The ruling: the votes can count, but only if we adjust for the votes as we woulda liked for it to have been instead of, you know...

...the way thing actually are?

There's been a lot of talk about party unity - let's all come together, and put our arms around each other. I submit to you ladies and gentlemen, hijacking four delegates ... is not a good way to start down the path of party unity.
- Harold Ickes

The solution to seating the delegates: since of course we're pre-committed to the idea that Hillary Clinton is not going to be our nominee no matter what, we can seat the delegates with "only" the penalties that the rulebook actually provided for situations like these, but more must be done - because Clinton might actually win.

See, the thing is, rules are rules, but there are times when rules don't count. See, it just wouldn't be fair to Obama for anything to benefit Hillary. So let's rewrite the vote totals to include the votes Obama "should have" gotten.

And the media will allow just a little bit of coverage of the enraged (and freshly insulted) Dem base, but only so long as we emphasize how appropriate that there's a zoo nearby*...

WASHINGTON -- The hotel where the 30 Democratic rule makers met Saturday -- to decide whether rules are rules or whether rules are made to be broken -- was within howling distance of the National Zoo.

Outside the stately Marriott Wardman Park Hotel were clusters of women with "Hear Me Roar" placards in their fists who came from all over the country -- $4 a gallon be damned -- to make what could be a last stand for their Hillary....

...and only so long as we drop in the new meme, that it's unfair to the people who voted but it's even more unfair to the ones who didn't, but could have.

None of that was the voters' fault (did they set the calendar?), and who winds up getting punished? The voters.

And not just the voters who voted, but also the voters who didn't vote -- the ones who might have turned out had they not been told about a million times that their votes weren't going to count. Who knows how they would have spoken.

To the DNC, the key to democracy means tinkering with certified election results as needed to make things...well, "fair"**.

And we have to accommodate all those poor unfortunates who would have voted, if only they...well, had voted.

Harold Ickes, a member of the committee and a top adviser to Clinton, said the panel had "hijacked" delegates belonging to Clinton.

"I am stunned that we have the gall and chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000" people who voted in Michigan, he said. "Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee."

Ahh, but who cares about legitimacy in elections? Certainly not the media - they've got priorities, and they know who pays 'em. And certainly not the DNC - they made that clear yesterday.

So - time to party, eh***? If you can't win honestly, well - so long as you win.

Democratic strategists say they expect Obama to secure a majority of convention delegates and put the final touches on an historic run for the presidential nomination by the middle of this week. Enough additional superdelegates are likely to ratify his victory over Clinton, once the final primary votes are cast, they said, to put him over the top.

Obama, who said the other day that he expected the general election campaign to start this week, plans to stage a victory rally Tuesday night...

But in the end - Obama won't. Win, that is. And neither will any real Democrats****.

...several hundred Hillary Clinton supporters chanted "Count every vote!" and waved signs announcing "Count my vote or count me out." A smaller number of Barack Obama supporters kept their distance. One woman, passing by a 4-year-old girl and her mother carrying pro-Clinton signs, shouted at them: "Cheater!"

The chaos and vitriol seemed to confirm Democrats' fears that they might blow an election that should otherwise be an easy victory for them. Nor did the party's compromise fit well with the Democrats' oft-voiced commitment to voting rights.

Superdelegates: This is what November will look like

She’s not going to get over it.

You still have a choice.

Do the right thing.

update: reading the comments at firedoglake (apparently where this video originates) and other "progressive" blogs, I am stunned at how the "winning" candidate's backers, the ones who defended Rev. Wright's righteous pulpit-humping, and still support Obama after seeing Pfleger make an obscenity of himself, think this woman (above) needs to be 'more civil'.

Apparently whether your behavior is civil or not, in their world, is not based by how you actually behave, but rather on whether the outrage is justified or not - whether one's opinion matches the Opinions That We Have Deemed Worthy vs. the opinions that people just shouldn't have.

This woman out-and-out suggested that the raving hatred of white women vs. the special rules for black people thing is unfair. This automatically makes her evil and therefore worthy of degrading jabs based on her being (a) old and (b) a woman. (Mother is not supposed to be a dirty word, guys. 'Course we all know you hate your own mommies - because they didn't raise you to be respectful toward them or any other women.)

I'd say attacking this woman for being old and female should be out, we should stick to the issue, but that appears to be the issue. People should be young and beautiful and should obey the rules for what looks good. Old women violate everything Obama's "movement" stands for.

These people also blame Hillary for Obama's total unelectability. They still don't see anything wrong with him, or with what happened. They don't see any disconnect at all between their own raving raging hatred of old white women on the one hand, vs. their expectation that these old white women should fall in line like worthless old white bats just ought and vote for the candidate they're goddamned told to goddamned vote for.

(shudder)

I am working on a way to define the difference between "angry" vs. out-and-out "hateful". I don't want to be the way they are. I think I might start with a list of what I object to most about them - for instance, the hypocrisy of calling people bigots even as you jeer at them for their age, cheer the rancid lady screaming about "white trash", and laugh at the misogynistic jokes. Maybe after I write down all the things that make me dislike them so much, I can get control over how they are infesting my reality, and the immune system can get a grip. But I do not want to be serene. I think there is a time for anger - it exists for a reason, it really does. And the key to me is to articulate what is actually wrong (vs. just hating on the other people), and what needs to change - the first step to fixing something is setting good goals....

It has to come back to ethics. Real ethics. We need to rediscover integrity. We really really do.


___________________________________
* "hear me roar" - Helen Reddy song, "I am woman, hear me roar" - put them next to the zoo, because feminists are like animals - DID YA GET IT? DID YA GET IT?

** on the bright side, at least we won't be hearing much more about affirmative action "never hurt anyone".

*** or is that time to crash the party?

**** our votes were stolen, suppressed, manipulated, minimized. "With friends like these, who needs enemies?" Something to think about when you read press coverage of those enraged Obama supporters calling us "cheaters":

Our candidate is running on the idea that votes need to be earned.

The other candidate is the one relying on the idea that votes are something to demand, steal, suppress, manipulate, minimize, and in the end, declare oneself entitled to.