Jim (Con't): It's September and US elections will be held November 6th. That's not that far away and one presidential ticket took a rough hit last week. C.I. covered it in Tuesday's "Iraq snapshot." Wally, what's going on?
Wally: Cindy Sheehan, for health and other reasons, has stepped off the Peace and Freedom Party's presidential ticket. Cindy Sheehan had been Roseanne's running mate. Roseanne Bar won that party's presidential nomination August 4th. Last Tuesday, Cindy announced at her site that she was not a part of the campaign.
Jim: And there's been an update there. Ava?
Ava: I'm reading this from Cindy's site, "Apparently, it is too late according to state policies for me to resign from the ticket, but I am withdrawing active participation in campaigning. So, I will still be the VP choice on ballots."
Wally: And the campaign is nothing without her. As C.I. noted last week, Roseanne's running her campaign like she's the stereotypical pajama blogger. All she's offering is Twitter feeds and blog posts. And that's not a campaign.
Jim: As the campaign has collapsed, does anyone think Roseanne can turn it around or is this the end? Anyone? Ruth, Kat, you were both considering the campaign? Cedric, you've had positive comments for Barr?
Ruth: I would say it is over. She has lost her running mate. How do you recover from that? When your running mate announces they are out and you have no one to replace them, how do you recover? I think it is over.
Kat: I would agree that it's over. Roseanne was full of talk but didn't follow up on it. In July, if you'd told me that she'd fall apart this quickly, I wouldn't have believed it. I thought she really was going to use her platform to raise issues -- her media platform. And in July, she was doing interviews. Then she sort of appeared to become the shut-in for president.
Ruth: Cindy Sheehan was the one going to rallies for issues, writing pieces and more.
Kat: Right. The only good excitement came from Cindy.
Jim: Okay, "only good excitement came from Cindy." Let's address that.
Cedric: Yeah, I'll jump in here. I don't think we say, "I hope you get cancer." Roseanne's gone crazy in her Twitter feed. What she was saying wasn't appropriate for a comedian and certainly didn't rise to the level of presidential. It wasn't just one Tweet, it was many. They were hateful and they really lower my opinion of Roseanne, I'm sorry. Maybe I was expecting Roseanne Connor and was disappointed by Barr for that reason? I have no idea. But I found her really disappointing.
Ty: She started out the year running for the Green Party's presidential nomination.
Kat: Right and she lost the nomination to Jill Stein.
Ty: And when she was running against Stein, she stated she really didn't want the nomination, she said she knew it would go to Jill and she'd support Jill but she was using this time to raise important issues. Did she raise any important issues? In that time or afterwards when she got the Peace and Freedom nomination?
Ruth: I do not remember any important issues when she was seeking the Green Party nomination.
Stan: Post Green Party, she raised the issue of medical marijuana. It cracked up David Letterman's audience in July and she used a clip of it in September to be her campaign commercial. That's all she did. The pot bit. Two months later, when she should have had something else to offer, she was still recycling her pot bit.
Ruth: Good point. And during the race for the Green Party nomination, she had a difference of opinion with Dr. Jill Stein over Israel.
Cedric: Somehow, she went from 'I will support Jill' to despising her. And then when Jill was going to be nominated at the Green Party convention, Roseanne did her angry Tweets.
Mike: Angry Tweets, the next level for Angry Birds.
Trina: I'll jump in. I thought her stunts during the Green Party convention were bitchy -- that's the only word for it. Now that I've seen what Roseanne thinks 'campaigning' is, I really believe it was a bitchy move. She was being bitter and angry and trying to steal focus from Jill Stein. I'm referring to the attacks she made during the Green Party convention but I also think that applies to her failed run.
Jim: The run continues.
Trina: But it's a failure. Cindy was the only one working in that campaign. I would argue that she's the shut-in candidate and therefore could go for the shut-in vote but Oregon's really the only state that votes by mail.
Dona: The entire state votes by mail. Not just absentee voters.
Jim: So the consensus is that Roseanne's run is over. Jill Stein has the Green Party's presidential nomination. What's going on in her campaign? Ann and Jess, you should start since you are Greens.
Ann: Okay, well she had a victory this week. Google TV tried to censor her TV ad. E-mail protests and other things forced them to air the ad.
Jim: Jess, why weren't they showing the ad?
Jess: They claim it was a language issue. But the objectionable term was bleeped out -- the word was bulls**t -- and it would have been allowed on cable channels anyway. But they're not allowed to censor presidential candidates. Legally, they're not allowed so as this became an issue outside of the Stein campaign, Google was looking like an ass and someone who didn't value political speech. That's why it was solved so quickly.
Jim: Ann?
Ann: I would've expected Stein's campaign to implode over Roseanne's, honestly. Roseanne had huge media experience and so I expected her to dominate the press coverage of the race not focused on Republicans and Democrats. I thought she'd leave Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, everyone in the dust. But despite all of her experience, she couldn't run a real campaign or even a good for-show campaign.
Jim: So you were expecting this to happen from Jill Stein's campaign?
Ann: No. But if you'd told me a third party campaign was going to implode, I would have thought it would be Jill's before Roseanne's.
Jim: Betty, you're supporting Jill Stein. Ava and C.I. have her Green New Deal proposal in their TV article so, setting that aside, what policy proposal impresses you or zero in on one aspect of the Green New Deal if you'd prefer.
Betty: Sure, I can do that. And I can do it either way, actually. What I'm going to zoom in on is this, I'm reading, "Maintain and upgrade our nation's essential public infrastructure, including highways, railways, electrical grids, water systems, schools, libraries, and the Internet, resisting privatization or policy manipulation by for-profit interests." August 31st on Talk of the Nation, Neal Conan and his guests discussed how approximately "8,000 bridges around the country are unsafe and in dire need of repair." So Jill's proposal not only creates jobs, it addresses a serious safety issue.
Jim: Good point. Mike?
Mike: Two of the most important things Jill Stein is proposing, for me, are "Provide tuition-free education from kindergarten through college, thus eliminating the student debt crisis" and "Forgive existing student debt." I'm lucky, my college was paid for by a friend. C.I. I snuck that in quickly. But my brother who has a kid, he suffered under a mountain of student loan debt. It really didn't pay to work the way they were taking out hundreds of dollars each month -- garnishing his wages. He got lucky because, as a gift, his got paid off. But prior to that, I was thinking how lucky I was because I would have needed loans if it weren't for C.I. and I could easily have been in the condition my brother was where he could move up in his company but it was as if he was working part-time for minimum wage the way the government kept garnishing his wages.
Marcia: Jim, can I jump in on this topic?
Jim: Sure.
Marcia: I agree with Mike. I also think Jill Stein's correct that we need to prevent the privatization of our public schools. One of the things I don't get, and C.I., Cedric and Wally have pointed this out at their sites, is how Barack can grand stand on Medicare and how he won't allow vouchers because that will chip away at Medicare which is so damned important. Well excuse the hell out of me but public school is important as well and, in fact, it's the cornerstone of the American experience. It also predates Medicare so why don't we try to protect that instead of, as Barack wants to do, turn it over to vouchers and charter schools?
Jim: That's a good point. I want to bring in Isaiah's "Vouchers" which made that point as well.
Jim (Con't): Okay. That to me drives home what Marcia was talking about. Rebecca, Elaine and Isaiah, I'm tossing that out for you to talk about because you haven't spoken yet this roundtable. Let's start with Isaiah, talk about how you drew the cartoon.
Isaiah: I had the voucher idea floating around but needed time to develop it. The point of the comic was there but how to make it wasn't. I came up with Vinnie Voucher and then realized we needed more than one panel. In terms of the panels, I didn't want it to be the traditional book case look with the horizontal lines making three columns. So I made Barack's chin and Vinnie's feet in the first row hang on to the second. The second's also more enclosed and has David Axelrod invading it in profile. Then the last row is just the one panel. It resembles or restates the first row but we're in much closer and tighter on Barack and Vinnie.
Rebecca: I see it as a success but especially as a visual success. David Axelrod is so obviously David Axlerod and he pops out out of no where and has no line but it makes sense because he's always watching the campaign he runs. I also loved little Vinnie, trying so hard to be helpful and cute but defeating everything he's supposed to help -- which I saw as a coded message about the school voucher program.
Elaine: Okay, now I hate you. I wish I had made that point. I'm laughing, by the way. But Rebecca's point is so solid about the coded message. There was some confusion over that comic with some people thinking that the point was 'Vouchers for both!' Isaiah was pointing the hypocrisy in the comic. Medicare is important but, as Marcia pointed out, so is public school. On the issue of Medicare, Jill favors Medicare for all which is another reason to support her.
Jim: Good points. Okay, everyone but C.I. spoke, I think, and she'd said she was fine with not speaking if we ran over, which we did. I thank Ava and C.I. for taking notes. This is a rush trancript.