Comments on KC Convention: Embarrassing!

While they were at it, they should have passed a resolution that money should grow on trees, people should live to be 1,000, and cars should run on air. If you're going to be completely delusional, why not do it right?

WHEREAS, bitches be gold diggin twenty-fo seven.

WHEREAS, pretenders always be frontin and tryin to take what's mine.

WHEREAS, the five-o rolls up when I'm mindin my own like they above the law.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT pimps up, hos down.

I thought I liked caucuses, too, until I went to the last round, which turned it from a fun, grass roots meetup with neighbors to a combination of an afternoon at the DMV, high school student council elections and jury duty...

You're a braver woman than me, Annie. Wait, that doesn't sound right. But yeah, there's no way in hell I could have stood that.

At least with a Department of Peace we would have had a more satisfying irony in it's inevitable recommendation that people be bombed back to the stone age in the name of peace.
Bill Clinton's persecution of the Iraqi people under the embargoes he enforced would no doubt have also been for the sake of peace. Starvation no doubt helped millions of Iraqi children reflect on higher things like peace, compassion and non-violence.

Amen on the Department of Peace. We already have a cabinet post that is supposed to function as a Department of Peace, and that is the Department of State. These morons have no clue, and don't realize that if Kucinich's bill passed, and a Department of Peace was established that President Bush gets to make the appointment. Ladies and Gentleman may I introduce America's first Secretary of Peace, Donald Rumsfeld.

I am all for peace and non-violence, but perhaps that's something that should be part of the charter of all the existing cabinet positions and not a new bureaucracy.

What did the polar bear represent? Is that another cabinet level position up for resolution--secretary of polar bear relocation?

Essentially, this kind of stuff is the reason I didn't bother attending.

thank you. I feel so much better about forgetting to fill this part of my obligation as a delegate.

I knew walking my dog was a better use of my time.

I almost don't understand the point. The platforms don't really mean much, and they influence public policy far, far less than lobbyists, polls, and individual principals of legislators, probably in that order.

I also think our ridiculous county conventions probably do more to damage our national electability than anything else. However, that part of it is balanced out by the whack jobs on the right.

You forgot to mention that the committee was too negligent to expect that the convention was going to go long and lease the venue for long enough to allot time to go through everything properly. "Gotta be out by 6, no matter what" when we were left with less than 2 hours of a 4-hour convention to do the actual work proscribed.

Doubly stupid was the rule that no one make a quorum call until then -- the time when we have to adjourn anyway.

Beyond that, I dunno who to blame, but the attendees should have been a lot more prepared. We had 2 1/2 hours of political speeches, no one thought to spend that time reading over the platform?

When the Islamofascist terrorists finally invade our shores, they could find no easier entrance than to drag their outboard motored Zodiacs up along the Seattle waterfront and mow through the airheaded hippies like a hot chainsaw through a cow made of butter.

Christ. I'm embarrassed to be a lifelong very liberal Democrat right now. Department of Peace. Why not the Department of Homeland Groovebuzz Chill Security, or the Federal Bureau of Sittin' Down and Rappin' About Your Nonstandard Behavior Styles Investigation, or on the foreign front - the Central Harmonically Convergent Intelligence Agency, man.

Like a chainsaw through butter.

The experience was a big waste of my Sunday afternoon. Having never gone through the process before I didn't know what to expect and didn't have a clear understanding of what would follow. The organizers should have used the down time as they were counting and finalizing credentials to introduce the platform, summarize the resolutions, and clearly state the rules. Not everyone received the handouts or knew what they involved. People spent so much time clarifying and rehashing the rules that we cut ourselves short.

I'll tell you one thing - as a newcomer the whole structure totally turned me off to throwing my hat in the ring as a delegate again. And that's saying something because I have a pretty high threshold for bureaucratic b.s.

And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Sims say he was supporting OB and his family wanted to see a woman in office?

@13: No, he first said his son was supporting Obama, then said unspecified "other members" of his family wanted to see a woman in office. Sims (a superdelegate) had previously announced his support for Clinton; he would have had to be much more explicit if he wanted to change to Obama in that speech.

Your mom is awesome.

And Dept of Peace? Jesus, Dems. Put the fucking bong down and try to function in the real world. Do any other countries in the world have a Dept of Peace? Would having one mean anything beyond your egos being stroked?

15's right, you're mom is awesome. She and the woman who got and kindly, quietly, but firmly noted that some people, like her, would be left out of the voting if we had to stand were the two highlights of the day, for me. It's a shame your mom couldn't multitask and vote, too, since she was obviously one of the more competent participants.

Oh, and f2*k Prentice. She was right, we were running long due to the "25 minutes we wasted on other stuff" (that's probably more of a paraphrase than a quote), but, damn, did she have to be such an asshole throughout the whole process?

For this, some of us missed out on seeing the Green Exhibition at the Convention Center ... sigh.

The main problem was that we used to start this at 10 am in prior years, and other than the main speaker, actually conduct votes on sections of the platform and amendments earlier, but recently they changed it to have all the elected officials speak first, and not actually consider amendments until way way too late.

Tons of awesome grammar up in this bitch. I feel great.

@18: If it's my post that's so offensive, I apologize. I posted it via an iPhone with weird text recognition. Dammit.

Uh, the "Department of Peace" has been kicking around since before I was born.
Maybe instead we could actually elect Democrats who don't green light every war that comes along? Oh wait that would probably require more citizen involvement than rhetorical quadranial empty gestures.

1) I agree that the platform process is one of the worst conceived methods for adopting such a document and have pressed that issue with the State party. I will continue to do so.

2) I actually like the idea of a Department of Peace. I don't think it is as ridiculous as the majority of respondents on this thread do, and I don't even smoke pot. ;-)

The Department of Peace does nothing that wouldn't otherwise be covered by the Department of State in a Democratic administration or the Department of Defense in a Republican one.

The more I think about it, the more sense having a "Department of Peace" makes.

Whether that's creating a new department, or renaming the State Department, or whatever, there needs to be some cabinet level entity that is able to quantify the benefits of peace and non-violence to the country and economy, and so forth.

The more I think about it, the more sense having a "Department of Peace" makes.

Whether that's creating a new department, or renaming the State Department, or whatever, there needs to be some cabinet level entity that is able to quantify the benefits of peace and non-violence to the country and economy, and so forth.

I figured I was pretty safe in blowing this off. Wow, I was correct!

@1:

Not ALL your "suggestions" are completely delusional:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6138972/

But yeah, this "Department of Peace" nonsense has come up for the past couple of cycles. It's pointless feel-gooderism, but then, that pretty much sums up the entire point of the caucus process for many participants.

Why don't we just go back to calling it the "department of war"? At least that would be more honest than this "depart of defense" nonsense.

Alternatively, Wes Clark (among others) propose a Dept. of International Development which would integrate and promote programs scattered all over the bureaucratic map, and might actually help create preconditions for conflict reduction.

The polar bear, I believe, represents the impending extinction of polarized politics as we know it -- which Barack Obama will bring about by mechanisms every bit as ineffable as Kucinich's Dept. of Peace.

It was absolutely a travesty of democracy and I stood up and said as much:

http://teresacentric.com/2008/04/a-disappointingly-undemocratic-king-county-democratic-convention/

So frustrating!

The county convention is absolutely, without a doubt, the most tedious part of the whole process of Presidential-year politicking. I was a National convention alternate in 2004, so I saw every stage of the process up close and personal. I thought the platform wrangling was quite possibly the most boring, the stupidest, and the least efficient bureaucratic bullshit I'd ever had the misfortune to experience. It is, in large part, the reason I chose not to be a delegate this year. Bleagh.

The good news, for those of you going on to the CD caucuses and the state convention, is that the county convention is the worst of it. From here on out, it's smaller, better-run, more focused, and more fun.

soooooo glad i didnt go to this...