[tesla69]

Culture, change collide in Treme
Some residents balk at musicians' traditional sendoff
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
By Katy Reckdahl
Staff writer
Monday, at about 8 p.m., nearly 20 police cars swarmed to a Treme corner, breaking up a memorial procession and taking away two well-known neighborhood musicians in handcuffs.
The brothers, snare drummer Derrick Tabb and trombonist Glen David Andrews, were in a group of two dozen musicians playing a spontaneous parade for tuba player Kerwin James, who died last week of complications from a stroke he had suffered after Hurricane Katrina.
The confrontation spurred cries in the neighborhood about the over-reaction and disproportionate enforcement by police, who had often turned a blind eye to the traditional memorial ceremonies. Still others say the incident is a sign of a greater attack on the cultural history of the old city neighborhood by well-heeled newcomers attracted to Treme by the very history they seem to threaten.
Police say Monday's response was in part generated from unspecified complaints.
Tabb and Andrews face misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace and parading without a permit. But both returned Tuesday night to the intersection of St. Philip and North Robertson streets to lead another procession for their friend.
"I got to be here," Andrews said. "Because I have to stand up for what I believe in."
Peaceful parade
Tuesday's parade was without incident. It was peacefully escorted by the New Orleans Police Department, thanks to a newly issued permit, the result of lengthy meetings Tuesday between community groups and police officials.
Funeral director Louis Charbonnet, a longtime supporter of music in Treme who also is in charge of James' Saturday funeral service, confirmed the permit came from those meetings, which he participated in. He was vague about who paid for the permit. "We've got a permit and it's paid for," he said.
Some neighbors said buying a permit was a cop-out, arguing the traditional parades should be unencumbered by the bureaucratic formalities.
"It is" a cop out, Charbonnet agreed. "But sometimes you have to do what you have to do."
As Charbonnet stood waiting for the parade to start, he emphasized that the meetings already had an effect. "Look around," he said. "Today you've got police out here protecting people. Yesterday it was harassment," he said.
Jerome Smith, who runs the Treme Community Center a block from Monday's arrest scene, said the police response was heavy-handed and culturally insensitive. He compared it to the Police Department's heavily criticized treatment of the Mardi Gras Indians on St. Joseph's night in 2005, which was the topic of Big Chief Tootie Montana's City Council testimony the night he collapsed and died in the council chambers.
First District Capt. Louis Colin avoided such comparisons, defending his officers' response Monday night. "If a law is being violated, we have to uphold the law," he said. But after Tuesday's meetings, he said he is determined to work with neighbors to find "long-term solutions" to this issue.
'I need to be here'
Lifelong Treme resident Beverly Curry, 65, is one who believes that permits should not be required for the neighborhood memorial parades. Despite a failing leg, Curry made it to the procession's start Tuesday night. "I need to be here, to show my support for our heritage," she said.
For a century, she said, that heritage has included impromptu second-line parades for musicians who die, "from the day they pass until the day they're put in the ground," she said. Those memorial processions still occur with regularity, without permits, as is the tradition. But, increasingly, NOPD officers have been halting them, citing complaints from neighbors and incidents of violence at similar gatherings.
In some ways, the police complaints parallel those NOPD officials raised earlier this year, as they defended the high permit fees that the department was charging New Orleans' weekly second-line parades, hosted by social aid and pleasure clubs. Ultimately, the NOPD settled that suit, assessing much lower rates to allow the clubs to parade. Club members saw the court victory as an admission by police officials that they had been insensitive to New Orleans' culture.
But Curry and other longtime residents point fingers at Treme newcomers, who buy up the neighborhood's historic properties, then complain about a jazz culture that is just as longstanding and just as lauded as the neighborhood's architecture.
"They want to live in the Treme, but they want it for their ways of living," Curry said.
For newly arrived neighbors, Curry sometimes serves as a cultural interpreter. "I tell them, 'When someone dies in the Treme, you're going to hear a band,' " she said. But to those neighbors dismayed by the noise or the crowds that come along with those bands, Curry is stern. "I say, 'You found us doing this -- this is our way," she said.
Mourning a friend
On Monday night, about 25 of the city's top-rung brass-band musicians mourned Kerwin James the way they hope to be mourned themselves: They paraded around Treme, taking the same well-trod route that the spontaneous parades often take. They started at the corner of North Robertson and St. Philip streets, then criss-crossed through the quiet streets of old Treme, which stretches from Esplanade Avenue to Basin Street, from Rampart Street to Claiborne Avenue.
On horns and drums were James' lifelong friends, bandmates from the New Birth Brass Band and members of the Rebirth Brass Band, including James' brother, tuba player Phil Frazier. Dancing along with the band was a crowd of about 100 people, including about 30 children. At some street corners, the band stopped and played for a few minutes while fancy dancers strutted and dipped and elderly neighbors in bathrobes stepped out onto their stoops to wave and give their condolences to James' family.
Then, about 8 p.m., a squad car pulled up behind the parade, which was just yards from its ending point, back at the corner of North Robertson and St. Philip.
When a New Orleans Police Department car approaches, musicians say they never know what's ahead.
Sometimes a squad car arrives and quietly follows the parade. Other times, an officer will emerge and ask for the bandleader, then discuss the reason for the parade and the planned route. In those cases, the two parties may negotiate a different route or ending point, but the parade typically is allowed to continue.
But on Monday night, the squad car meant the parade was over. The band had just launched into the funeral hymn, "I'll Fly Away," and some musicians had tears running down their faces as they sang the lyrics: "One glad morning, when this life is over, I'll fly away. When I die, hallelujah by and by, I'll fly away." At that point, officers used the car's intercom to tell band members that if they continued playing, they would be arrested.
Most musicians kept playing, as they walked into the parking lot. "I wasn't trying to defy police," one trombone player said. "But I was just carried by emotion."
Officers repeated their message, with little effect, so they began running into the crowd and grabbing anyone with an instrument. Some officers grabbed at mouthpieces, others tried to seize drumsticks out of hands.
James' sister, Nicole James-Francois was shocked. "There were so many police cars," she said. The scene was so peaceful and beautiful while the band was playing the hymn, she said. "Then it beaome almost something demonic, with all these officers saying, 'Don't you play.' "
Soon, 20 squad cars were lining the blocks of North Robertson between St. Philip and Dumaine streets, filling the night with red and blue flashing lights.

[tesla69]

The First Set of Disappearances Were Called Extraordinary Renditions
While extraordinary renditions were the sanitized words the US Government, and, sadly, the media, used to label the disappearances, there was nothing extraordinary about them.
The CIA used the same tactics that survivors of torture everywhere have come to know all too well. Without an arrest, without charges, in darkness or in shadows, people were disappeared, drugged, hooded, and sent to a clandestine prison where they were tortured.
After denying the existence of CIA-run secret prisons for years, the Bush administration now claims to have closed them. As always the case when governments disappear people, we may never know what happened to all of the prisoners. We do know that at least some of the prisoners were transferred to DoD custody and sent to Guantanamo.
The Second Set of Disappearances Are Being Called 'Transfers' and Are Happening Now
If extraordinary renditions were the sanitized words used to describe the first set of disappearances, transfer and repatriation are the sanitized words being used to describe the second set of disappearances.
Yesterday, the Department of Defense 'transferred' eight more prisoners from Guantanamo to governments where torture and indefinite detentions are common. According to the DoD, six prisoners (the Pentagon uses the sanitized term 'detainees') were 'transferred' to Afghanistan, one was 'transferred' to Libya and one to Yemen.
Languishing in those countries’ prisons is an unfortunate fate for men that the US Government has already held for years, likely tortured, and is only releasing now because prosecutors lack any evidence to prove their guilt. As with all disappearances, authorities have refused to release even the names of the prisoners.
These eight are the latest in a series of transfers – disappearances – as the government attempts to untangle the legal web it created to bypass the Geneva Convention and US Constitution. So deep in the dark hole of torture, the only option they see is to keep digging.
Much like the Military Commissions Act, the law created to govern Guantanamo, the 'transfer' and 'repatriation' of prisoners is designed to look good on paper. DoD press releases state that 'the transfer is a demonstration of the United States' desire not to hold detainees any longer than necessary.'
But, much like the Military Commissions Act, the transfers continue a system of disappearances and torture. Much like the Military Commissions Act, the transfers are a PR stunt that hides torture and denies survivors any hope of ever telling their story and seeking justice.
The men 'transferred' yesterday may never see a day in court. They may never get to tell their stories. Along with the Military Commissions Act – the Torture Law – we must demand that the second set of disappearances comes to an end.


By Ted Stein http://torturelaw.org

[tesla69]

http://www.nationalexpositor.com/News/392

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by tesla69

http://www.nationalexpositor.com/News/392

I find this post by resident nutball tesla69 especially telling. If you explore the link, it's fairly sensationalized copy on that page.

What don't you understand, tesla69?
If you march around in an unlawful assembly, it doesn't matter what document you're reading from! Duh!
This so reminds me of the ingrate down in Gainesville who got tased at the Kerry speech.

In the video at the landing page, what we see is a bunch of spoiled rotten kids playing a little game of "political activism" for the benefit of the camera. These brats have no knowledge of how to bring their message to people, nor do they care or even have an intelligent message in the first place. All they care about is getting their kicks and making a video for dissemination on YouTube and the like.

And don't get the sense that I'm just taking easy pot shots at today's generation. The Yippies and the Merry Pranksters back in the sixties were just as immature and misinformed with no real answers or direction. They claimed they wanted to "shake things up," to let their "freak flag fly" as a show of protest and irreverence, but any concerned individual (& let's face facts, people, it's time to get very seriously concerned) knows that one must be (a) informed to a fault, and (b) respectful to authority to a fault, to get anything accomplished. It seems people understood this concept intrinsically during the early sixties with the Civil Rights Movement, but that a bunch of yahoos began to make careers out of being leftist fruit loops in their stead later on in the sixties, and that this is, unfortunately, a fucked-up tradition that continues to this very day.

In October 2006, the 2007 John Warner Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 5122) was signed into law. Outlined in this legislation are expansions of the powers of the Insurrection Act, which allow the President and the President alone (without the approval of Congress or any state or local authority being necessary) to authorize the deployment of National Guard troops within the borders of the United States to combat unlawful assemblies of protesters, illegal aliens and "undesirables" in general. The same law also contains an equally disturbing provision granting the President emergency powers in a time of national crisis or emergency that supersede any state or local authority.

So, apparently, none of the posters in this thread (that feign concern) have any kind of clue at all as to the mechanism providing for eventual possible realities of a police state in the U.S., since this law has not been mentioned in this topic.

What seems a horrible possibility is that more attacks may be allowed to happen. In the aftermath, protesters may be squelched under the Warner provisions. And chances are, the authorities will be using the Raytheon Silent Guardian on the crowds.

__________________
But, thank goodness that everyone is not a complete idiot. This guy actually has sense:
Serious Change: dress like you're going to the most important job interview of your life
September 30, 2007 11:10 AM

Seriously pissed? How about serious change? Decades from now, no one will accuse our generation of not protesting enough, but you'll probably be making excuses for how we did it. No offense to those who have protested this way- your heart's in the right place and you've probably given lots of time and money to doing the right thing- but what if you're not helping? What if hundreds of thousands of people turned out in their very best, most serious clothes, with no puppets, no "clever" home-made signs, and no instruments? It's worked before. As Matt Taibbi put it in AdBusters (previously on MeFi), "Next thing you know, you’ve got guys on stilts wearing mime makeup and Cat-in-the-Hat striped top-hats leading a half-million people at an anti-war rally. Why is that guy there? Because no one told him that war is a matter of life and death and that he should leave his fucking stilts at home." These things always start small, but who knows? This is serious- let's act like it. If you wouldn't bring it or wear it to your grandmother's funeral, leave it at home.
posted by paul_smatatoes (168 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite

[tesla69]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

I find this post by resident nutball tesla69 especially telling. If you explore the link, it's fairly sensationalized copy on that page.
What don't you understand, tesla69?
If you march around in an unlawful assembly, it doesn't matter what document you're reading from! DUH!

We know you worship authority Atari2600, but in the US the Constitution gives us the right to Freedom of Assembly. It doesn't say we have the right if the cops want to give us the right. You can't wear Tshirts in public, you can't smoke in your house, your every communication is monitored, etc etc etc Wake the hell up moron.

Originally Posted by atari 2600

In October 2006, the 2007 John Warner Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 5122) was signed into law. the President emergency powers in a time of national crisis or emergency.
So, apparently, none of the posters in this thread (that feign concern) have any kind of clue at all as to the mechanism providing for eventual possible realities of a police state in the U.S., since this law has not been mentioned in this topic.

So why didn't you add it to the discussion instead of spreading smear and personal insults? Is that too civilized for you?

[atari 2600]

Fuck you; you're an idiot.

It's people like you that subvert real change because you're just another space cadet that can't see the forest for the trees. It's people like you that give creedence to right wing expressions like "the loony left."
You have no interest in facts or rationality. All you care about is being "conspiracy guy" because you've made that into your false identity. No movement needs you. You and others like you are nothing more than a liability that stands in the way of informing the public and getting things done. Go fuck yourself.

All that anyone needs to do is to write an intelligent and coherent letter to their representatives citing historical precedent and contentions derived via a rudimentary understanding of political science and constitutional law about certain provisions within H.R. 5122. Only a truly uncaring person is uninformed to the extent that they can't even handle the basics. I posted about this law early this year, but removed the post because I (correctly) figured that nobody would give a damn anyway.

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

But, thank goodness that everyone is not a complete idiot. This guy actually has sense:
Serious Change: dress like you're going to the most important job interview of your life
September 30, 2007 11:10 AM

Seriously pissed? How about serious change? Decades from now, no one will accuse our generation of not protesting enough, but you'll probably be making excuses for how we did it. No offense to those who have protested this way- your heart's in the right place and you've probably given lots of time and money to doing the right thing- but what if you're not helping? What if hundreds of thousands of people turned out in their very best, most serious clothes, with no puppets, no "clever" home-made signs, and no instruments? It's worked before. As Matt Taibbi put it in AdBusters (previously on MeFi), "Next thing you know, you’ve got guys on stilts wearing mime makeup and Cat-in-the-Hat striped top-hats leading a half-million people at an anti-war rally. Why is that guy there? Because no one told him that war is a matter of life and death and that he should leave his fucking stilts at home." These things always start small, but who knows? This is serious- let's act like it. If you wouldn't bring it or wear it to your grandmother's funeral, leave it at home.
posted by paul_smatatoes (168 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite

quoted for truth.


honestly, does logic ever really matter to soap-box types or is all that shouting done so that they can be heard and/or adored?

sadly, I suspect that in a lot of cases, it's the latter.

there are a lot of fucked up things in this world that might be resolved if people attempted to fix the problems in a logical and rational manner.


[edit: ouch, I think I just broke my false identity]

[atari 2600]

Well, if a person (like tesla69) that purports to be a rational truth-teller believes in UFOs from outer space, then it's no stretch at all to psychologically and philosophically label their personality as a false identity because their entire belief system is based on assumptions that willfully ignore reality in favor of personal fantasy.

The only concept that will overcome The Lie is The Truth, and nothing less, so be nothing short of vigilant. Objective truth is incredibly elusive to the selfish, and ultimately insecure, human ego. Yet more Lies (concocted by extreme leftist burnouts) piled on top of all the other Lies, will never do anyone any good.

[floatingslowly]

I'm not sure that I've ever really seen telsa insist that he was rational, but to me most of his posts are akin to carpet bombing.

there's an aweful lot of ordinance dropped, but it's mostly all collateral damage, as opposed to actual hits on his targets.

anyways, that's enough e-seriousness for me to last a month. I just wanted to say "good post".

carry on, soldier.

[tesla69]

I've been dealing with bullies like atari all my life so shes gonna have to work a little harder. She's very very rigid in his beliefs. She loves to yell and scream. Her smeers are a perfect example of why nothing can get done anymore. Anyone disagrees, they get name called.

Floatingslowly, I'm not sure what rationality means anymore in our world. My country murders 100,000 people, spreads radioactive dust throughout the environment, and is creating all kinds of genetically engineered virii and bacteria in 100's of labs around the country. That is considered rationalism. Consider me unsubscribed.

Jim

[atari 2600]

Citing examples of atrocities to convey a desired image doesn't automatically make you a concerned individual in reality. Any idiot can surf the web and copy and paste; it doesn't mean that they've spent any effort coming up with solutions to problems. Actions have always spoken louder than words. And one action you should have already taken is to make yourself informed concering the certain law passed last October and to have already taken appropriate measures concerning its troubling content. So please, spare me and spare us all the act.

one more time for the stubborn fuck who is far more concerned about his feathers getting ruffled than the actual truth of things:

And don't get the sense that I'm just taking easy pot shots at today's generation. The Yippies and the Merry Pranksters back in the sixties were just as immature and misinformed with no real answers or direction. They claimed they wanted to "shake things up," to let their "freak flag fly," as a show of protest and irreverence, but any concerned individual (& let's face facts, people, it's time to get very seriously concerned) knows that one must be (a) informed to a fault, and (b) respectful to authority to a fault, to get anything accomplished. It seems people understood this concept intrinsically during the early sixties with the Civil Rights Movement, but that a bunch of yahoos began to make careers out of being leftist fruit loops in their stead later on in the sixties, and that this is, unfortunately, a fucked-up tradition that continues to this very day.

So you see, I'm not the bully. I understand that one must work from within the system and be respectful of authority to affect change. But hey, I'm just patriotic with a true belief in the U.S. Constitution that way.
tesla69, on the other hand, espouses a juvenile and unrealistic call to anarchy in a rather ridiculous and vainglorious attempt to bully change into happening by disrespecting all authority and rubbing their faces in the mess that's been made of things. Which is, of course, all symptomatic of the fact that he has no answers or direction at all, the truth be completely told.

[demonrail666]

It's definitely a frustrating time we live in. I see a lot of people talking revolution but its largely adopting a language handed down from the 1960s. Retro-revolt if you like, as if all people want these days is their own version of an Abbie Hoffman. Shifts in economic, racial, gender and class politics over the last quarter of a century have rendered much of the thinking associated with the sixties counter-culture even more misguided than they were at the time. Protests against the Vietnam war, racial segregation, nuclear arms, etc., were straightforward compared with the more deeply interlocking issues that face us today.

How we tackle them is of course the great problem in that it'll clearly take massive infrastructural change and a period of potential transitional unrest, but whatever changes need to be made they need to be based on facts rather than received dogma.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

I
So, apparently, none of the posters in this thread (that feign concern) have any kind of clue at all as to the mechanism providing for eventual possible realities of a police state in the U.S., since this law has not been mentioned in this topic.

Erudition itself. I don't have the wherewithal to contribute to the mire of this thread, except to say that it's all well and good getting angry, but it strikes me as a function of emotion rather than ration to be 'angry' about the variegated machinations of contemporary (nomenclature/ nominal/ actual) democracy which, in turn, serves to make posting on a message board both 'enjoyable' (in an entirely masochistic fashion) and futile.

[atari 2600]

Yeah, you're right, Glice, I have no right to be human and get emotional about my fellow American citizens being complete incompetents in the face of potential impending upheaval that will affect the whole world, including your little corner, negatively.

And thanks for your honesty...that you have no "wherewithal to contribute."
And since you do not, why don't you follow your own advice and remove your little contribution to the thread?

[Glice]

Ha.

Perhaps I should modify/ mollify my statement - being emotional about 'the state of things' is entirely right and judicious, and, given time, will affect these changes that are sorely needed, and probably are already. It's the calls for a sudden, dramatic & radical upheaval from the same quarters that endorse (my view of) those aspects of culture which are endemic of/ to, if not responsible for, the same problems they purportedly decry.

I'll inevitably edit this following your inevitable editing of the above.

Originally Posted by atari 2600

And thanks for your honesty...that you have no "wherewithal to contribute."
And since you do not, why don't you follow your own advice and remove your little contribution to the thread?

No, thank you for your lamentable instransigence. Understandable, yes, but I'm not going to remove every instance of my saying something true, although you are right insofar as my doing so isn't entirely conducive to the ends of an internet forum.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

It's definitely a frustrating time we live in. I see a lot of people talking revolution but its largely adopting a language handed down from the 1960s. Retro-revolt if you like, as if all people want these days is their own version of an Abbie Hoffman. Shifts in economic, racial, gender and class politics over the last quarter of a century have rendered much of the thinking associated with the sixties counter-culture even more misguided than they were at the time. Protests against the Vietnam war, racial segregation, nuclear arms, etc., were straightforward compared with the more deeply interlocking issues that face us today.

How we tackle them is of course the great problem in that it'll clearly take massive infrastructural change and a period of potential transitional unrest, but whatever changes need to be made they need to be based on facts rather than received dogma.

Nice post, I appreciate your thoughts.

For the moment, the troubling aspects of Warner must be addressed first and foremostly.

The long-term solution is really rather simple. Well, it's simple in its elegance of formulation, but rather difficult to execute due to obvious inherency issues. But it is a solution that fixes a broken America. Either institute iron-clad campaign finance reform across the board to clean-up politics (and keep term limits as they are), or just add an amendment prohibiting repeat terms of office and putting an end to career politicians for good. If people fail to get behind this key aspect of addressing change and instead fall (once again) for splintering off in a thousand different directions expending their energies trying to fix a thousand different problems, then they play right into the control's hands, and nothing will ever get done and nothing will change. People seem to have real mental difficulty when it comes to correctly assessing what the real priority is and what the root of all of our problems is, namely, political corruption based on greed and/or vested interest in a political "career."

I've written about American patriot Doris Haddock before on this board. She's the elderly woman who walked across America to raise political consciousness in favor of responsible representation, and got the first attempt at campaign finance reform passed. The slippery snakes were able to wriggle out of that one.

__________________
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. - President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

The long-term solution is really rather simple. Well, it's simple in its elegance of formulation, but rather difficult to execute due to obvious inherency issues. But it is a solution that fixes a broken America. Either institute iron-clad campaign finance reform across the board to clean-up politics (and keep term limits as they are), or just add an amendment prohibiting repeat terms of office and putting an end to career politicians for good. If people fail to get behind this key aspect of addressing change and instead fall (once again) for splintering off in a thousand different directions expending their energies trying to fix a thousand different problems, then they play right into the control's hands, and nothing will ever get done and nothing will change. People seem to have real mental difficulty when it comes to correctly assessing what the real priority is and what the root of all of our problems is, namely, political corruption based on greed and/or vested interest in a political "career."

I agree with most of this, especially the putting in place of campaign fund caps. However I fail to see how a prohibition on repeat terms of office would have that big an impact on halting the concept of the career politician. Of course, if we take the term literally then yes, it would, but Government office is, as we know, a significant stepping stone to gaining lucrative positions on influential corporate boards. As such, regardless of whether a politician is able to serve one or more terms, the likelihood of them being given such a post after their period of office is extremely high.

This fluid transfer from the political to the corporate sphere is I believe the single most damaging factor in Western government today. Obviously the simple answer would be to prohibit ex politicians from such boards, but the logistical problem of trying to achieve such a thing makes it highly unlikely.

Too much of old revolutionary thinking was built around easy (read meaningless) notions like ''oppression'. However, as I think Atari suggests, it is indeed to the reciprocal relay of business and government resulting in a tight web of vested interest that should provide the real focus for anybody seriously interested in addressing today's crises.

[ThePits]

I think you both have the answer, place a cap on political funding, dont limit the amount of terms that a politican cans serve as politicians do not legislate beyond their elected term and some problems need a longer solution such as mass transit systems and environmental issues, and a ban on politicians taking up corporate positions for at least ten years after being removed. Put them on some sort of pension system. That takes out most of the global corporation corruption that is the demise of democracy as we know it

[demonrail666]

In essence, I agree.

However I work in what might be described as a government post and my experience of watching government officials fight to further their careers is truly one of the most horrifying sights imaginable.

[atari 2600]

 

How do Democrats expect Hillary (or Obama for that matter) to win the general election against either Rudy or Fred? What the fuck are people thinking? Are people thinking? What the fuck is wrong with people?
How is it that these four horrible candidates are out front?
And the primaries are all being moved up too.

Astoundingly, supporters for Dennis Kucinich for the Democrats and Ron Paul for the Republicans are so few in number (according to the API anyway) that they don't even merit a mention. Some polls have them each placing modest single digit numbers.

And, of course, Gore hasn't chosen to run, nor has Bloomberg.

(truly troubling)