Catastrophic Victory

Just Say No

2005-01-28T11:00:00.000-08:00

Well, the Senate confirmed Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State. No surprise there, the Senate is, after all, dominated by Republicans. We are told that we are supposed to be stunned at the historic level of opposition to confirming Ms. Rice, evidenced by the Senate's vote tally of 85 for and 13 against. I think we should be stunned that she received such an overwhelming level of support.

Perhaps I missed something, but isn't Ms. Rice one of those primarily responsible for landing us in this mess of a war in Iraq? Did she not loudly beat the drum to convince the Congress and the American people to support going to war in Iraq using facts that have since been shown to be utterly false? Wasn't Ms. Rice, in her role as National Security Advisor to the president, the person who failed take seriously the now infamous Presidential Daily Brief entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside The United States", which preceeded the September 11th attacks by several months? Finally, shouldn't Ms Rice, as the person designated to read things to the president when too many big words are used in a briefing paper, have placed some emphasis on the title of that PDB or on the doubts expressed by the intelligence community regarding bin Laden's ties to Saddam or Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction (for example, by reading those parts to him slowly or loudly, or by using illustrations)?

If all of the above are true, then Ms. Rice should not have been confirmed to represent this nation as its Secretary of State. She should have been held accountable for her dismal job performance just as everyone else responsible for the debacle in Iraq has been: By awarding her the Medal of Freedom. Her many failures make her richly deserving of the ignominy of standing on the same stage with Paul Bremer and George Tenet and receiving what has become our national equivalent of the scarlet letter.

I am not, however, as irritated by Ms. Rice being confirmed as Secretary of State as I am by the fact that all but 13 of the Democrats in the Senate joined the Republicans in voting for her confirmation. Why? What has Ms. Rice done to deserve this massive vote of confidence from Democrats? It has been said that Democrats felt that they didn't want to be labeled as "obstructionists" and that presidents deserve some deference to their choices for cabinet positions. But, when called upon to vote on the confirmation of an individual who has misled you repeatedly and who has exhibited a history of incompetence in her previous position, it is not the time to obstruct a little bit? When the president sending this individual to you for confirmation has shown you none of the deference that customarily is shown to the Senate by the Chief Executive, should he not reap what he has sown?

As noted above, Ms. Rice's confirmation was a forgone conclusion given that the Republicans control the Senate. The Democrats could have taken a principled, indeed rational, stand and said, "Ms. Rice is not fit to be the Secretary of State of the United States in light of her dismal performance as National Security Advisor, especially as it relates to the war in Iraq. Were we to vote in favor of her confirmation, we would implicitly be voicing our approval of a war and a foreign policy with which we vehemently disagree. For that reason, we shall vote to oppose Ms. Rice's confirmation on principle, though we recognize that our opposition cannot prevent her from becoming President Bush's next Secretary of State".

Taking such a position would not have been mere petulance or obstructionism. It would have been the right thing to do. It would have shown that the Democratic Party stands for something. It would have shown that the Democrats are not just "Softer Republicans", but a party of clear and unwavering convictions.

Is that too much to ask?

Rogue State/Failed State Conundrum

2005-01-25T10:54:00.000-08:00

Prior to September 11, and even afterwards, Bush administration foreign affairs concern has focused on nations, and rogue states in specific. If you look at our activities prior to 9/11 and immediately after, we concerned ourselves with nations like Iraq, Iran and North Korea, in part, because they made up an actual target that we could aim at. Afghanistan was a much more difficult problem, in that it was hardly ruled from the center and we could exert little or no influence over the countryside, even when we could influence the Taliban who ran the country.

Our invasion of Afghanistan, and our subsequent actions there, have placed a premium on sovereignty and pututative control over the country, rather than actual control over all places within the country. This is because we did Afghanistan on the cheap, never really putting ourselves in there full force with the necessary troops to control the whole country. As a result, much of the countryside is under control of war lords with only tenuous loyalty to the central government. In many places, ex-Taliban and Al Qaida figures exert great influence. In other words, Afghanistan, while putatively an ally, is on the edge of becoming a failed state again. This appears to be of little concern to the Bush Administration.

Iraq was, by all accounts, a rogue state. Under Hussein, Iraq seemed to have little regard for international agreements or other niceties. However, they were a coherent, controlled state. All parts answered to the center, and no one entered or exited the country without the explicit or implicit consent or understanding of Hussein (except, obviously, for those areas which were under International control, like the Kurdish north).

Iraq is now becoming a failed state. It is very likely that the result of these "elections" will be civil war. I used quotes because this is the most farcical democratic enterprise Iraq has seen in, well, I guess only a few years, since their referendum on Hussein which produced a 99.9% yes vote. In this case, voters do not even know most of the people they are voting for - that's kept confidential for security reasons - they don't know their platforms, because there are none, they don't know any policies, because there are none. This is essentially a popularity contest based on tribal and religious affiliation - hardly a harbinger of good things to come.

However, as it stands right now, Iraq is veering dangerously towards the status of another failed state. So, I have to ask you, which is worse. A rogue state that acts outside the bounds of civil society and rejects international standards in most of their actions, but which is at least controlled enough so that the center is in charge, or a failed state where all of the above bad things apply, except the country is an open and fertile ground for the breeding of future terrorists, where huge amounts of weapons can be used against us there, or smuggled out (easily) to be used against us here. The country could easily break into 3 parts, with the center facing bloody civil war and failed state status for decades to come.

Remember, the only country which was a real threat to the US in the last decade has been Afghanistan, and not because they had an overtly anti-American government, but because they had no government at all. Additionally, places like Somalia were a threat and breeding ground for Al Qaida because they were lawless places where Al Qaida could spawn. Therefore, it appears as if Iraq is becoming a greater threat, not less of a threat, due to our invasion. I can only see one solution.

We need to ensure that a strong leader who can unify the country and control his borders and population takes power there. Someone who may not be our friend, but we can convince him not to be our enemy. We need someone who will work with us against some of the other dangerous and bad actors in that neighborhood (like Iran, who is greedily licking their chops in anticipation of the Shia takeover of Iraq and subsequent subservience to Iran). In short, I have a proposal about who can do this.

Saddam Hussein.

We have our answer, we have our man, we even have him in custody and available for immediate use. Now all we have to do is act on it.

Democratic Geology

2005-01-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

Two issues, somewhat related, have come to the fore this day minus 8 (You know, the breathless countdown until the moment when, a la Red Auerbach, Karl Rove can light up his cigar and say "my ravaging is done here").

Issue number 1: Weapons inspections are concluded in Iraq. Why? Because there is no more need for a charade. A second term is secured and there can be no third. Thus, there is no need to talk in terms of "ongoing efforts to locate WMD's due to the still-existing realistic possibility, nee liklihood, that they will be found because, after all, there was no adequate accounting of the missing stuff to the U.N. and therefore they must exist because why wouldn't Hussein cooperate if he had nothing to hide, especially when he knew we would blow him away if there was no disclosure?, and it's a huge country and a plane or two were found under the sand and the CIA guy, now in retirement, whom I awarded the medal of freedom, said it was a slam dunk and the V.P. said the stuff was there, absolutely, and we have pictures of trucks hauling the stuff away from that unsecured weapons cache site and at the U.N. we showed satellite photos of approximately 40,000 of those slam dunk sites and there were mobile manufacturing plants galore that may now be disguised as Pace Arrow recreational vehicles in Boca Raton, and don't forget Niger, which must be the source of lots of that dangerous stuff or else why would that quiet (sneaky?) bearded man in England leave his family and go out in the woods and off himself? And that, my patriotic red-staters, is why we must continue to search." That's right. There is no longer a need to keep that ball in the air.

Issue number 2): Howard Dean is officially interested in becoming the Head Honcho of the Democratic Party. Why? Because the guy has more stamina than a Llama and, from all appearances, is so genuinely disgusted with the business-as-usual desires of the New Democrats, or whatever other euphemism is being used now to describe the arc of compromise that includes scaling back abortion rights, that he is willing to spend the next four years innoculating Democrats against such carriers. (Those folks are expressing, not for attribution, grave doubts about whether he is the right person for the party "at this time", given the need to reach a more centrist swivel point. (Maybe they can get Lieberman's brother-in-law.)). There is a crispness, intelligence and straighforwardness to Dean's public discourse that makes one feel slightly less putrid from paying attention to politics.

The link between these two issues? No, not the superficial fact that Dean was against the war in Iraq and highly dubious about the claims about WMD's. Rather it is the fact that right now, this flailing party, which could not translate a failed war predicated upon gargantuan doses of mendacity into a successful message, needs to, before anything else, place itself on terra firma. TERRA FIRMA.

Howard Dean is not sediment, he is terra firma.

Social Security - The Democrats' Chance

2005-01-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

Listening to some of the Sunday morning talk shows yesterday (thank god for XM radio, which has CSPAN Radio, and replays many of these shows without commercials Sunday night), I sensed that the Republicans are very scared about the prospect of Social Security "reform" being an issue that they take a major hit on at the mid-terms in 2006. Some were saying that they fear losing their majorities in both houses (although that seems impossible). On the other hand, Talking Points Memo continues to document the number of people in the so-called "Fainthearted Faction" of the Democratic Party (those willing to sell-out SS for some variation of the Bush plan). Meanwhile, Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly continues to show how secure SS really is, and what a fraud is being run by Bush, probably in the greater goal of actually destroying SS rather than "save" it.

Two thoughts. One, if this is the issue with legs in this country, while we are spending hundreds of billions on a fraudulent war, then it speaks very poorly of our country. Imagine, we just had our president reelected while all of this crap was going on, but, god no, you cut my benefits by a drop and I'm willing to drop the president and his party at a drop of a hat. Waste hundreds of billions so Bush could call himself a "war president," lie about weapons of mass destruction, engage in the wholesale destruction of all of our longstanding previous alliances, embarrass our country beyond belief by deciding that torture and indefinite detention of suspects is acceptable (after decrying it in the Soviet Union all these years), lose jobs for a term for the first time since Herbert Hoover, all of these things pale in comparison to a possible cut in retirement benefits. And Bush calls our country a generous nation?

Finally, if this issue is so toxic (it's not called the 3rd rail of American politics for nothing), whey aren't the Democrats going to war on the issue. They've dropped the ball on every conceivable issue up to now, especially the war and tax cuts, but supporting them in numbers large enough to call Bush's legislative successes "bi-partisan." Why not coalesce at this point and fight the political equivalent of a street to street battle against this, something most people seem predisposed to oppose in the first place. This should be the time and place where liberals re-discover their backbone, not where they give bipartisan cover to another idiotic Bush proposal.

FED UP IN THE LAND OF PLENTY

2005-01-06T16:53:00.000-08:00

In spite of the meaninglessness of postmortems, let me, just for the hell of it, describe how it is that John Kerry could have won. First a digression in the form of a query: Why are postmortems, at least in the realm of Democratic Party politics, meaningless? Because, just like the football coach who cannot resist running the ball up the middle on 3rd and inches even though everyone in the stadium knows he is going to call that play, the Democrats are committed to "the book". Sure it works sometimes, but not when you are down by 4, the clock is running out, and a field goal won't do. So, big city rallies, excitement about that friggin youth vote, billions of newly registered voters, urban turnout, and union strength, blah, blah, blah, are de rigueur. Guess what? EVERY VOTE KERRY GOT WAS HIS FROM THE SWEARING IN OF BUSH IN 2000. The powers that be in the Party will no sooner figure things out than Karl Rove will rest on his laurels. Now, to digress from the digression back to the issue, one of no importance and very little interest, ie. how Kerry could have won. And won, mind you, without having had to employ the currently in-vogue view that we need to back off of the abortion platform and pursue God only knows what other compromises. Here it is: For the very limited time that Bill Clinton was available, and perhaps enlisting as well Al Gore and Jimmy Carter (and, of course John Kerry), these people should have been not in the high populaton centers of Ohio and Florida, rather they should have parked themselves on various front porches (figuratively speaking) throughout the outer suburban areas and stayed as many of the final days as necessary and just talked to people. Word of mouth would have turned these blothiating sessions into a juggernaut that would have had the Republican brain trust scratching every head they could find and then sweating to the point of dehydration. After all, it required demonization of Democrats to allow this cabal to remain in power and such caricatures suffer when the subject comes within one's wingspan. Bit by bit, these chautauquas would capture the imagination of the nation. Politics as usual would hit a standstill. The juxtaposition of these intimate gatherings, albeit less intimate as time went on, against the billion dollar campaign that had been the daily fare, would be like a Whole Foods stumbled upon by the Donner party. Nutrition for the malnourished. What would the subject matter of these front porch conversations be? The talking points, consistent with the heart of the party's raison d'etre, are contained in Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" In other words, talk heart-to-heart about how it is that so many people are being convinced to vote against their best interests.

That's it. That's how Kerry could have won. Simply spend time with the people who think that they are being looked down upon, talk about the stuff that you know they care about without pandering, let them know that you are in no hurry to get back to the movers and shakers, and watch something like the atmosphere of Lincoln-Douglas prevail. It would have been exciting and people would have been moved. There would be the phenomenon of genuineness. More than enough votes would have been earned to make the difference.

Anyway, while we are rich with matters for concern right now, too many to name and too obvious to be worth naming, it may be that reform of the Party should be the priority, rather than impacting the flow of our current government. It's simply a matter of doing a windmill risk analysis. Don Quixote would go for fixing the country, Sancho Panza, more likely to have moments of lucidity, would advise replacing the locals first. I go with Sancho. In any event, neither would recommend adopting diminimis objectives in order to eradicate the need for courage of conviction.

Note: Warren Harding's front porch campaign is not the model. It's just that he could serve business interests more comfortably from a rocking chair.

Driftwood

Who wants a Buick, anyway?

2005-01-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

Well, it has happened. Rather than re-focussing our party on its core values and seeking effective ways to communicate with voters, the current leadership of the Democratic Party (with notable exceptions) has concluded from the results of the November election that we have to be more like the Republicans in order to prevail. Thus, we hear that our Party should, among other things, take a more "pro-life" stand on the abortion issue and take a more "pro-preemptive-war" position on the terrorism issue. How brilliant. How original. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! How could we possibly reject a tactic that worked so well for that astoundingly successful political movement, the Vichy French?

Before we begin falling all over ourselves to pander to the hard right, allow me to raise a couple of points. Did something change or do we still believe that a woman has the right to choose what to do with her own body? I don't recall the Democratic Party ever taking the position that abortion is a perfectly acceptable form of birth control, but I have heard that the Republican right wants to make abortion illegal, even when the life of the mother is at risk and even in cases of rape and incest. Protecting the right of a woman to make basic decisions about her own health and about her own body or subjecting all women to restrictions upon their fundamental rights imposed by the government when they become pregnant: Which, I ask you, is the more moral position? Which is more in keeping with the history of our Party in ensuring the rights and freedoms of all our people? And about this war in Iraq, has something changed or is it still a completely unjustified military occupation of a country which posed no threat to us? Have we found evidence that Iraq had something to do with 9/11? Have we found evidence that Saddam was harboring or supporting members of al Qaeda? Have we found evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or even a credible program to produce such weapons? Has attacking Iraq destroyed al Qaeda or netted Osama bin Laden? If our positions are true to our principles and we have the facts straight with respect to the war in Iraq, then why are we talking about changing our positions and our view of the facts to more closely resemble the people who have got it so terribly wrong?

This is how I see the efforts of the current leaders of the Democratic Party (again, with notable exceptions) to try to be, for lack of a better word, more Republican. When I was a young fellow, lots of rather boring, fat, opinionated, old, ignorant, bigoted, staid, Sans-A-Belt and polyester-wearing conservative types were clamoring to buy themselves Cadillacs. Now, these Cadillacs were the huge, bloated pluto-barges of the 1960's and 1970's, complete with utterly insipid chrome and faux-leather, which had the ride and handling characteristics of a wet, king-size mattress. These cars weren't known for their gorgeous styling or futuristic technology. They were, in fact, unappealing and flaccid, just like their owners. But, to the delight of their owners, they were also huge and grotesquely overdone and screamed, "I have $6,000 to burn and I belong to a country club which excludes all of you!" Again, just like their owners. I never liked those cars myself, but they found a niche. That niche is long gone, as evidenced by the fact that you can pick up any Sedan de Ville built between 1964 and 1974, if any still exist, for about 200 bucks. Further evidence, if you needed any, comes from the fact that Cadillac wouldn't think of building cars like that any more and has turned its energies to producing sporty little numbers and SUV's, sold to the blaring tunes of Led Zeppelin.

Anyway, as sorry as all rational people felt for those tasteless dim-wits driving Caddies in the '60's and '70's, there was another group that was even more pathetic. You see, another less prestigious General Motors brand, Buick, was turning out the "Electra 225". The Electra 225 could best be described as a big, mushy, silly, lumbering oaf of a car or, to put it more succinctly, a lousy Cadillac. Buick was turning out this dazzling automotive gem to compete, in a friendly way, with its sister company, Cadillac, for the boring, fat, opinionated, old, ignorant, bigoted, staid, Sans-A-Belt and polyester-wearing conservative buyers who only had $3,295 to spend on a car. I guess Buick sold quite a few Electra 225's, since they made the car for a number of years. I remember people that had the cars would frequently brag, "It's the same as a Sedan de Ville, for $2,700 less!" I bet Buick attracted more than a few potential Cadillac buyers with that sort of appeal. Unusually stupid, cheap, uncommitted potential Cadillac buyers, that is (who were probably wearing Sans-A-Belt knock-offs at the time they made their purchase).

Well, Cadillac must have sold hundreds of thousands of cars in that era and Buick probably sold tens of thousands of Electra 225's. Meanwhile, Ford was selling millions of Mustangs. Ford didn't particularly care about the fat, ignorant, conservative, Sans-A-Belt crowd. They were going after the masses. Ford wasn't interested in being inoffensive with the Mustang, they were trying to be compelling. It worked.

So, why don't we Democrats start talking about the things that make us Democrats, even if some rather boring, fat, opinionated, old, ignorant, bigoted, staid, Sans-A-Belt and polyester wearing conservatives don't like it. Who needs them. Or, to put it another way, who wants a Buick, anyway?

New Poll - Americans (read - Religious Right Wing Americans) Favor Restricting Muslim Rights

2004-12-28T19:39:00.000-08:00

If you think my collegue's post about Republicans being out of touch based on the University of Maryland poll was chilling, just check this one out. Lest you truly believe that right wing fundamentalists are in favor of "religion" (as in, be religious, any religion will do), check out this poll, as reported by Newsday. I don't know how I missed this one, but it certainly tells me nothing that I didn't viscerally believe before.

Apparently 1/2 of Americans favor restricting the rights of Muslims, including making them register with the Federal government. Now I'm sure that someone like Rehnquist, Scalia or Thomas could find some manner of showing this is constiutional, but let's face it, 1/2 of this country doesn't believe in the Bill of Rights, plain and simple. Ah, but let's look further into the numbers for the whole picture. Turns out that by a 2-1 margin, the people who believe this are religious Republicans. So, they don't believe in freedom of religion after all, the believe in the tyranny of their religion, with grudging tolerance to Jews like me, since we're part of the prophesy of the end of the world and are going to roast in hell anyways, and regardless, we don't proselytize like Muslims do. Therefore, we're a harmless little group that will be crushed someday, either by God at the end of days, or by the Holy American Empire headed by one of the later Bush administrations. As far as they're concerned, they'll give us Hollywood without a problem since they have Fox News to keep them happy.

Don't get me wrong, I've never had any illusions that this was true, but for so long after the McCarthy era, the end of segregation and Watergate, even Republicans felt the need to remain politically correct and not speak too loudly about their desire to split the races (and religions) back up, giving all but white, conservative Christians a 2nd tier role in out society. Now, with Bush firmly in charge of this country (by a whopping 3%), they feel no need to hold back on their feelings anymore.

That 50%, who support ending the Bill of Rights, that is the Republican majority. Something to be so proud of.

Thanks to Blogger Greg Stephens at New Zealand Politcal Comments for his post on the subject. Makes me think that New Zealand really is the place that right thinking Americans should be seeking political asylum.

Grand Old [Delusional] Party

2004-12-21T13:01:00.000-08:00

In attempting to design a strategy for the Democrats to win the presidency again some day, it's important to begin by trying to understand the electorate. As noted before on this site, some very respected Democratic pundits and politicos (Paul Begala and Hillary Clinton, for example)are suggesting that the party needs to appeal to the "Moral Values" voters who make up the core of the Republican base. I'm not so sure about that (see "Southern Strategy" and "Moral Values" posts below). My scepticism has grown since reading the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)/ Knowledge Networks Poll results now available on the net via The Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland.

This poll, conducted about two weeks prior to the November, 2004, Presidential election, reveals that a majority of Republican voters are mentally ill. No kidding. Consider the following findings:

"A large majority of Bush supporters [72%] believe that before the war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a major program for building them. A substantial majority of Bush supporters [56%] assume that most experts believe Iraq had WMD, and that this was the conclusion of the recently released report by Charles Duelfer. A large majority of Bush supporters [75%] believes that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda and that clear evidence of this support has been found. A large majority [60%] believes that most experts also have this view, and a substantial majority [56%] believe that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission."

Now, to set the record straight (as if any sane person living in the United States or most of the rest of the world for the past two years would have any doubts about these facts), the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Iraq Survey Group (headed by Bush appointees David Kay and Charles Duelfer) , the United Nations, and virtually every credible expert and serious news outlet on the planet have all concluded that Iraq had no WMD's and no significant program for developing such weapons. This has been widely reported and commented upon. The 9/11 Commission concluded that there was no evidence that Iraq under Saddam was supporting al Qaeda and no evidence of any connection between Iraq and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. This, too, has been widely reported and commented upon. Yet, most Bush voters believed exactly the opposite to be true as to all of these facts when they went to the polls on November 2, 2004. Let's look at a few more of their bizarre beliefs, again from the PIPA study cited above:

"Only three in ten Bush supporters believe that the majority of people in the world oppose the US going to war with Iraq...A majority of Bush supporters [57%] assume that the majority of people in the world would like to see Bush reelected...Bush supporters also lean toward overestimating support in Islamic countries for US-led efforts to fight terrorism...[51% of Bush supporters believe that people in the Islamic world favor 'US-led efforts to fight terrorism']"

Again, for those whose connection to reality is tenuous, the facts are these: In every poll conducted since the beginning of the war in Iraq, large to overwhelming majorities of the people around the world in the vast majority of countries (Great Britain, Australia, Israel and Kuwait being exceptions, although things may be different if the polls were conducted today) oppose the US having gone to war in Iraq. This, too, has been very widely reported and one needs look no further than the rather large protests which greet our president whenever he travels overseas to have a clear understanding of how unpopular the Iraq war is around the world. It's should come as no surprise, then, that people around the world favored Kerry over Bush by wide margins in every poll conducted before the election. It should also go without saying that the war in Iraq is deeply unpopular in the Islamic world, as every poll and virtually every news report from the Middle East (and elsewhere) has shown. However, apparently for Bush supporters, these facts are surprising and can't go without saying. But wait, there's more:

"Majorities of Bush supporters misperceive his positions on a range of foreign policy issues. In particular, they assume he supports multilateral approaches and addressing global warming though he has taken strong contrary opinions [on these issues]."

Look, nobody who knows anything about George W. Bush thinks he is for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the treaty banning land mines, participation in the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Protocols to address global warming. Nobody, that is, except the majority of people who voted for him. That's right, 69% of Bush voters thought he was for the Test Ban Treaty, 72% thought he was for the land mine treaty, 54% thought he was for the International Criminal Court and 51% thought he was for the Kyoto Protocols.

What's the point of all of this? Is it just to try to show that Bush supporters are, for the most part, idiots? Of course not, we all know that. The point is, with all due respect to Paul Begala, Hillary Clinton and their ilk, there is nothing the Democrats can or should do to woo these people over to the Democratic side. These are not rational, sentient beings. Put another way, if you persist in believing something to be true which is demonstrably and irrefutably false, you need medication, not voter outreach.

So, here's an idea: Why don't we focus our efforts on people who have some connection with reality? Why don't we just skip our efforts to attract the delusional vote? Let the Republicans and the "Flat Earth Society" keep them, I say. What do you say?

"Moral Values"

2004-12-16T16:02:00.000-08:00

Apparently, a large portion of the electorate went to the polls last November with two words foremost in their minds. These words, somewhat surprisingly, were not "Iraq War", "Lost Jobs", "Supreme Court", "Budget Deficit", "Environmental Disasters", "Prescription Drugs" or even, "Moronic President". The words were "Moral Values". Although "morals" and "values" seem to be words that describe sort of the same thing (i.e. principles with respect to right and wrong), I'm beginning to think that "Moral Values" as used by the 30 to 40 million people who voted for Bush because of them is some sort of code for "If you don't share my particular, and many times peculiar, brand of religious faith, screw you".

I've read that Karl Rove, that chubby poindexter of power politics, was responsible for placing measures to ban gay marriage, a real "Moral Values" hot-button issue, on the ballots in various swing states. This, in turn, caused droves of "Born Again" Christians (or "Christian Fundamentalists", if you like) to storm to the many polling places available to them in their morally valuable neighborhoods (as opposed to the few that were available to those of us who live in amoral and valueless areas) to vote against gay people forming lifetime bonds with one another. Such a lifetime bond between two gay people is, for reasons I have been unable to locate in the whole of the New Testament (I went to Catholic school, so we might be working off a different text) morally repugnant to all "Born Again"Christians. While they were at the polls preventing gays from getting together, these "Born Again" Christians all voted for Bush because he shared their "Moral Values" and/or against Kerry because he, apparently, did not. I can't imagine that the only thing which those who cited "Moral Values" as the predominant issue bearing upon their choice for president shared with Bush was their obsessive desire to keep gay people living in sin together. So, in trying to break the "Moral Values" code, I will offer the following as other beliefs which they might secretly share with our Commander in Chief:

1. A belief that the Iraqis under Saddam had "nucular" weapons, although they didn't have any nuclear ones;

2. A belief that Osama bin Laden and Saddam are the same person, which explains why you never see them together;

3. A belief that if you cut taxes by 200 billion dollars and increase defense spending by 200 billion dollars, we are all better off by a figure of 800 billion dollars;

4. A belief that French people are all gay and, thus, have no "Moral Values" and should not be allowed to marry;

5. A belief that a fellow who persisted in reading a book about a goat to a room full of 8-year olds while we were under terrorist attack is more capable of protecting us from another terrorist attack than a fellow who reacted to his boat being attacked during a war by chasing down and killing the attacker;

6. And so on, and so on...

I earnestly invite any and all of you out there to add to this list of the secret beliefs shared by those who possess "Moral Values". We Democrats, if we are ever to regain the White House, must crack this code so that we can begin pandering to this key voting bloc. Or, as I suggested in my earlier post regarding "Southern Strategy", maybe we should just abandon this group of wingnuts and start being true to our own principles.

What do you think?

Missile Defense Test Fails

2004-12-15T20:17:00.000-08:00

Hey kids, what's that mushroom cloud doing over your city? Guess that missile defense system that the president spent your generation's education money on just failed. No harm trying, though, right?

Yeah, right, it only encourages nations to find technology that works even better, spurring an arms race that must be paid for somehow - usually by the export of technology to, ahem, unsavory people who may use it in a manner not easily deterred in bilateral state-to-state diplomacy (Al Qaeda, perhaps?).

So, the nothing ventured, nothing gained idea is actually way wrong. This attempt by us has probably already spurred Russia and China - at a minimum - the attempt to foil the system with even better technology on their part. Oh well, at least we're out of that annoying and burdensome Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that served us so poorly for the last 3 decades.

Have no fear, though, I'm quite sure Bush will hold a press conference tomorrow heralding the great success of missile defense, and holding it up alongside Iraq as among his administration's great accomplishments. And, our idiotic electorate, or at least the 70% who voted for Bush and still believe that Hussein had WMD, will just cheer right along. Boy, it's great to live a life unencumbered by facts.

How about Dems use a new language???

2004-12-15T20:03:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm following this whole hubbaloo about the failure of the military to adequately outfit our troops, or for that matter, our failure to send adequate numbers out there, like this is any big surprise. Talking Points Memo has a couple of blurbs about this and the "official" Congressional Republican response.

Two issues.

First of all, how is it that the Republicans have managed to bottle this issue up and not have it made an election year issue? It's been talked about for nearly 2 years now. There were stories dating back to the start of the war about the fact that families were sending body armor to their kids since it wasn't being provided by the military. That's unconscionable. Our failure to send enough troops to the fight has led to the trouble we're in now, and when General Shinseki pointed this out, he was forced out of the military.

Of course, none of this is by coincidence, in fact, it's by design. Donald Rumsfeld had been fighting for years to remake the military as a smaller, more lightly armed and mobile force. Since he took office he has been trying to remake the military in that fashion. We should give him full credit for succeeding. It's nice, of course, when the Republicans actually succeed at something they set out to do, it's just a pity that it so often ends up being the absolutely wrong thing to do. This has to be the most typical situation of this president, he sees the world as he wants it to be, not as it is, and acts accordingly. Simply put, believing is seeing, rather than the other way around.

Point number 2 is this: Why are the Dems calling for "hearings," and "heads to roll," and other language of a responsible, yet irrelevant opposition. It's time to call a spade a spade. The Republicans hate the military, they hate the soldiers in uniform. They love the uniform, the trappings of military and the power it entails, but they hate the soldiers actually doing the fighting. They aren't insensitive, they weren't unprepared, they don't care how many die because they have contempt for working Americans, whether they work at Walmart and want them to shoulder an ever greater share of our nation's burdens for less money and benefits to help lower the burden of the wealthiest, or whether they work in the military for even paltrier pay and less benefits. Only now, they want to put these people in danger because they just don't care, they are, in point - ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTI-SOLDIER, AND UNPATRIOTIC.

It's time we shouted this out from the highest rooftops, instead of speaking of them like they really care and just messed up. They don't care, and don't let the starting point of their arguments be that they do care, and how they messed up inadvertantly. Make them defend their patriotism on TV, radio and any other medium they appear. Let's put ads on TV about how they hate the working troops. It's time to stop fighting with kid's gloves.

Southern Strategy

2004-12-15T14:40:00.000-08:00

It has taken me somewhat longer than my colleagues on this site to recover from the debacle of November 2nd. After researching my options with regard to becoming a Canadian (they are, alas, at their quota for asylum seekers from the USA, having taken in a higher than normal number of draft-age Americans recently), I have come to the realization that I must, in some small way, participate. What smaller way is there than posting some thoughts on this so aptly named site?
I have chosen to emerge from my bunker at this moment to comment upon a story which appeared in today's Los Angeles Times. The writer (Ronald Brownstein) detailed the overwhelming victory achieved by President Bush in the Southern states (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Florida) and used a verb to describe what Bush did to Kerry there which, so far as I am aware, is a first in political journalism. Brownstein wrote that "...Bush virtually obliterated Kerry" (my emphasis) in the South. One might think that the word "obliterated" is a bit excessive in this context, in that it is generally reserved to describe catastrophic events like what the Romans did to Carthage, what Godzilla did to Tokyo and what we did to Falluja. However, when you look at the numbers cited in the article, it's hard not to agree with Brownstein's characterization. Of the 1,340 counties in the states listed above, Bush took 1,124 to Kerry's 216. That's almost 85% of the counties in the South going for Bush. Put another way, Kerry's batting average in the South was an anemic .161. I checked baseball reference. com and found out that this average would put Kerry just ahead of the lifetime average of the great Eddie Zosky (?) and just behind that legendary batsmith, Luis Tiant (who was a fat pitcher).

Now, some of your big Democratic political brains out there are saying that this pathetic performance in the South can be turned around simply by nominating a candidate from the South rather than some Brahmin from the Northeast. I don't know about that. Last I checked, Al Gore was from the South and he didn't even win his own state. In fact, in 2000, Bush took 1,047 Southern counties to Gore's 294. Thus, Gore's batting average--in his own division, as it were--was a paltry .219. While that puts him considerably above John Kerry, Gore was outhit by that famous San Francisco Giant slugger, Johnny LeMaster, who hit a lifetime .222. In case you missed all or part of LeMaster's career (and who could blame you?), he was 6'2'' tall and weighed 167 pounds in his prime. As a result, he was frequently blown over when standing at the plate by the high winds at Candlestick Park, which cut down on his effectiveness as a hitter.

So what's the solution to the Democrats' Southern problem? That depends on who's got the problem, them (Southerners), or us (Democrats. Normal ones, not psychotic Zell Miller types). If the problem is us, then I guess we have to find some iconic Southerner to be our nominee. It can't be some diluted Southerner like Al Gore (he did go to Harvard, speak the English language and marry someone named "Tipper" after all), it's got to be a red meat, dyed-in-the-wool, bred-in-the-bone (I don't know any more cliches to use at this point) type of fellow who can drawl and use the word "danged" properly in a sentence. I know just the person:

Colonel Sanders.

You can't get more Southern and more iconic than that. And, he is absolutely beloved by people across the political spectrum and across the world. Especially people who have ever had a hangover or smoked a joint, which is everyone but John Ashcroft. There are, or might be, a couple of problems with this idea, but I don't think they're insurmountable. Let's look them over: 1) Colonel Sanders might be dead. So what, how alive were Al Gore and John Kerry? We Democrats have no problem with dead people. We have a big tent. 2) Colonel Sanders might not be a Democrat. Again, so what? If he's dead, he's malleable. We can convince him to come over to our side. If he's alive, he can't be more conservative than Zell Miller, and we let him call himself a Democrat.

Moving on, if the problem is with Southerners and not us, we need a more creative solution than the Colonel Sanders ploy. I haven't given this enough thought yet (being so excited about a Colonel Sanders-Joe Lieberman ticket), but here's an idea I want to put on the table for future discussion: 1) Re-think Appomattox. In other words, do we really want to do what we would have to do to attract the votes we lost in the South when our Party committed itself to advancing civil rights in the United States and abroad? Do we want to try to regain the votes we lost by supporting the rights of women? What about all those votes we lost when our Party pursued progressive ideas? Or the votes it cost us to oppose the chipping away of our Constitutional rights in the name of "Homeland Security"? I wonder, do we need any other Southern Strategy than "Let's win everywhere else"?

rational retreat redux

2004-12-07T13:22:00.000-08:00

This is my maiden voyage at this cite. I had retired, for mental health reasons, from all things political after the debacle of Nov. 2. I am getting a second wind, and will be "at one with" again shortly.

Thanks for the opportunity for re-entry.

Note that the title of this contribution is somewhat ironic in that when first coined, sans "redux", it was a slogan adopted to explain, via shorthand, why it was permissable to stop caring about the election. Hours and hours of watching "Hardball", hoping that a hardball question that could not be answered could fuel a daydream that the American public would catch on, or viewing poll cites, hoping that the numbers occasionally favoring Kerry would stick because the American public was catching on, or listening to real insiders who swore that the youth vote was going to overwhelm Karl Rove and prove that the American public whose future was at stake was catching on, or seeking out Talking Points Memo in hopes that any of a number of revelations of corruption or lies or incompetence would force the American public to catch on HAD FINALLY ADDED UP TO CONDUCT TO WHICH EVEN SISYPHUS WOULD DEMUR.

Thus, while at one point in time withdrawal seemed the only viable option, and Rational Retreat meant what it said, it now represents a retreat from retreat.

It all boiled down to, excuse the triteness, a culture war. One that was unwinnable by the blue states. And everyone knew it all along. And all that was done in the meantime was so much, as they call it in the restaurant biz, "plate coverage".

So, onward and upward, whatever that means. (Such is the responsibility of grownups).

Republicans showcase future of Social Security (failure)

2004-12-02T13:04:00.000-08:00

According to the Washington Post, Bill Frist's investments intended for use in political ads, have lost significant money in the stockmarket in the last few years. I guess this shows what's likely to happen during any downturn to our social security benifits. They may not make much money as they're presently invested, but imagine our pensions going down the tubes like the NASDAQ has done over the last 4 years. Who will pay, who will suffer. My bet on both counts is few Republican leaders, and few heavy Republican donors. Read the article for more.

Our Actions in Guantanamo

2004-11-30T11:05:00.000-08:00

The Red Cross contends that we are engaged in conduct tantamount to torture in Guantanamo Bay. Of course, this is no surprise to those who have actually concerned themselves with our conduct there. Fact of the matter is, we are hardly a light unto the nations right now, unless you want to count countries struggling with their own human rights problems like the Ukraine.

To be fair, we are only doing this to "outsiders," people who are actively engaged in a war against us (at least purportedly so, this is one of the big problems with conducting a war in this manner, you sweep up a bunch of innocents also and stick them in there, which only makes things worse). This does not, yet, involve use of these methods as a means of suppressing dissent in this country. Here's the rub, how long can we do this stuff, call them legitemate means in the fight against terrorism, before it gets extended to political dissenters in this country. We were already on that somewhat slippery slope with Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi when the Supreme Court put a minor skid to it (and Hamdi's been released as a result), but look at the rhetoric of some of the right in this country. They've effectively called millions of people traitors for opposing the president in a time of war. John Ashcroft famously claimed that those who oppose his actions in rounding up suspects give aid and comfort to the terrorists. What is that if not a call for a greater crackdown on political dissent.

Once the tactics have been legitemized, then the only barrier is that we need to extend the reach of targets we use those tactics against. What's first, jailing of political dissenters without trial or charges? Coercive questioning, torture, disappearances. We should not even be crawling near this slipperly slope, and yet, our government has no concern about where they are taking this.

Supreme Court Unfriendly to Medical Marijuana

2004-11-29T11:59:00.000-08:00

Appropos to my post yesterday, it appears as if sanity in the area of drugs is still a ways off. Apparently, the US Supreme Court, so often a friend to right wing state's rights claims, is not so friendly to those claims coming from the Blue states. If you want to discriminate against minorities or disabled people, a state's rights defense will fly. If you want to have autonomy over your body then you are out of luck. The case hasn't been decided yet, but the NY Times seems to believe that the tenor of the debate left little doubt as to where the decision would fall.

The Drug Scourge - Moral or Practical Problem?

2004-11-28T21:38:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have HBO, and are addicted like me to just about every show they make, you are probably also fans of The Wire. I think this is just about the greatest show I've ever watched. Generally, it follows a group of Baltimore police officers (they were all at some time in the same unit, but have scattered over time), and a few different drug gangs in Baltimore.

In the present series, a Major who is in charge of the western district decided that he'd had enough of the idiotic cyle of policing and violence that he'd dealt with in trying to stop the drug trade in his district, a battle he realized he was losing. After having one more series of citizen complaints about the whole area being controlled by drug dealers who prevent people from leaving their homes safely, he finally decided on a radical solution. He found 3 neighborhoods in his district that were uninhabited, and he pushed all of the dealers in his district into those 3 neighborhoods (the local kids called it Hamsterdam, when one of the officers pushing them there mentioned Amsterdam and the dealers garbled it). The result, that area turned into hell, with every ill you could imagine in the inner city bunched up into one area with the police turning a blind eye to all except crimes of violence. The 95% of the rest of the district that he pushed them out of? Paradise by comparison. Citizens are writing letters thanking them, crime's dropping by 15% in just weeks, people are able to go outside in the middle of the day, everything is just peachy.

This got me thinking, I've been in favor of legalizing drugs for a long time, but here's the question that The Wire raised for me. Do most people believe that drug use is a moral or practical problem. Here's the difference. Murder, rape, robbery, theft, these are all moral problems. Whether or not you personally are victimized, all of society is hurt by those actions, and they are clearly a moral wrong any way you look at it. Therefore, if someone only murders, or rapes, or beats their wife in the privacy of their own home, it is still a moral problem.

What about drug use? Is that a moral problem, in that someone smoking a joint or shooting up in the privacy of their own home (and not doing anything else wrong in their life), or is that only a practical problem, in that practically, it causes other moral problems to exist? You see, if you ask the question about murder, one would never say we can't allow murder because of the practical implications: the practical implications are that a moral wrong is occurring that destroys the fabric of society. But, drug use? Can we say that the use itself is the evil society is trying to prevent, or it leads to evils we wish to prevent, like murder, rape, etc....?

If drug use is a moral problem, then there is only one solution, we must fight it like we fight other true evils like rape. But, if it is a practical problem, then it is like traffic, or pollution, or drinking (and driving, which is drinking's big attendant problem). If it is a practical problem, shouldn't we find a practical solution, rather than a zero sum game solution that involves either winning completely, or losing completely? What if we compromised so as to reduce harm as much as possible?

If drug use is a practical problem, then the solution would be to try and reduce the problem as much as possible, not to go to war. Methods of reducing harm are so obvious, too, that it hurts to see us chase our own tails trying to "fix" things by doing the dumb stuff we're doing. Now, instead of being able to focus on moral problems, we've created a greater market for moral problems, and we focus greater attention on the practical problem of drugs than we do with the moral problems of true crime.

Clearly this could be a rallying point for liberals and conservatives alike. I just don't see how it can be considered to be a moral problem what people do in the privacy of their own lives that doesn't specifically hurt someone else. Will we ever get real on this?

Where's the Danger?

2004-11-27T22:13:00.000-08:00

Maybe I haven't paid enough attention since the election, or paid too much beforehand, but have I been missing a few orange alerts or something? It seems as if every holiday, every day where inordinant amounts of people got into cars or airplanes for the last 3 years, all we heard were terror alerts coming from the government. Maybe I haven't paid attention well of late, but it seems to me that there hasn't been a terror alert in a month, since the election ended. There were, however, many terror alerts right before the election. But then Bush won, and Ashcroft resigned noting that the nation was "now" safe from terrorism (I guess since there is no more need to alarm the public, since there are no more elections, we are now safe).

Now, Thanksgiving has come and gone and the only thing I saw on the news about travel advisories was about how crowded it was. Nary a word on terrorism.

Now, the Bush administration couldn't have been using false threats of terror to alarm the country, could they have? Ooops, treason, defeatism, prison, reeducation. Sorry!

Election Silence

2004-11-27T22:01:00.000-08:00

Alright, I've been caught up in my own misery since the election. I haven't blogged in the slightest, although I've sat angrily for a long time. I'm going to blog more frequently, and who knows, maybe people will even begin to read this site. In the meantime, I know I'm just whistling in the wind, but what the hell.

I really think that the right is engaging in full scale war on the normal people in this country in search of a theoracy/corporate takeover of our country. It is time to respond like we really want to win. It is no longer time to take the high road, we must take the winning road, by whatever means necessary, since that is what's being done to us.

Therefore, I think it's time that we start fighting the right in every venue we can. We should no longer listen to or read their media. I know it's nice to see what they're saying, but they don't care about what we're saying, why should we care about what they're saying? Furthermore, they use our listening in and general liberal interest in what all sides are saying as validation of their point of view when the ratings come out. So, let's starve their media, let's starve their corporations. They make fun of us, calling us out of touch elites, limousine liberals. Well, let's put our money where our mouths are, don't patronize their companies if you can at all help it.

To that end, I have found a site which begins to put together a rudimentary list of "blue" companies and "red" companies, ie - those that give to Democrats and those that give to Republicans. My view: don't patronize (if you can help it), any company that gives more than, say, 60% of their political giving to Republicans. Let's make it harder for them to survive.Like I said, this is war, let's fight like we really care about the results.

"We will beat them in their stores, in their companies, in shopping malls, in the gas stations, we will never give up, we will win" or something Churchillian like that.

Go to the site Choose the Blue, and live it.

Update: At the very least, start making these choices where you get your gas. The only company that I see which gives to Democrats (the others give overwhelmingly to Republicans) is Shell Oil. Start out by going there exclusively. It's an easy choice.

State Department Insists Al Qaeda not active in Iraq - in November 2001

2004-09-24T15:05:00.000-07:00

Check out the information released by the State Department in 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks. They have a map of the world showing where Al Qaeda is active, and this includes much of the world, but it doesn't include Iraq (although it includes Iran, Syria, Jordan, and even the US). How can Bush ever claim with a straight face that Iraq had Al Qaeda ties when their own State Department said they didn't - after 9/11? Hell, the US had greater Al Qaeda ties than the US did. Didn't two of the highjackers live with an FBI informant in San Diego prior to 9/11?

Update on the Axis of Evil

2004-09-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

Three years ago this January, George Bush electified the neo-conservative world with the phrase "Axis of Evil," labelling in one fell stroke the nations of North Korea, Iran and Iraq evil nations beyond the pale of civilizations. Such nations, he told us, would have to be dealt with, one way or another. He never said "dead or alive," but damn if I didn't see that smirk right there when he was talking.

So, nearly 3 years later, with the most aggressive foreign policy in US history, the Axis of Evil must be on the run by now. Let's take a look.

We sure showed Iraq. Hussein wouldn't admit to possessing WMD, so we invaded and kicked his butt, he's "toast" now (in the nearly immortal words of Dick Cheney as spoken to a man who had greater access to the president on war issues than Colin Powell, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia). We went in, we kicked ass and took prisoners (too many, it turned out, and had to lead a bunch of them around naked to show them not to do it again). Sure we got bogged down there a little bit, but let's face it, Muqtada al Sadr is a tough opponent, and he just doesn't play fair when he hides out in holy Shia shrines. Never mind that he was not our enemy until we invaded and then tried to crack down on him.

We have turned over whole regions of Iraq to insurgants. Fallouja is controlled nearly completely by Sunni insurgants, weeks of battling in Najaf never led to us vanquishing a Shia rebellion. US soldiers and Iraqi civillians continue to die in large numbers, along with rebels, of course, but despite the re-introduction of the Vietnam-era body count by Donald Rumsfeld, we seem to have lost sight of the fact that there is a nearly bottomless supply of new ones to take their place. In closing, we have taught one group of Iraqis that our regular army can kick butt, we have taught a whole other group of them how they can prevent us from maintaining control, and thus have tied up 70% of our combat units for 1 1/2 years without being able to control a country the size of California with a population the size of New York.

Iran - Well, for a little while, Iran was on the run there. They agreed to open themselves up to inspection to the IAEA (International Atmoic Energy Agency), and looked as if they were going to come clean about their nuclear ambitions, as well as have their goals of a bomb stymied. They still had a reformist prime minister and a population who looked with more affection than loathing to the US.

Now, of course, Iran has given the big flip off to the US, the UN, and the IAEA. They dumped their reformist prime minister by rigging the elections, and they now state, ernestly in their view, that they need these nuclear plants to meet their energy needs. Who are we to tell them no, even if they have all the oil they'll ever need and are attempting to build plants which are really only likely to be used for bomb making. Afterall, they have little to fear from us since those heady days of the Iraq invasion. 70% of our military cannot control a country the size of California with a population of New York that had been under continuous and intense international military sanctions for a decade. They know good and well that we will have no ability to attack, occupy and control a country 4 times larger with 70 million people in it, who has not been under any sanctions

And finally, North Korea. Oh, yes, I can just see Kim Jong Il quaking in his Gucci boots in one of his palaces in Pyongyang, sipping $100 bottles of Scotch and being attended to be multiple prostitutes. A person as big a fool as him even knows that we are taking troops out of South Korea to build up our failed effort in Iraq. Just for the hell of it, he decided to test a large bomb. Now he has us guessing, was it nuclear, was it conventional, was it a mine accident? Of course, we are in no position to harm him in the slightest, not that we ever were, what with him conventional ability to decimate 1/2 of South Korea's population and industry in about an hour of serious shelling of their country from the DMZ, only about 30 miles from South Korea's capital. We can be relieved that we no longer appease them like we did during the Clinton administration. But then again, they didn't build any nuclear bombs during the Clinton adminstration, they waited for us to call them part of the axis of evil before they did that.

All in all, it's good to see that the axis of evil is alive and well, perhaps even prospering. Sure, Hussein's gone now, but Bush actually called Iraq the axis of evil, and by all signs, Iraq seems to be more evil than ever. Our troops die there at rate of a couple per day, terrorists have begun using it as a new Afghanistan, as if our failures there didn't make the new Afghanistan almost as hospitable as the old one. I'm sure that the neo-cons who have run our foreign policy by political theory rather than political reality are thrilled with the rhetoric, unfortunately, the rest of this country will be struggling with the reality long after the neo-cons are a bad memory.

Jeb Bush Hits a New Low

2004-09-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

Apparently, because the Reform party is not a true "national" party, Florida law deems that the Reform candidate does not get automatic access to the Florida presidential ballot. Of course we know who the Reform candidate is - Ralph Nader, and his being on the Florida ballot obviously would hurt Kerry, as it did Gore in 2000. A federal court issued a temporary injunction keeping Nader off the ballot, so what did Jeb and company do?

You guessed it, they appealed (automatically lifting the injunction), and began printing ballots with Nader on it, claiming that there was no opportunity to argue against the permanent injunction due to Hurricane Ivan! What a load of crap! They are actually going to disobey the law to try and harm Kerry and help Bush. Every time you think that the Republicans have hit a new low, they go and prove you wrong with some new idiocy. Let's see how this one pans out.

Here's the article

MIAMI (Reuters) - Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader's name can appear on Florida ballots for the election, despite a court order to the contrary, Florida's elections chief told officials on Monday in a move that could help President Bush in the key swing state.
The Florida Democratic Party reacted with outrage, calling the move "blatant partisan maneuvering" by Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's younger brother, and vowed to fight it.
In a memo to Florida's 67 county supervisors of elections, Division of Elections director Dawn Roberts said the uncertainty of Hurricane Ivan, which could hit parts of the state by week's end, forced her to act.
The action came in an ongoing legal battle over whether Nader should be allowed on the Florida ballot as the Reform Party candidate.
Nader, an independent nominated by the Reform Party, was a presidential candidate in 2000 when Bush won Florida, and the White House, by 537 votes over then-Vice President Al Gore. Analysts said most of the nearly 98,000 votes Nader got in Florida would have gone to Gore had Nader not been on the ballot.
Florida Circuit Court Judge Kevin Davey issued a temporary injunction last week preventing the state from putting Nader on the 2004 ballot, siding with a Democratic challenge that the Reform Party did not qualify as a national party under state law.
A hearing on a permanent injunction is scheduled for Wednesday. But Roberts said Hurricane Ivan, which is headed for Florida's Gulf coast, had raised "a substantial question as to when such a hearing" will be held.
'PARTISAN MANEUVERING'
As a result, she said, Florida's Department of State had filed an appeal against the temporary injunction. The appeal application automatically lifts the injunction, allowing the counties to put Nader's name on overseas absentee ballots, which must be mailed by Saturday.
"I'm in disbelief," said Scott Maddox, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. "This is blatant partisan maneuvering on the part of Jeb Bush to give his brother a leg up on election day."
"They are trying to get ballots printed with Nader's name on them," said Maddox. "I am astounded that Jeb Bush is willing to defy the judiciary to help his brother."
Maddox said if Nader drew votes away from any candidate it would be Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
Gov. Bush said he agreed with Roberts' decision.
"It's up to the judge to determine, based on the law, whether Nader should be on the ballot or not," Bush said. "But while that process goes on, we cannot put ourselves in the position where the ministerial role of the supervisors cannot be fulfilled."
Maddox noted that Tallahassee, the state capital where Davey sits, is not expected to be directly hit by the hurricane. He said the circuit court could hear the case as scheduled on Wednesday and rule immediately.
In addition, the case is before the Florida Supreme Court, which could also rule at any time, he said.

Polls not too Bad?

2004-09-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

Check out this site, it suggests that all is not lost. According to the latest local polls nationwide, Kerry is ahead in the electoral map, 272-233, with FL and NV dead even. This is great news, and it looks as if the Bush "bounce" was really just the nation laughing. I'm not thrilled with Kerry's campaign, but in light of the way the media works these days, it's probably the best we can do. Let's win in November, and then worry about changing the nation more afterwards.

Update: They now have Maine tied, which gives Kerry 269 with FL & NV still dead even. That means if Bush takes FL & NV, Kerry has swung only one state to his column from 2000, and loses the election. More work needs to be done....

Zell Miller, Last Dixiecrat?

2004-09-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Zell Miller, Confederate?
Watching Zell Miller's speech (the part of it I could stomach, that is), made me think about how much he has in common with the leadership of the Republican party, and for that matter, with those Southern Democrats from the 1940s, 50s and 60s who did their best to prevent integration. For the most part, these Democrats became the present day Republican leadership. He sort of reminds me of the Southern Democrats at the time of the Civil War, for that matter. This got me thinking, Zell Miller and the ascendancy of the present day Republican leadership since 1968 seems to signify to me that perhaps the South didn't really lose the Civil War. Let's face it, many Southern princples from the Civil War era have reappeared in the form of the Republican party today. Excessive emphasis on states rights, opposition to a strong central government that works for the welfare of the nation, allowing of segregation (if the majority accepts, of course), repression of individual rights (especially when you consider that most states seeking to imprison people for what they do in their own bedroom are Southern states), heavy militarisation of society (Zell did say that the military is who we should thank for freedom of speech, not the press - notice how free speech and the press was who he took a shot at for an applause line), ending the separation of church and state, suspicion of science if it conflicts with religious beliefs (do we have to fight the Scopes Monkey Trial all over again?).All in all, when you look at the judges that Bush wants to appoint, the beliefs he expresses, his worldview, the statements of the leadership of his party, and you take out slavery, you might as well be looking at the old confederacy. Maybe the North's victory was a "catastrophic victory" for freedom that we have regretted ever since. Is there any way we can renegotiate the South's demands and let them secede afterall?