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First of all, I would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the past few months and for all the comments and emails I have received regarding this blog, it has meant the world to me...
When I first started Smoker's Corner, I didn't know what it would become. I was on vacation, looking for something to do and thought, "Hey, I'll start a blog." I picked the first URL that came to mind, hence www.trickytrickywhiteboy.blogspot.com which, if you ever watch Everybody Loves Raymond, is a reference to that show. At first it was just going to be day-to-day rants about everyday life but then I thought that I should blog about something more meaningful to me, something that has a purpose and is meant to inform. I've always been interested in government and politics and "conspiracy theories" and decided that there would be a good place to start, so that's what Smoker's Corner became. One man, dedicated to the movement of Truth through the sharing of information from all over the world.
It started off slow, then suddenly (to my amazement) began to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Honestly, I was a bit overwhelmed and did the best I could to keep up with posting the most up to date information that I could. It began making the rounds on the internet too. Links began popping up in other forums, on CNN's website and even the Wall Street Journal Online. However, with all the exposure that Smoker's Corner was getting, there were also people working behind the scenes to criticize me and my work. I got hate emails too, if you can believe that. A tiny little blog, getting hate email...unbelievable! I guess the final straw came when DIGG.com decided to ban my site from being 'DUGG' anymore, saying it was "consistently flagged as an intermediary to the direct source of news and/or video content." The whole thing just disgusted me...
So it is with great sadness that I have decided to put Smoker's Corner on permanent hiatus. That is not to say I will NEVER return again. For now though, my heart is not in it. I am keeping the domain, deleting nothing and maybe...MAYBE...Smoker's Corner will be back in one form or another. It took me a while to reach this decision and for right now, I feel that it is the right one.
Once again, thanks to all of you for your support, it has been much appreciated. For my subscribers, stay subscribed and one day you just may find a message in your in-box and then you'll know...I'm back...
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A last-minute federal court battle over caucus rules demonstrates just how important a tight three-way Democratic presidential contest in Nevada has become in the battle for momentum headed into Super Tuesday's votes.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are in a statistical dead heat in polling here before Saturday's caucuses. And Nevada's sizable blocs of Hispanic, union and urban voters could provide an indicator of where the race is headed on Feb. 5, when hundreds of delegates will be awarded in states with significant minority populations.
By contrast, Republican candidates have stayed away from the diverse electorate and unfamiliar electoral landscape as Nevada voters weigh in earlier than ever before.
No major GOP candidate has set foot in the state for two months, and some Republicans are bracing for a possible surprise first-place showing by long-shot Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the only Republican to broadcast TV ads in Nevada.
At issue in a federal court hearing Thursday is whether Democratic caucuses will be held in nine casinos along the Las Vegas Strip. The special locations were designed to make it easier for housekeepers, waitresses and bellhops in the state's biggest industry to caucus at midday near their jobs rather than returning home to neighborhood precincts.
The rules were unanimously approved by the state Democratic party last March and ratified by the Democratic National Committee in August.
But last Friday, six Democrats and a teachers union, which has ties to the Clinton campaign, sued to shut the sites on grounds they allocate too many delegates to one group. Of roughly 10,000 delegates to Nevada's presidential nominating convention, more than 700 could be selected at casino caucuses, depending upon turnout, which could make them more valuable than some sparsely populated Nevada counties, the lawsuit said. Four plaintiffs are on the committee that approved the sites.
The DNC petitioned to join the suit on behalf of the state party Tuesday.
The Clinton campaign has denied any involvement in the lawsuit, but Obama noted it was filed two days after he was endorsed by the powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which has organized many workers along the Strip. The union is the state's largest with 60,000 members, more than 40 percent Hispanic.
The Illinois senator drew cheers at a Culinary Union event Sunday when he said the rules were fine until the union decided, "I'm going to support the guy who's standing with the working people instead of the big shots."
By Monday, Bill Clinton was defending the lawsuit. "I think the rules ought to be the same for everybody," the former president told high school students near Las Vegas.
The Culinary Union circulated a less subtle message on fliers to members: "Backers of Hillary Clinton are suing in court to take away our right to vote in the caucus." It's airing the same message in Spanish-langauge radio ads.
The legal dustup is not the only sign that stakes have risen here as a new survey this week by the Reno Gazette-Journal showed the race is a toss-up among the three main rivals.
Democratic campaign offices are packed with field workers from Iowa and New Hampshire. An Obama phone bank has been expanded into a parking lot trailer. New Clinton staffers are wearing name tags. The Edwards campaign tripled its staff.
First to arrive after New Hampshire, Clinton went straight to a heavily Culinary Union neighborhood and found several members willing to break with the union to support her.
The fight over labor has dominated the campaign partly because its proven organizing ability is one of the few tested elements in the contest.
Party officials are hoping 40,000 people turn out, 10 percent of the state's registered Democrats. Four years ago, a record 9,000 turned out.
Clinton has the support of the Democratic establishment thanks to her state chairman, Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid, Sen. Harry Reid's son. The New York senator lined up the boldface names in each demographic group, particularly among Hispanics, who are nearly 25 percent of the population. She went after regular party activists, women and hordes of retirees with time to work the phones.
Edwards locked down some early union support, but the former North Carolina senator wrestled hard and lost when he needed it most. Along with the Culinary Union, the Nevada chapter of the Service Employees International Union aligned with Obama. The Edwards campaign has focused on a badly needed win in South Carolina and did not rush to match the stepped-up Obama and Clinton efforts.
Before his labor endorsements, Obama's campaign was fueled by new voters, blacks and scores of out-of-state canvassers from California and Arizona. His workers reached out to the massive work force on the Las Vegas Strip in casino employee breakrooms and cafeterias.
Obama has tripled his television advertising and added a new commercial about his union endorsements. Clinton's ads have highlighted her promise to close the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, but all three candidates vied at a debate Tuesday to express the deepest opposition to the dump.
Among Republicans, Paul had has TV and radio advertising almost all to himself. While he hasn't placed higher than fourth in previous contests, his views are a natural fit among some in libertarian-leaning Nevada. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has made a play for support among fellow Mormons, a politically active community in Nevada. He has some radio ads, the only other Republican broadcasting ads here.
A poll for the Gazette-Journal showed John McCain at 22 percent, Rudy Giuliani at 18 percent, Mike Huckabee with 16 percent and Romney at 15 percent.
While Las Vegas and Reno receive the most attention, Obama and Clinton plan trips to Elko, a small ranching and mining town in northeast Nevada - part of their effort to scoop up voters left without a candidate when New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson quit the race.
Richardson's departure also provided an opening among Hispanic voters in Las Vegas and fueled concentration on the Culinary Union.
The heavily Hispanic union has been working members for two months, prompting signs this 24-hour town may tire of political attention.
One graveyard shift worker last week posted this message to union canvassers outside a home: "Yes! We are caucusing with the Culinary ... Please do not knock (sleeping)."
Two days before the New Hampshire primary, Fox News staged a forum for the Republican presidential candidates and invited everyone who was at the ABC debate the day before, except for Ron Paul. They introduced the forum by saying that the GOP nominee would be one of the five candidates who were there, a statement clearly meant to suggest that Ron Paul doesn't have a chance to win.
That may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, if the camel was an American populace growing increasingly impatient and frustrated with Faux News propaganda.
Fox News wanted to have a forum where it talked with the five GOP candidates who basically agree with their way of thinking: who like the war in Iraq, who like the surge, who want to increase troops in the region, and who have no problem with an eventual war against Iran. What they didn't count on was the depth of support for Ron Paul.
It is hard to measure Paul's support. He is the most-searched-for candidate on the internet, by far, outpacing every Democrat and Republican. He probably raised the most money last quarter (probably, because he reports his donations live while others wait for the FEC deadline at the end of the month). In a graphic map of Meetup groups, other candidates have patches of red dots, while Paul's map is a solid red across the entire country. He has won almost every post-debate poll. Independent Paul supporters have helped him raise $10 million over two days, setting and breaking his own record. There is a blimp flying around the country that asks Who is Ron Paul? on one side and suggests you Google Ron Paul on the other.
Yet Paul came in fifth in both Iowa and New Hampshire. True, he beat Rudy Giuliani in the first, and nearly tied him in the second, despite the fact that Giuliani apparently spent more time campaigning in both states. But still, the other measures of Paul's support would suggest he should be winning these primaries, possibly by a landslide.
So is the mystery, why does Paul not do better in primaries? Or is the mystery, why does his support seem larger than it is?
It's almost an impossible question to answer. Almost because we now have, thanks to Fox News, proof in the stock market that the support is genuine, and the primary results so far are the aberrations.
The news that Fox News would be excluding Ron Paul from its N.H. debate came on Dec. 27. From that day on, the stock price of News Corp., its parent company, fell every day, losing a cumulative 10 percent, or about $6 billion, over the next seven days.
To be sure, other media companies fell as well. Time Warner and Viacom each fell about 6 percent over that period. The Paul supporters who spread the message of selling News Corp. stock, boycotting Fox News advertisers, and otherwise imposing their economic will cost the media giant billions.
The bleeding stopped Jan. 8, when Fox News relented to the economic pressure and invited Paul to the South Carolina debates. The stock price gained nearly 4 percent in just two days, right back in line with the other media companies.
Those debates were held last week. They were very similar to all the earlier debates, to which Paul had been invited. Other candidates get asked about policy issues while Paul gets asked about his electability. Other candidates snipe at each other and in particular Paul, while Paul ignores them and talks solely about the issues, the only candidate to answer every question that is asked.
But there was one major difference: Whereas in past debates, Paul received a vanishingly small portion of air time, in this one he received approximately equal time. I counted the number of words each candidate uttered. Paul surpassed the word output of John McCain, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani. Only Mike Huckabee said more words.
Maybe it's because Paul talks faster than the others, or because he needed to respond to accusations against him by the other candidates. Or maybe Fox News has realized that the people buttering its proverbial bread are conservatives like Paul and they are trying to recapture that key demographic.
That was, in essence, the only difference in this debate. Everyone else still wants to keep our troops overseas. Everyone else is itching to go to war in Iran at the slightest provocation. Everyone else thinks it is up to the government and the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy. Only Paul wants to bring our troops home, abolish the IRS, abolish the Federal Reserve, and slash our debt, spending and warring.
On the poll run by Fox News, where viewers can only vote once per cell phone number, the winner of the debate was, as always, Ron Paul.
Andrew Malcolm LA Times Wednesday January 16, 2008
Well, he's hanging in there. Not only that, but Rep. Ron Paul thumped two reputed Republican heavyweights in the Michigan primary -- former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Who'd have predicted that a couple of months ago?
Giuliani, you may recall if you can remember anything as distant as last summer, was the longtime GOP national front-runner in polls. He ran strongly against everybody in his party, even former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who finally won one last night, taking his home state from Sen. John McCain, who won there in 2000. Everybody wondered if anyone had a chance against the hero of 9/11, who defied standard Republican theocracy with his liberal social views.
But, guess what? Ron Paul, the 72-year-old Texas congressman and ob-gyn who delivers babies and a strict view of the Constitution, beat Giuliani in Michigan. And beat him good. Not only that,....
he doubled Giuliani's totals of 24,000 votes or 2.8%, getting more than 52,000 votes or 6.3% of the total Republican ballots.
Paul even beat Thompson this time, the real consistent conservative who was supposed to be the next Ronald Reagan until he actually announced his campaign in September. Thompson got about 31,000 votes or 3.7%, which is more than Rudy but still less than the nobody congressman with the libertarian views who few people but his passionate partisans took seriously months ago. He's often called Dr. No for his consistent congressional votes against spending.
Paul was so written off that Fox News banned him from its recent debate in New Hampshire. Oops, now the Paulunteers are organizing a boycott of Fox sponsors in return for the snub, a move that Dennis Kucinich's fans are now calling for against MSNBC for barring him from Tuesday's Democratic debate in Las Vegas.
True, Romney killed all his Republican competitors in Michigan, as he had to, with more than 326,000 votes, nearly 39%, with McCain trailing at 29.7% or 248,000. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee garnered less than half of Romney's votes, 135,000 or 16%.
And it's also true that Thompson and Giuliani didn't really campaign seriously in Michigan. Or New Hampshire. Or Iowa except for a last-minute Thompson bus tour. Obviously, both Giuliani and Thompson are intentionally laying back, trying to make the rest of the Republican field over-confident. No doubt.
Paul hasn't won anything yet either, except the continued devotion of his followers and growing national attention, including two national TV appearances on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" plus a full hour on "Meet the Press." OnTuesday Richard Viguerie, the noted conservative author, announced he's launching a new website to support Paul. Viguerie called Paul "truly a principled conservative in the grand tradition of Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan."
Paul just keeps picking up his 6% to 10% each time there's a vote. But Paul also beat Giuliani in Iowa. And he came pretty close to Giuliani in New Hampshire and did, in fact, beat Thompson there. And now in Michigan, Paul beat them both rather handily. He does it by going against virtually all the views of his GOP colleagues including opposing the Iraq war.
Fueled by the generous donations of Paul believers, the congressman was probably the most successful GOP fundraiser in the fourth quarter, acquiring nearly $20 million then and, according to his website, more than $834,000 more so far this month. He's already launched an eight-state ad blitz and has been campaigning in recent days in South Carolina, where he has three offices and will return later this week, and across Nevada. He got skunked in Wyoming where Romney won, but imagine if Paul scored big one day in the wild West where many people believe government got too big about 100 years ago.
Paul's website and new campaign blog claim to have quietly organized more than 7,800 precinct captains around the country. Meantime, Giuliani's top staff is going unpaid this month to save dwindling funds. Is there a pattern here?
So, while the "front-running" Republicans each win one state and no one builds up a head of steam, Paul just keeps hanging around, like a bad cold. Some of the other Republican candidates should be careful, lest they get the sniffles one of these days.
Here's an email that a volunteer got recently regarding PayPal and the New Hampshire Primary recount...
Skins
Hello Volunteers!
On our California Conference Call earlier this evening, I mentioned that I had been informed that the Granny Warriors? PayPal account had been frozen at the last minute by PayPal and the freeze prevented the transfer of the fee for the New Hampshire vote recount. I promised to verify this information and I have now done so.
I am informed directly by the Granny Warriors that PayPal did in fact freeze the funds earmarked for the Recount Fees! So, now you know who to blame for the failure to get a recount of the New Hampshire vote count. PayPal. The application for a recount of the New Hampshire vote required a deposit of $55,600 to the New Hampshire Secretary of State no later than 3:00 P.M. this afternoon, January 15th. A huge and successful effort by the Granny Warriors raised the money and they ordered the transfer to the Secretary. However, at the very last moment, PayPal FROZE THE ACCOUNT and did not transfer the money. The deadline for payment of the deposit passed and the recount application was rejected for lack of payment.
Emergency efforts by our folks on the scene in New Hampshire to push the recount through the Secretary?s office were not successful and a lot of frustration has been expressed on both sides as a result. The problem was not with the Secretary of State for New Hampshire, it was with PayPal. I understand that the matter may remain unresolved and a recount may still be possible. I am hoping for additional information early Wednesday, January 16th.
I am sure that PayPal will have a lot of excuses, but lame excuses are not acceptable under these circumstances.
Thank you to the Granny Warriors and to the others on the ground in New Hampshire who went beyond the call of duty for the recount and a big BOO to PayPal. We should remember who our friends are. And we should also remember which companies, organizations and people act to oppose our fight for Liberty and Self-Determination. I will pass along more information as it becomes available.
Blog Directory ID: 792
Blog URL: http://www.trickytrickywhiteboy.blogspot.com
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Blog Description: Alternative news/Commentary from the world around us.
Blog Tags: Truth - Conspiracy - Alternative - Government - Theories - 9/11 - Bush 
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Blog Owner: James Melzer
Blog Added: September 28, 2007 07:32:04 PM
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