Howard and Jim are first, as is John Edwards. Stay above the fray.

,as is John Edwards and Barack Obama

(thanks linda for the fortitude comment on the previous thread - stay warm everyone, this winter might turn out to be a cold one)

A right wing leader once said they would stop at nothing to get themselves in charge.   He said they must be willing to be "obnoxious." 

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1675

They have succeeded thoroughly in being obnoxious.

"We will maintain a constant barrage of criticism against the Left. We will attack the very legitimacy of the Left. We will not give them a moment's rest. We will endeavor to prove that the Left does not deserve to hold sway over the heart and mind of a single American. We will offer constant reminders that there is an alternative, there is a better way. When people have had enough of the sickness and decay of today's American culture, they will be embraced by and welcomed into the New Traditionalist movement. The rejection of the existing society by the people will thus be accomplished by pushing them and pulling them simultaneously.

We will use guerrilla tactics to undermine the legitimacy of the dominant regime. We will take advantage of every available opportunity to spread the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with the existing state of affairs. For example, we could have every member of the movement put a bumper sticker on his car that says something to the effect of "Public Education is Rotten; Homeschool Your Kids." This will change nobody's mind immediately; no one will choose to stop sending his children to public schools immediately after seeing such a bumper sticker; but it will raise awareness and consciousness that there is a problem. Most of all, it will contribute to a vague sense of uneasiness and dissatisfaction with existing society. We need this if we hope to start picking people off and bringing them over to our side. We need to break down before we can build up. We must first clear away the flotsam of a decayed culture."

Good morning.  Quick drive by.

Re: progressive values.  Why don't we keep it simple and re-work the 10 Commandments?  The fundies would perhaps *get it*  and certainly the neo-cons have broken them over and over.

1. Thou shalt not kill - and then talk about Iraq

2.  etc etc etc. 

We need to draw comparisons and not tie ourselves into knots about how to effectively fight the values voters.  When they talk about killing fetuses, we talk about the  killing of children in Iraq and how many more of them we've killed than have been terminated in abortions.  Just keep throwing the sh*t back in their faces. Talk about how many of THEIR kids aren't being insured and may die.

We're not countering their illogic successfully.  They've got the bible.  We need to be smarter than that.  My 2 cents.

Floridagal, that's truly scary and like I said, we need to be smarter than the Traditionalist Movement.  So now we're going from compassionate conservatism to traditionalism?  Yikes!

Perhaps it's time to introduce Buddhism into the American consciousness....the path  of Love, the way of Truth.  How often do you hear ANY candidate talk about love?  Never!  Maybe Gravel and Kucinich at times........... 

Democrats - the party of Love, Truth and Forgiveness.  Not true of course,  but those RW nut jobs need to be put in their proper place -   We need to start fighting smart and hard and dirty in a clean way.  Calling ourselves the party of Love and Truth is dirty/clean.  IMO

And we need to point out over and over that the opposite of fear is not courage; it's love.  When we call them fearmongers, we need to also say that fearmongering is lovedestroying.

Love appears to be a four letter word in this society. 

You're anti-gay marriage?  What about love thy neighbor? 

WHY DON'T WE EVER TALK ABOUT LOVE ANYWHERE?   

huckabee has some 'splainen to do on the release of a prisoner who went out and raped and killed a woman. bad, bad judgement.

If you really care, you would help me to help phil forgit win a seat in congress from the 1st district. So,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, you can phone from home and help us out here.

Write letters to IA supporting my candidate?  Not a chance, unless DFA gets behind ONE man and then endorses. 

Again, dems are all over the map.  No wonder we lose.

Besides, my dem isn't running, and I have no vote in the primary.  I could write thousands of letters for Dennis and he'd still not get on the map.  The CM has already made up the minds of the Iowa voters for them, IMO.   I seriously doubt that there are any progressive voters in IA.  Certainly not enuf to nominate a true progressive.  It's busines and AIPAC as usual.  What a pity. Edwards needs to withdraw his support for AIPAC before I vote for him.  If he does that, he gets my vote.  

Phil, can you suggest that to him?   

Nuff said. 

Newport News, VA--One week before the Virginia special election, General Wes Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, issued the following endorsement for Philip Forgit in a message to supporters across the country. General Clark joins an impressive list of leaders endorsing Forgit, including Governor Tim Kaine, Governor Mark Warner, and Senator Jim Webb.

"In just 7 days, voters in Virginia will have a chance to flip VA-1 for Democrats -- click here to contribute to Philip Forgit's campaign today!

"In 7 days, you have a chance to show why Virginia is leading our country forward. On December 11, voters will head to the polls in Virginia's 1st congressional district for a special election.

"Iraq war veteran and Bronze Star recipient Philip Forgit has a real chance to flip this seat for Democrats. His team is making its final decisions on advertising and field. We need to give them a boost in these final days to make sure they can reach every single voter in VA-1.

"Philip served with a Naval Special Warfare Unit as an advisor to the Iraqi Army in 2005-2006. A Naval Reservist, Philip was mobilized from his former job as a 4th grade teacher at Rawls Byrd Elementary, where he won the 2005 National Education Association (NEA) Award for Teaching Excellence.

Philip has shown himself to be a leader of outstanding abilities -- in the classroom, in the battlefield, and now I hope you'll help me bring his leadership to Congress.  Our nation is at war, and we need leaders in Washington who know how wars should be fought -- not from theory but from experience.

http://www.philipforgit.com/12407.htm

Just a reminder that we need help with the Phil Forgit campaign with phone banking and canvassing. If you can help, it would be appreciated.Please email Jamey at Jamey@forgit2007.com or call her at 336 287 7747 to get a list of people to call. Linda B

huckabee has some 'splainen to do on the release of a prisoner who went out and raped and killed a woman. bad, bad judgement.  

+++

linda b -

Well, Romney has had something of a "Willy Horton" experience too, in the likes of released Daniel Tavares Jr.:

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071130/OPINION/711300310

YOUR VIEW: Tuttman deserved better from Romney

Before the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, someone should take the time to give former Gov. Mitt Romney a basic civics lesson. As part of the education of Mitt, he will have to be instructed on the importance of the rule of law.

In our country, and in Massachusetts, there are three co-equal branches of government: the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Each is independent of the other. Each serves a vital role in our democracy.

Recently, the former governor called for Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman to resign from the bench after a tragic incident. It is alleged that Daniel Tavares, who was released on bail by Judge Tuttman in July 2007, killed two young, vibrant residents of Seattle while he was out on bail. Tavares had been in prison before the July bail hearing because he had been convicted of manslaughter. When his hearing took place, Tavares had completed his entire sentence on the manslaughter conviction. He would have been a free man but for two assaults that were alleged to have been committed during his incarceration.

In July, when he appeared before Tuttman, Tavares, a free man, was facing new charges stemming from the prison incident. A reasonable bail is a right guaranteed to all citizens of the country by the U.S. Constitution. The Massachusetts bail law carries with it the presumption that a person charged with a crime should be released without paying bail unless there are extenuating circumstances.

When Judge Tuttman conducted the Tavares bail appeal, the prosecution did not offer any evidence that there were special circumstances warranting deviation from the letter and spirit of the Massachusetts bail law. In contrast, Tavares' attorney presented several reasons why his client ought to be released. Because of the absence of proof contradicting defense counsel, Judge Tuttman followed the law.

Former Gov. Romney should have taken the time to acquaint himself with all the facts before calling upon one of his appointees to resign. Judge Tuttman is a thoughtful straight arrow and compassionate jurist who deserved better treatment. However, since Gov. Romney showed little interest in or respect for the judicial branch of government while in office, it should come as no surprise that he would grandstand on such an emotionally charged issue. It is comforting to know that this particular leopard hasn't changed his spots. Mitt has rarely allowed the facts to get in the way of telling a story his way.

Gov. Romney's lack of respect for the rule of law and pandering to an uneducated media is disturbing at many levels. Instead of offering heartfelt support to the survivors of this horrific double homicide, he opted to play politics with the one branch of government that recent history has demonstrated is critical to a functioning democracy.

The wannabe president clearly gained no insight into the workings of a democracy from events in Pakistan. Without a free and independent judiciary, tyranny will almost certainly follow. If Mitt Romney understood this, then he would be praising Judge Tuttman's courage, rather than taking cheap shots.

Guiliani is airing a  TV ad with a brilliant (sic) and new (sic) idea --

-- low taxes --

-- if he's elected President.

How 1980's ish.

YouTube
December 5, 2007

"National support for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani significantly eroded over the past month," USA TODAY Washington bureau chief Susan Page writes.

Young Pakistanis: Bin Laden Is A CIA Creation
Good Morning America gets more than it bargained for in a feature on young people in Pakistan

Infowars.net | December 4 , 2007
Steve Watson

An ABC news piece that ran yesterday morning attracted attention after four Pakistanis who were being interviewed about the attitudes and life of young people in Pakistan declared Osama Bin Laden to be a creation of western intelligence and stressed that Islamic extremist attitudes towards the west were virtually non existent in their country before 9/11.

ABC have since pulled the video footage from their website, but an industrious prisonplanet forum member grabbed the footage and uploaded it to youtube.

"Who is Osama Bin Laden?" One girl asked Chris Cuomo, "He's just a character created by America" she concluded.

Floridagal......

Yes, The corporate media helped create the decay in the culture. Profit propells it. We support their "right" of speech, etc., therefore we are the ones thought to be causing it. That is the trap we are in. We need to relate the war to the decay around us, unemployment, inflation, infrastructure etc. We are made to look like we are more concerned about the rights of pornographers, for instance
and some perceive that to be the main cause of the decay of our culture, not war or power profits.

Fw: Stop S1959: if passed you could be labeled a terrorist

---

Stop S 1959 in Joe Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee:

Tell your Senators to protect Americans from Big Brother and from Joe-McCarthy-like witch-hunts.

"If this bill is passed, your words and actions could be considered terrorism.

S. 1959 EVISCERATES FREE SPEECH, and empowers the govt. to declare ANYTHING they deem an "extremist belief system", instantly make you a terrorist, resulting in stripping of US citizenship, torture, and/or execution, with no habeas corpus rights, no ability to challenge even in the US Supreme Court."-Bill L.

Read about the dangers at any of these 4 sites:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-gir...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticl...

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkfra...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007...

It is now in the Homeland Security Committee.

Please call and email the members of this Committee and your Senators to demand a NO vote as too invasive of American's freedom.

How to contact:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseac...

Call 202-224-3121 and ask to speak to these Senators and to your Senators.

You can also send them email. Find them here: http://www.senate.gov

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/071204/480/97cfd11863d54c42bee5374d9a27a359

AP - Mon Dec 3, 7:52 PM ET

Seashell.....

That's a great idea....If Phil would ask Edwards to disassociate himself from AIPAC there would probably be more than the two of us who would decide to support him and give him a chance to prove the rest of it.

Dave wrote "Simply very poor form, and still being ignored by our fine blog staff. The whole thing has turned me from being a regular here, along with the corrosive forces of Tom, Indy and Fred. Once we were better than this."

audrey.nc
Wed, 12/05/07
1:30 pm
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Impossible I say.........this country loves war, plain and simple....oh a few may protest for peace and love but lets face it, this is a very violent country..the worlds largest nuclear power, the worlds largets military power and the worlds largest supplier of weapons...........the list goes on

Ive always thought the last 15 years, how can you have such a large military and not use it for anything, I mean if you have to, create an enemy......you know, like we have seen these last 8 years..

War and its glories are well documented in our history, face it the nation was founded upon violence toward the native Indian tribes.........check out on the tv per week just how many "war" movies are on...........glorified killing for whatever purpose, they cant seem to forget WW2 ended over 60 years ago.............

Last nite I sat in a movie theatre, the prior 15 minutes before the show were sponsored by.....The National Guard...........they had a very nice, 5-6 minute segment on the Guard, showing the history of the American citizen soldier, first off killing British troops to patriotic music and then some scenes from various wars includong Iraq ald all sorts of acts of heroism(they would not show atrociites, rapes, torture, killing civilians, friendly fire, etc) and also but not often rescuing vistims of disaster............

Now, I will assume this Hollywood production was heavily invested in by someone or corporation, mainly directed at the many unsuspecting youth of this country...............

 did anyone see the

Community Values: Iowa Heartland Presidential Forum Videos ?

Just  wonder what your  impressions of the event are..  

I think it's good to get positive talk out there about the importance of community.  A sense of a wider community that encompasses all people and not just a small insular group.

4.  Progressive values go beyond just a list of 10 commandments.. 

The comparisons are important.   first to take the professed conservative values (family, faith, freedom, etc)  and show what they really are. authoritarianism, secrecy, self-righteousness, hypocrisy, etc.  And to show how conservative values have failed.  

how do you think conservative values have failed?  not the policies, but the actual underlying values.
Professed values: family, faith, freedom, etc
actual values:  authoritarianism, secrecy, self-righteousness, hypocrisy, etc

http://www.newkerala.com/oct.php?action=fullnews&id=24364

Washington, Dec 5 : Jessica Biel, Ryan Reynolds, Scarlett Johansson, Kate Walsh and Taye Diggs are supporting Democratic presidential primary candidate Barack Obama

...

at the 'Los Angeles Generation Obama Concert' on Dec 11 at L.A.'s Gibson Amphitheater.

...

The event will also see musical acts by Goo Goo Dolls and R&B singer Ne-Yo.

Passes to attend the Democratic fundraiser can be obtained at Obama's official Web site.

Speaking of Progressive values............

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_david_sw_071205_kucinich_wins_pda_st.htm

Not surprisingly in a field of eight contenders, no candidate came close to gaining a majority of the total vote in PDA's recently completed presidential straw poll. But two candidates--Dennis Kucinich (41%) and John Edwards (26%)--combined for more than 2/3 of the total vote. Over 15,000 PDA activists voted in the presidential straw poll. Full results here.

Results of PDA Straw Poll:

25.

Mike -

I've seen that same National Guard ad at the movies.

What the ad portrays is that joining the Guard will allow you to help your local community.  Well, that doesn't reflect today's reality where joining the Guard can be a ticket onto the (Near) Orient Express (to Iraq or Afghanistan).  It reflect's yesterday's reality of like when I was in the Guard back in the mid 1980s.  That stay stateside Guard, unfortunately, doesn't exist anymore, thanks to our war president, out-the-door in 1/20/09 "My Pet Goat" reader, Bush. 

Huron John
Wed, 12/05/07
1:54 pm

Since PDA was founded by Kucinich staffers from 2004, that is not surprising. Edwards did well, twice the percentage of the next highest, Obama. Is there still doubt that Kucinich and Edwards represent the progressive side of the Democratic party this time around?

OMG, the Blog clock is improving.  My new post actually showed up at the bottom!!

29.

Indy Steve -

Thanks for sticking up for Obama in yesterday's threads.

Votes on PassageOct 23, 2007: This bill passed in the House of Representatives by roll call vote. The vote was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass the bill, needing a two-thirds majority. The totals were 404 Ayes, 6 Nays, 22 Present/Not Voting. hey we need more dems in congress not!!!!!!!!!

Clinton Campaign County Chair Pushing Obama Smear

Yesterday, Gary Hart, the Jones County Chair of the Democratic party in Iowa (and a Dodd supporter) wrote a diary on DailyKos saying he'd been forwarded the infamous email by an unnamed "Clinton county chair."

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=257119

Mike......

I know you are right. One generation rarely accepts much from the former, so maybe there's a chance if we educate the very young for the future. Kids in Saudi need to stop reading that Americans are infidels too.
Maybe the legacy of Kucinich will be to help set up a Dept of Peace to start that education process, here and around the world. We'll have to do it, or perish.

Tom Bearse
Wed, 12/05/07
1:47 pm

How dare you, Dave, to lump me in with those "scoundrels", Tom and Fred!  LOL ;-)

Where did this come from, Tom? The blog is open for spirited discussion, Dave, and I hope you join in.

* rdorgan
Wed, 12/05/07
1:51 pm

Well, I think he'll be a fine nominee. But better as a VP! Then Obama in 2016!!

Everyone has faults and some here want to focus on those exclusively. I don't mind bringing up "concerns", but doing it constantly on all of 'em is not going to get a progressive candidate.

Saying Obama is not against the war in Iraq was quite a stretch.

audrey.nc
Wed, 12/05/07
2:09 pm

I could support that, and Dennis Kucinich as the first Secretary of Peace has a nice ring to it.!

Since PDA was founded by Kucinich staffers from 2004, that is not surprising.

I didn't know that, but PDA is a lot more consistently progressive than is DFA. They're not flirting with or pimping for Corporate Democrats

I forgot to thank everyone yesterday for your support standing up for what's right and actually being able to talk about the issues (on this political blog, that is not a candidates blog)that to progres our country forward and not supporting the name calling and attacks. Our own small area of the Assault on Reason and dialogue.

These politicians are asking for money, work, support and a vote to make them the President of the United States and I promise to continue being a responsible citizen to seek truth on the issues, policy and their records so we can try to have a candidate that represents the peoples interest and hopefully to be one who will solve the many challenges we are facing. Thank you.

21.

WhatAre Progressive Values
Wed, 12/05/07
1:40 pm


Yes, I just did.

37.

...

Saying Obama is not against the war in Iraq was quite a stretch.

+++

Indeed.

Well, in case anyone missed my shameless plug for Jens Lekman yesterday, here's it again:

I just heard an artist named Jens Lekman (Swedish euro-pop stuff that sounds like Morrisey) on the local college station WERS (Emerson College).  Well, he came out with his third album this past Oct called "Night Falls Over Kortedala".  The song the station was playing is titled Your Arms Around Me.  I was hooked the instance I heard the song.  I just picked up his cd at  Newbury (street) Comics store.  Here's some samples:

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Falls-Over-Kortedala-Lekman/dp/B000V6KDL4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1196773610&sr=1-1

audrey.nc
Wed, 12/05/07
2:09 pm
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is true, and of course the US is not alone in my theory..you could probabaly lump Russia, England, France, Germany, China in there as well..maybe to a lesser extent..................

I dont favour totally disemboweling our military, as IMO I feel a certain portion of the discipline and training is good for certain people........the traditions are also engraved in our history and so be it.........

I think any young person today, regardless of party affilation only has to read up on the waste of the Vietnam and now Iraq wars..........the lies, disceit, millions of lives lost..the waste of $ too.

Theres the answer.....the youth must vow to never let this happen again(yeah right) and not vote into political office scondrels that conjure up such trajedies...........

Huron John
Wed, 12/05/07
2:19 pm

I agree...I didn't mean that as a negative. Some of the Kucinich folks are the most hard-working progressives in politics. Most of Kuc. top staff formed the PDA but it doesn't mean the rigged the vote in any way.

Kucinich is definitely in my final now. Unfortunately, sad that Edwards couldn't even find in his list of priorities for his administration in yesterdays debate to mention Global Warming.

45. That's in my final list....it's quite small now.

Huron John
Wed, 12/05/07
2:19 pm

Actually, I think PDA and DFA complement each other. One isn't "more" progressive than the other. So I amend my "agreement" to say both orgs are necessary and do different things.

Linda*in*SFNM
Wed, 12/05/07
2:30 pm

But, of course, you know that it is a huge priority for Edwards. I hope you weren't insinuating that it wasn't because that wouldn't be factual.

And he has specific, bold plans to deal with it. His trial lawyer experience will be useful in taking on the oil, gas and coal industries which will attempt to derail meaningful action.

http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/energy/

The League of Conservation Voters, which has not yet endorsed a candidate for president, described Edwards' plan as the "most comprehensive global warming plan of any presidential candidate to date."

"Senator Edwards' plan demonstrates that he understands the magnitude of the challenge before us and the need for bold leadership to meet it," LCV President Gene Karpinski said.

http://www.nrdconline.org/campaign/Tell_White_House_to_Protect_Polar_Bears4 

Israel and its toadies in congress are backing Bush's insane position on Iran.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1378815.php/Israel_warns_against_easing_stand_against_Iran__Roundup_

Tel Aviv - Israeli officials Wednesday warned world leaders against letting down their guard and easing their policies toward Iran's nuclear programme, after a new US intelligence report stated Tehran had halted its atomic weapons programme.

The officials also urged them to support greater sanctions against the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad despite the report.

Fact is global warming has been absent from John Edwards and he did NOT list in his adminsitrations priorities at the end of the debate yesterday.  

It's up to Edwards if he will be correcting that course.  

 We're not seeing it or hearing it, and that is a fact.

Linda*in*SFNM
Wed, 12/05/07
2:40 pm

That is distorted. It is not a "fact" but yet another attack without evidence. Did you bother to google that or check out my link? I suppose you don't believe the President of the League of Conservation Voters either?

Edwards has spoken out many times, presented specific, bold plans on global warming and, most importantly, he is right about taking on the entrenched special interests in DC and a political culture which supports it IF WE WANT ANY meaningful progressive reforms.

http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/energy/

SCRAP BOTH PARTIES AND START OVER

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_timothy__071205_republicans_and_demo.htm

The American political landscape has changed and I believe the change is permanent. The two main political parties should be disbanded, because they are irrelevant. Most Americans that don’t make their living in politics see no great difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. The issues that separate them no longer apply.

There are two separate and distinct political views in our nation today. They are not the Republican view or the Democratic ideas of government. The two main schools of political thought in America today are the politicians that support involvement of big money and corporations to lead this nation, and the people that want a return to constitutional law and exclusion of multi-national stateless corporations in running the affairs of this country.

To illustrate my point, let us take the current field of candidates and separate them not by the confusing labels of Democrats and Republicans which mean absolutely nothing in today’s political reality, but separate them into the two political divisions I mentioned above:

Corporatists; Biden, Dodd, Clinton, Obama, Romney, Guiliani, Tancredo, Huckabee, Thompson, McCain. Hunter, Keyes

Constitutionalists: Kuchinich, Edwards, Richardson, Paul, Gravel

Blindly trusting the corporate class to lead this nation is the worst development to come out of the last fifty years (or longer). When you trust businessmen to lead the most powerful nation on Earth, you are setting the stage for an Orwellian society where individual rights are pushed aside for profit and greed.

For fact-minded bloggers, here is Edwards general plan on global warming. There is much more in detail behind this on his site. Tell me what you don't like about this, Linda?

http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/energy/

The Edwards Plan halts global warming, achieves energy independence and jumpstarts a new energy economy by:

• Capping greenhouse gas pollution starting in 2010 with a cap-and-trade system, and reducing it by 15 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050, as the latest science says is needed to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
• Leading the world to a new climate treaty that commits other countries—including developing nations—to reduce their pollution. Edwards will insist that developing countries join us in this effort, offering to share new clean energy technology and, if necessary, using trade agreements to require binding greenhouse reductions.
• Creating a New Energy Economy Fund by auctioning off $10 billion in greenhouse pollution permits and repealing subsidies for big oil companies. The fund will support U.S. research and development in energy technology, help entrepreneurs start new businesses, invest in new carbon-capture and efficient automobile technology and help Americans conserve energy.
• Meeting the demand for more electricity through efficiency for the next decade, instead of producing more electricity.

50.

Huron John -

Israel has always looked after it's own interests (even if it means that U.S. interests suffer or are damaged).  Besides the Pollard spy case, there also was the torpedoing of the U.S.S. Liberty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a U.S. Navy signals intelligence ship, USS Liberty, in international waters about 12.5 nautical miles (23 km) from the coast of the Sinai Peninsula, north of the Egyptian town of El Arish, by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967. It occurred during the Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. The Israeli attack killed 34 U.S. servicemen and wounded at least 173. The incident remains controversial. Israel, and various U.S. government agencies, maintain the attack was an error, but American survivors of the attack, and others, dispute this.

...

Israeli officials say they were assured by the United States that no U.S. ships were in the area, [1] and that its air and naval forces mistakenly identified Liberty as the Egyptian vessel El Quseir.

...

Others believe that the attack was deliberate and premeditated. They note that the Liberty was more than twice as large as the El Quseir,[4] and was clearly designated [5] with Latin rather than Arabic letters and numbers, rejecting claims that Egyptians could have intentionally mimicked a US ship as deception in war. Proponents include some of the surviving Liberty crewmen,[1] and some former U.S. government officials, including then-CIA director Richard Helms[6] and then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk[7] as well as Admiral Thomas Hinman Moorer[8], former Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

...

HEALTH CARE, RIGHT OR PRIVELEDGE?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_carlos_t_071205_is_health_care_a_rig.htm

How do we measure the wealth of a nation?

Economists will certainly point to the GDP (gross domestic product.)

However as a physician, I must define the wealth of our country by a medical term: Infant mortality. Infant mortality is defined as the number deaths of infants one year of age or younger per 1000 live births. In the United States, Infant mortality has remained the same since 1960 (7 per live births) in spite of a rise in Cesarean section from 3% to 33%. We are last in all the industrialized countries and even behind Castro's Cuba.

Health care is a right, not a privilege. If We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. How can we, as citizens of the richest country in the world, deny 47 million of our citizens the right to health care?

I actually have a problem with requiring developing countries to meet stiff targets before the industrial world has. We've had 150 years of economic development and produced most of the warming gases up to this point. We have a GREATER obligation to reduce it.

So helping the developing world ,and not keeping them in poverty while we use their resources, should be emphasized. That part of Kyoto is why Bush wouldn't go along.

LMAO....

How can we, as citizens of the richest country in the world, deny 47 million of our citizens the right to health care?

___________________________________________________________________________

Huron,

Its simple really........many people feel they shouldnt have to pay for anothers health insurance............I heard that once from a Republican.

Example: Someone working and paying for their own insurance vs. non worker collecting welfare.

Did everyone know the Senate passed the Peru Free trade agreement yesterday with many Dems voting for it? Both Clinton and Obama missed the vote (NPR debate) but they both expressed support for it. Here is John Edwards statement:

"I'm disappointed by today's Senate vote to approve the Peru trade deal and expand the failed NAFTA model that has cost us more than a million jobs. The Peru trade agreement is an example of how corporate interests and their lobbyists and cronies have corrupted the Democratic Party. Like the failed free trade agreements before it, this agreement puts the interests of the big multinational corporations first, ahead of the interests of American workers and communities. By supporting this agreement, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have sent a powerful message to workers across America that they're willing to put the profits of Wall Street over the interests of Main Street.

Click for full text: http://www.johnedwards.com/news/press-releases/20071204-peru-trade-deal/

How kind of NPR to provide an excuse for Obama and Clinton to miss the Peru vote (no, I don't believe it was a conspiracy). But make no mistake, they both were for it. Them's the facts.

Here's the Senate roll call vote Peru Trade agreement: only 18 nays. Kudos to them....

NAYs ---18Akaka (D-HI)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Casey (D-PA)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Leahy (D-VT)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00413#position

Indy wrote "Where did this come from, Tom?"

It's from the last thread.

Anyone know Dodd or Biden's position on Peru Free trade? We know Clinton and Obama were for it. 

Not Voting - 5

Dave wrote "Simply very poor form, and still being ignored by our fine blog staff. The whole thing has turned me from being a regular here, along with the corrosive forces of Tom, Indy and Fred. Once we were better than this."  

Linda wrote "I forgot to thank everyone yesterday for your support standing up for what's right and actually being able to talk about the issues (on this political blog, that is not a candidates blog)that to progres our country forward and not supporting the name calling and attacks."

Tom Bearse
Wed, 12/05/07
3:08 pm

Corrosive forces, that is what we are! As in breaking down the status quo!

Entropy is our friend.

Mike....

When I said youth, I was thinking of pre-kindergarten and elementary. While they are still sponges. when I was in those grades, we were taught ethics, even on the playground, You know, how to act when you win or lose. Now, some want that in the context of their religion, and in the effort to keep religion out, not much is being taught in that regard I think.

And I think it's bad form to talk negatively about people who aren't present (behind the back?), so I will not comment in relation to anyone not present.

40.

Huron John
Wed, 12/05/07
2:19 pm

There is nothing wrong with working for or owning private businesses as long as the workers and the owners are not given special privileges that would undermined the better interests of those who they're there to serve.

This is good news for Edwards in Iowa and Nevada...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The parent of the 60,000-member Culinary Union says it will hold off endorsing a Democratic presidential nominee until early January.

But UNITE HERE also says it will allow its Chicago and Midwest regional board to support members who will campaign for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards in Iowa.

The affiliate will commit staff, volunteers and financial resources to Edwards' campaign in Iowa immediately.

Judge rules that DNC can penalize Florida, dismisses Bill Nelson's lawsuit, Nelson v Dean.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1678

Way to go judge!

Thanks for keeping us informed, floridagal

Find The Best Way To Save Energy In Your Home
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Too funny. They can't even get remotely close to how I live. (e.g., there's no place for "no hot water heater"; or heating with 2 space heaters; or 5CU refrigerator AND 5CU freezer; or 12" insulation floor and walls; etc. etc. etc.) Getting as close as I could, they overestimate my energy costs by about 100%, and offer a $274 savings as the best they can do. So I'm about 75% ahead of them already, lol!

Think Americans have a VERY long way to go. . . .

3:53
32 degrees
snowing

Most welcome, Denise.   Now it is severely past time for Nelson to stop all this threatening. 

Tell Bill to go do his job and, while he's at it, make a pitstop in Alachua to rescue Charlie.

We need more good news about him, too!

72.

floridagal .
Wed, 12/05/07
3:32 pm


Yea judge!!!

72.

Greaaatttt news! My kind of judge -- reasonable and lawful.

Bill Nelson's lawsuit never WAS about voter's delegates, it was about Nelson vs Dean. He thought he would make a big name for himself for the inside the beltway crowd, the idiot. Well, he has done that. He will now be known as a LOSER!

DEMOCRATS ARE SPLIT ON NIE

PROGRESSIVES VS AIPAC TOADIES

While many Democrats said they remain cautious about the National Intelligence Estimate’s (NIE) conclusion that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003, several said that Congress should investigate the discrepancy between the Bush administration’s recent doomsday rhetoric on Iran and the NIE’s judgments.

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-seeking-answers-about-report-on-iran-2007-12-05.html

Then of course, there's "Joementum", Senior Senator from Israel

http://hannah.smith-family.com/?p=2138

Turns Out Ahmadinejad Was the Truthful One

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/69767/

Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran's nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of World War III, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.

Is it conceivable that Bush was telling the truth at his press conference Tuesday when he stated that he learned of the National Intelligence Estimate report, which contained that inconvenient fact, only last week?

Even if Bush read the NIE report, he clearly doesn't respect it, for at his press conference he said "the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world -- quite the contrary." Not that he has anything against the NIE, whose directors he handpicked. "I want to compliment the intelligence community for their good work. Right after the failure of intelligence in Iraq, we reformed the intelligence community."

But whether or not the intelligence agencies are reformed, the president still ignores them.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office as Iran's president in August of 2005, two years after Iran's nuclear weapons program ended, has now been vindicated in his claims that Iran has abandoned the weaponization program.

Not so Bush, who has summarily dismissed the intelligence community's findings and, using his favorite tactic in dealing with debacles, is sticking to his original story. A story, as in the case of the earlier Iraq threat inflation, that too many in the mass media and Congress, including some leading Democrats, have bought.

Take Hillary Clinton, who said that "Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is in the forefront of that" by way of defending her vote for a resolution that, like the one she voted for before the Iraq war, blindly supports rather than seriously questions the president's case for war.

In the case of Iran, it is now publicly understood that there is no such evidence, flimsy or otherwise. But don't count on that to stop the bipartisan coalition of invasion hawks from pushing on.

Once again, they will attack the United Nations' experts, who have been proved right in Iran as they were in Iraq. A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed out that the NIE report supports the agency's view that there is "no evidence" of an undeclared nuclear weapons program in Iran and "validates the assessments of [IAEA Director General] Mohamed ElBaradei, who continuously said in his public statements that he saw no clear and public danger, and that therefore that there was plenty of time for negotiations."

Can we get ElBaradei to run in the Iowa caucus? Why are our leading presidential candidates so easily fooled?

39.

Indy Steve
Wed, 12/05/07
2:18 pm

...Then Obama in 2016!!
----------

Wow...,lol.
Indy I'm not sure if American People would agree to watch those spectacles so much longer..., lol.

IMPEACH PELOSI?

http://www.counterpunch.org/ramakrishnan12052007.html

For a whole year, various high-ranking Democratic House and Senate leaders, those running for president included (except Dennis Kucinich), have offered the same answers to several key questions, such as why they are: (1) Not doing anything to stop the war, (2) not doing anything about impeaching Bush and Cheney, (3) not doing anything to halt and reverse the numerous violations of privacy and erosions of rights, and finally (4) not doing anything to halt the wrongs of the Bush administration.

The all-purpose excuse: We don't have the votes.

Nancy Pelosi's impeachment is off the table, stance is not only ridiculous, it is criminal. To leave unchallenged the deliberate misleading of the country to war, (and the effort to do the same a second time), makes her party a knowing accessory to the same misdeeds. Congress has an equal duty to protect the Constitution as the President. Each day of equivocation is one more day steeped in the crimes of the Bush administration.

Moral and ethical arguments aside, even a purely political motive suggests that Democrats must seize the cry of impeachment. Surely, if the Republicans had not made as much of Clinton's doings and had refrained from the impeachment trial, the 2000 Presidential race would have hardly been a contest; Gore would have won in a landslide.

If the Democrats truly believe Bush and Cheney's crimes are of a magnitude deserving of impeachment, they can in good conscience speak of nothing else. If they do not, they should be forced to list each wrongdoing and say why they don't think it is a high crime. To allow that something is a high crime or misdemeanor against the Constitution, and say in the same breath that we must let it slide because we lack the votes, is as egregious an betrayal of Constitutional responsibility as the original crime. It also an insult to the entire nature of our polity as a deliberative enterprise, where exposition, evidence, debate, and persuasion can change minds.

To paraphrase Lincoln's famous letter to General McClellan, it is time to tell Nancy Pelosi,"If you won't impeach Bush and Cheney, can we at least impeach you?"

83.

Huron John
Wed, 12/05/07
4:16 pm


Turns Out Ahmadinejad Was the Truthful One
---------

Just try to go from the opposite: those who were disagreeing with Bush&Co. were the Truthful Ones (note "were", not "is").

Turns out there were NOT very many..., lol.

The Los Alamos National Labs are laying off 750 people.  One assumes it's because the new nukes didn't make it through the budget process.  

Did I mention that whoever gave an interview to the International Herald Tribune caused them to refer to the Chairman of the DNC as the "hapless Dean?"

Sounds like wishful thinking to me. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSkkGzLKLJA

Did I mention that whoever gave an interview to the International Herald Tribune caused them to refer to the Chairman of the DNC as the "hapless Dean?"

Time to bring out the "Scream" clips!

Some words from Dennis.....

The Pres. & VP have been beating the war
drums, and the House and the Senate have been dancing to the beat. Iran is a war crime in motion.

The pres. candidates were fooled 5 yrs ago and again today. Kucinich voted against every supplemental appropriation. He asks the others to explain their susceptibility to the Pres. claims.

Heaven help us if one reaches the Oval Office and they're wrong again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrZzRhzwCbo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGI8ZoekW1o

Huron John......

YES!!!, I called Pelosi's office a few weeks ago and told her to resign, but she wouldn't do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6wJocdWrP8

----- Original Message -----
From: Howard Dean
To: Susan Rowe
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 1:26 PM
Subject: "Hope not fear"


Dear Susan,

Here we go again.

For the past few months, the Bush Administration exploited the fears of Americans to make their case against Iran. Just a few weeks ago, the President said "I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon."

This week, 16 U.S. intelligence agencies published a report that "in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Turns out the White House was aware of this shocking assessment for a few months, but reportedly worked to delay its public release.

Distortions and manipulation to promote a narrow ideological agenda is nothing new to the Bush Administration -- it's how they misled us into Iraq. This is the worst kind of leadership: a dishonest appeal our base emotions.

Iran may pose a threat, but misleading the American people is not the way to deal with it. All of the Democratic candidates have said that we need to have all options on the table when dealing with Iran -- Republicans seem to only consider war.

After we elect a Democratic president in 2008, the American people will once again have a leader who will be open and honest with them. But until then, it's important that every Republican presidential candidate avoids the fear-mongering that George Bush has used to so profoundly divide this country.

Back when I ran for President, I couldn't walk ten feet without seeing a "Hope not Fear" slogan on a t-shirt or a sign. And now, four years later, it's never meant more to me.

Join me and remind every Republican presidential candidate that all Americans want to be inspired by hope, not governed by fear. Tell them to listen to the intelligence community:

http://www.democrats.org/HopeNotFear

If these quotes are any indication, the Republican frontrunners haven't gotten the message:

Rudy Giuliani: "Iran is nuclear threat, not just because they can deliver a nuclear warhead with missiles; they're a nuclear threat because they are the biggest state sponsor of terrorism and they can hand nuclear materials to terrorists."

Mitt Romney: "If for some reasons they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that's available to us."

Mike Huckabee: "A President has to do whatever is necessary to protect the American people. If we think Iran is building nuclear capacity that could be used against us in any way, including selling some of the nuclear capacity to some other terrorist group, then yes we have a right [to attack]. I would do it in a heartbeat. "

We don't need four more years of Bush-Cheney foreign policy in the White House. No matter your party, it's time to stop scaring Americans with doomsday scenarios -- and start talking about the positive steps our country can take to ensure a peaceful world community.

Stand up for policy based on facts, not hysteria fueled by fear:

http://www.democrats.org/HopeNotFear

President Bush used faulty intelligence and fear-mongering to enter Iraq. Now he's been caught using faulty intelligence and fear-mongering to engage Iran.

He's not going to get away with it. Don't let any one of our nation's presidential candidates get away with it either.

Sincerely,

Howard Dean

On June 10, 2007, FiReFoX wrote "Cheap shot at Kucinich? Fox News Kucinich? Sorry, I like many of his positions but when I met him in person he was a total @ss.Has a reputation of treating staff like crap. No one that I know of who worked on his campaign in 04 is supporting him now, but I encourage everyone to support whomever they want."  

96. That one paragraph:

"Iran may pose a threat, but misleading the American people is not the way to deal with it.  All of the Democratic candidates have said that we need to have all options on the table when dealing with Iran -- Republicans seem to only consider war."

 Does not go far enough. What Howard should have said is that Iran poses NO threat, zero, zilch, nada. and that neither Democrats nor Republicans should be mouthing off about leaving military options "on the table". Howard's statement cuts some slack for the AIPAC toadies, who are still parroting Israel's (and Bush's) thoroughly discredited charges.

Iran hasn't attacked anyone since long before the United States came into being. Would that we could say the same about our republic!

97. There's a lot of unsupported talk about Kucinich's lack of organizational skills, his arrogance, etc.

All I care about now is where he stands on the issues, which is a progressive's dream. I note that whenever a poll of progressives is taken, Dennis come out on top, and outstrips his nearest rival by a bunch, viz;

Results of PDA Straw Poll:

WHAT DOES THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY REMIND ME OF?  WHAY ARE THEY SO AFRAIF OF BUSH AND THE REPUBLICANS?

Ive pondered this for many months and have come to the conclusion that this party, the party that has embarassed me and countless others in leaving it.............they are the infamous "prevent defense" in football..........they are too busy trying to win an election(that they might very well lose) they arent gioing on the attack they are going to sit back and just play defense.....

Now for you football afficionados out there, if you have watched footbsll as long as i have you will understand that the prevent defense has lost more football games than it has won.......its  apthetic attempt by one team to just sit back and HOPE the other team does not score..usually the other team pulls it out.........

In the words of John Madden, all the prevent defense doe is to prevent you from winning..........

addendum..........

"they are too busy trying to  not lose an election than win one.

Several people killed in a shopping mall in Omaha by a 19-year-old who then committed suicide. He left a note saying he was "going out in style". I wonder if he is a victim of Bush's New Freedom Initiative that seeks to get kids on Ritalin, antidepressants, anything they have to pay Big Pharma for legally.

We all know what antidepressants do to kids. It ain't pretty. We need a leader with the guts to talk abut the national malaise vs. push pills to hide the symptoms.

Ironically, Bush was in Omaha this morning, but left before he could see what his icky policies have wrought.

Tom Bearse....97

I guess that's why his volunteers love him and work so hard, because he treats them badly.

Why do you pull out that old false rumor. What is your purpose? Dennis is a Dem., and you sound like the DLCers demeaning Howard.

double O event (Obama and Oprah) SOLD OUT at 18,000 seat coliseum, now moved to a 80,000 seat football stadium to accomodate all the others on the waiting list:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071205/ap_po/on_the2008_trail_28

By SEANNA ADCOX, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 35 minutes ago

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has moved a campaign rally with talk show host Oprah Winfrey to a football stadium that can hold more than 80,000 people.

The event had been scheduled for an 18,000-seat coliseum near the University of South Carolina campus, but the campaign ran out of the free tickets just two days after it began distributing them. Tickets will no longer be needed.

"We wanted to make sure everyone in South Carolina who wanted to see Barack Obama and meet Oprah Winfrey had the opportunity," said Inez Tenenbaum, an Obama supporter and former state schools superintendent. "Everyone can attend who wants to attend."

...

Doors will open at 12:30 p.m. and the program is to begin two hours later.

Winfrey also is to hold events with Obama in Iowa and New Hampshire.

OMAHA, Neb. - A gunman opened fire at a busy Omaha mall, killing at least eight people, wounding at least five others and then killing himself, police officials said.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ill defend my right to bare arms no matter what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Idiots................

audrey wrote "Why do you pull out that old false rumor. What is your purpose? Dennis is a Dem., and you sound like the DLCers demeaning Howard."

Because this is a forum for political discussion, and I'm interested in what people know about candidates.  John said he only cares about policy agendas, whereas I think judging a presidential contender requires much more.  Otherwise, why wouldn't this whole community have chosen Kucinich over Dean in 2004?

You call what FiReFoX witnessed firsthand an old false rumor.  If you have met with him at length or worked with him personally, you're in a position to provide your own credible refutation but if not, I'm uncertain why I should disbelieve her.

Tom, that's what is so great, your free to believe what you want.

audrey wrote "Tom, that's what is so great, your free to believe what you want."

That's a sporting gesture and I appreciate it, but this is an eyewitness without an ax to grind and without an agenda, providing an unvarnished report.  Inasmuch as I've admitted that Kucinich has an appealing liberal issue platform, accounts such as these might convince me or anyone else hearing them that Kucinich is nevertheless not the best person to lead the country.  Of course, you'd have to believe it first of all, and it would have to be of some importance to you if you did. 

John wrote "There's a lot of unsupported talk about Kucinich's lack of organizational skills, his arrogance, etc."

If FiReFoX said she met Kucinich in person, I'd be interested in an explanation why you  suggest that her opinion is unsupported.

Of course, everyone does have opinions and harbors their own jaundiced views on candidates including Kucinich and Obama.  Here's Frank Rich, for example, on Obama: 

"But there’s another, even more fascinating hidden story line in the 2008 campaign that speaks to the potential prowess of an Obama candidacy. Despite the thuggish name-calling of a few right-wing die-hards (e.g., Rush Limbaugh mocking “Barack Hussein Odumbo”), the dirty secret of a number of conservatives is that they are disarmed by Mr. Obama even though they know his record is more liberal than Mrs. Clinton’s.

"The drumbeat of approval has been remarkably steady. Last year Mark McKinnon, a top adviser to both the 2000 and 2004 Bush campaigns, admiringly called Mr. Obama 'a walking, talking hope machine' who 'may reshape American politics.' Andrew Ferguson devoted pages in The Weekly Standard to raving about 'Dreams From My Father,' Mr. Obama’s memoir, before dismissing its political sequel, 'The Audacity of Hope.' Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, keeps trying to write anti-Obama articles but they’re so mild that they never really contradict his judgment of a year ago that the senator from Illinois 'is the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement.' Even Tom Tancredo, the most virulent immigration demagogue of the G.O.P. presidential field, has spoken warmly of Mr. Obama.

"Perhaps most striking is the case of Shelby Steele, the archconservative scholar who shares Mr. Obama’s mixed-race heritage. Though he has just written an entire book, 'A Bound Man,' to argue (unpersuasively, in my view) that Mr. Obama 'can’t win,' he can’t stop himself from admiring the guy throughout. Peggy Noonan wasn’t being tongue-in-cheek when she wondered in the Wall Street Journal last month whether Mr. Obama 'understands the kind of quiet cheering he is beginning to garner from some Republicans.' In her view 'they see him as a Democrat who could cure the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton sickness.'

"Or at least they do in the abstract. Should Mr. Obama upend the Beltway story line by taking Iowa, the Republicans will have every reason to be as fearful as the Clinton camp is now."

Of course those could be old false rumors.  In any event, you're free to believe what you want.

Tom..

There are people who met Howard and didn't like him, as demented as that seems. I don't wish to have this conversation with you. Save it for someone else.

Or you might take the words of a lawmaker like Sen. Feingold to heart, in this excerpt from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

"Feingold lauded both Gore and Obama as potential candidates who were early critics of the war and said he thinks voters will be looking for a nominee who 'had the judgment to understand (the war) was a bad idea from beginning. . . . I don't think it is asking a lot for people to see this was a stupid idea.'

"He added:

"'I will run if I want to run, regardless of who else is running. But I will tell you, seeing Barack Obama considering running gives me comfort. If I decided not to run, it makes me feel good, it makes me very happy to see him thinking about running. . . . If he came up to me and asked me, should he run . . . I might tell him, "It's a good thing." ' "

I depends on who you trust and believe.

Tom........

lol

audrey wrote "I don't wish to have this conversation with you. Save it for someone else."

Oh dear.  I'm very sorry.

Huron's last post has been grayed out with big gray square blocks.  Anyone else see that?

We have so many serious problems, but there is one place to start.

IMPEACH CHENEY. He's the head of the hydra.

I also wrote Pelosi suggesting she leave office immediaely.  She didn't listen to me either.

 Oh, so all of a sudden Clinton is concerned about the mortgage crisis.  She's a day late and dollar short.

Go vote for more trade deals and war with Iran, you neo-con! 

How do we get the moderator to ask about AIPAC in debates?  The fact that there is never any discussion is evidence that AIPAC/CM is very much in control of the questions, the candidates and the debates.  IMO 

I dare the CM to let a real journalist ask questions. 

The proposed mortgage crisis bailout is spot on.

Folks with Credit ratings <650 (out of a possible 850) will able to continue paying their teaser rates.  Will likely save their homes.

The only people opposing the measure are Wall Street insiders who shorted mortgage-backed securities....heh heh.

and good for Hillary.  Obama suppors this measure also....all Dems should! 

Fresno Bee profile of Chris Dodd

Dodd's spent lifetime in politics, thinks he's due to step up

By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Christopher Dodd, then a rookie U.S. senator, eagerly opposed Dr. C. Everett Koop's nomination to be surgeon general in 1981, arguing that "his personal beliefs would keep him from impartial judgments."

Koop, whom the news media described as "a noted anti-abortionist" at the time, won confirmation easily and turned out to be a popular, articulate health-care spokesman. A few months later, a chastened Dodd sent him a note, apologizing.

"I voted against him, and I regret it," Dodd would say, "because he turned out to be one fine surgeon general."

The story is vintage Dodd. "He sees the big picture, and he works on a very human scale," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a longtime friend and confidante.

But the Koop story also illustrates what skeptics say is Dodd's biggest weakness: He's too much a creature of Washington.

"All he has is Washington experience, and that's an enormous burden," said Steffan Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University. "His image outside Washington is that he's a tax-and-spend liberal."

Dodd counters that that's too simplistic, but Washington unquestionably has shaped him.

Dodd's political roots stretch back to his father, Sen. Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut, who served from 1959 to 1971. His career was broken in 1967, when the Senate censured him for using campaign money for personal purposes.

Tom Dodd never recovered: He lost his 1970 re-election bid badly and died at age 64, five months after he left office.

His son made it his mission to restore honor to his father and their name.

"Sometimes, I think almost everything Chris Dodd does down here is meant to vindicate his father," said Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, who served with both men. Chris Dodd sits at his father's desk in his Senate office, and an illuminated life-sized portrait of Tom Dodd hangs there.

Equally important, though, is how Dodd grew up watching and enjoying the peculiar rhythms of the U.S. Capitol.

He loved the action, the process, the people. When he was 30 in 1974, he triumphed in a tough primary and won an eastern Connecticut seat in the House of Representatives. Six years later, when Democratic incumbents were falling as rarely before in the 20th century, Dodd became one of two freshmen Democrats elected to the Senate.

He had an innate understanding of the institution. His father's Senate friends counseled him, and the young senator patiently built a reputation and seniority on the Banking, Labor and Foreign Relations committees, hoping someday to emulate mentors such as Tennessee's Jim Sasser and Maryland's Paul Sarbanes, who quietly crafted sweeping consensus legislation.

From them, Dodd learned patience and the value of collegiality.

He'd come to the Senate at a highly polarized time, when conservatives were newly ascendant and Republicans had won control for the first time in 26 years. Dodd made alliances with Republican colleagues who were hardly political soul mates: Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter on children's issues, Texas' Phil Gramm on securities law, Utah's Orrin Hatch on family legislation, Nebraska's Chuck Hagel on infrastructure overhaul.

Dodd became a highly popular insider, so much so that when Sasser, in line to be the next Democratic Senate leader, was upset in his 1994 re-election bid, veteran senators urged Dodd to jump into the race. He wound up losing his last-minute effort to Tom Daschle by one vote, but President Clinton noticed.

Clinton offered him the general chairmanship of the Democratic Party; a shocking choice, since Dodd had never been active in party affairs and was viewed outside Washington as the kind of Northeastern liberal who'd just led the party to electoral ruin.

Dodd took the job and toured the country, charming skeptics, finding common ground in state after state.

But his new job came at a price. He was the chairman in 1995 and 1996, a time when Clinton was letting big donors sleep in the Lincoln bedroom or have coffee with White House big shots.

A Senate committee investigated. While it found that Dodd had done nothing wrong, the controversy kept him from seeking the vice presidential nomination in 2000 when Al Gore's representatives asked whether he wanted to be considered.

Instead, the nod went to Connecticut's junior senator, Joseph Lieberman. That blocked Dodd from the White House not only in 2000 but also in 2004, when Lieberman sought the office and Dodd deferred to his more prominent home-state colleague....
complete profile article and photo: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/...

What's concerning me about DFA is that so very few of us are upset with the candidates who openly have supported AIPAC.  Then there's IA, followed by the American electorate, also not concerned.   An AIPAC prez means war w/o end and it would be beneficial to the continuation of this country to shout that from the rooftops.

I've often written Keith about this.  Perhaps we need a huge letter writing or petition signing drive to force a discussion of this.  Maybe moveon would sponsor something.

The fear of being called anti-semitic is astonishing.  

I'll start.  Get AIPAC outta our government and halls of congress and off the hill. 

I don't ever recall hearing Koop speak out publicly against abortion during his terms nor am I aware that he attempted to change policy.  What I DO recall about him is that he was the first administration official to speak out about HIV/AIDS.  I see no reason to hold Koop's personal views on abortion against Dodd.  Perhaps this is what Dodd saw in Koop:

 "C. Everett Koop's two terms as U.S. Surgeon General coincided with the rise of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, an epidemic that, scientists and health officials predicted, would turn into the greatest public health catastrophe of the twentieth century. After his superiors relegated him to the sidelines of the AIDS debate during his first four years in office, Koop dedicated almost all of his time and energy to the disease in his second term. In 1986, he was finally authorized to issue a Surgeon General's report on AIDS. In 1988, he mailed a congressionally-mandated information brochure on AIDS to every American household. As he recollected, during this period "AIDS took over my life." Through his report and his many speeches and interviews on AIDS Koop did more than any other public official to shift the terms of the public debate over AIDS from the moral politics of homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, and intravenous drug use, practices through which AIDS was spread, to concern with the medical care, economic position, and civil rights of AIDS sufferers. Similarly, Koop promoted redefining the prevalent scientific model of the disease, from a contagion akin to bubonic plague, yellow fever, and other deadly historic epidemics that required the strongest public health measures--mandatory testing and quarantine of carriers--to a chronic disease that was amenable to long-term management with drugs and behavioral change.."

Fresno Bee profile of Dennis Kucinich

Kucinich mixes street savvy with controversial style

By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Day after day, 12-year-old Dennis Kucinich wore the same pair of turquoise blue pinstriped pants to school.

Other kids teased him about the pants, which he'd bought for a quarter at a Salvation Army store, but Kucinich had nothing else to wear. Finally, a nun at his school told him to stay after class and gave him and his family boxes of clothes.

"It was an extraordinary act of charity," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a recent interview. "Every step along the way there were people there to help us."

Kucinich is a product of west Cleveland, a middle-class urban community that thrived when America's factories were humming, but has been struggling to survive for at least a generation.

Like so many Rust Belt ethnic enclaves, the congressman's district is still largely populated by scrappers, people who worked with their hands and lived by their wits and relied heavily on their governments — state, local and federal — for safety nets and jobs when times were bad.

It's long been a place where politicians are friends, neighbors and favor-dispensers. Maintaining that street-level sense has been the key to Kucinich's rocky yet ultimately triumphant political career, one that saw him become mayor of Cleveland in 1977, at age 31, then saw him nearly recalled from office as the media mocked him as "Dennis the Menace."

Kucinich rose from a childhood in which he lived in 21 different places, including a car and an orphanage. He survived his childhood by being smart — his mother taught him to read by age 3 — and brash.

In the 10th grade, as he rode the bus to Catholic school — which he could afford because he had a job caddying at a country club — Kucinich would study and dream big dreams. He read humorist Harry Golden and playwright Moss Hart, and vowed to emulate their up-from-the-bootstraps success.

Kucinich wrote an autobiography for school that year; in it he said he wanted a career in national politics, modeled after John F. Kennedy's. "I'm going to aim for the top," he wrote in longhand, then added the word "very" before "top."

By 23 he was a Cleveland city councilman. Eight years later, he became the "boy mayor."

The signature issue of his tenure became his bid to stave off the sale of the city's power system to the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co., a move that led to the city's 1978 default, the first for a city since the Great Depression.

Kucinich lost his re-election bid, but years later he claimed vindication, saying the city power system wound up saving consumers millions.

Still, his reputation as an impetuous risk-taker now seemed cemented in American political lore.

In his 1999 book, "The American Mayor: The Best & Worst Big City Leaders," historian Melvin G. Holli ranked Kucinich among the worst. Holli cited Kucinich's "abrasive, intemperate and confrontational populist political style" and said he presided over a "disorderly and chaotic administration."

Kucinich mounted a slow, steady comeback, eventually winning election to the Ohio Senate and, in 1996, a congressional seat by beating a two-term Republican incumbent.

In 2004, Kucinich ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. Though he finished a distant sixth in the New Hampshire primary with 1.4 percent of the vote, he developed a devoted following among anti-war activists as he pushed for a cabinet-level Department of Peace and warned that Iraq was quickly becoming another Vietnam-like quagmire.

As he runs again, Kucinich's views, which aren't that far left of Democratic orthodoxy, are less controversial than his style is. ...

complete profile article and photo: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/...

Seashell....

OK, I'll second that. Someone once asked Kucinich what he thought got us into Iraq. He had a one word answer..."AIPAC". This was around the time that Jimmy Carter's book came out. I never heard anyone, except Carter, even mention the name.

Oh good greif!  Murdoch is trying to buy – GOD. WAIT unti God hears about this....

Rupert Murdoch is out to prove that you can serve God and mammon after all. The media tycoon's Fox Entertainment has bought beliefnet, the largest online faith and spirituality network.

Ron Brownstein on Matthews was just comparing IA with NH and what it might mean for Obama.  He said that NH is well educated, upscale, progressive and more likely to go for Obama.

Apparently Huckabee doesn't know much about Iran.  What has become of our country?

Fresno Bee profile of Ron Paul

(Paul has a HUGE following in Fresno among the ultra right-wing Christians, the Libertartians, the Republican Party's grassroots and netroots activists and the Young Republicans.)

Rep. Ron Paul does it his way

By Jay Root | McClatchy Newspapers

CLUTE, Texas — He spoke out against putting dope dealers in federal prison, opposed a bill to crack down on child pornography and voted against the Iraq war. Then Ron Paul announced that he was running for president — as a Republican.

If that sounds like a recipe for failure, or perhaps a political fantasy, consider this: The Republican congressman from Texas had more money in the bank in October than Sen. John McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee combined.

He's become an Internet sensation and, as the only Republican contender who favors an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq, a darling of the televised presidential debates. Paul, 72, is also the runaway favorite for re-election to Congress in his district, where the old "LBJ law" allows him to run for president and for Congress simultaneously. Democrats are so used to losing to him that they haven't even fielded a candidate yet, and probably won't.

"He's definitely an enigma,'' said Allen Cumbie, the head of the Democratic Party in Matagorda County, Texas. "I don't even think he tries to get legislation passed that benefits this district . . . and yet he continues to be elected year after year. I don't really know how to explain it."

Paul's bedrock supporters have a ready answer: He's authentic.

They may not agree with or even understand all of Paul's views, which range from bringing back the gold standard to abolishing the Internal Revenue Service. But at a time when slick packaging and scandal have soured many people on politics, voters are attracted to Paul's grandfatherly, if uncompromising, honesty.

"You always know where he stands,'' said Texas gun dealer Alan Jones, whose engraved .22-caliber rifles have become popular auction items at Paul fundraisers. "The thing you wish for is that there were more politicians in Washington that voted the way that they really think instead of doing it because of politics."

A soft-spoken obstetrician who's delivered more than 4,000 babies, Paul has managed to strike a chord both with little old ladies — his "Granny Warriors" — and dope-smoking libertarians. When he ran for president in 1988, High Times magazine ran a cover story titled, "Ron Paul: Pro-Pot Presidential candidate."...

complete profile article and photo: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/...

Here's Huckabee's ignorance.  I also think he's the dullest knife in the drawer.  He makes me think he married his mother or sister....sorry, but the guy belongs in the OT as a bookmark.  And he might win?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/5/105634/042 

110. and 113.

Good posts Tom. 

(Indeed, F and F - Frank and Feingold have often mentioned good things about Obama)

122.

Sam Ross
Wed, 12/05/07
7:47 pm

Beliefnet is right-wing. I get their the stuff. I like to study structures of belief. They're interesting folks.

126.

seashell :-)


Many of the moderate Republicans and decline to state swing voters like Huckabee in our area. He should be Mrs. Clinton's worst nightmare.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071205/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_obama_religion_2

Clinton volunteer quits over Obama email

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

2 hours, 58 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A volunteer Iowa county coordinator for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign has resigned after forwarding a chain e-mail that suggests Barack Obama is a Muslim who wants to destroy the United States by being elected to its highest office.

Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ and has never been a Muslim.

A hoax e-mail that has been widely circulated suggests Obama is some sort of Manchurian candidate for Muslims.

Judy Rose, a Clinton coordinator and Democratic Party official in Jones County, Iowa, forwarded it without comment to eight people on Nov. 21.

...

The Obama campaign declined to comment on her resignation.

The e-mail that Rose forwarded points out that Obama's father and stepfather were Muslim and that Obama lived in Indonesia for part of his childhood. But other parts of the e-mail are false — Obama attended public and Catholic schools in Indonesia, not a radical Islamic school. It is also not true that Obama used the Quran instead of the Bible when sworn into office or that he ever "admitted" to being a Muslim.

Beliefnet sounds very interesting.  I may check it out also and wonder if there are any discussions on eastern religion.

It's officical.  Keith and Maddow just dissed the "incompetence" excuse.

If I may toot my horn a bit, I've been saying for several years that this destruction of us and the ME has been planned, sorta like obsolescence.  And putz will ignore the NIE report and bomb Iran anyway.

Willful destruction of our country and Constitution ... that's what's happening.

The Germans didn't stop Hitler. 

Re: Clinton volunteer.

You can know your candidates by the volunteers they keep.

She should have been fired. 

Omaha:  Example of putzco's reign of terrorism.

Fresno Bee Mike Huckabee profile


Huckabee, the self-help politician

By Scott Canon | McClatchy Newspapers

Mike Huckabee would later write about that day in 1996 as his "crucible moment."

Jim Guy Tucker, the Democratic governor of Arkansas and a newly convicted felon, was reneging on his earlier pledge to resign. His I'm-staying-after-all phone call came as Huckabee, a Republican and then lieutenant governor, was rehearsing the speech he planned for later that day, when he expected to become the state's chief executive.

What followed was a brief constitutional crisis in Little Rock. Huckabee teamed with Democrats to confront Tucker in a daylong showdown. It made him a momentary hero for taking a firm position — that it was time for Tucker to go — and won the new governor praise for his relative grace in awkward circumstances.

"Some of us want to be bitter," Huckabee would say after finally being sworn in. "I don't know what could be gained. What's done is done."

The next year, though, he would author a slender book trumpeting his character that day. It would be the first of four books he'd write as governor, drawing on his religious faith and personal history to dispense advice. He published a fifth this year to kick off his presidential run.

So emerged the self-help politician.

"Leaders never ask others what they're unwilling to do themselves," he said in an interview.

Never shy about his background as a Baptist minister, Huckabee regularly promoted conservative social issues even as he dueled regularly with the state's ethics commission about his habit of accepting lavish gifts. Strongly pro-gun, he boasted that he was the first governor to have a concealed carry permit. His wife, Janet, has one, too.

The facts don't add up into a neat political archetype. Rather, Huckabee's record is that of an openly religious man who periodically injects his faith into politics and of a conservative Republican who's willing at times to make government bigger.

He beefed up Arkansas' pre-kindergarten education and insisted on arts education. He repaved the state's highways and greatly expanded health insurance for Arkansas children. With nearly every big issue, he lobbied for tax increases to pay the way, though he cut smaller taxes, too. Now that he's running for president, Huckabee has taken a no-new-taxes pledge.

"He's a flexible politician," said Jay Barth, a co-author of "Arkansas Politics and Government." "He's a pragmatic politician."

In Arkansas, he's almost universally described as a man of great energy and a public speaker the likes of which the state hasn't seen since Bill Clinton.

Self-transformed from flabby to trim marathon man, he doses his diet advice with the Gospel. In most everything, in fact, his Christianity lies not far beneath the surface.

Michael Dale Huckabee was born Aug. 24, 1955, in Hope, Ark., the son of a firefighter/mechanic and a teacher. His was a humble upbringing, but he thrived. He was largely self-taught on guitar and, despite the Baptist stereotypes, would play bass with various garage-rock bands.

Huckabee says he was a shy kid. But at 14, buoyed by the confidence he'd developed as a musician, he was picking up a few bucks as a radio DJ and learning to speak comfortably, candidly and colloquially, either during broadcasts or traveling around Arkansas as a wunderkind preacher.

In high school, he joined other ambitious teenagers in Little Rock for Boys State, the civic-education program sponsored by the American Legion that introduces select high-school juniors to politics, to see who could become leaders among leaders.

"We were both running for governor" of Boys State, said Rick Caldwell, who would become a college roommate and lifelong friend. "He was very articulate. He was a great communicator. He had a great sense of humor. I never stood a chance."

Caldwell describes Huckabee as someone who emerged fully formed in high school with clear ambition, deep faith and a work ethic that would forever put peers to shame. The two bunked together at Ouachita Baptist University, where Huckabee graduated magna cum laude in barely more than two years while holding down a full-time job at KBRC radio station in Arkadelphia and delivering sermons every Sunday morning and Wednesday night.

"We would sit on the dorm floor and . . . I remember him saying that, 'I want to be involved in getting people to change our nation,' " Caldwell said.

Next came Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Soon Huckabee was pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, where he founded a broadcast television station that carried his church services, local football games and a public affairs show that he hosted.

By 1989, he was president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, and in 1992 he ran for the U.S. Senate against Dale Bumpers. The race was all uphill. The preacher was taking on a popular Democrat in a Democratic state when turnout for Bill Clinton's presidential race was sure to doom Republicans.

Huckabee over-reached. He ran campaign ads comparing Bumpers to pornographers for his support of the National Endowment for the Arts. But voters knew Bumpers, a longtime Methodist Sunday school teacher, too well, and the tactic backfired. Bumpers won easily.

Clinton's departure to the White House set political dominoes tumbling through Arkansas, and Huckabee went straight to running for lieutenant governor. He won narrowly, was re-elected and by 1996 seemed headed to an unlikely — for a Republican in Arkansas — election to an open U.S. Senate seat.

Then came Tucker's conviction in the Whitewater scandal that dogged the Clintons. Huckabee dumped his Senate campaign and moved into the governor's mansion. Through most of his decade in office he got along well with what was the most lopsidedly Democratic legislature in the country. ...

complete profile article and photo: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/...

The beliefnet website is fun. Go take the beliefomatic and find out your religion. I always come out Neopagan. I can't get up the nerve to ask the free question of the California Psychics. You can read your horoscope there too :~)

130.

* rdorgan
Wed, 12/05/07
8:19 pm

.......
The Obama campaign declined to comment on her resignation.

The e-mail that Rose forwarded points out that Obama's father and stepfather were Muslim and that Obama lived in Indonesia for part of his childhood. But other parts of the e-mail are false — Obama attended public and Catholic schools in Indonesia, not a radical Islamic school. It is also not true that Obama used the Quran instead of the Bible when sworn into office or that he ever "admitted" to being a Muslim.
--------

Sounds like if he DID indeed attend "Islamic" school instead of "Catholic" one and/or used the Quran instead of the Bible, then you, rdorgan, likely WOULD NOT vote for him.

Is that correct perception?

132.

seashell :-)


Indeed the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.


A month or so ago I got that same email from a Democratic Union activist in our region who is a supporter Mrs. Clinton's campaign. I told them off in a return to all email. They had forwarded it to a very large list and it had been forwarded several times. The disgusting email was full of lies and racists comments. Fox News even called that email racists. Looks like the Clinton camp is full of very dirty-tricksters.

136.

former -

I very much would vote for Obama if he attended Islamic school and/or used the Quran.

The problem is that a Clinton volunteer is spreading a hoax and spreading misinformation. 

I'm sure that you might have noticed that what I have posted over the years is not misinformation nor is what you post, misinformation either.

I don't like people who spread misinformation.

Seashell is correct, the volunteer should have been fired.

125.

Susan Rowe
Wed, 12/05/07
7:50 pm

Rep. Ron Paul does it his way...

..."I don't even think he tries to get legislation passed that benefits this district . . . and yet he continues to be elected year after year. I don't really know how to explain it."

Paul's bedrock supporters have a ready answer: He's authentic.

They may not agree with or even understand all of Paul's views,...voters are attracted to Paul's grandfatherly, if uncompromising, honesty.
..........
------------

And we still call it "democracy"... - the state of public affair where "authenticity" and "uncompromising, honesty" CAN NOT explain elected official's success!
Definitely terms we use require redefinition..., lol.

138.

* rdorgan
Wed, 12/05/07
9:02 pm


I very much would vote for Obama if he attended Islamic school and/or used the Quran.
-----------

Thanks.

140.

former -

You're welcome (I have a number of friends who are Muslim; one of my brothers is a Buddhist).

I would vote for Obama if he renounced his hand-holding with AIPAC.  We won't get our country back until/unless we give AIPAC the boot, since we are now all about war and ideology and protecting Israel.  Oh, and bombing whomever we please, w/o cause.

138.

* rdorgan
Wed, 12/05/07
9:02 pm

......
The problem is that a Clinton volunteer is spreading a hoax and spreading misinformation.
......
I don't like people who spread misinformation.
-----------

That's the whole point of campaigning...to make you (voter) feel distinctively different ("don't like people") toward one camp (including candidate himself/herself) comparing to another one, so making you feel that you are CHOOSING..., lol.

In reality they both ARE THE SAME (to make sure, just check their records and speeches/rhetorics BEFORE!!! campaign has began)!

After all they are both from the SAME Political Party!

David Kuo

From SourceWatch

J. David Kuo is the author of "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction", released October 16, 2006, by Free Press.

Kuo, who had served two-and-a-half years in the White House as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, resigned his post in December 2003 "with a statement that 'Republicans were indifferent to the poor' and that the White House had 'minimal commitment' to 'compassionate conservatism'." [1]

In his February 2005 Beliefnet column, Kuo wrote: "I have deep respect, appreciation, and affection for the president" but "that there never really was great concern over what he called 'the poor people stuff'" by senior White House staff, Nick Turse wrote November 27, 2005, in TomDispatch.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State stated in May 2005 that it "and others have long argued that the Bush administration's faith-based initiative had little to do with helping the nation's needy" and "noted that the administration has offered no new funds for social service programs and has shamelessly used the initiative to court new voters." This, at least, was confirmed by Kuo in his February 2005 Beliefnet column, in which he wrote "that Karl Rove and other political strategists have long seen the political benefits of faith-based initiative."

It would appear that Kuo's plan for "the 'poor people stuff'" was handing over federal funds to the religious right. On the October 10, 2003, edition of PBS's "NOW with Bill Moyers", NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reported that it was Kuo, when he worked at Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition as a "top adviser to the coalition's main political strategist", who in 1995 "helped draft the coalition's manifesto, the 'Contract with the American Family' [that] argues that the nation should 'abolish all major federal welfare programs' and turn them over to 'private and religious organizations.'" ... more: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?tit...

LOL.  I'm 100% Neo-Pagan and/or 85% Buddhist.

No news there.  :-) 

142.

seashell :-)
Wed, 12/05/07
9:25 pm

I would vote for Obama if he renounced his hand-holding with AIPAC. We won't get our country back until/unless we give AIPAC the boot, since we are now all about war and ideology and protecting Israel. Oh, and bombing whomever we please, w/o cause.
--------

...lol, you know Sea, I love discussion with you on AIPAC.
Can't stand not to..., lol.

I'l try to be short.
You are saying "we are now all about...protecting Israel".
I'll tell you it is wise-versa (AND ALWAYS WAS!!!, if under "Israel" we'll understand Israeli People).

That's Israeli People (not American People) for more then 60 years now defending America's oil interests in ME.
That's Israeli children (not American children that learned about that only during last 4-5 years) for more then 60 years now sleeping with guns under the pillows and giving away years and years of their military service FOR FREE!!! not for salary as it is here.

...I'll stop for now and will just suggest you to think again WHO DEFENDED WHOM for the last 60 years!!!

Beliefnet is for the Disney crowd.

This organization is the best.

The Interfaith Alliance

http://www.interfaithalliance.org/site/p...

Comcast stopped offering MSNBC (Keithie) and I had to pay to get him back.  I think this happened to a lot of Comcast people. 

FCC Chairman Target of House Panel's Investigation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120507D.shtml
Jim Puzzanghera, of The Los Angeles Times, writes, "Two key House lawmakers announced Monday that they were investigating the Federal Communications Commission, accusing its chairman of 'possible abuse of power' and a failure to operate fairly and openly in handling proposed cable TV and media ownership regulations."

147.

former
Wed, 12/05/07
9:43 pm

-----------
you see, Sea..., you've got me to make a slip..., sorry!

Of course both People an both People's children defend Bush&Olmert&Co., we MUST NOT FORGET THIS!

They WANT US to make a slip like I've just done (don't make me Sea do it again..., lol)!

http://www.interfaithalliance.org/site/a...

New Poll: Candidates Should Not Use Religion to Influence Voters

Majority of Religious Americans Want Religion Separate from Government

Washington, D.C. – A strong majority of Americans tell presidential candidates not to use their religion as a political strategy, a new poll finds.(View Poll Data 91k) In fact, 60 percent of Americans who regularly attend religious services say that presidential candidates should not use their religion or faith to influence voters. Among all Americans, 68 percent hold this view. Notably, this sentiment is consistent across political party affiliation, with nearly 60 percent of self-identified Republicans agreeing and three-quarters of Democrats (75 percent) and Independents (70 percent) concurring. Furthermore, by a three-to-one margin, Americans believe that clergy and religious leaders should not have a great deal of influence on voters’ decisions (great deal of influence, 8 percent versus no influence at all, 31 percent).

These are among the findings of a new poll of 1,000 Americans conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, Inc. for First Freedom First, a project of The Interfaith Alliance Foundation. Voters overwhelmingly send presidential candidates and their campaigns the message that religion and government each work best when kept separate.

Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of The Interfaith Alliance noted, “These results are a clear message from voters to presidential candidates and those in office that Americans value their First Freedom. Religion should not be reduced to a political tool used to influence the voters because it damages both the sanctity of religion and the integrity of government. Americans are electing a Commander-in-Chief, not a Pastor-in-Chief.”

The new poll also found that:

Nearly 80% of Americans believe that it is important that the next president nominate Supreme Court justices who will protect the separation of religion and government.
Fully three-quarters of both those who regularly attend religious services (75 percent) and those who do not (81 percent) believe that this is important.
Among registered voters, nearly 70 percent (68 percent) say that presidential candidates should not use their religion or faith to influence voters.
A scant 13% of those who regularly attend religious services believe that clergy or religious leaders should have a great deal of influence on their votes.
People of color are even slightly more likely to believe the next President should nominate a Supreme Court Justice who will protect the separation of religion and government than voters overall.
“While it is important for religious leaders to speak out on the great moral and political issues of the day, the American people have made it clear that they do not want their religious leaders dictating their electoral decisions,” added Rev. Gaddy. “And when the next vacancy arises on the Supreme Court, I hope whomever is president will remember the will of the American people and nominate a judge who is committed to the separation of religion and government.”

The telephone survey was administered by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, conducted by Opinion Research Corporation as part of their twice-weekly omnibus survey and sponsored by The Interfaith Alliance Foundation. Results reflect a random sampling of 1000 people nationwide. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percent. More information can be found at: www.firstfreedomfirst.com.


# # #

The Interfaith Alliance (TIA) is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization with members drawn from more than 75 faith traditions and is dedicated to promoting the positive and healing role of religion in the life of the nation and challenging those who manipulate religion to promote a narrow, divisive agenda. First Freedom First is a joint project of The Interfaith Alliance Foundation and Americans United for Separation of Church & State. TIA’s election year program, One Nation, Many Faiths analyzes and interprets the role that religion plays in an election year and ensures that religious institutions are not held accountable to the priorities and interests of political candidates.


Date: 10/30/2007

Some pretty funny Christmas cards on baby. . . .

http://eatapyzch.blogspot.com/

seashell -  the FCC is presently a joke.  And who was it that was in charge when SO many things slipped by?  oh yeah -- Michael POWELL - son of.

"Murdoch knew key republican law makers had pressured the FCC on his behalf, Congress even threatened to cut off the FCC funds." ---Ken Auletta

Mention is made of NBC filing a complaint with the FCC about the ownership of Fox television.  NBC's beef was that the law states that no more than 25% of the money used to purchase a television station can be foreign. Murdoch clearly broke the law when 99% of the money used to purchase Fox was Australian!  NBC's appeal was denied by the FCC.   The NAACP also appealed the ruling of the FCC, but it was also denied.

Rupert Murdoch was not interviewed for this PBS broadcast because he said "he distrusted PBS". (No joke boys and girls!)

In his early years in Australia – his paper was one sided and ruthless..however the other fellow won and following the election his papers were burned in the streets and journalists striked, not over money but ethics.

Murdoch has stated that news is meant to entertain not educate. http://www.fortunecity.com/bennyhills/palin/250/fmurdoch.htm

During the 2002 and 2003 build-up to the invasion of Iraq, all of Murdoch's 175 newspapers editorialized for war

Don Henley has said that his pop hit "Dirty Laundry" is based on Murdoch's style of journalism.

In 1999, The Economist reported that despite billions in profits, News Corporation had paid no corporate taxes for more than a decade, thanks to its complex international structure and the extensive use of offshore tax havens. In 2004, Murdoch purchased a penthouse condominium in New York City for $44-million. His net worth is estimated at about $7-billion.

Murdoch's News Corp is now the parent company of an interlocking media empire that includes television, movies, cable networks, book publishing, satellite TV, magazines and newspapers operating in the United States, Australia, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific Basin. http://www.nndb.com/people/420/000023351/#FN1

Very funny cards, puddle, on your fabulous, and I do mean fabulous, blog.  Thank you for sharing yourself and your talent with us.  :-)

Oh please please please, let putzie rattle his saber and let Biden  impeach.  Impeach now, Biden, BEFORE he drops the bombs.

Good grief.  Any one of us could do better than this. 

Oops, forgot the link.

Video: Biden stands by threat to impeach Bush over Iran

We all knew this, right?

Hersh: Cheney 'didn't want to hear' Iran intel

Dear Iowa,

Please give Dodd and the others trailing a chance.  Please!   There are many things about Biden I like.  Talking impeachment is good, but he needs to do it NOW so I'm thinking he's a blowhard.

This creature who started this needs to be tried for slander.

CNN: Disproved Obama 'Islamic school' rumor still spreading

More evidence of creeping fascism.

127 journalists jailed worldwide: survey
One in six have never been publicly charged with a crime, per report.

I promise, not one candidate has a chance for my support unless I get a GUARANTEE that if they are President they would sign the US on to the current and next KYOTO TREATY!.

and I hope you all join me with that commitment.

A Message From Al Gore For Bali Climate Change Conference

http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/23194...

This creature who started this needs to be tried for slander.

CNN: Disproved Obama 'Islamic school' rumor still spreading

Ah, to live in a country that is civilized and has brie cheese.

France slaps penalties on gas-guzzling cars
AFP
Published: Wednesday December 5, 2007

Propel This! - Submit to Propeller.com

   
   

France's environment ministry Wednesday unveiled a system of green taxes on gas-guzzling cars and bonuses for cleaner vehicles, as part of a nationwide strategy to slash global warming emissions.

From January 1, any driver who buys a new car emitting more than 160 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre (just over half a mile) will be charged a once-off penalty of up to 2,600 euros (3,800 dollars).

Penalties will start at 200 euros, rising to 750 for emissions above 166 grams, and 1,600 euros above 200 grams. The top tax bracket is set to concern one percent of all cars, those spewing out more than 250 grams of carbon dioxide, the ministry said.

Buyers of more environmentally-friendly cars will receive a bonus of up to 1,000 euros, based on the car's greenhouse gas emissions, with an extra cash award for scrapping a polluting old vehicle at the same time.

Bonuses will apply to all cars emitting less than 130 grams of CO2/km, starting at 200 euros, rising to 700 for emissions below 120 grams and to 1,000 euros for the cleanest vehicles, those producing less than 100 grams.

For the cleanest of all -- those emitting less than 60 grams of carbon dioxide, currently mainly electric cars -- the state will pay out a special super-bonus of 5,000 euros.

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/France_slaps_penalties_on_gas_guzzl_12052007.html 

seashell......HOWDY.

Why don't you submit a question to the Des Moine Register for the Iowa Debate.

email questions to:
kobradov@dmreg.com
rforgrave@dmreg.com

I wrote and asked if each candidate guarantees us they will sign the Kyoto Treaty.

Clinton would promise, Linda SF, but I doubt  she'd deliver. ...at least not in any meaningful way.  I think Edwards would  sign on.   Obama, maybe.

One small victory for our earth.

 Appeals court blocks Bush logging rule

Federal Appeals Court Blocks Bush Admin. Rule on Logging, Burning in National Forests

TERENCE CHEA
AP News

Dec 05, 2007 21:23 EST

A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration rule that allowed logging and burning projects in national forests without first analyzing their effects on the environment.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the U.S. Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it issued the 2003 rule, which was billed as a way to reduce wildfires.

As part of the "Healthy Forests Initiative," the "hazardous fuels reduction" rule exempted logging projects up to 1,000 acres and prescribed forest burns up to 4,500 acres from environmental review.

The court said the agency's failure to properly analyze the rule caused "irreparable injury" by allowing more than 1.2 million acres of national forest land to be logged and burned each year without studying the ecological impacts.

The three-judge panel ruled that the Forest Service can no longer exempt such projects from environmental analysis until the rule itself can be properly analyzed.

The San Francisco-based appeals court sided with the Sierra Club and Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign, which sued the Forest Service and Department of Agriculture in 2004.

Wednesday's decision overturns a lower court ruling that favored the administration.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Appeals_court_blocks_Bush_logging_r_12052007.html 

Like so many lies that folks like to continuously keep putting out there.....some decades old.

Terrible that it's so easy to believe lies because it's based on prejudice.

168. Before I will even consider anyone, I want a guarantee they will sign it. A verbal guarantee on camera is good enough.

OH, this blog drives me crazy.

As I was saying, Before I will even consider anyone, I want a guarantee they will sign it. A verbal guarantee on camera is good enough.

Every candidate needs to answer it. Along with the Front Runners, Dodd, Kucinich.......even Biden. They all have to address it if they are serious about wanting to be Prez.

A Message From Al Gore For Bali Climate Change Conference
http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/23194...

Partial list of those fighting S1959.

Tell A Friend

The fight has begun, and the support to defeat this Bill building like a gathering storm!

::::::::

For the first time since the Vietnam War Protests, Americans are banding together in solidarity to fight Senate approval of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. In just three of four days, there have been several more sites carrying this important message - and they increase every day. Now that the momentum is building, the necessity to ramp-up the pressure is tantamount to success, and winning this one fight will embolden our country to take-on other issues that deserve our attention as well. To date, these are some of the sites that linked to, or have published this call to action:

Op-Ed News

CampusProgress.org

Diatribe

The Smirking Chimp


BuzzFlash.com Unbelievable amount of support from BuzzFlash!

Digg.com (The Digg Community in particular reacted to the challenge, and their comments are telling: LINK

Just Wondering

Free Your Mind

http://www.jimmyr.com/

Democratic Underground.com

The Massassi Temple

Netvibes

Freedom’s Phoenix

Brownswood

Crooks and Liars.com

JohnEdwards08

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=5084 

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=5084

My 173 post is grayed out almost entirely.  Hmmmm

sea, I see your 173. Perhaps it's your computer.

************
Yet another humonguous thread ... discouraging for the dial-ups. Is HQ trying to send a message?

************
It's not only prick who didn't want to know about Iran, others STILL don't. First Bully Bolton has an op-ed in today's WaPo. The revisionist history is in full bloom.

Why any legitimate newspaper would give this discredited fraud room to rant from his bully pulpit is beside me ... Katharine Graham must be turning over in her grave. Once this creep was in office, North Korea restarted its own nuclear program and it has only been since his removal from State that more seasoned diplomats have been able to resolve the crisis that he began there. During the Clinton Administration, dipomacy had managed to discourage continuation. The same was and will work with Iran.

************
The WaPo does have some good ones, but WAY too many bad ones. Today, Robert Samuelson is spot-on with health care. The US health care system is the most expensive one in the world.

==================
Rx for Health Care: Pain
By Robert J. Samuelson
Thursday, December 6, 2007; A29

We need to have a candid debate about health care in 2008, but the odds are against it. The fact that covering the 47 million uninsured already looms as the centerpiece of this debate is a warning sign that it won't be serious. We're told that the uninsured are our biggest health-care problem, but they aren't. Runaway health spending is. Although politicians pay lip service to that, what they really enjoy is increasing spending.

It's understandable because expanding benefits is so much more politically rewarding than trying to control them. Everyone believes in adequate health care; people should have it when they need it. Politicians cater to these beliefs. But the intellectual and even moral laziness of this approach results in an invisible abdication of political responsibility. We are letting the unchecked rise in health spending determine national priorities. Consider:

• Health spending already totals more than $2 trillion annually, about 16 percent of national income (gross domestic product). By 2030, it could easily exceed 25 percent -- one dollar out of four -- projects the Congressional Budget Office.

• There's a massive transfer of income from young to old. Americans 65 and older now represent about an eighth of the population and account for about a third of all health spending. By 2030, their population share will be about a fifth, and they could account for nearly half of health spending, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has found.

• Neither the government nor the private sector has succeeded in controlling health spending. From 1970 to 2005, average spending per Medicare beneficiary rose 8.9 percent a year. For similar services, spending for Americans with private health insurance rose 9.8 percent annually over the same period. The small difference may reflect cost shifting. When Medicare imposes price controls, doctors and hospitals increase prices for privately insured patients.

[...]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

And Michael Gerson rightly points out some of the most horrific effects of the wars in Africa, although they are not the only conflicts where effects fall disproportionately on the most vulnerable.

But these still do not make up for Bully Boy, IMHO.
====================
'A Different Kind of Genocide'
By Michael Gerson
Thursday, December 6, 2007; A29

WALUNGU, Congo -- This village, surrounding a small Catholic church, is as far down the red dust road as you can go without entering territory controlled by the exiled perpetrators of Rwanda's genocide. The rebels often come in civilian clothes to trade in Walungu's open-air market. At other times they raid the nearby farms for supplies and women. The region is known as "the quarter of rape."

In the shadow of the church is a facility run by Women for Women, an organization that matches international sponsors to local women in need of help. Listening to one of those women, I heard the story of a suffering nation in a single life.

Lucianne is 24, dressed in a red top and red skirt. She speaks quietly while looking downward, her hands trembling. Her eyes are staring and empty; her lovely mouth never smiles.

In December of 2005, while her husband was away on business, Hutu soldiers broke into her home, tied her arms behind her back, did the same to her sister-in-law and dragged them into the bush. The two women were marched to their family farm, where Lucianne's brother was also kidnapped. Other families were captured along the way.

"We were taken to a hill, and laid down for rape," she told me. "They gave a flashlight to my brother to hold while they were raping us. When he tried to resist, they struck him with a gun in the face. . . . We were near a stream. When one of them was finished, they washed the blood off us before the next was raped."

Afterward they were moved again. "I was unable to walk properly, and they were beating us along the way. The next morning we arrived" -- here she breaks down, then quietly continues -- "at the place where they killed my brother." She was tied to a tree. Her sister-in-law and most of the other women were taken away to be murdered.

[...]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

Yet more gun violence ... more dies from this in the US than from the *terrorists* that we are supposed to be keeping in Iraq.

===============
Gunman massacres eight Christmas shoppers in Omaha mall rampage
· Deadliest shooting since Virginia Tech bloodbath
· Bush had earlier been in city to raise election funds
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Thursday December 6, 2007
Guardian

A gunman killed eight people and wounded five others before taking his own life in Omaha, Nebraska, yesterday, the deadliest shooting in the US since the Virginia Tech massacre earlier this year that left 33 dead. The killer, armed with a rifle, went on a rampage in a mall busy with Christmas shoppers. Two of the wounded were in a critical condition last night.

The gunman opened fire in Westroads mall, killing most of his victims in the Von Maur department store, where some of those shot were waiting in line to get Christmas presents wrapped.

Shoppers and staff ran through the mall in panic when he began firing, heading for the exits or barricaded themselves in dressing rooms.

The gunman was later found dead on the third floor of the Von Maur department store. He left a suicide note that was found at his home by his mother, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official identified the gunman as Robert Hawkins, aged 19 or 20. The TV station KETV reported that the note said the killer wanted to "go out in style".

The police were alerted in a 911 call in which shots could be heard in the background. The police response time was six minutes, slow by US standards, but Sergeant Teresa Negron said that every officer in the city was immediately sent to the spot. "We do not believe that we have any other shooter," she told reporters. "The person we believe to be the shooter has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

[...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,33147...

er, s/b *more die* in the last ...

**********
Must go, sorry that I can't stay ... only time for brief visits these days.

**********
You can bet your bottom dollar that Bully Boy & prick were wholeheartednly behind this delay. So what else aren't we hearing about?

====================
British GCHQ eavesdropping played role in US intelligence U-turn on Iran
· Time lag as agencies checked out conversations
· Ahmadinejad basks in 'great victory' of report
Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Robert Tait in Tehran
Thursday December 6, 2007
Guardian

The US intelligence U-turn on Iran was partly based on telephone conversations in Iran intercepted by the British intelligence listening station GCHQ, according to a source in Washington speaking on a basis of anonymity.

In an updated assessment of Iran published on Monday, the US intelligence agencies concluded that the country had ceased work on a nuclear weapons programme four years ago, in contrast with its assessment in 2005 that the country was pushing ahead with its weapons programme.

George Bush said on Tuesday that the decision to change the assessment was based on "a great discovery". Diplomatic and official sources in the US said this was mainly based on human intelligence, almost certainly a major defector, but that intercepts were also a factor.

According to the source, there was a lengthy time-lag between the conversations being intercepted by GCHQ and the US intelligence agencies checking out whether they were genuine or whether those involved knew they were being listened to and put out false information.

[...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,33147...

Hi, Judy!  Yes, I think it's Firefox that censors my posts. :-)

Rove, Wolfie and Delay...all back in  business and getting press coverage.  They know they've got us by the short hair and they're  smug and blatant about it.  Without a free press, which we don't have, I don't know how we'll ever save this country.

Even Conyers is a turncoat. 

"My best friends are my biggest problem," he told me, out of the blue, as we leaned up against a wine bar at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn Saturday night. He wanted to talk about the possibility of impeaching the president.

Impeachment is something a lot of people talk about, but this guy's a little different. For one thing, he knows a lot more about it than anyone on the planet.

For another, he has the power, if anyone does, to do it. Nor can anyone launch a legal effort to impeach George W. Bush or Richard Cheney without his say-so. I was talking, of course, to Congressman John Conyers.

...from above article.

"Listen." he told me. "The most important thing is that we don't elect another Republican. That is the most important issue. I am supporting Obama, but any of the Democrats would be better than any Republican.

"Because if they elect another one of them, the Constitution is just going to be in tatters. Think of what that will mean for civil liberties. Think of wiretapping and the Supreme Court.***************

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

Conyers is full of it, like the others, and will sacrifice principles to elect a closet repug (like Clinton) .  We're not asking for conviction, just a beginning of the great discrediting of putzco and acknowledgement of our Constitution.  Wouldn't Guiliani have to be approved by the Senate before he would become VP?  Could Putz just appoint someone and that's that?

This is too hard for the dial-ups.  I'll quit now.

On Thursday Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, will give a speech addressing his religion, Mormonism. Romney hopes to repeat John F. Kennedy's success when he dampened concerns about his Catholic faith.

Good luck. Kennedy had a much easier task than Romney faces, for several reasons.

First, the Catholic Church had been around for at least a millennium and a half. Hell, once upon a time it was about the only (legal) Christian faith around. It was be Catholic or meet Mr. Stretching Machine. Back then the Catholic Church virtually ran Europe for hundreds of years. (Run, little altar boys, run.)

Seashell ~~ Thank you. . . .

Congress should be able to walk and chew gum and begin impeachment and get other work done, but it would consume Conyer's work. It should be his historic destiny to catalog the abuses of the Constitution under this regime so posterity knows the American people had a champion who didn't roll over. Come on John, remember your heritage, and turn the tables, "Release the hounds."

good morning puddle

I spent yesterday waiting in a hospital to make a final decision to not operate on my thumb, and just wait to see how it recovers before going to surgery. Evidently trauma to a nerve but nothing to be gained by going in. The risk of causing infection opening it up to get out the debris versus waiting, lead to an informed decision. I did get comfortable with the guy that will do the surgery if necessary so the day wasn't wasted. Now to catch up with the farm work with one and a half hands that work. a bad thumb doesn't slow down my two fingered typing skills at least, today I do a press interview explaining the caucus process

thanks for the random lifelines

Omaha exposes the danger of neglect of mental health needs.

study the health proposals of the candidates to see which incorporate Paul Wellstone's mental health parity clause

most do, not all

174.

seashell :-)
Thu, 12/06/07
12:54 am
Partial list of those fighting S1959.

===============================

Seashell, thanks for this post and link. I sent it on to Washington Journal, Keith, and Cafferty. I might send it to Lou Dobbs too -- this just might interest him.

PHIL -- I'm soooo sorry about your thumb. I hope there are some workers to help you there with that other 'half a hand' of work to do. Good thoughts!!!!!

I probably won't be seeing any of the candidates before caucus time in person, but I see dozens of TV ads and a half dozen mailings a day. If they want my vote they better be printed on re-cycled paper.

bbl

I was lucky, Annilow, and thanks to you and other well wishers. The severe winter weather has thrown me a curve, but nothing like the flooding in the NorthWest. I have good employees and I mostly supervise except for my OB skills in the maternity pens where I may need to call in a veterinarian instead of doing it myself during a difficult delivery.

good morning - good news for the DNC in Florida - a judge has ruled in their favor!  but of course Nelson vows to fight on - he and Hastings need to focus on MAKING & UPHOLDING laws, not ignoring them within their own party.

Judge Rules for DNC in Calendar Fight

In the ongoing war between the Democratic National Committee and its state affiliate in Florida, score one for the national party.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the DNC has the right to enforce its voting calendar and to punish a state which disobeys the approved schedule of voting, as Florida did by approving its primary for Jan. 29. The DNC had required that most states hold primaries or caucuses on or after Feb. 5.

By disregarding that rule, Florida's Democratic leaders sparked the ire of the DNC, which stripped the state of its delegates to next year's national convention. The party has sued, claiming that the DNC action violates the U.S. Constitution by denying people the right to have their votes counted.

But the court dismissed that argument, saying the DNC, not the state party, has the ability to decide when the party's presidential primaries will take place.

Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney said "We're pleased the court ruled in our favor, recognizing the constitutionally protected right of the Democratic National Committee to enforce its rules and treat all state Democratic parties in a fair and equal way. The DNC is committed to protecting the right to vote for every American, and we look forward to continuing to work together to ensure that Florida turns blue in 2008."

But state leaders, including Sen. Bill Nelson, vowed to fight on by pushing for legislation that would set the voting schedule legislatively and would give Florida and other big states a greater voice in the nominating process.

"This fight is not over. This fight is going to go on another day," Nelson said. "This decision in the court today just emboldens by determination to not let party bosses make the decision over the people's right to vote."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/12/05/judge_rules_in_dncs_favor_in_c.html?hpid=topnews

healing wishes to you Phil - hope it's better soon!

ahh, interesting - here's a bit more from a local source:

clip... Coffey said the congressmen were not expected to appeal Hinkle's decision.

But a state lawsuit is still pending that challenges the authority of the Florida Legislature to step into party affairs by changing the primary date from its traditional March date to Jan. 29.

"You have to go at the state," said Jon Ausman, a Tallahassee Democratic activist who filed the lawsuit. "The Legislature is who violated the law."

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-dems0607dec06,0,7143497.story

Brockton, MA is a city near where I live:

http://www.beisbox.com/mediac/400_0/media/DIR_70095/DIR_83975/DIR_93125/rocky1.jpg

http://www.eyewitnessnewstv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7458740

Brockton wins fight for Marciano statue; Boston mayor agrees

Associated Press - December 6, 2007 6:54 AM ET

BOSTON (AP) - It's a TKO for Brockton.

The president of the World Boxing Council has reversed himself and agreed to recommend that a statue of Rocky Marciano be built in the heavyweight champ's hometown, rather than in Boston as the WBC had originally planned.

That decision had been a blow to Brockton residents, who felt their city was the only place where the statue belonged. And they got some surprising help in their corner from Boston Mayor Tom Menino.

WBC President Jose Sulaiman says both Menino and Brockton Mayor James Harrington called him yesterday and urged that the statue be erected in Brockton.

Menino tells The Boston Globe that he would never want to take Rocky Marciano away from Brockton, because he put that city on the map.

...

speaking of sporting events, there's a big event this Sun Dec 9 at this stadium:

http://football.ballparks.com/NCAA/SEC/SouthCarolina/index.htm

Good morning,

I got seriously sidetracked by my email and have been busy for hours posting to calendars, updating our events and putting yesterday's screed up on other web sites.

Please recommend. Thank you.

http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/23196...

*rdorgan

I'm sorry, I'm having a terrible sense of Deja vue.  The last major event I'm aware of in the Verizon arena where Obama is coming after South Carolina was the circus.  Being trotted out in front of huge audiences by Oprah does not strike me as a positive.  Perhaps if I hadn't seen how Howard Dean was set up for a fall, I'd be less suspicious.

Of course, Phil insists that if Howard hadn't folded after Iowa and Wisconsin (?) he might have pulled it out.  But, it's my sense that Howard was really put off by the circus atmosphere--it's not a good predicate for taking care of the nation's business in a serious manner.

Look, Bush Two is a fool.  Obama is not a fool.  However, that's not relevant.  What's relevant are the people who are pulling the strings and, just as they were able force Clinton to do their bidding, it's unlikely that Obama has a support system that's powerful enough to resist.

Perhaps I'm jaundiced by the fact that a neighbor came by yesterday in support of Clinton and revealed that his support is based on her having the "power people" behind her.  I hadn't really thought of Democrats in quite that way--as simply wanting to be connected to the "power people" just like Republicans are, rather than being committed to "people power."  In other words, they're simply elitists whose team has a different name. 

former
Wed, 12/05/07
9:43 pm
___________________________________________________________________________

Perhaps the price of returning to the land of Abraham....or at least in the way they did maybe?

198.

Yes, I realize that Oprah will not be having that much of an effect on voters -- celebrities don't.

However, even before I ever heard of Obama, I've seen Oprah through the years and have admired her tenacity and longetivity.  Ok, it's a talk show, a magazine, etc. but a lot of what she has on her programs is informative.  Most days, by the time I get home from work I only get to catch the last minutes of the show.

The event in South Carolina is free.  The last time I got anything free I can't recall.  Thus, I'm a bit jealous of early states like SC that offer events like this to their voters from candidates and their supporters.

This is an excellent example of flawed logic:

There's a massive transfer of income from young to old. Americans 65 and older now represent about an eighth of the population and account for about a third of all health spending. By 2030, their population share will be about a fifth, and they could account for nearly half of health spending, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has found.

Money spent on health care is not income for either the young or the old.  It's income for the health care industry and the insurance middle men.  Whether or not the recipients of the purported health care even benefit marginally is debatable.

Imagine a religious ministry directing its ranting and ravings exclusively to young boys.  Would you say this represents an infusion of spiritual guidance which serves a need and from which the boys indubitably benefit?  The intent does not (or should not) determine the effect.  But, this is the same kind of thinking which defines the destruction of Iraq as an investment in the freedom of the Iraqi people. 

Front page news down here in Charleston. People are buzzing about it, even this early in the morning. Wish I could stay a few extra days to atttend. Columbia is not that far of a drive.

This is a small hotel, so the staff is very approachable. Many are excited and one used the word "honored" to have "such a smart and intelligent man" come to their state.

I tell ya, anyone who wants that job must really have a strong constitution. They must be all things to all people - a feat that is impossible, of course, but the demands of the people are unrelenting.

Oh in case the blog is jumping around, the intelligent and smart man being referred to is Barack. We have many problems in this country, and outside of it as well. When I have a problem at work, I look for team consensus and collaboration.

Yeah it's scary. Everybody wants it their way, or at least part of their way. If this guy can reach across the aisle and at least START a conversation, I think that is a major first step.

Then we get on to tackling all of the issues, and with the phuck ups of this current Administration, it will be difficult to know where to start. Iraq is in the forefront of the voter's minds right now - followed by healthcare for all.

Those are the 2 biggies for me, and they in no way take away from the seriousness of the others.

I wish him well in South Carolina. Remember, the strengths of the others can always translate into well place Cabinet positions. Except Hillary - she can go bake cookies.

And please don't come "home" to Illinois.

I'll tell you what, I was so glad that Obama was trotted out to be a keynote speaker at the DNC Convention in 2004. That's what started it all for me, thinking he could move beyond Senator.

When he was a state senator representing the south side of Chicago (no easy feat, let me tell you, during a time of Republican governors), he was so effective. It was like those folks finally had some real representation, and not just another white Irish guy that took them for granted and left them to rot.

The south side flourished, and Barack made sure his folks got some of that money pie. I'm very proud to know him in a different way.

When he ran for Senator against my good friend, Gary Chico, it was a tough decision that I would have had to make, had I been living in Illinois at the time. But Illinois made the right choice then - and the country has a chance to see what he can do on a national and global level.

It's the team, not just the man/woman.

seashell wrote "Conyers is full of it, like the others, and will sacrifice principles to elect a closet repug (like Clinton)."

I need to point out that in Jack Lessenberry's article, Conyers gave specific, cogent, pragmatic reasons, at an ACLU fundraiser, for not pursuing impeachment, regardless of his personal feelings about doing so.  An early supporter of Dean in '04 and Obama in '08, Conyers was being promoted this year, on this site, as a more liberal alternative to Carl Levin in the Senate. 

204.

Denise -

Thanks for that comment about Barack, except for the line about Hillary and cookies.  That was a cheap shot at her and I was surprised it came from you (your comments are usually very insightful and above that kind of stuff).  I'm not supporting Hillary for the dem nomination but she's very qualified to be our next US President if that's what the voters of America decide.

Phil, I'm really sorry to hear about your injury.

Guns freak me out so badly that I don't even like knowing there is one around. I don't like seeing them on cops' hips but I know they need to be there.

I hope the healing process is swift. Please take it easy, go hire some more help, and take some time to heal.

Hugs

Hey rd if you knew me you'd know it was not a cheap shot (hugs). We used to joke about that here, but that was along time ago. You probably were not around then.

Sorry, I know you're sensitive and I like that about you.

I apoligize if you were offended.

There is a new thread.

http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/23196 

I'm a white Irish guy (not a politician though) that I hope anyone I encounter I don't  "left them to rot".

In fact Obama has Irish blood in him and has a lot of white Irish Americans supporting him.

So please try not to single out white Irish guys (some of us might take offense here).

npl (compliments) respects = dea-mhéin

There is a new thread up.

210.

No problem Denise.

 All I know is this blog, is like anything else on the internet, it's in the public domain.  There's a lot of eyes looking, lurking at this blog and what comments are written here.  It's like how my grandfather used to tell jokes.  Many times I couldn't tell he was telling a joke until I found out later it was, joke on me, as they say.

In the past I used to throw around a lot of terms on this blog that now I've tried to be more discerning and catch myself before typing them.  Maybe it's because it's so close to another prez election cycle primary start season and I don't want to do something or say something that can come back to hurt in some way the message and the campaign of the candidate I'm supporting for prez..

rd - a public blog is where you can take or leave things. Leave what you don't like. Take what you do. I don't claim to represent the whole blog. Please don't put me in that position.

And the white Irish guys on the south side of Chicago left the blacks to rot. If you were not one of them, you don't need to identify with them.