Kucinich Bows Out to Fight On

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.

Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet

Dennis Kucinich has dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination as their candidate for the POTUS.

Kucinich gives up on presidency, still running for rep

January 27, 2008
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Democrat Dennis Kucinich Friday abandoned his presidential bid to focus on a tough race for re-election to Congress.

Even though I knew he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in today’s rainstorm, I still feel sad. Kucinich comes closest to representing every thing that is true and good to me about government. I’m a Progressive Democrat Socialist at heart.

I believe in capitalism but not unfettered capitalism. Pure capitalism leads to the excesses and abuses of the system that we have seen in recent years that can and has nearly ruined our economy and leaves the common man who really doesn’t stand a chance of attaining the American Dream vulnerable to the greed and avarice of the 20% of the population that controls the resources. Not only is this a gross injustice, it’s vulgar and dangerous.

I think things like the gas and electric and telephone services should be owned by the public, regulated by the government and managed by private companies. I believe that everyone in a country as rich as this country is should be guaranteed a living wage. McDonald’s should not be able to make insane profits off the backs of their franchise owners and line workers. I believe there should be a cap set on how much profit capitalists at the highest echelons can earn as personal income. CEOs should not be making million dollar bonuses while the men and women on the assembly lines or in the cubical farms are being laid off or losing benefits.

I believe that every man woman and child deserves basic health care in this country. I’m not talking about Cadillac health care. I’m talking about a child who needs well baby care and vaccinations in those first years of life that are so important in getting a child off to a good start in life. I’m talking about the kid who falls off the teeter totter and needs stitches in his head. I’m talking about a woman getting a pap smear and breast exam every year. I’m talking about the man who won’t go to the Doctor when he has a suspicious chest pain and dies of a heart attack because he doesn’t have health care insurance.

When the people at the lowest end of the spectrum of our economy find themselves so disenfranchised that they can not even attain a basic standard of living-a decent roof over their heads, healthy foods to feed their families, medical care, and participate equally in their culture, civil unrest is sure to follow. When the capitalists place profit ahead of the basic needs of their workers revolution can not be far behind.

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There Is a Better Way

Is there a better way
Is there a better way
Is there a better way ahead
Or just another dayThere’s got to be a way
To make a better day
I’m gonna find away
To make a better day

Lyrics by 9

Dennis Kucinich was on the campaign trail last week in New Hampshire and spoke to families participating in a program that provides transitional housing and support to the homeless. WMUR-TV filed this report

Kucinich Speaks On Homelessness
Candidate Uses Experience As Foundation During Appearance

“I come to the political system as an advocate for people, not an advocate for any special interest group. That really is what distinguishes me from anyone else in this race,” said Kucinich, a former Cleveland mayor.

Kucinich’s willingness to get back to the old-time Liberal Democratic ideals are what set him apart from the rest of the Centrist Democrats who might as well be labeled RepublicanLite.

“A president who stands for building technologies for peace, a president who stands for strength through peace, a president who sees the jobs of the future being created by supporting the space program is a president who can help strengthen the country, strengthen its economy and strengthen our (relationships) with the countries of the world,” he said.

They’re trying too hard to appeal to everyone and they’re stuck in their heads when they should be lessons from the past and going for the gut feeling issues that are going to bring people to their feet and get them out of their easy chairs and to the polls. Hillary of all people should know this Bill Clinton was a mastermind at appealing to peoples emotions and motivating them to vote for him.

Kucinich has the ability to appeal to people emotionally. He just need to be visible and get his message to the people. Money. It’s all about how much money you can raise. Contributions can be made via Kucinich’s website.

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He’s Out There, He’s Outraged, and He’s Outrageous

Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony
Stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni.Yankee Doodle, keep it up
Yankee Doodle dandy
Mind the music and the step
And with the girls be handy.

Richard Schaklburg 1775

When I say that he’s outrageous I mean that in the most complimentary way. Dennis Kucinich may not be a serious contender for the Oval Office at in the polls at this point but he’s campaigning as if he were, daring to address issues that are not the official Democratic Party centrist position. Hitting at the top contenders weakest points. Calling the Bush administration on every indecent move they make.

From Digg.com comes this article published in the RAW Story

Kucinich: ‘Belligerent’ Bush Admin. trying to ‘deceive’ US into ‘yet another war’

“The belligerent Bush Administration is using this pending designation to convince the American public into accepting that a war with Iran is inevitable,” Kucinich said. “This designation will set the stage for more chaos in the region because it undercuts all of our diplomatic efforts.” (read more here)

Kucinich is the darkhorse in this race but he certainly hits the emotional buttons Weston talks about in his book The Political Brain. He is the only contender who can claim that he voted against the war in Iraq and has consistently criticized it all these years. He is the one Democrat in this race who has been the big thorn in the Republicans toe because he has constantly called them out on their bad policies and their devious tactics.

With the recent endorsements by Michael Moore which probably means a great deal of money flowing his way via Moor’s rich and powerful friends and The AFL-CIO, Kucinich is beginning to make his move from a distant fourth in the pack o He will appeal to voters across a wide range of the spectrum because he has one of those pulled himself up by his bootstrap life stories that are so appealing to the emotions of voters and he knows how to deliver a well written speech. With the right advisers and enough money, Kucinich could come up from behind the pack at the last minute and steal this nomination right out from under Hillary Rodham Clinton’s pert little nose.

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Moore & Labor endorse Kucinich

I’ve had a lot of catching up to do with news. First of all in my email inbox about 10 updates from Gather.com with the following headline:

Michael Moore Endorses Congressman & Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich’s Healthcare Legislation

by David Anderson

You’re probably all well aware that Michael Moore has a new movie out called SICKO that takes a hard look at the health care system in the United States and finds it in dire need of emergency services. He believes Dennis Kucinich’s proposed legislation would be beneficial to the health of the nation.

Michael Moore has formally endorsed HR 676, the bill in Congress which could establish universal healthcare in America! Presidential candidate and Congressman Dennis Kucinich has been working hard to push this bill through the House of Representatives. He is also a long time proponent of universal healthcare. Read the transcript below and join the Kucinich for President 2008 group here on Gather: http://kucinich2008.gather.com/

Or go to the campaign website: www.kucinich.us

Hurray For Dennis Kucinich And Michael Moore!

Googling Kucinich turned up this from the Capitol Times editorial pages here in Madison.

Kucinich wows labor

An editorial - 8/09/2007 10:09 am

I met Kucinich years ago at the Labor Hall on Park Street when he came to speak. He was wildly popular amongst Union folks back then. The hall was so packed you could barely breathe. He’s a wonderful speaker. Just wonderful.
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This is Your Brain. This is your Brain on Politics:

Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.Its the hammer of justice,
Its the bell of freedom,
Its the song about love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.Its the hammer of justice,
Its the bell of freedom,
Its the song about love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

Pete Seeger and Lee Hays performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary

My Delphi Forum friend MerlinsDad (who I met at the Political Circus and now hang out with at the Poll Vault over at Delphi Forums) was feeding me large chunks of Drew Weston’s book, “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotions in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” and got me so darn interested in it that I just had to have a copy which arrived in the mail yesterday. Drew Weston is decidedly liberal and he has set out to change the way Democrats run their campaigns.

This promises to be a better than average good read. MerlinsDad says it is. He’s going to be reading along with me the second time through and we’ll discuss. I’m going to try to get him to start his own Blog so it will be a permanent record of rational discourse between two friends. Actually I’m going to try to bully him into it because I’ve tried convincing him he has plenty to say in a Blog that is worth saying and he keeps giving me this “Aw shucks, attitude.” I’m a fierce bully when I want to be. ;^)

I tried to start reading this last night around 10:30 pm and promptly fell asleep three pages in. I guess I was a little tired. The heat has been getting to me and we’ve had a respite. It’s 8:54 am and the temperature is 69* with 86% humidity. It was raining earlier but the sky is partly cloudy and we’re looking fo a high of 86*. I hope the humidity clears up as the day goes by…

Well, let us begin the discussion. I’ve read the forward and 12 pages into the first chapter. Weston is a neuroscientist who has been studying how the brain processes political and legal information as well as a clinician who trains psychologists and psychiatrists in understanding the “nuances of of meaning in what people say, do and feel.” The central thesis of the book is that the assumptions of the past from the time of Plato and Socrates and the Enlightenment have been that human beings think rationally and when presented with contradictory information the will examine all of the data and come to a reasonable conclusion.

Weston contends that this is not the case. He asserts that the politically partisan brain of the die hard Democrat or Republican will reject contradictory information about their candidates based on what he calls “gut feelings” and he set out to prove it by watching the brain at work in real time with the advanced technology we have at hand today. He and his colleagues set forth 4 hypotheses about what they expected they might find during their studies.

1) Threatening information about candidates would produce negative emotions that would activate neural circuits associated with negative emotional states

2) They expected to see activation of the part of the brain that is associated with regulating emotions .

3) They expect to see a “brain in conflict” as indicated by activations in a region that monitors and resolves conflict

4) Since they suspect that people “reason with their gut” or emotions they didn’t expect to see activation in the brain that is normally associated with reason or rational thinking.

Generally scientists don’t get everything on their wish list when they set out to do a study like this but in this case, Weston studied 15 Democrats and 15 Republicans and in every case all 4 hypotheses were verified. Humans are not the rational, reasoning creatures we have been taught they were all these years when it comes to politics. We operate on a very emotional level and this has some serious consequences on the campaign trail.

This may explain why I just can’t get into Hillary Clinton. She doesn’t turn me on emotionally. I don’t really dislike her all that much perse. I’m sort of neutral. She’s blah. There’s nothing exciting about her. Nothing that grabs me and makes me say, “YEAH, shes my candidate!”

I really want to feel much more strongly about the first viable woman candidate for President. I want to be excited that there is a woman running for President who actually might win. I mean when that Republican woman ran some years back I was excited. But Hillary is just not cutting it for me.

In truth, I’m far more excited by the prospect of Bill Clinton being the ‘First Gentleman’ in the Whitehouse than I am in Hillary sitting in the Oval office. I get a huge giggle at the thought of the ire of the Republicans imagining Bill lurking in the halls of the Whitehouse giving advice. Truth is, I want Bill back far more than I want Hillary back and that will probably be why I vote for her in the primary. More’s the pity.

If I had my druthers, I’d want Dennis Kucinich in the front runner position. Now there’s the Democrat who moves me emotionally! Listening to him give a political speech about his policies and the Democratic Party in general is like listening to an old time Evangelical Revival stump Preacher. HE MOVES ME! To tears.

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