ADD notes a “website that lists all the major candidates and their stands on the issues; at least, the issues as designated by whoever created the site.”
1. Based solely on the issues, not silly things such as “electability”, which candidate best represents your positions on the issues? For me, wide-eyed liberal that I am, it’s Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who I voted for in the 2004 Democratic primary. Second is former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska.
2. Yet I’m disinclined to vote for Kucinich, or for that matter, Gravel, because they are unelectable the way the system is set up. Call that a self-fulfilling prophecy, but there it is. Then who? Let’s do this by process of elimination. Not all issues are the same in my mind. Gun background check (in favor), the death penalty (against), the war in Iraq (against), torture (against), and the same-sex constitutional ban (against) provides a pretty good litmus test. By that standard, I disagree at least thrice with Brownback, Cox, Giuliani, Huckabee, Hunter (a perfect 5 for 5), McCain, Romney and Tancredo. Thompson doesn’t have enough known positions, surprise, surprise. Who’s on your “no way, no how” list?
3. So who am I leaning towards? The person who just might have enough money to actually win whose position is closest to mine turns out to be Obama, who I still wonder about, experience-wise. How about you?
***
One of those bizarre political stories involves former Congressman John Sweeney, who represented the Congressional district adjacent to Albany. He was one of those Republican thugs who helped get the 2000 recount in Florida stopped. His 2006 re-election bid was stopped, in no small part, by allegations of domestic violence against his second wife Gayle (or Gaia) in December 2005. The Sweeneys denied it, claiming it was a smear campaign by his opponent, Kirsten Gillibrand. Now, he’s saying that there WAS domestic violence, but that HE was the victim, and that he’s even gotten a judge to give him an order of protection. Gayle, who said in television commercials last fall that there was no violence, now claims she was coerced to say so, and that she was the victim. Now John’s first wife has entered the fray, stating that he was never physically violent towards her.
* John getting a restraining order against Gayle doesn’t prove that Gayle was the aggressor. He’s been a very powerful man, politically.
* Wife #1’s claim that she never experienced domestic violence from John doesn’t mean that wife #2, who was considerably younger and, in her own words, “in awe of him” in the beginning, wasn’t experiencing abuse.
* In most iterations of this story, there’s a lot of alcohol mentioned.
As I said, very bizarre
***
Meanwhile, the new member of Congress, Ms. Gillibrand, had a press conference this week announcing a bill to increase the tax deduction on day care costs. She had it in an Albany daycare that is not even in her district. But then I remember that her district, that runs from Washington County to Delaware County (note to non-New Yorkers: a big chunk of territory) without including any of the cities (Albany, Schenectady, Troy); it was gerrymandered to be a safe Republican district, mostly rural. I’m sure it’s easier to get the Capital District press to come to Albany than the countryside.
ROG