It's Still the Florida Democratic Party's Fault

Gene Smith's Daily Kos diary is giving me a migrane headache. I like Gene, but why must Florida progressives continue to defend the idiocy of the Florida Democratic Party. Smith splits hairs by citing rule 3A of the DNC Delegate Selection Rules.

All official Party meetings and events related to the national convention delegate selection process, including caucuses, conventions, committee meetings, filing dates, and Party enrollment periods, shall be scheduled for dates, times and public places which would be most likely to encourage the participation of all Democrats, and must begin and end at reasonable hours.

Smith makes an argument that defies would get thrown out of court.

It goes on to provide the exemptions for the four "early states" of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

But here we are at the heart of the problem, at least here in Florida. We had two different rules of the DNC Delegate Selection Rules brought into direct conflict with each other by the actions of the Republican controlled state legislature. Those are the facts. There is nothing to be nipped in the bud here.

The rule is very clear. Only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina were allowed by the Democratic National Committee to hold presidential elections in January. It took one hour for Judge Robert Hinkle threw out Bill Nelson's lawsuit against the DNC. The DNC found the Florida Democratic Party in violation of their rules. The argument that the FDP voted unanimously to move the primary up to Jan. 29th. The vote vote to move up the primary received huge bipartisan support.

Florida House 118 to 0
Florida Senate 37 to 2

I have followed this story and I never heard the reason Florida Democrats supported moving the primary up was because of rule 3A. Nelson and Thurman voted to move the primary up so they can court favor with presidential candidates. Republicans and Democrats wanted to national media spotlight that New Hampshire and Iowa received. These people were warned repeatly by DNC and RNC officials not to move up the primary. The FDP has refused to compromise with the DNC. Nelson and Thurman are responsible for disenfranchising voters and they need to be held accountable. Progressive bloggers sound like the lefty version of Instupundit when they become apologists for these incompetent Democrats. Florida deserves better than Bill Nelson and Karen Thurman.

My question to Gene is if it isn't the FDP's fault than who's is it?

For Your Reading Pleasure

Lindsay Beyerstein - Florida to Let Felons Vote

Gatordem - Property Tax Puzzle

Libby Spencer - Bushenomics Boom Ring Hollow

Mixter - Cheney Links Saddam to al-Qaeda, Again

Think Progress - McCain: It’s ‘Fun’ When I ‘Misspeak’ About Progress In Iraq

Compassionate Conservatism: Homeless Edition

Gatordem attended a meeting amongst churches and social activists on what to do about St. Petersburg's homeless situation. An unnamed Republican attended the event. He talked about how he is compassionate about the plight of the homeless. He is just against a church's plan to get them off the streets.

The conversation started out civilly enough. Our Republican friend announced that he had all the compassion in the world for folks who found themselves suddenly homeless. He related how he had once taken in a young man who needed help and assisted him to get back to self sufficiency. We all agreed that the main problem was one of affordable housing.

Then the conversation started taking divergent views. While saying he had yet to make up his mind about the church's plans, our friend reported a list of problems as to why the church should not be allowed to move forward with its plans. Mostly, while some of these issues were true enough, the bulk of his argument was all about NIMBY. The homeless advocate admitted that they intended to "cherry pick" the subset of tent city residents to move onto the church property. There was a screening process in place to choose only homeless folks who had a good chance of becoming self sufficient during the limited time frame envisioned in the church's plans. Neighborhood doubters were asked if they wished to participate in the screening process. They were "too busy".

The conversation really started to deteriorate when a dear friend of mine spoke up. My friend, a world renowned photographer barely got two words out of his mouth before he was personally attacked by our Republican friend. My photographer friend was cut off by the Republican who dismissed him as embracing every "liberal" cause which came down the pike. My friend protested that his antagonist knew very little about him and that it was premature to make that sort of judgement about him.

Our Republican friend became adamant and started shaking his finger very close to our photographers face. He vowed that he would "do everything within my power" to defeat any elected official who voted in support of the churches plans. He made a similar threat about any neighborhood association officials who did likewise.

Gatordem also reported that residents who were against the church keeping homeless on their grounds were invited to help with the screeening process of picking candidates most able to maintain a residence. These people all said they were too busy to get involved. That really is the problem. People want the homeless off their streets, but can't their themselves away from the television long enough to even attend a meeting. These people should act shocked that their are homeless people in St. Petersburg. It's not like they tried to change the situation.

Since the gang at Sticks of Fire enjoys having blunt assessments about homelessness; perhaps they like to host a forum on the issue. They have the time to host Sticks of Fire Night at the Jobsite theatre. I'm sure Tommy Duncan and Bill Sharpe would love this idea. In fact, contact Sticks about this and tell them I sent you.

Write in the suject:

Sticks of Fire Should Host Homeless Forum

Body:

I was deeply moved by Rachel Moran's post on homelessness. Until I read her; I never realized homeless people have handsome canine features. She would be fantastic to host a forum on the plight of the homeless.

Since Sticks can host candidate debates and other tacky self-promotional crap they should have no problem pulling a homeless forum off.

I have showed people the infamous Rachel beat up the homeless on videotape post and Tim Fasano's defense of that post. The response I get from people is they think Rachel and Tim or insane. Fasano actually compared Rachel to Shakespeare. I treat these Tampa bloggers like their bizarre because they act in that manner. The weird thing is that they are socially accepted and defended by the cult of local Tampa bloggers for making bigoted remarks, but have a problem when people call them on that. This is something I thought a lot about with my recent posts about AutoAdmit. It's not cencership to be against people putting a young woman's class schedule online. It certainly isn'tcencership to try to stop a woman from going through with plans to have a friend assault homeless people on-camera. It's common sense. Something a lot of people who use the internet don't have enough of.

Now go contact Sticks of Fire.

St Pete Homeless Update

The homeless situation in St. Petersburg is not front page news anymore. That doesn't mean there isn't much work needed to be done. Gatordem is someone working at a grassroots level to help provide solutions. He has a post on what many hard working people are doing to make a difference.

Grace-Ann Alfiero of Creative Clay is willing to increase services for mentally disabled homeless people. Creative Clay will need more funding to do that. That could be something the city and private citizens can do in a joint venture. It makes more sense than cutting tents.