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Posts Tagged ‘Americans’

NEW HAMPSHIRE voters contemplate DRAFTING HILLARY CLINTON:

In Americans, Draft Hillary, economy, HILLARY 2012, Human Rights, JOBS, Madame President HILLARY CLINTON 2012, Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton on December 19, 2011 at 5:51 pm

New Hampshire voters should draft Hillary

Taken almost one year ago today- December 23, 2010- GIVE US HILLARY for PRESIDENT in 2012



We are now calling on Democratic voters nationally — particularly in New Hampshire — to organize a write-in campaign for Clinton. This is something that New Hampshire voters have a long history of doing.


YOU’RE GONNA LOVE IT! SIGN THIS PETITION, please.

HILLARY REPLACING OBAMA AS THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE

We advocate this DRAFT HILLARY movement not because of the desire to make political mischief — but to put the country on the right course.

It’s clear that Obama has been unable to build consensus and, with the polarizing campaign he is now running, will be unable to govern effectively even if reelected. Only Clinton can commit the Democratic Party — and, indeed, the nation — to a unification and healing process. This could allow Washington, in a bipartisan manner, to finally address the economic and governmental
crises that now grip America.

We are facing a crisis of national leadership, so citizens should step up and take charge of their country the way demonstrators in the Middle East did earlier this year. And, stunningly, as the people of Russia are now doing.

It’s time to take the decision about America’s leadership out of the hands of the established powers and return it to the citizens of our country. That opportunity to change U.S. politics will appear in the second week of 2012 in New Hampshire.

To seize this moment two things are required:

First, and most important, ordinary Democrats and independents in New Hampshire should mobilize behind a grass-roots effort to write in Clinton’s name during the Jan. 10 Democratic primary.

Second, a committed group of Democrats with resources and stature needs to help facilitate an authentic citizens’ movement — independent of party structure, Clinton and organized interests — to support a massive New Hampshire write-in campaign and put this before a deeply disaffected electorate.

There is already an online petition to draft Clinton, created by Democrats.
“We the undersigned Democrats want a new Democratic nominee for president who can win in 2012. We are convinced that the only person with the national stature, experience … who can win in the general election in 2012 is Hillary Rodham Clinton. We are fully prepared to take matters in to our own hands and launch our own massive write-in campaign,” it reads.

Even if one does not agree with their every argument, we urge everyone who shares our beliefs go to that website now — and to tell their friends to go to there and sign it.

Since 1944, when approval ratings first became reliable, there have been five cases in which the incumbent president had an approval rating below 49 percent a year ahead of the election. Each time, the incumbent party lost.

Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 43 percent — less than Jimmy Carter’s. Obama now has the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history. Many, particularly on the left, have begun to demonstrate with signs reading,

“Buyer’s remorse.”

DRAFT HILLARY 2012 ... Hillary Can Fix This: New Hampshire residents Write in Hillary Clinton for President Primary Day!

In a recent Daily Beast piece, “Hillary Told You So,” angry, frustrated liberals were quoted saying, “No one ever had to tell Hillary” that the economy is crucial, and “Hillary is TOUGHER (and 10X SMARTER ).”

Indeed, the most active calls for Clinton to run have come from the left — indicating that there is substantial support for this idea across the board and not just from centrist Democrats.

Certainly, the recent barrage of articles by former Obama allies saying that the White House has lost white, working-class voters — a key part of the Democratic coalition — is cause enough for Clinton, who has been that voting bloc’s champion in the past, to be the Democratic standard-bearer.

Many argue that our approach is impractical and is unlikely to work because Obama will not stand down. But make no mistake, we are political realists.
As political realists, we know that every recent presidential candidate who has emerged — from Obama in 2008 to Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and now Newt Gingrich — has been citizen-driven. The elites have not driven the process; ordinary voters have filled the void.

Such a void exists now.

Clinton pulled off a stunning New Hampshire primary victory over Obama during the 2008 primaries. There is every reason to believe that, as a write-in candidate, she would get a substantial number of votes in the Granite State next year.

NEW HAMPSHIRE is one state where grass-roots politics predominates. As presidential historian Theodore White wrote in 1965, New Hampshire’s primary allows candidates “to appeal directly to people” and “over the heads of the politicians.”
This primary — traditionally well before other primaries — allows independents to cast ballots for either Democrats or Republicans, unlike most other “closed primaries,” in which only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote on their respective parties’ ballots. It’s justly famous for write-in candidates, who often had substantial success.

In 1964, write-in candidate Henry Cabot Lodge had an upset victory over GOP front-runners Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller. In 1968, incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson was not on the ballot, but as a write-in, he received nearly 50 percent of all Democratic votes.

A write-in candidacy in 2012 can send a message that the Democratic Party must stand for something more than Obama’s reelection at all costs.

We are not asking the president or the secretary of state to take action. We ask the people of the United States, Democrats and, especially, New Hampshire voters to exercise their right to be heard by writing Clinton’s name on the primary ballot.

Voters have had enough of the establishment powers dictating who can run.

All that is needed is a spark on the dry tinder of political frustration and anxiety. A few Democratic patriots can provide the means to make it possible — and change the course of U.S. history.

article written by: PATRICK H. CADDELL and DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70623.html

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Clinton Urges Iran to Release Detained Americans

In Americans, Global News, hostages, Human Rights, Iran, Iraq, Madame Secretary Clinton on August 15, 2009 at 11:00 pm

15 August 2009

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Iran to release all Americans detained in the country, including three hikers arrested last month.

Clinton Saturday called on Iranian authorities to grant consular access to the three hikers, who were detained July 31.

Iranian television has described the three as spies who illegally entered the country.

Clinton said the United States also remains concerned about Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent missing in Iran since 2007. She also called for the release of American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh.

In related news, an American graduate student jailed in Iran for a few weeks and barred from leaving the country for nine months returned this week to Los Angeles. Esha Momeni was arrested last year and charged with acting against national security.

She was researching the Iranian women’s’ rights movement for her master’s thesis at an American university.

Momeni is one of several Iranian-Americans detained in the last year on security-related charges. She says she spent 25 of her 28 days in jail in solitary confinement, and that she was repeatedly interrogated.

Momeni was eventually released on bail, but Iranian authorities confiscated her passports and barred her from leaving the country until this week.

Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP.

Clinton ‘Concerned’ About Americans Held in Iran

BAGHDAD, Aug. 3 — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday thatIran Iraq she was “concerned” about three Americans detained in Iran and that the United States had not received any information from Iran about their fate since they crossed into the country from northern Iraq last week.

News reports Tuesday in Iran, meanwhile, said the Americans were under arrest for “illegal entry” and claimed that their case was being used by the U.S. government for propaganda purposes, the Associated Press reported. Iran’s state-controlled media noted that at least two of the Americans are journalists, the wire service said, and questioned reports that the trio were hikers who wandered across the border by mistake.

Officials in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region said the group was lost and entered Iran while on an excursion in a mountainous area along the border. They also said that border guards had warned them not to proceed because the border in that area is not clearly marked.

“Obviously, we are concerned,” Clinton told reporters at the State Department. “We want this matter brought to a resolution as soon as possible. And we call on the Iranian government to help us determine the whereabouts of the three missing Americans and return them as quickly as possible.”

Clinton said that the Swiss ambassador in Iran, who represents American interests there, is seeking information about the three. Tehran and Washington broke off diplomatic ties in 1979.

Kurdish authorities identified the Americans as Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal. The three had called a friend, Shon Meckfessel, who had stayed in a hotel in Sulaymaniyah, the region’s second-largest city, because he was feeling sick. They told him that Iranian border guards were surrounding them. They have not been heard from since.

Kurdish officials said the Americans told them they were journalists. Shourd has written for Brave New Traveler, an online travel magazine. On the magazine’s Web site, she identifies herself as a “teacher-activist-writer from California currently based in the Middle East.” Bauer, of Minnesota, is a Middle East correspondent for New American Media and has written for other publications, including the Nation magazine.

Bauer’s mother, Cindy Hickey of Pine City, Minn., and Fattal’s mother, Laura Fattal of Elkins Park, Pa., both said in brief statements that they were concerned about the group’s welfare and safety.

The Kurdish government said that it would soon meet for a second time with Iranian representatives to discuss the fate of the Americans and to seek their release.

Clinton’s statement Monday came after the head of the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy committee, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, confirmed the arrest of the Americans on Sunday, according to Iranian television.

Iran’s Arabic-language network said in a news bulletin Monday, quoting Iraqi police sources, that the Americans were “CIA agents.” The Iranian government, however, did not immediately endorse that claim.
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