An Inaugural Farewell

The progressive elevator pitch

Posted by: DiAnne at January 21, 2005 02:48 PM

DiAnne, I was thinking about this while running this afternoon (training for my first marathon, how crazy is that?)...well here's what I came up with.

As a progressive, I support
*Personal Responsibility
*Morality in Action
*Fair, Honest, and Useful Government
*Tough Love
*Wise Stewardship of Resources, and
*Opportunity for All

(I was going to say "Principled Compassion", but "Tough Love" is better for Joe 6-Pack)

Posted by: Veritas at January 21, 2005 08:53 PM

I love it! I'm going to post the challenge again.

The progressive elevator pitch

The American Prospect defines the GOP elevator pitch as:

We believe in freedom and liberty, and we're for low taxes, less government, traditional values, and a strong national defense.

Nevermind the ways the Bush agenda has strayed from that pitch. This is how they have branded themselves and it has been spectacularly effective.

The editors at the Prospect are looking for suggestions for the Democratic pitch. I'm stealing their idea so we can riff about it here. So here's the rules: Define what we stand for in a sentence no longer than 30 words.

(Kos was also working on this)

Great photos!

I would have posted at Kos, but the thread was getting crowded and I haven't bothered to register over there yet.

This post has been sent directly to DCP management. You may contact the management directly at info@democracycellproject.net

Dick

Those are terrific pictures. Thanks!

I'd rather see pictures of protesters - or the juxtiposition of barriers and to symbols of our democracy - than fur-bearing robber barons.

My Progressive elevator pitch:

Propoganda, it will kill a country
or
Progressives believe
or
Progressive that's what we stand for
or
My children deserve honesty from everybody, including their government. Progressives wont hide from the truth. Progressives wont lie to America.
or
Do you trust a liar. If you do, then you vote Republican
or
The Truth sometime can hurt just ask a Republican.
or
Democrats wont lie to you.

I am so glad the inaugural is over. Now is the time for all of us to gather up our strength and fight the good fight. The future is now.

Ground Control to Mr. Bush
By Bernie Sanders

The time for playing nice with corporate outsourcers and their enablers in government is over.

“There’s a trade deficit. That’s easy to resolve: People can buy more United States products if they’re worried about the trade deficit.” —George W. Bush, December 15, 2004

Reminiscent of the callous “Let them eat cake” reputedly uttered by Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine, President Bush’s remarks show how out of touch he is with the economic reality most Americans face. Apparently, the president hasn’t visited a shopping mall or Wal-Mart lately. If he had, like the millions of Americans who flocked to our nation’s stores this holiday season to buy toys, bicycles, computers, sneakers, clothes, telephones, cowboy boots (yes, Mr. President, cowboy boots!), even artificial Christmas trees and decorations, he would surely know that an overwhelming majority of these products were made overseas, mostly in China.

Mr. President, did you buy an Xbox for your teenage relative this holiday season? If you tried purchasing one that was made in the United States, you’re out of luck. According to Flextronics CEO Michael Marks, “We moved all of the production of Microsoft’s Xbox consoles from Mexico to China.”

Did Mrs. Bush buy you a pair of Ariat cowboy boots for Christmas? Well, guess what, Mr. President? Every last one: made in China.

As everyone knows from your accident last summer, you are an avid bicycler. How about a sturdy mountain bike for Christmas? Oops, 85 percent of our bicycles are made in China.

As our commander in chief, you might be thinking about picking up some more rare-earth magnets for our military’s smart bombs and cruise missiles. Well, guess what? Eighty percent of those magnets are made in China.

How about an American flag? Since 9/11, more than 10 million American flags were made in China.

Levi’s Jeans? Sorry, they aren’t made in the United States anymore either. Did your staff purchase Christmas decorations for the White House this year? Approximately 80 percent of these decorations are now made in China. (By the way, did you read about the so-called Christian “dissident” who was placed under house arrest in China because he wanted to have a party with his friends to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ?)

Mr. President, you may want to do your holiday shopping next year with former General Motors CEO Jack Smith. At least, he sounds like he’s been out in the real world lately. “Walk around Wal-Mart,” Mr. Smith says, “and it looks as if everything is made in China.” And he should know about Chinese imports. After all, General Motors is laying the groundwork for moving the U.S. auto industry abroad by purchasing $4 billion in auto parts from China by 2009, up from $200 million last year.

While the stark reality of America’s industrial might moving abroad may have escaped the president and his economic advisers, a growing number of members of Congress see with their own eyes the devastating effect that the president’s trade policy is having on manufacturing jobs in their own districts. It’s high time that Congress brought the president down to earth, and made him understand that our current unfettered free trade policies have been a disaster for the working families of this country—and need a fundamental overhaul.

Today, the middle class in our country is shrinking, poverty is increasing, and the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider. This year, the United States will have a record-breaking trade deficit of almost $600 billion, including an estimated $140 billion trade deficit with China. Over the last four year we have lost 2.7 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs—more than 16 percent of that sector. Many of those jobs have gone to China, a totalitarian society where workers are paid pennies an hour and have minimal rights. Meanwhile, most of the new jobs being created here are low wage with minimal benefits.

Amazingly, while the U.S. middle class declines, corporate America is helping make China the economic superpower of the 21st century. Not only is China rapidly becoming the manufacturing center of the world, it is quickly becoming the information technology hub as well. Andy Grove, the founder of Intel, predicted last year that the United States will lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to China and India over the next decade. These are some of the best-paying jobs available.

And John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, is typical of many corporate leaders when he said: “China will become the IT center of the world, and we can have a healthy discussion about whether that’s in 2020 or 2040. What we’re trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company.”

The time for playing nice with corporate outsourcers and their enablers in government is over. Congress must repeal Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and develop trade policies that protect and create good-paying jobs in America. We must create a noise so loud that even the president hears it.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on the 32nd Anniversary of Roe vs. Wade
21 January 2005

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the 32nd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade:

"Tomorrow, we will observe the 32nd Anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that affirmed a woman's right to make her own reproductive health care decisions.

"Roe vs. Wade is based on a woman's fundamental right to privacy, a value that all Americans cherish. It established that decisions about whether to have a child do not and should not rest with the government. A woman -- in consultation with her family, her physician, and her faith -- is best qualified to make that decision.

More - http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=253

Friends don't let friends vote Republican.

Help a Republican by teaching him to read.

Republicans don't know that a mind is a horrible thing to waste.

Democrats stand for equality for all at the expense of no one.

Life is enriched when you and everyone else can vote.

Sen. Obama Hears Ill. Veterans' Concerns
January 21, 2005 6:55 PM EST

EVERGREEN PARK, Ill. - Vietnam veteran Samuel Miller Jr. filed his first disability claim for post traumatic stress disorder more than 11 years ago, but he has yet to see any money from the government.

Jose Juachon receives $48 a month for his service to the United States during World War II - about the amount he was making in pesos when he left the Philippines decades ago.

The two Chicago men and dozens of other veterans shared their stories with U.S. Sen. Barack Obama on Friday during a meeting at an American Legion post in suburban Chicago.

"The only thing I've gotten is denials," Miller told Obama at the session attended by more than 300 veterans.

Obama called the meeting and another in Springfield on Saturday following a Chicago Sun-Times investigation that found Illinois veterans receive some of the lowest disability benefits in the nation.

The veterans who crowded the hall complained not only about the way disability claims are treated, but also about issues ranging from the closure of veterans hospitals to the lack of services for mentally ill veterans.

The freshman senator and rising Democratic star, who sits on the Veterans Affairs Committee, said he plans to raise the veterans' concerns at a confirmation hearing next week for Jim Nicholson, President Bush's nominee for secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department.

"When we send troops to war, it is our solemn obligation to care for them upon their return ... and to treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve for protecting us," Obama told the crowd. "Unfortunately, in Illinois, we have not been living up to that obligation."

Obama and fellow Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said they met with Nicholson earlier this month, and he promised to investigate discrepancies in disability payments.

The Sun-Times reported that Illinois veterans received an average of $6,802 in disability pay in 2003, putting the state 50th among 52 states and territories.

Outgoing Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi has ordered the agency's inspector general to review how disability claims are rated.

http://start.earthlink.net/article/pol?guid=20050121/41f08c50_3ca6_1552620050121-1367015562

Democrats believe in (a list of possibilities)

-a balanced budget,
-a strong American defence system,
-using most of our tax dollars to solve our own problems at home,
-using diplomacy first before armed aggression,
-supporting small American businesses against multi-national corporate market takeover,
-international cooperation wherever possible,
-good education as the foundation of a lasting freedom,
-research and development to find alternative fuel and new medicines
-protection of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the atmosphere that protects us from the sun

My new bumper sticker:

"Liberal Patriot on Board"

and two American flag decals.

I'm going positive from here on in. No more negative thoughts, words or actions. I just can't stand living with myself anymore if I'm going to be thinking and talking about all the horrors of this administration all the time. The only radio program I can listen to right now is Ed Schultz. The others are too depressing.

So instead of bemoaning all the damage Bush is doing, I'm going to focus on all the positive things we're all doing about it.

more elevator talk:

- lessening our dependence on polluting fossil fuels
- taking care of the poor, as Jesus preached
- taking care of eachother, as Americans

"When we send troops to war, it is our solemn obligation to care for them upon their return ... and to treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve for protecting us," Obama told the crowd."

That statement from Obama reminds me of another great Senator...

Twilight of the Neocons

William Safire wrote a column this morning in The New York Times celebrating President Bush's Second-Inaugural Address. As a rhetorical vehicle, Mr. Safire ranked it as among the top 5 of the 20 Second-Inaugurals in American history.

The URL for Mr. Safire's original column is: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/21/opinion/21safire.html.

My reaction to the tone and subject matter of President Bush's address was a bit more acerbic.

*********

Dear Mr. Safire,

Dubya can talk about freedom all he wants. It's about all he's good at. But when push comes to shove, like virtually all of these Neocons, we know that his embarrassing biography cannot measure up to his martial rhetoric – and that he's among the most fundamentally incompetent Presidents in the nation's history.

Dubya can talk about opposing tyranny from now until January 2009. But having stranded 150,000 American troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future (while American forces remain heavily committed in Korea, the Balkans, and elsewhere around the world), there's precious little he can do about it during his 2nd term. And if he attempts to reinstitute a draft to feed his liberation fantasies, even this Republican Congress might be persuaded to draw up the Articles of Impeachment against him. I mean, political gay bashing, and loathsome, nationalistic rhetoric that would have made Herman Goering chuckle, is bad enough. But drafting American boys and girls to fight in exactly the kind of war that Dubya himself refused to take up arms in would cross the line for more than a few Republicans. Americans may be falling farther and farther behind educationally, but they haven't so completely lost their minds that they would put up with a draft.

Now, if I were Dubya, I'd be spending all of my time repairing the huge gap that I created in the Federal budget – the gap that voodoo economics is again not generating sufficient revenue to close.

I'd be worried about the trade deficit, and the continued outsourcing of high-tech and back office jobs at the precise moment when Americans are carrying record amounts of personal and mortgage debt.

I'd be wondering what would happen if outsourcing, corporate downsizing, and an increasing downward pressure on wages, compelled greater and greater numbers of low and middle income Americans to dramatically curtail spending – or worse yet, choose that staple of Dubya's business playbook, Bankruptcy Court.

I'd be worried about how Americans will respond to the inevitable devaluation of the dollar, and the impact of ever-rising oil prices.

And I'd not be looking to push my privatization scheme for Social Security, not at this point in the economic cycle, with the DJIA and property values likely at unsustainable levels. This is clearly not the time for the Government to take on additional debt – and it is absolutely not a time to ask low and middle income Americans to entrust their future to the vagaries of bubble economics. For instance, if you bought positions in the market in 1929, it took you approximately 20 years to get your money back – assuming that you could even afford to hold a position that long. The twenties were another age of bubble economics. Hence, it was exactly the kind of Wall Street meltdown that we likely face that led to the establishment of Social Security. But, astonishingly, Bush now wants to link this safety net to the NASDAQ? Why doesn't he just offer to pay out Social Security benefits in shares of Enron?

In closing, it is singularly uncomfortable to observe a group of your countrymen so completely out of touch with reality – and especially so, when they happen to completely control the reins of the nation for at least the next two years. But, like a drunk or degenerate cocaine addict who needs to hit absolute rock bottom before coming to their senses (an experience that Dubya is clearly no stranger to – if only he found AA or NA instead of The Bible), perhaps these Neocons need to confront the inevitable outcome of their dubious policies. One would think that the results of their Iraq invasion would have been testimony enough. Alas, no. I fear this nation, originally founded by level-headed, sensible, healthily skeptical men, will instead be compelled to accompany these Neocons on their downwards spiral towards personal, political, and spiritual ruin. May Providence bring their bottom sooner rather than later; and amidst these ruins, may It grant us the us the ability to humbly rebuild, and return to that sacred journey that should have always been our primary focus, and for over two centuries has stood as liberty's brightest beacon to humanity – "a more perfect union.”

Sincerely yours,

Can't stand Safire.

The conservative Louisville courrier ran a critical piece about the speech. They also don't mention, but Brzezenski (Carter's Natl Sec Adv) also called it "a sermon" rather than a speech.
& classic conservatives are rather isolationist paleocons (such as Buchanan).

Bush's Transformation

http://www.courier-journal.com/cjextra/editorials/2005/01/22/opin-edtop0122-3908.html

President Bush's second inaugural address completed a breathtaking personal transformation.

During the 2000 campaign, Mr. Bush expressed disdain for "nation-building" and promised a "humble" approach to foreign relations. Yet, he began his second term Thursday with a clarion call to Americans to spread liberty throughout the world.

"It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world," the President said.

In every nation? End tyranny? That would constitute world-building, a radical concept that is clearly not the vision of cautious, realistic conservatism.

The key question, of course, is how seriously to take such an extraordinary assertion of America's mission.

Many foreign policy experts agree with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, who said on public television that the President's speech was "not a point of departure for serious policy," but rather represented a repackaged "testimonial of his deepest beliefs."

Looked at pragmatically, that is certainly a plausible interpretation. With the burdens of his tax cuts and Iraq debacle, the President cannot raise the money or the troops to provide the economic aid and military muscle required to confront authoritarianism globally.

So, one possibility is that the President was just restating, with inaugural flourish, Americans' historical belief that the nation should promote liberty and democracy.

Certainly, in his first term the President showed no interest in intervening, in the name of freedom, to halt genocide in Sudan, or in jeopardizing America's oil supply by demanding sweeping change in Saudi Arabia.

Similarly, it is hard to imagine that he would push China's leadership so hard to adopt democratic reforms that he would risk losing Chinese help in addressing the danger to us posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Yet, unfortunately, Mr. Bush also has demonstrated an ability to form a strong worldview unsupported by much knowledge about the world. And he seems oblivious to the law of unintended consequences.

That dangerous combination already has led to a detour from the fight against terrorism into a disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq.

Curiously (or maybe not), the President mentioned neither terrorism nor Iraq in his speech. One hopes that Mr. Bush is not implying that the United States should engage in more adventures like Iraq. But Americans must also hope that Mr. Bush will soon clear up what he does mean.

My Republican Uncle sent me the NYT article about conservatives being paranoid about SpongeBob so I reminded him that Tinky Winky of Teletubbies was their last gay seducer of youth, with his lavendar skin and purse. He then sent me this.

The Price of Homophobia

Don't ask, don't tell - just scream in frustration: it turns out that 20 of the Arabic speakers so vitally needed by the nation have been thrown out of the military since 1998 because they were found to be gay. It is hard to imagine a more wrongheaded rebuff of national priorities.

The focus must be on the search for Osama bin Laden and his terrorist legions, not the closet door. The Pentagon's snooping after potential gays trumps what every investigative agency in the war on terror has admitted is a crucial shortage of effective Arabic translators.

After the first World Trade Center attack, in 1993, government agents revealed an alarming shortage of Arabic speakers. Key notes, videotapes and a phone call pertaining to the attack were later found in a backlog of untranslated investigative data. The shortage continued right up to and well beyond the 9/11 attacks. Three years after the towers were destroyed, the F.B.I., rife with translation problems, admitted it had an untranslated backlog of 120,000 hours of intercepts with potential value about looming threats.

At the State Department, a study showed that only one in five of the 279 Arabic translators were fluent enough to handle the subtleties of the language, with its many regional dialects.

The military's experience is no more encouraging, with intelligence results muddied at times by a rush, as one inquiry put it, to recruit Arab convenience store owners and cabdrivers, who couldn't handle the task. The military is right to rely more on its language schools, but it can take several years to produce fluent graduates. The folly of using "don't ask, don't tell" policy against such precious national resources amounts to comfort for the enemy.

When President Bush was asked last week by The Washington Post why Osama bin Laden had eluded capture, he replied, "Because he's hiding." So is the Pentagon - it's hiding from reality.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-neocons22jan22,0,1039680.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Bush Pulls 'Neocons' Out of the Shadows

In the unending struggle over American foreign policy that consumes much of official Washington, one side claimed a victory this week: the
neoconservatives, that determined band of hawkish
idealists who promoted the U.S. invasion of Iraq and now seek to bring democracy to the rest of the Middle East.

For more than a year, since the occupation of Iraq turned into the Bush administration's biggest headache, many of the "neocons" have lowered their profiles and muted their rhetoric. During President Bush's reelection campaign, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the leading voices for invading Iraq, virtually disappeared from public view.

http://www.newamericancentury.org - manifesto
Any article in last few years by Pat Buchanan, chief paleocon & flax taxer.

Notice who is being asked to name HIS mistakes in planning the war in Iraq, and notice who gets the blame for how things are going... so much for the era of personal responsibility. Pass The Buck, DICK!

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday that he overestimated the pace of Iraq's recovery from the U.S.-led invasion because he didn't realize the lasting devastation wrought by Saddam Hussein on his people after the first Gulf War.

Asked to name his mistakes in planning the war in Iraq, Cheney said he had not anticipated how long it would take the Iraqis to begin running their own country. Not until after Saddam was ousted did the United States realize the extent of the Iraqi leader's brutality in putting down revolt in 1991, Cheney said.

"I think the hundreds of thousands of people who were slaughtered at the time, including anybody who had the gumption to stand up and challenge him, made the situation tougher than I would have thought," he said on "The Don Imus Show" on the radio.

"I would chalk that one up as a miscalculation, where I thought things would have recovered more quickly," Cheney said.

An intersting insight into difference between Bush's concept of "freedom" and the world view -- might also distinguish republicans from democrats. Is book burning (as in Farenheit 451) consistent with Bush's concept of freedom?

January 22, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Speech Misheard Round the World
By ORLANDO PATTERSON

ambridge, Mass. — SINCE 9/11, President Bush and his advisers have engaged in a series of arguments concerning the relation between freedom, tyranny and terrorism. The president's inaugural paean to freedom was the culmination of these arguments.

The stratagem began immediately after 9/11 with the president's claims that the terrorist attacks were a deliberate assault on America's freedom. The next stage of the argument came after no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, thus eliminating the reason for the war, and it took the form of a bogus syllogism: all terrorists are tyrants who hate freedom. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who hates freedom. Therefore Saddam Hussein is a terrorist whose downfall was a victory in the war against terrorism.

When this bogus syllogism began to lose public appeal, it was shored up with another flawed argument that was repeated during the campaign: tyranny breeds terrorism. Freedom is opposed to tyranny. Therefore the promotion of freedom is the best means of fighting terrorism.

Promoting freedom, of course, is a noble and highly desirable pursuit. If America were to make the global diffusion of freedom a central pillar of its foreign policy, it would be cause for joy. The way the present administration has gone about this task, however, is likely to have the opposite effect. Moreover, what the president means by freedom may get lost in translation to the rest of the world.

The administration's notion of freedom has been especially convenient, and its promotion of it especially cynical. In the first place, there is no evidence to support, and no good reason to believe, that Al Qaeda's attack on America was primarily motivated by a hatred of freedom. Osama bin Laden is clearly no lover of freedom, but this is an irrelevance. The attack on America was motivated by religious and cultural fanaticism.

Second, while it may be implicitly true that all terrorists are tyrants, it does not follow that all tyrants are terrorists. The United States, of all nations, should know this. Over the past century it has supported a succession of tyrannical states with murderous records of oppression against their own people, none of which were terrorist states - Argentina and Brazil under military rule, Augusto Pinochet's Chile, South Africa under apartheid, to list but a few. Today, one of America's closest allies in the fight against tyranny is tyrannical Pakistan, and one of its biggest trading partners is the authoritarian Communist regime of China.

Third, while the goal of promoting democracy is laudable, there is no evidence that free states are less likely to breed terrorists. Sadly, the very freedoms guaranteed under the rule of law are likely to shelter terrorists, especially within states making the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. Transitional democratic states, like Russia today, are more violent than the authoritarian ones they replaced.

And even advanced democratic regimes have been known to breed terrorists, the best example being the United States itself. For more than half a century a terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, flourished in this country. According to the F.B.I., three of every four terrorist acts in the United States from 1980 to 2000 were committed by Americans.

The president speaks eloquently and no doubt sincerely of freedom both abroad and at home. But it is plain for the world to see that there is a discrepancy between his words and his actions.

He claims that freedom must be chosen and defended by citizens, yet his administration is in the process of imposing democracy at the point of a gun in Iraq. At home, he seeks to "make our society more prosperous and just and equal," yet during his first term there has been a great redistribution of income from working people to the wealthy as well as declining real income and job security for many Americans. Furthermore, he has presided over the erosion of civil liberties stemming from the Patriot Act.

Is this pure hypocrisy - or is there another explanation for the discrepancy, and for Mr. Bush's perplexing sincerity? There is no gainsaying an element of hypocrisy here. But it is perhaps no greater than usual in speeches of this nature. The problem is that what the president means by freedom, and what the world hears when he says it, are not the same.

In the 20th century two versions of freedom emerged in America. The modern liberal version emphasizes civil liberties, political participation and social justice. It is the version formally extolled by the federal government, debated by philosophers and taught in schools; it still informs the American judicial system. And it is the version most treasured by foreigners who struggle for freedom in their own countries.

But most ordinary Americans view freedom in quite different terms. In their minds, freedom has been radically privatized. Its most striking feature is what is left out: politics, civic participation and the celebration of traditional rights, for instance. Freedom is largely a personal matter having to do with relations with others and success in the world.

Freedom, in this conception, means doing what one wants and getting one's way. It is measured in terms of one's independence and autonomy, on the one hand, and one's influence and power, on the other. It is experienced most powerfully in mobility - both socioeconomic and geographic.

In many ways this is the triumph of the classic 19th-century version of freedom, the version that philosophers and historians preached but society never quite achieved. This 19th-century freedom must now coexist with the more modern version of freedom. It does so by acknowledging the latter but not necessarily including it.

It is not that Americans have rejected the formal model of freedom - ask any American if he believes in democracy and a free press and he will genuinely endorse both. Rather it is that such abstract notions of freedom are far removed from their notion of what freedom means and how it is experienced.

The genius of President Bush is that he has acquired an exquisite grasp of this development in American political culture, and he can play both versions of freedom to his advantage. Because he so easily empathizes with the ordinary American's privatized view of freedom, the president was relatively immune from criticism that he disregarded more traditional measures of freedom like civil liberties. In the privatized conception of freedom that he and his followers share, the abuses of the Patriot Act play little or no part. (There are times, of course, when the president must voice support for the modern liberal version of freedom. The inaugural is such a day, "prescribed by law and marked by ceremony," as he ruefully noted.)

Yet while these inconsistencies may not bother the president's followers or harm his standing in America, they matter to the rest of the world. Few foreigners are even aware of America's hybrid conception of freedom, much less accepting of it. In most of the rest of the world, the president's inaugural address was heard merely as hypocrisy.

Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, is the author of "Freedom in the Making of Western Culture" and a forthcoming book on the meaning of freedom in the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/opinion/22patterson.1.html

In most of the rest of the world, the president's inaugural address was heard merely as hypocrisy.

Posted by: bob-in-co at January 22, 2005 09:46 AM

President Bush, Hypocrite in Chief

Another article from today's LA Times....

Steve Lopez:
Points West

Mothers Mourn as the Elite Party On

The first mom I spoke to by phone Thursday morning was Celeste Zappala, whose sons used to hang around with my boys now and then in Philadelphia. Zappala was in Washington for President Bush's inaugural, demonstrating against the war that took her eldest boy.

"I'm at Foundry United Methodist Church, where I just spoke about the cost of war," said Zappala, who carried a poster-size photo of her son, Sherwood Baker.

Baker, a 30-year-old National Guardsman, was killed April 26 last year while searching for weapons of mass destruction. Baker, a husband and father, had gone to Iraq with a walkie-talkie and navigational device his family bought for him because they were not provided by the military.

And now his mother was in Washington on the day of a grand inaugural celebration that would cost more than $40 million, most of it paid for by American corporations. When I asked Zappala what she meant by the cost of war, she answered:

"I mean that there are 1,370 American soldiers dead, 10,000 soldiers injured and at least 100,000 Iraqi people dead. A country has been destroyed, and we make new enemies every day, but we never see the coffins coming back because there has been a deliberate effort to sanitize the war," Zappala said.

"We're here as witnesses to what the real costs are. You know our family's been demolished by this, and my grandson grows up without a father. That's what the war means…. Is this the time to spend $40 million for flowing champagne and caviar? While they're partying in fur coats at balls, blood will be shed in Iraq."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez21jan21,0,934743.column?coll=la-home-utilities

Liberal means freedom; the modern, world concept of freedom is liberalism.

I once had a girl friend back in the late 60's who said she loved to date liberals. "Why?", I asked? "Because liberal means free love," she answered. For some, freedom means the ability to exploit such naivete.

Bush expresses freedom in term of slave and master. Freedom is being free of a master, or a government, free to exploit those who buy your products by being free from law suits. Free not to have to care for the health of your workers. (Something the slave master was not free to do).

The frames are laissez faire freedom vs our constitutional freedom giving each individual rights and basic necessitates to live and grow.

Those are the opposing pictures we need to frame.

anybody know what heppened to the chat?
it liiks like another site became the host?

Looks like winbeta is having server issues...even I cant get on...hehe...I'm sure it will be resolved soon...I hope! :-)

IRC chat back up and running:)

hey guys can any of you get back in to chat?

Just talked to the fellas at Winbeta, our irc host, and they had a crash...all should be back to normal now...they said, "sorry, and thank you for flying winbeta" ;)

all.
chat back on the air...
sometimes bad stuff happens to the good 'uns

New cell member sent me this:

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of sexually transmitted disease. This disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior.

 The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim (pronounced "gon-na re-a-lect-im").

Many victims have contracted it after having been screwed for the past 4 years, in spite of having taken measures to protect themselves from this especially troublesome disease.
 
Cognitive sequelae of individuals infected with Gonorrhea Lectim include, but are not limited to:

-Anti-social personality disorder traits
-delusions of grandeur with a distinct messianic flavor
-chronic mangling of the English language
-extreme cognitive dissonance
-an inability to incorporate new information
-a pronounced xenophobia
-an inability to accept responsibility for actions
-exceptional cowardice masked by acts of reckless bravado
-uncontrolled primate style facial smirking
-ignorance of geography and history
- a strong propensity for categorical, all-or nothing behavior

The disease is sweeping Washington. Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed and baffled that this malignant disease originated only a few years ago in a Texas bush.  A vile insect species is spreading the disease.  

 Be on your guard –avoid churches and television news!

Chuck in Baku for DiAnne:

On your earlier post about suggestions to a GOP “Elevator Talk” thirty-words or less, as in:

Republican: “We believe in freedom and liberty, and we're for low taxes, less government, traditional values, and a strong national defense.”

Here’s mine (exactly thirty words!):

Democrat: “We believe in honest democracy; personal liberty; a market economy regulated to provide sustainable, healthy, safe and fair conditions for our communities; education and science; and encouraging these values abroad.”

Chuck in Baku

drilling in Alaska has begun...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/21/alaska.oil.ap/index.html

We believe in democracy, honesty, compassion, personal liberty, healthy environment, quality education and healthcare and sane foreign policy fostering alliances.

Chuck in Baku for DiAnne:

I know, your elevator challenge notwithstanding, you are more into medium than message right now. But one of the benefits of a focused, streamlined organization is that different versions of the message can travel back and forth faster and with less distortion. In that respect, it would be interesting to see what, say, Spokane Democrats would like to do for the east side of the Cascades. I mean, if memory serves, as recently as 1994 one of the most powerful members of the House was Democrat Tom Foley of Spokane, who went down in the Gingrich assault. What was once an unassailable Democratic seat has become an unassailable Republican seat practically overnight. Going back to my hunch that environmental issues in extractive industry are really at the core of this polar flip-flop, it would be interesting to look at all the FDR and FDR-legacy bacon, which was not very environmentally-friendly bacon, that the Democrats delivered to areas like eastern Washington and points east – I mean, Hanford, all the Columbia/Snake dams, missile silos, air force bases, big mining operations, aluminum smelters with big USAF and USN demand, etc. By the ‘eighties, that dynamic reversed. Even the Protland shipyards used to get tons of Navy work. Now it is Republicans pushing environmental de-regulation of industrial-scale farming and ranching and logging and mining, and providing federal pork, which these communities probably see as in their interest, while big city Democrats push for sustainable environmental standards. My guess is that that is the underlying tension that has to be resolved before we can take back the Columbia and Snake basins and the upper Missouri. So as you all are sorting the medium statewide, it would be interesting to hear what message that medium is transmitting from the loyal oppostition in places like Spokane, Yakima, and Tri-Cities.

Keep up the Great Work!

Chuck in Baku

PS: I know that’s off topic so here goes: My inaugural farewell is a farewell to focusing on the sins of the current administration (while continuing to monitor them) and focusing instead on getting our house in order so we can pursue a positive track for 2006.

DiAnne:

As per the following from above:

"We believe in democracy, honesty, compassion, personal liberty, healthy environment, quality education and healthcare and sane foreign policy fostering alliances."

By my count, you've got ten words left to work in something on economic issues! (I wanted to add something about taxing unearned income more relative to earned income.)

Chuck in Baku

Getting our message out.

What the Republicans did regarding framing was provide succinct talking points on key issues to the mind of every potential R voter. They chose a few sentences, short and sweet, and then made sure that every potential R voter read those, or saw them or heard them, hundreds of times. They made sure the media had them and read them as “news.” They distributed them to churches, places of business, non-profits like CoCs and NRA, professional organizations like the AMA, and many, many other places. They dispatched prominent Republicans to bring these same talking points to potential voters in all these places. We can be sure that this strategy will continue and grow.

What I’d like to see is some sort of Democratic initiative that duplicates and improves upon that strategy. Some possibilities for message distribution are PTAs, Education Foundations, Unions, and employees (hand distribution) of non-union workplaces as points of distribution. Add to that, environmental organizations, outdoor clubs and businesses, hunting and fishing clubs (Ducks Unlimited helped save the wetlands of Florida), churches, urban planning organizations, and any other urban issues group or institution. (We also need foundations, etc. to finance this, but those seem to be in the works.)

There are a couple of challenges for us in this regard. One is a horrible lack of unity and cohesiveness among progressives with regard to framing our message. We can’t even agree on a label for ourselves, let alone talking points. We labour under the misconception that in order to be democratic, we all have to loudly broadcast our differences, rather than focus exclusively on the goals and ideals we share. This is simply not the case, and it certainly will prevent us from winning. Yes, dissent is the hallmark of Democracy, but yes, it will also lose you the election. We simply cannot lose a single race in 2006. Our country’s future depends upon us getting it right.

Another problem is that our message is so diffused. At every progressive demonstration I’ve been to, there are all different issues represented on signs. My neighbours tell me that they don’t even try to read the signs, they just figure “oh, liberals” and move on. We need to learn to focus our message on all occasions, and to time carefully the choice of the issue to be presented, and then to highlight it exclusively. I understand why this diffusion has happened to us – who could imagine a president that would be so colossal a failure on so many fronts? But, none-the-less, we need to focus or we will not win.

Yet another problem is that our message is nebulous in the extreme. People want to be informed about concerns in a specific way – for example, “Bush plans to invade Iran - stop him!” will work better for us than “Bush is an idiot!” This is perhaps the biggest strength of the Republican strategy. Yet we on the left of Bush continue to plaster our cars and our conversations with slogans rather specifics. I saw a license plate frame yesterday that said “Bush and Cheney will be making my next license plate.” Humorous maybe, but not helpful. In fact, it incites reaction. We’ve got to start focusing on what will produce the results we want. We need to find it in our hearts to somehow work together through all of this. If we don’t get on the same page, we are not going to win.

Lastly, we undermine our message by attacking our own hard-working Democrats whenever we disagree with them on some point. There are a million reasons why this is one of the most self-defeating behaviours exhibited by man – some call it the curse of language. Psychology texts are full of the many ways in which this behaviour undermines the success of an individual, a family, a team, a classroom, and any other group with a stated goal. I won’t list them all here, but I urge all the Dem bashers to please stop undermining all of our efforts with your nastiness and negativity. Intelligent people will always disagree; we have to learn to focus on the areas where we agree, and accept differences among us. A difference of opinion with regard to strategy and solutions does not make one group or the other morally superior – we must stop talking as though it does. Instead, we need to listen to each other and take what we can from all perspectives.

So, I have an idea, and I will type it up and share it with you all shortly.

Chuck, great posts!

Chuck

I miscalculated - I think I'll leave it at 20.
Having decent environment, healthcare & education would cut military spending automatically & there would be less use of our budget to kill children we don't know. We should claim "balanced budget," if we can do it, because conservatives can no longer talk about "fiscal conservatism" with a straight face. That should take wind out of the "tax and spend liberal" cliche.

Smart children are a strong defense.
I don't buy the conservative package. The other cliche they use is that Democrats are "weak on defense" but I don't see where killing aforementioned innocent children makes us stronger or more respected. & if we are "feared" that will only increase terrorism, which happens when people have nothing left to lose.

The Republicans have not only got an elevator pitch for themselves, they've got one against the Democrats. Certainly, "tax and spend liberal" is a part of that.

I propose we start using "spend and spend conservative" and grow our description of the neocons from there.

Money is the most potent issue; PEW says that ultimately, Kerry lost because people making over 100,000 didn't want to lose their tax cut. Let's tell them that they're going to pay for it a hundred times over in the future.

Bush didn't really give Americans a tax cut. He simply loaned our own money back to us, at a very high rate of interest.

Amy

That's a great post. I don't think people listen anymore re. policy - to Dems or Republicans. I think it's all about values.

My values are the same as when I was a child & I'm middle aged. Labels from the Republicans are "socialist" "liberal" "secular humanist" with digs at "weak" (bully mentality/military force) or "spendy" (they hate social programs as it's a "dog eat dog world" but blank check for military-industrial complex is ok). We call them "greedy" but sometimes they are actually "martyrs," voluntarily slaving to make their bosses rich & voting against their own interest.

War is not the way to achieve peace.
The planet should be shared and love prevail.
Personal life is responsibility of the person.

That's my hippie Democrat value system that got me through McCarthy, McGovern, feminism, Hart, Nuclear Freeze, Target Seattle, antiGulf War, antiGulf War II, Kerry campaign & til death.

Now they'll make fun of that but are these better?..

America should rule the world.
Every person has to go it alone.
It is up to the church to dictate moral values.

Those values are against all true religion and morality because of the selfishness & greed.
Buddha's sermons on greed and compassion from 3000 years ago still fit & some of Jesus too.
What we're seeing is neither religion nor morality.

Amy

If Kerry lost because the top 1% didn't want to lose their tax cut then they rule & this is not a democracy.

Here's what they'll get more of:
street crime, break-ins, hard drug use, teen prostitution, illegitimate births, uninsured people, people on unemployment, back street abortion, closet homosexuality, suicide, incest, pedophilia, sexual perversion, illiteracy, incarcerated, racial incidents, gang violence, obscenity, infant mortality, strokes, heart disease, cancer, terrorism, boycotts, trade deficit, budget deficit, sinking dollar, scandal and business corruption, and war.

If Kerry lost because the top 1% didn't want to lose their tax cut then they rule & this is not a democracy.

Posted by: DiAnne at January 22, 2005 02:14 PM

"We can have Democracy in this country, or we can have extream wealth concentrated in the hands of the few. We can't have both."
~Justice Louis Brandeis

hey pcdoc.. i guess the chat is having problems again?
Another channel was moved over our channel...

DiAnne:

Interesting on the security issue. In fact, to my mind, our military budget is more about protecting and distributing pork than it is about defending America. Then, of course, once you have that hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Hence, when a nebulous, non-state terrorist organization attacks American targets, the temptation is to attack and take over some country because we can do it, without ever examining whether or not it furthers our security (in other words, with out really thinking about whether or not we should do it). Of course, at the same time, using the hammer justifies buying it in the fisrt place, which is why the debate in the past election cycle degenerated into an argument about who wanted to spend more. A proactive security policy would involve much less traditional military assets and much more mediation, state-building, and positive incentives to all to decrease corruption, increase transparency, and support basic human rights (including democratic governance). And all of that would have to be undertaken in a multilateral way so that no other powerful bloc would be tempted to throw spanners in the works. Of course, that is hard to frame and explain. It's much easier to "wave the bloody shirt" and "remember the Maine." And it's much better entertainment to go to war than to discuss trade and visa regimes and to work through back-channels to achieve sustainable results based on informed consensus. I guess what I am trying to say is that it will be very tough to get that "strong on defense" issue back. Our only assets are truth and logic.

Chuck in Baku

At the risk of sounding like a Monty Python skit ("nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition) -- I'd like to restate the last sentence of my last post as our assets are three: truth, logic, and morality!

Chuck in Baku

I managed, though with some difficulty, to miss hearing any of Bush's speech the other day, but a huge wave of fear overcame me when I came on this article on Yahoo news a few minutes ago. If even the Nixon people know GWB is a total nutcase, it's not really a Republican vs Democratic problem- it's truly a war between the sane and the insane for control of this country. Just check out this exerpt from the article:

But on Thursday, Bush proclaimed in his inaugural address that the central purpose of his second term would be the promotion of democracy "in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" — a key neoconservative goal. Suddenly, the neocons were ascendant again.

"This is real neoconservatism," said Robert Kagan, a foreign policy scholar who has been a leading exponent of neocon thinking — and who sometimes has criticized the administration for not being neocon enough. "It would be hard to express it more clearly. If people were expecting Bush to rein in his ambitions and enthusiasms after the first term, they are discovering that they were wrong."

On the other side of the Republican foreign policy divide, a leading "realist" — an exponent of the view that promoting democracy is nice, but not the central goal of U.S. foreign policy — agreed.

"If Bush means it literally, then it means we have an extremist in the White House," said Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, a conservative think tank that reveres the less idealistic policies of Richard Nixon. "I hope and pray that he didn't mean it … [and] that it was merely an inspirational speech, not practical guidance for the conduct of foreign policy."

Linda,

Bush may not his speech to be a practical guide for the conduct of foreign policy by, these 4 years will be judged by the degree of success he has in achieving the goals outline in his speech. That has got to bother the "realist" republicans". Bush is a big risk taker -- as long as he is gambling with other peoples lives and money. If Bush fails to achieve significant progress in riding the worls of tyrany, the republicans stand to lose big.

Chuck in Baku for Linda Enterkin:

I wonder how the average Jane and Joe would react to the idea that our Commander-in-Chief believes our primary mission as a nation is to end tyranny throughout the world on his/her dime and her/his time, and, potentially, with Jane and Joe's life or the lives of their loved ones.

Chuck in Baku

If Kerry lost because the top 1% didn't want to lose their tax cut then they rule & this is not a democracy.

Posted by: DiAnne at January 22, 2005 02:14 PM

"We can have Democracy in this country, or we can have extream wealth concentrated in the hands of the few. We can't have both."
~Justice Louis Brandeis

Posted by: NativeTexan4Kerry at January 22, 2005 02:17 PM

Unfortunately, the Republicans have been able to convince Joe Bluecollar that he either is or soon will be in that top 1%. Instead of understanding that as part of the middle or lower middle class his earning power has decreased and his taxes have either stayed the same or decreased, he somehow believes that he is the beneficiary of Bush's tax give away to the wealthy. And he apparently feels that jobs being sent overseas and labor unions being weakened or destroyed are somehow going to benefit him.

At some point it takes more than framing things the right way, or having a great organization. It takes people actually thinking about the reality of their lives and the truth or lack of truth in the things that are being "sold."

That Brandeis quote is chilling, because it is so true. A government that benefits the wealthiest top 1% is an oligarchy - not a democracy.

I'm glad "What's the Matter with Kansas" is one of the book discussion groups' books - because I'd like to understand why in the world people vote against their own interests.

I always want to frame it that we needed someone SMART in the White House - to solve problems and unify domestically and globally. That was Kerry/Edwards.

A guy named Billy Quaid made 500 "Smart" buttons in Kerry colors & font (as close as he could) to wear with Kerry buttons (this was early on). I distributed as many as I could over the blog & he sent a lot to the Kerry HQs in New Hampshire & Iowa. We wanted "Smart" because we were trying to figure out what Kerry was that Bush wasn't.
We were also trying to attack Bush's career of getting by on luck and connections.

When the campaign came here before the caucusses, a staffer named Ari Melber had seen the buttons in Iowa and wanted to promote the concept but I don't think it ever got much further. The closest was "Respected in the World," which thrilled me to do end. "The Real Deal" came from Lou, a blogger. Another blogger campaigned for the idea that Edwards could "heal divisions" and I was always harping on Kerry's early comment "We need to start making some friends on this planet."

The counter-attack is always ignorance - "Freedom Fries" & so on - Anne Coulter & Rush Limbaugh but it goes all the way up to the top. Once at an antiwar rally some freeper-types snuck into the neighborhood (they really didn't want to be seen there as someone might think they were gay) and put up a sign that said "Invade France Next" next to one that said "Kill All the Evil Forien (sic) Devils."

I think slogans and programs and policies and ideas can be clearly stated but I think any dumbing-down is a concession because it doesn't serve truth.

Is it any wonder I always agreed most with Dean's gaffes (which is when I think he spoke from the heart) or when Kerry didn't realize the mikes were on (so didn't temper it)? & thinking about my values post, I sound like a Kuciniac and that is no coincidence, but I always try to keep my values (ideals) separate from my pragmatism. Without selling out, I do believe that realism is required to get out of this mess but speaking truth to power comes first in the end.

Chuck in Baku for DiAnne”

You wrote: “I think slogans and programs and policies and ideas can be clearly stated but I think any dumbing-down is a concession because it doesn't serve truth.”

Well, even though I’m trying to get exclusively positive, here’s an example of what not to do in order to avoid dumbing-down and defiling truth (once in a while you have to frame the positive by its logical opposite):

Republican: “We believe in freedom and liberty, and we're for low taxes, less government, traditional values, and a strong national defense.”

Of that slogan, this part: “We believe in freedom and liberty …and a strong national defense….” says nothing to me. Whose against that stuff?

Then this part: “We believe in … traditional values….” begs the question, “which ones exactly?” Arranged marriages between cousins, for example? Segregation? Again, it says nothing.

So all that’s left is: “We believe in … low taxes, less government ….” OK, so what government activity do you intend to curtail? Regulation of paper mill emissions into the Willamette and Columbia? Refinery emissions into the Cayuhoga and other environmental controls? Social Security and Medicare? Public schools? Military spending? SEC oversight of Enron-like activities? Police and fire services? Courts and trials? Roads? Farm subsidies? Immigration and customs controls? Carrying out elections? I bet I just touched on 60-80 percent of consolidated government budgets.

Chuck in Baku

Here is an excerpt from Bush's first interview since the election. All I can make of it is that he hasn't received his orders from Grover Norquist yet so doesn't know his lines. At least Rumsfeld can make up better bullshit than this!

_________(from the latest New York)____________
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?050124ta_talk_hertzberg

Last week, he granted his first newspaper interview since the election, to the Wall Street Journal, the parish bulletin of the nonevangelical wing of his political base. The first question was about his agenda for Social Security, and whether he would just be laying out general principles and leaving the details to Congress. “No, not necessarily so,” he said, adding:

That’s part of—that’s part of the advice my new National Economic Council head will be giving me as to whether or not we need to—here is the plan, or here is an idea for a plan, or why don’t you just fix it. I suspect given my nature, I’ll want to be—the White House will be very much involved with—I have an obligation to lead on this issue—I think this will be an administrative-driven idea—to take it on. And therefore, that that be the case, I have the responsibility to provide the political cover necessary for members, I have the responsibility to make the case if there is a problem, and I have the responsibility to lay out potential solutions. Now, to the specificity of which, we’ll find out—you’ll find out with time.

Chuck in Baku for Resolute:

You wrote: "Unfortunately, the Republicans have been able to convince Joe Bluecollar that he either is or soon will be in that top 1%."

That reminds me of a poll I read about a while back, where ten or twenty or so percent of the US polulation thought that they were in the top 1% (as defined by net assets).

As an organization we have to figure out a way to reach out to these folks with the prospect of tangible benefits. In a way, Tip O'Neil was probably right when he said "all politics is local politics."

Chuck in Baku

Unfortunately, the Republicans have been able to convince Joe Bluecollar that he either is or soon will be in that top 1%. Instead of understanding that as part of the middle or lower middle class his earning power has decreased and his taxes have either stayed the same or decreased, he somehow believes that he is the beneficiary of Bush's tax give away to the wealthy.

Posted by: resolute at January 22, 2005 02:51 PM

That's very true, sadly. Reminds me of an explination i heard for why certain people vote republican: "Most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich, than face the reality of being poor."

I really need to read What's the Matter with Kansas.

Posted by: DiAnne at January 22, 2005 02:59 PM

I heard that bush also said some other "interesting" things in that interview, such as...

"I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person," Mr. Bush said. "I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is."

The Federal Courts have started their dance again with Texas Redistricting. Rule of Law seems to have gone out the window with this crowd. Politicizing our Judiciary seems to be once and again the name of the dance. 2/3 Republican federal Judges ruling on Redistricting and handing the GOP 6 Congressional seats. Any guesses how that dance will once again end?

Federal panel hears redistricting concerns
Some charge the population change is not reflected in gerrymandering
By R.G. RATCLIFFE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

DALLAS - The legal battle over congressional redistricting focused in federal court Friday on whether one-man, one-vote constitutional protections were violated in 2003 when the Legislature used 3-year-old census data to redraw district boundaries.

ADVERTISEMENT

Lawyers for Democrats and minority groups told a three-judge panel that major shifts in the state's population had occurred by the time the map was drawn, making it illegal.

But State Solicitor General Ted Cruz argued that the U.S. Census is the only legal population count that can be used for redistricting.

Cruz said because of births, deaths and people moving, the census is inaccurate the day it is completed.

The federal panel heard arguments Friday on whether courts should consider claims that the Texas redistricting plan was an excessive Republican gerrymander.

The panel is made up of two Republican appointees, U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Patrick Higginbotham and District Judge Lee Rosenthal of Houston, and a Democratic appointee, District Judge John Ward of Marshall. The panel did not immediately rule after Friday's hearing.

The Republican-dominated Legislature in 2003 redrew the state's districts to eliminate the 17-15 majority Democrats held in the congressional delegation. Republicans now hold a 21-11 majority under the new plan.

While the hearing was supposed to mostly be about partisan gerrymandering, the focus was on the one-man, one-vote rule. That U.S. Supreme Court doctrine says districts must have equal populations so that no one's vote carries more weight than another person's.

I know that I have posted here before about how the Texas Republicans are planning on stealing a Democratic State Legislative victory, Vo, but I cannot more strongly urge the DNC to come down here before the Texas Legislature and say enough is enough. Don't you dare steal another election. Sad thing, I have neither seen nor heard from the national DNC office about this saga. This is their opportunity to make a statement in the South. We are Proud Democrats and we just aren't going to take it any more.

Chuck in Baku

What are the scales -
fiscally liberal to conservative
socially libeeral to conservative

For example, Libertarians are fiscally conservative but socially liberal.

Traditional Republicans are fiscally conservative and socially conservative, Democrats are fiscally liberal and socially liberal.

Republicans view Democrats as 'weak on defense' and 'tax and spend' but Democrats view Republicans as 'warmongers" and 'cutters of social programs.'

I asked my son how Libertarians were different than Republicans. He said, "They like to be able to smoke pot but they don't care about poor people either."

He's reading "What's the Matter with Kansas" and I'm reading Lakoff's book & then we're going to trade.

I think the scale is liberal to conservative on the axis & libertarian to authoritarian on the abcissa.

Then the conservatives can be broken down into paleocons like Pat Buchanan (fiscally conservative, isolationit) and neocons (fiscally liberal, interventionist). That is the schism within the Republican party.

My son believes though, that "Republicans stick together." He also says that historically, conservatives never deliver on the conservative social agenda they run on.

By the way, it's 30 years since Roe v Wade & at 5 PM PST thousands of us will take candles and walk around Green Lake, Seattle. I'll be there with a candle in one hand & a camera in the other.

To Joe Blue Collar

The government is taking your money to fight wars for big companies that are sending your jobs to China. The government isn't banning abortion or gay marriage. They lied to you to get your vote. How do to know they won't confiscate your gun next?

To Joe White Collar

The government is giving the upper crust more tax breaks proportionally than you're getting. The middle class is shrinking. Your kid is too rich to get financial aid for college but you can't afford to pay out of your pocket. Same goes for insurance for your family if your job is outsourced. Manufacturing is going to China but software is going to India.

Posted by: DiAnne at January 22, 2005 02:14 PM

DiAnne, several studies I've read have suggested that it's the low part of the top 1% that voted for Bush unexpectedly. Those with incomes of 100-150K. Those people are not rich, not at all. They're raising families, paying for music lessons and pre-schools and day care and private schools, saving for college, trying to save for retirement, trying to squeeze in a vacation once a year, have recently lost a fair bit of money in the stock market, and have car loans and mortgages. I know, I fit in this category. (However, I bucked the trend and voted Democratic!)

I asked my son how Libertarians were different than Republicans. He said, "They like to be able to smoke pot but they don't care about poor people either."

LOL
You know, DiAnne, I can't think of a time when I've disagreed with your son.

Any bloggers here in Texas are encouraged to help us win a State Legislative race in San Antonio.Anyone here interested in helping should contact Sue Schecter in Houston. Let's win them back one seat at a time.
"Also, there is another important election coming up on February 5th. House District 121 in North San Antonio is a traditionally Republican seat, but has been vacated by its current holder- Elizabeth Ames Jones- and a special election will be held on February 5. Normally this would be a very steep uphill battle, but we have two things going for us: the quality of our candidate and the infighting of Republicans in the district.

Our candidate is Judge Rose Spector- the first woman ever elected to the Texas Supreme Court and one of the finest, fairest jurists the state has ever known. Judge Spector was celebrated as a justice who would give fair decisions that weren’t designed to help Republicans or Democrats, but to evenhandedly interpret the law. She was also one of the attorneys on Texas’ original school finance court case, making her uniquely qualified to handle the hard work of overhauling our school finance system. She has lived in District 121 for decades and knows what the people of the district are looking for in a legislator. The people of District 121 deserve a legislator like Judge Spector,.. "

Notice Kerry played very well to Joe White Collar but Bush aimed at Joe Blue Collar. Bush wants the middle class to shrink. Upper crust will own companies, labor will happen in China.

What I don't get is who is going to buy all the Chinese goods? I know about Walmart but Federated & May stores are merging so that means most mall department stores will be one & the same. I looked at tags last night - more upscale merchandise? Made in China. Made in Bolivia.
Most of it - 70% off. They can't give it away.

People are maxed. The economy depends on consumer spending - 2/3 of the economy is consumer spending. What to buy? I literally can't think of anything that I want that I don't have (except Bush gone). I'm bored with shopping and materialism. The clothes are even starting to look more Republicanish - it's like the 50s. Music will start to suck - mark my words.

A great big thank you to all of our religious leaders who are speaking out in support of true Christian principles and democracy:

"President George W. Bush pledged to end tyranny around the world during his inaugural yesterday - yet sent exactly the wrong message by presiding over festivities that were heavily religious, often Christian, in nature, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, criticized the Inaugural for its de facto message that the United States has some sort of official tie to religion.

"If President Bush is serious about ending tyranny all over the globe, he needs to start by respecting religious diversity and church-state separation at home," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. "Behaving as if our country is an officially Christian republic instead of the secular state it is only plays into the hands of extremists who use religion as an excuse to hate our country and its freedoms."

Lynn noted that during yesterday's kickoff religious services, the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell offered a benediction that claimed to be offered in a spirit "respecting persons of all faiths" but ended "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

"That was perhaps most offensive of all," Lynn said. "It was as if Caldwell said, 'Yes, we respect all religions, but now I'm going to pray in the name of the one that really matters.'"

For more:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
518 C Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002
202-466-3234 telephone
202-466-2587 fax

http://www.au.org/

DiAnne:

Your son is a genius. I love that:

"I asked my son how Libertarians were different than Republicans. He said, 'They like to be able to smoke pot but they don't care about poor people either.'"

Shades of Rodney Dangerfield!

And more seriously, he is spot on on this one:

"My son believes ... that 'Republicans stick together.' He also says that historically, conservatives never deliver on the conservative social agenda they run on."

They stick together because they want to stay in power. There really is no unifying theme to the GOP other than empty slogans and banalities, one the one hand, and a simple power grab by entrenched elites on the other. Got to look into that Kansas thing....

Chuck in Baku

Amy
About my son - it is really irritating because he's at the know-it-all age & he makes fun of me for blogging & rallying. He is really sensible & practical though, a Taurus.

My husband is just reading the Sy Hersch article in the New Yorker and completely going off. Our whole family is burnt out on politics, including my formerly Republican Mom & Uncle but we don't stop! & we won't til "they" are gone.

I have no problem with rich people voting their economic interest. The top or bottom of the top 1% or even the upper 5%. Its working class and lower income folks like those I railed against at our West Virginia rallies last summer that perplex me, voting against their own economic interest. There is a saying I've heard that goes something like, if you want to live like a Republican vote Democrat.

They stick together because they want to stay in power. There really is no unifying theme to the GOP other than empty slogans and banalities, one the one hand, and a simple power grab by entrenched elites on the other. Got to look into that Kansas thing....

Chuck in Baku

There you have it!!!

Ira

I was gratified to attend a a couple of upscale fundraisers & work with some upscale Dems here even though I'm kind of a "squatter" (they think "bloggers" are cool).

I actually heard talk like "censored press" "police state tactics" "destroying the environment" - it could have been a bunch of lefties except a guy was going around with a tray of hors d'oevres & refilling my wine!

I actually overheard one of them say, "They have no right to tell me I can't give away my money to causes I believe in" and "I don't even want a tax cut."

Bush is so corporate - I couldn't believe the menu at the Coronation - turkey stuff with Kripie Creme Donuts with Safeway greens!! I thought it was a parody but it wasn't. That & the boot-scootin' hat-wearin' idiots.

What I don't get is who is going to buy all the Chinese goods?
People are maxed. The economy depends on consumer spending - 2/3 of the economy is consumer spending. What to buy? I literally can't think of anything that I want that I don't have (except Bush gone). I'm bored with shopping and materialism. The clothes are even starting to look more Republicanish - it's like the 50s. Music will start to suck - mark my words.

Posted by: DiAnne at January 22, 2005 03:20 PM

LOL re the music line...

Lou Dobbs explains this very well in his book "Outsourcing America". They don't give a flying f*ck about America. They don't need us to spend. They are eying the third world market, where people, far from being bored with shopping and materialism, are raring to go to the mall and spend. Forces are at work now (Fox for one) instilling materialistic ethics in viewers in South East Asia. South America will undoubtedly be next.

So our spending habits don't really concern corporations long term. They know we've consumed almost everything we can. They know we're starting to realize that there's a cost associated with unfettered consumption. They know we're going to wake up soon. They need other markets as well as slave labor to keep their profit engines running.

To Ira and all in Texas from Chuck in Baku:

You know, there has been lots of talk about election reform with respect to replacing the Electoral College with direct elections and standardizing voting technologies and procedures, and I think a movement to deal with gerrymandering ought to be part of that elector reform agenda -- I would even say it's time to draft a Constitutional amendment spelling out that congressional districts must respect geographical compactness and traditional and natural boundaries and may in no instance be designed to demonstarably favor any candidate.

Just my two bits. Heck, I am even against gerrymandering where it favors Democrats!

Chuck in Baku

My mom is on the phone from North Dakota all happy - says antiBush protesters are on C-span.
We don't watch tv or have cable but it's at

http://www.c-span.org/watch/index.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS&ShowVidDays=30&ShowVidDesc=&ArchiveDays=30

“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

DiAnne, I love Tauruses. And I think he's right re the blogs - at least, to a large extent.

I made the mistake of pointing out to a local Deaniac yesterday that only a fraction of Dem voters even understand what a blog is, let alone read them. He almost flat out called me a liar and said we'd be in big trouble if that was true. Yes, well....

Perhaps your son would talk to him...?

Yes folks there are manay many well to do Dems. Income means nothing to me, it's their IQ.

DiAnne, several studies I've read have suggested that it's the low part of the top 1% that voted for Bush unexpectedly. Those with incomes of 100-150K.

Posted by: Amy at January 22, 2005 03:16 PM

Amy,

Really? I'd love to look at those studies. Now I understand what you're saying about individuals in that bracket being concerned about their taxes being raised. But I thought Kerry was clear that he was talking about rolling back the tax cuts on those earning $250k and over a year - only. He also made it clear that he'd only be rolling back taxes cuts to Clinton era level - when, as I recall, folks in that bracket did just fine.

Now the $100 to $150K are the ones I hold particularly responsible, if they did, indeed, vote in large numbers for Bush. They know better - and they have supposedly gotten where they are because of their critical thinking skills. They really thought they'd be better off with Bush? Did they understand about the impact of the deficit on the economy? Were they paying attention to the billions of dollars being sunk into that sink hole that's called Iraq?

I live in a very affluent part of Connecticut and most thinking Republicans at least said they were not voting for Bush for some of the reasons above. So I'm fascinated if there are actual numbers that indicate this group put reason aside and jeopardized their children's future by voting for this administration.

"For example, Libertarians are fiscally conservative but socially liberal."

DiAnne, this is a description of both the Conservative and Liberal parties in Canada. LOL Although the Conservatives are making noises about slitting their own throats by becoming socially regressive like the Republicans here. Idiots.

My understanding is that the median income of the blue voters was significantly higher than the red, which also tends to correlate to the demographics of large urban areas with concentrations of professionals with higher education. It's almost like todays Democrats are the Whigs of the 1830's and 40's. Strange how things change.

Chuck in Baku

By the way, Dick, great header post!! Forgot to mention. (I can't sit for more than a minute at a time right now, so I'm a bit schizoid.)

And I guess that would make a part of today's GOP base the Jacksonian Democrats! Any my great great grandfather was named Andrew Jackson Hopins (his dad, Caleb, was a sargeant in Jackson's army, so the story goes).

Curiouser and Curiouser.

Chuck in Baku

Amy

Well the social conservatism thing will make us the laughing stock of the world, & that's separate from our foreign policy blunders.

We just had Florida friends come through who had just purchased property on Vancouver Island. They met people in Canada who were actually moving further north, in case Bush invaded! & some speculated that if there was another terrorist attack, he'd close our borders!

My mom always talks on the phone for a long time- well this time she wanted to get off the phone so she could watch C-span and said the protesters were "just fabulous." She had watched quite a bit of the Inauguration against her better judgment & thought it was ludicrous. This is someone who was a Young Republican in college & whose father ran for state Senator in South Dakota as a Republican.

Chuck I agree that the feds should have some form of uniformity in desiging congressional districts but it always has and will continue to be a local decision b/c of states rights concerns.No one Dem or Repub would agree to nationalize Congressional Districts. In fact I don't believe that was ever the intent of our founding fathers. The problem is that we have yet to adopt the Tom Delay philospohy of politics as a contact sport in controlling Congress. In a fair world view I would agree with you. But fairness no longer has anything to do with American politics and unfourtunately we will need to use the same tactics in Blue state legislatures when it comes to Redistricting or else we will continue to be steam rolled nationally as we were here in Texas.

Oops -- for the record, that should have been "Hopkins," not "Hopins."

Chuck in Baku

No the plan raised taxes at the $150,00 level not $250,000 Resolute.
"But I thought Kerry was clear that he was talking about rolling back the tax cuts on those earning $250k and over a year "

Ira
The Republicans want to make one big judicial district on the west coast into 3, to install conservative judges.

They are also working the courts in heavily Republican Chelan County to get a revote to install Dino Rossi & oust Christine Gregoire as governor, & who just went to DC to get corporate donor help. Barring that, he will try to run a coup against Senator Maria Cantwell.

Kerry plan was go back to Clintonian taxation levels unless you made over $200,000 per year.

I was actually in a much higher tax bracket under Clinton than I am now & made more in the markets.

Now I clip coupons.

Chuck in Baku for Ira:

You wrote: "But fairness no longer has anything to do with American politics and unfourtunately we will need to use the same tactics in Blue state legislatures when it comes to Redistricting or else we will continue to be steam rolled nationally as we were here in Texas."

I suppose you are right about that -- this is no time to unilaterally adopt Marquis of Queensbury rules.

But on the electoral reform plank, again, even if it could never pass through the system, making a big deal about fair (rational) congressional districting could help the cause -- anyone obstructing it could be beat up with the issue if it got any traction as part of a larger campaign about who believes in democracy and who just talks the talk.

Chuck in Baku

Ira,

We're both off a little.

Here's a segment from Kerry's platform on returning our country to fiscal responsibility:

"But rather than debating real differences, the Bush campaign is engaged in the politics of deceit and distortion.

They are spending millions of dollars trying to mislead Americans about the basic facts: If you make less than $200,000, you'll get a tax cut under my plan. If you make more than $200,000 a year, you will go back to paying the same tax rates you did with President Clinton and our country will get health care and education. The top 2% will pay more than they do now. Everyone else will get a tax cut under a Kerry Administration.

Let me repeat: 98% of individuals - and 99% of companies and small businesses - will pay lower taxes under my plan."

He made that clear over, and over and over again.

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0407.html

Interesting inagural day episode. I was wearing my black arm band in our bldg lobby. A 35 year old well dressed man and owner of this huge Farmers Insurance Agency office in my office bld in a very very Republican location, who drives a new BMW, came out of his office and approached me. I presumed he was a Republican. I thought here we go an ugly confrontation by a predictable Chamber Republican type. He asked if I was wearing it b/c of the inauguration.I presumed he would then lash into me. I prouldy and defiantly stated that the black represented my feeling of the horrible direction Bush was taking this country. He quietly whispered, he felt the same way and chimed in that Bush is taking this country over a cliff. As he left he begged me not to tell his associate or emloyees, but it heartened me that there are unexpected moments like that that surprise me. This was a true expierance that shows that we need to be visible with our sentiments.

Resolute. You are right it was $200,000 not $150 or $250,000. See how time blurrs our memories. Its part of getting old I am afraid.be it $150,000 or $200,000 it still amazes me that I heard over and over again especially those folks in the Columbus and Milwaukee focus groups conducted by Peter Hart that I constantly heard Kerry would raise their taxes.The bus driver and even a school teacher repeated that mantra that was not addressed. I shouldn't even post about the taxe issue b/c it makes me so angry that Kerry didn't address that in October.I wrote Dick Bell almost harrassing emails begging them to deal with that issue and for the life of me it wasn't. Kerry was positioned perfectly and not in my wildest dreams during the primaries did I ever envisage his being accused of that. As you recalled Dean and Ghephart crucified Kerry in the primaries for not wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts. Unbelievable.

Chuck in Baku Ira:

You know, come to think of it, and along the lines of what DiAnne and Amy have been reporting from Washington State, maybe there is a real silver lining to this gerrymandering thing in the sense that it forces us to deal with local politics and local elections (and hence local organizations and contacts) to win back statehouses and state congresses on real meat and potatoes issues. I’ve got to think that the GOP has gone to that well as much as they can while we haven’t even really started digging.

Chuck in Baku

PS: From your anecdote, sounds like the old Main Street Republicans are over-due for a soul-searching. And it actually fits the demographic trends of this last election, if I understand them right.

Chuck in Baku for Ira:

Also interesting when the guy said:

"As he left he begged me not to tell his associate or emloyees...."

I wonder how many of his associates or employees feel the same way but would not want him to know that. Amazing how deeply intimidation works on folks over time to the extent even of achieving self-censorship.

Chuck in Baku

Chuck: my point was not the intimidation issue. This guy owned a very succesful conservative insurance agency. He was the owner. My point is that there are allies out there even in the south that we would never suspect, that feel as we do. There are a few of us here in the south that understand that Bush is taking us in the wrong direction but we are out numbered by so many Republicans here in the south that we are afraid of being outed. It will take boldness for Republican here in the south to understand that Dems are not going away not matter how much they wish. Its about not being afraid of our shadows just b/c we are here in the south and it is expected that we be Bush apologists. That is the message I hope that southerners will start to spread. its OK to dislike Bush, you have friends that agree with you. Its not about intimidation as much as it is about perceptions that we are alone out here. We aren't.

"If you make less than $200,000, you'll get a tax cut under my plan. If you make more than $200,000 a year, you will go back to paying the same tax rates you did with President Clinton and our country will get health care and education."

Resolute and Ira,
this is my understanding too. Unfortunately, in many circles people thought the cutoff was 100K and the confusion was I'm sure encouraged by the Republicans at every turn. (That's the kind of distinction that should have been on every billboard in the country for a month.) I believe the demographic that showed up in the election research as having voted Dem in higher numbers in 2000 than in 2004 was 100-150K. So, in other wrds, those people didn't get JK's message. I'm still looking for the link, but I think it was PEW.

Of course, those people have other things in common besides income. Are they white? Most likely. Do they live in the suburbs? Most likely. Go to church? Most likely. This is the demographic the Republicans targetted and continue to target every day. So perhaps keeping their tax cuts, if they knew about it, wasn't enough to protect them from the Republican propaganda machine.

I wrote Dick Bell almost harrassing emails begging them to deal with that issue and for the life of me it wasn't.

Posted by: Ira at January 22, 2005 04:16 PM

Unfortunately, I don't think those running the campaign used the advice they got via the blog, e.g. honest feedback from their supporters. Very sad, very frustrating - and part of the reason (IMHO) that Kerry didn't win by a landslide. Why the campaign seemed unable to get ahead of the issues and fine tune their approach was a mystery to me.

I think we were all wishing the campaign would fight like Muhammad Ali - dancing around on his toes, landing a good one every once in a while, taking advantage of every opportunity that opened up to land a blow. If the campaign had used that model - things might have been different.

Resolute:

I guess we'll have to stick with rope-a-dope for a bit? 8th round = summer 2006.

Chuck in Baku

Posted by: Chazman at January 22, 2005 04:47 PM

You bet. Sounds like a plan.

I thought the campaign was excellent for the most part. Some ideas I sent up the ladder appear to have been used - I'm sure others had given similar suggestions. Not every thought I had was identical to the campaign strategy, but that's to be expected. It's a huge responsibility to make a decision. Someone has to make tough choices.

It upsets me when people post that they themselves could have done it better, that we could have won in a landslide, if only we had used their ideas.

The Democrats paid heavily for every single mistake that was made by the candidate or the campaign, and even by some not in the campaign, like Rather, yet the Republicans made many more mistakes and paid for not one of them. In fact, it's incredible the amount of destruction for which they have not been held accountable.

We were up against the Swift Liars who had generous media support and promotion. The media was pro-Bush, and made a concerted effort to keep the truth about the neocon record and agenda from the public.

The Republican organizational model had been in the works for decades. (What, you thought Dean and/or bloggers had invented grass roots organizing?) The had many institutions lined up to assist in disseminating mis-information.

And it was war time.

I really, really wish people would quit with the dumping on the campaign. They did a damn good job under the circumstances. Let's learn from our collective mistakes and move on.

Ira:

I agree with you 100%. I tend to run in that same demographic as the insurance guy I suppose -- I've worked overseas in the oil patch for some 12 years, but, being from Oregon, I'll always be an outsider. My next job may well be in Houston (and I've worked there before). But I still see it as partly about water-cooler intimidation. I have experienced it myself going back to 1993. It results in people that might think otherwise perceiving that they are alone when they are not, which is an insidious form of intimidation. Me, I always tried to make the other side heard around the water cooler as well -- with humor and in a non-confrontational manner (or at least with that intention). And I know I've had a couple small successes. I also know a lot of traditional Republican white-collar oil field workers have very strong misgivings about the direction the GOP is taking us, especially with respect to national security and foreign affairs, areas where they have good experience by the nature of their work. There is a huge opening for us there and that's why I say I agree with you 100%. And I even know a few that have always been Democrats.

Chuck in Baku

Babylon Wrecked by War
Saturday 15 January 2005
By Rory McCarthy and Maev Kennedy
The Guardian U.K. (truthout has it.)

Troops from the U.S.-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon, according to a damning report released today by the British Museum.
John Curtis, keeper of the museum's Ancient Near East department and an authority on Iraq's many archaeological sites, found "substantial damage" on an investigative visit to Babylon last month.
The ancient city has been used by U.S. and Polish forces as a military depot for the past two years, despite objections from archaeologists.
"This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," says the report, which has been seen by the Guardian.
"Among the damage found by Mr. Curtis, who was invited to Babylon by Iraqi antiquities experts, were cracks and gaps where somebody had tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons of the Ishtar Gate.
He saw a 2,600-year-old brick pavement crushed by military vehicles, archaeological fragments scattered across the site, and trenches driven into ancient deposits."

The whole article would leave you weeping, so I've only clipped a few paragraphs.

I really, really wish people would quit with the dumping on the campaign. They did a damn good job under the circumstances. Let's learn from our collective mistakes and move on.

Posted by: Amy at January 22, 2005 05:03 PM

Amy,

I'm not "dumping" on the campaign. Most people know I was a very involved and strong supporter for a long, long, long time. And I participated on the Kerry blog as CT for Kerry.

However, there simply were some things the campaign could have done better - and truly listening to the grassroots would have been to its advantage.

I think we have a real problem when a discussion about what might have been done better is taken as an attack. That's not my intent as I'm sure it's not Ira's. And if we don't understand what needs to happen next time - then we're ahead of the game.

If we all have to tiptoe around and not do any post mortems - then we're going to lose again.

Meant to say - then we're not ahead of the game.

"Unfortunately, I don't think those running the campaign used the advice they got via the blog, e.g. honest feedback from their supporters. Very sad, very frustrating - and part of the reason (IMHO) that Kerry didn't win by a landslide. Why the campaign seemed unable to get ahead of the issues and fine tune their approach was a mystery to me."

We can certainly agree to disagree. But I don't see broad condemnations like this as helpful. Laying blame is not the same as discussing what "we" might have done better.

If you make less than $200,000, you'll get a tax cut under my plan. If you make more than $200,000 a year, you will go back to paying the same tax rates you did with President Clinton and our country will get health care and education."

Resolute and Ira,
this is my understanding too. Unfortunately, in many circles people thought the cutoff was 100K and the confusion was I'm sure encouraged by the Republicans at every turn. (That's the kind of distinction that should have been on every billboard in the country for a month.) I believe the demographic that showed up in the election research as having voted Dem in higher numbers in 2000 than in 2004 was 100-150K. So, in other wrds, those people didn't get JK's message. I'm still looking for the link, but I think it was PEW.

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

It was also $200,000 of taxable income -- after all exemptions and deductions, which include those massive intrerest payments on those 1.5 million dollar mortgages in California. Most people think in terms of salary, not taxable income. The other distortion was about how many of those over $200,000 are small business owners, and how Kerry's plan would hurt those unemployed seeking jobs in small business, the generators of growth in new jobs. What nobody said is that employee wages and salaries are deductible costs, so the decision to hire was irrelevant in this argument. How much of this is a failure of the media, and how much a failure to get the media to understand the Kerry plan?

How much of this is a failure of the media, and how much a failure to get the media to understand the Kerry plan?

Posted by: bob-in-co at January 22, 2005 05:18 PM

Perhaps half and half. What seems obvious is that the concepts are difficult to put together into seven second sound bites. :-(

I remember Bush saying clearly, plainly and repeatedly: I'm not going to privatize Social Security!" That's all he said about it, over and over. No matter that it was a lie. It was short and to the point!

Charts. Maybe we need more charts in our campaign. There's one going around of the deficit and how it's behaved over the last few decades, and it's very telling.

I hardly view my comments or Ira's as a broad condemnation -I was commenting about one aspect of the campaign. So, yes, let's agree to disagree.

By the way - DCP was formed out of "lessons learned" by Dick Bell and the Kerry blog moderators from the Kerry blog experience. This was stated by Dick in one of his early blog threads. Again, no one is a stronger supporter of Kerry or the efforts he made than I am - so I'm trying not to take offense at being lectured at.

Quoting from the mission statement: The DCP provides leadership in developing messages and organizing from the ground up. Through its website, the DCP hosts a learning community, giving activists access to the tools and the training they need to mobilize and activate their own democracy cells. At the Democracy Cell Project, we value your advice and your ideas. You are our partners in making this site as useful as it can possibly be. With your participation, we will build a site that will help people everywhere be more effective fighters for a more democratic country."

Again, good comes of evaluating the past and making more effective use of resources and inputs in the future.

Posted by: resolute at January 22, 2005 05:30 PM

Okay, I'm wrong and you're right.

Posted by: Amy at January 22, 2005 05:36 PM

Amy - no one said that - certainly not me. And I certainly don't want a squabble. I understand that people are protective of Kerry and his campaign - I am too. I tend to get quite defensive when "outsiders" make criticisms. I used to get into arguments with my family (who are all staunch Democrats) defending the campaign all the time. As fierce as a mamma bear defending her cubs.

We should all consider the spirit in which our discussions occur here. We are here to promote grassroots participation - establish best practices, encourage and enable. I respect and value the insights everyone brings to the table here - even if I don't agree. We are all being honest, open and trying to contribute in a way that will help us win big in 2006 and 2008.

Winning big and winning pretty in 2006 would be great. I'll be very happy to settle for winning ugly by a hair's breadth, though.

Good night all from here in Baku! Keep the faith, keep positive! We can do this thing if we hang together and hang tough.

Chuck in Baku signing off (GMT+4, NYC+9, PDX+12)

resolute- I'm with you on this one- it's time we reevaluated a lot of the things that were done in the campaign and find out why we lost to one of the worst presidents in American history. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeating it, and I honestly think that repeating the past was one of the reasons we lost this election. We continued to underestimate GWB, as in 2000. We continued to be a bit elitist in some of our approaches- there were a lot of statements made by the campaign that the average American just could not understand. (Remember- "I voted for the bill before I voted against it?"- That one was a doozey, wasn't it?). And we did NOT reach out to the average American in our campaign. Totally ignoring the South was ridiculous- and it was elitist. When Howard Dean even suggested that the party needed to reach out to the south in one of the debates, he was ridiculed in the media and by the party hierarchy for 2 weeks afterwards. I don't know how many times it was said on the Kerry blog that we could "do without the South." Well. Enough said on that subject. Having said all that-the media was totally against us, and influenced the election in such a way as to toss it over to Bush. But it just might have been possible to turn that 2 percentage points the other way with a different strategy. I honestly feel we used the same strategies that we used in 2000, and that election should have never been close enough to toss it over to Bush had we not made the same mistakes we did this time. There are still a lot of sore toes in the Kerry camp, and they don't like to be stepped on, but we'll never change and win a national election unless we admit that we made some serious mistakes. Even the pro-choice advocates are admitting in some interviews the past few days that they need to stop referring to fetuses using that terminology- that the country is never going to come around to their way of thinking unless they (the pro-choice people) begin to speak in terms of the "unborn." They need to not be so strident in their approach, or they'll never make the majority of Americans understand what they're trying to say. If they can make adjustments, I don't know why we can't. But we can't- not until we stop saying "we wuz robbed" and admit some adjustments are in order. Guess I've made everyone mad - it is nice to know you were Ct for Kerry though- I've been wondering about that.

linda and resolute...i was trying to come up with a post that expressed my feelings on this subject you all are discussing, but after re-reading both your post....I couldn't have said it better myself;)

Posted by: Linda Enterkin at January 22, 2005 05:49 PM

Hey Linda,

Can't imagine you made anyone mad - I think everyone's opinions and insights are of tremendous value. (I bet you're glad you're not in Conn. today - we're supposed to get 2 feet of snow and 45 mile an hour winds - bringing the temperature to 17 degrees below zero.)

Anyway, none of us have commented on Michael Powell resigning. I'm curious - is this going to help the cause of media reform or hurt it?

Out of the FCC's hands?
Courts, lawmakers could decide indecency, ownership

By David B. Wilkerson, MarketWatch
Last Update: 6:01 AM ET Jan. 22, 2005


SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - On two of the biggest issues facing the media industry -- indecency and media ownership --the next Federal Communications Commission chairman may be on the sidelines while courts or legislators decide what the next steps will be, industry experts say.

FCC Chairman Michael Powell resigned Friday, ending a contentious four-year stint as the commission's leader.

A significant part of his legacy will be what happens to the effort he spearheaded to relax long-standing restrictions on media ownership, along with the issue of where broadcasters are required to draw the line on indecency in the 21st century.

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B487A5350-C77C-4245-9C26-FEBBB038DCFF%7D&siteid=google&dist=google

only one thing i would add...there is a lot of blame to go around for our loss in this last election...a small sliver of which could be attributed to John Kerry...and slightly more to the campaign in general...but i put the bulk of the blame squarely on my/our own shoulders. I for one didn't get politically active untill after the primaries...and how many of us actually did ANYTHING after 2k to prevent this mess in 2k4.

Its a bit of a stretch to blame Kerry, or the campaign for all, or even a significant part of this loss...this one was on US folks...next time, lets make sure we are paying attention, and prepared, so a fine candidate like John Kerry can actually be heard.

Resolute and Amy:

I certainly don't want to rerun those arguments we had in November where we yelled at each other and said how dare we think we know more about how to run a Presidential campaign then Kerry or Bob Schrum. I have no expertise other than low level involvement in political campaigns since 1968. It was merely an observation I had since I see others discussing our candidate's position about tax policies. Let me just say it a little clearer, I observed the Peter Hart focus groups which I presumed the party leaders also carefully watched on CSPAN that Peter Hart conducted in Columbus and Milwaukee during October. I don't know if others saw it but it really struck me and it still haunts me that the overlying theme especially of the women voters, most of whom were self described undecideds, stated over and over again how they mistakenly feared that their taxes would be raised under Kerry even though none of them (and that is my assumption) made anywhere near $200,000. Some were bus drivers, especially that undecided woman from Columbus that drove me insane, teachers, clerks etc that seened mezmorized by the false idea that their taxes were going to be raised. Kerry's plan was very business friendly and tax friendly. He actually had tax cuts for corporations and personal income tax reductions. One of his proposals to cover catastrophic healthcare costs would have been a blessing to large corps who's healthcare costs rise 15% annually. What is driving me crazy is that as Dems we are so afraid to say My Tax plan/My Healthcare Plan is BUSINESS FRIENDLY. And yes big business friendly. It seems in my untrained mind that Kerry felt he could win focussing almost solely on the war the last 30 days. It just amazes me that he let his tax policies be intimidated by Rove's scare tactics. My point is that some of us observed mistakes during the election and were literally helpless in getting those observations communicated to the higher ups. Maybe they would have made a difference, maybe not, its possible the strategist even heard our thoughts and judged them not worthwhile, but at least in my mind we blew a great Kerry tax strategy by being tepid about his position which polling data I have read says was right on the mark. And Amy we might not have all of the answers but our concern is how we make sure that those voices are at least listened to in future campaigns.

Ira- and how about Kerry's plan to let some of us buy into the Medicare system so we could actually retire early and not have to be in a panic situation over any unexpected medical bills?
I knew about it, but every single person I told about it did not. They'd just never heard it.
I don't remember seeing any commercials about it- and I do remember getting VERY tired of all the commercials about who did what in the Vietnam war.
The message didn't get out, and I think the campaign and the party are equally responsible. I'm not sure if we volunteers are the ones responsible- Someone said they didn't get involved until after the primaries- I did get involved in this election LONG before the primaries were over, and so did a lot of us on here for what it's worth, so I'm not willing to blame myself for this one. aI spent 4 years feeling guilty over Al Gore's loss, and how little I did to help him win, but a lot of us worked our behinds off over this one. So something went wrong somewhere. And we just have to face that.

"We did not reach out to the average American in our campaign. Totally ignoring the South was ridiculous- and it was elitist. When Howard Dean even suggested that the party needed to reach out to the south in one of the debates, he was ridiculed in the media and by the party hierarchy for 2 weeks afterwards. I don't know how many times it was said on the Kerry blog that we could "do without the South." Linda

Connecting with average voters Linda should be our party's obsession the next 4 years. Dems have always been the party of the working man, the truck driver steel worker, laborer. Aside from union issues that I don't want to get into today, the party of FDR in my mind has always been the fighter for the working class guys who make $30,000, $40,000, $50,000. Somehow Bush learned that all you have to do is wear jeans, boots, drive around in a pickup with a gun rack, swagger and call your opponent an elitist, ungodly, baby killer be picked up in your limousine and then have those same workers support you. As a party we need to once again figure out to attract those unemployed factory workers in Canton Ohio who were ripe for the picking, served up to us for picking.Maybe we need to learn from President Bubba how to speak, how to connect with the bubbas of America.Its a cultural thing and yes Linda we need to do more than give lip service to the south. Are we going to suddenly win Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia again. No, but at least we must make our presence known in the major southern media markets, Mobile, Atlanata, Nashville, Houston, Dallas, Little Rock, Jacksonville, etc. That is 1/2 the battle. Making a presence, showing the country that its OK to be southern and a Democrat. Until we begin that battle it will be back to carving out 274 electoral votes form Florida or Ohio on a wing and a prayer. That must stop.It may take 2-4 years for the south to even give us a look so we better get started. the comments on the blog about winning w/o the South were stratigically accurate Linda, but culturally and image wise insane on our part.Remember we were told by the campaign that John Edwards would take care of that. Not.

Incidentally I have commented before how we need to have a presence on " Major Southern Media Markets" is not meant that we need to spend millions to run vacuous tv commercials in the south. What I am advocating is having strong DNC spokes people make regular appearances on the LOCAL tv talk shows with the message that its OK to be southern and vote Democrat. We can all do that in our small way at our local water coolers or approaching those shy in our every day lives that its OK to come out as a Southerner and admit to friends and co workers that you are a Democrat, but what I am hoping for are our National Dem Politicians and party leaders including the next Chair of the DNC to make the southern LOCAL talk show circuit. Its a big job that will require reaching out one on one AND also through mass tv communications. My thought for the day and I will sign off.

please pardon me intruding here, but i have just got to say this. Average Joe voter does not think about elitists. its not on his mind on the job. i keep looking and looking at the campaign and i know what i saw wasn't just my imagination.

john kerry carried a message of equality and civil rights. the message was that we are all in this together and we will all work together.

george bush on the other hand carried a meeage about who you are better than. if you support the bans on gay marriage you are better than gays. if you support the war, you are a better patriot. if you are pro life you are better than those atheist pro choicers. his rich supporters were better than the little guys, but in bushowrld even the little guys got to be better than somebody else.

thats the elitism of the whole election isn't it? you might not be rich and elite but you are still elite. equality means change and acceptance. john kerry was aking people to change, george bush told them they could stay just like they are and be the better people for it.

bush appealed to the worst in human nature and they responded, plain and simple. it's okay to look down on someone as long as it's given some kind of blessing. i never worried about elitism as a target in this election, i worried about hate.

just my observations.......

let me just add one more thing......

the fear factor. the election has been over for weeks and who is addressing the falcay that democrats are weak on terror? where did that come from? how do we make sure it goes away?

where is the reframing guys? what are repbulicans weak on and why aren't we hearing more about republican weakness?

falcay=fallacy

My point is that some of us observed mistakes during the election and were literally helpless in getting those observations communicated to the higher ups. Maybe they would have made a difference, maybe not, its possible the strategist even heard our thoughts and judged them not worthwhile

Posted by: Ira at January 22, 2005 06:04 PM

I certainly agree with you about the tax issue. Dems, especially so-called progressives, are definitely afraid to appear business-friendly, and I believe that hurts us tremendously. Take the "not one damn dime" day, for example. I think it was a bad idea. I would have prefered a "celebrate small business" day. The enemy is not business, it's multinational corporations whose lobbyists have infiltrated our government and take power from our elected officials.

But my questions are these: What evidence do we have that the campaign ignored input from the grass roots? Let's think for a minute - how many of us are there out here, blogging, etc? Do we all agree? Do we all have the same observations, the same opinions? Are we one voice in perfect harmony that the campaign should have listened to and didn't? Would we have been able to see the evidence of their listening to our one voice? Is that it?

And do we think that we are unique because we blog? Are we one borg-like entity that has a unique, brilliant perspective, because we post on the blog? Do we think that in all the thousands of people working on the national campaign, not one of them might have seen things just as this supposed collective consciousness, this grass roots, did, and maybe mentioned it?

And where were we all for the 3.5 years leading up to the campaign, when perhaps people who were doing the bulk of the high profile work in October may have had more time and opportunity to listen to us? Did we give our input to the DNC then? Does it occur to us that perhaps they got a different opinion from every person out here, on every issue? (Certainly my own observations from a rural mixed northwest district often conflicted with what I was reading from others on the blog.) And does it occur to us that perhaps processing all of those opinions and observations (mostly opinions in my view) might take more time than was available?

Why must we feel guilty and blame ourselves, or else blame someone else? Must it be someone's "fault"?

Yes, a lot of things went wrong.

-We have an antagonistic, pro-Republican media that was ready to pounce on our candidate for every mistake. And only God doesn't make mistakes.
-We have a corrupt elections system in place.
-We have a fledgling GOTV organization at the local level.
-Our databases are incomplete and often incorrect.
-We don't have a set of institutions in place and co-opted to disseminate our talking points at all times, not just during elections.
-We haven't learned to "frame" our positions so that they are both memorable and resistant to twisting, and we haven't learned to fit them into seven second sound bytes while still maintaining their meaning.
-We haven't learned to lie. In my research into Republican strategy over the last 4 decades, I've discovered that the basis for their successes is always the same - a blatant lie. Or two. Or three. Democrats always want to tell the truth, even though all the research suggests that lying works best in politics.
-Democrats are elitist. As a group, and as individuals, we think we are the smartest and have the best and right opinions and ideas on everything. We look down on more pragmatic people rooted in solving their own immediate everyday problems, and they feel it. We tend to look down on people who don't agree with us, who can't articulate their views, who have a different set of facts in their heads.

So those are my thoughts, and this is the approach I take when "learning from our mistakes." I try to see the big picture, and then I try to come up with specific solutions. It gives me something active to do, and I prefer that to simply saying... well, whatever.

I take my cue from Karen, and from DiAnne and Dick and others here; All are astute observers and were very involved in the campaign. I've never heard any public dissing of the campaign from most, only constructive suggestions for next time. That's where I think our energy is best placed.

I know we all worked hard, and are disappointed. But it doesn't mean we didn't play a good game. We are changing coaches, but that doesn't mean the first coach was useless, weak, or stupid. We were out-played, but tomorrow is another day, and we are learning fast from our mistakes. We are identifying our weaknesses, and learning to maximize our strengths. Truly, it's an exciting time to be part of the Democratic party.

Hey everyone, it's a mandate!!!!

CNN QuickVote

Will President Bush achieve his second-term goals?

Yes 23% 9607 votes

No 77% 32466 votes

Total: 42073 votes

Maybe we ought to run a candidate with a really really simple message & then some premiums like free beer or really cool hats, since people don't listen or process the platform anyway! We already had the fun party - with Michael Moore, Eminem, all the Hollywood moviestars, rock concerts, huge rallies, a train trip through the country, the coolest & smartest people & most of the minorities.

There are just too many people who don't like to have fun, want to make their bosses rich & prefer to live like Christian Taleban.

Good point Amy, somehow I just don't sense we could pull it off. Somehow it would backfire and explode in our face, but again a very good point.

"-We haven't learned to lie. In my research into Republican strategy over the last 4 decades, I've discovered that the basis for their successes is always the same - a blatant lie. Or two. Or three. Democrats always want to tell the truth, even though all the research suggests that lying works best in politics"

Amy

That is an absolutely awesome post.
I'm going to read it over about 5x.

Ira

Bush studied Demographics & targeted the 100 fastest growing counties in America & won 97 of them, & also targeted Hispanics & married women.
Rove attacked Kerry's strengths, figuring his supporters would attack his weaknesses.

Any photos of protestors turning their backs at inauguration?

Ira

I like this series - has one where Bush limo passes pretty close to protesters.

Am off to the Roe v Wade commemorative candle walk around Green Lake (3 miles, in Seattle).

Rove attacked Kerry's strengths, figuring his supporters would attack his weaknesses.

Posted by: DiAnne at January 22, 2005 07:22 PM

And we didn't disappoint, did we? :-(

Linda, I just composed and lost a response to your long post - the one you said might make people mad. Not sure why you thought that, it was a great post, with excellent observations. Unfortunately, I'm now out of time, but I agree with it all, especially the part about not addressing the concerns of the average joe and ignoring the south. Bravo!

Marc, that's pretty humorous. So why am I not laughing? :-(

DiAnne, everone actually, if we were to target a set number of counties, say 101, LOL, what criteria would we use in choosing them?

A prayer to our savior from tyrany:

Bush is my shepherd; I dwell in want.

He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.

He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.

He restoreth my fears.

He leadeth me in the paths of international disgrace for his ego's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of pollution and war, I will find no exit, for thou art in office.

Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control, they discomfort me.

Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the presence of thy religion.

Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.

My health insurance runneth out.

Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall follow me all the days of thy term,

And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.
Bush is my shepherd; I dwell in want.

He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.

He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.

He restoreth my fears.

He leadeth me in the paths of international disgrace for his ego's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of pollution and war, I will find no exit, for thou art in office.

Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control, they discomfort me.

Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the presence of thy religion.

Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.

My health insurance runneth out.

Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall follow me all the days of thy term,

And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.

Posted by: Ira at January 22, 2005 07:19 PM

Bush Sr. won by promising not to raise taxes. He quietly promised conservatives he would instead slash and burn social programs to satisfy the conservatives who wanted fiscal responsibility - the deficit was a concern to conservatives back then. And then he promptly signed into law the biggest tax increase in history, I believe.

Then Clinton trimmed the social safety net. Go figure.

"...next time, lets make sure we are paying attention, and prepared, so a fine candidate like John Kerry can actually be heard."

Posted by: pcdoc at January 22, 2005 06:03 PM

You mean "THIS time, let's make sure..." We've started, we're in it, the 2008 campaign is off and running!

"Bush Sr. won by promising not to raise taxes."
And that lie was what helped do him in. That is why lying can only be done by those w/o a conscience, like W. I just don't think we could pull off the Big Lie.
Subconsciously you have to believe it was true to start with like WMDs. That is why W was so succesful and his father not. It would be like asking Kerry to have announced that he could guarantee he would pull all of the troops out of Iraq even if he knew that was not militarily viable. Repubs are just wired differently. W like Nixon can lie with a straight face, know its not true, delude himself into believing its true and convincing his audience otherwise. In psychology I think they call that pathological.

"...Are we going to suddenly win Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia again. No, but at least we must make our presence known in the major southern media markets, Mobile, Atlanta, Nashville, Houston, Dallas, Little Rock, Jacksonville, etc. That is 1/2 the battle. Making a presence, showing the country that its OK to be southern and a Democrat.

Posted by: Ira at January 22, 2005 06:27 PM

Thought this should be highlighted, as it's important.

And yet, Bush went around blatently disparaging Massachusetts in his speeches, and no one raised an eyebrow. WTF??? Why are the rules so different for Democrats? Imagine if Kerry has said something negative about faux cowboys from Texas???

Posted by: Ira at January 22, 2005 08:03 PM

You're right, it did Bush Sr in.
I confess to having read Kelley's book....

Working from the bottom up - using democracy cells through a grassroots infrastructure - is a pretty new concept with regard to the "modern" Democratic party. There have been ebbs and flows since the turn of the century - (I think of the 70's as a period of grassroots, to some extent). But the model pretty much has been of the national organization controlling the money and the message and the power.

But I think the Dean candidacy flipped a switch - it's what propelled him to the top for a while - and it's the power behind MoveOn and other organizations that have turned to the house party model and online communications model.

I think we can all agree that currently elected Dems, and the national party itself, are trying to figure out how to develop a national campaign that combines elements of the the bottom up and the top down models. Parts of the party get it - parts don't. I cringe whenever Terry McAuliff sends out one of his emails - because he's using "grassroots as an ATM model" and seems to be clueless about the fact that many feel they are not being heard or taken seriously.

On the other hand, we're hearing from the Dem governors who are encouraging the party to listen more to the states - to organize through every state. And I think Dean's candidacy for the head of the Dem party is such a popular one because people know that he "gets" it - that he will make sure the national party takes and uses feedback - and creates an ongoing dialogue.

The point is - I think the Democratic party - at all levels - now understands the power of a two-way dialogue. There were lots of things that were transitional about the 2004 election. I think Dick is a visionary and was ahead of his time within the Kerry campaign. He knew the power, importance and value of the blog when, perhaps, there were other parts of the campaign that were working in terms of the old model.

Change is hard - we are witnesses a party not just struggling with message or framing - we are witnessing a party struggling with its entire power structure. Clearly the KerryPac understands this in a way that the campaign structure and hierarchy, did not.

"johnkerry.com is a community of online activists, first brought together in the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign. In 2005, we continue to work side-by-side to rewrite the book on grassroots politics."

And yet, Bush went around blatently disparaging Massachusetts in his speeches, and no one raised an eyebrow. WTF??? Why are the rules so different for Democrats? Imagine if Kerry has said something negative about faux cowboys from Texas???

Posted by: Amy at January 22, 2005 08:15 PM

Good point. I noticed that; that REALLY bothered me. I mean, he's SUPOSED to be the president... he claims hes a "uniter"... and yet there he was CLEARLY arogantly putting down the state of Massachusetts! Incredible.

Posted by: resolute at January 22, 2005 08:42 PM

I hesitate to bring this up, but I am encouraged by the fact that Dean has made comments suggesting that he thinks the Dem party should compromise on the abortion issue. He's actually very much a moderate. But a moderate with insight and energy.

Gore came to Houston in 2000 and said things about our dirty air and our pathetic policies regarding children's healthcare which were right on the mark. It may just be civic pride but the local and even state and national Rep party went insane in their lashing out at Gore about his statements about Texas and Houston. Yea, you are right on the mark; there are double standards.

I'm glad you've brought up the way Bushhead completely dissed Massachusetts during the campaign... "the liberal Senator from Taxachusetts"... I couldn't believe nobody called him on it.

But what'd you expect from the Texas Twit?

Amy,

Personally, I think we need to do something with the abortion issue because I don't know if Dems can ever win with this issue hanging out there - now that it's been framed as Republicans are prolife and Dems are babykillers.

I have heard some progressives suggest that we let this be a state's decision. If the red states want to prohibit abortion and the blue states want to provide that option - then let them. That basically takes the issue off the table in terms of national elections. The point is - it wouldn't be imposed at the federal level.

I still don't know how I feel about the suggestion. But I think Dean is right to address it - like many things, it needs to be looked at and re-evaluated. I do know that when I was canvassing in Florida this October with Emily's list - knocking on Dems and Independents' doors -most of the negative comments about Kerry had to do with his stand (and the Dem party's stand) on abortion.

A thought:

Every time people get mad at Evangelicals Karl Rove laughs all the way to
the bank. It only causes more division. Maybe we need to present OUR
case from a MULTI-FAITH angle. Many could identify with that and rally around it,
thus reducing division and causing unity. True freedom is a multi-faith issue, it knows
no bounds of color or creed.

They want values, let's give 'em values.

Personally, I think we need to do something with the abortion issue because I don't know if Dems can ever win with this issue hanging out there - now that it's been framed as Republicans are prolife and Dems are babykillers.

Posted by: resolute at January 22, 2005 09:04 PM

Resolute, I think you are on to something there.

I personally think it was all won and lost over the abortion issue.

It would certainly help neutralize it to have it on the state level.

Resolute,

I haven't been to the Kerry website since the election, but that sounds promising. And for some reason I don't get emails from Terry in spite of the hefty sums I donated to the party.

For two years after I came to the US I worked with the Republicans. My family has always been Republican, and I have some very nice Republican neighbors. I regret that I helped to get some Republicans elected in 2002.

When I moved to the Dems to work for Kerry I had a lot of opportunity to compare the two parties and their strategies, from what I saw in my locale, and on the national scene but from a distance.

I agree that input from the ground is crucial. I think it's best gathered through the years leading up to the elections, as the Republicans do. What I really found lacking in Dems was the ability to follow our leaders once they are chosen, and to support them positively until the election is over. Democrats can't even refrain from criticizing their own candidates, loudly and publicly, i.e.on blogs, as I discovered both online and in my work in my district. I was quite shocked. It seemed to me that with the Dems, everyone was always wasting energy second-guessing their leaders, and that undermines their leaders' confidence and thus their efforts. It also wastes a tremendous amount of energy. Republicans seem to understand that much better than Democrats. I never heard any back stabbing of candidates or campaign leaders by volunteers while working with the Republicans during an election. (Not to say the candidates don't stab eachother when it suits, but they refrain during elections.)

The best model in my experience is one that gathers a lot of information from all sources over a period of time, and then makes a plan, based on that information, to be implemented by those appointed to implement it - ie, the campaign and the candidate.

Then, the job of the masses is to support, support, support. Here is where the Republicans beat us hands down. Their campaign leaders and candidates can count on their supporters 100%. Not so with the Democrats. Democrats, it seems, are always having to watch their backs against their own.

Anyway, my point is that 50+ million people can't be shooting off daily emails weeks before the election, frantically telling the campaign leaders what they should be doing about something or other after the fact, and expect it to have a positive effect. It just won't. I realize you know this, I'm just stating the obvious.

I hope you didn't take any of our discussion personally - it wasn't meant that way at all. I respect all of your contributions here, and seldom if ever disagree with you on the issues we discuss. I know you as on of the most productive and positive people on the team.

I hope you didn't take any of our discussion personally - it wasn't meant that way at all. I respect all of your contributions here, and seldom if ever disagree with you on the issues we discuss. I know you as on of the most productive and positive people on the team.

Posted by: Amy at January 22, 2005 09:21 PM

Of course not Amy, and I feel the same way about you.

We all feel very passionately about things, or we wouldn't be here. I think it's excellent practice for us, figuring how to discuss issues and position things - particularly if we disagree. We need to hone our powers of persuation and not be afraid to talk to people we don't agree with.

I think the challenge is always not to take disagreement personally - (unless it's directed personally, of course). I really have a hard time talking to the opposition - I didn't have enough self discipline to talk to rabid Bush supporters. I would get way too emotional - which is not a good thing.

So we have our very own debating society here - which I think is great.

I personally think it was all won and lost over the abortion issue.

It would certainly help neutralize it to have it on the state level.

Posted by: Truth Shall Prevail at January 22, 2005 09:15 PM

It would neutralize it for the federal elections, but it would be a nightmare for state Dems, one would think. And I wonder how women in the red states would feel about that idea?

I also think the abortion issue places us at the bottom of a steep hill.

"I really have a hard time talking to the opposition - I didn't have enough self discipline to talk to rabid Bush supporters. I would get way too emotional - which is not a good thing."
Posted by: resolute at January 22, 2005 09:30 PM

I *seriously* have this problem, too. I just can't be near people who are so willfully ignorant, but, I'm trying really hard to get rid of my elitist attitude!

On abortion I think we should concentrate on how to better articulate where we stand before we resort to actually changing our stance.

People don't understand our beliefs on this issue. They think we WANT abortion. I fear they might get an even worse idea if we were to suddenly change our values to get elected. Not to mention the support we would lose from other Democrats.

But obviously, the issue of abortion has been easily turned against us and used by repugs to beat Democrats again and again. So we've got to change SOMETHING. I say we first try and change the way we explain our possition. Growing up in Texas, ive found it most effective to first attack the repug possition on abortion, pointing out how the rate of abortion has gone UP under bush, and asking if simply labling abortion "ilegal" would actually do anything to stop the CAUSE of abortion, or even the practice itself. Then, I've found it effective to assert how Democracts actually want to stop the cause of abortions with education programs, etc.

Perhaps the reason that we lose on this issue is we articulate it as "a woman's right to chose." While that may fly in the blue states, it certainly does not in red states. I think it would help a great deal to articulate our stance as "a more effective way to stop abortions from happening by getting at the root of the problem."

Just my two cents, from someone who has grown up in the very red Texas... just a possiblity to consider before we resort to changing our values.

I don't think we should change our values - I think we need to think about what our strategy is and what our positioning is.

For instance, we should be making the distinction between prolife and probirth. Most of the rabid "prolifers" are really "probirth" folks. How can you be prolife if you support unnecessary wars or are in favor of the death penalty.

I do think we need to figure out how to get out of the corner we've been painted into.

I think that Bush got away with dissing Massachusetts for the same reason you can get by with dissing someone who is on the top of the heap, but it's just wrong to diss someone on the bottom. After all, Massachusetts is the cradle of our democracy and it's far better known for being the home of wealthy political dynasties than for it's working class citizens. And Massachusetts didn't help JFK's campaign one iota when it decided to legalize gay marriage just months before the election. It didn't really matter that JFK didn't support the legalization of gay marriages- most of the electorate believed he did simply because he is from Massachusetts. Couple with that the idea that is so prevalent in most of America that Massachusetts produces the most liberal senators in America - which Teddy is, no doubt- and a lot of Americans cheered when GWB put the state down. They already thought it was rather "hoity-toity" to begin with, and Bush knew how to play on those predjudices. JFK is far more moderate in a lot of his stances than Teddy Kennedy is, but no one really heard about his political stances, only about his Vietnam war experiences. (As a matter of fact, the original JFK was a lot more moderate than Teddy as well.)
Americans love to put down the high and mighty, and unfortunately, Massachusetts just fits into that category to them. And by the way- a lot of deep south Southerners don't particularly like Virginia either- it's just a bit aristocratic for their liking. I think it was just natural that Bush got by with talking the way he did about Massachusetts- it may be wrong, but it was still natural. And Carl Rove probably told him it would be good politics. Unfortunately, it seemed to work. Just one more problem for the campaign.

It would neutralize it for the federal elections, but it would be a nightmare for state Dems, one would think. And I wonder how women in the red states would feel about that idea?

Posted by: Amy at January 22, 2005 09:32 PM

I know. It's like one of those "darned if you do, darned if you don't" kind of things. It's almost "gotcha" in either case.

There has to be something we can do to overcome the obstacle created by this one issue. The Republicans are going to play that card until the Dems come up with something to either neutralize it or counteract it.

Get this: It was a non-issue for me for many years, but the Rovian's REALLY made people decide and choose a firm position on this one issue this past election year.

This is going to creep you out. I am just thinking of a phone call I received last spring, where a woman asked me to SAY my position. (This is creepy.) When she first called, I said one thing. By the time I had finished being interrogated by her I felt like I had taken an oath. (Really creepy.) I have a personal opinion but don't care what other people do. By the time they got done with me (and how many millions of others), I felt like I was making a personal decision for Everywoman in the United States. The sense of personal responsibility was blurred from the reality that I would be making a personal decision become LAW for everyone if I voted Republican. I didn't realize that until now! I still voted for Kerry, because I felt he was the more moral man, and represented more values I identify with, but not because I saw what they had done to me in that phone conversation. They even had the nerve to ask for money during that phone call. D*#N that Rove.
That is deliberate, methodical mind control tactic.

"I do think we need to figure out how to get out of the corner we've been painted into."

How about we all become Buddhists and Hindus (or at least begin to think them). Once you throw reincarnation into the mix (the idea of which may actually have started with Pythagoras), the whole abortion issue is dramatically transformed. Why? Because within the context of these two world religions, both of which pre-date Christianity, no soul is ever, ever, ever lost. Everyone comes back, and keeps coming back until they clean up their act (in the soul's eye, not peabrains like Falwell's and Robertson's). Women choosing to terminate a pregnancy are doing just that - choosing, making a life choice that, in the end, can only be seen as between her and (as Jefferson phrased it) "the creator of the world". Any soul that is looking to incarnate will simply find another vehicle (or set of parents). No silliness about Limbo (funny how the Catholic Church managed to ditch that concept).

And don't get me started on preborn children - since from my window on consciousness and spirituality, life didn't begin with birth and it ain't ending with death. And if George Bush can be responsible for over 100,000 retroactive abortions of innocent Iraqi civilans, then God help the fool who's going to condemn a woman for making a choice that can only be understood in an eternal framework.

Linda,

That is fascinating - I had no idea southerners considered Virginia to be hoity toity -

I am a huge believer in understanding the people/states/regions we want to do a better job of appealing to. No one but a southerner would be able to share that insight.

The Dem party really needs to understand where different groups are coming from and what they hold important and of particular value. I think that's where the Dem governors are coming from.

That is deliberate, methodical mind control tactic.

Posted by: Truth Shall Prevail at January 22, 2005 10:22 PM

I think they use a great many mind control and propaganda tactics. It seems to work well for them.

My question is - who has decided to use these tactics? Does the word come from top down? I'm really curious about this. For instance, I thought one of the most chilling parts of Fahrenheit 9/11 was Rep McDermott (who is a psychiatrist) talking about the impact of the constant terror alerts - how continually being told to be afraid impacts perspective.

So, are they studying mind control and subliminal messaging, or did they just come to this point through trial and error? I think it would be the story of a lifetime to find out.

And the beauty of using a concept like reincarnation in this debate is that it very definitely brings into play the 1st Amendment guarantee of Freedom of Religion. Abortion is, and should always been seen as a grave act, but people holding different religious viewpoints may well disagree about the severity of the act.

Of course, this will bring back the claim that America was meant to be a Christian country (which, I believe, John Adams may have said). But the perfect counter to that is that, if the Founders' beliefs are to taken as significant, then America must is more accurately seen as a Deistic country. For more information on Deism, you can visit:

http://www.uniteddeistchurch.org/

It can be forcefully argued that quite a number of the Founders and Framers were Deists, as were a substantial percentage of the great minds of the 18th century.

And while I'm on a roll here, Tom Paine (he of "Common Sense" fame) had quite a bit to say on the subject of Deism, reason and the problem with revealed religions. We have the beginning of his essay, "The Age of Reason" in the DCP library, with a link to the complete work.

http://www.democracycellproject.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=24

Posted by: resolute at January 22, 2005 10:42 PM

I don't know, but my gut feeling is they have been at this a while, and it probably has been studied out. The reason I say this is because it appears to me to be very precise. It is all over the place with them - the patriotic themes, calling people and getting them to take a verbal stance followed up by a commitment of their money (they didn't get any money from me, the little I had to donate went to Kerry), the selection of the most polarizing of issues. How could they know what works so well if they hadn't studied it out?

The Dems, on the other hand, are honest and (I think) transparent, and vulnerable because of it.
Are they wrong? No, they are honorable. Could they be wiser in their strategies? Probably. How they do it without compromising their integrity is another question.

Awhile ago I posted a photo link, I said - but no link. Here is it. They aren't new but some good.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?g=events/ts/012005inaugprotests&a=&tmpl=sl&ns=&l=&e=32&a=0&t=&prev=31

I just walked around Green Lake, Seattle (about 3 miles) with about 400 other people with candles, to commemorate Roe v Wade 30 years ago. I was pleased to see all ages but quite a few UW students & among them alot were young males.
It was quite beautiful with all the candles & the reflections in the lake, the winter trees, wet weather but not raining & not very cold, very fresh & quiet except for talking, laughing voices. It wasn't solemn. One had a lantern & a sign that said, "The Fire Of Freedom - Light Up, Not Burn Down Our Rights" & there was one solemn counter-demonstrator couple standing very still with an illuminated sign which said "Today's Holocaust - Abortion", complete with a big color picture of whatever it is they use.

I just got back to my computer this evening.
I really can't believe what I am reading. The issue is not abortion, the issue is choice. If we start doubting our stand on this important issue-we are truly a sorry sight. Again the issue is choice, not abortion. One day my daughters may have to make an agonizing choice. Nobody has the right to make that decision for them.

"Inauguration, Schmauguration"

The "inauguration," "coronation," corporate sponsored "celebration" by invitation ONLY
is on TV for all to see,
But the disgruntled, angry, "penned in" crowd is shoved aside,
out of sight, forced to hide.
Why is dissent so forcefully discouraged?
How can democracy ever hope to flourish?
With so many people against this war,
Bush and his cronies are responsible for --
Anti-war parents whose children have died,
Want to be able to say with pride,
"Our children gave their lives for a worthy cause,"
But the lies and deception give us all pause.
They say the economy's getting healthier,
But the poor get poorer as the rich get wealthier.
Nobody I know can find a job,
And the disgruntled crowd becomes a mob.
With jobs so scarce, healthcare is even worse.
What do people do without a doctor or a nurse?
In fact, the whole healthcare system is broken.
Privatize social security? You've got to be jokin'!
The more Bush tries to stifle dissent,
The more I hate this government.

Yes - "they" are ANTI-CHOICE, ANTI-WOMAN not PRO-LIFE. If they truly were, they would oppose war & the death penalty instead of making excuses. They would respect sanctity of life of children orphaned by the tsunami or war. They would support school lunch programs and health care for all children.

They are hypocrites headed for hell.

In a nutshell, the Repugs are pro-birth, not pro-life. If they cared about live, they would take care of the child once it is born. They would want better health care, better environment, better education, better jobs; all the things that promote life. We can and must win this argument

nicely done Irene..
well said..

just got up and checked the weather channel...I hope all are safe and warm...the snow belt looks bad...

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Posted by: Cyrano at January 22, 2005 10:43 PM

Oh Cyrano, Cyrano......Thou dost sound so much like a brotha I know, love and respect..........

Abortion. Not condemning anybody. A PERSONAL decision, that I, out of LUCK, never had to make. That wasn't my point. (I ran around the block a couple of times in my day, and at that time, if I had been met with that decision, I don't know what I would have decided to do.) Believe me, nobody can judge anybody until they have marched a mile in their moccasins. Or danced, in my case. With a margarita in my hand, and guacamole in my hair till 5 in the morning dancing til they shut the place down. I would do that part of the mile again, it was fun. Which leads me to say, I know God (whatever anybody wants to call Him/Her etc.) is bigger than most people give "Him et.al" credit for. I appreciate your information on Diety and Buddhism and Hindus. It is interesting. I have heard some teaching that says that the bible is just a small part of what God can reveal to us. A small fraction. I think some of that is very true. The power of thought, positive thoughts and speech having energy and all that. And I believe that. (That, by the way, IS in the bible). I hope someday you will tell me more. What is the name of the church that the Diety people attend? Is it the one that Tom Cruise attends, Science something? Unity?

Listen to me here Cyrano. When questioned in detail by the Zogby poll I was asked what two things I believed strongly enough in to fight and possibly die over. I said "the right to live and let live", and "civil liberties". That did not come from a judgemental, controlling mind. Decisions aren't real for anybody until and unless they are made internally. By the person,
because he wants to.

My point was not abortion is bad don't do it, abortion is good so do it. My point was abortion is a polarizing issue. I personally think it is THE polarizing issue. We were tossing around one way of perhaps neutralizing it.

I refuse to get defensive about Christianity. At least for tonight. My personal belief in a particular religion is based on things that are real to me. Pea headed, narrow minded, or whatever you see it as, it has taken a big commitment from me; cost me something. In order to make that decision and stick with it it had to meet my standard of truth. And it did. Not because I am a brainless twit, because I researched it, and it is real to me. And it is worth it to me. Do I want to tell everybody to make the same decision? That isn't why I am here and come here. I can go rub elbows with the religious right and play the games and say the right things and get all good and confirmed any time I want. The last thing I want to do here is don the robes and be all Miss Judge. I am not Billy Graham and this isn't the Inspiration Channel. (Wait...Maybe it is!) That isn't what IT is ALL about, and it is not what THIS is all about.

Nite Cyrano.

Posted by: tutterfly at January 22, 2005 06:48 PM

Fantastic observation. The "better than" theme reached right into the age-old "Might is Right" and "God is on OUR side" justifications and pumped up the volume. I live in Rural Red and see-- and feel-- those subtle "better than" head tosses every day.

However, that is also the right's greatest weakness. Because it isn't built on the very foundation they profess to believe in.

As for the rest of this discussion, fascinating as well. PC Doc, I was one of those who fought since before Selection 2000... and that explains my weariness today. I'm just plain tired and still need time to regroup for the fight ahead.

And Amy, trust me on this, Resolute isn't dissing the campaign. She was and is one of the finest fighters I've been lucky enough to work next too. The campaign didn't listen to a lot of what was told to them via the blogggers and that is why and how this place was born. We didn't leave. The hard core bloggers and mods didn't leave... the folks behind the IRC chat kept the family together... and little by little, the solid supporters have found their way back here. We have a lot of work to do. For the record, I may not post much or even have the chance to read the blog as often as before, but when I do, I'm again floored all over by the intelligent comments posted. We are simply an awesome group of people here.

Cyrano.. "then God help the fool who's going to condemn a woman for making a choice that can only be understood in an eternal framework."

Beautifully said! :-)

PS. I just want to add, one of my greatest fears was this community would disappear after the election. I'm in Rural Red, and the visions of losing this group and fighting mostly alone *again* kept me up at nights.

I was SO happy, and relieved, when Dick and Karen vowed to continue and do whatever they could to keep this family together.

So, we are family. We may disagree on policy and process, but from those disagreements, and our diversity, we'll stay strong and multi-layered.

What we really don't need, and this is just my opinion here... is to question anyone's commitment or use those dreaded "you statements" where we are doing the "I'm better than you" meme that, as Tutterfly said above, the right does so well.

And that's my soapbox for the day. @;-)