June 2006 Archives

Yesterday I attended a small protest against big oil in Congress, which took place on the corner of 2nd and Massachusetts Avenue, NE, here in DC. There is an Exxon station there; it is where almost every national story on the high price of oil gets filmed, because their prices are always higher than surrounding stations (location, location, location), AND the lines are always long anyway. Great photo ops. It is also the location of the Heritage Foundation.

I spoke with an earnest young man (it was like going to the gym: mild workout, good for the abs) who was willing to engage with me about several issues: the Iraq War, the Vietnam War, the Economy, Education, and John Kerry. We bantered about these issues; he with his Rush Limbaugh scripted remarks, me with my own experiences and knowledge gained from doing actual research. He quizzed me on numbers; I chided him on a lack of investigative skills. I have heard the numbers quiz many times (“Do you know the % of soldiers who have reenlisted?” “Can you tell me how much we spend on social programs vs. the War?”, etc.) It is true that I do not carry these numbers with me; that many of us on the left don’t care for statistics and are, in fact, suspicious of numbers.

We tend to argue more from the larger patterns. I referred the young man to several sources for different budget numbers: the Common Sense Budget, for one. We actually agreed that No Child Left Behind started off as a better notion than it ended up. He asked me how I would change it and I told him: I believe in better public education and we ought not to be promoting private sector solutions that won’t work with the majority of urban or rural children.

On the Iraq War/Vietnam War he would not budge; the litany of already-tired and inaccurate lines came forth. When he went from terrorism in Iraq today to 9-11 in under a minute, I pointed it out. I asked him why we didn’t attack Saudi Arabia? He said, “They have too much oil”. Hmmm.

Our understanding of John Kerry was quite different too. Seeing as how I actually had some numbers and facts on that, he backed down. I told him he needed to rent and watch “Winter Soldier” so he could see where JK’s 1972 testimony came from. He allowed the possibility that he was under-informed on the quotes he claimed JK said. I told him google is a great thing. You can find the actual testimony and transcripts and think for yourself. The conversation ended when I mentioned Halliburton and other war profiteers. He stalked off. I think he thinks he won the argument.

I share this discussion because I want to encourage us to talk to such folks more often. This boy was bright and sweet and he took me on, as I did him, for practice. I also want to recommend a book. I propose we all read: He Talk Like A White Boy, by Joseph C. Phillips. The subtitle is Reflections on Faith, Family, Politics, and Authenticity. Joseph is an actor, a father, and a columnist/commentator on NPR; perhaps you have heard him. He is African-American and a conservative. He is also a good friend of mine and a former student.

I am reading his book with both joy and concern. I love this man and I know his struggles and his triumphs. Periodically he sends me emails asking for my opinion on something; I encouraged him to develop his one-man show, and was proud of the results.

His writing is truthful, often self-effacing and amused as well. He is an incredible husband and father and will break you of any stereotypes you may have about black men or Hollywood marriages. He is a man of faith in the way I wish others could be: when he wanders he is called back by wise and loving voices and he listens. He is tolerant of other faiths.

He is as authentic a conservative as anyone I ever talk with, and I find myself agreeing with him on many issues. We have talked about arts education, for example, and he would love to take on that issue, in support of more accessible arts programs for kids. He knows the value of creativity and innovation. But where his logic and arguments fall down are in the political arena. And it is here that his story, the young man’s from yesterday, and mine collide.

One of the funniest conversations I ever had with JCP was about six months after O.J Simpson made his escape on a white Ford Bronco, down the interstate, with helicopters flying overhead, while we all watched on national television. Joseph had decided that he, JCP, needed to buy a white Ford Bronco. No other color would do; he wanted THAT car. His wife, the ever-grounded Nic, refused to let him buy one. Joseph did about 15 minutes of monologuing about his right to have the car he wanted, most of which had us falling off our chairs and weeping with laughter. The fact that a Bronco is not the most fuel-efficient car was trumped by his right to own what he wanted to own.

How important was it to Joseph that his personal identification with such an instantly recognizable symbol of a successful black man overcame his values of conservation and a healthy planet for his children? (Full disclosure: I have had similar conversations with white men. Never with women, however.)

Where do identity and authenticity collide? Where is the authentic concern I know he feels for the future? To what do we owe our sense of ourselves; our beliefs and values in the way of truth? In his book, Joseph repeats untruths when he talks politics; he does not know these are untruths, but they are. The young man yesterday repeated untruths as well. And in all honesty, some of the talking points I have been handed at rallies and protests do not always ring true to me. I have to do some research, and come up with accurate and forward-looking frames.

On his website, Joseph has a video clip of appearances he has made. In one of these, he says George Bush has been better for black people than Bill Clinton. He is challenged on this point and stumbles over some stuff about small business loans and home ownership (either of which could be traced, with research, to Clinton policies). The young man yesterday and his friend told us that slavery had been abolished in this country and black people are better off now. While they did not draw a line between George Bush and the emancipation of slaves, the implication was clearly to the new black prosperity that Joseph points out.

The identity stories of prosperous African-Americans who can buy the global-warming cars of their choice, who are able to live by their core values and who are living better lives than their parents did are propagated throughout the conservative ideology. Joseph is a living, breathing example of same.

Aside from the arrogance of such ideology, one has to notice that, for most African-Americans, the ideals do not hold. Bush and the Republicans are outsourcing jobs, and cutting student loans. For too many young black men (and others), the military becomes an unexamined opportunity to build a future—if you live through it.

Authenticity then might need to include a more comprehensive understanding of the lives of everyday people in the United States today. But that perspective is part of the progressive identity code, not the conservative identity code. The conservative identity code asks its adherents to ride over the “negative, America-hating” stories of pain and suffering.

Of course, our side has these issues as well. The progressive identity code contains unprovables, and statements we make about “not fighting back” and “voting for the war” have us sharing common ground with the conservatives. These too are inauthentic but identifying statements. They just happen to be about ourselves.

The tension between authenticity and identity is palpable for all of us. How can we possibly reconcile them? How can we be inside the club and serving the interests of the club, while being truthful to the facts in the most comprehensive sense?

These conversations lead me to think about the differences in approach between the right and the left. I think our side tends to think forwards, not backwards, and we want things to be better for our children. I suspect conservatives want things to be like they think they were, better for their children, as they were in the past.

In the opening of the video on Joseph’s site, he says he supports the Bush-Cheney 2004 effort because he wants to overcome “forty years of failed liberal policies.” The fact that forty years precedes the passage of the Civil Rights Act is not addressed. In his book, he tells stories about his dad, and his sons, and there is a nostalgia for a simpler and clearer time, when the rules were clear and identity and belonging did not require so many inauthentic beliefs.

Conservatives like my young man, and like Joseph, can learn from the projecting forward nature of progressive thinking, just as we can learn from looking back, as conservatives do, to family and faith, and core values from childhood. We need to understand the longing they have for safety and a lifestyle of prosperity.

And they need to know that we are not reckless disregarders of those core values, but constructors of improved designs, building on the models of democracy and participation to fit the new width and depth of the world.

Evidence for beliefs and values must not be based upon what goes on inside an echo chamber. Nor can evidence be limited to what we heard yesterday but failed to examine, repeated within a closed system until it takes hold as belief. In that sense, the authenticity of who we are as a nation depends upon the shared marketplace of ideas, depends upon blogs, forums, book clubs, chats, conferences, phone calls, coffee, and all forms of media. We need to transcend identification as Americans, and become authentic citizens of the USA and the planet. Only then will our identity be, first and foremost, human being.

Score one for justice. From Adam Bonin via DKos:

In a 5-3 decision this morning (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld), the United States Supreme Court ruled that neither Congress's post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), nor the inherent powers of the President gave the President the authority to establish military tribunals on Guantanamo Bay to try and convict alleged enemy combatants in the war on terror. The Court found the commissions illegal under both military justice law and the Geneva Convention.

Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion, supported in its entirety by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Souter. In a separate opinion, Justice Kennedy joined enough of it to count. Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas all dissented, with the Chief Justice sitting out because he ruled in this case when it was previously heard by the D.C. Circuit.

We will update this story when the written opinion becomes available online. In the meantime, Adam links to both background on the case and the oral arguments.

I believe this is the first strike in the War On Bush's Illegal Use of His Fantasy Presidential Powers. More on this later after I have time to read and digest the opinion.

Please weigh in with your thoughts.

UPDATE: Opinion can be read here.

Despite the best efforts of Al Gore and millions of concerned citizens, the editors at the Washington Post are still oblivious to the threat of global warming.

It's not enough for the paper to run stories about new reports on disappearing glaciers, melting permafrost, and the like. We need editors and reporters who understand how the threat of global warming permeates their work, who don't let an opportunity go by to help readers make the connections between the mundane and unremarkable aspects of our lives and their accelerating threat of global climate change.

Take today's frontpage story ("The Superhighway to Everywhere") on the eve of the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s signing of the law creating the federal Interstate Highway System. There is the parade of statistics (47,000 miles of highway, 55,000 bridges, etc.), some sociological observations about fast food restaurants and Wal-Mart, rush-hour congestion, and air pollution.

But nowhere in this paean to highways and cars does reporter T.R.Reid mention global warming. Cars and trucks contribute 25% of all U.S. CO2 emissions. And with about 5%of the world's population, the U.S. produces roughly 25% of the world's greenhouse gases.

No one involved in writing or editing T.R.Reid's story thought to even mention the role of the Interstate Highway System in accelerating the production of greenhouse gases. Here we have what is often hailed as "the largest engineering project in history," a project that undergirds a suburbanized system of land development that requires burning ever-larger quantities of fossil fuels, and there is not a word about global warming.

With this kind of silent stupidity from one of the country's leading newspapers about one of the greatest threats to world civilization, it's hard to avoid the feeling that we are unlikely to save our world from the violence of unchecked global warming.

How about the Post send its entire remaining (they just gave "early retirement" to a huge bunch of reporters) editorial staff to a remedial course in how to incorporate the impact of global warming into as many stories as they possibly can?

Or maybe the Post could simply order all of its employees to check out Tom Toles every day: his cartoon today features a dark cloud labeled ("Global Warming Plague Number One")with a bolt of lightening that has knocked over a tree on the White House, with a caption over the White House reading "...but the pharaoh's head remained hard."

(For more on cars and global warming, check out the Union of Concerned Scientists.

I've been accused of being like a dog with a bone when I get on an issue. I can live with that. Proudly. And I am sure some will accuse me of that with my follow-up to Peter King's remarks about what constitutes treasonous behavior, a capitol crime, in this day and age. Again, I will live with that. Proudly.

In my previous post, I stated that enquiring minds want to know if Congressman King was including Karl Rove and Lewis Libby in his remarks about leaking information in wartime being a treasonous act.

So I called his office. Twice so far. I posted the first converstion on the thread of my first post.

Here's my transcript, as best as I could manage and still talk on the phone at the same time, of the second phone call. I imagine there will be a third. But in the meantime:

I called and spoke to "F" at King's office. The standard line from the King office phone staff was handed forth: F can't speak for the Congressman.

I said, "Who asked you to? It's just that the Congressman made remarks on what constitutes treason, and that would seem to include Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. It seems that he should have been on the record about this at some point, so what is his stand on that?"

F: Well, it's not the job of staff to do research for people
so you should look that up for yourself on the internet.

CM: Excuse me? No, that's not an acceptable answer. It is DEFINETLY your job to provide people with information on the Congressman's position on matters which he himself has chosen to take a stance on. So what's the Congressman's stand on people who leak government secrets, treason or not?

F: Well, those are two different things--different than the other.

CM: No F, it isn't. It's the same matter, with the slight moral distinction that one is protected free sppech by the First Amendment, and the other is a base political strategy. So what does the Congressman have to say about Libby and Rove.

F: I don't know. I can't speak for the Congressman, the person you would have to talk to about that is M.I.

CM: I see, and when will MI be available?

F: In two weeks.

CM: F, that's absurd. THe Congressman is getting a lot of media attention over this and you are telling me that the person handling that is out of the office for two weeks? I don't think so. Who's your supervisor, F?

F: (silence)

CM: Who's your supervisor, F?

F: ....no one.

CM: You don't have a supervisor, F? You're telling me that you are just hanging loose at the Congressman's office, doing as you please, with no supervision whatsoever? Is that what your telling me, F?

F: (silence) I have to take another call now. We have lots of calls today.

CM: F, I don't hear any phones ringing. Who's your supervisor? F? Who's your supervisor?

F: Um, A.D.

CM: I see, and what's A.D's title?

F: Intern Supervisor.

CM: So you're an intern, F. I'd like to speak to a real staff member please. How about R.T, the Congressman's Press Secretary?

F: He's busy.

CM: No he's not, F. Put me into his voicemail please.

F: I don't think I can do that.

CM: F, You're an intern, you don't have the authority to blow me off. Seriously, you don't, so put me into the voicemail please.

F: Umm...

CM: F., put me into his voicemail right now, please. Or you can put me into your supervisor's voicemail. It's up to you. I would suggest R.T's voicemail.

F: Okay, have a nice day.

CM: Thanks, F. You, too.
-------

This is the conversation as close as I could type it while I was talking to the intern. There is some part of the conversation left out in the beginning, establishing my bonafides, like F and I were born in the same hospital, that type of stuff. But I pick things up where we get to the meat of the conversation.

Now, will I ever get through the noise machine? I don't know, I will keep you posted. But that's not completely the point, is it?

The point is to make people accountable for what they say. To ask the questions that media should ask. To BE THE MEDIA.

If they won't ask the questions, we will.

Because someone ought to.

Flag desecration is being debated in the Senate. It must be close to the Fourth of July.

And once again, the media lapdogs oblige those who are against desecrating the flag, but clearly in favor of desecrating the Constitution.

It's hard to find a media lapdog more willing to let herself be used than Dana Bash. In her coverage of this story, she manages to use her "media math" skills, slant the story to Republican advantage, and give an example of flag desecration that isn't.

In the lead of her story she showed a Rock the Vote ad from the last century, with Madonna wrapped in the US flag, as an example of desecrating the flag, but the amendment being considered says nothing about wrapping oneself in the flag.

Why not show this picture of George Bush from a couple of weeks ago, writing his name on flags with a permanent marker, as an example of actual flag desecration that would be covered in the proposed amendment?

Her story is not just misleading. It's wrong.

As Editor and Publisher reports, the Republican Congressman from my birthplace, Peter King (R-NY), has labeled the actions of anyone who discloses classified information during wartime "treasonous". (emphasis mine)

WASHINGTON The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration Sunday to seek criminal charges against The New York Times for reporting on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.

Rep. Peter King blasted the newspaper's decision last week to report that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.

"I am asking the Attorney General to begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times -- the reporters, the editors and the publisher," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous."

While King was referring to the NY Times' reports of US Treasury Department's massive mining of financial database records, I am sure that in his quest to be the uber-patriot, he would include anyone who leaked such information during wartime.

As such, I am sure he is extremely concerned about Scooter Libby's role in the leaking of Valerie Plame's name to the press, and will be asking for Karl Rove to step down.

Or will he? Regardless of whether the courts ever pass judgement of the actions of the New York Times, does Congressman King also believe that Scooter Libby should also be charged with treason?

Enquiring minds want to know. And those enquiring minds can reach Congressman King's office to ask those question at 202-225-7896.

Please let us know if Congressman King supports the troops by removing traitors in his midst.

Media Math.

You know what that is. It's the math wherein the media says things like, "The country is deeply divided over the Terri Schiavo case", but in reality the country has an approximate 82% view that the government should stay out of the case completely. Or today, when CNN reports today's Supreme Court decision that has the court "deeply divided" over the Eighth Amendment, but the actual vote was 5-4.

Media math. It's not just limited to standing law. It's now available to misinform about future laws.

In Dana Bash's heavily Republican leaning story a few minutes ago, "Guarding Old Glory", she said that a "healthy majority of Americans, 56%, support an amendment against desecrating the flag".

By what special media math is 56% a "healthy" majority? A majority, yes, but hardly a "healthy" majority.

If the media is intent on using descriptive terms to describe the metrics of opinion, fine, but can we have some idea of what the terms they use actually mean? Absent that, it's just a bunch of manipulative nonsense.

Did you see this headline?

No, of course you didn't. And you won't. Because this is not part of the narrative that the media has set forth.

According to the media, setting a timetable for Iraq is cutting and running. But apparently, only if you are a Democrat.

Here's the real question: Other than Russ Feingold, why aren't Democrats all over the media about this narrative. This is a golden opportunity to demolish this nonsense.

What are they going to do with the opportunity? It's a simple question for the media: Why is it cutting and running when the Democrats want to set a timetable, but it's phased redeployment when the Republicans do it?

It's a question that every single Democrat in elected office should be asking on every media outlet everywhere.

The real swiftboating of Murtha is beginning.

The Agonist and Taylor Marsh are tracking things down. They are conducting a full and detailed fact-finding investigation on those behind it. They could always use help.

If you read through the comments, it's an interesting unfolding of how the smear merchants behind the campaign operate. The internet research line is very instructive.

Reporters should take note. This is how it's done.

[Editor's note: This piece comes to us from DCP member ABQJohn. Thank you, John, for lending your wonderful insight to the blog discourse.]

I am finishing a wonderful, albeit short, stint with the State of New Mexico’s TANF/Food Stamp Program that we affectionately call the Welfare Office. The mission of the office is to give the clients the education and motivation to get them off of public assistance. All of these folks are experienced social workers and all have a heart the size of New Mexico.

The program starts with education, and the first thing clients’ learn is the definition of insanity. The definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” We then move to motivation with a poster of a typical, Generation Y teenage girl with the familiar “whatever!” expression. On the poster is the phrase “If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always gotten.” We encourage clients to change their habits to achieve better with our help.

The oft-used Republican mantra of stay-the-course is much like doing the same thing over and over. I like to call that the Ed Smith approach. Edward John Smith was the captain of the Titanic who famously stayed his course right into an iceberg on April 14, 1912, sinking the mighty, world’s largest ship on its maiden voyage and killing 1,595 people on board. And if we keep doing the same thing, we’ll get the same results – just more of the same old same old and Americans and Iraqis deserve better than more of the same.

The next mantra oft used to malign Democrats is the cut-and-run approach. But it was the Democrats introduced not one but two plans on the Senate floor last week – both dying a slow and painful death by the Republican led Senate with no help from the Republican White House, a soon all-Republican Cabinet, and an arguably Republican Supreme Court. And just in case you think you missed the Republican plan introduced into Congress this week – there was none. What is happening in Congress is cut-and-run. Every time a serious debate of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan arises, the Republicans cut-and-run. They cut the debate short and run from the issue, oft reverting to the Ed Smith approach to certain failure. We need a change in this Congress in November so real debate can take place to get us out of Iraq and give the Iraqis back their country.

So if we continue to do what we’ve always done, we’ll continue to get what we always gotten, but to continue to do the same things over and over and expect a different result? That’s insane!

Anyone feel like it's August 2004 again?

I do. The media is suckling at the Republican narrative "Dems are divided...Dems are weak on National Security..." teat and what are the Democrats doing? I mean, what are the Democrats doing?

Moreover, what should they be doing?

Here's some advice from TRex over at FDL and I'd like to know what people think of this:

Which brings me to tonight’s topic. As netroots activists, we hear a lot of talk about the importance of "reframing the arguments", and I couldn’t agree more. But so few of our advocates in the public sphere seem to be taking that advice to heart. The whole "Lie and Die" thing is a nice try, Mr. Kerry, it’s short and it rhymes, sure, but it is still a response to the GOP’s charges of us being "cut and run" liberals. It still places us in the argument in a defensive crouch.

As long as we continue to form our strategies and sound bites around defending ourselves, the GOP will always win. They have consistently set the tone for every debate from gay marriage to the War in Iraq by arriving there first, seizing the moral high ground, and hurling accusations, which the vichy Dems seem more than willing to waste their time parrying, ducking and weaving around in a doomed effort to justify themselves to the electorate, no matter how absurd and disingenuous the accusations are. We always enter the debate on terms set by the Republicans. If we continue to do that, we will always, always lose.

Listen to me, Democrats! Never defend. Never explain. Attack, attack, attack! When a right-winger accuses you of something, back up, reframe, ignore the charges, just ATTACK. How hard can this be? Ann Coulter doesn’t waste her time defending herself against our accusations. Neither does Rush Limbaugh. They launch their attacks and the terms of the debate are set from there, and once again, as liberals, we are bringing knives to a gun fight.

To whit:

A Republican says, "All you liberals are cut-and-run traitors! You don’t support the troops!"

Instead of frantically beginning to tap dance and show that you’re not a traitor and that you do support the troops, you fire back, "Why are you Republicans such cowards? Your leaders are all draft-dodgers who’ve never fired a shot at anything but a bunch of canned quails and old lawyers. You’re using the troops as human shields against the midterm elections! Do you like seeing our brave men and women in uniform slaughtered and killed? Or are you just too much of a coward to face the consequences of your failed policies in Iraq? Which is it? Do you just hate the soldiers or do you hate your constituents?"

There. You have just put the burden of proof on the Repugnican that he/she isn’t a coward and that they don’t hate the troops. Then you set up a false dichotomy that they can’t answer without looking like a fool.

The rest of the entry is here. I'd like to know what people think of this approach. Please comment.

There are a couple of other strategies being floated out there and I will post on them later today for discussion.

I am posting these, because, as I have written on before, the Democrats will not be in charge of the narrative, because they are not in charge of the media. The only topics that will be covered in the media wil be Iraq, Immigration, fear and loathing. And it's up to the Democrats to deal with it. So the DCP will be posting several options, and we would appreciate your feedback.

This week we've enjoyed seeing a number of new messages and initiatives on Iraq by Senate Democrats and others answering to indictment-free Karl Rove's remarks last week that an Iraq exit strategy was "cut and run".

Jack Murtha's lively reponse, "Stay and Pay" came Sunday on Meet the Press, where he excoriated Mr. Rove, his cavalier attitude towards our military from his position of priviledge behind a desk in the White House and the main portion of his anatomy that occupies his desk chair.

This week, Senators Feingold, Boxer and Kerry presented a joint resolution calling for phased withdrawal from Iraq. As Sen. Kerry put it, the current Administration's plan is: Lie and die.

Enough.

Enough of the NY Times lazy crap journalism hit pieces on Democrats.

First it was the fifty interviews and no quotes in a story about Hillary and Bill's sex life. That was bad enough. But this morning, they put out a hit piece on John Kerry for his leadership in trying to end the War in Iraq. From Greg Sargeant at The Horse's Mouth, via Atrios:

Then the paper indulges in some highly questionable sourcing as it strains mightily to portray Kerry as calculating and political:

Senate Democrats have been loath to express their opinions publicly, determined to emphasize a united front. But interviews suggest a frustration with Mr. Kerry, never popular among the caucus, and still unpopular among many Democrats for failing to defeat a president they considered vulnerable. Privately, some of his Democratic peers complain that he is too focused on the next presidential campaign. (Emphasis added.)

Interviews "suggest" a frustration; his "peers" say he's political, though no "peer" is quoted saying so, even anonymously. Meanwhile, the piece also adds high up in the story that Kerry's position leaves Dems "open to Republican taunts that they are `cutting and running' in Iraq" without letting any Dem rebut that argument until the end of the piece. And of course the story features an obligatory reference to Kerry's "I was for it before I was against it" campaign gaffe.

This is really cheap stuff -- thinly sourced, factually questionable and bordering on snide -- and it's truly surprising that it got past any Times editor.

Not so surprising. Things have been steadily getting worse.

Using the passive voice to disguise shoddy journalism has got to end. If people aren't going to speak on the record, the Times needs to say so and say why. If not, they need to leave it out.

Today's assignment: BE THE MEDIA. Write to The New York Times and complain about this kind of garbage journalism.

P.S. Greg also adds in an update that the WaPo, in covering this same story, offers little better, reprinting a GOP press release. It's beginning to sound like some editors got some phone calls from some Republicans...

In the meantime, please write that letter to the NYT and post it here in the comments.

Enough is enough.

UPDATE: Feel free to comment on the numerous inaccuracies in the story, too, and post them throughout the blogosphere. If the NYTimes gets the story wrong, we should do what we can to get the correct information out there.

Gloria Borger tells Howie Kurtz the truth about the media's full, willing and paid participation in the Fourth Estate fluffing of the president that took place last week.

From the June 18 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, via Media Matters:

KURTZ: Gloria Borger, are journalists suckers for this kind of secret trip to Baghdad stuff? I mean, Bush was there less than six hours but got an avalanche of mostly positive coverage.

BORGER: I think we are suckers. Particularly if you're the one who gets to go on the pool, Howie, and gets to travel with the president on a secret trip to Baghdad. We do like these secret trips.

Believe it or not, we kind of like to be surprised, but I think if you're a bureau chief in Washington, you may be asking, "Gee, why didn't we have more information?" And when you ask that question, the answer you always get from the White House is, "Because this has to be shrouded in secrecy because this is a matter of presidential security. So we can't tell you more about this in advance." So you know you're being used, but in a way you kind of like it because it's good pictures.

KURTZ: You enjoy it.

I don't think they are suckers. I think they are whores. Memo to Gloria Borger: Enjoying your work as a media whore doesn't actually make you less of a whore. Nor does it vitiate your responsibility in the matter to tell the truth to your audience that the President of the United States is your john, and corporate media is your pimp.

The truth is not a matter of reflection. Borger and the rest of the media knew they were being used, when they were being used, not after. They said nothing and did nothing about it, in a continuingly bizarre and well-documented attempt to support and cheerlead a failed Presidency with failed policies. Their knowledge of being used by the White House for propaganda purposes was a contemporaneous fact. It should have been treated as such and made part of the original story, not part of an offhand comment during a Sunday chat show that no one watches.

In the meantime, reality continues grimly along (emphasis mine):

BAGHDAD, July 20--Two U.S. soldiers missing since an attack on a checkpoint last week have been found dead near a power plant in Yusifiyah, south of Baghdad, according to an Iraqi defense official.

Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Muhammed-Jassim, head of operations at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, said the soldiers had been "barbarically" killed and that there were traces of torture on their bodies.

So much for the "Hip, Hip, Haditha!" crowd.

And on one other sour note, this story was broken in the media before the families of the soldiers were notified because the Head of the Iraq Ministry of Defense made the announcement.

So much for our tremendous cooperation and coordination with the Iraqi government.

I am sure at some point in the future I will be more disgusted with the media complicity in the Iraq War, but it's hard to imagine when. They jumped into "embed" with the Bush Administration in the run up to the war, and they are still embedding down with them, uncritical and unquestioning.

I should probably stop calling them whores. Gives whores a bad name.

In the meantime, I have to wonder if anyone will ask Senators Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, John Cornyn, Saxby Chambliss and Ted Stevens if they still think amnesty for insurgents who kill US soldiers is a good idea...

[Editors note: The dateline on the Baghdad story is an error on the part of The Washington Post.]

For as long as I can remember reading about the glories of online communications, people have been celebrating the anonymity that the net can bestow. My favorite New Yorker cartoon for many years featured a dog in a chair sitting at a keyboard, telling a feline friend, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!"

But as we've learned this year, our friends over at the NSA and other Pentagon-based outfits not only know whether you're a dog, they know what kind of dog food you like, how many a times a day you go for walks, and what happened the last time you went to the vet's.

So when someone at the Pentagon sits down to read blogs, he or she can very quickly determine the identity of the writers of everything they're reading, and apply the appropriate filters and discounts.

But what about the rest of us? How much work should we have to do to determine the ideological underpinnings of a report of an organization we've never heard from before? Or how seriously do we need to take the latest rumor about the indictment of yet another Bush associate or member of Congress?

The time it takes to check out the backgrounds of the sources of rumors is not free: it's a cost, even if we're not billing anyone for it, and no one's paying us either. It's true that trust becomes a critical factor here, but trust takes times to build and nurture, and by its very nature, the net allows rumors to propagate much faster than the time it takes to establish whether a rumor is coming from a trusted source or not.

Without the multi-billion dollar resources of the NSA, the rest of us have had to develop our own systems for evaluating news from sources about which we knew little or nothing. I sometimes feel like every message should have a little box attached to the beginning or the ending where the sender could reveal as much, or as little, as he or she wanted about the background of the sender.

There would still be times when someone would legitimately want to keep such information murky or hidden, like corporate or government whistleblowers; but these people are far too few and far between.

So what do you do when you hit a comment or a claim that you wished were true, but don't know the author? Let's talk.

“Minnesota: On the front lines in the defense against Canada since 1858.”

Calling all members of the Democracy Cell Project…

Whether you are a daily poster, a crew member, or a lurker at the DCP website, we’d like your input at our next annual gathering of the DCP. This year’s gala/meeting/extravaganza/think tank/wine tasting will be held in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.

Friday, July 21 to Sunday, July 23.
But seriously, we’re all getting together in Minneapolis/St. Paul to talk about where the DCP will go in the next year, and how we can continue to increase our presence in the blogosphere and on the ground.

There is limited free housing available for those that cannot make the trip without it, and we will have details on that soon.

In the meantime, please mark your calendars for these dates, and start thinking about how the DCP moves forward.

Check back here for details in the coming weeks.

See you in Minneapolis/St. Paul!

More than anything, I think losing my father early in my life forced me to grow up faster than I wanted to. In many ways, learning about who that persona was in my life, what having a wise man inside of me to guide me through this world, helped me find the leader in myself. But I know that came at a price. I still miss the actual man.

Being a cook's daughter, one of the most amazing things I remember about my father was that during my summer vacations, I would work beside him as he ran his lunch truck to the lettuce, strawberry and broccoli fields in the Salinas Valley feeding hundreds of Mexican farmworkers every day but Sunday. Between fields (we had to feed three fields full of workers per day), he would whistle John Philip Sousa tunes and I would always find the piccolo line to whistle along with him. Invariably, we would both whistle so loud and ridiculously we would both break down in laughter, the dust of the field flying behind us.

It wasn't an easy job. The rest of the year he was up at 3 in the morning, leaving our house and going in to cook breakfast, prepare hot lunches and dinners day in and day out. When he got home, he immediately went to sleep, just as I was doing my homework after school. I didn't see him enough when I was a kid, so these summer days were precious.

We lost Dad in my eighteenth summer, suddenly. He survived his first heart attack, retired happily, and we had full days with him for about a year. He saw me graduate from high school with honors, and prepare for my first year in college. He didn't survive his second attack.

I look at my niece now, who's had a wonderful childhood and adolescence. Her father's there, with video camera, at her graduation, her latest tap concert. He's there as we walk her through Introduction Day at Cal Berkeley. He's there to assist her through the big decisions of her life, guiding her through a decision tree about which school to go to, and coaching her through her logic and emotions to make one of the many important decisions of her life. Teaching her about how to lead herself.

Now I can't say that its ONLY the man in the house who helps a child find their way through the world. There are many members of one's family--blood and extended, regardless of gender, age, affiliation, who provide the leadership deep from within themselves, who defy the common stereotype and inspire others to nurture their personal leader inside. When I look at Father's Day now, the soul gap of losing Dad so early is filled by the leader I found in myself, through friends, through family, through community. And I look to each and every one of them today with love.

So I dedicate this thread to the fathers amongst us, here or gone, next to us or inside of us. Wherever they are. Its because for me, they have held, inspired, and led me, whistling through the long dusty roads and the darkness. And because they are in my life, I have my place in this world.

Folks who remember that they are Christians only when it comes time to campaign, had better expect to answer a few questions on the topic, or expect to be exposed as Doug Feith's competition for the stupidest ******* guy on the face of the earth.

Yes, Congressman Westmoreland, we are looking at you.

From The Colbert Report, we learn that Congressman Lynn Westmoreland (GA-8), who co-sponsored four separate bills to display the Ten Commandments in the courts, etc., can't actually name the Ten Commandments.

Anyone want to take a guess at how many he can name?

Watch the video (courtesy of Crooks and Liars) for the answer. It's priceless.

It's Campaign Season Christians like Westmoreland that make the baby Jesus cry.

Michael Kinsley writing in WaPo. As the blog folks say, just go read the whole thing...

The Name Is Kafka . . . Franz Kafka

By Michael Kinsley
Friday, June 16, 2006; A25

"So put aside your Captain Crunch decoder ring," recommends the Central Intelligence Agency, "for the moment." This is on the Internet site of the CIA's legal department. It's part of a pitch for recruits so startlingly moronic -- even as an attempt at adorable self-mockery -- that you think it must be some subtle comment on the double meaning of the word "intelligence." In good hall-of-mirrors fashion, it's lifted from some book, but the book quotes supposedly real CIA employees. Whatever, this is the agency's self-presentation on its own Web site.

"If the theme music from Mission Impossible runs through your head," it says, "or you get the urge to order a martini 'shaken, not stirred,' at the mention of the letters 'CIA,' '' -- why, then, you're just the kind of lawyer we want!

"We've been a major player in developing the law of national security vs. the First Amendment," the agency deadpans. "Or the Fourth Amendment. . . ." When "Americans [abroad] come across on our screen, they've got constitutional rights we've got to think about . . . . Or electronic surveillance . . . . In areas like that, we're helping to create the law, and that's a real rush."

God help us...

And it's all true. The CIA is in the forefront of efforts to make sure that democracy, individual rights and stuff like that don't get in the way of our crusade for the spread of democracy, individual rights and stuff like that.

Go. Read.

(hattip to DW and Jim P at Dkos)

As the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq is crossing a tragic milestone of 2500, the new Iraqi unity government announced its amnesty program for the insurgents/freedom fighters who killed them:

BAGHDAD, June 14 -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday proposed a limited amnesty to help end the Sunni Arab insurgency as part of a national reconciliation plan that Maliki said would be released within days. The plan is likely to include pardons for those who had attacked only U.S. troops, a top adviser said.

Reconciliation could include an amnesty for those "who weren't involved in the shedding of Iraqi blood," Maliki told reporters at a Baghdad news conference.

This ought to tell us everything we need to know about how the Iraq government feels about the US troops in their country.

I have few questions: How is supporting a government that grants amnesty to people killing your troops, actually supporting the troops? How many troops need to be killed in order to really, really be supporting that government?

And for the Tom Tancredo supporters, how come we support a government that grants amnesty for killers, but won't support a government that grants amnesty to minimum wage undocumented workers? For all of those that do not support amnesty for undocumented workers, but do support the war in Iraq, I'd like a full explanation of the philosophy behind that type of thinking.

Just asking.

Redford Talks About the Apollo Alliance

The Backbone Project folks take the Chain Gang through the space (Condi looks familiar, no?)

Hillary Clinton was forceful! Not entirely for troops coming home yet, but forceful...

Nancy Pelosi voted against the war...she reminded us

Fire in that eye!

JK and his sidekick, the ever-lovely Marvin

Russ Feingold reasons and shares the truth.

Just got off the phone with Karen. Our crew is working to overcome networking problems at the Hilton and will post new threads on today's events later today.

Today's highlights will include the addresses by Senators Russ Feingold and Barack Obama.

So stay tuned...

At the first event of the 2nd day of the Take Back America conference, Hillary Clinton threw plenty or red meat to the crowd. She started with what she called “the overwhelming need to return integrity to our voting system,” calling on the crowd to spend the next few months going to local and state election officials to do everything possible to make sure every vote counts: “To take back America, we have to take back our electoral system.”

She hailed Democratic victories at stopping the worst excesses of the Bush administration, from the gay marriage amendment to the estate tax, despite the party's minority status.

But in a theme she returned to several times, she emphasized the importance of throwing the Republicans out of Congress in November.

The only sour note came when she started to talk about the war. There were scattered boos as she started in, with some people shouting out “Stop the War.” Clinton was unflustered, and powered on through the rest of her speech, to a largely standing ovation, and a rush of well-wishers as she left the stage.

Carol Sharick is a mom, an administrative support staffer at a small liberal arts college, a blogger, and a local activist.

Here at the DCP we know her dry sense of humor and level-headed commentary. She was selected by the progressive community as the best entrant in Campaign for America's Future "What is a progressive?" contest.

Here is her winning entry:

“A progressive is someone who understands that it is the people of our country who make it great, and unless we take care of the people first, we'll never be successful in maintaining our greatness. Taking care of the people means providing healthcare for everyone. It means keeping the environment clean, safe and preserved. It means great schools and great jobs. It means improving the lives of families, rather than lining the pockets of big business, or big politicians. It means taking care of each other here, and around the world. We're all in this together.”

Carol is sitting next to me at the Bloggers' Row table. She is here as a special guest of Take Back America. We talked...

Hot on the heels of our coverage of The Yearly Kos Convention in Las Vegas, we are continuing our reporting of the best political happenings.

Watch this space for our first live blogpost from convention, opening this morning in Washington, DC.

In the meantime, I hear Dick is hanging out, waiting for Robert Redford to stick his head in the door. Poor Dick--he gets all the crappy assignments, doesn't he?

Having a sense of direction in Las Vegas is absolutely critical to sanity and survival. First of all, heat is always the factor--as the city-within-a-city sized casinos will attest. One can easily get lost trying to find an exit from the hotel casino out onto the street. It is one big blur, exacerbated by the absolute need to avoid the extreme dry heat and the endless array of lights, few trees, except those grown in The Mirage, and the vehicular pollution. You can actually live in one of these hotels and never see daylight for days, weeks at a time. Odd place to talk politics?

Not really.

Now that its over, DiAnne and I, members of the DCP West, decided that our final report on the conference would be a cultural de-brief on Las Vegas, politics, and the general cultural vertigo we two west coasters experienced here in the land of heat, sin, depravity, greed and most recently, blogger politics.

Mixing the phantasmagorica of Las Vegas culture with national politics seems, oddly enough not a big stretch.

Evidence in point, Governor Mark Warner's party on Friday night for the blogosphere at the Stratosphere--the LV equivalent to Seattle's Space Needle--only with oxygen bar, full array of mall retail, and aquamassage (available in the casino lobby, not the party).

After my massage, we went up to the 109th floor of the Stratosphere. DiAnne and I looked across the nighttime Vegas landscape, replete with mega-hotel skyscrapers, the ant-like traffic below, While musing by the veggie and mashed-potato bar, the vodka martini trays, the band, with Blues-Brothers impersonators and the ubiquitous Elvis impersonator, I had to ask DiAnne to pinch me. Was that big "Star Wars" type contraption floating at roughly the same height as the top of the Stratosphere REALLY shooting laser death rays down at the city?

Never when I began blogging three years ago, that I would imagine myself blogging in a national netroots convention where the Democratic Senate leader would be exhorting us, the commnity of bloggers from around the country---to help him out.

Harry Reid is face-to-face with close to 1,000 "influentials" from the Democractic netroots and he's about to throw down a gauntlet to the Administration. Tonight's keynote with Senator Reid is the last of four major keynotes this convention which already presented former Governor John Warner, Senator Barbara Boxer and DNC Leader Howard Dean.

Receiving a warm welcome, he recognized as a former fighter that he's in a roomful of fighters who are making sure the truth is heard, who believe in the power of sharing the truth with others. Thanking us for standing up to the Swiftboat attack on John Kerry, defending Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson against Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, and helping win key victories in Social Security and against the nuclear option--he also revealed that next week, he will introduce new legislation requiring intelligence community professionals to monitor and back up in writing every word Administration officials utter about Iran.

(A full broadcast of the speech will be available at www.fora.tv, compliments of LinkTV, who are supporting this convention.)

He's laid out three major challenges for the netroots:

1) Call them on it
Reid urged bloggers to make clear where we stand on the issues. We need to dispel the urban myth by the opposition that we don't stand for anything. We need to call the administration out on their divisive political schemes.

2) Be the Megaphone
The Iraq War is Bush's war. It's time for HIM, not a future president, to find a way to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.

3) Never Give Up
Get out into your communities and make sure Americans understand the need for a new direction.

Reid summed up best what keeps us all typing away, researching, getting passionate about and following through--whether its an issue, a candidate, or a whole movement. "If we're going to change the direction of this country, it requires the hard work of us all. I've talked tonight about the power you have online, but each of us has power off-line as well".

We know as bloggers that power is your belief in yourself that you can change and can create change. Starting with one. Building on to many.

Our leaders recognize our passion and commitment is not a passing trend. They feel it. They feel us. And showed it by their presence here at this convention this weekend. And we help give them the courage to push hard on this Administration while they're in the House and the Senate. We need to continue giving them more--now, the next five months as Senator Reid asked, and the next two years and beyond---until we have retrieved the country we all want.

Continue to believe. There is so much at stake.

Mark Warner is making a high-profile, much-anticipated lunchtime appearance at Yearly Kos, here in Las Vegas. We open with a biographical videotape and an introduction by Markos. We are given t-shirts and the video highlights many of Warner's accomplishments. Like several courting the netroots, Warner could possibly be a contender for the 2008 Presidential election.

And now, Governor Warner. He has visited 23 states and visited 4 countries since leaving office a few months ago. He sees energy and optimism in this room. He has seen what the netroots are doing in every state he has been to. He reminds us that we are running 423 candidates for the House. He applauds the new set of energy brought to conventional politics. He favors the 50 state focus vs attention to a few swing states.

Virginia is a so-called "red state." He tells us people there are tired of being labelled and ready for a change. We need to take the energy we have here and take it back with us into our communities, into our streets.

He is a public school product, another lawyer who worked for the DNC, started an eneergy company that went broke, failed at real estate and slept on his friends' couches. At 26, in 1982, he discovered the world of cellular phones, an emerging technology at that time. "Go ahead and tell your cell phones back on," he says. He gets points for humor.

He emphasizes his education and healthcare focus. When campaigning for government in 2001, there had not been a Democratic Governor since the 1960s. He presents as a self-made man who believes in people having a fair shot. He seems very aware of changes in technology as it affects service delivery and even security. He favors change and adaptation in politics, something very consistent with the message of this Conference. It could be framed as "Future vs Past."

He seems to have updated several sectors in Virginia. He needs to articulate his vision for America and this is the place to do it. This is the audience that is ready to hear it. We'll hear alot of speeches from alot of contenders from both parties.

It is a thrill to see new media, new people, new politics and a new agenda all in one place. It is a thrill to see a room full of tables of people with laptops and cameras - ordinary citizen activist/reporters from all over the country. It's exciting to see Markos of Daily Kos walk in with his wife and son, who are coming to see Howard Dean, and to hear that Markos will be interviewed on Meet the Press, that this Yearly Kos conference is covered on the front page of the N Y TImes.

Howard Dean starts by telling us that the politics of the right isn't working. He reminds us that younger people who were disappointed at the outcome of the last election have a short time horizon, that the movement to take back the country for real American values will take time and it's a daily fight. The opposition realized this 35 years ago but this is not about the Republican and Democratic parties - it's about the United States of America.

He urges us to appeal to our best instincts, not scapegoat. We are not the people who put the interests of party ahead of the country and we will not. He tells us that this is about all of us - this is the true Town Meeting where everyone gets to speak, and that the DNC has an Internet Department that reads what bloggers say all day long. This is a grassroots movements from the bottom up. The new politics is about trusting people in their own neighborhoods to do the right thing.

"The Innocents Abroad" is what Fe calls us, here in Las Vegas for Yearly Kos.

We found each other under the Celine Dion billboard next to Starbucks at the airport. Cabbing by the fancy hotels with the Luxor Pyramid two doors away from a Disney-looking castle, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, we also had a brief glimpse of the economic infrastructure of Las Vegas, with billboards advertising for bikini bull riders and mud wrestlers.

At the hotel, the demographics changed from wild-eyed gamblers to liberals/progressives, a stark contrast.

MARKOS SPEAKS

Our first event was the Keynote address by Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. He summarized the phenomenal development of the political internet. He encouraged all the individuals who wanted to run for public office, who had not felt they were qualified enough before, to take the leap. He emphasized how we are making conservatives outright lose or at least waste hug sums of money, something few would have anticipated.

Mainstream media assumes bloggers are young and naive. The average age of a Kos reader is 45, according to http:www.blogads.com. The media will have to make sense of all the blue hairs. (And there are a phenomenal amount of media here!)

There is intelligence in the blogosphere - we actually know what it is like to live in Bush's America. People from all corners of the party's ideological sphere can bicker and fight but come together on election day. Candidates are coming close to winning or they are winning, with half the money! (He is referring to primary elections). In Montana, Conrad Burns could go down. Joe Lieberman has gone from a 65% to 19% lead to a 55% to 40% lead in just a month's time.

The White House press corps is the reason the reality-based community was born, as Markos said. This is the Age of People Power Media. The Colbert address to the DC press community was an example - the media tried to ignore it, pushed an article that said it "wasn't funny." They didn't anticipate all the people who watch C-Span on a Saturday night, who aren't losers, but visionaries! The Colbert address was all over the web with over 3 million downloads as an iTunes item, causing the C-Span site to actually crash.

More thoughts from Kos: This is a world where truth telling is a gaffe. The media elite and political elite of both parties have failed us. Republicans can not govern, Democrats can not get elected. Now it's our turn (the grassroots).

Whether you agree with Markos or not, this is the 2nd time I've seen him and he possesses a good resource - common sense. He believes in reform - if they refuse to reform they need to be relegated to the dustbin of history. He says this with conviction. I think he believes it.

I've been following the ongoing CIA leak investigation since 2004. During the Kerry campaign, I've chatted with and interviewed Ambassador Joe Wilson. Lately, I've become an avid fan of Christy Hardin-Smith's coverage of Plamegate and the Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's proceedings at Firedoglake.

For Yearly Kos, Jane Hamsher put together a dynamic panel on the CIA Leak Investigation: mainstream journalists, bloggers, a former CIA professional and colleague of Valerie Plame, and Ambassador Wilson himself to dissect not only the Administration's role in the coverup, but the role of the mainstream media, and the blogosphere and netroots in the development of the story and the case.

Each panelist provided a powerful perspective on the case and the media's role in it, from Joe Wilson's personal story as well as his broader political view on the seriousness of the leak, to Larry Johnson's scathing diatribe against those who dare commit treason in the name of protecting the current Administration.

Marcy Wheeler aka Emptywheel discussed her coverage of Judith Miller's role in protecting sources in the Libby case. Dan Froomkin acknowledged the role of the blogosphere in keeping the fire under the story in an ironic show of bravery, given his role as a panelist here and his employer. Murray Wass was quietly circumspect about his ongoing coverage in the National Journal on the Grand Jury activities and the Libby defense team. Christy Hardin-Smith rounded out the panel with her coverage of the Grand Jury's proceedings with her years experience as an attorney (a recovering one), and a reality-based summation of how Grand Juries REALLY work.

I am sitting on the floor at the front of a crowded hall.

Wesley Clark is discussing his education in Arkansas and comparing it to what is taught now. In conservative regions, well-meaning teachers are running scared. They do not have the kind of support network that will let them fully engage young minds. They have to carefully couch their words so that not one student will go home and say, "Teacher is saying there is something older than Genesis."

Someone noticed that an apple fell off a tree and Newton figured out in the 17th century that there was a force called gravity. Instead, he could have said that God punished him for being idle, under a tree, and made an apple fall on his head.

As a child, Clark read geology, paleontology. He loved Roy Chapman Andrews, who called bones and rocks by their actual names, instead of saying God put them there to test his faith.

He believes in incredible mysteries in the universe. He sees no way that the pursuit of knowledge is threatening to humanity. He recommends Leonard Susskind's new book, which turns Intelligent Design on its head by conceiving multiverses rather than a universe. There may be many universes and we're here in this one. It may be different universes where physics works differently. Who knows?!

Clark believes we were put on earth to use our hands, eyes, ears, intelligence to learn, create - we must do it because it's in our nature. We must ask impossible questions. We can't be any other way. We are no different than our ancestors of thousands of generations ago. They looked up at the stars and asked what were those specks of light. He believes we are closer and closer to finding out and that God wants it that way.

He recommends we support science, call up talk radio and argue, push for a new national strategy for excellence in science and investment in our young people in science and technology. We simply must.
He also opposes proselytization in the Armed Forces and believes it's wrong.

More to come later after the panel discussion.

[Editors Note: DiAnne and Fe will be reporting live all weekend from Yearly Kos Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada.]

I understand the Democrats have television commercials running during the World Cup Soccer games. This, I assume, is to reach out to Hispanic/Latino voters. It's a great idea and shows some creative thinking on the part of the Democratic Party.

Which got me thinking--are there any ideas out there that you have heard of or come up with yourself that you would like to see implemented for your party? There will be opportunities next week to for the DCP to share these ideas with others.

Over the next week, we will be attending and covering Yearly Kos Convention in Las Vegas (opening today), and the Take Back America Conference (beginning on Monday). We will be live-blogging the proceedings and bringing ideas back here, but we would also like to share ideas with others.

So post your ideas and thoughts on this thread, and we will be happy to put them out to the larger audience of organizers.

And not to be lost in this discussion, is that many areas will be gearing up over the next few weeks for the fall elections. Getting others involved and activated is critical. What will you be doing to get others involved? What are you doing in your area? And finally, what would you tell someone who have never been involved in politics, but is starting to feel an urgency about the mistakes our government is making?

How do you turn emotion into action on the ground for someone who has never been politically active?

Anyone who's hung around national politics for a few election cycles can tell you that the process is enough to make almost anyone temporarily crazy, if not push you completely into the deep end.

Third-party notions are especially likely to induce flights of fancy uninformed by more than a century of sad results, at least from the perspective of those who believed that a third party might actually replace the Ds or the Rs.

Now comes Unity08, one of the stranger manifestations of the third-party illusion, with a whole gang of illustrious advisors from both parties, mixed in with a bunch of current college students.

With a pox on both Ds and Rs, Unity08 envisions a 2008 ticket with a D president, R vice-president, or vice-versa. The implication appears to be that both parties are equally responsible for the various messes our country is in today.

This conclusion itself raises some profound concerns about the sanity of the entire Unity08 venture: who do the founders of Unity08 think is in charge of the federal government these days anyway? Both parties? I don't think so. If one party controls the House and the Senate and the White House, wouldn't it be logical to conclude that that party was largely responsible for the state of government today?

If you think you can explain any internal coherency in the Unity08 strategy, please feel free to share your analysis here.

I see that the next stop on the Republican's campaign swing through the Senate legislative agenda is the Flag Burning Amendment.

The Flag Burning Amendment is a cheap and embarrassingly transparent cheap political ploy by Republicans. They are attempting to make anyone who has the good sense to oppose this amendment, usually Democrats, appear unpatriotic.

The message is simple--anyone who desecrates even so much as a symbol of our country's freedom clearly hates America and that for which it stands.

Maybe one of the good Senators who support this amendment can answer this question for me: How come burning the flag is wrong, but using the US Constitution for cheap political gain is perfectly okay?

One look at the calendar and you know that some headlines just write themselves.

It's 6-6-6 and Satan's Workshop is in session in Washington, D.C. again this morning, trying to build hate into the U.S. Constitution.

In a sharply parallel move, we find out yesterday that the Pentagon has decided to leave some parts of that quaint document, The Geneva Conventions, out of the U.S.Army Field Manual, the book that governs our troops' behavior.

And we have Ann Coulter greeting us this morning on The Today Show.

Hate, it seems, is all around. It's a strategy, a means to an end, and that end is usually power. Nothing new there. But what's new to me is this overwhelming prescience about the onslaught of hate that is yet to come in the next few months leading up to the election.

In 2002, they used anger.

In 2004, they used fear.

Now, they will use hate.

How do you fight hate as a political weapon?

Well, it's that time again. The political circus is in town.

Time to call gay people queers, dykes and fags, and act like they aren't valuable contributing, tax-paying, law-abiding members of our family and community.

It's also known as the summer before an election.

I don't get it. And maybe someone can explain it to me.

What on earth have gay people ever done to make others hate them for nothing but the fact that they are gay?

Now, I am pretty sure I can list some of the accomplishments and contributions that gay people have made to the world in art, science, literature, philosophy, military defense and...let's just say it--gay people have contributed in every field of study.

Every field. There is no question of this.

So would someone kindly explain to me why a certain percentage of Americans see gay people as such a threat? Honestly, can we have a few facts or examples to enlighten the tolerance crowd?

I'm asking because of the Constitutional Amendment On The Need For A National Expression Of Ignorance And Bigotry that is set to be debated and voted on by the US Senate this week.

Despite the fact that we have real problems that need real solutions here in America, this is what the Senate will be working on this week. All week. Not the threat of Osama bin Laden. The threat of Joe Smith marrying Joe Smith.

Since we hear time and again the threat of Terrorism and the War on Terror, can I please hear about the Threat of Gay People and the need to have a War on Gay People? This time, can we include a fact-based discussion?

I'd like to hear at least one Senator who plans to vote for this garbage (and the list of pander bears is shockingly long) tell me what gay people have ever done to hurt America.

Absent that, I want my tax money back that's paying for the Senate to be in session this week.

I may have to put up with the noise and the elephants crapping in the streets when the circus comes to town, but I shouldn't have to pay for it.

I have collected some of the documentary offerings from the Film Festival and Folklife Festival, both of which started last weekend in Seattle. Many of these will be travelling around the country this summer or can be rented. If they are not available where you live, there are ways to rent some of them long-distance or some will soon be available on-line. I also signed up to help organize both festivals next year, so if you hear of documentaries that should be aired, please send them along. It just seemed like a good thing to do.

Documentaries from the Folklife Festival:

In The Land of the Free (US)
Two Arab immigrants living in Seattle discuss their decisions to come to the United States and experss concerns that the freedoms that drew them here are diminishing.

Benaat Chicago: Growing Up Arab and Female in Chicago (US)
Arab-American teenage girls growing up on Chicago's South Side talk frankly about stereotypes and racism they face while expressing pride in their cultural heritage.

The Letter: An American Town and the "Somali Invasion" (US)
An insulated, predominantly white town becomes center of controversy when its Mayor sends an open letter to 1100 newly arrived Somali refugees informing them that the city's resources are strained and to please encourage other Somalies not to move there.

The Bride Market of Imilchil (Morocco)
For three days each September, men and women gthre in front of the Imilchil shrine to choose mates and marry in a nearby tent.

On Boys, Girls & the Veil (Egypt)
A young actor faces family pressure to marry. He is filmed on his daily rounds, during which he and his friends talk about work, marriage, gender politics and the hibab.

Beat of Distant Hearts (Algeria)
Sahawari refugees express their collective experiences through poetry, song and painting. These formerly nomadic artists struggle to keep their culture alive while fighting for independence in this last colony of Africa.

Folk Music of the Sahara (Libya)
The intoxicating folk music of North Central Africa comes alive in this visual feast. Entrancing rhythms and wailing vocal choruses punctuate scenes of stunningly dressed at celebrations.

Through A Thousand Children (US)
A Palestinian-American teenager reflects on his participation in a local chldren's peace project.

My Scarab (US)
In Arabic, "saraab" means "mirage", a metaphor often used for survival in the midst of war. An Itaqi political refugee seeks solace through painting and carving when confronted with his past and loss of hope.

United for Peace and Justice folks suggest the following actions for people opposing the Iraq War. On this Saturday morning, following yesterday's thread header and passionate discussion, it seemed to me that we might be craving some sane actions to take. So here we go:

As horrible as the November 2005 massacre in Haditha was, it appears to be the tip of the iceberg. Today's news brings reports of another alleged mass killing of civilians by U.S. troops in Iraq, including a 6-month-old baby, last March.

While the details of that incident remain murky, the story of Haditha has now been told in chilling detail by numerous respected sources. In a several-hour-long rampage, a group of U.S. Marines shot 24 Iraqi civilians execution-style, at close range -- among them a 77-year-old amputee confined to a wheelchair and seven children ranging in age from 1 to 15. A 41-year-old woman was killed while trying to shield the youngest baby with her body.

U.S. soldiers shot these innocent people. But ultimately, it was U.S. policy that killed them. We need to be sure that /all/ of those responsible for these deaths are held accountable -- not just the individual Marines who snapped and committed terrible atrocities, but every politician from Congress to the White House who has supported this indefensible war.

*TAKE ACTION* We need to keep the public dialogue going about Haditha, the war, and political accountability. We encourage you to call into the talk shows on your local radio stations and to write letters to the editors of your local newspapers. (Click here to take action.) See our talking points for more detailed ideas about how to frame the issue.

I was only seven years old, but I remember the news reports of the My Lai Massacre.

I remember sitting in the late night glow of the black and white television with my father, watching Tom Snyder on Tomorrow, conduct groundbreaking interviews about the massacre. I remember the public sadness and outrage. It was real. It was palpable.

It was on the Nightly News.

And now we have Haditha. And what is likely the Haditha cover-up. I know that I feel sadness and outrage, and I suspect that all of you reading this post feel that, too, but where is the public sense of right and wrong on this issue?

People I have spoken with either don't know, or don't really "get" the importance of Haditha. I understand the lack of shock. But I don't understand the seeming lack of emotional reaction.

Is it me, or is the public yawning at yet another atrocity commited in the name of democracy?

[UPDATED at 10:40 AM (EST): More from the BBC here, and Iraq Prime Minister statement that US forces are committing violence against Iraqi on a daily basis (registration required for NYT article). Hattip to Aravosis for additional stories. Will this be the tipping point for American outrage? If not, what will?]

We woke up this morning to the snarling face of Condoleezza Rice on the front page of the Post. While we are used to unsettling photographs in the Post and tend to brace ourselves as we open the door and prepare for the stomach-turning headlines, today's was startling in its ferocity. Casey had called and warned us, but even that heads-up was not enough.

Under the photograph, Rice is quoted as saying that "Iran needs to make some changes." Hmmmmm. We didn't know we were in a position to demand "changes". Iran hasn't been terribly interested in getting back into our good graces. In the dating world, demanding changes from someone who has shown no interest in a relationship does not win points towards the cool lunch table...

Is this the new "robust diplomacy" President Bush refers to? We reflect upon the history of such ultimatums in previous international relationships...

Personally, while I celebrate the entrance of the new IDEA of diplomacy, I am not sure that the Bush Administration really has the same operational definition that I do.

How about you? How do you define diplomacy? If it was YOUR picture on the front page of the Post, and they were quoting YOU, what would it look like? What would it say?