rant

I suppose that, as a political blogger, I should be more engaged these days. Mid-term elections are on. The right wing is eager to force women into pregnancy. Republicans are dealing with internal battles their innate racism and free-trade ideology. The ice caps are melting away. And Bush is, well, still in power, which is bad news for the world.

I suppose that we all burn out at some point. Frankly, I find it hard to engage with the so-called liberal blogozoid these days. It's getting to be like the right-wing echosphere, colored by party-first dogmatists and regressive apologists with world views defined by growing up under Reagan and political styles more reminiscent of Tammany Hall than city hall. Manufacturing consent is a phrase that resonates with me now.

I suppose it's to be expected, what with elections this year and all that.

But really, it's disgusting. The real agents of change in this country are cultural and technological. Politically, we're lost in a political atmosphere reminiscent of the 1850s. 1850 is where the Republicans want to take this country, and the Democrats play along by accommodating, appeasing and recruiting bigoted, misogynist and xenophobic twits and goons who are right along with the minus-150-years agenda.

Call me jaded, but I don't believe one whit that jackasses and fucktards who were attacking pro-choice progressives as "single-issue voters" now suddenly have gotten religion and actually back gender equality and reproductive rights. I don't believe that anyone who endorsed Casey or Kaine or any of the plethora of forced-pregnancy advocates is truly a friend of women's autonomy. They say it's "the big tent."

As long as they are feeding at a well tended trough, the DC Dems care not at all. Careless they are, and they insist they shall be.

But... she plaintively cried, what of the ... the ... the Democratic Big Tent?

Catch this exchange on the Soapblox Chicago blog as the Dupage and Cook counties in Illinois worked at counting with their fingers and toes into the wee hours and even the next day... late word on the blogs is that Duckworth has pulled it out, with about 1000 votes.

Just get Democrats

into power first, then worry about Progressives. That will come in the future. Progressives and other Dems must work together to bring the Party back into power and everyone must loosen the reins on their ideals a little bit.

--------------------------------------

by: CollectiveDefense @ March 22, 2006 at 00:06:17 America/Chicago

funny

I've heard that every election for over 20 years now... It's always a one sided compromise. It's like being in an abusive relationship.

Just Another Souless Atheist in Search of World Peace and Harmony

-------------------------------------

by: Kankakee Voice @ March 22, 2006 at 00:12:24 America/Chicago

And yet for the better part

of those twenty years it doesnt seem like people have been following that mantra because Republicans have traditionally been in power over the last twenty years except in the early 90s pretty much. Banging from the outside wont accomplish you anything if you alienate yourself from the rest of the Party. They have the money, the influence, the power. If you want to hol onto your ideals then no, no Progressive will ever get into power.

-----------------------------------------

by: CollectiveDefense @ March 22, 2006 at 00:26:19 America/Chicago

Hey! No shit ''Collective Defense'', it has not been working. Get a clue.

And especially don't miss this:

Thank you

and I dont think Duckworth will even reach out to many Cegelis staffers. I dont think they will even need Cegelis' people out on the ground for them with all the backing and money from the Democratic Party.

-----------------------------------------

by: CollectiveDefense @ March 21, 2006 at 23:58:22 America/Chicago

Why would she?

When Cegelis based her entire campaign on trashing Duckworth? A scortched earth policy doesn't leave much behind.

--------------------------------------------

by: nobodysent @ March 22, 2006 at 01:13:14 America/Chicago

Would Duckworth even ask?

My worry is that having won by the skin of her teeth in the primary (if the results so far hold), Duckworth's handlers will think, "Ground game? We don't need no stikin' ground game."
Problem is, the "strategy" that may have won them the primary, hasn't got a prayer of winning against a Republican who will have more money AND significant ground troops on his side.

----------------------------------------

by: Jim in Chicago @ March 21, 2006 at 23:59:47 America/Chicago

And at the end of the thread:

Its pretty bad when youre already thinking

about a recount. Means you dont believe Cegelis will win. Everyone was so sure Cegelis would win, but no. I said think differently. Duckworth might win, she has money and backing from D.C. Democrats, meaning Cook Co. Dems and the like. If Duckworth wins now, what will all you Pregressives do now? I suggest lending your vote to Duckworth for at least one election just to get a Democrat into power in a Republican district and change it for good. Let Cegelis run again in 2008 and see if she wins. Of course she might win it this year.

------------------------------------------

by: CollectiveDefense @ March 22, 2006 at 00:17:29 America/Chicago

The party is making it clear as can be, clear as it has been for years... show up for the biannual or quadrennial slog in the mud, work like beavers, be insulted, then STFU and be meek til they need the left, liberal, progressives again.

And this: Dems are happy, they say Republican women will vote for her, she is a conservative Dem.

However, Cegelis who made it thru to run agaisnt Henry Hyde in 04, came closer than anyone had, she garnered 44% of the vote.

Hillary likes her Salazars, Caseys and Duckworths. Likely Duckworth swore on a Bible she would not cough up a fetus in public... LOL. Might as well laugh.

The party is pro-life. With a few stray pro-choice. And DC Dems are not interested in the base, the rank and file.

It has to end. Withhold the vote. And withhold work from the party.

Old English Folk Song:

The carrion crow sat upon an oak,
Fol de rol de rol de ray,
The carrion crow sat upon an oak,
Watching a tailor mending his cloak.
Heigh ho, the carrion crow!
Fol de rol de rol de ray.

O wife, O wife, bring hither my bow (etc.)
That I may shoot this carrion crow. (etc.)

The tailor he shot and he missed his mark,
He shot his old sow right through the heart.

O wife, O wife, bring some brandy in a spoon,
For our old sow's fallen down in a swoon.

The old sow died and the bell did toll,
And the little pigs squeaked for the old sow's soul,

O ho, said his wife, you're a silly old goose,
To kill your old sow and not care a mouse.

O ho, said the tailor, I care not a mouse,
For we shall have hog-puddings and chitterlings and souse

Ya think?

When was she not, I say.

She must do something about getting a stump... er, fire hydrant speech. Just has to. After La Kerry we cannot have another self-impressed nom, who also does not have a credible stump speech. Kerry drooled his speeches, she spits out lectures.

As I type this just the memory of her voice grates in my ear. Quite aside from the guff she upchucks (10K to Casey).

Meanwhile Bill is handy. Useful, ministering, evangelising Bill.

Spoiled Sparky [not kidding, that is his name]

A little Bush Biz, some Africa Biz with Holbrooke (no pic, he is not a dog, he is a rock that speaks), some Ports Biz, little phoning to our (that means Bush and Clinton) friends. You know them: the UAE team for global security and ports and terminals administration.

Schumer?

This is our Poodle Whirligig. It is 15 inches tall and has 10 inch legs. Available in black and white. $29. Look at our other dog whirligigs!

Oh planning on adding enough senate seats to get to majority. Opera glasses at the ready!. This will be fun. Have some champagne, the bubbles help keep one upright in turgid times....

And Rahm, doing what poodles like Rahm do.

Fun stuff - fun for them. Much fuss and bother, accomplishing little.

And all the while the party is:

Norman Solomon has a quick, and desperate (I feel desperate about most things in America these past years... don't you?) look back at what the pundits said in the ramp up to WAR!.

The third anniversary of the Iraq invasion is bound to attract a lot of media coverage, but scant recognition will go to the pundits who helped to make it all possible.

Continuing with long service to the Bush administration's agenda-setting for war, prominent media commentators were very busy in the weeks before the invasion.

At the Washington Post, the op-ed page's fervor hit a new peak on February 6, 2003, the day after Colin Powell's mendacious speech to the UN Security Council.

I cannot give these creeps a lot of time - but will take the first one off the top... one known to all...

Here is what Solomon selects from the months of blather Richard Cohen extruded onto the pages:

Post columnist Richard Cohen explained that Powell was utterly convincing.

"The evidence he presented to the United Nations - some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail - had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them," Cohen wrote.

"Only a fool - or possibly a Frenchman - could conclude otherwise."

Fortunately it was a pretty fast google to turn up the day, just this past January, that Richard Cohen joined the (also) staged performance at the Oprah show - to declare his rage over betrayal - and high profile lying... to the American people. Flag, motherhood, and some kind of pie, were just around the corner...

It was over that earth shattering issue: James Frey of A Million Little Pieces.

Take a gander:

Oprah: Richard Cohen is a Washington Post columnist who wrote in the case of James Frey:

"The liar whose memoir turns out to have a good deal of fiction alongside fact."

[Richard Cohen also] said, "Oprah is not only wrong but deluded."

And I was impressed with that. I was impressed with that because I thought sometimes criticism can be very helpful. So thank you very much. You were right. I was wrong. What do you want to say?

[I feel so much better about America, don't you? -Marisacat]

Richard Cohen: I would say to the publishing industry, you guys have got to cut this out. You're not little shops anymore with two or three people working with quills. You're part of large corporations. Hire somebody for $25,000, $30,000 a year as a fact checker.

A fact checker would have found out in a half an hour that some of this book didn't work because the book doesn't pass the smell test. … When it doesn't pass the smell test, you give it to a fact checker.

Work it out. Somebody could have done what The Smoking Gun did. They could have done it. Publishers have to do it from here on end.

There is a difference between truth and fiction. We find this out all the time. Now we're finding it out again.

This was a betrayal of his readers. It was a betrayal of you.

More from Richard Cohen

Feel better? About America?

About publishing? Media? Truth, Reason, Logic, Art, Beauty? Eros? Thanatos? Feel better, possibly, about the Commerce Clause, with Roberts and Alito well ensconced?, No? Your childrens' future?

Richard Cohen took a public dump of his bottled up ethical angst. LOL, such professional drama...

Really he just adjusted his de rigueur South Seas pearl choker. In light of everything, it was not pretty. Frey is not WAR!. Not by a long shot. But Richard sits pretty... on a dog pillow at WaPo.

*My apologies to the Poodle breed, excellent and wonderful dogs, if not overbred (which is not their fault). I like them, from the tiniest teacup to the most elegant standard poodle. And cockapoos, labradoodles too.

I just disdain humans who want to be poodles.

Well, it is to laugh really.

The umpteenth Democratic pass out, pass over, lie-down-fall-down cream puff move: "I have not read it", they (nearly) all said.

Clinton hiding from reporters behind the 4' 11" Barbara Mikulski (Dana Milbank), Kerry flipped (WaPo and The Hill) and then he flopped, then he tipped over -- he just does somersaults. Nobody sane can watch it by now.

They aren't spineless anymore, they are fucking fried shrimp. Small ones...

...and then I toured the Big Box Blogs... who all shriek they want better, more better, best, bestest from their (you should excuse the commonness of the phrase) Fighting Dems.

They want the fried shrimp to... well, a long list of things dead and butterflied shrimp just cannot do...

Such drahma. So late. And so fake. Crocodile tears. Hot and cold spigots.

I say to them:

get your tongues out for Reid, the way you all did for a damned year. That casino hack with the lobbyist children - and the visible G-spot for rightie pro-life Catholic judges.

Here are the DC Dems:

But for a handful, they are all "Blue Dogs"

Here are the "incestuous amplification" Big Box Bloggers:

Tiniest pink fight promoters -
Don King is not threatened

It's a set.

In case you had not heard (nor caught C-Span last Sunday) the likes of Carville, Begala and Kamarck (all DLC branded on their aging haunches) are "take the party back" people. Really. The kids at Harvard's Kennedy School for Government were not too impressed either...

The tired trio exuded flop sweat thru the event. No surprise, flop sweat is something the party has down pat.

Shrimp, dead but still sweating - and flopping.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

UPDATED: Thursday, 12:17 PM, PT:

Think Progress is reporting the first poll on censure:

First censure poll released.

46 percent of Americans (48 percent of voters) support Sen. Russ Feingold’s censure resolution, while 44 percent (43 percent of voters) oppose the idea, according to an American Research Group poll.

Jordan Flaherty living and
working in New Orleans has written with remarkable clarity of the desperation of his city and her people in the wake of Katrina.

Ninth ward, New Orleans [CNN]

Ursula Price, a staff investigator for the indigent defense organization A Fighting Chance, has met with several thousand hurricane survivors who were imprisoned at the time of the hurricane, and her stories chill me.

"I grew up in small town Mississippi," she tells me. "We had the Klan marching down our main street. But still, I've never seen anything like this."

Safe Streets, Strong Communities, a New Orleans-based criminal justice reform coalition that Price also works with, has just released a report based on more than a hundred recent interviews with prisoners who have been locked up since pre-Katrina and are currently spread across thirteen prisons and hundreds of miles.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary, America's most infamous and largest maximum security prison, known as "The Farm". In the 18th and 19th centuries, Angola was a thriving slave plantation. After the turn of the century it was officially converted into a prison, yet very little changed: the free labor which was originally provided from the sweat of an entirely black and slave population was then taken over by a mostly black and convict population.

They found the average number of days people had been locked up without a trial was 385 days. One person had been locked up for 1,289 days. None of them have been convicted of any crime. [...]

According to a pre-Katrina report from the Metropolitan Crime Commission, 65% of those arrested in New Orleans are eventually released without ever having been charged with any crime.

Retired school teacher, Arthur Davis, and NOLA cops, October 2005

Samuel Nicholas (his friends call him Nick) was imprisoned in Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) on a misdemeanor charge, and was due to be released August 31. Instead, after a harrowing journey of several months, he was released February 1. Nick told me he still shudders when he thinks of those days in OPP.

"We heard boats leaving, and one of the guys said 'hey man, all the deputies gone,' Nick relates. "We took it upon ourselves to try to survive. They left us in the gym for two days with nothing.

Some of those guys stayed in a cell for or five days. People were hollering, 'get me out, I don't want to drown, I don't want to die,' we were locked in with no ventilation, no water, nothing to eat. Its just the grace of god that a lot of us survived."

Lake Ponchartrain, July 10 2005, high water in the wake of Hurricane Dennis
[Globe and Mail]

Benny Flowers, a friend of Nick's from the same Central City neighborhood, was on a work release program, and locked in a different building in the sprawling OPP complex. In his building there were, by his count, about 30 incarcerated youth, some as young as 14 years old.

"I don't know why they left the children like that. Locked up, no food, no water.

Why would you do that?

They couldn't swim, most of them were scared to get into the water. We were on work release, so we didn't have much time left. We weren't trying to escape, we weren't worried about ourselves, we were worried about the children.

The guards abandoned us, so we had to do it for ourselves. We made sure everyone was secured and taken care of. The deputies didn't do nothing. It was inmates taking care of inmates, old inmates taking care of young inmates. We had to do it for ourselves."

Benny Hitchens, another former inmate, was imprisoned for unpaid parking tickets. "They put us in a gym, about 200 of us, and they gave us three trash bags, two for defecation and one for urination. That was all we had for 200 people for two days."

Slaves at work on the Indies Company plantation, across from New Orleans
[Lassus, 1726]

State Department of Corrections officers eventually brought them, and thousands of other inmates, to Hunts Prison, in rural Louisiana, where evacuees were kept in a field, day and night, with no shelter and little or no food and water.

"They didn't do us no kind of justice," Flowers told me. "We woke up early in the morning with the dew all over us, then in the afternoon we were burning up in the summer sun. There were about 5,000 of us in three yards."

Woodlawn Plantation, Louisiana
1941 [Edward Weston]

Abu Ghraib on the Mississippi

From reports that Price received, some prisoners had it worse than Oakdale.

"Many prisoners were sent to Jena prison, which had been previously shut down due to the abusiveness of the staff there. I have no idea why they thought it was acceptable to reopen it with the same staff.

People were beaten, an entire room of men was forced to strip and jump up and down and make sexual gestures towards one another. I cannot describe to you the terror that the young men we spoke to conveyed to us."

In 1724, Louis XV adapted the Code Noir for Louisiana. Since 1685 this code had regulated the condition of slaves in the French Islands, notably forbidding interracial marriage and sexual relations.

"We have a system that was broken before Katrina," Price tells me, "that was then torn apart, and is waiting to be rebuilt.

Four thousand people are still in prison, waiting for this to be repaired.

There's a young man, I speak to his mother every day, who has been in the hole since the storm, and is being abused daily. This boy is 19 years old, and not very big, and he has no lawyer. His mother doesn't know what to do, and without her son having council [sic], I don't know what to tell her."

September 1970 raid on Black Panther offices, across from the Desire Housing Project, est. population, 20,000. Moon Landrieu was mayor of NO at the time.
Link*

I asked Price what has to happen to fix this system.

"First, we establish who was left behind, collect their stories and substantiate them. Next, we're going to organize among the inmates and former inmates to change the system. The inmates are going to have a voice in what happens in our criminal justice system.

Untitled, from the One Big Self, Prisoners of Louisiana series, 1999, silver emulsion on aluminum
[Deborah Luster]

If you ask anyone living in New Orleans, the police, the justice system, may be the single most influential element in poor communities.

Its what beaks up families, its what keeps people poor."

Amen to that...

*Link is to online facsimile of the Black Panther newsletter of June, 1971.

Word has come thru of the discovery in Iraq of the body of peace activist Tom Fox.

Tom Fox, the Virginia peace activist ... has been found dead, a State Department spokesman said last night. The FBI verified that a body found in Baghdad on Thursday morning was that of Fox, according to the State Department. It was not immediately clear last night when he had been killed or how. Nothing was said immediately about the circumstances leading to the discovery of the body. [...]

Fox disappeared Nov. 26 in Baghdad, along with Norman Kember, 74, of Britain, and James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both of Canada. The four worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams, a Toronto- and Chicago-based group that opposes the Iraq war and has criticized treatment of detainees in U.S. and Iraqi jails.

UPDATE: 6:19 PM, PT: AP report with additional detail on the death of Tom Fox. His body indicated, from the wounds, that he was tortured before he was shot in the head and chest. His hands were bound.

Last year, within days of the abduction of the 4, Media Matters documented Rush Limbaugh's ditto head take on christians abducted in-country, while there opposing the war, working as peace activists within Iraq.

Yeah, all right. Now, let's take this at face value just for a moment.

This could all be BS. I mean, we've never heard of the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. This could all be a stunt, but let's take it -- well, let's take it both ways.

We'll take it face value at first, then we'll look at it as a stunt second. I said at the conclusion of previous hours

-- part of me that likes this. And some of you might say, "Rush, that's horrible. Peace activists taken hostage." Well, here's why I like it. I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality.

So here we have these peace activists over there. I don't care if they're Christian or not. They're over there, and as peace activists, they've got one purpose. They're over there trying to stop the violence. Now, if this German group fits the mold, they are probably blaming the United States and coalition forces for all of this.

Authorities tell ABC News they are investigating Limbaugh for money laundering violations, involving "30 to 40" just-under-$10,000 withdrawals from US Trust bank, structured to avoid Federal currency reporting requirements.
[18 November 2003]

But more importantly, they believe that if they just go there, like these idiotic human shields before the war, if they just go there -- "Mr. Limbaugh, it's real simple, something you wouldn't understand because you've never been to conflict resolution. But it's real simple. If we go there, and we show them that we are people of peace, and that we want to stop the violence, and that we don't hold them responsible, they will see and understand that this is the way to bring peace."

Imagine, for a moment, had they been there church planting or attached to Franklin Graham's West Wing sponsored Samaritan's Purse (reported as inside Iraq first!). Oh, I do believe the entire Right Wing Wurlitzer, in all its bellows and buffoons, would assemble... a new casus belli would be called forth. Or their bodies discovered, mysteriously, in Iran.

Instead:

LIMBAUGH: They wouldn't have been kidnapped because they wouldn't have been there in the first place if Bush hadn't gone and caused the war and created all these terrorists.

I mean, these people are liberals, they're warped. Well, I mean, that's why there's -- I'm telling you, folks, there's a part of me that likes this.

Probably, even with this, though, you know, they're not going to see the light of day. They're not going to -- I know, let them take me out of context. I don't care anymore.

I hope no one thinks I thought Saturday morning, in liberal leftischer blogoland, needed yet another story about Pill Boy.

No, this got written up, at the instance of yet another wholly tragic martyr, to contemplate the Bush Family Greed (themselves fixers and enablers for generations) which has met the Great American Emptiness - and to deliver this tidbit from Rush's personal timeline:

Marries third wife Marta Fitzgerald [27 May, 1994] a 35-year-old aerobics instructor he met on Compuserve.

The two are married in Justice Clarence Thomas' house, with the ceremony officiated by Thomas himself. Also in attendence were William Bennett, James Carville and Mary Matalin.

- only consider this line up of eminent personages if you are not eating. It's an appetite killer. And remark on the vast moral emptiness of our so called governing class. They are all, with heartbreakingly few exceptions, pundits, lobbyists, TV/radio personalities, war mongers, campaign managers, consultants, titans of various cash industries, fixers and enablers and too many of these same people revolve in and out of academia (Ken Starr, Condi Rice, Larry Summers) and / or the military.

And in some cases are on the SC. For life.

Have a pill. Or two or three... Hell, it might even help.

Could they stand on their hind legs? Do you think?

performing pastel-colored poodle,
in a clown and poodle show
[OCRegister]

Ari Berman in The Nation takes a look at the Dems, embroiled in their running soap opera of duck and cover. Hide from it all but be The Alternative --also known as The Candidate:

Iraq returned as a central theme in George W. Bush's State of the Union address this year. With the war on the minds of many members of the public and with the 2006 midterm elections approaching, it seemed natural that the opposition party would forcefully challenge the President's policy.

Instead, the Democrats ducked and covered. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine devoted a mere three sentences to the Iraq War in his official Democratic response to Bush.

Representative Rahm Emanuel, a leading party strategist, didn't even mention Iraq when asked on television what his party would do differently from the Republicans--a hint of how the Democrats have downplayed the issue internally.

On the advice of top party consultants...

[there we go again! If they had any decency, or could close their greasy palms, they'd leave the country, FOR SHAME!],

the Democrats in the run-up to the 2006 midterm vote are either ignoring Iraq and shifting to domestic issues (the strategy in the 2002 midterm elections) or supporting the war while criticizing Bush's handling of it (the strategy in the 2004 presidential election).

Three years into the conflict most Democrats can finally offer a cogent critique of how the Bush Administration misled the American people and mismanaged the Iraqi occupation, but they're unwilling or unable to suggest clearly how the United States should extricate itself from that mess.

Count on the Dems to catch the drift, and depart, vacate any idea of leadership. Remembering that Murtha stepped forward FIVE months ago, read it and weep:

For a moment on November 17, when Representative Jack Murtha boldly called on Bush to bring the troops home, the Democrats seemed to have found such a voice--and with it an opportunity to shift the debate to how to exit Iraq, not whether to stay.

Sure, plans to redeploy US troops within a year or two, sponsored by Russ Feingold in the Senate, the Out of Iraq Caucus in the House and the Center for American Progress (CAP), were already on the table.

But none brought with it the standing and sense of urgency of Murtha, who previously had been known on Capitol Hill as the dean of the defense hawks.

Well, do you think that Pelosi and Reid and others are, you know, hampering a strong anti-Iraq War coalition from forming within congress ?

I do.

Progressives/left/liberal need to break away. there is no place for them in the party.

A Washington Post survey of eight prominent foreign policy advisers found that only one, former Carter Administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, proposed a clear plan for how to get out.

The resulting headlines--DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKERS SPLINTER ON IRAQ, DEMOCRATS FIND IRAQ ALTERNATIVE IS ELUSIVE, DEMOCRATS FEAR BACKLASH AT POLLS FOR ANTIWAR REMARKS--reflected the disarray.

As prominent Democrats shied away from the fight, Bush went on the offensive with a series of Iraq speeches, allowing Republicans to caricature Murtha's plan as "cut and run."

Pollster Mark Penn [Penn is Hillpac's pollster] and Democratic Leadership Council founder Al From warned that foes of the war "could be playing with political dynamite" and needed to be "extremely careful."

These Democrats seemed transfixed by the ghost of George McGovern, instead of reacting to the mounting unease with Bush's policies. [...]

Democrats in Congress subsequently went mute on the war.

By mid-February even Pelosi was reassuring nervous party strategists that there would be no specific talk of Iraq when the Democrats unveiled their own version of the GOP's Contract With America later this year.

The bulk of Democratic strategists approved of the no-details-on-Iraq approach.

Do nothings. Newly born. Born again. The No Details New Democrats, Republicrats, Demlicans, Trojan Horses, Republican-Lite... we all know the drill.

And here is a tidy quote from Steve Elmendorf:

"You can't hope the Democrats will ever have a unified message, other than a unified critique of how Bush mishandled the war," says Steve Elmendorf,

a former chief of staff to Representative Dick Gephardt and senior adviser to the Kerry campaign who's helping plan the Democratic agenda for '06.

Begala:

"The point of an agenda is to be unified, and the party clearly won't be." Nor is it realistic to expect they should be, says longtime political adviser Paul Begala:

"I don't think a Congressional candidate ought to presume to be able to solve unsolvable problems."

Let us be clear, the issue is not, any longer, voting for the war. More than half the Democrats in the senate voted FOR IWR, and few have recanted, much less apologised to the American people. Let's get real here, they have provided, already, the heavy lifting to get us there, and keep us there. They now plan to continue with the proven themes.

The issue is a measured plan to withdraw, semi-withdraw -- oh, troops at the ready in the friendly circle of friends we have, Doha Qatar, UAE, Jordan Israel others... We are in the bag for ''war in the region''. We are readiness at the ready!, there to put down palace coups or internal armed insurrection. We stand ready! Our sphere of influence is across 27 countries in the broader region, from the 'Stans westward. As the Iraq invasion took place we "greatly expanded our footprint in the Horn of Africa".

That is all this is about: Sign on to a plan for measured withdrawal.

Understand this: The party will split, whether it cuts the damned baby in half or not, because it, Biz Wing, War Wing, supports war forever, permanent bases forever. They voted for it. And for Negroponte too, 98/2. And they voted for him when Clinton made him Ambassador to the Phillipines. Let's get real.

The short version: The party supports George Bush. Oh they flail around, they rail, they bitch, they moan... but when the cow chips are down? -- crickets -- His poll numbers are down? Cue the crickets.

Those who see it otherwise, see issues of morality and pragmatism in a responsive approach:

It may be impossible to assume that discussion of the war can wait until after November, given the recent events on the ground. If most Democratic strategists have continued to counsel caution on Iraq, a few do not--for moral and pragmatic reasons.
"I think the Democrats are afraid of the issue, but I don't think they should be," says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. Lake had previously fallen into the camp of consultants who advised Democrats to ignore the war and pivot to domestic issues.

Now she says that approach is no longer possible, and that Democrats must talk about a plan to bring troops home. "Iraq is the essential factor in the voters' landscape," Lake says, the number-one issue feeding distrust of the President and a desire for change.

And Brzezinski, NSA under Carter:

"The tone, unfortunately for the Democratic majority, has been set by the two Clintons," says Brzezinski, a longstanding hawk and vocal critic of the Iraq War, "who have decided that Senator Clinton's chances would be improved if she can manage to appear as a kind of quasi-Margaret Thatcher, and therefore she's been loath to come out with a decisive, strong, unambiguous criticism of the war, with some straightforward recommendations as to what ought to be done. And I'm afraid that has contaminated the attitude of the other Democratic political leaders." [...]
"Prolonging the war is damaging us in every respect," says Brzezinski.

"The costs are quite extensive and if you add the economic costs [$1 trillion] and the costs in blood [roughly 20,000 US casualties], staying the course is not a very attractive solution or definition of victory.

And I think Democrats could make that case intelligently and forcefully."

Berman closes on some notes of hope, but I am very sorry: I say, think back. Did they ever get it, in recent memory? '00?... and '02? Grab a hankie and think back to '04? Kerry at the Grand Canyon? He'd vote for it again! It did not mean war...

Last year? What did they "get" last year? We got primary fields cleared, for the likes of Casey, just ONE example.... Who is pro-war, pro-life, supports defense of the fetus from conception (that heralds criminalisation for drs and women, let's get real) and would vote for ... Alito.

A gift quote, well timed for the administration and the speeches, that Casey and Rendell gave to Bush. Bush, three times, quoted Rendell's support for Alito, identified him each time as a Democratic governor, naming him. It is called "supporting Bush".

I say it makes Rendell and Casey what Bush called "discerning Democrats" who should join with Zell and vote for Bush. I rather suspect Casey did. Rendell may very well have.

Let's get real. They divvy up power.

Caste your eyes back up to the quote from Brzezinski, about the Clintons:

"The tone, unfortunately for the Democratic majority, has been set by the two Clintons, who have decided that Senator Clinton's chances would be improved if she can manage to appear as a kind of quasi-Margaret Thatcher, and therefore she's been loath to come out with a decisive, strong, unambiguous criticism of the war, with some straightforward recommendations as to what ought to be done.

And I'm afraid that has contaminated the attitude of the other Democratic political leaders."

Vote for us, we're poodles! About where it is.

Progressives need to pull away. There is no place for them in the party.

Long time mover and shaker in the christianist war on women and girls, a war planned and fought on the mean rural roads and city streets of America, lately coming to full bloody flower in SD, is... Leslee Unruh.

Her husband, a local chiropractor, served on the Task Force that led to the recent law signed by Gov. Rounds. She has flogged every horse that the white, christian, oppressive mentality will support from an online abstinence clearinghouse, to a CPC center, to a suspicious Omega Maternity home for unwed girls...

Leslee Unruh: Oh, do please meet this woman. For she is the enemy.

The Abstinence Clearinghouse is an offshoot of the pro-life movement that refers to those who believe in comprehensive sex education as the "safe sex cartel" and "condom pushers." Its mission is "to promote the appreciation for and practice of sexual abstinence (purity)" through distribution of abstinence-only publications. Its website boasts a "medical advisory board" composed of health professionals who will not prescribe contraceptives to unmarried teens.

Abstinence Clearinghouse founder Leslee Unruh has close ties to the pro-life establishment. She spent most of the '80s protesting outside abortion clinics and encouraging people to protest outside the homes of physicians who provide abortions.

That is Ed Meese, AG under Reagan, with Leslee Unruh beside him, on his left.

She also started a "crisis pregnancy center" in Sioux Falls, S.D., about which there were so many complaints that the governor had her investigated. Unruh pleaded no contest to unlicensed adoption and foster care practices as part of a plea bargain in which 19 charges, including four felonies, were dropped.

Let's stop, and read that bit again:

She also started a "crisis pregnancy center" in Sioux Falls, S.D., about which there were so many complaints that the governor had her investigated.

Unruh pleaded no contest to unlicensed adoption and foster care practices as part of a plea bargain in which 19 charges, including four felonies, were dropped.

A promo shot of Leslee, meant to indicate she wants "you" for her abstinence games.
I say, anyone with a brain will say, her angle, long term, is federal funds. And white babies. And cash. And coercion of women and girls. It already was her game...

The charges resulted from Unruh's promises to pay teenagers if they remained pregnant so she could put their babies up for adoption. Tim Wilka, one of the state's attorneys at the time, explained,

"There were so many allegations about improper adoptions being made [against her] and how teenage girls were being pressured to give up their children," he says. "Gov. George Mickelson called me and asked me to take the case."

Well, somebody covered her ass. As she bleated out, nolo contendere...

The picture on the ground in SD, and several other states, is very bleak for women... but as I cast my mind back over a year long of online - and so very ''DLC'' it has been - demagoguery of NARAL (imo, there is a buzzing bee up Kos's ass), and, while I believe in very harsh criticism of pols, lobbyists, hacks and others, I have been around the block... and there is a difference. Demagoguery is meant to demonise.

The past 6 weeks the demagoguery starts to extend, across the board, from NARAL to PPFA. Often involving a small circle of "incestuous amplification" blogs who tie in tightly via, again!, incestuous linking to the Red Star Mother Ship....

I say: they wear pink rhinestone collars and leashes and the leashes lead straight back to the party. Yes yes yes: they are "Democratic" sites. They surely do coordinate. Rahm, Reid, Hillpac, Schumer, Rendell, others. The conservative Democrats, red states, blue states, purple states... all the same in the end.

Scratch so many Democrats and you find a "reformed" Republican, ones that have scarcely changed at all, never really left Republican mommy and daddy.... Why cultivate your base, why form coalitions, when you can just herd the new weeds?

Find the Biz Wing, the Handmaiden Wing, the Chortle Loudly but Curl Up With No Spine, No Filibuster Wing. "Bitch and capitulate". Oh they, the incestuous blogs and the wanna bees, they raise their little poodle arms in fake approbation at this, or that, that the party does... but they work for the Yankee dollar, as I put it.

And not one of them wants anyone to remember that a majority Democratic senate brought us Clarence Thomas (Jane Mayer). That Biden, chair of the Judiciary, was outwitted and blind to flank work by aides to Republicans on the committee. Danforth shepherded that nom right by the Dems. 11 Democrats crossed the aisle on the senate floor to vote for Clarence, 52/48... he would not be on the SC without senate Democrats and a Democratic chaired Judiciary Committee.

I may be, and I am in fact, uneasy with the national level at NARAL, long time Democratic office holder in MT, Nancy Keenan, til she failed at her run in '00 (lost to the R by 6 pts) for the one seat in the House (it is possible to be critical and not demagogue her). There is no real ground level history of working for reproductive rights... unlike Kim Gandy, who, in addition to a history as a Louisiana prosecutor, came up thru the ranks at NOW for 30 years and ascended thru internal vote.

However, let's take a look at REAL grassroots in SD - as opposed to what I call "greasy roots", the visible leadership of the Big Box Blogs:

The Unitarian Universalists, a tiny number in SD - all of 186 souls at three congregations spread out across those hard rural roads of SD... from within their number we find Mahala Bach, who came forward with her desperate recounting of the most brutal rape at the age of 13 and her subsequent abortion, sought with the support of her mother and her doctor.

UUs worked as the only organised religion to fight against the war against women, this siege of the SD leg. Sometimes working interfaith, but often alone... protesting out side the capital (something Kos does not like) demonstrating (ditto) ... and among their number is Unitarian Universalist member:

Thelma Underberg, who attends All Souls, is executive director of NARAL ProChoice South Dakota.

She predicted pro-choice groups would challenge the bill because it has no exceptions for the health of women. She thinks it would take a minimum of two years for the challenge to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

South Dakota’s experience should be a warning, she said, adding, “There are a lot of other terrible pieces of legislation out there. I hope people are finally waking up to the fact that things are totally out of whack.�

And in case anyone think this SD NARAL/others (PPFA operates the single abortion clinic left) pro-choice work is anything like sitting in a house in Berkeley bitching for months on end over Langevin and RI and NARAL endorsements (I personally cannot stand Chafee, but I don't control, nor contribute to, NARAL) at a keyboard, or on the phone or fax machine to Reid's office - who is a Democrats for Life all star, see p.4 of the pdf, he voted with Pryor, Breaux, Zell Miller and Ben Nelson in the 108th congress on pro-life - if anyone thinks pro-choice work in SD is easy, think again:

South Dakota has the fewest number of UUs of any state, but they are far from shy about speaking out on issues like abortion. They know, however, that when they do raise their voices in the public square there can be a price to pay.

A year ago Justin Lena, a member of the Rapid City fellowship and chair of the local Democratic Party, wrote a letter to the newspaper advocating the availability of emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms for women who are raped. The day the letter was published someone threw flaming liquid on his lawn.

As I said, grassroots vs greasy roots.

And it is wise to listen, from time to time, to the real political writers, the very small handful in the nation... most others are what I call "churn" writers. But then there is William Greider, among the few (Lapham, Krugman, Walter Karp - now sadly gone - it never is many)... and I can hear in Greider's words from 1992 the backing for the demagoguery carried out by the Big Box Blogs... and I can hear who yanks their pink rhinestone poodle chains:

"The DLC's main objective was an attack on the Democratic Party's core constituencies -- labor, schoolteachers, women's rights groups, peace and disarmament activists, the racial minorities and supporters of affirmative action. Its stated goal was to restore the party's appeal to disaffected white males, especially in the South."

DLC, NDN, "reform" Democrats, New Democrats, DINOs... Republicrats, Demlicans. Third Way. Party "lobbyists". Consultants vs "activists" (the Kos preferred) and, of course, the patented "important shit".

Lots of names for the mess. People really cannot defend it any longer. The pro-white, pro-male (with "women assists" at the ready), pro-Republican (lite lite lite) agenda is in its third decade.

This just in, I could not caption the online game better:

You Can DONATE to Yearly Kos!

After all, if the pro-choice single issue groups aren't going to do their jobs, we'll just have to do it for them. We will sit down with these politicians and tell them to their face how important privacy and choice are to all of us.

We can use Yearly Kos to amplify our message beyond the convention hall.

THEY WILL HEAR OUR MESSAGE, LOUD AND CLEAR.

Yes do send off a fax to Reid, the star speaker.... Who voted for every pro-life measure targeted by Democrats for Life. You do that. I call YKos busy work. And showing evidence of scant interest from the ... ranks.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

UPDATED: Wednesday, 9:08 AM PT

well I have toured B-B-Blogs, post Ciro... now, if there was real struggle to rebuild the party (outside the beleaguered Howard and I did not support this last ditch stand of going "inside") losing, as the party rebuilds, would be acceptable.

However, the mantra from the Boyos is no idealogy, no factions pulled together to form coalition and, last but not least (or so they say): win win win.

The Orellys, with Barnum in the 20s. Performed in Paris.
Likely wore pink rhinestone, Paris paste collars...

So Boyos (and Girls and Democrats) ya gotta win. More than a couple governorships that should NEVER have produced so damned much public flop sweat.

BRAVO!! to Chavez:

[AFP photo]

The Venezuelan government has given a Christian missionary group from the US until Sunday to leave the country.

President Hugo Chavez has repeatedly called for the expulsion of the New Tribes Mission, saying they are American imperialists.

He has called them spies of the CIA and colonialists.

Most of the 160 evangelical preachers and their families have already gone back to the US, after he asked them to leave last October.

Only 30 New Tribes missionaries are still in Venezuela.

For the past 60 years, the New Tribes Mission, which has its world headquarters in Florida, has been trying to convert indigenous groups in Venezuela to Christianity.

It is a non-denominational Christian society which says it is only funded by private individuals, not by the US government.

Indigenous groups

The missionaries live and work in the remotest areas of the country, including the Amazon rainforest.

Their goal is find tribes untouched by so-called "civilisation" in order to convert them to Christianity.[...]

In return for agreeing to adopt the Christian faith, the indigenous people receive basic health care and literacy classes.

Yes send them home. Tho it sounds like "home" is the funding purse of some hard right evangelical religionists in America.

And, in the meantime, America and Venezuela and whomever else can cartoon caricature the church groups (and Jesus, God the Father, the Blessed Holy Virgin AND the Holy Ghost) and Imperial Invasive America in any way they wish.

Part of politics (and war) is harsh, often nasty and mean propaganda by depiction. And religion is part of power and politics. Part of geo political war as well.

If the right wing Danish press cannot caricature the prophet Mohammed (and if there was NO truth in some of those cartoons you have not been reading along for years) then the ME press had best stop with the all too familiar anti-Israel / anti-occupier cartoons.

I say, let it all rip.

The last thing on earth that should be sacrosanct is religion. Anybody's religion.

What a fetid sacred cow.