The GOP 2004 meme
One meme the GOP hopes will carry them through the '04 cycle with their hides intact is becoming apparent. An RNC statement attacking the Democratic presidential MSNBC debate was headlined "Democrats So Desperate to Attack President Bush, They Will Say Just About Anything!"
Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the RNC said, "They're all Howard Dean now. They have adopted harsh, bitter, personal attacks as their approach. They are a party of protest and pessimism and offer no positive agenda of their own."
So this is at least the first meme the GOP will put in the water supply to try to convince America that GOP is a party which can govern and deserves four more years. Bitterly attacking the Dems with no policy basis, claiming that the Dems are just bitterly attacking them with no policy basis. Kinda funny, really.
We are the Party of Protest. Yes. Against tax cuts for the wealthy, endless budget deficits, reckless and ruinously expensive military adventurism, and the murder of 359 U.S. service men, 1500 Iraqi civilians and 3 million American jobs, by this Administration and this GOP controlled Congress.
We are the Party of Pessimism. Yes. Pessimism about the GOP's fitness to govern this country. Pessimism that anything will improve with the GOP at the wheel. They've had their chance to show what they can do, and the result has been an disaster of interstate pile-up proportions. The GOP needs to be put in the backseat where it can't do any more harm. We'll even provide them with a distracting illusion of control.
We offer no Positive Agenda. Except health care for all Americans, restoration of American credibility in the world, equitable taxes, balanced budgets, educated and healthy children, new American jobs, robust and beneficial enviromental protection, an alternative fuels policy to wean us off petroleum dependence, a sane anti-terrorism policy, the protection of the civil rights of all people. They must mean besides that.
We offer harsh, bitter, personal attacks. How dare we attack the usurper, an illegitimate and unelected President who stole the election with illegal military ballots, an illegal and racist voter role purge, violent protests, threats of insurrection, personal intimidation, and the aid of a suborned and corrupt Supreme Court. How dare we be bitter about Bush, who lied to drag a psychologically wounded nation into an unnecessary war which has claimed 359 American lives and counting, mired us in a quagmire of Vietnam proportions, will cost us hundreds of billions we cannot afford, and destroyed untold thousands of Iraqi lives. How dare we speak harshly of an Administration, a Congress, and a GOP filled with racists, bigots, fascists, criminals, third-rate intellects, and Christo-Talibani who want to foist their revolution upon America, destroy our civil rights, damage our enviroment, drive the poor further into poverty, trash democracy, tax the rich less than the poor, force women into subjugation, force minorities into second-class citizenship, and over-turn our Constitutional order of the rule of law in favor of their own rule by men and call into question our patriotism for opposing it. I'd say such behavior warrants some personal attacks. What these people have done to our nation deserves retribution and the exaction of justice. Do I take the attempted destruction of my nation personally? You bet your ass I do.
Their meme may slap on a tournequette and quickening exsanguination from their base, but this Administration is too gravely wounded to recover. Even most of the rank and file will find this meme insulting to their intelligence. The GOP are squirming desperately for any traction they can find. The overwhelming majority of America simply doesn't believe them anymore. Once you have lost credibility with Americans that's game, set, and match. You don't recover politically once you have lost the trust of the majority of Americans. Bush could reveal himself to be the second coming of Christ now and most would dismiss it as a trasparent play for the religous vote.
Clark and Dean, The Season's Most Fashionable Couple
A new article on
Salon.com outlines the curious relationship between grassroots Dean and Clark supporters. Many supporters of both seem ready and willing to cross the lines in order to support the other guy. I think it's true. So many simply want to beat Bush that they don't much care who does it, they just have convictions as to who is more likely to be able to do the job. Who do you think is more likely to do the job of kicking Bush's butt out of the Oval, and why?
Best make it convincing folks, I've invited the Southern Arizona Coordinator for Clark to post here, so we're likely to have some Clarkians hanging about here soon.
La La Lie Land
President Bush, having made his melodramatic, Land of Make-Believe, landing on USS Abraham Lincoln to deliver his Iraqi victory speech, stood under a banner that declared "Mission Accomplished" and claimed, "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Since then, violence has continued to spiral out of control in Iraq. The increasingly frequent targeting of our soldiers by guerrilla and para-military forces, massive terrorist bombings, and the assassination of indigenous leaders, indicate that the nature of combat operations may have shifted, but it is no less major, nor less costly in the units of measure that really matter: American and Iraqi lives.
Yet, though he stood under a banner proclaiming victory,
White House communications boss Dan Bartlett spun this web, "The President said exactly the opposite: "The mission continues." Why the banner, then? Bartlett says that the Lincoln's captain had the banner made up to thank his crew for the longest-ever carrier tour, not to declare the war over.
This is a laughably bad spin. This from an Administration which barged in vast klieg lights to light the Statue of Liberty just so for a televised address from New York? Who framed Mt. Rushmore perfectly over the President's shoulder for another speech? Who more carefully controls and scripts Presidential appearances than any director controls the action on his set? They allowed an unplanned and ambiguous message to hang behind the President during possibly the most important speech of his Presidency? yeah, OK, I'll buy that. And I'll take a little "Clear Skies" and smidgen of "No Child Left Behind" to choke it down with.
I have a hard time even understanding what it is meant to accomplish. To make Shrub look like less a fool, I suppose. It must be a fascinatingly bold and inept attempt to rewrite an embarrassing chapter in the Bush Administration's history. Don't expect to hear this spin more than once though, because the real effect is to draw attention to Bush's lies. I've heard people opine that this Administration lies subtly; they don't, they just lie deniably. A subtle lie is one that you can't detect, a deniable lie is one that you can't prove.
But Bartlett is right one thing, Bush did say that. But in the proper context, he said nothing like what Bartlett implies Bush said:
"Our mission continues. Al Qaeda is wounded, not destroyed. The scattered cells of the terrorist network still operate in many nations and we know from daily intelligence that they continue to plot against free people. The proliferation of deadly weapons remains a serious danger."
So Bush said the fight with Al Qaeda continues. That the fight with terrorism continues. But Bartlett clearly wants us to believe Bush meant that the combat mission in Iraq continues.
But Bush wouldn't conflate Al Qaeda and Iraq, would he? He wouldn't intentionally blur the distinction between them as justification for invading Iraq, right? No, no, don't laugh... yet.
At a
joint press conference with Tony Blair on January 31, 2003, he was asked, "Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?" Bush said, " I can't make that claim."
Then why on the day of "victory", June 1, 2003, did he say of Iraq in
his speech aboard the Lincoln, "We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda and cut off a source of terrorist funding," making the very claim he said he could not make just four months earlier?
It certainly wasn't the only time Bush blatantly implied a connection between the two, nor was he the only one in his Administration to do so. Bush recently
owned up once again to the fact that there isn't and wasn't any connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Clearly, Bush is not on speaking terms with the truth. Nor is there is nothing subtle, nor even deniable about it. He was just lying through his teeth.
King Shrub also said, "The war on terror is not over, yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide."
Yes, the tide
has turned. Unfortunately, the tide is rising, not falling; and we are on the beach below the tide line, buried up to our necks in sand.
CIA faces off with the White House
The
CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate the possibility that White House Officials may have broken Federal law by
outing Ambassor Wilson's wife as a CIA undercover operative.
Ambassador Wilson clearly suggested that the official responsible is none other than
Karl Rove. Has Bush's hubris finally made his Brain so reckless that he did his own dirty work? Will the Ashcroft's Justice Department be allowed to make a fair and thorough investigation? Will Novak drop a dime on Rove?
This has the potential to build into a major scandal. Even in the GOP, few will find it politically palatable to defend the outing of a national security asset endangering America's efforts to prevent WMD proliferation.
Making Waffles and MisDebatin'
Indecision Thy Name is ClarkA man who wants to be President ought to at least know his own mind before asking for the votes of his fellow citizens. The flip-flops and hedging of General Clark on the issue of the authorization of the Iraqi war is a little disappointing. I was hoping that he would display a clarity of judgement and eloquency of disposition that would convince much more of our populace that the rush to war in Iraq was complete folly and an abidication of the Constitutional role of Congress. By doing so he would humiliate and justly shame most of the Deomocratic field and frame the issue clearly for the showdown with Bush, no matter who the candidate was.
He's failed to do that; I hope he still can. Dean's positions couldn't be more clear - and the public couldn't be less ready to listen to him. So many are still caught in the delusion that the military can accomplish even an impossible mission. Who better to disabuse them then a 4 star General? The realization that Dean has been right to oppose this war, and did so for the right reasons, could not help but come eventually. Instead, the General has lost the operational initiative and will have to overcome the confusion and relativism of his early statements to marshall a message from the melee of opinions he's deployed.
I think I understand the military mind on this aspect of leadership. A good commander attacks a problem from many angles and considers the weaknesses and strengths of each option for before commiting himself to battle. However, a military commander should also know that this process must be internal and appear effortless to the troops. If you display indecision and vacillation, they won't follow you, trusting their lives to your judgment.
Niether will civilians trust a President who appears too indecisive. Their lives are no less in the hand of the President than those of the soldiers in the field are in that of their commander. Presidential leadership is a complex mix of the domestic and the martial. A inexperienced politician would understandably have diffuculty in adjusting to the role, but a military leader should be expected to at least have the martial quality of surety of command. Clark has demonstrated a lack of political savvy, but also a lack of that which makes him so appealing to many, a military mien and firmness of judgment on matters of foriegn policy and security.
I have to wonder what exactly Clark was thinking about if not this very issue and others of national significance as his draft movement was begging him to run and he was
writing his book about Iraq and terrorism due out next month. If after writing a book on a subject he still doesn't know for sure what he thinks about it, when will he ever?
The Debate that Became a DogpileDean again bore the brunt of Gephardt's and Kerry's attacks on his "record" in the New York debate. Despite these assaults Dean dealt with the attacks with firmness and even a touch of adomonition that felt quite well recieved by the audience. He kept his good humor and self-deprecating air and played the statesman calling for a positive tone and a focus on the real issues and the enemy that awaits them all.
The fascinating thing about these attacks
by Gephardt and
Kerry is that most the them are both nearly a decade old and they are almost all speculation or statements of general principles by the candidate, not what he DID, but what he SAID. They can't criticize his record so they attack him using out of context quotes talking generally about policy - not what he's done, not policies he implemented- just things he has speculated about or abstractly supported. Many are decontextualized so as to be misleading, make a fine distinction or simple misstatement into a policy flip, or imply his support for something which he does not support. It's simple dirty pool. It misleads and alienates the voters.
When attacked, Dean was straight-forward and honest about it when he had simply screwed up or when he had not been sufficiently clear in stating his position. He was very credible and did not seem to be weaseling out of the charges at all, but simply answering them and them admonishing his attackers. At one point, however, he counter attacked Gephardt by way of illustration how politicians have to make tough choices and sometimes change thier views. I saw it as a constructive counter-argument to Gephardt and Kerry's rehashing of the past, but it may have come off to some as overly defensive. He also got rather hot about Gephadt associating him in any way with Newt Gingrich and got a little too boisterous about defending himself. Al Sharp-tongue then gently chided him for his temper, which is likely to reinforce Dean's reputation as prickly and tempermental.
In all, Dean weathered the attacks fairly well. Outside of two moments, when Sharp's-tongue pricked Dean and when Kerry pointed out that Gephardt didn't actually compare him to Gingrich, Dean appeared relaxed, articulate and stateman-like. Dean is getting more polished, confident and cool in debate. He no longer seems like the member of a high school debate team out for the highest score.
I was actually rather surprised that no attacks or criticisms were leveled at Clark at all. I expected Dean to get some breathing room since Clark is leading in national polls and is running strongest in head-to-head polling with Bush. The are two possible explanations; either they don't see Clark as a threat in early primary states yet, or they have some other reason for holding their fire, especially on the Iraqi waffles. The first reason is clearly the most likely.
What that other reason(s) could be is only speculation of the rankest sort, but that's what blogs are for isn't it? Kerry, Lieberman, and Edwards all have the DLC to be concerned about. Going negative on Clark now could be impolitic to their bases and could jeopardize their funding streams. Gephardt and Kerry could be hanging fire because they do not want to call attention to their own compromised votes on the issue.
Down in the Minor LeagueKucinich is harder to figure. Frankly, it doesn't much matter what he does, he's not going to be elected. He may see the General as a way to harm Dean. I can't imagine why he would he would think that any of the those pulled from the Dean camp by the General would gravitate to him, though.
Kuchinich is doing good things in Congress during his race and is using his run as a platform for very progressive legislation. I can see Kucinich's race as a future model for a smart legislator wanting to promote some interesting ideas by running for the Presidency while sitting in the Congress. It is actually a powerful legislative strategy in the right hands. Building a national constituency for fundraising in order to help finance other Congressmen's races can aid greatly with party advancement. The campaign, regardless of your chances, will afford you a national audience for your ideas and superior access to the press. You get to raise your status and cement the advantages of your incumbency with the folks back home, who now see you as a national figure. I see much of these goals in Kucinich's behavior in this campaign. He knows the odds against his winning are overwhelming, but much like Nader's Green campaign of 2000, winning is not really the goal.
Kucinich's latest bill to strip Consitutionally problematic provisions from the PATRIOT Act might actually have a chance at passing. An early sunset provision would be attractive, but until at least the Presidency is no longer in GOP hands, better the evil we know, than the evil the GOP can concoct. Congress might hold the line this time, but I wouldn't bet my civil liberties on it.
I genuinely like Al Sharpton. Really, how can you not? He is such a rascal and has a wonderful wit. He's possessed of a genuine and honest demeanor, too. You want to ask him over for dinner; he'd be delightful guest. He may be a charlatan, but he does have more than a dollop of genuine, hard-won wisdom and and a sincere compassion for the less fortunate. I suspect his run is a bid to supplant Jackson as the leader of black America. Jackson's recent scandals leave a vaccuum of high-visibility national leadership in the black community. Worthy or not, Sharpton and Braun both see an opportunity to claim that position.
To a greater or lesser extent they will probably both succeed. Braun, should she actually capture the endorsement of NOW, will be force to be reckoned with in the women's movement and possibly have a positive effect on the participation of women minorities in politics. That can only be positive for the Democratic party.
I have a hard time seeing Sharpton's effect. He is clearly a very smart and resourceful man and his run will probably succeed in cleaning up his image and rehabilitating him as a more mainstream leader in the black community. The depth of the credibility remains in doubt though. His numbers, much lower than Jackson's polling in 1999, tend to indicate that Sharpton remains unable to cross-over to get votes outside minority electorates.
Could Bob Graham be any more boring? I think he's a good man and genuine and honest politician, if that's not oxymoronic. But dang, even when he's speaking your eyes can travel right over him like he wasn't there. I don't know why, but he just doesn't excite any enthusiasm in most people. If ever there were a man destined to be VICE-President, it's Graham. And maybe Gore.
Edwards. Gosh Golly, I jess don't know. I grew up in town called Hope, strapped to an assembly line in the mill mah Daddy worked in. They fed me doggy biscuits till I grow'd up got me some legal larnin and became a multi-millionaire by suing big bad corp'rashuns that done hurt gran'mama. People aren't buying the marketing. They see a Slick Willie in those Saville Row trousers and they ain't having none. He's too young, too polished, too earnest, too... Clintonian? It just makes people uneasy. Kinda creepy in a serial killer pretending to be a cop sort of way, you know? It's the only expanation I can come up with. He advocates some genuinely smart and important things, but he just isn't able to get people to buy in to his vision. Maybe he's not ready. Maybe he needs to go back in the oven for eight years to finish up?
Yuma for Dean, checking in!
First of all, I would like to thank Michael Bryan for inviting me to represent
Yuma for Deanon the Dean for AZ Blog. As we move into autumn, Yumans are beginnning to emerge from their air conditioned aluminum cans en masse and we, Yumans for Dean, are committed to spreading the excitement for Howard Dean all across the county. We like to think of ourselves as the wildcard that will give Howard Dean's hand the winning edge in Arizona on Febuary 3rd. We had our first non-meetup event on September 20th, in conjunction with Dean Visibility Day. As seen in the photo below, we have a very energetic core of Dean supporters who are ready to fan out and build our base. Instrumental in this mobilization is the 'Yuma Dean Machine', which is the backdrop of the photo. Kudos to our valiant leader, Rodney Martin.
We are going to have a booth at the first Main Street celebration of the season, The Hispanic Heritage Celebration, this Friday night. I'll give you an update on that.
Oh, one more pic... check this out (more pics available at the website)
Helping With Tucson Audubon's Habitat Restoration
Another opportunity exists to raise Gov. Dean's profile among members of the local environmental community. On Friday and Saturday, October 3 and 4, Tucson Audubon will be having volunteer days at their habitat restoration site on the Santa Cruz River. Some members of the Environmentalists for Dean Group are going to attend on each day wearing our Dean T-shirts, as we did on the Native Plant Society's Desert Weedwacking project last Saturday. Those who wish to participate need to bring work gloves, shovels, lunch and water. E-mail me, or see the TAS Website for more information. We will have a meeting site for this project, somewhere in NW Tucson.
Marsha, Marsha, Marsha
A New York times article , titled
Kerry Says Dean Is 'Imploding,' addresses comments that Kerry has made about Dean when the cameras are running and when they are turned away (Kerry keeps forgetting that his microphone is still on). During a debate in Baltimore a microphone picked up Kerry muttering "Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean." Reading this I was reminded of a Brady Bunch episode where Jan, frustrated over perfect Marsha, starts muttering "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha." To add to Kerry's frustration, his remarks just seem to keep attention focused on Dean. The article sparked the question "Is Dean Imploding" for Village Voice's question of the day.
I've pasted some of the comments below.
The only thing "imploding" are Sen. Kerry's sour grapes. What do we have to show for our current policy towards the Israeli government, aside from more terrorists-in-training? Howard Dean won over this Republican Veteran long ago and cemented and only made my conviction in him stronger with that sagacious statement.
Forest Hills, NYDean is far from imploding. It's become clear that he's a force with which to be reckoned and the other candidates are grasping for ways to attack him. Dean's not perfect, but he's running the best campaign out there, and he's the only candidate so far to capture the passion and the fury that so many of us feel as we learn more and more about the destructive and deceitful mechanisms of the current administration.
Endicott, NYOnly in the minds of "Bush Lite" Democrats. He speaks his mind, and that ruffles establishment feathers. He has a large, dedicated, and growing grassroots following that's going to kick the butts of the political pros.
Flagstaff, AZNot in the least bit. Dr. Dean's remarks are accurate. Our taking sides with Israel have only made matters worse. There is no sight of resolution to be seen on the horizon, and there will not be one as long as America sides with Israel against Palestine. Neutrality and earnest efforts in peace-making between the two parties on the part of America is greatly desired.
Phoenix, AZ
Dean on Bush's UN Speech
NEW YORK, NY -- Governor Howard Dean today released the following statement on President Bush's United Nations Speech:
"Nearly six months into the war in Iraq, President Bush once again missed the opportunity to get our Iraq policy on track. Instead, he continues to fail to take the steps necessary to restore American credibility and earn the trust and cooperation of our key allies.
"Today, at the United Nations, the President argued again that we were right to go to war, though the world continues to believe - as they did before it began - that the war was unjustified. The President's continued insistence that the invasion of Iraq was integral to the war on terror only increases the skepticism greeting our current proposals for increased international involvement.
"We face a situation in which Americans increasingly doubt this mission, the lives of our sons and daughters continue to be at risk, and $87 billion could be diverted from urgent domestic priorities unless the President and the Republicans agree to take it out of their misguided tax cuts. The need for international assistance only grows.
"Yet with this Administration unwilling to cede any authority in the mission to our allies, why do we believe they would contribute to what they see as a failing operation, when we will not give them any means to correct its failings?
"Today's speech was another example of George Bush's petulant foreign policy. We run the risk that the result will be a UN Security Council Resolution that does nothing - no new desperately needed troops, no meaningful financial contributions - and that we Americans will continue to shoulder the burdens of this war alone. A little humility - promised by this President but never delivered - could go a long way."
Dean Visible in Cochise County
You can't get much more visible than this for Dean Visibility day. Thanks to Britt Hason for getting the picture, and being nimble enough to get the thing up there in the first place!
Bush Red Handed
Bush lied to Congress to get us into a war, and he now admits it.
March 18, 2003
Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)
Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and
(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
Sincerely,
GEORGE W. BUSH
But now, Bush says that:
"There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties," the president said. But he also said, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks.
The failure to find any imminent WMD threat is problematic for the presidential determination required under §3(b)(1). But is it fatal? Arguably not. (A) seems blown. Iraq posed no credible threat to the United States. Clearly, the President had no evidence that Iraq did, or he wouldn't have fabricated so much of his case. However, the language seems to
presume a threat, not require proof of one.
(B), must also be true, but it too offers an easy out: should Bush determine that further peaceful means are not
likely to lead to compliance with relevant UN Resolutions, he may attack. "Likely" is not a strong standard of proof. At best, it must appear plausable to the President. Given Saddam's games with the inspectors, Bush can make a case. And with a GOP Congress, a plausible case is all he needs.
Now Bush says he has no evidence that Saddam was involved in September 11 (when on March 18th he says he did have such evidence), which seems to negate Article 2 of his legislatively-required justification for war as outlined under
PL 107-243.
Doesn’t this mean he lied to comply with the provisions of PL 107-243? Maybe. And isn't that an impeachable offense? Maybe. Did the drafters put in enough weasel words to allow Bush to slide by? Maybe.
This is the relevant language from the Presidential Determination section:
(2) acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
"Consistent with" is the key language on which the Administration will hang their hats if the shit hits the fan. They will claim this language does not require an attack on Iraq to be "because of" 9/11, just "consistent with" the neccesary actions against terrorists "including", but not limited to, those who carried out 9/11. In short, this Resolution is so poorly drafted you can pole a raft of monkeys through it's holes; and that is exactly what the President did.
I doubt the President is in any danger of impeachment on this account. The President came clean on the 9/11 connection precisely so that he could not be accused of lying to Congress. Since the accusation against Iraq was more in the way of innuendo, obsfucation, and associative language, than actual clear statments, his confession clears the "misimpression" anyone might have gotten into their silly heads.
Bush's legal counsel are no fools, but the people who drafted PL 107-243 were. Or they were willing dupes.
Dean Visibility
Wow!! What an interesting experience for visibility day!! A group of us wore our Dean gear and headed to the U of A for the 11th annual Lesbian Looks Film Festival -- 300 lesbians and our Dean gear! Shannon wore her rainbow Dean button, and everyone wanted one. They are in development!! Stay tuned!
Though, as an aside, I must say that for me, every day is Dean visibility day. My backpack is a walking advertizement. Most days I am wearing a Dean t-shirt or hat. I spend lots of time talking to people in various locals.
I encourage you, fellow Deaners, to make every day Dean Visibility Day.
Spam in a Can
A very amusing parody of Bush's canned constituent letters:
"I would like to express my dismay at Bush's fiscal irresponsibility and at his "Action Center's" organized effort to spam newspapers with letters to the editor that preach lies. (reference:
http://www.georgewbush.com/Economy/WriteNewspapers.aspx?AgendaID=2, lower right) I looked at the proposed "letter to the editor" he is asking his constituents to send in their own words. Well here it is in my own words:
President Bush should be commended for his strong leadership on the economy. He has taken bold action to spend our surplus and burden future generations with the bills for today's pork barrel spending. At the same time, he has led a bold assault on employment.
The President's economic agenda creates jobs in India. His economic plan is focused on foreign job creation and helps working families like Dick Cheney's and Bill Gate's with immediate tax relief.
Promoting investment in his campaign fund is another critical component in the President's agenda. Reducing the overall tax burden on the wealthy spurs election investments by those individuals and corporations, enabling much needed campaign ads."
Ha! The power of sarcasm. The unintentional and unself-conscious ridiculousness of our enemies will be their undoing.
You can write a
real letter, in your
own words to any newspaper in Arizona at the
DeanForAZ site.
America's First Gay Black Mayor Endorses Dean
Ken Reeves announced today that he has endorsed Democratic Presidential
contender Howard Dean for President. He will appear on stage with Governor
Dean during this Tuesday's "Democracy, Freedom, Action" rally in Boston's
Copley Square. Reeves will also attend a Monday afternoon poster session
event to promote the rally.
Ken Reeves has served on the Cambridge City Council since 1989. From 1992 to
1995 he was Mayor of Cambridge, and holds the distinction of being the first
African-American to hold a mayoral position in Massachusetts, as well as
being the first openly gay African-American to lead a city in the United
States. He currently serves on the Cambridge City Council.
Reeves says, "I learned from the Boston Globe article today that Howard Dean
had black roommates as a freshman at Yale. They seem to have schooled him
well. I absolutely am excited to support a candidate for president for whom
being either black or gay is neither news nor a negative."
Weedwacking for Dean or "Pass the Ibuprofen"
Jenny's message, posted by Michael, pretty much say it all. Except that using a 14 pound, 6 foot long pry bar to uproot buffelgrass introduced me to some muscles I had forgotten I had. It was fun, and I have great respect for the Native Plant Society's Sonoran Desert Weedwackers group, which does this difficult but vital work on a regular basis. I think we made a few converts to Dean, as one person left with a Dean sign, and another previously uncommitted woman was proudly wearing her new Dean T-shirt when we left.
After an appropriate period of recuperation, I joined Peter Newton and Barbara Tellman outside the Fox Theater block party last night. The event was not as condusive to public contact as we had hoped, but Peter and I hung around with the Light Rail Initiative folk in a sort of unofficial "free speech zone," holding up Dean signs and giving out Dean stickers. We got many positive gestures of support from pedestrains and motorists alike. And several people told me that Gov. Dean, "had [their] vote. All in all a good night in downtown Tucson. As to photos of the Weedwacking, Marilyn Hanson has sent them to both the Dean for AZ and Dean for America sites.
Greider on Weasely Wes
William Greider's interesting
blog post on General Knowlegeless. I have to suspect that the general reaction to our very model of a modern Major-General, is turning out to be somewhat of a disappointment to his backers.
WeedWackin' for Dean
Jenny Prileson sent the following post from Enviromentalists for Dean:
About 7 of us intrepid desert "Weedwackers" just returned from hiking into one of the Tucson Mountain Park canyons and pulling out non-native buffel grass, a nasty weed which threatens biodiversity and is a big brush fire hazard (how's THAT for a "Healthy Forest Initiative, Mr. President??). We're wiped out from the heat (it was 100 degrees when we got back to our cars) and exertion, but 3-4 of us wore our Dean T-shirts and held up signs along the road after the event, doing our best to be visible! Hopefully our group leader will be posting the digital photos soon.
Go Dean!
Weasely Wesley and Derring-Do Dean
I gotta admit, I'm sympathetic to Wes. I genuinely like his style and I was excited when it looked like there might be an early Dean/Clark ticket emerging. But I'm begining to be relieved that he didn't accept and decided to run on his own. Wesley is going to have to work out his own positions and take his lumps on his own dime.
And the first day of Wesley's campaign certainly qualifies
as lumpy. His gaffes with the press and wild gyrations in public trying to figure out what he really stands for are frankly embarrassing. Whoever thought to put an untested candidate in an airplane full of tough reporters completely on the record deserves the boot. The General needs to stop shooting from the hip and start talking from a script - he hasn't the experience to wing it. The result of his first media impression as a candidate is a vacillating diletante who doesn't even know his own mind.
The media's focus on Wesley at this point is both predictable, and given his demonstrated penchant for vacillation and flip-flopping, harmful to his campaign. The Clark folk need to go to ground and avoid media while Wesley gets the hang of keeping his mouth shut until he's ready to say something useful. A good deal of
today's Note is devoted to Wesley's exploits and the press likely will remain obsessed with him for some time. I must say, the most surprising revelation of the day is Wesley's admission that he had voted for Nixon and Regan. This reinforces in my mind the fact that Wesley isn't really a Democrat at all. The party is just a convenience to him, not his home team. I certainly haven't any problem with independent voters, but I don't care for one running for President on the Democratic ticket.
Speaking of teams, our man Dean is bringing out the bat again for the end of the quarter fund-raising push. Look for Dean to clear 10 million this quarter with ease. And speaking of fund-raising pushes, we are encouraging readers to donate to Dean's campaign on the side bar.
An interesting feature of the end of quarter drive is a Dr. Dean's National House Call. The campaign is encouraging people to host house parties on September 29th and sign up for participation in a giant conferrence call. Trippi is organizing the effort to get the call into the Guiness Book. Details and registration are
available here. Even if you just have a few friends or family and are raising just a little money, sign up and put Dean in the Guiness.
Another features of the September to Remember drive is Dean Visibility Day, which is today. Many of our bloggers will be participating in Visibility Events. I encourage all of them to report in on their efforts as soon as possible. Also I invite any of our readers participating in Visibility events to email me with your reports at MBryan@aol.com, or to post them in the comments thread of this post.
Shhh... I'm Hunting Babbitts....
It looks like former Flagstaff mayor,
Paul Babbit, Jr. may run for Congress in District One in next term's primary for a shot to take on freshman Republican Renzi. One closer to taking back the House, I'd say.
Keep an ear to the ground for news of another generation of Babbitt on this blog shortly.
Adding Insult to Injury
You may find this hard to credit- I know I certainly did- but our military hospitals actually charge our wounded soldiers for the meals they eat while recovering from their wounds. I swear,
it's true. Gives new meaning to the phrase, "Let them eat cake." It tacks on, "So long as they pay for it."
Jaspora by Wyclef Jean: Dean's favorite song
Howard Dean's favorite song is a funky rap rant in Haitian French creole by Wyclef Jean from his album The Carnival. Recorded in 1997, it is slightly dated, but far hipper than the obviously pandering choices of the other candidates. I recorded this off iTunes using a cell phone, since that m4p copy protection is pretty serious stuff, thus the sound quality isn't great.
I strongly suggest people request this song from rap, alternative, world beat and top 40 format stations as a dedication. You can dedicate it to Howard Dean for helping me take my country back, or for making you feel that you have the power. It is an easy and costless way to get Dean's name out there. Just don't say anything about voting for Dean or that air time might be an in kind donation by the station.
audio post powered by
audblogThe English translation of the lyrics:
This is what the world was waiting for
Wyclef who came from the Fugees
Jeremie, Haiti, Port-au-Prince, Flatbush...
Jaspora doesn't respect Jaspora (repeat 4 x)
Ever since I was little, I left Haiti
There's some that went to Brooklyn there's some that went to Miami
Why do Jamaicans always say they are Jamaicans,
But Haitians are afraid to say they are Haitians?
Why? Are you scared to say your name is Samuel?
Why? Are you scared to say you're with Israel?
Why? Every night you are sleeping with Jezebel!
You're scared to say Haitian girls are beautiful!
Beautiful girls are beautiful...
I respect your name just like I respect the angel Gabriel
Here, Diaspora men want to take you to hotels,
Start talking English, turning to playboy channel
They do not respect Israel.
Diaspora do not respect Diaspora
If you are a Diaspora I am going to give you to sharks
Diaspora do not respect Diaspora
If you are a Diaspora tonight we're going to disarm you
Diaspora ha ha o, put your hands up!
I am going to take them and throw them in prison
I will make them know who is Toussaint
I will make them know who is Dessalines
After, we will let them go and send them back to Brooklyn
So he could go to his mother who is cooking in the kitchen
His mom looked at him and said "Man, you've changed"
She said I changed because I am Haitian
They taught me a lesson, they put me in prison.
I see Diaspora women and Diaspora men
There are people who are not going to make it because
they will sleep with the fishes
They lost their knowledge just like a priest without religion
Diaspora do not respect Diaspora
If you are a Diaspora I am going to give you to sharks
Diaspora do not respect Diaspora
If you are a Diaspora tonight were going to disarm you
Port-au-Prince do not respect Diaspora again
Men Flatbush do not respect Diaspora
Men Canada do not respect Diaspora
Men Miami do not respect Diaspora
Pa Kayos do not respect Diaspora
Papa Djoume do not respect Diaspora
Refugees do not respect Diaspora
Men Florida do not respect Diaspora
Wrong things done are going to finish worse
If you disrespect native-born
Done wrong things are going to finish worse
Disrespect Haitians you will get hit...
Jaspora has to respect Jaspora
Jaspora has to respect Jaspora
There has been some speculation as to whether there is a political message in Dean's choice of this song. I tend to think that there is not. He doesn't speak Haitian creole. I'm sure he just likes the mood and sound of the song and it goes no deeper than that. It's pretty sad the a politician can't seem to have a preference that is superficial and simply aesthetic in nature. They asked him his favorite song, not his most politically significant song, or the song which would attract the most votes. He answered 'Jaspora' because he liked the way it sounded and he might even listen to the album often; how refreshing is that?
ST. PAUL, MN LABOR DAY (Better Late Than Never)
Peter Newton Files this Belated Report from on the Road:
September 1, 2003 -- Rolling Thunder Tour Stop No. 3 went swimmingly
as 4,000 Minnesotans enjoyed the 16th annual Labor Day picnic on
Harriet Island, St. Paul. Rolling Thunder Democracy Tour partnered
with St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly and Wellstone Action to bring
Jim Hightower, Granny D and Patch Adams out to speak at the event.
Jim sold out his books in half an hour. Today, his book is at No. 9
on the New York Times Best Seller list! Go Jim!
Joining Jim, Granny D and Patch Adams, were Richard Trumka, Secretary-
Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, and Shar Knutsen, President of the St. Paul
Trades and Labor Assembly, who reminded the crowd that Minnesota is
now a swing state and admonished them to continue the fight for
working people in the proud tradition of the prairie populists. Patch
ministered at rousing two hour special training session
entitled "What is Your Love Strategy" at the end of which 90 people
embraced and committed to principles of love and inclusion over
competition and war ~ personally and politically. For photos and
further reading,
click here.
That's about the size of it, but one Arizonan was there as well. It was a gorgeous day and many people turned out to enjoy a cookout on the banks of the Mississippi River. I attended the Patch Adams seminar and one hosted by the Wellstone Action folks, with a group of Twinkie Deaners. (People from "The Cities" (the Twin Cities (Minneapolis + St. Paul, Minnesota)) are known as Twinkies. Just watch ESPN for reports about their baseball team and you'll understand.) The Wellstone seminar was GREAT!! but Patch Adams was a little too winded. Hightower was interesting, but the same. His stump speach gets old after a while. Granny D spoke for a little long. But the burgers were great, and the exhibition booths were great. I spent a lot of time speaking with various progessive groups in Minnesota. One wonders why they continue to vote so conservatively recently. Perhaps the book I bought will help me to understand this connudrum.
I hope to bring all of this acquired knowledge back to Arizona, and to make some changes in our political climate. The Deaners up there have a web site and business cards to hand out, but little more. They had 15 Meetups planned for September. Unfortunately, I haven't heard back from anyone I met up there, but I hope to keep in touch. It was fun, and everyone should plan more festivities like this in every community throughout the year. People need to meet each other more often without a commercial impetuous.
Peter
Sometimes it's just downright embarassing...
Having the Bush Administration in power is not just harmful to nearly every aspect of our national life, it's damaging to one's intellect and self-esteem, and perilous to one's sense of reality.
Suddenly, everyone in the world thinks that if you're an American, you must be an idiot. It's humiliating; mostly because I can see why people think that. The credibility American's are giving people who are flat out liars, or full-stop stupid, or worse, stupid liars, makes me suspect sometimes that I'm just too stupid too to accept the newspeak maxim- the truth is a lie. The utterly unhinged clap-trap flowing unendingly from our government is getting so deep that even other parts of the government, those less political and more professional, are fed the hell up and have simply taken to calling a spade a spade, stating simply that the Administration is a bunch of dangerous lying Yahoos.
Take today's
GAO report on the the state of the budget deficit, as an examiple. It basically calls the President a stinking liar whose policies are sucking us down a fiscal rat hole into third-world nation status. I can't recall a time when a professional staff has been more openly contempuous of the policies of a political branch.
Meanwhile, our 'leaders', or more accurately, our 'misleaders' can't even get on the same page about their whopping lies. Dick Cheney is still selling his particularly noxious brand of
condescension and obsfucation: telling the nation 3 things which he knows to be untrue in a single breath. He, Rumsfeld and Bush just can't seem to keep their lies straight;
Rumfeld is now admitting there's no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein and
so is Bush. Yet,
Cheney apparently didn't get that memo. Someone needs to tell him that the government is telling a different pack of lies this week.
The Administration as good as admits by their unrepentant and blatantly contradictory behavior, that they are low-class scumbuckets who lied to everyone, including Congress, and they don't particularly care who knows it. So why haven't we pulled them off their thrones and drowned them in the gutter as they deserve? Aversion to reality? Ignore them and they'll go away? Democracy is only good once every four years? I don't know.
I do know that Thomas Friedman, the NYT columnist, has finally gone over the edge due to his sactimonious whoring for the Bush Administration. He now claims we're
at war with France. In combination with Andrew Sullivan's celebrated swan dive off the deep end of reality over this war, the evidence is in that even the formerly even-tempered and reasonable among us is in danger of being sucked under by the swamp of lies which this Administration has plunged us into. Are there no depths, save lying about blow-jobs, that the American people, or specifically their jaded and wholly owned representatives, won't stand for? Is there no way to abort this Administration before it does more harm via neglect of the vital and obsession with the utterly non-sensical? Do we have to find someone to go down on W? Besides G. Gordon Liddy or Sean Hannity, that is...
I really don't know where I'm going with this post: nowhere specific, I suspect. Perhaps just a plea for damn sanity? And if I can't have that, how about some delusions of my own choosing? Can we please invoke that wise and sensible law of childhood, and call a do-over of this utterly stupid millenium?
Desert Weedwackers For Dean
Marilyn Hanson, who is participating in the Environmentalists for Dean group I chair, has come up with a great, environmentally friendly activity for Dean visibility day, this Saturday. The Sonoran Desert Weedwackers remove invasive buffel grass from Tucson Mountain Park, in cooperation with Pima County Parks. Several of us from the group are going to participate in this Saturday morning's project, wearing Dean shirts, from 7 to 10 AM. We are planning to meet at the Albertsons parking lot at Silverbell and Speedway at 6:15 AM, to carpool for the drive to the project meeting place, which is the old caretaker's house, across the street from the Desert Museum. Anyone wishing to participate should E-mail Marilyn Hanson at mfhanson@mindspring.com She needs to know how many will be participating so she can ask Pima County Parks for the proper number of digging tools and gloves. All tools are provided. Plan to bring sunscreen, a hat, water, and snacks. This is a good opportunity to showcase the Dean team's dedication to improving our environment.
Wesley Clark: The New Anti-War Candidate?
Article at TruthOut.org claims that Clark has not been consistently anti-war. Excerpt below, for full article go to
www.truthout.org/docs_03/091803A.shtml
"Hearing Clark talking to CNN's Paula Zahn (7/16/03), it would be understandable to think he was an opponent of the war. "From the beginning, I have had my doubts about this mission, Paula," he said. "And I have shared them previously on CNN." But a review of his statements before, during and after the war reveals that Clark has taken a range of positions-- from expressing doubts about diplomatic and military strategies early on, to celebrating the U.S. "victory" in a column declaring that George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt" (London Times, 4/10/03). "
Clark: What will it mean?
The question many Dean supporters are asking themselves now is what will Wesley Clark's candidacy mean for Dean? This is a very difficult question to answer, but I'll take a stab at it. The short answer is either not much, or a hell of lot, either way, the likelyhood of Dean sharing a ticket with Clark has dropped to nearly nill.
The first and primary reason that Clark and Dean are unlikely to end up on a ticket together is that Dean is the front runner in the races that matter the most. The only way Clark is going to make progress in the long term is by attacking Dean. Not condusive to kissing and making up for the General Election.
It is likely that Clark will lay back for awhile trying to build his war chest and integrate his draft volunteers with his staff. He needs credibility and traction. He has to pull out of fifth place and start gathering forward momentum. He may focus his attention on the back of the second tier pack in IA and NH, Lieberman and Edwards. He may rely on Dean to dispose of or weaken Gephardt and Kerry. He will hope to winnow the field and pull out a 3rd or even 2nd place showing in those initial races, good enough to give his campaign momentum and fundraising credibility. I suspect Clark will steer clear of direct engagement with Dean until he's helped Dean cull the herd.
This early momentum and buzz could open the the field for Clark victories in SC and OK. His ultimate aim will likely be to try to make the race essentially Dean vs. Clark in AZ, NM, MO, DE and DC and thereafter.
Many of the candidates have attributes which Clark sees as his advantages over Dean. None of them can put the package together like Clark thinks he can. Edwards, Graham, and Gephardt are all southerners. Lieberman is ideologically to the right of Dean. Kerry has war hero status. To eliminate these disparate candidates, and fold their attributes into a single candidate will be the basis of the anti-Dean stretegy of the Clark campaign. Once those cadidates are cleared from the race, then the campaign to portray Dean as incapable of defeating Bush will begin, with Clark portrayed as the Democratic party's best hope.
The challenge for Clark will be to come up with reasons other than his biography to choose him. Right down the line Clark's positions, to date, are quite similar to Dean's. Mark Fabiani and, most likely, his business partner Chris Lehane, will be doing Clark's communications. I can envision the General caging these attack dogs until just the right moment, and then losing the dogs of war. With men like these at the helm, the reasons to prefer Clark will likely come in the form of attacks. Lehane was formerly with Kerry's campaign and is rumoured to have left because of the candidate's refusal to go more negative on Dean.
Now the good news. Clark has a lot of deficits to overcome and his campaigning style may be much more traditional than Dean's. Clark needs to raise funds and attract a great deal of volunteer enthusiasm or Democratic establishment support. Clinton's "endorsement that wasn't an endorsement" will help with the later, but it remains to be seen if Clark will be able to attract either the large donors of the DLC crowd or build a large base of small donors like Dean. Much of the activist energy right now is with Dean. Only time will tell whether Clark can siphon off any of that energy or whether he will run a more traditional top-down campaign. If the latter, he will need to pick up much of the Democratic establishment currently encamped with Kerry, Lieberman, Gephardt, and Edwards. He needs money and people and voters, and whether he will start to roll them up or languish remains to be seen.
What makes predictions especially difficult is Clark's lack of an electoral track record. We simply don't know how, or if, Clark will connect with voters. Nor do we know how he will deal with debates, attacks, and the inevitable gaffes.
Only time will tell. Clark is a leap into the dark electorally. An act of political faith. Or desperation. A political
tabla rasa on which people can write their aspirations for an end to GOP corruption and misgovernance.
Here are some links to learn more about the enigmatic General and his people:
The Clark SphereUnited 4 ClarkDigital ClarkClark's Company WavecrestMeet the Press Post War Interview
If Not Dean, Who?
Another interesting article from TomPaine.com. below is an except from the article.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8877
"If the pundits have been consistent about one thing in this campaign, it's the argument that the Democrats will get slaughtered if Howard Dean is their presidential nominee.
He's not a national candidate, they say. He's too left-wing. He doesn't have enough foreign policy experience. By running as the centrist, tough-on-terrorism candidate, George W. Bush would beat Dean like a drum.
Or so they say.
But the Dean campaign has brought such unexpected energy into the Democratic primary that the Dems now have an entirely different problem: If Dean loses, the party will probably lose in November 2004. "
Dean Finds That Courting Blogocrats Means Answering Tough Questions
Interesting article in The Village Voice
Dean Finds That Courting Blogocrats Means Answering Tough QuestionsWired to Wiredby Anya Kamenetz
September 17 - 23, 2003
Thanks to his Internet-centered campaigning, presidential contender Howard Dean appears to be far more wired into the wired electorate than his Democratic rivals or George W. Bush. Dean's innovative use of the Web has gotten plaudits from the press, and his courting of the wired crowd seems to be paying off—10,000 people showed up for an August 24 rally in cybercity Seattle. But if Dean is to keep the goodwill of blogocrats, he must find the message to match their medium.
It is perhaps with this obligation in mind that the former Vermont governor spent a week in mid July as a guest blogger on the online journal of Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. A cyberspace hero, Lessig is the author of Code, and Other Laws of Cyberspace and The Future of Ideas, both of which passionately advocate the value of preserving the Internet for the public domain and warn of the dangers of giving too much power over innovation to corporations through new copyright extensions and restriction of competition.
The emerging online intellectual-property movement is broad and potentially baffling to those not fluent in both legal and technological jargon. It covers controversies as diverse as Napster, FCC rules on media consolidation, the Microsoft monopoly case, and the use of open-source software. In recent years, techies' ire has coalesced around two pieces of largely under-publicized legislation: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, both passed in 1998.
The Sonny Bono Act, notably backed by Disney, extended the term of copyright for the 11th time in 40 years, to the life of the author plus 70 years. Online entrepreneur Eric Eldred lost a challenge to the act in the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2003; he unsuccessfully argued that copyrights were no longer meaningfully limited in time because of these repeated extensions.
The DMCA attempts to strengthen existing copyright protections for the new online media. Its most detested provision is referred to as "anticircumvention." Roughly, any software tool whose main purpose is to break security encryption on a piece of copyrighted intellectual content, whether a DVD, a music file, or a software program, is now illegal. This new protection for copyrighted material carries no accompanying provision for fair use; in practice, large media and software companies, including eight major movie studios, have had programmers prosecuted and jailed for writing decryption devices even when the programmers' code has had a legitimate academic purpose. And the law certainly doesn't make it any easier to trade movies or music in peer-to-peer networks like Napster.
For Lessig and his camp, including members of free-culture groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the new copyright protections are not annoying technicalities but a social counter-revolution in process, turning the "creative commons" that was the early Internet into an environment even more controlled by corporations than "real space."
"Those threatened by this technology of freedom have learned how to turn this technology off. The switch is now being thrown. We are doing nothing about it," Lessig concluded in The Future of Ideas.
On the surface, at least, Dean's campaign is operating very much in sync with the idea of the creative commons. His campaign manager, Joe Trippi, a software industry insider and a self-described avid reader of blogs, extols the virtues of Dean's "bottom-up" strategy over "broadcast politics."
His rivals John Kerry and John Edwards have taken note; both recently launched campaign blogs. But Dean's people have moved far beyond that. Using its official online campaign journal, Blogforamerica.com, the commercial website Meetup.com, and scores of unofficial sites, the Dean campaign has coordinated meetings and rallies, raising considerable funds from thousands of small donors in targeted message-sending bursts. (The campaign says it raised $500,000 in a few days in July in response to its publicizing a Dick Cheney $2,000-a-plate fundraiser.) Most appealing is the opportunity for young, wired citizens familiar with Web journals to give online feedback and thereby get excited about democracy. Lessig has referred to the Dean campaign's strategy as "open-source," a term describing free and collaboratively created software, like the original Linux.
But how committed is Dean to the principles behind the open-source idea? When the unofficial, but large, Dean Nation blog submitted a list of readers' 10 most popular questions to the Dean campaign in April, the DMCA made it, along with "9-11 Investigation" and "Cutting Gov't Spending." Yet in the five short entries that Dean posted on Lessig's blog, he managed to avoid the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Act, though hundreds of posters both during the week and later mentioned the issue or asked him to state a position.
"What is your position on the threat to the public domain? And what policies do you intend to support to address that threat?" asked Dean Nation blogger Aziz H. Poonawalla. A poster to Lessig's blog named J.B. Nicholson-Owens complained on July 21, "Dean had the opportunity to research something related to copyright issues before coming here. I see little (if any) evidence he did that. To me this comes off as profoundly disrespectful of the audience. During the (mostly one-way) discussion, he had time to compose a response that would give us some inkling of what he was thinking on any copyright-related issue (which is the main topic on this blog)."
Reached by the Voice, Dorie Clark, Dean's New Hampshire communications director, said, "Governor Dean recognizes the importance of these issues and his policy team is looking into them, but we haven't reached a policy yet."
Lessig himself seems disinclined to press Dean on the matter. "I invited Dean in particular," Lessig posted after Dean's visit, "because so much of the success of his campaign has come from those who spend time on the Internet, and I suggested that the mix who spent time at my blog had a valuable set of insights that might be useful to understanding the issues that rage on these pages. But as I've said before, these issues are not the central issues of a presidential campaign (yet, anyway). And necessarily, any attention a presidential campaign gives to these issues will be for the purpose of learning. No one launches a campaign for President in 2004 with the aim to 'free culture' or limit the excesses of creative regulation."
Though Stanford induced Lessig to move his site to a personal server after the Dean postings because of Federal Election Commission regulations aimed at keeping school resources out of political campaigns, the guest spot does not necessarily imply an endorsement. In fact, Lessig has personally contributed only to the Edwards campaign.
Many bloggers who do support Dean believe they understand why it may be in his interest not to come out just now in favor of copyright reform, as candidate Dennis Kucinich, for example, has (also guesting on Lessig's blog). "I was encouraged by Dean's appearance on Lessig's blog, and his stated desire to learn about IP [intellectual property] issues and make an informed decision," Brian Flemming, editor of the political and culture blog Slumdance.com, told the Voice. "I'd love it if he took a stand against the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Act, etc., but I do understand that would be throwing caution to the wind politically, given the power of the media companies. Al Gore had the media against him, and he nearly lost. I'm not anticipating a radical stand from a candidate already pegged as unelectable by some."
The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America were both major supporters of the DMCA. Dean's list of individual contributors, on the other hand, already includes dozens of Hollywood names, including Warner Bros. president and COO Alan Horn, Disney producer Jeffrey Abrams, Mel Brooks, Norman Lear, and executives at Sony, Universal, 20th Century Fox, HBO, and Showtime. If Dean shapes his messages to please big media, that could be a big blow to the creative commons
Blues Festival Again
I am beginning to sound like a broken record (a broken B.B. King record?), but we currently have $175 pledged toward the $220 rental of a space at the Tucson Blues Festival. This is tough for me, since I was an English major, but I think that leaves us $45 short. I am going to beg at my environmental group's meeting tomorrow night at the NWNC, but I thought it couldn't hurt to put the plea here again as well. So, if you haven't pledged, and can spare a bit of cash (even ten or twenty bucks), you could help us reach this large, diverse (captive?) audience. For those unfamiliar with the Blues Festival, it is a free event sponsored by the nonprofit Tucson Blues Society. I don't know who the headliners are this year, but there are usually a number of fine performers throughout the day. It takes place on Sunday, October 19, this year, in Reid Park. It starts at 11AM (traditionally with a performance by students in the Tucson High School Blues Band), and is usually over by 7 PM. If you can contribute, contact me at 292-0693, or by E-mail at Jennel2@aol.com. Thanks.
Jim Nelson
President Bush Shortchanges Funding for His Own Emergency AIDS Program
-From the Daily Misleader
The President heavily promoted his emergency relief for AIDS after announcing it at this year's State of the Union speech, signing a $15 billion law to be spent over five years. But while the President is publicly calling for full funding, he's actively seeking to underfund his own program.
The President said in Africa this July that "The House of Representatives and the United States Senate must fully fund this initiative, for the good of the people on this continent of Africa," Less than a week later, he sent a letter to Congress asking for 1/3rd less than full funding.
The law that Bush signed authorized $3 billion a year, but President Bush has requested only $2 billion in his 2004 budget. Despite the claim to fully fund the program in the State of the Union, the Bush Administration is now claiming that AIDS service organizations cannot absorb full funding immediately. The service organizations themselves disagree with the White House's position.
The Republican-led Foreign Operations subcommittee also disagreed when it approved a doubling of the commitment for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS from $200 million to $400 million, despite a letter from the White House requesting the lower figure. It was later scrapped by the full committee under White House pressure.
And the bottom line? The president's push for $1 billion less than authorized by Congress (and promoted by the President himself) blocks 1 million people from treatment and nearly 2.5 million new HIV infections that could be avoided.
Governor Howard Dean Endorses Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride
First presidential candidate to endorse rideATLANTA--Democratic presidential candidate Governor Howard Dean, M.D., became the first presidential candidate to endorse next week's Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a historic effort to draw attention to the rights of immigrant workers and the need to reform America's immigration laws.
Modeled after the 1961 Freedom Rides, the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride will see immigrants board buses from ten U.S. cities and stop in over 100 towns.
In a letter to Maria Elena Durazo, National Chair of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, Governor Dean offered his strong support for the rides:
"I strongly support the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride and its goal of empowering millions of American workers to call for a clear roadmap to citizenship. It is my hope that the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, like the Freedom Rides of 1961 that inspired it, will serve as another defining moment in our history when the voices of a committed few help to raise the consciousness of all Americans," Governor Dean wrote.
Beginning with send-off rallies in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles on September 20--and subsequently in six other major cities--almost a thousand immigrant workers and their allies will cross the nation in buses, stopping in more than 100 towns and cities across the United States. The rides will culminate with Congressional visits and rallies in Washington, DC and New York during the first week in October, and will focus on drawing attention to the urgent need to reform America's immigration laws.
The Dean for America campaign has posted the Ride on its self-organizing action tools and set up a website to provide information on the ride.
"We are stronger when we are beholden to one another as part of a national community and weaker when we act only as individuals. The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride reflects this ideal, and for that, I proudly support their efforts," Governor Dean wrote.
Amusing (and highy apocryphal) Story
A little boy wanted $100 so badly that he prayed for two weeks, but nothing happened. He decided to write a letter to the Lord requesting the $100. When the postal authorities received the letter addressed to "Lord, USA," they decided to send it to President Bush.
The President was so impressed, touched and amused that he instructed his secretary to send the little boy a $5 bill. President Bush thought this would appear to be a lot of money to a little boy. The little boy was delighted with the $5 and sat down to write a thank-you note to the Lord, which read:
"Dear Lord,
"Thank you very much for sending me the money. But it's too bad you sent it through Washington. That moron President Bush and his friends deducted $95!"
Story Updates
Battle CasualtiesThe Observer
obtained records regarding
the number of American wounded in Iraq which indicate that 6000 soldiers have been evacuated for medical reasons, 1500 of whom have been wounded, many seriously. While this is much lower than
my stab in the dark estimate, it still a much higer figure than the Administration would like to admit, and higher than the populace is likely to accept.
This ratio of casualties to fatalities is running close to 4 to 1, but still only includes those wounded seriously enough to require treatment outside the battle theatre. The army's prefered locus of treatment is near the battlefield. We still do not know how many soldiers are being wounded, rehabilitated and returned to duty near the combat area, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. I still suspect the number of wounded is being greatly understated by the Administration.
In addition, the type of injuries sustained is changing. It is more common now to lose one or more limbs instead of one's life in an incident than the recent past. Improvements in body armor protect the soldier's torso better, but still leave their limbs vulnerable. Hence we are seeing an increase in debilitating limb wounds requiring amputation.
The legacy of this war will be with us for a long time to come. Many years hence, young heroes in our midst missing one or more limbs will still serve as a grim reminders that the cost of electing a fool to the Presidency is more than we can afford. I remember wags cracking wise in 2000 about how with unemployment at an all time low, the stock market sailing along on a bubble of irrational exuberance, and a record budget surplus, that America could afford to elect an idiot to the Presidency; they couldn't have been more wrong.
Enemy of IsraelUpdating
my recent blog entry, Paul Snodgrass is the name of the student kicked out of Israel and threat to Israeli for wanting to go to school at Bir Zeit. It turns out that
Paul belonged to the Alliance for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, a group that supports the Palestinians’ right of return and proposes that Israel and Palestine exist as either two, fully independent states, or one bi-national state. This may be the reason for his harrassment by the Israeli government. Apparently the Israeli's consider it a threat to their security for an American citizen and taxpayer to advocate enforcement of UN resolutions. American citizens pay the taxes which subsidize the Israeli military-industrial complex, the creeping annexation of the West Bank in the guise of temporary "settlements", and the brutalization of the Palestinian people. Yet the Israeli's consider it to be a threat to their security when one of them wants sane and humane behaviour in return for his tax subsidy.
When Dean said that we must be an impartial broker, I think he was begining to speak the truth about Middle Eastern politics. When Dean said that Hammas members were soldiers, he was attacked. He violated the great taboo of "moral equivalence". Never must a Palestinian fighting to free his homeland be given the same moral significance as an Israeli soldier defending his home, or an American defending his. As soon as they stop being "terrorists" and start being nationalists, or patriots, or simply desperate, the battle suddenly loses moral clarity. Suddenly, we are just people doing very nasty things to other people who are fighting back as best they can.
For far too long America has financed and abetted Israeli flouting of international law and common human decency in the name of an illusory security. Israel and the United States will never have peace in the Middle East unless it is built on a foundation of justice. US and Israeli policy currently seeks to build peace upon the corpses of those who demand justice and self-determination, both in Palestine and in Iraq. Until we stop abetting the worst tendencies in Israeli politics, the very same fascistic victim-fantasy currently twisting the United States' politics into a senseless spiral of violence and neurotic self-mutilation, a just and lasting peace is impossible.
Dean Attacked by Dems For Biased Foreign Policy
From Dean Defense Listserve:
I'm sure by now you've all heard of the letter signed by Congressional supporters of a certain other candidate attacking Howard Dean for his stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. We need you to do several things:
1) We've included a list below of all the relevant Representatives, where they are from, and how to contact them. Use it. Especially contact any Reps from your home state. If none are from your home state, contact Nancy Pelosi. For a Democratic leader to make such a statement about a
Presidential candidate is, well, unacceptable in my mind. (NOTE:
Nancy Pelosi and Dean have subsequently kissed and made up. Pelosi now says there is essential agreement between herself and Dean on the US role in Middle East peace)
2) Pass this message on to friends and other Dean supporters. We need to let these Representatives know that we, their supporters at the grassroots, don't appreciate their uncalled for attacks. There's hundreds of us on this listserv. We need thousands.
3) Keep the pressure on. Ask for an apology. These are attacks motivated by pure politics.
The letter from the Representatives can be found at:
The Berman LetterThese are the names, districts, and contact URLs for the Representatives. Where only the main page is provided, scroll to the bottom of their webpage to find contact info:
That's them folks. Get this list out there please.
Something to keep in mind, even as you're writing your own letters, is that
what these people are expressing outrage is the idea that the US should be a
fair negotiator in peace talks. Attacking fair mediation is not only
ridiculous, it's harmful to the Middle East Peace Process. If one side
doesn't trust us, no one can walk away a winner. To that extent, those who
would demand a biased negotiator are, in effect, demanding more violence in
the future.
TALKING ABOUT RACE
By Governor Howard Dean, M.D.
Race is a difficult subject in America. Politicians often tell black audiences that they believe in civil rights and affirmative action. Some talk about their own experiences in the Civil Rights movement. Some are now attacking the use of the word quotas in front of white audiences. Doing all of this is important.
But it is not enough.
No white American can understand what it means to be black in America. Things have improved significantly for African Americans in this country since 1964. However, it is important to recognize that the Civil Rights Movement was largely a victory over legal segregation. Discrimination still exists, and we must continue efforts to eliminate it.
Polls show that the majority of white Americans believe that race is no longer a big factor in American life, and that equality of opportunity has mostly been successfully incorporated into American political and social culture. Many white Americans assume that whatever segregation remains in the public school systems and universities around the country is either self-imposed or the product of neighborhood schools.
Bill Clinton is the only President or white Presidential candidate I have ever heard talk candidly about issues of race in America. Black Americans still believe, with some justification, that white America does not understand the historical scars left by slavery and Jim Crow, scars which cannot be erased in a generation or two. Black Americans often mistake white indifference or lack of understanding for racism, which is the case in only a small number of instances.
But many white Americans don't understand that indifference and lack of understanding does lead to institutional racism, where, despite the best intentions of the individuals who run the institution, day-to-day hiring practices only reinforce African American fears and suspicions of bias. Just last week, a Wall Street Journal article reported that white job applicants with criminal records were more likely to be called back for job interviews than African American applicants with clean records.
Affirmative action is still needed in order to overcome the unconscious biases that all Americans of every ethnic group have toward hiring people like themselves. And the discussion of that unconscious bias is essential if we are ever going to bridge the gaps between white America and not only African Americans, but the Latino community, Native-Americans, Asian Americans, and women of all ethnic backgrounds.
Talking about race means more than merely mentioning civil rights or condemning the President's use of the word quota. Talking about race means confronting ourselves with the vastly different perceptions that we have about each other, and trying to walk a mile in one another’s shoes.
Race is not simply a matter of civil rights; it can influence the right to thrive and prosper in American society. A discussion of race is incomplete without addressing the impact of race or ethnicity on the ability to access affordable health care, quality education and the capital to build businesses and create wealth.
It is particularly important for white candidates to raise these issues in front of white audiences. This kind of message can be too easily dismissed or pigeonholed coming from a member of a minority community. If America is going to prosper as the most diverse nation on the face of the earth, we are all going to have to take responsibility for the stereotypes we have of each other, and debunk them.
Let us each commit to do our part.
What's in a name?
Last night I attended the annual Wingspan Benefit Dinner. The keynote speaker placed Dean in the same category as Bush and Kerry because Dean advocates equal rights for the LGBT community via civil unions in lieu of marriage. She proclaimed that those who work for these people have become the apologists for their candidate to the LGBT community. I was upset for two reasons: A. I am not now nor will I ever be an apologist for any person. B. The speaker's remarks indicate to me that people are not thinking critically about this issue.Those who desire equality must realize that this is not a black and white issue and if equality is to be obtained we must examine our society not with our hearts but with our minds. Below is my opinion on this issue.
Marriage, according to my
American Heritage Dictionary, is the "state sanctioned union between a man and a women." What the dictionary leaves out is the religious connotations that are attached to marriage; the vast majority of marriages in this country are performed and sanctioned by religious institutions. We live in a secular country. Our government, regardless of how individual politicians or citizens feel, cannot force religious institutions to sanction unions between same-sex couples. It is sad that most religious institutions do not embrace all their followers but the government can not change religious beliefs. The work for equal recognition within religion is the job of the religion's members, they are the only ones who have the power and influence to make changes.
Our government does have the power to extend equal rights to all couples. It can sanction and recognize
unions between couples both homosexual and heterosexual. These unions are called civil unions. Many
ask why there is this distinction and why can't unions between same-sex couples be labeled as marriage.
As individuals, people can call their union whatever name they choose. As stated earlier marriage is a
religiously charged term. Our government recognizes religiously sanctioned unions because the majority of our citizens choose this type of union. I personally believe that because our government is secular it should not do this; civil unions should be used for everyone. Like the brand names Kleenex and Q-tips, marriage has become the common term used to denote a union between two people regardless of whether it is religiously sanctioned.
I support Howard Dean because he thinks critically about this issue. I support Howard Dean because he
supports me.
Dean Environmental Group Meeting
The second meeting of the Dean Environmental Group will be held on this coming Wednesday, Sept 17, at 6:30 PM, in room 112, at the Northwest Neighborhood Center, 2160 N. 6th Ave. I invite anyone interested in these issues to join us. This meeting, we will be getting down to action plans, including how to reach out to the attendees of the Arizona Association of Environmental Educator's conference in Tucson next weekend. We willl be recruiting people to participate in particular projects, such as group participation in volunteer projects for groups such as Audubon and the Sierra Club. We will be looking for ideas and suggestions for an environmentally themed event for the
Sept 20, Dean visibility day. Of course, I will also be pushing my Blues Festival idea, and looking for those final pledges to get that space reserved by next weekend. Everyone is welcome. Come and get your daily Dean fix, and help us brainstorm.
Reflections on the Current Political Climate
This is a free thought essay I wrote after trying to cope with the weight of this day.
Today started out with a trip to campus in the car. As usual the car radio was tuned to whatever clear channel (pun intended) we could get. There was this medley of patriotic songs playing and snipets of George W. making a speech about punishing the offenders of 9/11 (as though their being dead already wasn't punishment enough). Then I get to school and I am nearby the 9/11 memorial service taking place on the mall. The Arizona Daily Wildcat and every other news outlet is covering 9/11 memorials all over the world. Most of which are heartbreaking and act as a healthy reminder of the depths of human tragedy and loss. That was a horrible horrible day, and it is one, like the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, or the Day Martin Luther King Jr was shot, that everyone who was alive that day will remember where they were and what they were doing.
For me, I was in the shower listening to the radio (yes, I have a shower radio) and I remember jumping out of the shower, all soapy to turn on the TV and watch in horror as the 2nd plane hit the WTC. I sat, aghast and in shock, like the rest of the world. I had no idea the tragedy this would bring. I said that day that the US was at war and even if it hadn't been declared that we were.
Today is no different. I am still frozen with shock and grief and the memories of hugging my soon to be girlfriend and telling her that her mother would be ok (her mother works in Pennsylvania and was evacuated before the last plane crashed in that field).
My shock and grief have changed, in fundamental ways. No longer am I horrified only at the loss of the people that day. I am horrified by my country's response to it. Tragedy begets tragedy seems to be the lesson. I am horrified that Bush and Rumsfeld and Ridge feel that it is their place to speak of vengeance and of fighting terror when the U.S. is creating no less of a tragedy by dropping bombs on Iraqi children and starving families and cutting veterans benefits. It is no less of a tragedy that the people of Iraq must live in fear of our soldiers and of car bombs and that they have no infrastructure. No water, no electricity. We have wrought devastation upon their land. We have reigned TERROR on them. We are no better. No matter what mantle is given us by our flag and our nationalism and our "freedom", we ARE NO BETTER.
Bush and his cronies speak of freedom when I have friends (U.S. Citizens) of Middle Eastern heritage who live in FEAR that they are going to be detained and held without an attorney for suspicion of terrorist activity, just for disagreeing with this government.
The tragedy of 9/11 lives on, not only in the loss of lives that day and the stories of children who lost their parents or parents who lost their children. The terror of 9/11 lives on in US military action and occupation. It lives on in a government that is out of control and that doesn't recognize the sanctity of citizenship or of due process.
Today, I do not forget 9/11, I remember what my country can achieve and I remember that REGIME CHANGE BEGINS AT HOME. Today I renew my commitment to fire the current pResident and restore democracy to America and sanity to the world.
Today, in honor of the victims of the 9/11 attacks and all of the victims of the subsequent tragedies in their name, I ask you to do the same.
Clark
It seems as though Clark is on the fast track for VP run, and Dean seems to be at the top of the list. Does anyone have any good sources of information about him? I know a little bit, but I am ever careful not to support someone unless I have a clear understanding of their record.
Also, it is interesting to note that there seems to be some opinion among Clark's supporters that he will enter not as a VP candidate, but as a P candidate and that he will be strong because he is Southern and he can answer Bush's wartime popularity (as a decorated veteran). It will be interesting to watch, for sure!
Could it be...?
The Washington Post reports that Dean has met with Wesley Clark a number of times and the two men may be discussing the possibility of getting Clark to join the campaign in the VP slot. Seems September 19 is be the day Clark may make an announcement one way or another.
Here is the link:
Washington PostShould this happen this early in a presidential campaign, it would certainly give Dean a momentum that would leave other candidates, including Bush, in even more confusion and frustration.
Blues Festival Booth Donations
Here is what I have been told by Barbara Tell an regarding donations to pay for the space at the Blues Festival. The people wishing to donate should make their checks directly to the Tucson Blues Society, the sponsor of the festival, and the group that rents the spaces. The $220 they charge includes all city permits. I will be having a meeting of my Dean environmental group at the NW Neighborhood Center in room 112, on Wednesday Sept 17, at 6:30 PM. Checks could be brought there, or if you wish to mail them, E-mail me or call me and I'll give you my address. Barbara tells me that we have to record the information from all checks and report them as in-kind contributions to the Dean campaign. Then they would be mailed to the Tucson Blues Society. I appreciate the response, and as of now, with my $50, we have $175 of the $220. I expect to ask members of my group to pitch in, and I will make up whatever difference we lack as of next Wednesday. You may also E-mail Barbara at bjt@Ag.arizona.edu if you want clarification of the in-kind donation procedure, or if you just have questions for her. My E-mail again is Jennel2@aol.com, like all AOL customers, I am experiencing some problems with E-mail due to the recent Blaster Worm. So, if you prefer to call, my phone is 292-0693. Call or E-mail before you write your check, to be sure it is still needed. Thanks.
Jim Nelson
Why Dean Can and Will Win in '04
Why Dean is the ONLY candidate that can beat Bush...
I have been reading www.blogforamerica.com. The Gov. has issued a statement regarding the underhanded tactics used by our Republican congress to pass school vouchers while they KNEW that two votes from the opposition, plus the entire Congressional Black Caucus were scheduled to be out of town for the debate.
I decided to read some of the comments to Dr. Dean's statements. Here is one that sums up why Dean can win and why the naysayers should think carefully before they say he is "too liberal"
Copy/Pasted text from www.blogforamerica.com:
"I can't believe I used to vote Republican. I feel so dirty. Although at the time they seemed (and were) honorable men and women. No longer. I am voting for Dean in the general election because I want to save the GOP from itself. No one else has the backbone to stand up to the ultra-right. If they lose, and lose big time, the GOP will hopefully choose to follow a different course. One which will make me proud to come from a GOP family once again. I don't agree with Dean on a lot of issues... But I am sick and tired of watching the ultra-right wingers hijack our political system and pollute our national dialogue with such bitterness.
Posted by a at September 10, 2003 01:35 PM"
Yay for satire!!
i would recommend that everyone check out
www.theonion.com (read the "Top Story" it just about sums up US foriegn policy). I would love it if people would check it out and then have some discussion about it!!
Another fun one is
www.geeks4dean.com. Check out the shop. I particularly enjoyed the altoids spoof and the magic card spoof.
Tucson Blues Festival Booth
There's currently a tremendous opportunity to have a Dean for AZ booth at the Tucson Blues Featival in Reid Park on Sunday, October 19. This free annual event attracts hundreds, maybe over a thousand, Tucsonians, including college students and members of the general public of all ages. But the rental is not inexpensive. A space, through the Tucson Blues Society, is $220 for the day, and does not include a tent (they are checking on that for me), or the tables and chairs we would need. I personally will pledge fifty bucks toward this effort, and I hope others will step up and share the cost in the form of in-kind donations to Howard Dean's campaign.Howard Dean is the only candidate in the race who can actually play the Blues, as he did at the Iowa State Fair. Every group under the Tucson Dean umbrella could share this booth, and get our candidate's message out to a large, diverse audience.
Jim Nelson (Jennel2@aol.com)
Defense in Dense
Update: Now the Administration and its more shameless apologists are implying that growing terrorist activity in Iraq was
part of their brilliant strategy all along. Apparently, the idea is to create a "fly trap" for terrorists in Iraq. Bush in his latest address declared Iraq the central front in combating terror. Boy, I bet the Iraqi's will be happy to be of service.
Seriously, this has to be the stupidist piece of spin I've heard out of this Administration yet. Do they seriously expect the public to believe that by stimulating terrorist activity, we are combating it? Will anyone actually buy the idea that terrorists are like mindless automatons who will strike exactly where we want them too? If we inspire yet more radicalism and terror, it WILL end up happening here with greater frequency too, not just where we decide to take a stand.
There is not some fixed amount of terrorism in the world. We cannot make one target so ripe that all the terror in the world will flock to it leaving the rest of the world safe. There is exactly as much terrorism in the world as there is extremely desperate and well-indoctrinated people reacting to injustice and violence upon their own people in a violent and counter-productive manner. Iraq has seen an uptick in terrorism because we have made more terrorists.
Iraq is an attractive terrorism target to be sure; American military and civilian assets thick on the ground, conspicuous and isolated from the populace. Perfect conditions for terrorist attacks on politically significant targets. Give it a year and soldiers will start treating every patrol as a combat mission, if they aren't already. Every time a soldier steps out of a US controlled compound they will be in mortal danger. This won't reduce terrorism elsewhere. Just the opposite, in fact. The frequency with which attacks on American targets succeed in Iraq, and they will suceed as often as they fail, will embolden more terrorists to try attacks on American soil and civilians once again.
We could perhaps take a spin as disconnected from reality as this as a good sign. Only someone suffering serious rope-a-dope would try to sell to this angle; the knockout can't be far away. Perhaps the next spin will involve a secret space alien invasion occuring in Iraq that we are secretly there to combat. I won't speculate any further, I don't want to give GOP hacks any talking points.
Andrew Sullivan, who at least in my own mind, has lost his, actually suggest in his latest London Times scrawl that Bush's "bring it on" comment was the not the product of a synaptically challenged Commander bumbling into a buzzsaw of public opinion, but the shrewd taunt of a master strategist drawing our terrorist enemies to their destruction like moths to a bonfire. This must be a great time to be a stand-up comic. So much material, you can pluck it right out of the Times.
The worst crime of all is that this new spin assures that even more resources will be diverted from protecting our homeland and our people from terror and shoved into the pockets of "contractors" like Haliburton and Bechtel. If Bush gets the 87 billion dollars he wants to throw away, one wonders what other domestic priorities will be sacrificed to this Administration's hubris and pollyanna worldview. Keep in mind that 87 billion is far larger than the annual budget of the Education Department. If Bush ever calls himself the education President again, may he spontaeously combust from all the hot air he's generating.
For the Defense on Dean's Defense
I'm inclined to wonder, as do many Progressives, what happened to Andrew Sullivan. He is still a Progressive and I still agree with him on most subjects; but when it comes to national security it's as if some evil genius has transplanted some long-forgotten Paleo-Neo-Con's brain into him. He
wrote of his opinion of Dean's chances a few weeks ago and was largely very complimentary about Dean's positions and achievements. However, when he turned to national defense, he started spewing such nonsense it sounded as if he had let Paul Wolfowitz write the last half of the article.
I would have ignored him, figuring Progressives know his views are very idiosyncratic on this topic, but then my wife read it and asked me about Sullivan's views. I realized that I had to respond to his charges, even though I find them facially farcical. Some of us remember when Sullivan made sense, and thus willingly give him the benefit of the doubt. Let there be no doubt, on this subject, Sullivan may be as bracingly acerbic and rhetorically proficient as ever, but his premises and arguments are a Potemkin village in which he lives unheeding of the fact it was constructed by Bush Administration officials solely to deceive. It is cardboard and poster paint and the first hard rain will carry it away, leaving Sullivan... well, all wet.
Sullivan writes:
"So where's the catch? In a word: national security. Dean has got himself where he needs to be in the election cycle largely because he strongly opposed the war against Saddam. Earlier this year, as partisan Democrats fumed at the Bush administration's success at building strong support from the war on terror, Dean gave the base what it wanted. He opposed the war forthrightly, while many scared Democrats in the Senate and Congress voted for it."
Notice the Sullivan conflates without distinctions "the war against Saddam", "the war on terror", "the war" which he says Dean opposed. They are not one and the same. Such conflation is typical of this Administration's rhetoric and outright lies.
"The War on Terror," though often carried out through questionable means, which Dean does criticize, is not something which Dean opposes. In fact, he feels the invasion and occupation of Afganistan was fully justified as an act of retaliatory self-defense for the crime of 9/11. What's more, he has been very critical of Bush's big talk and tiny budgets for Homeland defense. Dean will increase the resources available for Homeland defense and focus on prevention of terrorist acts by using a defense-in-depth strategy that utilizes security measures targeted to the threats abroad, on our borders and in our midst.
The "War on Saddam," as Sullivan so inflammatorily, and tellingly, labels the Iraq War, is not part of the War on Terror, nor even an accurate description of the Iraq War. One cannot make war on a person. We fought the nation of Iraq and are now engaged in fighting many of its people, not just Saddam. To ground one's justification for the Iraq War solely on the character and actions of Saddam Hussein, is misleading and irrelevant. Realistic calculations of international power and threat are the only proper basis for diplomacy and war. Claiming that Saddam's evil justifies all our actions is simple-minded, rhetorical nonsense. It is a dangerously childish, school-yard method of making policy decisions.
"The war" is the Iraq War, which Dean did not oppose in principle; rather, he questioned the means by which the decision for war was reached. Later, he came to the realization that the war would do active harm to our national interests because of this Administration's unrealistic aims and counterproductive methods. Dean opposed the Administration's timetable, strategy, and rationale for war with Iraq; the way this war was executed, not the idea of war itself.
Dean must have strongly suspected the Iraq War would alienate the very people most important to our intelligence efforts against terrorism. Far from opposing the War on Terror, Dean's opposition to the Iraq War is grounded in his concern that the vastly greater threat to our security from terrorism would grow as a result of the Iraq War. Demonstrably, the Iraq War has been disruptive to what Dean believes should be our primary goals of fighting terror and keeping Americans safe.
This Administration continues to claim that the Iraq War was, and is, part of the effort to combat terrorism. This despite having no evidence at all that the Ba'ath regime ever supported Al Qaida or any other terrorist group responsible for attacks on American interests. No evidence. Period. Rhetoric and carefully decontextualized claims they have aplenty. Unless real evidence existed at the time of our decision to invade, all post hoc attempts to cobble together a case for invasion are simply rank political justification, not the foundation for legitimate policy decisions. The Administration has manifestly failed to produce evidence of any links to terror prior to the war. Iraq is now hotbed of terrorism and that condition is manifesty the result of the Iraqi invasion.
The recent bombing of the UN headquarters and the car bombing in Najaf demonstrate clearly that the invasion and occupation of Iraq, far from quelling terrorism, has given terrorist groups, including Al Qaida, a whole new set of targets and opportunities for expansion. The occupation presents to them a power vacuum within Iraq in which terrorists may operate freely against American citizens, innocent Iraqis, and the very people trying to rebuild Iraq.
Americans are beginning to see in events on the ground the realization of predictions made by those who opposed the Administration's plans. Fundamentally, the debate over Iraq is not an argument about whether to defend America vigorously, but how to go about it wisely. Opposing this Administration's plans for war on Iraq, or criticizing their execution of it, does not make Dean "soft on security." On the contrary, how can a patriot fail to speak out, believing that this Administration is failing to make realistic policy which protects and defends our nation?
Dean believes that Bush's policies vis à vis Iraq and the War on Terror are weakening America. He condemns this Administration because he thinks they are making egregious mistakes that are harming America. As the costly stupidity of the Iraq War plays itself out to its inevitable and tragic end, the American people are beginning to realize that America cannot control the world; our powers are too poor and limited, no matter how vast comparitively. That is not defeatism; it is realism.
There will always be those who claim victory is just around the corner. Just a few more troops, just a few more billion (87, to be precise), just stay the course and show resolve and we will prevail. People who say such things are fundamentally ignorant of strategic realities. People much like those around Bush said the same things about Vietnam; failing utterly to understand the extraordinary resolve of occupied peoples. If Iraqis perceived America as a disinterested power they might accept our military occupation for their own long term good. But they understand all to well the nature of Bush's occupation; it's motives have much more to do with privatization of oil production and public utilities, enriching political allies, and manipulating public sentiment at home than with the welfare and future happiness of the Iraqi people.
Dean is doing his level best to genuinely end the unilateral nature of the occupation and thereby ease the Iraqis fears about our unchecked power over their nation. A President Dean will create a stronger and wiser America, which stands shoulder to shoulder with it's allies to improve the world. President Bush stands for a weak and petulant America which over-reaches, bullies it's allies, and then begs for the world to extract us from our own folly. We can defend ourselves and our allies from aggression. We can help keep the world a civilized place in alliance with those of good will. But Bush's policy of go-it-alone cowboy diplomacy is dangerous grandiosity that that we must not tolerate for the sake of our nation's security.
In my own estimation, and I do not know if Dean feels the same, the blood of each of our man and woman who has died in Iraq stains forever the hands of the Bush Administration. Those soldiers have encountered every soldiers worst fear: to die without their sacrifice having made America any safer. Americans have died in wars, their lives given that their families, friends and fellow citizens might live in freedom and without fear. It is a mockery and crime, however, to ask a soldier to die for a lie, or for cause which imperils thier fellow citizens whom they swore an oath to protect. This Administration's callous disregard for the sincerity of that oath is causing growing despair in those who serve America with their full measure of devotion.
The first reason for Dean's opposition to decision to go to war is that it was not a means of furthering the struggle with terror, it was, and is, a distraction that will exacerbate terrorism, a folly that weakens us when we need all our strength to defeat a real enemy. One little phrase routs all of the Bush Administration's self-justifications, "Where is Osama bin Laden?"Sullivan continues:
He has been relentless on the alleged missing WMDs issue.
This is all the space that Sullivan devotes to this critical issue. It's as if he wants it to go away but can't quite resist mentioning it.
I suppose there really is nothing more Sullivan can say about this issue, considering that the weight of the evidence is all on Dean's side. Impugning Dean's motives and leaving substance aside is Sullivan's only possible rhetorical strategy, since there is no substance to the opposing side. Dean has indeed been relentless about this issue, not out of partisan envy or personal animosity, as Sullivan later suggests, but because this is a critical issue of Constitutional limits and public morality.
The certain existence of WMDs and the imminent danger they posed to America security was THE reason given by the Administration as a causus belli against Iraq. Even so, they had to propose a new standard for pre-emptive self-defense in the absence of any immediate threat of attack by Iraq on America. Such a precedent in the customary law of nations is unacceptably destabilizing to the established international order, of which America is the primary beneficiary.
It is now apparent that the "evidence" which the Bush Administration, and Bush himself, used to sell their aggressive mission was exaggerated, fabricated, or presented out of context. This issue is about the "why" of the Iraq War, not the results. When confronted with the issue of WMD Administration apologists invariably change the subject and discuss the goals of the war, instead of how the decision for war was reached. In a democracy, the means by which decisions are taken are are as important as the goals of those decisions.
During times of danger it is natural for people to turn to a leader for security and resolve. Following 9/11 people turned to their President for leadership and got deception instead. In their pain and anger they were more than willing to lash out at whatever target the President presented. Bush and his Administration's national security team, dominated by ideologues who had long been intent on war with Iraq, exploited the opportunity to fabricate a case to achieve their aims.
After months of searching, no WMDs have yet have been found. The Administration has spun and covered-up, and even outright lied to try to make this basic fact go away. They have resorted to worst sort of thuggery and intimidation to silence critics and prevent leaks and whistleblowers. The wife of Ambassador Wilson, the debunker of the Niger letter, was outed as a CIA agent by Administration officials, a criminal act and a blow to American intelligence that could cost lives.
But lies cannot change the facts; were there any WMD in Iraq, they did not threaten the United States by any reasonable usage of the word "threaten". The Administration may have had a moral certainty that there were WMD weapons in Iraq. In fact, I'm quite willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they did believe it, but they lacked any credible proof. Instead of leveling with America and basing their recommendation for war on what facts they had. they stretched the facts to support their baseless assertions of an grave and growing threat from Iraq instead.
In the eyes of many, the Administration's behavior in this regard presents a grave Constitutional issue, an issue which the GOP would assuredly not try to minimize were the President not one of their own.
Congress must authorize war. Is it legitimate that they do so while laboring under deliberate misimpressions created by the President? Polk was at least chastised for the deceptions he used to bring us to war with Mexico. To tolerate unchallenged such behavior from the President undermines the proper role of Congress to check the power of the President's prerogatives to act unilaterally as the Commander in Chief. Toleration of the President's deception, indeed, active opposition to investigation of that deception by the GOP Congress demostrates a disturbing alliegance to party above the Constitution. The lies the President told may be an impeachable subversion of the Constitutional design, and is most certainly unwise. Our founders knew well the tyranny of an executive who could unilaterally declare war; they called him King George. Perhaps we should, too.
Rulers decide unilaterally matters of war and peace, casting aside the lives of their subjects in war whenever and wherever they see fit. American Presidents are not rulers; they are servants, and they must be honest about the reasons for war and obtain the consent for it from our elected representatives, free from deceit. To claim otherwise, even in times of grave peril, demonstrates contempt for our Constitutional system and a disdain for the wisdom of the democratic design our Founders bequeathed us. The wise controls and checks upon our leaders are meant to prevent the arbitrary use of power. The design is the heart of limited government, which was at one time a core principle of Conservative political philosophy. Apparently, no longer.
Dean's second reason for opposing the war is that the manner in which it was entered into was possibly subversive of the Constitutional order and contrary to the principles of democratic and limited government in which he believes. Bush arrogated the powers of a ruler to himself in deciding to attack Iraq under false pretenses.Sullivan writes:
"When Baghdad was liberated, and Saddam removed from power, Dean came up with his most memorable line yet: "I suppose it's a good thing."
"I suppose." How could anyone be that ambivalent about Saddam's removal? Even those who opposed the war acknowledge for the most part that Saddam was an evil monster. But for Dean, that huge humanitarian advance was balanced by dismay at a success for an administration he loathed. Of course, that naked partisanship is why he appeals to the Democratic Party base."
"I suppose" is evidence of a thinking man in the process of forming an opinion, not naked partisanship. Some people don't recognize ambivalence for what it is, a sign of independent thought. How could they recognize equivocation as a sign of someone considering the evidence, since they themselves simply adopt their opinions whole and substitute the arguments of others for independent thought? Dean has reservations about the ultimate effect of the Iraq War on American security interests. Since, in general terms, the only alternative to removing the Ba'ath regime is to leave it in place, the natural response to wonder if deposing the Ba'athists will ultimately result in benefits for America's security, or indeed, even for the security of Iraqis.
Dean has said that the time to take action against the Ba'athists was following the first Gulf War when we had evidence of Saddam currently ordering his citizens killed. We not only failed to act, but tacitly abetted the slaughter by allowing him to provide air cover to his troops.
Dean does not oppose the use of American troops to stop an active human rights atrocity, but there is little wisdom to using our troops to punish crimes a decade or more old. That does not save any lives, it only costs the lives of American troops. Sullivan's moral outrage is heartfelt, I'm sure, but such emotional diatribes are not the proper basis for the military policy of the greatest, most powerful, military force on Earth.
Dean's criticisms are not a matter of "naked partisanship" or loathing or envy, they are concern for the fate and security of our nation. If there is anything one can be sure of, it's that anyone who can see only unseemly motives in the actions of others, is likely not well acquainted with any other kind.
Dean is also very concerned with the way the costs of war were characterized by the Administration. Instead of preparing people for the sacrifices and costs of war and occupation, the Administration soft-pedaled the difficulty and expense of the task. Irresponsibly, they claimed that the war would be swift and easy (which was largely true, because they got lucky that most of the Imperial Guards melted away into the populace instead of defending Baghdad) and the occupation would be short, with a simple exit strategy. The latter assertion has proven to be either deliberate deception or unspeakably Pollyanna naiveté in the Administration's national security team.
Now we are deeply engaged in the affairs of a fractured nation which, for the sake of stability in the Middle East, we dare not abandon. We face the prospect of years of extremely costly occupation and reconstruction while bleeding out American lives at increasing pace. Not only is the cost likely to be ruinous, but the goals of fighting terror and promoting a lasting peace in the Middle East are likely to be compromised by the distractions of the task. The vacuum of effective control the Administration's half-measure, on-the-cheap, occupation has created fosters Islamic radicalism, promotes intercene violence, and results in pockets of de facto lawlessness, all of which breed terror.
There is a sick irony in the fact that our security goals will be harmed in the name of our security if we continue to allow Bush to call the shots. The Administration's lack of true commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan models the sort of half-measures and neglect one can expect in Iraq if Bush is given another term. Rather than committing the needed resources, Bush cuts deals with warlords and starves the central government of resources needed to exercise even basic control of the nation. Bush's already huge deficits, combined with his public commitment to cut taxes every year he is in office, are simply incompatible with the fiscal burdens of rebuilding two countries. If Bush thinks he can get away with another war, or, God forbid, one is actually thrust upon us by a true security threat, such as that growing in North Korea, the burden will grow yet more ruinous to our economy and credit.
For these reasons, and more which I have not mentioned, or which Dean sees but I cannot, any thinking person might ponder the possibility that the destruction of the noxious, yet stable, Ba'ath regime is a mixed blessing and say, "I suppose it's a good thing." His utterance was not politic, considering the nature and intellectual depth of his political opponents, but it was honest and highly revelatory of a man with an independent and critical intellect.
Sullivan says some things about healthcare reform and character which, though begging for refutation, I will skip over and address in a separate article. I would prefer to focus on foreign policy here. Sullivan continues:
"And in an election in which terrorism and national security will be central issues, a candidate who would seem to undermine America's credibility in the reconstruction of Iraq would also have a huge amount of persuasion to do. For even if you disagreed with the war, abandoning Iraq now would be a catastrophe from which American foreign policy would barely recover. Up against that, a message of tax hikes and gay equality, however justified on the merits, would scarcely be credible."
Dean does not advocate the abandonment of Iraq. Either a complete mischaracterization of Dean's position is the only way Sullivan can find to criticize Dean, or Sullivan is truly ignorant of Dean's public statements on this point; in which case he has no business writing about Dean at all.
Dean proposes that we cease this Administration's unseemly obsession with operational control of the reconstruction (which is viewed internationally, and by Americans who bother to think about it or who have glanced at
Halliburton's market cap since the Iraq War began, as a means of steering reconstruction funds into the pockets of favored American corporations) and security prevents sufficient international aid and assistance from being offered to the effort. Dean would obtain a new UN resolution creating a mandate for Iraq. This would give the effort international legitimacy and begin to heal the damage Bush did to our relations with our perennial allies in Europe and elsewhere in his rush to war on Iraq.
Dean's foreign policy views and priorities are the most thoughtful and realistic positions on defense in the Presidential field, most especially superior to the fever dreams and deceptions of Bush.
When he's President, Dean will be a great Commander in Chief. He will keep our military strong, treat our soldiers with the dignity and respect they deserve, and give them the resources they need to do thier work. Bush has overextended our military, demoralized and humiliated the troops repeatedly, and starved our fighting forces of needed resources. As President, Dean will restore our perennial alliances and utilize the cultural and moral power of the United States through diplomacy, treaties, and commercial relations to strengthen America's hand in world affairs without the need to resort to demonstrative wars. Bush has wrecked our alliances, isolated America, weakened us diplomatically; a power that must use force and bribes to get its way actually has no power at all. As President, Dean will ease the crushing burden on our military readiness that Iraq has become by sharing it with the rest of the world. Bush, if re-elected, will lead us deeper into the quagmire.
Howard Dean's military, strategic defense, diplomatic, and national security policies reflect the world class thinking which produced them. His common sense, wisdom and intelligence shine through his every pronouncement. Howard Dean's principles are shaped by the American ideals of temperance and justice in international relations, and the overriding goal of promoting peace and democracy worldwide by example, not by blunt imposition of our will. Howard Dean is a man of peace, a husband, father, and healer, who is determined to protect his nation and its democratic soul. His primary foreign policy focus is to bring American power fully to bear upon the scourge of international terrorism, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and keeping the peace so that our people may live and thrive.
Dean has consistently been underestimated by America's so-called intellgensia. People like Sullivan who have been duped, blinded, and confused by the spectacularly successful shuck and jive of this Administration. Their policies are costly failures. Our military is groaning at the seams and we are hemorrhaging money, not to mention American blood, in Iraq. Our standing in the esteem of the world is gravely damaged by the Pollyanna, lying bullies, who have captured our security policy apparatus. Terrorism continues to threaten the security of our people at home and abroad, and this Administration will take only measures that capture headlines, not those quieter, more expensive measures that prevent terror. In their largely ineffectual bumbling, this Administration has stepped all over the civil rights of American citizens and severely mistreated the immigrants and visitors to our nation who are our ambassadors to the world. Combined with their ruinous economic policies, deceptive and destructive environmental backpedaling, anti-labor, anti-worker, anti-minority, anti-woman, anti-democratic policies, dirty tricks, power plays, and abuse of the our nation's values and people, the sum is an ethically bankrupted and monstrously corrupt GOP. People have begun to realize that the leaders of the GOP across the nation have overreached our tolerance for the abuse of power, done their best to dig out our Constitutional foundations of limited government, and damaged the American people's interests in favor of their own too many times. A wave of people sickened to their souls by the perfidy of the Taliban-like zealots who have captured the leadership of the GOP, and this Administration in particular, are going to sweep Dean into office with a resounding majority for the Democrats. No matter how much filthy money Bush raises, no matter how often he puts on the knee pads for special interests, no matter the lies and deceptions he attempts, none of it can the change the minds of awakened voters.
Dean will be our next President, and not a moment too soon.
Dean: Misplaced priorities leave our nation vulnerable
by Howard Dean
Special for The Arizona Republic
Sept. 6, 2003 12:00 AM
After the horrific attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 awoke America to the danger of terrorism, making Americans more secure should have been our nation's top priority.
Instead, after some initially positive steps, the Bush administration abandoned the war on terror for other misplaced priorities. It chose a domestic agenda of tax cuts for a few wealthy Americans and a foreign policy focused solely on Iraq. Almost two years later, the president has turned the largest budget surplus in history into the largest budget deficit, and much of the work necessary to protect us from the threat posed by terrorists remains undone. As a result, all Americans, at home and abroad, are less secure today - economically, politically and strategically.
The president's focus on passing reckless tax cuts and the resulting budget shortfall have left the United States without the resources to adequately protect against possible terrorist strikes and unprepared to deal with the aftermath of an attack. The critical requirements of our first line of defense - police, firefighters and hospital emergency workers - have become unfunded budget mandates imposed upon local and state governments.
There are no mandatory security standards at the 123 chemical facilities in the United States, any one of which could, if attacked, put up to a million people at risk. Just last week, a Wall Street Journal report confirmed that our airports remain dangerously - and unacceptably - vulnerable. Two years after the CIA failed to tell the FBI about terrorists on their watch list, nine agencies maintain 12 lists of suspected terrorists containing overlapping but not identical data. We still are inspecting only a tiny fraction of the containers that enter the United States by sea, rail or road - any one of which could contain materials to kill millions. And hundreds of tons of Russian nuclear material, chemical agents and biological pathogens remain unsecured. Addressing most of these priorities is a simple matter of resources - yet resources are not available due to today's budget crisis.
Worse, what little the Bush administration has done domestically to try to make us safer, it has done poorly. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security has triggered a bureaucratic turf war, drawing resources and attention away from the real war on terror. The color-coded national threat advisory system has needlessly scared the public and failed to provide any useful information. No one knows what to do when the administration changes the color from yellow to orange. The administration's mistreatment and religious and ethnic profiling of Arabs and Muslims has unnecessarily alienated groups whose assistance we vitally need to win this war.
They don't just go awayOn the international front, Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mohammed Omar remain at large. Far from being destroyed, terrorist network al-Qaida has dispersed and been reconstituted - with Osama bin Laden reported to have convened a terrorist summit in the Afghan mountains just last April. The Taliban is again on the move, threatening the safety and security of whole swaths of Afghanistan.
North Korea, a known weapons proliferator, is threatening to test a nuclear bomb - the Hermit Kingdom is in such dire financial straits that selling nuclear materials is a chillingly real possibility. Progress in completing the Israel-Palestinian "road map to peace" has come to a full stop, fueling the skepticism toward the United States that much of the Middle East now exhibits. The lack of planning for the stabilization and rebuilding of Iraq has led to a significantly more dangerous situation than existed before the war by creating a magnet for terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, seeking to kill Americans. Furthermore, the way the administration has arrogantly carried out the war in Iraq has alienated the friends and allies whose cooperation is integral to our success in combating terrorism, not only in Iraq, but everywhere around the world.
It is unfortunate that the issue of America's security has ever made its way into the political realm. Bipartisan statesmen and panels of experts who have examined the issue - from Warren Rudman to George Schultz to William Perry - overwhelmingly agree on what needs to be done to respond to the security threats facing our country. This clear consensus should have led to bipartisan agreement, resulting in swift passage of initiatives to make all Americans safer. Instead, lacking the will to abandon their reckless tax cuts to fund these necessary measures, the president and Republicans in Congress have questioned the patriotism of those who have challenged their policies - whether on Iraq, North Korea or other critical issues.
Before it is too late, we must take the steps that most agree will make us truly safer. This will require forcefully challenging terrorism in a united effort with other nations, improving domestic security and enlisting Arab and Muslim countries' support for the war on terror.
We're not in this aloneTo win the war on terror, we must be prepared to use the iron fist of our superb military. These efforts must be aggressive and make better use of special-operations forces and CIA operatives. All aspects of U.S. power need to be more effectively employed and coordinated in a joint effort with other nations. To accomplish this, we must stop conducting a foreign policy based on petulance and stop browbeating and berating our friends and allies. Such playground politics only alienates other nations and weakens our national security - with no apparent upside.
In the past, other countries have followed our lead because they respected us. It is vital that we repair these damaged relations and regain the respect of the world. We cannot win the war on terror on our own. We will be more effective and carry less of the burden if others join us in this effort.
To defeat terrorism, we need to work vigorously to defend America at home. We must improve U.S. intelligence and step up counterterrorism collaboration. We need to systematically assess threats and vulnerabilities and fix the greatest gaps in our defenses first - safeguarding chemical facilities against attack, protecting our ports by inspecting more ships, and improving how information is shared across all federal agencies and all levels of government so that everyone can work in tandem to prevent attacks and respond effectively if they occur.
Security begins at homeWe must give the nation's first defenders and responders the resources and training they need; improve communication systems; and clarify the appropriate roles for federal, state and local government. We should also make homeland security a core mission of the National Guard. And we must fund homeland security research and development, including safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals, innovative approaches to container security and better controls over nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological materials here and abroad.
We must also enlist support in the Arab and Muslim world. The United States must mount an aggressive campaign to win the hearts and minds of those less fortunate and more susceptible to being won over by terrorists' fraudulent promises.
Too many politicians think in terms of two- or four-year cycles, and we need to fundamentally change the way we approach the task. To do so, we must go beyond superficial statements declaring, "We are not against Islam." We must think and act more broadly to address the real economic and social contradictions that plague Arab and Muslim countries with a long-term plan that encourages economic reform and promotes democracy, tolerance, human rights and equal opportunity for women. We must work with our friends and allies around the world to give the people a reason to hope rather than despair.
Mostly good news
Interesting article on the changing attitude of the Republicans towards Howard Dean. Just a couple of months they were salivating at the thought of Dean possibly winning the Democratic nomination. They are far less delighted now.
Here is a
new poll indicating that the race may be tightening between Dean and Kerry, but not by much. Interestingly, a number of John McCain supporters are supporting Dean.
Threat to the State of Israel!?
Sometimes a story just makes you wonder how insanity comes to be institutionalized. Everyone is doing their job the way they have been instructed. Everyone thinks they are acting rationally to preserve their security and national interest. The policymakers, while possibly misguided, almost certainly didn't anticipate such perverse and unjust results. But still, the sum of all those bits of human intelligence, judgment, and even wisdom, is hideous cruelty and injustice of such Grand Guignol proportions that one is rendered powerless to adequately describe it.
From the National Lawyer's Guild listserv:
"A UofA student (we will make his name public in a few days), one of our active members last year, has decided to travel to the West Bank and finish his degree (units in Arabic and Women in Palestinian history) in Bir Zeit University, the most prestigious Palestinian institution of higher eductation.
"He thoroughly discussed his decision with both his advisor, the department and the U of A administration. While of course everyone told the student to think carefully about such a course of action due to safety concerns, there is no question of the academic validity of this decision: Bir Zeit university is an accredited institution by the Department of
Education (and, incidentally, by the Israeli governament), the U of A accepts credit transfers from it, and more than one U of A student has successfully taken part of their degree course there in the past (one former such student is currently enrolled in a PhD
program here).
"On arrival to Tel Aviv, the student was detained by Israeli police and interrogated. Unfortunately, he chose the honest and forthright course of action, telling the local authorities that he was planning to complete his degree in a Palestinian institution of higher education. At this point, he was detained and harassed for 12 hours. During his interrogation, he was repeatedly denied legal rapresentation, and threatened with "CIA and FBI investigation and even possible prison". He did contact the US embassy, but there was nothing they could do for him.
"At the end of the 12-hour period, his passport has been stamped with "Threat to the security of the State of Israel" (something which de facto precludes travel anywhere in the Middle East) and deported to London.
"APJME, as well as the student's numerous friends and collegues, regard this as outrageous. There is no question, either in the student's past history or his planned course of action, of him being dangerous to anyone's security. The university he was planning to study is considered a legitimate institution by all parties concerned. A US citizen has been detained with no charge or trial, harassed, and branded a terrorist for absolutely no reason whatsoever. As a consequence, he lost a semester and a sizeable amount of money, not counting possible future adverse consequences. We believe the University of Arizona should:
- take an official position of the matter, and issue a complaint to the Israeli governament and the US department of education.
- Waive tuition for the credits the student plans to take to complete his degree.
Limber up those pens, Deaners. We have a wrong to put right in our own backyard. Call or write to UA President Peter Likins at 520-621-5511 or plikins@arizona.edu and write to your
federal and state representatives to let them know that as Arizona citizens and taxpayers we want justice for this student. As soon as I learn the student's name, I will post it here. In the meantime send out those letters, the name of the student doesn't matter, this sort of thing isn't exactly a common occurrence.
Dean Environmental Group Meeting Report
The Tucson Dean Environmental Outreach Group (tentative name) met for the first time this past Friday evening at the Northwest Neighborhood Center. A dozen people, several not yet committed to Gov. Dean, listened to two speakers, and participated in a discussion of Dean's positions on conservation issues. The second part of the meeting was devoted to exploring ideas for getting Dean's message on the environment out to various groups in Tucson and SE AZ concerned with such issues. We discussed tabling opportunities and member to member interaction. Another meeting of this group will be scheduled soon, and I invite anyone interesterd to contact either me, Jim Nelson, at Jennel2@aol.com, or Barbara Tellman at bjt@Ag.arizona.edu Thanks
Is our children learning, yet?...
Governor Howard Dean issued the following statement regarding the President's
radio address on the No Child Left Behind bill:
"Today the President used his weekly radio address to praise his education bill, No Child Left Behind. Behind his glowing rhetoric is an unfortunate reality: Another broken promise by this President, who has broken his pledge to fund the statute's new demands, creating crushing burdens for local school boards and teachers throughout America. The funding is simply not there, and local leaders - already burdened by widespread federal program cuts and strains created by mismanagement of the economy - are struggling to find new resources to pay the bill. All too often, the only solution is to raise property and state taxes, giving lie to the notion that this President is a tax cutter. He is simply a tax shifter.
"Secondly, we all applaud the notion of accountability, but the methods in NCLB to measure accountability and promote reform are dangerously flawed. Schools from Texas to Colorado are being forced to dumb-down their tests so that they can ensure "progress" from one year to the next. This is a sham, and a disservice to our children. Worse still, in too many places, struggling students are reportedly being held back or even pushed out of classes and schools in a tragic game to boost average tests scores. Meanwhile, to help schools actually improve, the Administration provides rhetoric without resources.
"It's time we had school reform that works and really does close the achievement gap - not empty sloganeering that burdens our schools and sticks local taxpayers with the tab."
More from the Mouth of Tom Delay
Today on CNN Mr. Delay was told that his attacks on Howard Dean are welcomed by the Dean campaign because Delay's comments rally Dean's Base and cause people to further aid Dean's campaign. Delay replied by saying that Dean's base is small and insignificant. He also said that Dean has an unfit temper to be President. He went on to say that Bush is calm and even handed while all Dean does is yell and criticize the President.
Delay is delusional! Mr Bush has decimated 3 countries (USA, Afghanistan, & Iraq) in about 2.5 years; How could any-body think that he is remotely even handed.
I hope Delay and his friends continue to underestimate the growing number of people who support Dean, it'll make regime change so much easier. If Delay's attacks on Dean cause a surge of contributions to Dean, I wonder what his dismissal of Dean's supporters will do.
New Mexico Debate- Michael's Review
The candidates messages, and the overall tone of the debate, weren't unexpected. The candidates largely kept their criticisms for Bush and so often found themselves in agreement, except for Lieberman of course, that some of their differences seemed petty.
The surprise of the evening would have to be the demeanor of Gephardt. He was on fire. Incensed, smokingly angry at the Bush Administration, and lashing out with verve over and over. His eye's bulged and veins stood out as he denounced Bush's failed policies while gesticulating animatedly. The moderators practically had to shout him down at one point. He was by far the greatest entertainment of the evening. Dean looked positively calm and demure by comparison.
Wesley Clark, who it was rumored had been negotiating for a podium in New Mexico, failed to show. Also absent was Rev. Sharp-Tongue, and the night seemed staid and serious without his mercurial presence. I still think the new President should create a post of Holy Fool for Al.
Lieberman damn near shot himself in the foot, and got the only jeer of the evening, with a swing and a miss at Dean over the application of American labor and environmental standards to our trade partners. He said that the Bush recession would soon become the Dean depression if we tried to apply our standards to our trade partners. That was the line that got the jeer. People knew that the attack was mean-spirited and overly-technical. Dean thanked Lieberman for the shot and quickly pointed out that he meant international standards. Lieberman lamely said that he had always supported that, too.
Could Lieberman's advisors have genuinely thought that such an innocent conflation of international and American standards would be the issue to directly attack Dean over? People don't know what either consists of, nor the difference between them. Nor do they care. All they care about is keeping American jobs in America. Yet Lieberman thinks he'll score points by defending a free trade regime which drains jobs out of our country and exploits the workers other countries? He is so out of step with the mood of the electorate, he seems to be walking in the opposite direction.
Every time Lieberman opens his mouth a sanctimonious homily flops out and everybody feels like their dad is lecturing them once again on how they'll never amount to anything. It is interesting to see his chutzpah, though. In a room full of bikers he might loudly proclaim that Harleys and Indians suck and the only decent motorcycles are Motoguzzi. Once thoroughly trounced, he would no doubt point to his beating as evidence for the rectitude of his argument.
I suspect Braun and Kucinich are having an affair. Their perfect agreement on every issue, the adoring looks as the other speaks, hint at a campaign trail romance. They may not capture the Presidency, but they have captured cupid. It's too bad really that they are unelectable. A steamy bi-racial affair between President and Vice President is just what this nation needs to loosen up it's mojo following the frightened immobility of the Bush era. My wife did compare Kucinich to an evil goblin from the Lord of Rings as he stood glowering at the stage while listening to the other candidates. Not a good sign, that.
Kerry borrowed liberally from the themes and language of his own announcement speech in composing some of his answers. He was genial, and even made some really good points, especially on children and defense policy, which came straight out of Dean's play book, and he even cracked a couple of good one-liners at Bush's expense. But I gotta say, Kerry is starting to look like the mummy from a B horror film with really great hair. If the guy had any more gravitas in his face he would be the Crypt-thing. I think he needs a good night's sleep.
Edwards was his usual glib, handsome, charming, humorous, down-homey, and credible self. I want to drag him off and introduce him to all my female relatives, even the married ones, but I still don't want him as President for some reason. A certain lack of what Kerry has a surfeit of perhaps. Smush 'em together and maybe you have a President.
Graham seemed to disappear into the crowd after some an initially strong showing on Iraq and terror. He presented his plan for economic recovery as a blind trust exercise, and then seemed to fall through the stage.
Then there was Dean. He wasn't his usual self. Perhaps it was the format, but he seemed much more self-contained and at his ease than usual, almost laconic, and he spoke with an admirable brevity; I think he may have had time left by the end of the debate. Perhaps he has hit the stride of a front-runner, or is trying a more even-tempered delivery. There was none of the sparing with Kerry of the last debate; but they were at nearly opposite ends of the stage. He did speak Spanish with wonderful facility. Kucinich's high school pronunciation and the other candidate's bare attempts at occasional phrases were embarrassing in comparison. Less is more in this case I think. Dean showed critics that he could take the heat with grace and play the statesman as well as the populist rabble-rouser.
Meet-up Report: Hotel Congress
The meet-up at Hotel Congress was hopping! About 100 people attended. Originaly our location was supposed to be the Student Meet-up but that was not denoted on meetup.com so we ended up with a group of varying ages.
We started with a short film and then moved on to a general Q & A session which everyone seemed to enjoy. Jonna was awesome and answered all the questions with ease!
This months activity went well. People remained in their discussion groups long after the meet-up was over. I ran in to attendee to day who has already given a postcard out.
Meet-Up Report: Northwest Area
Due to the continued success of the Dean campaign, this month we had 3 meet-ups in the Tucson area. Ann Jensen and I hosted the one at the YMCA at Ina and Shannon. We had around 50 people. Large Pinal county contingent. Judy Lavendar, the Arizona state coordinator came and spoke to us a bit too and that also added to the atmosphere. It was great when we broke into small groups and talked to each other this time. Many people needed to decompress. I liked the smaller size. As always, Rex spoke wonderfully and was an asset.
I met some really impressive people. Ann, Rex and I spoke to them about what brought us to Dean. We three have arrived at this point by very different roads. This speaks to Howard Dean's ability to galvanize a whole range of people. A true uniter.
I Do So Love It When They Slander Me...
Dean has gotten into
yet another flap. This time with Tom DeLay over Dean's criticism of John Ashcroft.
DeLay said, "If this cruel, loudmouth extremist is the cream of the Democratic crop, next November's going to make the 1984 election look like a squeaker."
Cruel, loudmouth extremist? Man, that's great stuff. You can't pay for exposure like that. The most wonderful thing about your opponents being
arrogant,
hypocritical,
likely criminals is that that the more they slander you, the better you look.
Kerry Sounding a Lot Like Dean... Except Not.
John Kerry's strangely
unaffecting candidacy announcement speech sounded oddly like an uninspired Howard Dean. He strikes out as Bush, criticizing foreign policy, while admitting that he voted for "threatening" war against Iraq, an interesting reading of the Senate resolution upon the strength of which Bush MADE war, as well as threatening it. Apparently Kerry has decided that a slight recharacterization of the resolution he voted for is required. Kerry promised he will go back to the UN and internationalize the occupation were he President.
Kerry says he'll roll back the Bush tax cuts, except for those to the middle class, unlike some candidates (a poke at Dean). That he'll make up all the jobs lost under Bush in his first 100 days. (dangerous promise, that one) That he'll stop corporate welfare and will not allow corporations to move offshore and take government contracts. That he will build a system of universal access to health care by allowing people access to the Congressional health care plan, though, frankly, most people couldn't afford such a sumptuous plan and he didn't mention an income percentage cost. He promised to ensure civil liberities and equal rights, protect the enviroment, and end dependence on foriegn oil within ten years through higher CAFE standards and alternative energy(quite ambitous). He promised to litmus test for Roe any Supremes he might appoint. He also said he was looking to be the candidate of the NRA (another poke at Dean), and that we need to continue the assault weapon ban (though Dean supports this too, so what the difference is between them is not articulated).
In truth, I like Kerry. He seems like a genuinely caring and thoughtful guy. But he seems to lack a second gear. He grinds along speaking in the calm and measured tones of a career politician trying to avoid saying too much. If his mild pokes at Bush are supposed to help him catch fire and get shut of the constant bleed of support he's been suffering, this speech doesn't seem like the medicine. The one time Kerry's support really blipped was when he ripped Tom DeLay a new one for questioning his patriotism. If Kerry can whip up that kind of passion regularly, then Democrats might feel like Kerry was up to taking Bush on and leaving him crushed in the dust. Kerry does seem to get that many Democrats want Bush beaten and battered, broken like a dropped china doll, and that infernal smirk wiped right of his face; or better that face wiped right off his smirk. People hate his guts like they could never hate someone they had ever met. It's like the opposite of the hunger of the GOP to destroy Clinton.
Meanwhile, Howard Dean releases a press statement criticizing Bush for being a jerk to our allies because he called several European countries "chocolate makers" in a derisive way. Now that's a passionate and scrappy candidate. Dean doesn't let anything slide. He doesn't
take any crap off those GOP twerps, and that's one major reason Democrats love him.
A Site For Political Junkies
Forgive me if I have inadvertently reposted this here. But I think this site is too useful for day-to-day political work to be forgotten.
A friend of mine is a political professional. She has worked in seven states and in at least that many Democratic political campaigns. She's a sort of political gypsy; a political soldier of fortune who goes where organizing and action are called for. She has suggested a source for solid political reporting that, she assures me, is prized by political pros. Best of all it's free.
It was a surprise to me that it was buried in a major network news site: ABCNews.com. It is on the site's political page and is simply called
"The Note." It is a remarkably detailed summary of political news stories, as well as a kind of 'day book' that tells what candidates are doing each day, along with other politically significant events. We don't usually think of network news as more than sound bites and video clips, but there is a lot of good stuff there. Especially if you are currently working or volunteering for a favorite candidate you might want to take a look at it.
Dean news from today's Note:
"ABC News Dean campaign reporter Marc Ambinder says that on September 23, one of the most powerful local labor leaders in the country will host a fundraiser for Gov. Dean in New York City. A rep for SEIU 1199's Dennis Rivera says it's not a personal endorsement - and certainly not an indication of an impending SEIU endorsement. But to our knowledge, Rivera hasn't hosted a fundraiser for a presidential candidate this cycle. And a number of Dean campaign events in New York City have been held at 1199's headquarters. So you make the call."
More here:
Link
Score Bush's Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy magazine has asked noted experts to score Bush's foreign policy and also has a score card for readers. Go make your
feelings on the subject known.
Will She or Won't She?
The rumour mill begins to grind again about
Hillary in '04. Apparently she is meeting with her political team on September 6th to decide whether to file for the primaries before the deadlines looming in November and December. Now that Bush's support is softening and the perception that he had a lock on re-election is yesterday's CW, Hillary may want to flounce in and benefit from the turn of the political tide which Dean's campaign and current events have created. Might Al Gore be thinking the same thing?
It's a Bush... No, it's a Shrub... No! It's an Underdog!
Bush now is fundraising by
claiming underdog status, too poor to defend himself against Democrat's attacks. Ironically, the very same email solicitation is stuffed full of wildly irresponsible misquotes of Howard Dean. Dean supposedly called Bush worse than the Taliban and accused him of planning to suspend the election.
