Is It Getting Cold In Here Or...

Casey,

Good point. That is an important question, although the wrong-winged pundants seem to spread the lie that the troop level is just fine.

It's also great to come online and share their responses so that we can debunk them for the next caller. (I hate being caught by their little word games!)

But also, when you call, don't keep the message to yourself, spread their response! Be the media. We're fighting for our democracy, our livelihood, and our children.

Off to this week for some R&R... yuck, I can't even enjoy that term anymore.

keep up the good fight y'all... the monkey is goin into stealth mode.

peace

Monkey,

Have a good week! My job is temporarily done, so it's on to this job of fighting for democracy again.

Bon voyage, Monkey!

Have a great time MonKey! Enjoy for me, too!!

In the meantime, I am going to be asking this question of my pro-Iraq friends.

This Kos diarist requests help spreading this on the blogosphere & I got it via an email or might have missed it.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/24/3043/84168

Apparently, unions have gotten together to run an ad advocating for decent wages & MSM agencies are refusing to run it, for obvious reasons (their owners' politics).

Iraq redeployments are ok, given that Rumsfeld's Army re-org is humming along nicely and newly re-commissioned units are becoming available to deploy. They're cutting the numbers of Guard and Reserve troops overseas and putting most other troops on a 1-on, 1 or 2-off rotation right now (1 year in Iraq, 1 or two home, then back again). The Navy - hitherto relatively untapped - has developed a "brownwater fighting force" ala Vietnam which will free up many of the Marines to rotate home. A lot of the jobs are contracted out to firms like Blackwater. A draft would be shooting themselves in the foot - they don't need it and it would be a terrible strategic move.

The real question, Casey, is not Iraq but Iran. How will we have enough to fight three wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran) at once?

*************

Also, talk of the $1 billion (yes with a B) new permanent American embassy (aka fortress, complete with massive fencing and underground tank storage) near completion in Iraq belongs somewhere. Which appropriations bill covered that one?

Veritas
Hadn't strategists also planned to be able to fight in North Korea or against the Chinese at the same time as fighting Iraq, Iran & Syria?

We are in Phoenix/Sedona for the week and the political news battlebob seems to be 24 hour news reports abdout nothing other than Immigration. Their brave and wildly popular governor just vetoed their Republican legislature's bill that was going to fund billinual education here court ordered with a $100/student in funds. Surprisingly that and almost everything else she does is being met with popular support here.
We have seen at least 10 commercials by a Demcratic candidate named Jim Pederson who is confronting John Kylein Nov and Kyle's immigration plan of allowing immigrants to stay here and do the dirty work for 5 years and then given notice to pack up their belongings and go home. Pederson's commercials say he wants to be an Independent voice for Arizona, and as a Democrat says he aligns his Immigration position with popular McCain, saying that Kyle opposes McCains immigration legislation and is not in step with Arizona values. Its a gamble, and I have no idea how much name id that Pederson has but his political strategy seems shrewd and he is giving it his all to knock off Kyle here in Nov, which I am sure that Charlie Cook does not even have on his radar screen as a possible Democratic pickup. Pederson seems to be well financed and probably a self funded candidate which will give him required visibility here and free up other DNC funds to be used in other Senate races like Ford's in Tennessee which we really need to pull off if we want to take over the Senate.

I still think it's a good question to find out how we can support Bush's war.

This is from Nick at Democratic Daily...
“No more northeast liberals! We “know” from history that they don’t play well in the MidWest and the South!” How many times have we heard statements like this? Probably too much to count.

As far as the South goes, yes northeast liberals don’t play well in the South. Of course given the fact that no Democrat has won a majority of the southern white vote since 1948 it’s kinda hard to argue that anybody the Dems nominate will play well in the South. Except for 1964 and 1976, no Democrat has won even 40% of the southern white vote since 1960. In fact, since 1964 only one Democrat (Carter in 1976) has won a majority (or even a plurality) of the total southern vote-despite massive support for Democrats among most southern non-whites. Yes, Virginia (no pun intended) even Bill Clinton lost the southern vote. Clinton won 45.9% of the southern vote in 1996, 41.0% in 1992, while Kerry won 42.0% there in 2004 and Gore won 43.4% in 2000.

But what of the Midwest? Well the Midwest might still be close to the south geographically, but it’s moving away from the South politically. How is this so?

A comparison with other post-1948 Democrat nominees is instructive. For all the talk about northeasterners not playing well in the Midwest, Kerry won 48.2% of the total popular vote in the Midwest. Aside from Lyndon Johnson in the Democratic landslide year of 1964, only two other post-1948 Democrats have-barely-won a greater percent of the Midwest vote than Kerry did. Clinton won 48.5% in 1996, Carter won 48.6% of the Midwest vote in 1976.

Of course Carter was running in the aftermath of Watergate, the then unpopular Ford pardon of Nixon, the helicpoters leaving Vietnam in 1975, and a deep recession that had wreaked havoc on the economy-especially in the Midwest.

Clinton was an incumbent running for re-election at a time when the economy was shifting into high gear, Perot was less of a factor than he had been in 1992 (and was taking votes mostly away from Dole anyway), the GOP base was at best lukewarm about their nominee, and the GOP nominee himself ran the epitome of a lackluster campaign. Don’t forget 1996 is just a year after the Oklahoma bombings, so the face of anti-government rhetoric was no longer Ronald Reagan, it was Timothy McVeigh. Also, in 1996 the face of the GOP was not Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, or even Bush Sr., it was Newt Gingrich-nuff said. If anything, both Carter and Clinton should be taken to task for not doing better in the Midwest given the cirumstances they ran in.

In contrast, Kerry was challenging an incumbent president. Yes the Midwest had lost jobs on Bush’s watch. But Kerry also had to deal with an incumbent that a majority of Midwesterners (and Americans in general) liked and trusted personally. Kerry was also challenging a wartime president who was fighting a war that most Midwesterners (and Americans in general) thought was the right decision to make.

Illinois was the only state in the Midwest where Bush did not have an approval rating over 50% at the time of the election. Illinois was also the only state in the Midwest where a majority did not approve of Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. All other Midwest states a majority approved of the job Bush was doing and approved of his decision to fight a war in Iraq. Ergo, Kerry overachieved by winning 4 Midwest states (as opposed to one) and coming close in two others. Given Bush’ s high personal and job approval ratings in all non-Illinois Midwest states, it is a fairly certain conclusion that Kerry’s higher numbers were due to people voting for Kerry- as opposed to the proverbial “anybody but Bush.”

Kerry also won a greater percent of votes in every Midwest state than Clinton did in 1992. Kerry also bested Gore in all the blue and battleground Midwestern states save for two states that both men lost- Missouri and West Va. Nor was there a big dropoff from 2000 to 2004: Gore won 47.5% of the Missouri vote, Kerry 47.1% (Clinton won 47.5% in 1996).

Comparing the blue and battleground states from 1996 and 2004 is also instructive in debunking the “Midwest don’t like NE liberals” arguement. Except for West Virginia, Kerry’s and Clinton’s vote totals were very close to each other in every other Midwest blue or battleground state. For example, Clinton outdid Kerry in Missouri 47.5% to 46.1% and outdid Kerry 50.3%-49.2% in Iowa. On the other hand Kerry outdid Clinton 49.7% to 47.8% in Wisconsin and outdid Clinton 48.7% to 47.5% in Ohio. Indeed, had Kerry won Ohio but gotten the same Wisconsin percent Clinton recieved, he would have lost the electoral vote as Bush won 49.3% there. For the record, Kerry’s 48.7% of the Ohio vote virtually tied Carter’s 1976 total of 48.9%. Outside of that tie and LBJ’s landslide in 1964, not one post-1948 Democrat has won as great a percent of the Ohio vote as Kerry.

Another point to keep in mind is Kerry’s percent totals in the Midwest compared to the NE and the South. Kerry won 55.8% of the NE vote, 42.0% in the South, and 48.2% in the Midwest. The gap between Kerry’s Midwest and NE percent totals is 7.6%. The gap between Kerry’s Midwest and South percent totals: 6.2%. In contrast, at 42% of the vote, Clinton got only 1% more of the MW in 1992 than his southern total, 4% less than his NE total that year. Since 1996-and continuing in 2004- Democrat percent totals in the Midwest have been inching closer to their popular vote percents in the Northeast and away from their totals in the South.
Sigh, I can hear the Kerry doubters at Fox “news” and Dkos now.

“Wait a minute, Nick. While Kerry did well in the Midwest, he still lost the total Midwest vote 50.9% to 48.2%. Yes, he won the popular vote in the West (49.9%-47.8%) and the Northeast (55.8%-43.0%) and did better in the Midwest than in the South. Still, he LOST the Midwest popular vote, just like he lost the southern popular vote. How can you still claim the Midwest is moving away from the South?”
Tune in next time for: There is More than One Midwest

Battlebob
Thanks - that is a useful article & I have alot of place to put it!

2 unrelated disgusting things I have encountered already today:

- Fox News had a member of the Phelps family on that was so wacko even Colmes & Hannity thought so. I watched the uploaded video (which borders on watching Fox) and here's the link if you're interested (as a study in pathology vs pathology).
http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/2178.html
Those are the people who protest military funerals, saying the wrath of God is upon us. They blame 9/11 on gays & the Asian tsunami on the Swedes. They have less than 200 in their church & almost half are inbred family. Reading their bio, can see how they got wacky, as the patron of the church was a speedfreak wifebeater who forced his children to sell candy on the streets.
I wonder how they can afford to go all over the country & also their websites are tech/savvy & media/savvy. Most in the family are lawyers (in Kansas). I started crying when I saw them at Boston DNC (protesting) & was comforted by an Irish cop! The woman who freaked me out is the very one in the video.

- Guardian has a story about Sarkozy courting the Le Pen vote in France. The would be like McCain courting the border Militia vote, more or less. What disturbed me though was that every recent Guardian story I've read on the internet has this big color picture of Condi Rice in the middle of the story with "Condi in 2008?" - if you click on it, you go straight to NewsMax. Is the Guardian that hard up for advertising money, since they are one of the only news outlets not owned by Murdoch?!

Benson on the WH Staff
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/benson/

Ira,
Hoped you liked your visit to Phoenix and Sedona. The poor air quality in Phoenix drove us out but Sedona is a special place. We have relatives who live there and always enjoyed the place. The red rocks are pretty spectacular.
Jim Pederson is the former head of the Democratic Party in AZ and up to now I thought of him as a party hack. He didn’t really impress me any in 2004 but maybe he didn’t have a lot to work with.
He is pouring a lot of his own money into his campaign and was dead in the water (-20 points) until Kyl had a brain-fart about immigration. His real bias is showing and Pederson is savvy enough to take advantage of it.

Someone finally told the truth.

Jimmy Carter | Colonization of Pakistan Precludes Peace
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042406J.shtml
"For more than a quarter century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the United States and the international community," writes Jimmy Carter. "Israel's occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land, regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalized government, one headed by Yasir Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet."

I also phoned the Guardian & left a message.
I told them I was a loyal reader since 9/11/01 but that I didn't think they were so desperate as to have to advertise NewsMax & that I found it highly offensive to open their articles on the internet & find a color picture of Condi Rice in the middle of the article. I left my phone number & email.

Veritas
Hadn't strategists also planned to be able to fight in North Korea or against the Chinese at the same time as fighting Iraq, Iran & Syria?

Posted by: DiAnne at April 24, 2006 11:11 AM

Short conflicts/strikes/invasions yes; prolonged occupations no.

Whoa
Looks like Truthout made a mistake & wrote Pakistan for Palestine. It wasn't me! (see title of Carter link I posted just above)

Is anyone reading this blog planning on being at any of the following:

April 29 March (UFPJ) in NYC
April 30 March for Darfur 2-4:30 in DC

May 13-14 vigil for Mother's Day at the White House

Please let us know so we can coordinate reports.

If you want to support the Darfur march this weekend, here is a link:
http://www.moveon.org/pac/darfur/index.html

It's also on our front page, under petitions.

"You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!"

morrison lessofothers,
Otter

But you CAN petition the government. Or boot 'em out.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/9249

karen:

That sounds just a boot right to me.

chimpeach,
Otter

A real find: posted on Kos' Diary Rescue thread. Sandy has posted here occasionally; she is a Kos and DU regular, and she really got me with this:

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?p=29

karen, I saw that too and thought it was excellent. i love the new diary rescue feature. great concept.

Sandy,

It's great to see your blog is still up and running. I enjoyed the latest post.

Karen,

Thanks for bringing it to our attention. I too like that new forum in Kos because so many wonderful diarys get lost there.

Another place to look sometimes:
http://democraticdaily.com

Thanks Karen, and everybody. It's pretty easy to be inspired by someone as magnificent as John Kerry!!