Digby Does The Work

Ben is definitely a work of art... Daily Kos's "Cheers & Jeers Rum & Coke Friday" has some good stuff on him too... Loved this line...

P.S. Ben: Jayson Blair just called. Loves your stuff.

And this...

CHEERS to going poopies in your Huggies. Right-wing manchild blogger Ben Domenech is in the throes of explosive diarrhea this morning, after waking up to find that the honest, hard-working, open-24-hrs. lefty blogosphere exposed him as serial plagiarist overnight. There there, kid...here, dry your tears with Daddy's trust fund.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/24/93319/9303

And here's a diary with a comprehensive list of Ben's plagerism exploits...
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/24/13724/1544

No wonder he was named after a rat...

Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's one thing you should know
You've got a place to go
(you've got a place to go)

Tom Toles today...funny & sad because it's true...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_main.html

md,
When we all shut out the lights and move to another planet, Tom Toles gets to come with us...

Totally love the guy.

Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement
In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding
http://tinyurl.com/kfx2v
Posted by: madame defarge at March 24, 2006 09:02 AM

This pea-brained idiot who was installed into office by SCOTUS in 2000 has been catered to by a Congress that has bent over backwards trying to accomodate his dictatorial demands, and still he issues signing statements declaring he can choose not to obey the laws of this land. There is nothing in the presidential oath of office that says any president can do that. A POTUS is supposed to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" - not use it for toilet paper!

IMHO, every piece of legislation, from first to last, concerning the so-called "Patriot Act" needs to be repealed!!! Furthermore, all new laws made and any old laws amended at Dumbya's dictates need to be repealed. (Reminder: the old laws worked just fine; intelligence legally gathered prior to 9/11 was correct. IF he even read it, Dumbya chose to ignore the Aug 6, 2001 PDB. By ignorance or by design, he allowed 9/11 to happen.)

Congress, including wimpy Democrats, have always "cooperated" with any demands by the world's #1 terrorist (yes, the installed POTUS) who uses fear rhetoric and name-calling to scare both Dems and Repubs into compliance. Congress has compromised themselves out of existence, and out of legitimate power; legislators are now taking up space in the House and the Senate, but they have no power because they've given it away to the person who allowed 9/11 to happen. Dumbya does what he wants anyway, and no laws written and symbolically enacted are going to stop him until/unless a majority of our legislators finally figure out the de facto dictator will never, ever stop unless he's impeached and tried for high crimes and misdemeanors. Then I'd like to see Congress send him to The Hague to be tried for war crimes, since the Nuremberg judgement declared the invasion of a defenseless country is a war crime (as are concentration camps, illegal detentions, torture, renditions, etc.)....

So, what's the hold-up? IMPEACH him so we can rid ourselves of that nasty creature who believes himself above the laws of this land!!!

Pace says war on terror will last for years
Joint Chiefs chairman also calls for greater global intelligence sharing

ANKARA, Turkey - The war on terror will continue long after Iraq and Afghanistan are stable, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told military officials from around the world Friday.

Speaking at the Global Terrorism and International Cooperation Symposium, Pace called for patience and collaboration, repeating U.S. assertions that it will be a long campaign.

“Iraq and Afghanistan will over time become stable,” he said in a keynote address. “But the war on terror will continue long after Iraq and Afghanistan have had success in standing up their own governments.”

more...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11989193/

For My Beloved Louisiana

Katrina, Katrina, wash me away.
Cry me a river and flood the bay.
Float me the hope of rescue one day.
Drown my love and send me astray.

Bring history to bear on open shores.
Bring back my father from distant wars.
Bring back to me The Empire I love.
Katrina Katrina. What have you done?

On waves of memory comes back the child.
Left to die, alone in the wild.
The old are gone, all washed away.
The day Katrina had her say.

North winds blow, and south winds blew.
The bayous weep, they still do.
They lie in wait, for better days.
Where better dreams once freed slaves.

Katrina, Katrina. Wash us away.
Kill our tommorrows and savage our way.
Change the heart of a nation in less than a day.
Katrina. Katrina. Wash me away.

By Christy Cole

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060324/ts_nm/rights_abortion_dc
Drive launched against S. Dakota abortion ban
SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota (Reuters) - Abortion-rights supporters launched a referendum drive on Friday to overturn a new South Dakota abortion ban passed as a challenge to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized the practice.

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families coalition filed with the state to begin collecting the 16,700 signatures needed to put the issue before the voters in November, Deputy Secretary of State Chad Heinrich said.

If the petition drive obtains the needed signatures by June 19, the law would be put on hold until the voters decide on its fate in the November election. If not enough signatures are gathered the law would go into effect July 1, leaving opponents with the option of challenging it in court.

A petition drive flies in the face of the expectations of abortion opponents, who have been counting on a legal challenge to the law in the hopes that the case would eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

(More on link.)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/03/24/notes032406.DTL&nl=fix
Three Years Of Happyfun War!
1,100 days of brutal violence and death, grinding you down to a numb little nub. Thanks, Dubya!

Posted by: Christy at March 24, 2006 12:02 PM

Beautiful.

Would make a great song. Know anyone who can put these great words to music & record it???

May be a great opportunity to "Radiate". Just sayin'...

Ben has resigned

I think the plagarism done him in.

"In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday. An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately."

We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations. Despite the turn this has taken, we believe this event, among other things, testifies to the positive and powerful role that the Internet can play in the the practice of journalism.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/

Ben D. Over

Posted by: Hawkeye at March 24, 2006 02:00 PM
Posted by: monkey at March 24, 2006 02:08 PM

Maybe he can start something up with Jeff Gannon...

Madelyn Albright basically eviscerates all Bushco foreign policy in this column for the LA Times, hat tip to kos diarist thereisnospoon

Good versus evil isn't a strategy

Bush's worldview fails to see that in the Middle East, power politics is the key.

By Madeleine Albright

THE BUSH administration's newly unveiled National Security Strategy might well be subtitled "The Irony of Iran." Three years after the invasion of Iraq and the invention of the phrase "axis of evil," the administration now highlights the threat posed by Iran — whose radical government has been vastly strengthened by the invasion of Iraq. This is more tragedy than strategy, and it reflects the Manichean approach this administration has taken to the world.

It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction. The administration's penchant for painting its perceived adversaries with the same sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences.

For years, the president has acted as if Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein's followers and Iran's mullahs were parts of the same problem. Yet, in the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq and Iran fought a brutal war. In the 1990s, Al Qaeda's allies murdered a group of Iranian diplomats. For years, Osama bin Laden ridiculed Hussein, who persecuted Sunni and Shiite religious leaders alike. When Al Qaeda struck the U.S. on 9/11, Iran condemned the attacks and later participated constructively in talks on Afghanistan. The top leaders in the new Iraq — chosen in elections that George W. Bush called "a magic moment in the history of liberty" — are friends of Iran. When the U.S. invaded Iraq, Bush may have thought he was striking a blow for good over evil, but the forces unleashed were considerably more complex.

The administration is now divided between those who understand this complexity and those who do not. On one side, there are ideologues, such as the vice president, who apparently see Iraq as a useful precedent for Iran. Meanwhile, officials on the front lines in Iraq know they cannot succeed in assembling a workable government in that country without the tacit blessing of Iran; hence, last week's long-overdue announcement of plans for a U.S.-Iranian dialogue on Iraq — a dialogue that if properly executed might also lead to progress on other issues.

read the rest here...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-albright24mar24,0,5251258.story?coll=la-home-commentary

----

one more tidbit from the kos diary

[thereisnospoon:] She makes clear in no uncertain terms that all of our anti-Iranian rhetoric not only destroys our chances of creating real regime change in Iraq, but also destroys our hope of "winning" (whatever that would mean) in Iraq.

[Albright:] "Second, the Bush administration should disavow any plan for regime change in Iran -- not because the regime should not be changed but because U.S. endorsement of that goal only makes it less likely. In today's warped political environment, nothing strengthens a radical government more than Washington's overt antagonism."

[thereisnospoon:] Once again -- Mr. Bush, the world hates your United States so much that it will essentially do the opposite of whatever you say.

here's the link to the kos diary...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/24/13640/7398

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/03/24/ganging_up_on_feingold.php
Ganging Up On Feingold
Excerpt (More on link):
It is no small thing that it took William Kristol, the conservative pundit and editor of The Weekly Standard , to intone (on Fox News Sunday, no less) that Feingold “is smarter than the Democratic congressional leadership” and “deserves credit for taking a principled stand.” Kristol, who presumably isn’t signing up for the Feingold-for-president campaign, nevertheless declared that the senator “is making his case coherently. He’s an impressive politician.”

Meanwhile, from the liberal side of the aisle, it is the apoplectic blogosphere that must yell and scream before even the most modest of official resistance bestirs.

Now, elected Democrats, standing up for your principles is not that hard once you get used to it. It’s just been so very long for you that you’re out of practice.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060324.html
An Update on President Bush's NSA Program: The Historical Context, Specter's Recent Bill, and Feingold's Censure Motion
By JOHN W. DEAN
Excerpt (More on link.)
In the end, this issue is going to be resolved by the 2006 midterm election. If Republicans lose control of either the House or Senate, the investigations of the Bush/Cheney White House will begin. It won't be pretty. It will make dealing with lying about sex look like High School hazing. It will even make Richard Nixon look like a piker when it comes to staying within the law.

If the early polls are half correct, independent swing voters have had it with Bush. Democrats want no part of him. Moderate Republicans are keeping their distance; they are no longer willing to hold their noses and vote for him.

The big question is whether there will be an "October Surprise" - a dramatic event that will bump up Bush's currently dismal polling numbers, and help his party. Right now, Republican friends tell me they are doing all they can to keep the mid-terms from being a referendum on Bush. They know they have a better chance if they focus on local races - absent an October Surprise. If you have any knowledge of how White Houses operate, you can be sure they are working night and day to pull off such a surprise.

If they do it, Bush will get away with his lawlessness. If not, he and Cheney are in for two very bad years. They have earned them.

Women Wage Key Campaigns for Democrats
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032406D.shtml
If the Democrats have their way, the 2006 Congressional elections will be the revenge of the mommy party. Democratic women are running major campaigns in nearly half of the two dozen most competitive House races, where their party hopes to pick up enough Republican seats to regain control of the House.

William Rivers Pitt: The Mouse That Roared
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032406Z.shtml
William Rivers Pitt argues that while the "If" factor cannot alter the outcome, there is a significant lesson for the Democratic party establishment to learn here. Tammy Duckworth, Rahm Emmanuel, the DCCC and all those big-time endorsers got brought down to the wire by a grassroots campaign with a tenth of the money, and in the end came within an eyelash of losing. Conventional wisdom says Cegelis should not have made it that close. She didn't have the cash, the endorsers, or the media team Duckworth had. It should have been an easy win, but it wasn't.

Bush's Requests for Iraqi Base Funding Raises Skepticism
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032406B.shtml
Even as military planners look to withdraw significant numbers of American troops from Iraq in the coming year, the Bush administration continues to request hundreds of millions of dollars for large bases there, raising concerns over whether they are intended as permanent sites for US forces.

THE SLOW DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS
Molly Ivins, AlterNet
For some reason, publishers assume people will want to buy more newspapers if they have less news in them and are less useful to people.
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/33954/

Supreme Indifference
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor says America may be sliding toward a dictatorship. Why don't American newspapers consider that news?
BY JONATHAN RABAN

Sometime after 6:00 a.m. on Thursday, March 9, I was jolted awake by an electrifying item on NPR's Morning Edition:

"...I, said O'Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O'Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.—Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington."

continued at http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=31218

(Jonathan Rabin is a British writer currently living in Seattle)

Posted by: dwahzon at March 24, 2006 03:01 PM

Thank you that seems to answer my question from the other day http://tinyurl.com/zo6jy

One of the underlying issues with this administartion seems to be a lack of the sense of history. They seem intent upon repeated all the mistakes that have already been made... Then adding a few twists of their own...

Posted by: madame defarge at March 24, 2006 01:11 PM

LOL already hearing music in my head. There should be enough musicians in the DCP to put a soulful blues track to Christy's lyrics :)

Monkey...Otter...???

Posted by: Veritas at March 24, 2006 04:37 PM

All over it... stay tuned.

There's a tremendous diary at kos that has a ton of pictures from the Immigration bill protest march in Phoenix, AZ today.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/24/185739/101

And here's a second diary... different pictures and more of a bystander report on what happened from the street level.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/24/175636/472

If you are serious about that Monkey ...

Try this final cut. It is more balanced and clear.

Katrina, Katrina, wash me away.
Cry me a river and flood the bay.
Float me the hope of rescue one day.
As you drown my love and send me astray.

Bring history to bear on open shores.
Bring back thy fathers from distant wars.
Bring back to me The Empire I love.
Katrina, Katrina. What have you done?

On waves of memory comes back the child.
Left to die, alone in the wild.
The old are gone too, all washed away.
The day Katrina had her say.

North winds blow and south winds blew.
The bayous weep, they still do.
They lie in wait for better days.
Where better dreams once were slaves.

Katrina, Katrina. Wash us away.
Kill our tommorrows and savage our way.
Change the heart of a nation in less than a day.
Katrina. Katrina. Wash me away.

Let me know.

looks like they blew a gasget in Phoenix...

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0324immigrationmarch24-ON.html

Read montini and the comments.

http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=134&title=do_illegals_have_the_right_to_protest&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1&blogtype=Columnists

Here is another typical Dumbo-ish story.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0324juryduty24-ON.html

Request for soldier in Iraq to skip jury duty is denied

Michael Kiefer
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 24, 2006 01:25 PM

Think that fighting for your country in Iraq automatically gets you out of jury duty?

Think again.

About the marches in Phoenix...
They marched about 4 miles from low-income latino area to Kyle's office which is in some of the most expensive real estate in town.

One of the leaders: Alfredo Gutierrrez was the ranking Democrat in the Az Senate for years before retiring and is a good friend to all progressive Democrats.

I have no link to this. It came in my email. But enjoy:

It was the first day of school and a new student named Pedro Martinez,the son of a Mexican restaurateur,entered the fourth grade.

The teacher said, "Let's begin by reviewing some American history.

"Who said 'Give me Liberty, or give me Death?'" She saw a sea of blank faces, except for Pedro, who had his hand up.

"Patrick Henry, 1775."

"Very good!" apprised the teacher. "Now, who said, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth?"

Again, no response except from Pedro: "Abraham Lincoln, 1863."

The teacher snapped at the class, "Class, you should be ashamed! Pedro,who is new to our country, knows more about its history than you do!"

She heard a loud whisper: "Scr*w the Mexicans!" "Who said that?" she demanded.

Pedro put his hand up. "Jim Bowie, 1836."

At that point, a student in the back said, "I'm gonna puke." The teacher glared and asked, "All right! Now, who said that?"

Again, Pedro answered, "George Bush to the Japanese Prime Minister, 1991."

Now furious, another student yelled, "Oh yeah? S*ck this!"

Pedro jumped out of his chair waving his hand and shouting to the teacher, "Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky, 1997!"

Now, with almost a mob hysteria, teacher said, "You little sh*t. If you say anything else, I'll kill you!"

Pedro frantically yelled at the top of his voice, "Gary Condit to Chandra Levy, 2001."

The teacher fainted, and as the class gathered around her on the floor, someone said, "Oh shit, we're in BIG trouble now!"

Pedro whispered, "Saddam Hussein, 2003."

Finally someone throws a eraser at Pedro, someone shouted "Duck"!

Teacher, just waking, asked "Who said that?

Pedro: Dick Cheney 2006!

===== Mark Morford's Notes & Errata =====
SFGate.com - Friday, March 24, 2006
Three Years Of Happyfun War!
1,100 days of brutal violence and death, grinding you down to a numb little nub. Thanks, Dubya!

You've endured three more birthdays. There have been three Academy Awards ceremonies, three new Super Bowl champions, three full winters and three summers, three complete cycles of jean styles and hemlines and pleat cuts in the fashion world and there has been the rise and very quick fall of roughly 146 horrible TV shows you never even saw.

Your skin has changed. Your teeth have worn down. Your bones have shifted in their sockets. Your fingernails grew another 4 inches and you consumed roughly 5,850 pounds of food and 600 pounds of meat and your hair grew about a foot and a half.

There have been killer hurricanes and earthquakes and devastating tsunamis, heat waves and cold fronts and dramatic shifts in the general temperament of the Earth. Ice caps are melting more rapidly. Billion-year-old stars finally gave up and blinked out. Young wine has aged nicely. Babies born three years ago are now walking and eating with utensils and uploading digital photos to their MySpace pages via their cute little Nokia cell phones. Times, of course, have changed.

But through it all, through your life for the past 1,100 days like an undercurrent of cold black blood, like an unshakable stench deep in your nostrils, like a disturbing stain you simply cannot get off your shirt, our country has been at war. Endless, raw, insidious, interminable. ...

(click here to read the rest)

(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2006/03/24/notes032406.DTL&nl=fix)

The whole story on NPR during my drive home was about immigration. I hope it gets the coverage it deserves (the protests by the workers).

I think that this summer we'll also see some major work stoppages & protests by hotel workers. It has already started in some places over the last couple of years but this time it'll be right during tourist season.

Some people think labor can't organize and people can't mobilize in the US anymore, but I don't think that's really a given!! Our stock market and GDP are up, but that's because the rich are getting richer. Munitions and petroleum stocks influence the market, and GDP can go up when there is more death, misery and natural disaster (Iraq, Katrina etc.) because more business comes to entities such as Halliburton.

I'm not a Commie, just a part of the shrinking middle class, downwardly mobile despite a half century of hard work, and that's without being a minority or immigrant! I have 3 degrees and still have to punch a time clock and monitor my productivity like in a factory. Just got paid but mad as hell and not going to take it any more!

This is such a good website!!!!!

http://www.thinkprogress.org/

Posted by: Christy at March 24, 2006 08:32 PM

Will get back witcha, songstress.

Only in America.

Want to find out what's going on with the immigration issue? Forget the media.

You may find more in "Lawn and Landscape."
Seriosly.

http://www.lawnandlandscape.com/news/news.asp?ID=4200

So tonight, we took the kids to the movies. With our tickets were 2 credit card like items, with "Free iTunes Downlaod" on it.

My daughter just logged on to the site listed on the card, and it told her she had to register some info to get to the free music.

Guess where you the registration page took her to when she logged on?

The National Guards website.

No kidding, it makes you register with the National Guard website before you can redeem the music. There was also a commercial for the National Guard played during the previews as well.

They are going after our kids, in a big way.

Adolph's Meat Tenderizer

monkey,

We saw the National Guard ad too. 17-year old was not tempted...

But then, he has talked with Juan Torres and reads this blog, so he has alternative information. I worry so about his friends...

monkey,

That's incredible. I wonder if that is itemized in the Presidential budget or if this is just a few creative recruiters.

Posted by: karen at March 24, 2006 11:14 PM

Welcome back to the real world. (Sad as it is to come back from vacation to 'this'!

Well I was just sitting in my parked car in the dark, where I get most of my news (besides on the internet). I was listening to the NPR broadcast which was playing taped interview clips of high schoolers in LA who had walked out of high schools by the thousands today. Most were Hispanics, worried about their future and the prospects for their relatives in this country. Earlier I heard a statement by a guy whose father had worked and paid taxes for 3 decades in this country, yet could be deported as a felon.

I couldn't help but see parallels with the immigrant youth in Europe, especially since I somehow picked up "Democracy Now" in my car this morning and heard several French student protesters interviewed by Amy Goodman.

All are casualties of globalization. CEOs become billionaires by shipping jobs away so kids think they have no future, even those who can go to college. My son will finally have a degree after 7 years because he had to work his way through school. Yet he'll probably continue to work in a bakery. As my mom says, it's better than going to Iraq.

The new European law being proposed lets employers fire young people without warning or cause. My son told me that most of his jobs in US been structured in the same way and that the whole state of California can eliminate state workers jobs on a whim.

It's becoming fashionable in both societies to complain that some poor or illegal person might be getting too many social benefits (or should not be entitled at all). Yet it's all a drop in the bucket compared to the white collar welfare that goes on in this country (Halliburton etc.)

What has America come to? I asked myself this as I paged through "women's magazines" at the health club. Forced pregnancy is on the increase (rape victims, etc.) Women are shown in high-circulation glossies in this way: How much weight have they lost? Have they had plastic surgery? Are their breasts real or fake? Do they have a "bump"? (Pregnancy is the new vogue)

Yet what do the young have to look forward to?!

Big military plane just flew over and shook our house.

Thank you Associated Press

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5710054,00.html

Thousands Protest Immigration Policies

Watch for Day with Dignity - many Hispanics will flex their economic muscle by not working, not spending

I've been reading Jeremy Rifkin's "European Dream" all week, but I don't really have much time to read, so it's before bed.

Once in awhile I get to thinking, "How did things get so meseed up?" and I know by now, it's all about money.

I just came across this, p. 205: "The Thatcher-Reagan economic revolution of the 1980s, with its emphasis on deregulation of government-owned businesses and further liberalization of global trade.." - that passage - those damn neocons!! All the pain and suffering they and their spiritual descendants have caused - makes my blood boil!

Posted by: monkey at March 24, 2006 10:44 PM

That's a particularly scummy way to get to our kids.

Someone near and dear to my heart wrote a thesis about the propaganda our children are getting from toddlers on up through cartoons, computer games, gameboys, etc., to condition them for violence and war.

Saturday morning, and a new warning: the immigration issues (Sensenbrenner Bill, see http://tinyurl.com/qlznc for more information on it) is exploding.

The photo in today's Post (I can't find it online yet) of thousands of immigrant rights workers marching in Phoenix AZ only reflects what I saw on the west side of the Capitol a week ago or so.

There will be more marches, several of them in DC.

I think all of us here need to have a heads-up on this issue. FOr one thing, it promises to be THE wedge issue of the 2006 election cycle. And the side issue for those I spoke with and saw gathered by the Capitol is the link of immigrant rights to both the economic and privacy concerns about the Bush administration AND the illegal war in Iraq, with many remembering the interference the US government has perpetrated throughout Latin America.

The immigrants' rights organizations are also being supported by the social workers, healthcare workers and educators who will be criminalized by providing services to illegal immigrants. And Katrina relief is an add-on to their concerns as well.

So, let's attend to the evolution of these newly empowered communities, or democracy cells, and see how they fare as they speak truth to power.

NEW THREAD

Karen, if you want pictures...

scroll up and check out the links that I posted earlier from dailykos

This just doesn't seem right for the first post on the new thread so I'll put it here.

For those who have been in on the 4gw discussions in the IRC, there is a blog post by Lorelei Kelly at Democracy Arsenal that you may find of interest.

This bit in particular, caught my eye:

~snip~
Today's new progressive movement needs to be non-partisan but not apolitical. In short, it needs to rescue our democracy by claiming the wide terrain that has opened up in the middle of the political spectrum. This is the fundamental reason why the military and progressives need each other. The market fundamentalism of the conservative movement--along with its anti-government rhetoric--has damaged cultural notions of sacrifice, common good and public service, the military's very reason for being. This damage can be seen in the effects of privatization on the uniformed Americans serving in Iraq...where a private contractor earns several times more than a soldier.

The military institution--whose professional education system is steeped in American history and the labors involved in building a healthy democracy--looks more and more ideal as our civilian/public sector systems fail. Internationally this holds true as well: American JAGs have become global human rights champions for their work defending the rights of prisoners in Guantanamo.

The conservative strategy of substituting public relations for a governing philosophy has impacted the military as well. Intentions aside, the military has allowed the public and elected leaders to persist in the belief that defense industry pronouncements equal professional military opinion.
~snip~

Read the entire post here and check out the comments -- there are some informed people hanging out there...
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2005/04/here_are_two_bo.html

The current post at Democracy Arsenal is also a well thought out piece which addresses Bushco's current spin campaign on Iraq.

~snip~
When you start caring mostly about a political win -- as in the President's current five-day long political campaign to turn around public opinion on the war (and, in doing so, to attack the media) -- you stop attending to events. Opinion and events, like oil and water, don't mix. The aesthetic of the win -- of massaging and pushing and pulling public opinion -- becomes your paradigm, the way you see the world. It becomes binary -- your friends and foes -- with a sliding scale between (people who you can persuade to become a friend).

To anyone who's worked on a campaign, all of this is so absorbing -- so seductive, in a way -- that it occludes any other way of thinking. Put another way -- you cannot try and win public opinion and govern. We think they're the same, but they're not. At most, they coincide, overlap, cross-pollinate. But they are fundamentally different behaviors.

The American people aren't stupid. Spin does not create opinion, not really. Policy does. If the Administration's spin offensive consisted of transparent, hard thinking about practical options, they would start to "win." Even if "winning" is no longer a sensible way of thinking about the conflict.
~snip~

http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2006/03/krauthammer_def.html

Dwahzon
Thank you very much for the Kos diaries with pics.
I had come home tired and didn't scroll up that far or didn't see.