How Do You Say "Ba-Humbug" In Hindi?
America, the indifferent (International Herald Tribune).
Just in time for Christmas:
...the Bush administration has reduced its contributions to global food aid programs, and it has told charities like Save the Children and Catholic Relief Services that it won't honor earlier promises. Instead, administration officials said that most of the country's emergency food aid would go to places where there were immediate crises.
...
The administration has cited the federal budget deficit as the reason for its cutback in donations to help the hungry feed themselves. In fact, the amount involved is a pittance within the federal budget when compared with our $412 billion deficit, fueled by war and tax cuts. The administration can conjure up $87 billion for the fighting in Iraq, but can it really not find more than $15.6 billion - our overall spending on development assistance in 2002 - to help stop an 8-year-old AIDS orphan in Cameroon from drinking sewer water or to buy a mosquito net for an infant in Sierra Leone?
...
There is a very real belief abroad that the United States, which gave 2 percent of its national income to rebuild Europe after World War II, now engages with the rest of the world only when it perceives that its own immediate interests are at stake. If that is unfair, it's certainly true that American attention is mainly drawn to international hot spots.
...
In 2002, President George W. Bush announced the Millennium Challenge Account, which was supposed to increase U.S. assistance to poor countries that are committed to policies promoting development. Bush said his government would donate $1.7 billion the first year, $3.3 billion the second and $5 billion the third. That $5 billion would have been just 0.04 percent of national income, but the administration still failed to match its promise with action.
Back in Washington and away from the spotlight of the summit meeting, the administration didn't even ask Congress for the full $1.7 billion the first year; it asked for $1.3 billion, which Congress cut to $1 billion. The next year, the administration asked for $2.5 billion and got $1.5 billion.
Worst of all, the account has yet to disperse a single dollar, while every year in Africa, one in 16 pregnant women still die in childbirth, 2.2 million die of AIDS, and 2 million children die from malaria.
Jeffrey Sachs, the economist who directs the Millennium Project, puts the gap between what America is capable of doing and what it actually does into stark relief. The government spends $450 billion annually on the military, and $15 billion on development help for poor countries, a 30-1 ratio that, as Sachs puts it, shows how the nation has become "all war and no peace in our foreign policy."
You mean Jesus' messenger in the White House doesn't care about poor people? The Hell you say.
Anthony Zinni for U.S. Senate (Pennsylvania) Pt. 4- An open mind is a liberal mind
One question I'm always asked when I tell Democrats that I would love to see Anthony Zinni run for senate is "is he even a Democrat"? And I don;t know (or really care) about the answer to this question, because one thing is clear, Anthony Zinni has a strong liberal mind. As this quote, which I have already posted, notes, Zinni's thinking is flexible, rational, and open minded- the exact qualities we need from our leaders.
Here's the quote again:
Our biggest flaw is that we never take time to understand the culture. Some things we do that make perfect sense to us do not make perfect sense in another culture.
In another example of the rational thinking that I fell we need from our leaders Zinni gives the 10 biggest mistakes we've made in Iraq (from the Center for Defense Information).
1. The belief that containment as a policy doesn't work. It certainly worked against the Soviet Union, has worked with North Korea and others. It's not a pleasant thing to have to administer, it requires troops full-time, there are moments when there ... there are periods of violence, but containment is a lot cheaper than the alternative, as we're finding out now.
2. The strategy was flawed.I couldn't believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move. That the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad, when just the opposite is true, the road to Baghdad led through Jerusalem. You solve the Middle East peace process, you'd be surprised what kinds of others things will work out.
The idea that we will walk in and be met with open arms. The idea that we will have people that will glom on to democracy overnight. The idea that strategically we will reform, reshape, and change the Middle East by this action -- we've changed it all right.
3. We had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support, a mistake repeated from Vietnam. The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there. I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one month before the war, and Senator Lugar asked me: "General Zinni, do you feel the threat from Saddam Hussein is imminent?" I said: "No, not at all. It was not an imminent threat. Not even close. Not grave, gathering, imminent, serious, severe, mildly upsetting, none of those."
4. We failed to internationalize the effort.
5. We underestimated the task. You are not going to go through Edelman's "cakewalk;" you are not going to go through Chalabi's dancing in the streets to receive you. You are about to go into a problem that you don't know the dimensions and the depth of, and are going to cause you a great deal of pain, time, expenditure of resources and casualties down the road.
6. Propping up and trusting the exiles. When I testified before Congress in 1998, after a grilling from Senator McCain and all those wonderful senators supported the Iraqi Liberation Act, and I told them that these guys are not credible and they are going to lead us into something they we will regret.
7. The lack of planning. didn't hear anything that told me that they had the scope of planning for the political reconstruction, the economic reconstruction, social reconstruction, the development of building of infrastructure for that country. And I think that lack of planning, that idea that you can do this by the seat of the pants, reconstruct a country, to make decisions on the fly, to beam in on the side that has to that political, economic, social other parts, just a handful of people at the last minute to be able to do it was patently ridiculous.
8. The insufficiency of military forces on the ground. There were a lot more troops in my military plan for operations in Iraq. I know when that plan was presented, the secretary of defense said it was "old and stale." It sounded pretty new and fresh to me, and looking back at it, now because there were a hell of a lot more troops. It was more the (Eric) Shinseki model that I think might have been a hell of a lot more effective to freeze the situation. Those extra divisions we had in there were not to defeat the Republican Guard, they were in there to freeze the security situation because we knew the chaos that would result once we uprooted an authoritarian regime like Saddam's.
9. The ad hoc organization we threw in there. No one can tell me the Coalition Provisional Authority had any planning for its structure.
10. A series of bad decisions on the ground.De-Baathifying down to a point where you've alienated the Sunnis, where you have stopped having qualified people down in the ranks, people who don't have blood on their hands, but know how to make the trains run on time... Disbanding the Army... Lack of a dialogue or identification of the leadership in the Sunni and the Shia areas. The inability to connect with the leadership down there...
Now, I don;t know what people think of when they think of "liberal" thinking, but first and foremost inmy mind is a critical mind, and clearly Zinni poseses one...
A New Year In Times Square- The Same Old Stupid Drug War
Throngs of people will, as always, fill Times Square this New Year's Eve to watch the ball drop. This year, however, if these revilers were to let their gaze drift down and across the street they would find themselves staring at a curious banner exclaiming "Freedom is Drug Free!" If one of those curious revilers was to go up and get a closer look they would realize that the banner is part of an installation by the DEA titled Target America: Drug Traffickers, Terrorists and You, and exhibit which seems bent on trying to blame pot smoking New Yorkers for the 9-11 attacks. Yes, that's right, if you smoke a joint to celebrate this New Years than not only are you committing a victimless crime, but you are responsible for September 11th.
Besides the offense that New Yorkers might feel as the attack they personally lived through is used to intimidate them in the drug war debate, but as this year winds down the moral arguments that the government uses to justify the drug war sound more shallow than ever.
This whole Vioxx mess has made it is obvious that the government doesn't give two shits about your health so long as a major pharmaceutical company is selling the drug. The FDA whistleblower who testified that the FDA is incapable of protecting America estimated that Vioxx had helped to cause 27,785 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths since 1999. For those of you keeping score, that is roughly ten times the amount of people killed on September 11th. Two other things continue to really piss off in this whole debacle. First of all, the FDA didn't take Vioxx off the market, Merck withdrew it. Second of all, the FDA still hasn't removed other troubling drugs from the market, such as Celebrex and Bextra, even though they may pose the same threat to the health of the American public.
Remind me- what health risk does Marijuana pose?
In response to the Vioxx/FDA controversy, President Bush is doing what any great leader would- he's trying to limit the liability that drug makers face from putting drugs on the market that they know are dangerous. Obviously, I'm just waiting to hear about those opposed to "tort reform" are terrorists. Well, I guess I don't really have to wait, that's exactly the argument American Insurance Group Chairman Maurice Greenberg made this past February, when he said "It's almost like fighting the war on terrorists. I call the plaintiff's bar terrorists."
Meanwhile it has become ever more apparent that Congress is in the pockets of the big drug companies. We learned this week that retiring U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin, who helped to author the new Medicare law (a boon to big drug companies at the expense of the American tax payer), would become president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the largest lobbying firm representing the major pharmaceutical companies.
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In other drug war related news, the AARP has found that almost 3/4 of the seniors they polled support legalized marijuana. So who exactlly supports keeping medical Marijuana illegal?
Rendell mounts push to move Pa. Presidential primary
Governor Rendell proposed earlier this week to move PA's presidential primary voting from April to January or February, in order to give PA a bigger say in who becomes the Democratic nominee. As Rendell noted "We're one of three key states in the general election, and we have no voice in the primary process".
Now, it seems obvious to me that the bigger blue states should get a bigger say in the selection of the Democratic Presidential nominee, but I have a few problems with this move. First of all, this would continue the trend of pushing the primaries earlier. In the past we might not have known about the candidate until June. This year we knew Kerry would be the nominee in Early March.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that New Hampshire, since 1977, has claimed the right to have the first primary. This means that whenever another state moves its primary back, New Hampshire moves theirs even further back. Over the course of the last three presidential primaries New Hampshire has moved its primary back almost a full month, from February 20 in 1996, to February 1 in 2000, to January 27 in 2004. If Pennsylvania was to move its primary into late January, New Hampshire law would force the state to move its elections even further back- maybe even into the previous year.
My question is: why shouldn't the national party decide when each state can vote in the primaries? I'm not sure I like the idea of every state voting on the same day, as it would be a logistical nightmare for those trying to campaign, but there has to be a better way to give the bigger states a bigger say without constantly moving the primaries further and further back.
One idea would be to use something along the lines of the Delaware Plan the Republicans came close to using. Basically this plan would create four voting blocks, each block consisting of similar sized states, and would allow the smaller states to vote first, with the bigger states voting last. For the Democrats this seems highly unlikely though, since the bigger states (CA, NY, PA, FL, IL, OH, MI)would continue to vote last.
Another plan, advocated by Chris Bowers of MyDD is the so-called California Plan, which basically still allows smaller states to vote first.
I've seen a lot of ideas with how to fix the primary system being floating around the blogosphere, but the one which seems to make a lot more sense to me is breaking up the country into 'blocs', with each one containing small, medium, a large states, and each bloc voting 1-2 weeks apart. The blocs would rotate each Presidential cycle to allow different states to vote first.
My real hope is that this move by Rendell is a bargaining ploy, to force the states which are resistant to primary reform into a deal. If not, we can expect the backwards march of the primaries to continue.
Zinni - Quote of the minute
Anthony Zinni - Wikiquote
Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else, and that's the idea that when the troops are in combat everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning and troops were dying as a result. I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed?
The colliding military and progressive minds part 7: The need for afirmative action
Zinni and other Generals wrote a 'friend-of-the-court brief' in defense of Affirmative Action.
As the brief states:
Based on decades of experience, amici have concluded that a highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps educated and trained to command our nation’s racially diverse enlisted ranks is essential to the military’s ability to fulfill its principal mission to provide national security.
...
The absence of minority officers seriously threatened the
military’s ability to function effectively and fulfill its mission
to defend the nation.
...
The crisis that mandated aggressive integration of the officer corps in the service academies and in ROTC programs is a microcosm of what exists in our society at large, albeit with potentially more severe consequences to our nation’s welfare. Broad access to the education that leads to leadership roles is essential to public confidence in the fairness and integrity of public institutions, and their ability to perform their vital functions and missions.
Reason #10a Why a Military Mind Is a Progressive Mind: Health Care is a National security Issue.
You know, if my 21 year old self could see me openly advocating for a General to run for Senate, I'd probably want to spit on me. But this is because in my youth I misunderstood the military, and especially the military mind. Whereas I used to see rigid men, who I assumed to be dumb cogs in a brutal system, I now see extremely well educated and mentally flexible individuals, with strong intellectual backgrounds, and a fierce loyalty to their country, which they serve as selflessly as possible.
I was also trapped in a pre-Cold War mindstate, that equated security with having the biggest, the baddest, and the most, weapons. But, now the Soviets are gone, America has risen to a position of unparalleled military might, and so the threats that we face today come from new, and sometimes much more dangerous, areas. These new, asymmetric threats (see this for definition), come from smaller nations and non-state actors such as Transnational Criminal Organizations or Terrorists, and require new defense strategies.
In a very ironic (at least to me) twist- it is now the security argument which holds the most promise in pushing for a national health program.
As Anthony Zinni has noted: We will eventually see a weapon of mass destruction used in a terrorist act. And, I would say we had better start thinking about how we're going to be prepared for the threat, because we're woefully unprepared for that event, and that's inevitable.
And as this study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)- a semi-governmental non-partisan defense think tank- points out:
The US and its allies also need to rethink internal security planning, public health, response, and defense efforts to deal with the broad range of CBRN threats. This requires us to refocus homeland defense on attacks using each type of CBRN weapons, and covert means of delivery.
Within the United States, we need to examine the full range of options for defense and response, make hard trade offs between them, and develop an integrated mix of federal programs to deal with them. The most urgent effort, however, should be in dealing with biological attacks, simply because they combine high potential lethality with greater ease of acquisition and use. This means developing new detection, characterization, and warning systems where these can be proved to be cost-effective. It also means rethinking the national stockpile of vaccines and medical goods, and our investment in public health services and surplus medical capacity.
Today Reuters reports that the
best defense against an Anthrax attack is to respond quickly with Antibiotics, rather than vaccinating people against it before hand.
As Ron Brookmeyer, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, notes:
"Strengthening the public health infrastructure to improve early detection and rapid response is going to be a better use of resources to improve disease surveillance and to get drugs out to people quicker than a mass pre-attack vaccine program"
Strong defense equals a strong public health system. I mean we have a lot bigger cahnce, I believe, of getting hit with a biological agent than a nuclear one- so why are we investing in
Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems that don't work instead of building up a dual-use public health system?
Who'd a thunk that a progressive issue could be so closely aligned with the military? Not my 21 year old self, that's for certain
Anthony Zinni For U.S. Senate (Pennsylvania) Part One
I haven't seen anyone else talking about this yet, but I think that the perfect candidate to run against Rick Santorum for U.S. Senate is General Anthony Zinni. Zinni is perfect for many reasons- as Frank Kaplan, of Slate, wrote:
His final posting, before retiring in 2000, was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command—the command that, under his successor, Gen. Tommy Franks, ran the war in Iraq. Through his 40-year military career, Zinni was director of operations for the Somalia task force (before and after the Mogadishu disaster, but not during), head of the Marines' counterterrorism unit, commander in chief of U.S. European Command, deputy commandant of the Marine Corps, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, director of various training and doctrine commands, and a decorated Vietnam veteran. Finally, from 2002-03, Secretary of State Colin Powell named Zinni to be his special envoy to the Middle East
He is perfect as a framing candidate because:
Zinni is the very model of a modern general—a warrior-intellectual, adept at fighting battles, commanding divisions, planning strategy and tactics, undertaking massive logistical feats, and engaging in global diplomacy
....
Other applicant's-checklist issues: Zinni values allies. "The allied contributions to Provide Comfort were significant. The French [were] superb." As for coalitions, "No nation today can go it alone—economically, politically, diplomatically, culturally, or religiously." "Building viable, interoperable coalitions with the forces of regional allies will remain necessary to ensure our security." What about the United Nations? "[Kofi] Annan is a tremendously impressive human being with a rare intellect and the common sense to handle the most complex situations."
But can Zinni—a maverick, a hell-raiser, and a Republican—be a loyal team player? Clancy supplies a testimonial, writing of Zinni's performance helping Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage run disaster-relief missions: "Zinni made things happen—contributing to, demonstrating his loyalty to, and becoming part of Armitage's team."
Anthony Zinni For U.S. Senate (Pennsylvania) Part Three
This is exactlly how we frame our national security agenda. And who better to serve as spokesman?
I have spent my life as a U.S. military man in the Caribbean, in the Far East, in Africa, in the Middle East, in Southwest Asia, and in Central Asia, in Europe, Eastern Europe. Our biggest flaw is that we never take time to understand the culture. Some things we do that make perfect sense to us do not make perfect sense in another culture.
As a result, look at the mistakes we've made in Iraq day by day: the de-Baathification, the disbanding of the army, bringing in exiles and propping them up as leadership -- we have made every mistake we possibly could.
Yes- what we need is a less confrontational and more inteligent, resourcefull, and sane national security policy. We want to show the world the way, not beat it into submission.
Anthony Zinni For U.S. Senate (Pennsylvania) Part Two
note- I published all three of these at the same time, but I don't know how 2 and 3 got switched in order- my bad
Also, all of this post is from GLOBAL VIEWPOINT's interview of Anthony Zinni
Don't think those anti-war liberals could support a military guy? Hmm. What did Zinni say about the threat that Iraq posed to us and about the Bush Administration's plan?
Zinni tried to warn the U.S. public and the Congress, but nobody, including John Kerry, would listen.
So at Central Command before I left -- I retired in 2000 -- I started a plan called Desert Crossing for the reconstruction of Iraq because I was convinced nobody in Washington was going to plan for it, and we, the military, would get stuck with it. So when I left in 2000, we were in the process of that planning. When it looked like we were going in, I called back down to Centcom and said, "You need to dust off Desert Crossing."
They said, "What's that? Never heard of it." So in a matter of just a few years, it was gone. The institutional memory had lapsed completely.
In February [2003], the month before the war, I was called before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify on this, and the panel before me was the planner for the State Department and the planner for the Pentagon. And they were briefing their so-called plan. It was clear to me that there was no plan. The current government was way underestimating what they were getting into. That they had done virtually no planning.
Why didn't they do it? They naively misjudged the scope and the complexity of the problems they were going to have. They thought they could do it seat of the pants.
This whole war was big mistake on our part that has produced an unneeded bag of worms. It was elective surgery that didn't need to be done.
GV: Why not just get out?
Zinni: The time has not yet come -- but it could be getting close, unfortunately. I hate to say that. I want to see this work, from the bottom of my heart. And I think we keep making mistakes. The first rule if you find yourself in a hole is, stop digging. We seem to keep digging.
Nobody in the world, with the exception of the crazies and extremists and jihadis, wants us to fail. Not the French, not the Arabs. They all want us to succeed. They don't agree with what we have done here and the way we've done it, the way we have gone in there, but everybody sees failure as far worse than crowing that "I told you so." They don't want that. We have to come out with a stable Iraq. I think that the key is getting a U.N. resolution, going back to that model the first President Bush put in place after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It should have been what we did in the first place. . . .
It might have taken six months, nine months, or a year. But who cares? There was no imminent threat. Believe me. I saw the intelligence before the war. There was no imminent threat.
Remind me- what was Kerry's position before the war? "I thought they were a threat" Kerry was, and still is, either an idiot or an asshole, but either way Zinni won't have any problems fielding questions about the leadup to the war. And while we're on the subject of Kerry's stupidity, why the hell didn't I see a commercial with Zinni talking about the parallels betwewwn Vietnam and Iraq?
Zinni: Some of the strategic mistakes are very similar. First of all, in Vietnam we went in with a flawed strategy. Remember, the strategy was that we had to stop communism before the dominoes fell. All of Southeast Asia would come apart once Vietnam fell. Obviously it fell and the rest of Southeast Asia didn't. It was a flawed strategy.
Here we have a strategy that we can change this part of the world by going into Iraq, installing democracy, and it's going to explode throughout the region. Comments like "the road to Jerusalem leads through Baghdad", when just the opposite is true. A flawed strategy.
The second comparison is trying to draw the American people into support of the war by cooking the books. We did it with the Gulf of Tonkin situation, where we were led to believe there was an attack on our destroyers while they were innocently in international waters, when they weren't. They were in North Vietnam territorial waters supporting an ongoing operation. And here we have had the case for WMD as an imminent threat for not using international authority to go in.
We had a situation in Vietnam where we underestimated the threat or the situation. We have a case here where we underestimated the threat or the situation. We had a case in Vietnam where we went in without a viable plan. We have a case here where we have gone in with no plan, not even a less than viable plan.
We made mistakes on the ground in Vietnam. We made tactical mistakes, we made policy mistakes. As an example, one-year individual rotations, not mobilizing the reserves. We have made mistakes here, overmobilizing the reserves ... de-Baathification, not understanding the situation and the culture. So there are a lot of similarities.
Zinni also gets bonus points because
the right-wingers are scared stiff of running against this guy in PA. And why shouldn't they be- Zinni is going to put Santorum over his lap and spank him like the immature baby he is.
Merry Christmas - Don't Get Sick!
The AP reports that Companies Rapidly Cutting Health Benefits. Just in time for the holidays!
Eight percent of employers with at least 1,000 workers said they had eliminated subsidized retiree health benefits for some workers this year, and 11 percent more said they probably would do so next year, according to a study released Tuesday by the benefits consulting firm Hewitt Associates and the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.
Philly Cops Arrest 10-year-old scissor terrorist
Pa. Police Apologize for Scissors Arrest
PHILADELPHIA - The police chief and the head of the city's schools apologized Monday to the mother of a 10-year-old girl who was arrested and handcuffed after she brought a pair of scissors to school in her backpack.
Although officers were following protocol when they drove the girl to a police station with her hands cuffed in front of her, discretion will be used in future cases involving young children, Police Chief Sylvester Johnson said.
Johnson said he told Rose Jackson that the arrest of her daughter, Porsche Brown, was "extremely unfortunate" and apologized for "any trauma that her daughter experienced" on her way to the station.
The district said Brown had violated a ban on bringing scissors — which are considered potential weapons — to school.
You gotta love those Philly cops and schools. I don't know what I find funnier- that they handcuffed a 10-year-old-girl and dragged her down to the 'big-house' or that they still suspended her for 2 days after they called the cops on her and probablly traumatized her for life.
Harry Reid and Dems to Launch Investigations
This Harry Reid charachter just keeps on looking better and better. If he doesn't watch out he may end up as the Democratic nominee in 2008.
Yahoo! News - Senate Dems Plan Investigatory Hearings
New Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said Monday his party will launch investigative hearings next year in response to what he said was the reluctance of Republicans to look into problems in the Bush administration.
They said issues that "cry out" for closer investigation, in addition to contracting abuses in Iraq, include the administration's use of prewar intelligence and its reported effort to stifle information about the true cost of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. Reid also mentioned global warming and the "No Child Left Behind" education program as topics that needed a closer look.
The Democratic-organized hearings would not have subpoena powers, but Dorgan said there are plenty of whistleblowers "anxious to tell their story."
I bet he's right- and thank God we finally have someone leading the Senate Dems who will ask.
Religious right refocuses on states- what about the Dems?
Kos has a post today aon how religious right-wingers have refocused their energies on states- and why not, the state level is where a good deal of the legislation that effects our lives happens.
My question is, besides the candidacy of Elliot Spitzer, where is the evidence that the Dems have shifted focus as well?
Oh- and the article contains this choice quote:
"It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go," she added. "I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going to take it back."
So now people who want to teach evolution in school and protect women's health are terrorists. Nice. I think she may have missed the memo- liberals founded this country, which is a liberal democracy, and wrote the constitution in such a way that these nutcases would be kept from creating a theocracy
GOP May Target Use of Filibuster
The Washington Post today leads today with an article on how the GOP May Target Use of Filibuster in the Senate to push right-wing extremists through the judicial appointment process. It seems like Bush is getting ready to ram through a truly god-awful Supreme Court candidate down our throughts, one who will help to destroy our environment, erode our civil liberties, and deny women the right to abortion.
However, the good news in all of this, if there is any, is that the new Senate minority leader, Harry M. Reid of Nevada, appears to have a set of balls, a couple of fists, and a willingness to fight dirty:
"If they, for whatever reason, decide to do this, it's not only wrong, they will rue the day they did it, because we will do whatever we can do to strike back," incoming Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said last week. "I know procedures around here. And I know that there will still be Senate business conducted. But I will, for lack of a better word, screw things up."
That's the kind of rhetoric I like to hear from our leader in the Senate. If we are going to go down, we're going to go down swinging, as opposed to that wuss Daschle, who always seemed willing to appease the Right.
As Joshua Marshall notes:
I remember a Daschle aide once telling me, in a half-resigned, half-admiring frustration, of a staff meeting in which there was some discussion of playing hardball with some opponent -- I can't remember what they were suggesting or even what the context was. And Daschle's response, seemingly without irony or any double-meaning, was "It's not the Daschle way." And that was that. Perhaps a bit of stiff rectitude, but more a basic decency, one that may not always have served him well in the shiv-play that is now Washington. But I'll let others be the judge of that.
Let me be the judge- nice guys finish last. What we need are bullies for the cause. If I elect someone to represent me, and they aren't willing to defend me because of some personal 'morals' about fighting fair, then I can guarantee that I won't support them next time (at least not enthusiastically). It's time for the Democrats to pick some real men and women who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty and their lips bloodied in the name of the cause. Down with the Wussocrats! The fight is on, it is real and the stakes are as high as I can imagine, now lets get some friggin guts and start to stand up to the goddamn Republicans who are driving the middle class, our environment, our civil liberties, and more, off of a cliff.
Are we trying to start a war with Russia?
Are we trying to start a war with Russia? Maybe not, but you couldn't tell by the actions of the Bush administration. Imagine the response if Russia tried meddling in Mexico's elections with the express purpose of tying in our biggest neighbor's economy and military into our adversiaries. Or, imagine if we found out that the French were contributing heavily to the Kerry campaign- the shit would hit the fan.
Yahoo! News - U.S. Money Helped Opposition in Ukraine
Chris Bowers from MyDD :: Taking a Hard Line On Social Security
Chris Bowers from MyDD has a great piece on Taking a Hard Line On Social Security.
The Dems need to stand firm on this, and Bowers has some great suggestions for how to do this:
- Loudly proclaim the Republican arguments that there is a Social Security funding crisis to be a lie and the corporate media has been duped. Don't be afraid about using the words "lie," "duped," and "corporate," as they will appeal to young voters and reformers. Go as far to claim that the fact that there is even an argument over this is demonstrative of the need for media reform. After all, one side of argument is based entirely on lies and a mythical funding crisis and the media is unwilling to call them on it.
- Immediately re-frame the argument as to whether Social Security should be entirely abolished over the next twenty years and replaced with private savings accounts (the Republican position), or whether it should not be abolished and we as a nation should continue our national investment in the prevention of poverty among seniors (the Democratic position). This will help frame the issue as an ideological divide, thus showcasing a core belief of the Democratic Party in a positive light.
- Publicly and privately threaten any Democrat who votes in favor of privatizing Social Security with all of the following: stripping of important committee assignments, a complete funding cut-off, and a well-funded primary challenge. This will help keep the party in line on the issue.
Bloggers Kicked out of DNC Candidate Q&A
Over the last few days I've been reading a lot on other blogs about the DNC and the choosing of the next DNC chair person. I can't say I had even thought about how the DNC chair was chosen before the bloggers started to bring the process to my attention. To me, it seemed like a huge positive- a whole lotta progressives getting involved in the process of a party that has often seemed aloof from their base, to say the least. So, it was a little shocking this morning when I surfed over to Kos and found this: Bloggers Kicked out of DNC Candidate Q&A.
I mean are the Dems trying to alienate their base? Are they trying to ferment conflict within the party?
Ugh.
Slavery was great! Just ask these racist hillbillies.
'Southern Slavery, As It Was,' a booklet that attempts to show that blacks really liked Slavery has helped me realize that it was that damned 'liberal elite press' that convinced Northerners that Blacks didn't like to be slaves. Damn liberal elite!
Here are some of the more darkly (no pun intended) humored quotes:
"...The 'peculiar institution' of slavery was not perfect or sinless, but the reality was a far cry from the horrific descriptions given to us in modern histories." Think of it more like a day spa for S&M lovers.
"Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence." Yeah, the confidence that you would have been whipped, beaten, or murdered if you didn't pick that goddamn cotton.
"There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world." Of course that "history of the world" only includes the Holocaust, the Rawandan Genocide, the current Darfur genocide and the Turks genocide of the Armenians. I mean those damn blacks shoulda been glad that we didn't just kill them all- fucking ungrateful slaves.
"...Many Southern blacks supported the South because of long established bonds of affection and trust that had been forged over generations with their white masters and friends." If in the first part, by supported they mean- working without pay, and without a choice, to prop up a system that kept them in shackles- I'd have to agree, blacks did "support" slavery, but I'm curious what definitions of "affection" and "friend" could be used to describe a black slave's view of his or her white "owner".
"Nearly every slave in the South enjoyed a higher standard of living than the poor whites of the South -- and had a much easier existence." Much easier- those poor southerners had to listen to early country music and make moonshine from tree barks, I mean isn't that a form of 'slavery', or at least torture?
This comes via Pandagon
EPA announces to Terrorists- Go after our Sewage and Drinking Water, cause we don't give a shit.
Something that I enjoy studying is security, and within these studies one thing that has fascinated me is the idea of non-traditional security. Basically, non-traditional security studies are predicated on the idea that since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ascendancy of America to an unparalleled position of global power, that the threats to America will not come from a big state that we can meet on a field of battle, but rather from smaller states or non-state actors (terrorists), and in the form of asymmetric threats which is a version of not "fighting fair," which can include the use of surprise in all its operational and strategic dimensions and the use of weapons in ways unplanned by the United States. Not fighting fair also includes the prospect of an opponent designing a strategy that fundamentally alters the terrain on which a conflict is fought. The typical asymmetric threats that people talk about are, of course, terrorism and WMD, but what fascinates and scares the living bejesus out of me are Cyber based threats to the critical infrastructure of the United States. While the threat to our electric and internet systems are probably the most frightening, the only known cyber based attack against a utility (at least known to me), happened in Queensland, Australia, when a former sanitation department employee remotely released hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage into rivers and streams.
So, in response to this threat, the EPA has just announced that it plans on taking the lead on securing our critical infrastructures, by passing the buck to industry. Yes, that's right, the US Government has just announced that it will ask American sewage companies to voluntarily secure our nation from threats to our sewage and water waste disposal. I'm still unsure if the words "pretty please" were added to the guidelines, but it definitely didn't give the federal government any authority to ensure that the American public is safe from attack.
Well, at least our food is safe. Oh... Shit.
Gay Registry in California
No, we're not talking wedding registries for gays, we're talking about a gay man forced to register as a criminal sex offender in California because he was caught kissing a man in ithe 1950s.
Finally- those wacky Californians are coming to their senses. Now if only we could get them to register all those stinking Hollywood Jews we'd be getting somewhere.
LA Weekly: Features: The Sex Files
THE DAOU REPORT
A friend of mine pointed me to THE DAOU REPORT a few days ago, and now I'm hooked.
This page posts blurbs from the best blogs on both the right and the left, and is a quick and easy way to get your finger on the pulse of the activist minds on both sides.
Quote of the day: Bernard Kerik
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "'Political criticism is our enemies' best friend.' -Bernard Kerik, October 20, 2003 (As reported by Newsday)"
Yes, and anyone who disagrees will get their hands chopped off or their testicles set on fire.
Ex-CIA agent says sacked for not faking Iraq WMD reports
Ex-CIA agent says sacked for not faking Iraq WMD reports.
How dare he not comprimise National Security to fool the Americans into going to war?
O'Reilly is a racist and antisemetic asshole- imagine that
O'Reilly is a racist and antisemetic asshole- Imagine That!!!
Hey Jews- suck it up! This is a Christian Nation and you are not welcome!
Here's the choice lines:
"Remember, more than 90 percent of (our) homes celebrate Christmas. But the small minority that is trying to impose its will on the majority is so vicious, so dishonest -- and has to be dealt with."
Is this Hitler or O'Reilly?
