Gore4Dean

Dean Rejects Modernism

2004-01-29T09:26:00.000-08:00

Very insightful post by radical middle over on dKos:

Trippi is a Modernist, and Dean is a Progressive. In art theory (as interpreted by me), a Modernist is someone who sticks to a particular aesthetic to the exclusion of all others. For example, Picasso's Cubism was modernist; Pollack's Expressionism was modernist. These artists devoted themselves to a single idea. Trippi's Modernist aesthetic was the grassroots campaign, People Power rising up to take their country back from the Establishment. He formed the seeds of the idea in the 80s, and tried it for real with Jerry Brown in 1992. But it didn't really work until his 2003 perfect storm - the combination of an incredibly angry and motivated base, the Internet, and an ideal candidate.

Dean, on the other hand, is a Progressive. In my mind, progressives are scientific, engineering types. They're not devoted to ideology, except making life better for people through good government. Progressives try something, and if it doesn't work, they throw it out and try something else. Progressives are totally pragmatic. Look at Dean's history of dealing with health care in the early 90s for an example.

And here's the rub... Modernists want to conform to ideology, Progressives want results. As long as Trippi's Modernist approach was delivering results (i.e. turning Dean from asterisk to frontrunner in six months), Dean loved it. But when it stopped delivering results, Dean rejected it in favor of something more likely to work. Trippi, preferring his Modernist ideology over Dean's Progressive pragmatism, chose to leave rather than admit his ideology no longer worked.

This is purely an outside the HQ perspective since I don't know the players personally, but from their publicly shown approaches and expressed thinking. But this makes perfect sense to me, but then again I am an analytical graphic designer and an artist. Go figure.

The nightmare to come

2004-01-28T16:29:00.002-08:00

(taken in part from the insightful mind of Bri over at dKos)

The Kerry Bush Debate Nightmare

Kerry: President Bush lead us down the wrong road towards an unnecessary war based on faulty intelligence and we are now paying the price.

Bush: You voted to authorize the war based on the same intelligence that I relied on. You yourself said that the capture of Saddam Hussein validated your vote for the war, and that we are indeed safer with him gone. No one said this was going to be easy. But freedom comes at a cost. The american people understand that, and now is not the time to lose our nerve.

----------

Kerry: President Bush's tax policies take from the poor and give to the rich, while creating huge deficits for our children.

Bush: You missed the majority of votes held last year but this is one you voted for and agreed with me. These tax cuts are working and creating a more robust economy.

---------

Kerry: President Bush's NCLB has actually decreased the quality of children's education by diverting much needed funds to support this bureaucratic mess. Plus the entire act is underfunded.

Bush: You must have thought it was a good idea because you voted for it. Education has improved in many states including... and education will continue to be a priority for my administration

---------

Kerry: We need to get real prescription drug package passed, work tirelessly to make sure every American has access to affordable healthcare.

Bush: I pushed Congress to pass Medicare reform, I urged Congress, and got passed in bipartisan fashion largest increase in healthcare spending in US history, and you didn't even turn up to vote on it. Even your liberal Massachusetts colleagues Ted Kennedy voted for it.

There it is. Every major issue that matters to voters, utterly decimated in a four quick responses. This is why a record of accomplishment Governing, a proven solid record of accomplishment and success are a baseline minimum. At this point, only Dean has that. This is why, beyond his plain spoken direct language (as opposed to Washingtonian Political jive) I have been Dean's avid supporter and backer.

Kerry would make a better President than Bush, but so would the dirty dish-towel I clean the lawn-mower with in my garage. Dean would make a far better president, and can actually run on his record, which is what can pierce the fog of the GOP funded $200 million dollar Mighty Wurlitzer.

If Kerry get the nomination the above is a quick glimpse at the easy disaster that will occur to destroy the Democratic bid.

We CAN'T LET this happen.

In the Times

2004-01-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

Was quoted today in the New York Times.

On the Dean blog, Mitchell Gore, 39, a graphic designer in Portland, Ore., advised in a post last week: "Beware the stealth-troll post; the one that starts with something like 'I was supporting Dr. Dean, but ever since. ' These trolls want to start a Dean-bashing session. The best way to deal with them is to ignore them completely.

Interesting how the quote was used to imply balkanization of ideas on the net, given that the intent of the post and the the large amount of it was a blog primer for newbies giving advice on trolls. That is where the quote came from. Here is what I wrote:

BLOG PRIMER (reminder)

For those of you new to the campaign or this blog, welcome. Here are a few tips on the blog and the trolls (message board sociopaths).

This blog is a great place to pick up on breaking news and to provide feedback to our people-powered campaign. Read it, Post on it. Get involved and help take your country back!

You can also dismiss some of the posts here - Don't get too upset with the negative anti-Dean or anti-(fill in the name of the candidate) B.S. you see. Those negative posts usually come from trolls. Trolls post here for one reason only; to disrupt the conversation. You will never know who they are or whom they support, regardless of the content of the post or the name. One person may be posting under different names, with different genders. They may even be paid operatives. It might be easier for you if you just think of every one of them as Karl Rove (Bush's right hand man and top political advisor who built his career in politics for him). Also, beware the stealth-troll post; the one that starts with something like "I was supporting Dr. Dean, but ever since..." These trolls want to start a Dean-bashing session. The best way to deal with them is to ignore them completely. Scroll over their vile garbage. NEVER respond to a troll, and NEVER use the name of a troll in your own posts. I must confess however that I from time to time respond with a (scroll) message to let it be known that their garbage is not being read and make it known that there is nothing worth reading from them.

These "Clark" trolls are not Clark supporters (just like Kerry Trolls are not real Kerry supporters and so on). They are FREEPER/GOP provocateurs. Real Clark, Kerry, Gephardt, etc. supporters are not "anti-Dean", and are busy working to get their respective candidates the nomination. Real supporters of the other candidates are posting on their own blogs, not spending 24/7 here.

These are not Clark (or other candidate) supporters, these are not even Dem supporters. They are FREEPER (Free Republic, aka the loony Clinton killed Vince Foster rabid-right) trolls. Thus some Dean supporters are lured into misguided, fact devoid anti-Clark posts in retaliation. If you find yourself tempted to do this, be aware that such retaliatory posts do NOTHING to help Dean, do NOTHING to help Dems, and do NOTHING but increase acrimony between camps while it DOES help sow dissent within the Dem camps. This of course HELPS Chimpy (aka "President" Bush). In fact some of the apparent Dean supporter anti-(Insert name here) retaliatory attacks are sometimes not even Dem or Dean supporters as well. Just sock puppets (a poster posting as multiple people under different names) in order to flood the blog with their inane garbage and increase the acrimony. Their ideal end goal is to instigating a flame war between blogs and camps and make themselves the focus of conversation and debate. It is a surprisingly common tactic of trolls.

Occasionally a troll here is a single-issue extremist, who seeks to use the high-visibility of this blog to further their own axe-grinding agenda. This is akin to the old rainbow head wig guy (dating myself here) who used to go to sporting events back in the late 70s and early 80s in order to get on camera and hold up a "John 3:16" sign during free-throw shots, etc. So don't be fooled by trolls. Don't respond with intra-party flames and attacks. We will need the REAL Clark supporters, and the REAL Gep supporters, REAL Kerry supporters, etc. come November. Never forget that. Right now those supporters and their chosen candidates are our competition, but they are not, nor should they be our enemy.

Furthermore, the Press regularly monitors this site. They are mostly interested in getting a by-line and some fast press with a blog-bite. You'll see reports citing blog posts, usually from trolls, taken out of context and reported on the press as indicative of the campaign. The best way to deal with bad press is to write to the editor, cancel your subscriptions, donate to Dr. Dean and stop watching the corporate news. We're onto them now. Maybe one day we'll see real journalism replace the corporate sound-bite reporting mentality, but it won't be anytime soon. (My apologies to the few members of the press out here who actually "get" what this is about, and are able to file complete stories without bias - we're learning who you are, and we thank you and your organizations for speaking the truth).

Finally, a safety Tip: You may not wish to use your real email address, as they are picked up and you may get some nasty stuff from the gutter, and when you do post, try to keep your posts short (shorter than this one anyway).

Enjoy!

Interesting that the out of context quotation makes it seem that I was trying to curb debate, and posting of opinions. Which is not what it was saying, but to give background that the anonymity of posters on the BFA made it ripe for provocateur spamming and sock puppet arguments to sow dissent, etc.

I don't think the quote out of context was 100% false in its presentation, but without the larger context of what I was saying, how it was part of a "take everything here with a grain of salt" sort of heads up advice, makes this peice in the Times somewhat misleading.

It was advice on how to deal with trolls, and that context is completely absent from the piece. This smacks of pulling quotes out of context to try and make a point in creating a story about a different topic altogether.

MODEERF (hint, this word is going the opposite of forward)

2004-01-23T21:36:00.000-08:00

From my blog on this:

The Governing Council (GC) of Iraq recently voted to rid Iraq of family law and chosen to impose their own idiotic Shari'a laws back in December though it is only getting out now. We can say what we want about Saddam, but Iraq had some of the more "western" (read progressive) laws and protections for women in the areas of marriage and divorce in the Muslim world. The women in Iraq are pissed and who could blame them?

Isn't it tragic that US intervention so often leads to more repression for women abroad, whether it's inadvertently helping foment the Islamic Revolution (through overthrow of 1954 Mossadegh and installing the Shah), to fully backing, training, equipping and pushing the Mujahdeen radical "freedom-fighters" like Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan... which after the Soviet withdrawal and with the patronage of the then rapidly developing nuclear power (they got 'em now) Pakistani dictatorship re-ordered themselves into the Taliban, to now overthrowing Saddam and then having women take several step backwards.

So is are country learning as Chimpy would say?

And of course ignorant Americans (helped by an indifferent press) somehow think the Iraqis have all these new "freedoms" because they pulled down a Sadaam version of the Michael Jackson "HIStory" album cover.

Ok

The Shari'a passage is not in effect at the moment because Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, has to sign off on it for it to take effect (and the magic 8 ball currently points to "ask again later") but why is this only barely coming to light now? There seems to have been a black hole for this on the news here (save for a buried Washington Post article) and some crucial blogs like Riverbend and Back to Iraq 3.0.

That article from the WaPo was from the 15th of January about a vote that took place in December!

Did I pull a Rip Van Winkle and miss it getting talked about in the press and punditry?

Of course this throws into a little sharper relief why we are getting the "when is the bathroom free?" fidgety dance routine from Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani. It starts to make a little more sense now, his vacillating between saying if elections aren't held there'll be a fatwa ordering civil disobedience, and saying the decision to hold elections should be made by Kofi Annan of the UN.

Can we say "run out the clock"...?

Here's the money question, Bremer might kill this vote all to hell for the next six months or so and keep the GC sock puppets in line, but what happens after we (in theory) hand over the big ball of wax in or around June and the Shi'a are a majority?

And here's a bonus puzzler...

How the FUCK are we safer with an Iraq under Shari'a with the CIA now saying there is a real possibility of civil war soon, but it's all good because someone in Iraq pointed out where former CIA asset Saddam Hussien was hiding in a dirt hole?

And who has been the "madman" to dare worry and (gasp) say something about this sort of possibility implicated in the previous paragraph?

Thanks to ihlin's post about this earlier on the Daily Kos which I lifted some salient points from.

Rational Anger

2004-01-20T17:55:00.000-08:00

Dean is angry?

Yes.

Should Dean be angry?

Yes.

So should every rational person in the nation.

We are angry that there are ballooning deficits as far as the eye can see. Dean has proven record of balancing budgets every year he was Gov. despite there not being a law that mandated it. Dean can solve this fiscal nightmare by making the hard choices, yet focusing on the real cost and the real needs of the people, of families, of our communities. He is a doctor, and as such tirelessly looks for what works and what can solve problems before they become critical.

Dean is angry?

Yes.

Should Dean be angry?

Yes.

So should every rational person looking at the facts.

Bush is an unmitigated disaster when it comes to feeding placebos to the lie of "compassionate conservatism" while being the shill (whiting or not) to massive tax giveaways to the pharmaceutical industry under the guise of "prescription drug benefits" which do nothing in actually helping seniors, let alone the rest of us. The Bush administration and the GOP wraps there disastrous and self-serving agenda in the props of grandparents and seniors, while doing nothing but giving away the fiscal security of our nation to the crass self-interest of the crony backers that funded his entire political career. Compare that with Howard Dean, who left a promising career on Wall Street, to become a doctor. He moved to rural Vermont and delivered healthcare with his own hands to people directly. He got involved in local politics to rebuild and improve community. He fought to ensure that EVERYONE had affordable access to healthcare. When the same nay-sayers derailed "universal care" proposals in Vermont when they torpedoed the Clinton health plan in Congress, Dean fought on and expanded Medicare coverage and expanded and added to existing programs to get more people covered at the state level. Now every person under 18 in Vermont has access to healthcare. Everyone under 150% of the poverty line has access to healthcare coverage. For ANYONE to begin to think that Dean would not fight on and on until we had everyone covered is a fool. Dean is a medical doctor, who has front line knowledge of the system and how to get to universal coverage. With a plan that is workable, affordable and passable. Dean's plan will work, can easily be afforded by returning to the same tax levels during the unprecedented booming economy during Clinton while not squaring off with every moneyed interest which actively sought to, and succeeded in killing the Clinton plan.

Dean is angry?

Yes.

Should Dean be angry?

Yes.

So should every rational person looking at the facts.

Bush is rapidly driving our nations future off a cliff, with record deficits and massive spending increases, which are not repairing our nations manufacturing, and economic infrastructure. Spending that is not funding our educational system as it should, but giving it away to those who are plundering our economy, moving our jobs overseas and dodging taxes and evading environmental protections that re in fact directly harming us, our family sand our communities. If trends in our declining dollar continue, the Euro will soon become the currency of choice for capital markets. If that happens, we are beyond fucked. Any nonpolitical hack of an economist who knows the situation knows that these deficits are unsustainable. Job growth is non-existent and not even keeping up with the population growth, so we are not even close to "growing our way" of a wet-paper bag let alone unprecedented, record busting deficits. Howard Dean has a PROVEN record or restoring fiscal responsibility to government operating budgets. Restoring and securing credit and bond ratings, paying off debt to get interest payments manageable. More telling, he pushed for and secured revenue reserves for the state so when there is an economic down-turn, services would not be cut, and taxes would not be raised.

Under this administration there is more than $24,000.. yes THOUSAND dollars of debt hanging over every man, woman and child in this nation, and Bush is adding over $2.3 billion a day to that debt. If and when those notes come due, not to mention how much of future revenue will get pissed away on interest payments (ever look are credit card revolving debt) we are all in serious serious trouble. Dean has proven record of solving these types of problems. Solving them in ways which do not include cutting services, and not raising taxes (in fact he was able to cut taxes twice when it is was fiscally reasonable and safe to do so). He has a proven record of putting Vermont on a sound fiscal footing.

Dean is angry?

Yes.

Should Dean be angry?

Yes.

So should every rational person looking at the facts.

We are angry that over half a century of foreign policy, and the cornerstone of the rule of law, multilateral agreements and our countries standing as a world leader, based on high moral purpose have been subverted by those pushing agendas which have nothing to do with furthering our nations security. Over 500 of our best and brightest have been lost to no good purpose in Iraq. This administration used 9/11 as pretext to carry out a fundamentally flawed, colossally stupid and radically dangerous agenda. 9/11 and the threat of terrorism was used to exploit fears of WMD with far from solid evidence that Iraq posed ANY threat to us. Bush's advisors sold that misdirection with false evidence and ever shifting rationales. Yet the GOP and this administration moved to cut solider combat pay, veterans benefits, while using "the troops" as a crass political club to try and silence and destroy those who saw this coming.

Dean called it correctly then, and still calls it correctly. Dean's positions on foreign policy are squarely in the center of our nations mainstream of rule of law, working with allies through the UN and NATO. If Dean were president last year, we would only be in Iraq if it was proven, with real evidence, that Iraq posed a legitimate threat to us. All the false rationales given post invasion, are canards, and if there was legitimate pretext for invasion, rightly could and should have been handled through the UN and NATO. We could stare down the Soviet Union, and Russia during the cold-war, through working with out allies and through the UN and with NATO, but some tin-horn dictator (and previous ally of convenience) with an army that could not even pose a real threat to it neighbors anymore, justified invasion at any cost, and without even a months delay?

How anyone could NOT be angry at the sorry state of our nation under GOP governance and the radical neocon agenda behind it, and fail to see the reality of Dean's proven record is beyond me.

Thoughts Going Forward

2004-01-20T09:10:00.000-08:00

Well, Iowa results of course was not what we wanted, but I say to you all on the BFA blog again, that the negative attacks on the other Dems and their supporters was borne out in Iowa. For months now, I have taken rafts of crap from fellow bloggers on BFA for my often laborious admonitions to not attack other Dems. Likewise I have been flamed for suggesting that the registration and min. control of the blog is important in cutting down crap flooding, denial of service attacks, doppleganging, and trolling. I have never said it would solve the problem, but make it manageable.

Likewise, how many hundreds of thousands of words were wasted on the BFA day in and day out, posting anti-Clark, anti-Kerry, anti-Edwards shit?

How many times have I stressed that this was and is counter-productive?

I am not under the illusion that those Kuccinich supporters we watched on CSPAN during the Iowa caucus were directly affected by the blog comments here, but the negative attacks, the lack of stressing the positive message and most importantly, driving home the fact that Dean has a solid, PROVEN record of delivering health-care, balanced budgets, and expanding civil liberties is what we must focus on.

It cost us dearly in Iowa, and could cost us more if we do not re-focus on what made Dean such an attractive candidate in the first place. An outstanding record of pragmatic liberalism. Balanced budgets, expanding healthcare, and accessible direct language.

While I have been one to rail against the DLC the media and the asinine non-think that frames the electorate, that only goes so far.

Dean DOES have real strengths and a real record to run on, that is positive, that does provide a credible and solid choice to move our country forward.

How we have organized and fund-raised, etc. is taking our country back. Dean needs to focus on what we want to do should we succeed.

That is the message that has to be front and center. 24/7.

Counter-punch when called for, but do not go negative. Call BS when it comes, but the key thing is call BS but point out what is really important, which is the positive solutions that Dean has, and a demonstrated record of accomplishment in Vermont.

I am not jumping ship, and I am in for the haul. However we (that means you Howard and HQ in particular) do need to focus getting out the message on why Dean has been, and IS an outstanding executive for leading government.

OK... where to from here? Well what is the name we are starting out today with (and is the CW)...?

Anger.

That is the theme that will be played out form now till doomsday. The rally speech last night will only add to it. But is that a bad thing?

No, not if it is dealt with properly. Is Dean angry?

Yes.

Should Dean be angry?

Yes.

Should EVERY American be angry?

Yes.

We should be angry at ballooning deficits, over 500 of our bravest and best killed for no good purpose in Iraq, schools closing early because of budget short falls massive giveaways to pharmaceuticals under the guise of prescription drug benefits, the list can go on and on.

YES we are angry, and so is Dean. So should any rational person looking at the facts and the reality of the situation. It is the cliched bumper sticker, but it is also true... "If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention".

But there is a critical point about embracing that anger. It has to be refocused on what is making people angry but crucially, what will solve it. It has been a mistake to try and deflect that theme. Dean can and should (in retrospect as well) embrace that "angry" label and say "hell yes I am mad, I am mad that we have run-away deficits, I am made that real homeland security has not been put into place. I am made that property taxes have gone up, schools are closing early, and Americans are dying in a war based on a lies."

But there IS, and MUST be more said than that. That anger is a cross-over moment. It must lead to solutions, to plans to fix it. To what policy and law, and society SHOULD be, which will address these things that rightfully make people angry (those paying attention).

This is where Dean can and should shine. He has a record. A proven record of success, of balancing budgets. Success at reigning in spending of our tax dollars, expanding health-care, providing services, protecting the environment, securing civil liberties, and on and on.

Dean HAS a record. Why are these things not being front and center, 24/7...?

That is where the bridge of our righteous anger at the unmitigated disaster of the the Bush administration should, and MUST make clear, directly, and quickly.

Hell yes we are angry about run-away deficits and out-of-control tax giveaways to corporations by Bush. Because we need to balance the budget like we did in Vermont, to get fiscally sound for the when there is a dip in the economy, the Government is there to help with vital services to carry us through to when the economy picks up.

This is not a new message, Dean has said it. But is has been buried under a blizzard of counterattacking other Dems, and screaming about the media and wanting our country back.

The anger is justified, but there is more than anger in Dean, and it is 100% crucial that if nothing else gets out, it is what is behind the anger, and more importantly what is the solution to what is rightly making us anger that must be clear, loud and what is impossible to miss.

Interesting email today...

2004-01-16T08:57:00.000-08:00

On Friday, January 16, 2004, at 08:13 AM, Timothy Huegerich wrote:

The success of my Dean site, CatholicsforDean.com, clearly indicates the need for Dean to stop alienating people who are pro-life. His vitriolic opposition to the partial-birth abortion ban, for instance, is hard for us to understand.

The pro-choice and pro-life movements can work together to reduce the number of women who want or feel compelled to have abortions. We can work together to:
- improve the economic fortunes of women,
- make child care universally available,
- build a culture that encourages committed relationships (through discussion, not law),
- ensure quality sex education, and
- promote adoption.

Is there any chance that Dean could acknowledge abortion as unfortunate, even while he recognizes the right of women to choose it, and express his support for the five initiatives above? It would greatly increase his standing with Christians throughout the country and greatly strengthen his campaign. More importantly, it is the right thing to do for women.

Thank you,
Tim Huegerich

From: Mitchell Gore
Date: Fri Jan 16, 2004 8:50:59 AM US/Pacific
To: Timothy Huegerich
Subject: Re: Join the abortion prevention movement

Dear Tim Huegerich,

I appreciate your contacting me, but the need for keeping late term abortions legal is a medically necessity.

You obviously disagree, and think that we should allow women who have severe medical complications die when such late-term abortions can in fact save their lives as being necessary. That you define this in the fiction of "partial birth abortion" is indicative that you are placing an ideological and flawed world view on the realities of the situation. Late-term abortions are never done for elective reasons, but to save the lives of the women who are forced into such a terrible position because of medical complications. This is never done because of elective reasons.

The demagoguery of those pushing the "partial birth abortion" propaganda point betray the credibility of your position.

We both agree that reducing the need for abortion is a common goal that we all agree upon. If we could make it so there are never a need for an abortion except to save the life of the woman, that would be a great achievement, something we could all be happy and proud to work towards. Thus the need to educate people about contraception, so as to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. This is again where we respectfully (and adamantly) disagree about approach (unless you dissent from your Churches position on birth control).

I do not attack you for your chosen beliefs, but there are serious, real world reasons why your positions (while respectfully and sincerely held they may be) are very, very misguided.

We obviously hold very different world views about sexual congress and how birth control is a viable, and moral way to prevent unwanted pregnancies (and thus the need for an abortion) in most cases, and we must agree to disagree on these points (again presuming that you hold the views of your professed religious doctrine of the Catholic church on issues of birth control).

cheers,

Mitch Gore

Feel the love (in other words, smell the desperation)

2004-01-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

Just got this little ditty...

From: Steven8788@aol.com
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 7:39:05 PM US/Pacific
To: lestatdelc@mac.com
Subject: you're a maggot like dean and you are a loser as well bush in 04 you troll

That it, that's all there is. Nothing but a hatred and fear insired subject line. Comical no?

Where The Mind is Without Fear

2004-01-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

Martin Sheen recited an amazing poem at the Iowa Perfect Storm Bus Tour kick-off rally last night. It captured the driving spirit of what Dean and this movement has been about.

Below is the poem, written by Rabindranath Tagore who was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He is considered by many one of the greatest writers of modern Indian literature. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. This poem transcends his time and place, and speaks clearly to a deeper truth. Like the confluence of spirit and moral purpose for social reform and progress with persons like MLK and Gandhi his poem speaks with a relevance to our times and our country.

Where The Mind is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

Kudos to you Martin for capturing and conveying that spirit, so true in our hearts and minds as we seek to restore America.

But Will He Buy Five Copies for His Mother?

2004-01-13T17:28:00.000-08:00

Next month's Rolling Stone has Howard Dean on the cover, and an interview within.

Reading it now... so no thoughts as of yet (other than great photo on the cover).

Signs For The Perfect Storm

2004-01-12T23:55:00.000-08:00

Just got done putting up a new piece, which, with the initial idea and the prodding of Adam Mordecai, I have put together a poster for the Iowa Caucus. Thanks for the concept and the direction Adam.

The poster is get people involved in, and celebrating the greatest grassroots movement in modern history, converging in Iowa to get Iowans to caucus.

Down the road (pun noted) we hope to do other iterations for the other states as they come around. If you are interested in helping get out the vote for Dean in Iowa, swing by the page at Dean for America to find out more and to sign up.

Ground Control to Maj. Novak

2004-01-12T13:23:00.000-08:00

Novak is always right since he is a right-winger... right?

Here is Robert "I will out CIA WMD operatives" Novak's very informed and brilliant feature this past weekend (Jan 10 - 11):

NEUTRAL IN IOWA

"Howard Dean's operatives in Iowa still hope for it but now doubt that Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa's most popular Democrat, will endorse the former Vermont governor prior to the Jan. 19 Iowa presidential caucuses."

"Harkin has indicated that he is very friendly toward Dean, and at one point an endorsement seemed likely. However, he has said nothing with time running out."

EARTH TO NOVAK... You might want to return to planet earth, specifically Iowa where Harkin has in fact endorsed Dean. By the way, he endorsed Dean on Jan. 9th.

So please.. tell me why again, "we" the people listen to this idiot pundits (especially the idiot fright-wingers) who have been consistently wrong about everything in this election cycle?

Thanks to Bill in Portland Maine over on dKos for spotting this one.

Dean already creating 10% of the job growth

2004-01-09T14:01:00.000-08:00

According to just released numbers George Bush created 1,000 new jobs in the entire month of December. The Dean campaign has hired over 100 people this past month. Does that mean that Howard Dean alone is responsible for over 10% of the current job growth?

Never mind that we need somewhere between 130,00 to 150,000 new jobs each month just to cover the increase in the population. So the 1,000 jobs Bush created, means we have a net loss of around 139,000 (average of the range).

So tell me again why the CEO president is supposed to be good for the economy?

The media and Dean

2003-12-31T23:17:00.000-08:00

Paraphrased from tensor's post on dKos:

A synopsis of the media's relation with the Howard Dean campaign this past year:

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Hey, a new interesting fresh face!

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Why is this guy so angry?

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Why is this angry guy attracting a following? this must be some kind of a hippie-internet cult.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes and nobody is saying nothing!

Media: Gee, an outsider; the Democratic establishment must hate him.

Howard Dean: The emperor is naked!

Media: Waffling flip-flopper first he says no "clothes" now he says "naked"!!

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: This is a one note campaign that's peaked; an anti-Dean with tons of experience will emerge to take him down.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: This angry outsider just broke fundraising records. He seems to have some magic online appeal for flaky white nudists on the internet.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: All the other candidates say that Dean is unelectable because. while the emperor lied about having clothes, screaming that the emperor has no clothes proves that they were right in saying that "while the emperor lied about having clothes", that this vindicates saying that the emperor's clothes are the right sort of clothes to wear.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: That angry guy keeps breaking fundraising records from these internet nudists and now all the other candidates say that the emperors cloths are miserable failures, and horrible clothes, that the clothes are wrong, that the clothes are the worst clothes in history. They also say that the angry guy once in effect said that people need to take away clothes from old people because... well... he was telling them it would be better to not spend their grandchildren's trust fund on $5000 pairs of pajama's.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Well, as governor, Dean once went swimming wearing only a swimming trunk; he's also been known to have taken showers, without any clothes and he has the problem of shooting from the hip about people having no clothes! What a hypocrite!

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Well, heck, he'll lose in a landslide in the general because almost a year before the election, most people think the emperor has clothes and will react poorly to being told the emperor has no clothes since people talk about how nice and personally appealing the emperor is in his clothes.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Hey look over there at Michael Jackson accusing Kobe Bryant of forcing him to eat tainted beef that probably came from old Europe.

Howard Dean: The emperor has no clothes!

Media: Wow, he won! he's a genius! we knew it all along; but he's gonna have problems governing...

U.S.S. John Kerry at ramming speed

2003-12-20T16:15:00.000-08:00

“if you truly believe that if I had been President, we would be at war in Iraq right now, then you shouldn’t vote for me.” - John Kerry, December 5th, 2003

So... according to his own words if we could have voted Kerry into the Presidency in 2000, we would not be at war in Iraq.

Yet... according to Joe Lieberman's line of thinking, Saddam would still be in power if Kerry were President. Welcome to the circular firing squad of the Democratic party.

Let's look some more at Kerry's words from Dec 5th, 2003:

"The way Powell, Eagleberger, Scowcroft, and the others were talking at the time," continued Kerry, "I felt confident that Bush would work with the international community. I took the President at his word. We were told that any course would lead through the United Nations, and that war would be an absolute last resort. Many people I am close with, both Democrats and Republicans, who are also close to Bush told me unequivocally that no decisions had been made about the course of action. Bush hadn't yet been hijacked by Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney and that whole crew. Did I think Bush was going to charge unilaterally into war? No. Did I think he would make such an incredible mess of the situation? No. Am I angry about it? You're God damned right I am. I chose to believe the President of the United States. That was a terrible mistake."

Those are Kerry's words from the media invitation to Al Franken's living room round table, shortly before Saddam's capture a couple of weeks ago. So back then the war was a "terrible mistake" yet when Saddam was captured last Sunday, Kerry turned around and attacked Howard Dean and crowed that Saddam's capture validated his 2002 vote for the congressional resolution authorizing the war. That is a last straw showing mendacity and pathetic, abject political gaming on a grand scale... and wholly useless ploy. It is why Kerry deserves to be shown the door in his bid for President.

Kerry's words about Saddam's capture and his attacking Dean will be used by the GOP in talking points and attack ads if Dean gets the nomination and would also be used to make Kerry completely neutered and inept at pushing any foreign policy creds he might have built up over the years (even if by some miracle Kerry gets his campaign on track). Kerry has sunk to being a low, low man... and a sad political hack by betraying his principles and attacking others like Dean and Clark who were right on this critical issue when he (Kerry) was not. It is a shame because until the disastrous betrayal of his own record and positions (and by extension us) he had been a principled, strong advocate for progressive and liberal causes.

What is most telling is how Kerry, Lieberman, Gephardt, the DLC leadership crowd, all proclaimed Saddam's capture a "vindication" of the four candidates "who took the politically difficult course of supporting military action to topple the tyrant". So why are these same people not calling into question Clark's position on the wrongness of the war and his foreign policy judgment since he, like Dean opposed the war, would have opposed the resolution and still think it is distraction from the real security threats our nation face, plus is a tragic misuse of our military assets and most critically, our military personal?

Because these people refuse to get on the ABB (Anybody But Bush) ship and instead continually go for the politically expedient in attacking fellow dems who have not wavered on their principled and sound positions regarding the issue of Iraq, they are destoprying ANY Democratic Party chances of gaining control of any branch of government, in particular the executive branch.

Not sure how Kerry can do it, but I hope one day he can redeem himself. His continued rudderless, misguided and damaging campaign for the nomination, where his foundering aircraft carrier of a candidacy is busy ramming into the docks of both the party and other of other candidates like Clark, and in particular Dean, is a disgrace and only makes a possible redemption that much harder.

What a shame, what a disgrace.

Taking the Pledge

2003-12-18T14:39:00.000-08:00

Interesting Times has a pledge to be taken by all those who are for Anybody-But-Bush. Read it, take it, link to it, pass it on.

We hold this truth to be self-evident:

Having George W. Bush as President has been and will continue to be a disaster.

We will not let our partisanship towards any particular candidate for President cause us to lose sight of this basic truth. As such, we pledge ourselves not to become enablers of any campaign designed to divide us in our struggle to remove Bush from power. I pledge that no more will we be:

Tools of those who would disrupt the Anybody-But-Bush movement.

Partisans who would rather bring down the other guy's candidate then find reason to elevate our own.

Dupes who will automatically assume that anything negative about the other guy's candidate is more likely to be true than the negative things said about our guy.

Fools who lose sight of the ultimate goal: the defeat of George W. Bush on November 2nd, 2004.

We will uphold this pledge to the best of our ability.

We will encourage others to do the same.

This we do solemnly swear.

Mitchell Gore

War is Peace

2003-12-18T00:13:00.000-08:00

Added a new piece which lambasts the GOP doublespeak. It is a rather sobering one, and can be a bit unsettling (as it should given the stakes involved).

This is one of a series in the "Understanding the Republicans in 2004" campaign. I have quite already in the bag and ready to upload. I have some more HTML coding to do to get them up, but am almost there. You can see the small thumbnail previews of them here.

I hope to get them uploaded for public use tomorrow as time permits. I would have done it tonight, but it was one of our kids birthdays tonight so we had a nice dinner out and we put lights on the tree. So it's "sleepy time" for me.

Ahhh infants loose on the net

2003-12-16T22:25:00.000-08:00

Love the depth and breadth of email like this ones below...

From: Steven8788@aol.com
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 01:22:16-0500 (EST)
To: lestatdelc@mac.com
Subject: your a loser like howard dean

That's it. That's the entire message... just a subject line insult. You know there troglodytes are out when that is all they can muster. Bemusing non-the-less.

Re-vamping once again

2003-12-16T21:54:00.000-08:00

Well, if anyone have been trying to access the design portion of the site these past few days, you may have noticed that I was negligent in keeping my hosting bills paid, and I was also in the throws of reworking the site to make it easier to add new stuff to the site without having to re-do so many parts with each addition. Definitely the down-side of hand-coding web pages.

I am in process still of updating the site to a frames version (which will make it easier for me to add new pages). This is not the final form of this site though, as there are some limitations in the frames approach, and I want to eventually get it all into a comparable Deanspace implementation. This will allow better capacity to disseminate content as Deanspace grows and gets better interconnected as the Dean netroots grows.

The main advantage of the admittedly limited frames implementation, is the menu on the left side of the design download part of the site. I have added a "what's new" page, and made the menus collapsable (one level at least).

Anyway, I have added several new pieces, notably two new ones to the "Re-Select Bu$h" campaign, and a Join Generation Dean flyer that was done by request. I have several more pieces in the GOP Up is Downism campaign, which I want to hurry up and get the site re-vamp stuff out of the way so I can upload them.

So, hope I have not dampened interest in people using this site by my clumsy hosting issues and lack of updates over the past month or so. But getting back into the game again and re-joining the fight. Speaking truth to power, six degrees at a time.

"The Left" Gunning at Dean

2003-12-05T14:56:00.000-08:00

Dean gets attacked in TV ads from the left by Lieberman and by a progressive group over guns. While Lieberman's is reprehensible since it is is repeating the lame GOP attack rule-book of lurid innuendo of the common practice of governors sealing records for upwards of 10 years, it is the gun attack which I think is relevant to the general election and the more interesting one.

According to an article in the Guardian UK (why oh why do I tend to find British publications get more real news about American politics?) Dean is going to be attacked in TV ads by Lieberman, and by a progressive advocacy group over guns. I think the gun issue is in the end the more interesting one. The key grafs are here:

On Friday, an organization called Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values began running an ad that says both Dean and President Bush received the National Rifle Association's highest marks for their stances on gun policies.

The group is spending about $230,000 to run the ad for a week, a fairly moderate buy in Iowa.

The ad says, "In Vermont, Dean was endorsed eight times by the National Rifle Association. And Dean got an 'A' rating from the NRA because he joined them in opposing commonsense gun safety laws. So if you thought Howard Dean had a progressive record, check the facts and, please, think again."

Tim Raftis, the group's president, said the organization is not affiliated with any of the Democrats seeking the nomination. Raftis was the campaign manager for Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin's unsuccessful presidential bid in 1992. Harkin has not endorsed in the Democratic primary.

He said the ad singles out Dean because "this is information we feel it is important for voters to consider.'' He said the group may air ads about other candidates as well.

Now, it seems to me that this sort of attack actually helps Dean's position in the general election. I say that because having this sort of attention thrown (from "the left") onto Dean's moderate gun position will go a long way into defusing attacks from the NRA, and more than likely keeping them from forming.

It cannot be understated what impact the NRA had in key "swing states" by campaigning and fund-raising HARD for Bush. From "Freedom First" to "Sportsmen for Bush" bumper-stickers to coordinated rallies and fund-raising events from the NRA to help Bush's candidacy.

As was pointed out in previous discussions here on dKos, I think that Dean's gun position will make him an untenable NRA "boogeyman" with which the NRA can or will be able to openly rally around Bush in 2004.

While Clark holds similar sounding views on gun control issues, I think that the NRA's previous ratings of Dean, while an anathema to some on "the left" and in progressive circles, it will be more than enough to neuter any NRA "call to arms" (pun noted) since their previous ratings will be VERY ripe weapons for disarming and actually hurting the NRAs standing with its own membership.

It would put the NRA in the unenviable position of potentially facing the "where you lying then or now" sort of counterattack should they foolishly be gung-ho in running opposition rallies against Dean and/or rallies for Bush.

I simply don't see how Dean's gun rights position and NRA rating can be parlayed effectively by the NRA into any meaningful opposition to Dean's candidacy over gun issues, the way it was against Gore in 2000. This takes a "deal breaker" issue (guns) off the table for many rural states.

Couple this with Dean's record for land conservation, and rural policy positions and experience as being Gov. of Vermont, I think puts states into play in the West, Northwest, and Southwest, not to mention key swing states like WV and TN that were lost in 2000.

Treason a third of a year ago tomorrow

2003-11-10T01:16:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a third of a year and still counting till we find out who committed treason against our nation.

It has been 120 days since our WMD nonproliferation operatives were betrayed by the White House and 120 days since this cover-up began.

120 days since our national security has been blinded by the betrayal of their cover, by this administration.

For 120 days now, black market operatives and terrorist groups have been able to operate while avoiding our WMD nonproliferation undercover operatives.

Rove and the ideology he is in service of

2003-11-10T00:48:00.000-08:00

Right at the top here, I would like to thank Chris R over on dKos for sparking this piece for his post in the thread about the GOPs "fears" of Gephardt in the election.

This entry is not directed mainly at his post, which I disagree with on a particular point, but it does lead me to what I really think this is about in the "big picture". I wish to use his post as a jumping off point to the larger context of the situation.

I disagree with the assertion Chris R makes that Bush's success or failure in 04' hinges on his policies, not his advisors tactics. But not perhaps in the sense of the most obvious reading of that one my think of.

I would argue that the ONLY way for Bush to win in '04 is to wallpaper over and perfume the turds that IS his Presidency and the handling of our national policies, both foreign AND domestic.

I agree that on the merits, it SHOULD be about policies (which are losers for Bush), and hence the political reality that Rove and ChimpCo. HAVE to campaign in such a way so as to get people to overlook the disastrous failures during their term of governing.

All that have IS "tactics" with which to try and tread water, by flailing their arms and legs as fast and furious as they can and hope that it is enough to keep their heads above the pit of their own shit. Distraction and subterfuge is all they have.

The entire GOP strategy, and Rove's campaigns in particular, which HAVE been embraced by the GOP as a whole is, attack, attack, attack. Rove's domain has ALWAYS been about 100% tactics. Policy is tied to their political tactics, because they want to destroy the current system and replace it with their own.

Remember, Rove is responsible for MUCH more than just ChimpCo. Most of the GOP heavy hitters have Rove to thank for their past campaigns. Rove is not infallible, but he is the leader of the GOP strategic election thinking across the board.

But he (Rove) is only the means to the ideological end. Which is the larger point I wish to really put forward.

That Rove is a savvy and very skilled political tactician, is pretty well known and agreed upon. But to see the ideological imperative behind the GOP of today, which are not Rove's creation yet what Rove is in service of, one needs to look to the Heritage Foundation, and other far-right groups and "think tanks" for what is the end goal is they seek reach.

I believe that when objectively looked at, their agenda is nothing like the ideals that most Americans come to think of as the real core principles of our society.

Equality under the law, social justice and easy access to economic empowerment.

Yet that statment above is, by their own words and actions, not what the radical-right wants. It is what they use to sell their agenda which is the antithesis of this.

They want raw capitalism and a biblical world-view social order to hold dominion over our soecity. As much as that seems to be "tin-foil beenie" land, look at their own words and actions, and take them at face value.

I would also put forward that this is why Clinton was assaulted constantly for 8 years. Bush I was "supposed" to have a second term according to their agenda. Can you imagine Bush I (million points of light, new world order) with Newt in power back then?

This attempt to unravel our society and re-shape it into a class-based theocracy was a plan forestalled by Clinton getting elected in '92. It was also stalled because Clinton had a Dem Congress at the beginning of his first term and was able to turn the tax and revenue structure around. This was fundamentally moving the ball away from their end-zone because it was working.

This caused the GOP to counter-attack with everything that they had, which was nothing but yellow journalism and politics of personal destruction in service of their larger goal, regaining power at all cost and march towards their desired end-state.

They have their "trifecta" currently, and look at the unmitigated disaster that we have. But, and this is key, they don't see it as a disaster on the whole, because their long term goals are to undo every piece of new deal and great society legislation and program. They want raw market capitalism, and biblical social orthodoxy.

Why do I say this?

Let's look objectively at history. The pre-civil rights South (in particular before the Civil War) was exactly what I describe above, a class-based, biblical theocracy.

The south was historically a Democrat bastion and stronghold. But prior to the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, Democrats were the party of Jefferson Davis and Dixie. The GOP of today are the Dixiecrats of old, who have ALWAYS wanted a return to the class-based biblical theocracy. It was with civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, culminating in Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that caused many to leave the Democrats and join the GOP. This was the basis for Nixon's "southern strategy" in 68, exploiting the new cross-overs and the fracturing of the Democrats in the south over civil rights.

The "south-shall-rise-again" refrain is not some peculiar anachronism or rose-colored homage to "tradition". The sea-change of American politics happened after WW II, and that was the emergence of the middle class as the predominate class in America, because of both the socialism/capitalism hybrid that resulted in massive public works, both in the New Deal programs, but more significantly in the unheard of in history public sector expenditure in full employment in the war effort.

This led to empowerment of the previous underclass and resulted in the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.

GODLESS communism became the perpetual war (cold war) to continue the massive public works through the establishment of the military/industrial complex, and buoyed by the now existing New Deal, and the addition of the Great Society programs.

This forced the those who hold the raw capitalism of mid to late 19th century and biblical theocratic word-view to leave the Democratic party and switch to the GOP, as exemplified and exploited by Nixon in his "southern strategy".

In short, the calssism of robber-barons and the plantation owners are still with us, but they are now the hardcore base of the GOP. They seek a return to raw capitalism of the late 19th century, and the reemergence of a class based, biblical gentry.

That is their dream state.

They have high-jacked fiscal responsibility and co-opted the language of Goldwater era conservatism, but what they want is raw capitalism circa late 19th century.

The far-right have in passive voice, tactically soft-sold social "compassion" to disguise their radical religious world-view to make it palatable and non-threatening to "moderates" (i.e. people who have become apathetic or cynical of the whole process).

We must take these people at their word. This IS a war for our culture, and a war for the future of our nation. What they fail to see is, who is the enemy of our most cehrisehd idelas and principles really is, themselves.

This is why it is a moarl imperative, that we MUST win.

Fear in a tube

2003-10-28T11:21:00.000-08:00

Fear is what most people don't "get" as being the real meaning of, and central point of Michael Moore's brilliant, (yet unfocused and slightly irresponsible) movie "Bowling for Columbine" not "guns" nor the NRA, which unfrotunatley Moore veers off on, and ends up missing the forest (fear) for the trees (Charlton Heston and the NRA). He touched on the meat of it in the first part of the film, but fell into the trap of trying to be Mike Wallace and "expose" the NRA, K-Mart and Heston as being the problem. They aren't. They are the symptom.

Fear is the real issue, and has become both the cultural touchstone the literal and metaphorical oil for the machinery which our society has become addicted to.

Has been since the depression and WWII, and most certianly had a profound impact in aftermath of both.

It has been the driving force behind McCarthyism, the Cold War, the political seismic shift during the civil rights movement when the fear mongers and their inbred fuck-head followers, fearing the black man, switched from Democrat to GOP. It has been at the core of the push to tune out, and mindlessly consume. It is the prime motivator for maintaining "social order" and something that mass marketers do in fact play on, in order to drive sales. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD).

I was shocked that the most insightful thing said about our culture in that movie, the one which hit the nail squarely on the head, was by none other than Brian Warner (aka Mariylyn Mansion):

(Warner) When I was a kid growing up, music was the escape. That's the only thing that had no judgments. You put on a record and it's not gonna yell at you for dressing the way you do, it's gonna make you feel better about it.

I definitely can see why they would pick me. Because I think it's easy to throw my face on the TV because I'm, in the end, I'm a poster boy for fear. Because I represent what everyone is afraid of, because I say and do whatever I want.

The two by-products of that whole tragedy were, violence in entertainment, and gun control. And how perfect that that was the two things that we were going to talk about with the upcoming election? And also, then we forgot about Monica Lewinsky and we forgot about, the President was shooting bombs overseas, yet I'm a bad guy because I sing some rock-and-roll songs, and who's a bigger influence, the President or Marilyn Manson? I'd like to think me, but I'm going to go with the President.

(Moore) Do you know that on the day that Columbine happened, the US dropped more bombs on Kosovo than any other time in that war?

(Warner) I do know that, and I think that's really ironic, that nobody said 'well maybe the President had an influence on this violent behavior' Because that's not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you're watching television, you're watching the news, you're being pumped full of fear, there's floods, there's AIDS, there's murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they're not going to talk to you, if you got pimples, the girl's not going to fuck you, and it's just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that's what I think it's all based on, the whole idea of 'keep everyone afraid, and they'll consume.' And that's really as simple as it can be boiled down to.

(Moore) If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine or the people in that community, what would you say to them if they were here right now?

(Warner) I wouldn't say a single word to them, I would listen to what they have to say and that's what no one did.

As a society, we have allowed ourselves to become isolated, disconnected from each other. We have replaced reality with "reality TV".

We have become Howard Beale's nightmare.

You people and sixty-two million other Ameicans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube.

Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome, god-damned force in the whole godless world. And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people...

...and when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome, god-damned propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network.

So, you listen to me! Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television is a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, story tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the truth, go to your God, go to your gurus, go to yourselves because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth. But man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We like like hell! We'll tell you that Kojack always gets the killer, and nobody ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry. Just look at your watch - at the end of the hour, he's gonna win. We'll tell you any s--t you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds - we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion.

Paddy Chayefsky, and Jerzy Kosinski both saw the writing on the wall... Network... Being There... I hear ya guys... I hear ya... R.I.P

Laugh, Cry... or Both?

2003-10-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

Preaching to the choir but this is just so infuriating and maddening... first the so embarrassing it makes you laugh part.

“Is our current situation such that ‘the harder we work, the behinder we get’?” - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, October 16, 2003

(emphasis mine)

The above is from a memo made public to Generals Dick Meyers and Pete Pace, and to Defense Under-Secretaries Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Fieth. This memo was also hand delivered by Rummy to several legislators.

Of course the money shot is:

"The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions"

And here we have been told in deafening tones by the self-same people (ChimpCo. and in particular Rumsfeld himself) that the quagmire in ~~Vietnam~~ er... Iraq, was going so successful and that is was simply the press' fault for making it seem that we were not winning in Iraq and the war on terror. Never mind the ever more glaring evidence that Iraq has had, and never was really about fighting terrorism.

"The Stovepipe" Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yoker posted last night is a MUST read that shatters any illusions to anyone other than partisian appologists or willfully blind people that this mess is all the same self-deluding (being generous there) pattern of 100%, red white and blue, GOP bullshit.

almost a Benjamin

2003-10-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

It's been almost 100 days and still counting till we find out who committed treason against our nation.

It has been 99 days since our WMD nonproliferation operatives were betrayed by the White House and 99 days since this cover-up began.

99 days since our national security has been blinded by the betrayal of their cover, by this administration.

For 99 days now, black market operatives and terrorist groups have been able to operate while avoiding our WMD nonproliferation undercover operatives.

Miltary Spending vs. GDP

2003-10-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

Prompted by a thread over on dKos, someone there asked how best to counter the claims by the GOP, that military spending vs. the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shows that we are not spending enough on the Pentagon.

So I ran a little math equation on Excel last night, to try and find some sense of scale on what the Pentagon spends on our dime, or more accurately under ChimpCo; our children's and grandchildren's dime. I found some rather sobering facts about the scale of the spending which I lay out at the end of this post. This of course based JUST on Pentagon spending for this fiscal year, not including the Homeland Security Dept. budget, nor the Department of Energy spending on making nuclear weapons, etc.

Yet many times conservatives will try claim we don't spend enough on the military, and waste it on other spending priorities. Never mind the large chunk of the overall Federal budget it DOES consume. I have no problem spending what we need to defend ourselves, and help our allies. Their argument that we need to spend MORE however, is spun by trying to point out that our military spending compared to the GDP is not that great. But this is really a meaningless comparison mainly because almost every penny spent on "Military Spending" is contained within the GDP. This is a perfect example of moving the goal posts. IF you increase "defense spending" you also increase GDP at the same time.

To further undercut their dogma, if you look at taxes in total vs. GDP it is not really meaningful in any way. So by their own logic, we are not being taxed that much after all, so modest tax increases to fix our roads, keep our schools open, and secure our Social Security, and to provide universal health care coverage for all Americans should be no big deal either... right?

Of course that is not how they see things, and will continue to talk out of both sides of their mouths.

In the end, anything vs. GDP is rather useless argument, and it's only purpose really is to obfuscate the matter.

As the old saw goes, updated for the new millennium...

a trillion here, a trillion there, eventually it adds up to real money.

Now, to put the number in perspective (I did this early in the AM this morning, so it is current) the following yardstick on what the size of these numbers should sober-up anyone with a functioning brain stem ...

721,651 seconds ago was last Sunday
721,651 minutes ago was the middle of last May
721,651 hours ago the League of Nations met for the first time.
721,651 days ago Jesus was 26 years old

721,651 dollars ago, was what the Pentagon spent in the time it took you to read this (60 seconds).

This is an example of how to most people, when numbers and money get to such a large scale, it becomes meaningless to them. It becomes debating monopoly money, or poker chips.

Krugman, the revolution and "the leaks"

2003-10-16T17:10:00.001-07:00

This may seem a bit tangential to the seemingly easy to follow topic of Bush "stopping all leaks," which is getting mild play in the media at the moment, but I just finished "Bush's Brain" and am getting underway with "The Great Unravelling" and I wonder now how this "Nixonian" obsession of running a closed shop under ChimpCo. along with how exceedingly odd I found it that Cheney nominated himself as the best choice for VP to the Twig back in 2000 are akin to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. More directly, could this be what some astute thinkers flat out call the "revolutionary" power of the radical-right, which is hiding in plain sight?

What I mean is, that there are core elements within this administration, the neoconservatives in the Pentagon, Cheney and his office, and its close allies in Congress (the religious-right of DeLay, etc.) who are outright dismantling the very system we have come to hold as immutable. I can see how shutting off an "outsiders" foray into what is really going on is of paramount concern to the radicals in power now.

As Krugman points out in The Great Unraveling, consider first the "welfare state" (already distorted in the public psyche and language as a pejorative) which is embodied by the New Deal programs, Social Security, unemployment insurance, and Great Society programs like Medicare. If you read the literature emanating from places like the Heritage foundation, which drives the Bush administrations economic ideology, you discover a very radical agenda: Heritage doesn't just want to scale back New Deal and Great Society programs, it regards the very existence of those programs as a violation of basic principles.

Or consider foreign policy. Since World War II the United States has built its foreign policy around international institutions, and has tried to make clear that it is not an old-fashioned imperialist power, which uses military force as it sees fit. But if you follow the foreign policy views of the neoconservative intellectuals who have fomented the war in Iraq, you learn that they have contempt for all that--Richard Perle, chairman of a key Pentagon advisory board, dismissed the "liberal conceit of safety through international institutions." They aren't hesitant about the use of force; one prominent thinker close to the administration, Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, declared that "we are a warlike people and we love war." The idea that war in Iraq is just a pilot project for a series of splendid wars seemed, at first, a leftist fantasy--but many people close to the administration have made it clear that they regard this war as only the beginning, and a senior State Department official, John Bolton, told Israeli officials that after Iraq the United States would "deal with" Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Nor is that even the whole story. The separation of church and state is one of the fundimental principles of the U.S. Constitution. Yet Tom DeLay, the house majority leader, has told constituents that he is in office to promote a "biblical world-vew"--and that his relentless pursuit of Bill Clinton was motivated by Clinton's failure to share that view. DeLay has also denounced the teaching of evolution in schools, going so far as to blame that teaching for the Columbine shootings in Littleton Colorado.

So I am really suspicious as to this strange "plug the leaks" being just about PR damage control vis-a-vis the yellowcake disaster and the Valarie Plame outing.

I see this as a possible indication of a sort of "hunker-down" and keep at it, sort of response whilst they go about their allied "principles" of tearing apart the foundations of our society in the name of their radical and (as Krugman, referring to Henry Kissenger's frame) "revolutionary" agenda.

I see this as picking up out from the ashes of Newt Gingrich's failed start, and is in fact a real assault on America. More fundamental and damaging to our nation, certainly more transfiguring, than if a thousand airplanes were in the hands of al-Qaeda pilots.

Is that over-blown?

I think not.

Even Kissenger in 1957 had the framing right in his 1957 disserataion "A World Restored":

Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertions of the revolutionary power that means to smash the existing framework. The defenders of the status quo therefore tend to begin by treating the revolutionary power as if its protestations were merely tactical; as if it really accepted the existing legitimacy but overstated its case for bargining purposes; as if were motivated by specific grievences to be assauged by limited consessions. Those who warn against the danger in time are considered alarmists; those who consel adaption to circumstances are considered balanced and sane.... but it is the essence of a revolutionary power that it possesses the courage of its convictions, that it is willing, indeed eager, to push its principles to their ultimate conclusion.

Why do we continually doubt the very words of the revolutionary power in the radical-right?

Why do we assume they see that working within the system is what they "really" want when they flat out declare that they reject the basic assumptions about the framework of our society?

I see the "Reagan Revolution" and Newt Gingrich's self-proclaimed "revolution" to be precursors to, and in reality the same basic players which are a part of the same political camp that are now tearing apart our system. Re-districting, Diebold machines, extra-Constitutional intervention to install this administration, state recalls, media-co-option, radical tax cuts that will force the scraping of the New Deal and Great Society programs, smashing the barrier between church and state.

We have failed so far to respond to this threat, because we have wrongly assumed that the differences were only some outlandish starting point, some staking out of a bargaining position in the immutable game of traditional policy haggling. This is not what we are seeing.

This is why this administration has prevaricated on the publicly stated goal posts, and present an ever-shifting set of rationales on everything from tax cuts, to why we went to war in Iraq.

Their real goals are openly reveled by those who have been a party to this administration from before it was even mapped out as a candidate seeking the nomination in the primary season of 2000.

This has been the agenda of the radical-right from the mid 70s onward. It simply found a willing apathetic populous, one weaned on marketing white noise and thus susceptible to a non-threatening and yet machismo appealing laden sales-pitch.

This is why I see this damn-the-torpedoes attitude as being an example of the most vindictive administration in generations, reveling itself in how it hypoctitically addresses "leaks" which are not a part of advancing their radical agenda. It cannot be stressed enough that this is not usually viewed within the context of what it is, because the enormity of taking the radical-right at its word, is just too mind-boggling when viewed from within the norms of the established framework. This is what Kissenger rightly gleaned from examining from history, back in his 1957 dissertation.

This cadre of the radical-right do not care about the rules. They do not care about the system. They wish to smash it apart and assert their own system. A system of protecting unearned aristocratic wealth and power, and asserting a biblical world-view on the nation... and the world.

86... 87... 88 Days...

2003-10-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

88 days

It has been 88 days since our WMD nonproliferation operatives were betrayed by the White House and 88 days since this cover-up began.

88 days since our national security has been blinded by the betrayal of their cover, by this administration.

For 88 days now, black market operatives and terrorist groups have been able to operate while avoiding our WMD nonproliferation undercover operatives.

The Final Desperate Strategy

2003-10-04T00:27:00.000-07:00

The Bush Administration, and the Right wing ideologues who support them, have one last and desperate strategy left in the face of the Yellowcake/Iraqi Disaster, erupting into the Valarie Plame Scandal.

War against the CIA.

Essentially, for political survival they need to set up an all-out conflict with the CIA, and convince the public to buy into the notion that "they," the CIA, are at fault.

Why? In order to keep their ideology afloat, and their ideologues in camp. Breaking ranks is a definite possibility for many who have been zealously defending the administration. This may occur since they are now left without any coherent reasons to support their folly, but when one's entire world-view is based on unproven theory, and faith-based ideology, all bets are off.

Their final strategy is not called desperate for nothing. It won't work. It might placate and keep the "true-believer" in camp for awhile, and even get a prominent defender in the Wall Street Journal or the attack machine of the Far-Right media to tow the line for a while, but it reeks of imminent failure. This amounts to one, last grand strategy to explain all the failures of the Bush Administration since September 11th.

"We weren't able to respond adequately, and on a timely basis, or to prevent the terrorist attacks on September 11, because of the CIA! Their failures! They should have had Predators in the skies shooting down commercial airliners like any competent modern intelligence agency!"

Decode: The FBI, who is tasked with domestic security is blameless.

This calls for us to overlook the damning facts that this administration, had in its hands a robust strategy for attacking al-Queda drafted by the previous administration, which did not think it wise to initiate a war while handing over the keys to the White House to the current occupants of the Oval Office. The current administration did not even have a full meeting of the principle players from the relevant departments to review this plan, until 7 days before the terrorists struck.

"We were forced to out Valerie Plame, a deep undercover CIA agent in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the very crux of the war on terrorism, because her liberal turncoat husband was sent by the CIA to debunk our war justifications, which later forced us to admit that the justifications were anything but, and not built upon evidence!"

Decode: We still believe the case is good, if totally unproven and is contradicted by the facts on the ground.

This calls for us to overlook the damning facts that this administration and its ideologues who take, as an article of faith, that Iraq had to be invaded and have an allied regime installed. They have held this belief long before the previous administration was even sworn in. This is a scheme which they have held for over 1o years prior to the attacks of September 11th. We are asked to dismiss the revelations that within less than 6 hours of those attacks occurring, during the highest level meeting of the command and control apparatus of our nation, "our" Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld scribbled hastily on his notepad, that in effect, this was a tripwire. This was the excuse to "Sweep it all up. Things related and not." (literally what he wrote) and execute the grand plans of the Project for a New American Century. Plans which called for a radical realignment of the middle and near-east. A realignment, not based on removing the root causes which allow extremism to take hold in the impoverished areas of the world, but because of strategic, economic, and geopolitical interests. Those interests namely being control of natural gas and oil resources. The PNAC is a radical group in power right now. It is worth reminding ourselves what Henry Kissinger (the poster child of "realpolitik") wrote in his seminal work A World Restored that brought him to prominence in 1957, that nobody within the system of a society can quite bring themselves to believe that the revolutionary power really means to do what it claims.

"We can't find Saddam's WMD because all the places that the CIA clearly told Donald Rumsfeld there were WMD, there either wasn't, or the CIA killer predator drones didn't take out looters who spirited the WMD out to the black market and inevitably al-Qaeda as the highest and most interested bidder."

Decode: It's not our fault our intelligence was wrong, which led us to not plan for the chaos that followed because we were duped into thinking we would be hailed as liberators.

This calls for us to overlook the damning facts that for well over a year, the offices Secretary of Defense, and the Vice President were not happy with intelligence assessments and reports which did not support and in fact contradicted their convictions that Iraq posed an serious, unacceptable and imminent threat, and that we could be out of Iraq within weeks after major combat operations we finished and we were greeted as libarators, and that our own Generals were vastly over-stating what it would take to secure the peace. A threat, we might recall, which could not be disarmed by any means short of war and invasion. It also calls for us to overlook the glaring and obvious reality that The Sec. of Defense set up it's own "intelligence" shop, to reassess the data, and draw its own conclusions, outside of the established channels of intelligence gathering, assessment and vetting. In short, this group was intercepting the intelligence data, stamping its conclusions on it, and with the widest possible, unfiltered assertions from the VP's offices, passing along to the White House and on to the State Department as "bulletproof" reasons for preemptive, immediate action.

"This is all a part of our plan in Iraq, and things are going according to our larger strategy of winning the war on terrorism which is working by fighting the terrorist and rogue nations on our terms, and this entire imbroglio is simply political gamesmanship and whining from the Democrats, the CIA, and people who are Saddam apologist and/or fear-filled appeasement advocates."

Decode: We were really looking to leverage the WMD excuse to exercise our "the flypaper strategy" which would draw all the terrorists in the region into.

This calls for us to overlook the facts that "our" planning didn't take the steps needed, or commit the resources to secure suspected WMD sites in Iraq during the ground action, and we let any WMD or materials (if they existed) to slip out of the country and into the shadowy, untraceable unsecured networks of unaligned groups and terrorist networks, which were the very rationale as to why we invaded Iraq in the first place.

All of this boils down to trying to excuse the gross failings of a policy crafted on an ideological belief, by blaming the very apparatus of intelligence gathering, assessment and policy crafting based on the facts, which undercut the ideological and theorized strategies of this administration, long before it came into office, or before the attacks of September 11th.

In short, they are trying to blame the CIA for their own doomed policies and intelligence failures.

Again, this is a desperate strategy, to go to war against the CIA and its valuable and respected agents. It will only work on a very short-term practical basis, and intellectually on a very limited ideological basis, for the followers and suffering defenders of the Right and Administration. It attempts to putty up the leaks on the ship, so that it doesn't sink while other remedies are explored. It won't last.

A clear federal crime, not to mention the even more serious damage to national security, was committed with the exposure of Valerie Plame. It may not have been entirely for revenge per se, but to defend a distorted, ideologically stilted untruth. In other words, lies. An ill justification to put it in the most charitable terms possible. A woman charged by our nation to monitor and track weapons of mass destruction, has been wantonly exposed along with all of her contacts. But more importantly this struck at, and crippled, the vital operation of WMD nonproliferation which we all must see successfully caried out. Keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the wrong hands is the very crux of, and greatest challenge to, the war against terrorism. As weapons technology continues to evolve smaller, more mobile and more powerful, the difficulty of tracking and securing these weapons will be ever more reliant on the very assets that this administration dealt a severe blow too, human intelligence gathering. What the hell are we doing?

We don't know now, because we are flying blind.

All of this was seemingly condoned and even gloated over by Karl Rove, the so-called mastermind behind the Right wing political apparatus. Regardless of whether he knew or not about Plame's true status and the severity with which disclosing such status was, somebody should have known, and should have put a stop to it. When it first became public, back on July 14th, at least then something should have been done about it. Yet no action was taken by this administration.

Only when it was leaked to the press that the CIA was formally handing over a criminal investigation on the outing to the Department of Justice, which would cause potentially fatal political damage to this administration, did it even begin to respond. So for nearly three months, this administration did nothing to investigate this leak. This while at the same time it was busy not investing a leak into the disastrous compromise in our national security, the GOP was using the Department of Homeland Security assets to track down Democratic Texas legislators who were trying to stop the illegal re-districting efforts. Efforts by the most partisan, self-same elements of the Republican party in their bid for a crass political power grab. All to further secure and entrench its fetid grip on the Government.

Now we are expected to swallow that the very same people who have lead us into this nightmare situation, should now be allowed to investigate this scandal? That it will hold itself accountable? We are expected to trust an administration that lies to itself, the world, and to us, to suddenly become honorable, trustworthy, and to act in the best interest of the nation, instead of desperately defending its failed ideologically based disasters?

This administration must recuse themselves fully, the perpetrators need to be discovered and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Failing that recusal, articles of impeachment against President Bush need to be initiated, and this administration must be removed. Unless Bush and the administration come clean, end their war against the CIA and their valuable agents and operations, and demonstratively stop the political destruction which has so greatly weakened and divided us, we will collapse into a fascist failed experiment in a government of, by and for the people.

A little humility, soul searching, and addressing one's failings can go a long way.

Maybe the "E" Means We Have Had "Enough"...?

2003-10-03T15:35:00.000-07:00

Who'da thunk...?

While not a HUGE fan of his music, I like some of his tunes and respect his talent, now it seems Bruce is a pretty clear-headed guy as well.

Rock'n'roll superstar Bruce Springsteen (news) wraps up his worldwide "The Rising" tour on a political note this weekend in New York, where the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks provided inspiration for his latest songs.

Springsteen wove strong criticism of the administration of President Bush (news - web sites) into the first of the final three shows at Shea Stadium on Wednesday night, playing a recording of Bush talking about weapons of mass destruction, questioning America's motives for the war in Iraq (news - web sites) and calling for Bush's defeat as he seeks re-election next year.

"It is time to impeach the president and put in somebody that knows what they're doing," the musician, known as "The Boss," told the crowd.

Heading into the hit "Born in the U.S.A.," he said: "The question of whether we were misled into the war in Iraq isn't a liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic question, it's an American one.

"Demanding accountability from our leaders is our responsibility, our job as citizens," he said.

(snip)

Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off "The Rising" tour in the summer of 2002, traveled around the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia and sold more than 3 million tickets.

Wonder if this is what Roger Waters was referring to...

All alone, or in twos,
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands.
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand.
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

We can hope the wall will come down.

Back and to the left... Back and to the left...

2003-10-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

Seems Senator Arlen "Magic Bullet" Specter came close to the GOP party third rail by almost breaking ranks the other day and calling for a special prosecutor, though quickly backpedalled. It now seems he is edging as close as he dares.

"We have to give the Department of Justice an opportunity to proceed, but it's very much on my mind that the Judiciary Committee has a constitutional obligation to do oversight there" - Sen. Arlen Specter, Friday Oct. 3, 2003

Is that enough?

We certainly got to the bottom of the JFK assassination thanks to Arlen's brillance and physics defying theory of ballistics didn't we? (smirk)

Maybe he has a back-and-to-the-left, back-and-to-the-left, back-and-to-the-left, theory that will explain how a handful of people even had possible access to the Plame's ID are not guilty of a treasonous actions against our collective security by outing our covert WMD non-proliferation operatives.

Weapons of Ass Destruction Found!!!

2003-10-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Here's what David Kay (lead inspector for the hunt for WMD in Iraq) had to say about the subject currently being touted by ChimpCo. today, in his report on the WMD hunt in Iraq:

"One noteworthy example is a collection of reference strains that ought to have been declared to the UN. Among them was a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced. This discovery - hidden in the home of a BW scientist - illustrates the point I made earlier about the difficulty of locating small stocks of material that can be used to covertly surge production of deadly weapons" - David Kay, Interim Progress Report on the Activities of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, The House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Defense and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — October 2, 2003

C. botulinum Okra B... hmmm. Let's see.

Clostridium botulinum (exactly what Kay is referring to above), is the bacteria which produces botulinum toxin, and is a normal soil bacterium. You've probably ingested large quantities of it yourself, if you've ever eaten vegetables straight out of a garden without washing them thoroughly, or if you've ever eaten unfiltered honey. This is why doctors tell you to not feed honey to babies. Live C. botulinum is used in undergraduate microbiology labs as a teaching tool...the live bacteria are not dangerous, are ubiquitous in nature, and are ubiquitous in microbiology labs around the globe--even those not hell-bent on the destruction of American liberty & whatnot.

If Kay said that large quantities of purified botulinum toxin had been found, that would be significant. It's difficult to purify the toxin from the bacteria (which produce the toxin in exceedingly small amounts), and there's no good reason to have lots of it. That said however, it would not mean much if only small amounts of purified botulinum toxin were found anywhere--small amounts of the toxin are injected by doctors into patients for the treatment of chronic pain and wrinkles--that's what BoTox is.

So really David Kay's team found evidence of the source of BoTox!

Kay would not go so far as to call the anti-aging treatment a "weapon of mass destruction," but did say that due to a BoTox program, along with Saddam's known silicone and spandex labs, WMD in the Baath Party stood for Whoa, momma! Damn!

In other news, Kay announced that Saddam was "sitting on" massive amounts of cellulite, with plans to weaponize it, for transmission to already-obese Americans, producing the dreaded "Weapons of Ass Destruction." When reached for comment, Tampa Bay defensive lineman Warren Sapp said, "If I could get some of that, the earthquake from my Beyonce bunny hop would bring down the whole damn stadium."

And stay tuned for more news about the breaking Schwarzenegger scandal, "Onan the Barbarian" Arnold apologizes for groping himself during 1965-2003, claims he thought he would like it, and now realizes how offensive it was to many people."

Of course what the upshot of the interim report by Kay really means is no weapons found.

(thanks to RR, Chris, and Kuz over at the DailyKos for the above raw material)

Standard Bush Policy = 100s Told Who Our Covert WMD Spies Are?

2003-10-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

Was reading an article this morning from the Washington Post on the Yellowcake Disaster/Scandal which contained a meme that really leapt out, about how misguided some of the reporting is on this treasonous crime.

"Investigators are expected to focus first on determining who had access to information about Plame's undercover status and who within the White House had access to those individuals. Both questions could result in scores or even hundreds of names, officials said."

What officials?

Rove?

McClellan?

Some low-level flunky?

Some partisan hack?

Is somebody feeding me crazy pills?!?!?

To claim that dozens or even hundreds of people have access to the identity of covert CIA operatives is flat out BULLSHIT.

If there are indeed hundreds within this administration that have access to our WMD covert operative's identities, then this is the most damning statement imaginable about the fuckheads running this circus.

Hundreds of people in the White House may have had access to the classified identities of our WMD covert operatives?

(blink blink)

What the fuck is WITH these reporters and the spin doctors feeding them this shit?

If you take the above statement in the article at face value here's the "so-fucking-obvious-a-question-it-makes-you-wonder"...

HOW THE FUCK WOULD THAT MANY PEOPLE IN THE ADMINISTRATION HAVE THAT SPECIFIC HIGHLY SENSITIVE, NEED-TO-KNOW INFORMATION?

Remember, this isn't what the WMD intel was saying, but what the identitiy of COVERT WMD OPERATIVES were. This is NOT something that is disseminated by the CIA, except on a VERY high-level NEED-TO-KNOW basis!

Holy F-in Hey-sus... WAKE UP!

Name Games

2003-10-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

I have been busy since Friday in the trenches over at dailyKos about the entire yellowcake disaster, and while a particular thread there seems juvenile and almost absurd, it points to an important issue of the language we use and how we frame the issues. Specifically it is a thread about what to "name" the scandal erupting around the Bush administration, over their outing of a covert CIA operative working on WMD proliferation intelligence operations.

While seeming a rather droll parlor game (naming a scandal) it brings up some larger more serious issues, which over-arch and should fuel our efforts to get Bush out, and Dean in.

When I was promoting what should be the proper framing for this seemingly innocuous endeavor, and having already put forward that anything "gate" (i.e. Watergate, Filegate, Troopergate, Travelgate, ad nausiem) is beyond droll and counter-productive, no matter how bemusing some of the permutaitons could be, I said the following:

I can't say this enough (and as someone who did marketing design work on THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR) the "Plame Affair" one is too focused on Plame, not the horrific crimes and damage to national security this is.

Plame Affair is 100% dismissible in tone.

Yellowcake Debacle
Yellowcake Crimes
Yellowcake Disaster

The last one (my pick) imbeds the consiquences of what was DONE by the administration. It ties it back to what this mess is about, WMD and the real threat of non-aligned groups and terrorists getting WMD, the intel cooking by Bush, the spark that lit this fuse, and the end result of what this has done to not JUST this administration, but to our WMD intel operations, which ChimpCo. has predicated our entire national policy on, pre-emption.

If you can't nail down intel into 100% bullet-proof statements of the truth, then the entire concept is immoral, flawed and makes us a nation of Tojo, and Blitzkrieg aggression.

I am not a pacifist by any means, but Bush has sold the farm on the moral high-ground in foreign policy, specifically when it comes to military action.

So don't forget what this is about, our collective security and future. And don't forget who was out the ahead of the curve (again) on this vital issue (which erupted into scandal when the Twigs administration got Novak to out the CIA WMD operative on July 14th, 2003). If you can't immediately understand and recite who that person is and why, check out question number 4 of the 16 Questions to President Bush.

We have to be serious people again (which does not mean we can't be fun, happy and jovial).

To not understand the scope of what this is about, and dismiss it casually as politics, or campaign gamesmanship (even from "our side") then you are not a serious person.

A Pattern in the Sand?

2003-09-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Draco over on the threads at Daily Kos for finding this one:

Sources close to the former president say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted.- Why Are These Men Laughing? Esquire, January 2003 by Ron Suskind

So... are we seeing a similar pattern from before in how things in the Plame affair may very well come to light as this unravels? This ending up being Rove, getting dirt from NSC or Cheney's office, on the raw goods on Valerie Plame, to put a huge (though ultimately self-inflicting and possible mortal wounding) shot across the bow to intimidate Wilson and others for the yellowcake exposure and attacking the already broadcast WMD lies in the war run-up.

Rove to Novak, is an already established MO with Rove as is shown in the Esquire piece, and anyone having read Bush's Brain will know that Rove seeking revenge on someone swinging a pick-axe at the clay feet of his handiwork gets this sort of treatment. Rove however seems to have made the mistake in thinking that the CIA are the same category of "target" as Jim Hightower or other past Texas roadkill.

The delicious taste of this is the sweetest thing yet politically for our nation, in what has the makings of gluttonous orgy by hoisting ChimpCo. on it's own petards and reclaiming our country.

CIA and White House May Soon be at War

2003-09-28T05:46:00.000-07:00

Between the CIA handing the outing of Valerie Plame to Justice, and now the GOP led House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence trying to pin WMD intelligence failures on the CIA, this is going to blow-up in slow motion.

Of course the utter bullshit factor to all this is, that the "intel failures" the House is trying to pin on Tenet were in reality a self-inflected wound by the administration, due to the cherry-picking being done by Rummy and Co. with their home brew shop within the Pentagon and NOT anything from Langley. I think the war between the CIA and the WH are going to flare up BIG time really soon. And I don't think there are many people with a working set of neurons who would be under the illusion that the CIA can't take these people out politically. They invented the Mighty Wurlitzer after all.

Remember, the WH first tried to pin the 16 words in the State of the Union address on Tenet, and he initially fell on the grenade (for the most part) but chaffed enough that the WH backed off that one. Then the WH outs Plame to discredit critics (Wilson) of the administration for hyping the intel on WMD in Iraq, and the CIA is still trying to asses the damage done on that one. Now the GOP led House Select is trying to pin WMD intelligence failures on the CIA. Get ready for the agency and Tenet to go nuclear (behind the scenes).

This is a clear indication that the Twig's administration is going into full-on melt-down IMHO, like a drowning man who is flailing around so desperately, that the lifeguard trying to swim out to him takes one in the kisser.

This is VERY bad for ChimpCo.

Arizona Cactus Pops Bush's Balloon

2003-09-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

The article at The Arizona Republic yesterday by Jon Kamman is a small data point, but a huge story (or should be). In it, he points to Bush's major collapse in the polls in the state. According to the statewide poll results mentioned in the article, only 34 percent support Bush for re-selection, with 44 percent preferring someone else and 22 percent undecided, and reflects a dramatic plunge in popularity for Bush. In 2000, Bush beat Al Gore in Arizona by a margin of 6 percentage points, or nearly 100,000 votes of 1.5 million cast.

I wish the AR article cited the actual survey itself, and I would like to look at those numbers and how they break down and the sample questions were worded. But this is HUGE news.

If Dean (or whoever gets the nomination for the Democrats) simply gets the same exact states that Gore took in 2000, and Arizona does indeed go against Bush, the electoral college is a lock with it being a 287 blue states v 251 red states. Florida and the south can go entirely to Bush and we would still win by a decent margin.

This does not even consider states like Iowa which are hemorrhaging under Bush and where Dean has built a large grassroots organization, which is still growing within that state. Nor does it address states like West Virginia and Tennessee which, because of Gore being assailed by the NRA, lost those pivotal states. These would be legitimately back in play should Dean get the nomination because the gun issue would be a non-starter for the Twig and the NRA to attack Dean on.

This shift in the polls could be a hole in which Bush would not be able to crawl out of. But we HAVE to get Dean the nomination, which to put states like WV and TN back in play to really drive a steak through the heart of this dreadful misadministration.

Dean's populist appeal, his centrist record, his rural policy positions and his ability to put attack issues like the gun-control out of reach is something that puts Dean as THE only candidate to really be able to slaughter Bush.

The question is can the fucking idiots at the DLC wake-up and see the writing on the wall and stop with the Donner Party plan and stop desperate hack attacks setting the party into a circular firing squad?

Debating the Debate

2003-09-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

Well watched the debate replays last night and took some time to digest what I saw.

I think Dean did well, his handling of the Gep/Newt attack was handled well, though I think he could have driven the point home about how he was supportive of improving the administrative aspect of medicare, based on his years of experience as an actual healthcare provider would have been a little more substantive and perhaps made it through the media sound-bite filter a bit more.

I agree with some of the bloggers here, that his revisiting that exchange explicitly later on, allowed Kerry to try and hit back by trying to defend Gephardt by trying to pin Dean on the position and not the rhetoric Gephardt luridly try to use to frame the attack.

I see why Howard tried to go there, to try and reframe it as "we need to attack the GOP and not each other by calling each other GOP" tack, but given Dean calling most of the other candidates "Bush-lite" on numerous occasion, his front-runner position in the polls, and the real threat he poses to the status quo/split the difference mind set of the establishment candidate (wilderness Joe, Kerry, Gephardt, etc.) I think that approach fell on deaf ears for the most part. It also does (wether we like to admit it or not) leave Dean open to criticism that he can dish it out but can't take it. That said, I do agree that the Newt comparison in particular is way off-the-mark and would certainly get my back up, but coupling the quick and furious slap back, with clearly articulating why that attack is disingenuous is more important than simply declaring such smears (because we all dislike Newt and the radical-right) as insulting.

You always have to make it painfully clear why (i.e. how that does not accurately reflect your position or policy view) not just that it is insulting.

More troubling to me, though I have not heard the media pick up and run with it, was the extremely despicable LIE that Kerry got away with throwing out there that Dean supported cutting vet benefits.

This was as the debate was going into commercial break, and Dean was not given a change to rebut this flat out LIE by Kerry, and the exchange was dropped as they moved on to a new round of questions to different candidates.

What the media of course was keying on and is hyping is Clark.

Now, while I think Wesley Clark was fairly light on substance for the most part, I do think that most of the bloggers were underrating Clark's performance. While a little circuitous in his replies, Clark did answer a few of the questions many here on the blog painted as a dodge and which the media played up as his failing to fully answer. Specifically I am referring to the much touted and replayed exchange in the media about privatizing SS, which Clark DID in fact answer, though perhaps a little to circumspect for the moderator who was asking the question. When he first tried to answer by saying "I'm a believer in Social Security. I think you need to protect that system, I think you need to put the resources into it, I think you need to assure that it's solvent. " That is a very circuitious answer, which is extremely vague, but is saying that you have to fund SS fully to keep it solvent.

I think that Clark on this, and a few other questions put too him, was over-thinking the answer and thus the easy read answer was not how he worded it. If he had put his second portion of the answers, "I think it's great if individuals invest in the stock market, but not as a substitute for ensuring the solvency of Social Security. We're going to get Social Security right first. And then, we're going to put in place the measures so that individuals can save and invest on top of Social Security." on that one FIRST, he would have slam-dunked it.

Notice how Edwards handled the same question. "No, I don't believe it can. I think we have to do a number of things... "

That is how you answer the questions, the simple short answer up front, then the exposition after to drive it home and explain the WHY aspect of your position.

The clearest answer would have been "No I do not support privatizing SS, but I do support allowing private investment on top of a fully funded SS core system" which is what Clark was driving at, but could not effectively say it in those words.

Distilling the position into a very easy to follow answer and train of thought is crucial. Of all the people on stage last night, I think Al Sharpton was best and clearly articulating and properly reframing the questions and clarifying how many of the presumptions of the issues and questions out in the general psyche are mis-framed. He is also great at reframing it in simple to follow terms.

Being able to properly frame, and distill down into easy to follow language is crucial, and on many of the issues where Dean is correct on calling the Twig on it.

This is of course what Howard has always tried to do, particularly on issues like the tax shift, which Sharpton much more clearly and with a great and simple turn of phrase drove home.

"Tax Shift" is EXACTLY what the issue is, and is also what Dean has rightly called the wig for with his reckless tax "cuts" and Dean HAS to pick up that sort of simple clarity way of describing it like Sharpton did.

Brother Howard really needs to follow Brother Sharpton's language on that one. It certainly is not co-opting the issue, since Dean was out there from the beginning on it, but Sharpton's gift is truly being able to simplify the language of it, and in essence say "no, THIS is what it really is called." I think if Dean leads with that tack, then follows it up with a more robust and substantive "and here's why" sort of policy exposition, it would be vastly more effective.

I think Sharpton really drove Dean's point and message home for him on that one, but Howard has to really take up that ability to call it clearly for what it is like Al did to reach the more disengaged person in the population.

I also think that Dean would do himself a great favor by speaking out and clarifying how a single-payer healthcare system would be better in the abstract, but that his plan is a workable and pragmatic. That his plan would deliver more realistic chances of covering a great number of the uninsured, and that it would be a bridge to a more universal coverage solution down the road like single-payer.

Think of the current insurance/medical delivery system we have as flawed designed behemoth, ala the Titanic. Is simply cannot be turned on a dime, and thus any argument that we can switch to a single-payer system overnight or in a singular shift is simply not feasible.

I think CMB brought up a valid point, that the Clinton plan tried to permanently reconcile and maintain a two approach system that is irreconcilable, however an overnight shift to a single-payer system will simply never be passed in congress, and would cause a MASSIVE upheaval in a vast sector of the economy.

I think an incremental shift, with an eventual migration of the system into a single-payer universal system should be the ultimate goal, and I can see how Howard's healthcare proposals could be a conduit to that larger goal.

More to come on this later.

Open 4 Bidness

2003-09-23T00:48:00.000-07:00

Well, started the Gore4Dean online store up on Cafepress, so that people can purchase swag that has Gore4Dean designs on them.

So far only have items available with the Sleepless Summer Tour rally poster image and a singular item with a "Re-Select Bu$h" piece (the salmon one) but should in short time have the rest of the designs up.

Paul points out why we HAVE to win

2003-09-21T03:04:00.000-07:00

Being a long-time vet of the NY Times forums, I have always held Paul Krugman in high-esteem.

The Guardian's interview with him from Friday is a crucial read. It points to why this election is vital, and why Bush HAS to go.

The most telling grafs, ones we all should really let sink in on what we are really facing are these, where the article discusses a passage in his current book (also a must read) about something that struck him before it was finished:

just as he was about to send his manuscript to the publishers, he chanced upon a passage in an old history book from the 1950s, about 19th-century diplomacy, that seemed to pinpoint, with eerie accuracy, what is happening in the US now. Eerie, but also perhaps a little embarrassing, really, given the identity of the author. Because it's Henry Kissinger.

"The first three pages of Kissinger's book sent chills down my spine," Krugman writes of A World Restored, the 1957 tome by the man who would later become the unacceptable face of cynical realpolitik. Kissinger, using Napoleon as a case study - but also, Krugman believes, implicitly addressing the rise of fascism in the 1930s - describes what happens when a stable political system is confronted with a "revolutionary power": a radical group that rejects the legitimacy of the system itself.

This, Krugman believes, is precisely the situation in the US today (though he is at pains to point out that he isn't comparing Bush to Hitler in moral terms). The "revolutionary power", in Kissinger's theory, rejects fundamental elements of the system it seeks to control, arguing that they are wrong in principle. For the Bush administration, according to Krugman, that includes social security; the idea of pursuing foreign policy through international institutions; and perhaps even the basic notion that political legitimacy comes from democratic elections - as opposed to, say, from God.

"But worse still, Kissinger continued, nobody can quite bring themselves to believe that the revolutionary power really means to do what it claims. "Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent," he wrote, "they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework." Exactly, says Krugman, who recalls the response to his column about Tom DeLay, the anti-evolutionist Republican leader of the House of Representatives, who claimed, bafflingly, that "nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes".

"My liberal friends said, 'I'm not interested in what some crazy guy in Congress has to say'," Krugman recalls. "But this is not some crazy guy! This guy runs Congress! There's this fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge the radicalism of the threat we're facing." But those who point out what is happening, Kissinger had already noted long ago, "are considered alarmists; those who counsel adaptation to circumstance are considered balanced and sane." ("Those who take the hard-line rightists now in power at their word are usually accused of being 'shrill', of going over the top," Krugman writes, and he has become well used to such accusations.)

Re-read that if need be. Realy let it sink in.

We HAVE to do everything we can, because we HAVE to win this.

p.s. it was also very encouraging that someone of Krugman's caliber (and certinaly not a "lefty" on most matters given his impeccable creds as a economic and international affairs expert) hint's at our man Dean when in the article it states:

Krugman doesn't make the nebulous argument that there is something inherently objectionable about the US and its role in the world. He claims only that a fundamentally benign system has been taken over by a bunch of extremists - and so his alarming analysis leaves room for optimism, because they can be removed. "One of the Democratic candidates - who I'm not endorsing, because I'm not allowed to endorse - has as his slogan, 'I want my country back'," Krugman says, referring to the campaigning motto of Howard Dean. "I think that's about right."

A "Miserable" Candidate

2003-09-21T02:47:00.000-07:00

info@dickgephardt2004.com

Dear sir,

I am writing you to express the OUTRAGE I feel at the efforts of your campaign to ATTACK other Democratic candidates, with distortions and misleading statements on Howard Dean. Statements that are highly-misleading and are worthy of the likes of Karl Rove and the lies perpetrated by the far-right attack dogs. That you, a supposed leader of the party, would do this is beyond the pale.

You sir, and your campaign are the reason we (and there is an ever growing army of us) back Dean 100% and WILL change this party.

Your "welcome letter" on your site stating that if a supporter were to "Send $270 to offset Howard Dean's support for cutting Medicare and I will send you a certificate joining me as a Charter Member of the Dick Gephardt Real Democrat Club!" is tantamount to a bald-face lie.

Dean has never advocated cutting Medicare, and your slippery, out-of-context distortion of Dean's position in the early 90s on the matter, is wholly misleading and for all intents and purpose a down-right lie. You might want to listen to what Bill Clinton had to say just last week (at the Iowa Steak-Fry) when he said that when it came to health care issues, Dean is hands down the best in the field.

If this (gross distortions and misleading attacks against Dean) is how your think you will engender support among the party faithful, you are SORELY mistaken. You are doing nothing but Karl Rove's dirty work to get Bush re-selected and destroying the party. I for one will not support your candidacy as a result, even if you manage to maneuver around enough to grab the party nomination with your deceitful tactics.

When the piece by Steve Murphy on your campaign's front page asked the disingenuous question "And where was Howard Dean? (in the early 90s)"...

...it might do you well to recall that during that time he (Dean) was balancing Vermont's budget, bringing healthcare to every child in the state and everyone who is at 150% of the poverty line and below, and to put it bluntly, doing his job. Unlike some members of Congress we could name who have an absenteeism rate of 90%, and who misses crucial votes on Over-Time Regulation bills which end up hurting the working class, just in this past month.

You sir have sunk to a new and desperate low, with your website and campaign strategy, which has all the merit and sophistication of desperate hack.

I would have expected much better from you sir, and I can not in good conscience back you now, our in the future unless you publicly retract these unwarranted and desperate political gambits to try secure your own career goals. You will have to shift your "strategy" away from the baseless, hollow, and shrill ploys to bamboozle voters into picking you by falsely painted Howard Dean as a bogeyman.

That you would do so on issues of Medicare and healthcare issues, given Dean's first hand, front-line experiences AS a healthcare provider, is further indication as to just how absurd and outright pathetic your attacks are.

Shame on you.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Gore

Gender Bent

2003-09-21T02:15:00.002-07:00

I have heard some speculate on the official blog and elsewhere about Dean's imagined inability to connect with "Soccer Moms."

Needless to say I find the assertion that Howard Dean can't attract the legendary "soccer mom" a bit straining, in the credulity dept. From his statements on abuse of women, to reproductive choice, to advoctaing programs that reduce or prevent social problems rather than waiting for the victims (such as early intervention with children at risk). Dean has a VERY pro-woman platform.

While admittedly anecdotal, every female I have had occasion to discuss anything about politics with, has been VERY receptive to Dean's message.

In fact my significant other's boss, who is a GOP through and through, is looking into backing Dean because his wife (the prototypical "soccer mom" if there ever was one) is a Dean supporter and working on him to back Dean as well.

Needless to say, I find the tendency for people to hand-wring over who they think Dean might not be able to appeal too, somewhat self-defeating and usually off-the-mark 99% of the time.

Dean is pulling across party lines into his campaign, and people into the process who usually stay home on election day or previously had zero interest in either candidates or the proccess.

This is something which most media "pundits" fail to grok it seems, and this will be a rude awakening (for them) when the tsunami hits.

Janeane, love ya, but don't stand too close to me

2003-09-21T01:34:00.005-07:00

Janeane Garofalo was in attendance and part of the festivities for the Howard Dean event at the Avalon in NYC last night.

While I like Janeane as a person (from what I know of her), and would LOVE to hang out with her and all, she is a sitting duck for the Fright-Wingers.

All they have to do is cite things like the article "Don't Tread On Janeane," written by Trish Deitch Rohrer for the now defunct Buzz Magazine, where she says:

"Our country is founded on a sham: our forefathers were slave-owning rich white guys who wanted it their way. So when I see the American flag, I go, 'Oh my God, you're insulting me.' That you can have a gay parade on Christopher Street in New York, with naked men and women on a float cheering, 'We're here, we're queer!' -- that's what makes my heart swell. Not the flag, but a gay naked man or woman burning the flag. I get choked up with pride."

While I agree with some of the underlying sentiments above, her over-the-top comments about being "insulted" by the American flag, and being "choked up with pride" by flag burning, are a stupefyingly ignorant way of expressing a valid point of view about the less than exemplary aspects of or national and cultural lineage.

It is stupid ways of articulating things like the above valid critique of our slave-owning, white upper-class dominated history which serves up meatballs for the ditto-head squad to slam us all with.

She's of course free to support Dean and other Dems as much as she wants, and again I like her as a person, but it would be a big mistake to have her visible front and center, and noticably tied to the campaign.

Just my 2/100th of a dollar.

Take CDean or DVDean for a Spin

2003-09-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

Just added downloadable files for printing up customizable CD and DVD labels. These PDFs are designed to be used with the Avery CD Labels, numbers 8931, 8692, 8699, 8942, 6692, 5692, 5931, 5698, and 8691.

If you have other label media formats, please email with margins and postioning on page and will get a custom PDF out to you and posted up on the pages.

Way back machine set to April 18th, 1946

2003-09-17T13:39:00.001-07:00

The recounted interview with Herman Goering below is worth remembering in context of the mendacity of, and conflicted arguments coming from the Twig's administration, particularly that of Tricky Dick Cheney, who has been the flag-waving leader of the "Go-to-War-with-Iraq-at-all-Costs Pep Squad."

How Russert can try and pick gnat shit out of pepper about the ultimately ACCURATE statements when interviewing Gov. Dean about the minutia of troops strengths, etc. which led to the downright droll cacophony in the echo chamber of idiot pundits trying to make hay out of Dean's answers when Dean appeared on Meet the Press back in June, yet neither he nor the mainstream media seems to even press Cheney in his outright culpability for the public being so duped by the very statements HE made (and continues to make) about links between Iraq and al-Queda.

Return now the setting on the way back machine for the relevant historical frame:

"We (Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail and Hermann Goering) got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"'Why, of course, the people don't want war,' Goering shrugged. 'Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

"'There is one difference,' I pointed out. 'In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

"'Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.'"

Is we learning yet?

Dean Visibility is the GOOOOOAL!

2003-09-17T04:41:00.000-07:00

Just added some flyer downloads to the download section to use and promote local events for Dean Visibility Day, which is this Saturday.

There are both English language and Spanish language versions of these flyers. They are both available in color and black & white iterations. The artwork is slightly different between the two as well, since most people in America whose first language is spanish, realize that football in most of the world is actually played with the foot (i.e. Soccer), as opposed to American Football.

Here's hoping both we and Dean can score a GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAL! This weekend and really get the word out there.

If you download these flyers, all you have to do is type the info into the "what," "where" and "when" which currently have temporary text in place. This should allow you to customize the flyer for events in your area, and print it in one pass. Of course like all the download files on Gore4Dean, you will need Acrobat Reader which is free from Adobe for most operating systems.

I hope to have 4-up versions posted tomorrow sometime.

In or Out... don't care right now

2003-09-12T19:22:00.000-07:00

For myself I am putting to rest for now the whole Clark run or no/run bit, which seems to be an ongoing meme with the official blog (mea culpa, I speculate in my head as well) and how it impacts the race for Dean.

U.S. Today has a poll yesterday which shows (in poll question 13a) that Clark basically would pull evenly, from all the other candidates should he enter the race. Despite that he would still be below the top-tier candidates (in order on the poll, Gephardt, Dean, "Wilderness Joe", and Kerry).

So whether Clark is in or out, it does not negatively impact Dean's position in the polls vis-á-vis the rest of the pack. Though it would push all the other lower poling candidates further down in the presumed poll rankings going forward.

On the upside (aside from Clark not hurting Dean vs. the rest of the pack) it would presumably strengthen Dean's arguments about Iraq and foreign policy because Clark holds the same basic positions as Dean on them. Thus Clark, with solid military creds, would strengthen that meme (i.e. Dean's position on Iraq) even if indirectly. So where he to enter the race, it would, over a period of time most likely erode all the other top-tier candidates position on Iraq, but not Dean's.

Distinguished military records and being right of course has never really held much truck with the Karl Rove and his slime-machine tactics, as I point out in my entry about Max Cleland (that traitor*).

(*note use of sarcasm)

p.s. I find this gif at Amazon.com bemusing.

Would be more accurate however were that a broken link.

p.s.s. any hard-core hackers who hate the Patriot Act and John "People Prefer Dead People to Me" Ashcroft wanna make that a reality at Amazon? (evil grin)

Bush-League Tactics

2003-09-12T18:20:00.001-07:00

or Truth blown-up like limbs with a grenade!

Somone yesterday posted on the offical blog:

"And, for some people in the general election, Dean's opposition to the Iraq war may be successfully spun as unwillingness to defend the US. Clark moots that point, plain and simple."

I generally would like to agree with the with the sentiement above (pun noted) but I have three words of reality for everyone, that must be remembered.

Ready for those three words?

Ok.

Max "Fucking" Cleland!

We are staring down the barrel of a slim-machine howitzer folks.

Certainly everyone remembers former Democrat Congressman Max Cleland, who is "soft on homeland defense" and is not interested in protecting and defending America... right?

"When you think of someone who isn't interested in the security of the American people, you think of Max Cleland wheeling his merry way through the marble halls of the Capitol. You see, Max left three of his limbs in Vietnam. A VC grenade blew them off.

"Cleland is a war hero. Conservative Georgians first elected him to the Senate in 1996 on the basis of his unquestionable integrity and selfless loyalty to his country. And yet he lost his bid for re-election in 2002 largely because of attacks on his patriotism.

"Cleland's opponent, Saxby Chambliss, was not a war hero. He got out of Vietnam because of a bad knee. Cleland has never had a bad knee. Before the war, he had two good ones. Afterward, he would never have to worry about his knees for the rest of his life.

"Chambliss ran one of the great attack ads of the 2002 cycle, one that warmed even Karl Rove's icy heart. It featured images of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and... Max Cleland.

"The ad savaged Cleland's votes against the 'President's vital homeland security efforts.' The tag line: 'Max Cleland says he has the courage to lead. But the record proves Max Cleland is just misleading.'

"To recap quickly. Cleland loses three limbs in Vietnam. Cleland authors the Department of Homeland Security legislation. Bush blocks it. Bush proposes politicized version of the same legislation to trap Democrats into voting away our civil service workers protections*. Cleland stands on principle and votes against it because of the changes.

"Bush says senators "not intertested' in security of American people, Chambliss compares Cleland to Osama and Saddam and attacks Cleland's courage.

"Chambliss wins. Republicans take Senate. Bush credits victory to change in tone"

(thanks Al for the above reminder)

So... who around here thinks we need to be soft-selling this?

(looks around room)

Anyone?

Anyone?

(* my addition to explain in a few short words why it was politicized, to attack workers rights)

A Sad Day

2003-09-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

Just heard that Johnny Cash died.

While not a fan of country music, I have had a vast amount of respect for this man. He was a man of conscience, empathy, talent and courage. A true American.

You will be sorely missed.

"Iceberg, Right Ahead!"

2003-09-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

Buzzflash has an interview with Paul Krugman, who I always held in very high-regard, which to my mind is a vital "must read." He has just had his newest book, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century" published, which I would highly recommend reading.

One of the stand-out and key grafs is towards the bottom when he is asked about whether or not Clinton's success will hold up as a legacy of his presidency. To which Mr. Krugman replies in part:

"I think that with the looming disasters of the budget on foreign policy -- and the things that really scare me, which I know we're not going to get into but let's just mention the erosion of civil liberties at home -- I think that, in retrospect, this will be seen in terms of how did the country head over this cliff. I hope I'm wrong. If there's regime change in 2004, and the new man actually manages to steer us away from the disasters I see in front of us, then we'll probably be talking a lot about the long boom that was begun during the Clinton years, and how it was resilient, even to an episode of incredibly bad management." (emphasis mine)

This interview, is brief insight into, and a clarion call from one of the sharpest minds in the field about precisely what Dean's campaign is seeking to tackle and exposes the Bush administration for what it is (to use Krugman's words) "My god, these guys are looting the country".

Another key graf really points out the tilt of the media response to the looting of the nation by the current administration and its backers, when Mr. Krugman observes:

The concept that the president of the United States is flat-out lying about the sustainability of his own economic policy -- that's too high a hill for them to climb. And I guess the general public tends to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But there's a definite tilt in the way these things are covered and perceived. I think the average voter in California is feeling outraged about the state's $38 billion deficit, and then you stop and think for a second. You say, wait a second -- first of all, it's not $38 billion. It turns out that was a two-year number, and this year they've closed the books. And it's only $8 billion for next year. And, anyway, that number should be as abstract and remote from the ordinary residents of California as the national budget deficit is from the ordinary American.

But there's a machine that keeps on beating it out, saying Davis is bad; Davis is irresponsible; the deficit -- he lied to us. And the press picks it up, and, in turn, it makes its way to the public. So you have a situation in which mainstream publications continue to report and hammer on Davis' $38 billion deficit, which isn't even remotely true, while Bush, for the most part, gets a free pass on the $500 billion deficit which is absolutely real. (emphasis mine)

This parallels the underlying message in Al Franken's bitingly funny yet substantive satire of the rightward shift and subsequent media distortion of the situation (aka lying by the radical-right), which has successfully sought to re-frame the debate on public policy. Where Mr. Franken puts the lies and methods out there for all to see and properly ridicule, Mr. Krugman adds the larger implications of where it is headed (off a cliff) and why it is vital to change course in THIS upcoming election cycle.

I would use this old snippet to warn of the actions of the Twig and his backers at the helm of the ship of state (and their enablers) which busy themselves re-arranging the deck chairs.

Blackout, Grand Theft America, and Yellowcake

2003-09-09T00:42:00.000-07:00

A little update on why things slowed down here on the Gore4Dean site the past week or so. The short of it is we lost power at our house over the labor day weekend (our house was built in 1945) and the 50+ year old electrical meter finally gave out. So we had been without power until late Friday and living out of a hotel, so have not had access to my home computer in the interim, and only now catching up.

As a result, I am just now slogging through all the past email that had built up before, during and after the outage and other pending stuff to get back on track.

On to some hard hitting culture jamming.

I just ran across a brilliant flash animation someone posted a link to on the official Dean blog titled "Grand Theft America" (a riff on the popular yet violent video game Grand Theft Auto) by Eric Blumrich. It's about voter disenfranchisement in Florida and it is VERY well done, hard-hitting and pulls ZERO punches. In my view it is mandatory viewing by everyone in the nation (one can only dream).

It points in the direction of a very serious issue surrounding vote tabulation, and the pressing concerns about the new electronic voting machines which do not have a paper trail. This is often cited via the short-hand term "black-box voting" and is something I hope leads to serious investigation and thoughtful and comprehensive enactment of safeguards before Rove and team can pull shit in 2004.

I also just put up a new piece of my own as part of the ongoing project for guerrilla marketing (though not directly part of the "re-select Bu$h" campaign) and is a pretty in-your-face one, nailing Bush on the Iraqi uranium-yellowcake purchase lies, in the run-up to the war.

Finally to Zevon, been humming Lawyers, Guns and Money all day (somehow that song pops into my head whenever if see the twig on T.V. "reassuring me" that he has his eye on the ball)... and you will be missed.

Shoe Fly, Don't Bother Me...

2003-09-08T23:32:00.000-07:00

Well, our busy little anti-Dean shill Scott Huminski is at it again, and like any of various flies that annoy livestock, our little gadfly just can't help himself from emailing compulsively .

I will respond here so all can see.

In reply to your latest email, the short answer is, frankly I have no time for you Scott.

But I will make a deal with you...

You post in public on all those Indymedia sites, that you flat out lied in a previous email when you asserted that Robert Corn-Revere was not your attorney...

OR

You post to all those Indymedia sites that YOUR friends over at the Freedom Forum or that the Bennington Banner which you holds so much stock in as well as several other publications/sites -- judicialacountability.org, fact.trib.com or the records of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals -- that all these people were "lying" when they say that Mr. Corn-Revere was/is your attorney and you are mulling over whether it is worth your oh so valuable time to sue them for libel, and I will gladly take another look into your claims of Howard Dean's police state mentality. (smirk)

How about it Scott... is it a deal?

Or is it only people who call you on your nonsense that get the "liar" and "libel" silly treatment from you?

Oh... while your at it, you may want to use your Ouija board powers to commune with Joe Trippi (Howard Dean's campaign manager) and inform him and Mr. Dean as to how "high-up" in the "organization" I must be. I say this because last time I checked I was not a part of the official campaign, and simply a private citizen who supports and volunteers his own time and talents in the grass-roots effort to help Mr. Dean oust the real enemy of civil liberties, Bush, Ashcroft and company.

It might be nice if you clue Mr. Trippi and Dean into my "high-up" status -- who knows, they might toss me a paycheck or two.

Of course I may be tempted to donate that money to the state of Vermont which has had to spend thousands of dollars worth of man-hours, cleaning up your mess in the foreclosure of property they are trying to unload, because public loans (i.e. Vermont citizen's money you took and never paid back) which you defaulted on.

Wait... let me guess, you will again claim I am guilty of libel according to your omnipotet sooth-saying, by simply declaring what is or is not libel and that I must be guilty of it because you say so. I guess my making such statements (your defaulting on public loans) based on the Bennington Banner's articles (which you also use as a a legitimate source to back up your nonsense) is "libel"... right?

Is someone feeding me crazy pills?!?

And thank you in advance for informing me and the rest of the world as to why exactly your wife felt compelled to sue the state, on the same "grounds" upon which you agreed to a plea bargain over?

Why exactly did she feel compelled to do that Scott?

I mean, the state was willing to drop the obstruction of justice charges in the civil case that started this whole mess, if you simply agreed to pay $100 to help pick up some of the costs of the court fees you were running up, on the people of Vermont's tab, while defaulting on money they loaned you.

But, if you would rather just let it lay there... I can live with that Scott.

I have more important things to do that waste much more time with your prattle.

Mitch Gore

a.k.a. the "Very High-Up Minion Hand-Puppet of Howard Dean's Campaign" (ROFL)

p.s. when in your email you create your own more flattering spin on what the word gadfly means, you may want to take a gander at what the dictionaries say that word means, which I have already provided a link to in my previous blog entry about your annoying email spam.

Home Sweet Home

2003-08-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

Finally have the new domain up and have have ported over the download content to it's new home. So www.gore4dean.com is up an running. Soon I hope to transfer the blog to that domain as well and will leave a "we have moved" re-direct script here when that occurs.

In addition, I hope to get a cafepress site up and running shortly, to allow purchase of merchandise based on the designs, which will help fund more Dean grass-roots projects and outreach.

"Restoring the Dream"... Restored!

2003-08-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

Well there were concerns from the campaign that my "March on DC Anniversary" poster would run them afoul with the King estate since I had a digital illustration that looked photo-realistic. When I explained to them that it was an illustration based on a photo of King, and of the march back in 63, and not an actual photo in and of itself, that calmed some nerves a bit. (I fully understand their concern)

I nor the campaign would or will illegally use any photographs of Dr. King, nor exploit his likeness or legacy for commercial gains.

Anyway, that is all cleared up now and the files and thumbnails are back up on the official site.

On another note, I have finished the first of a new series of posters promoting the "Debate Rallies" for the next 4 Dem. Presidential Nominee Debates. I have only done the first debate poster (the second actual debate among the contenders) but the others will follow when I am past this weekends events and have the time to do the others. The next debate (and first poster finished) is in Albuquerque, NM on Sept. 4th. 4000 Dean supporters turned out in Philadelphia before the Philadelphia Debate in August.

If you can make it there for the New Mexico debate rally sign up for it! If you can attend one of the other dates, be sure to sign-up for it on that page at the official site.

Scratch That...

2003-08-20T22:11:00.000-07:00

Seems the March on DC posters and handouts are now not up on the official site now. Guess they only have a shelf life of a few hours on the DFA pages.

For those still interested, they are still available for download on the design download pages of Gore4Dean.

March on the official site

2003-08-20T18:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Zephyr Teachout for passing on to the campaign my posters and handouts commemorating the 40th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and Dr. Martin Luther King's historic "I Have A Dream" speech.

You can see them up on the official campaign site. They are also available here in the Design Downloads section along with the on-going "Re-Select Bush Campaign" posters and the "Sleepless Summer Tour Posters"

Hopefully these sorts of ground-up efforts will continue to grow and be strengthened as the campaign moves along. Neither top-down, nor bottom-up approaches to organization are the most productive, but collaborative and vital bi-directional collaboration is.

This is something that fails to register with most "punditry" who pooh-pooh relevance of the breadth and depth to the grass-roots support Dean is harnessing, and is a vital ingredient to bring out the best people have to offer.

Tar Baby Huminski Say Nuthin'

2003-08-20T00:15:00.000-07:00

Seems our anti-Dean sue-happy gadfly Scott (after all we are on a first name since Mr. Huminski greats me in his email that way) is a little bit upset.

After my line by line refutation of Josh Frank's highly flawed "news" article "reporting" on Dean's "Constitutional Hang-Up," and my posting links to several of the indymedia sites where he was railing against Vermont (a.k.a. Dean's "Police State") I received an email from this busy little litigant intimating he might sue me if he had the time. Actually he suggests that "A law suit against a crazed Dean fanatic might cause quite a stir."

Beyond giving me a good laugh at how misguided our Mr. Huminski is, the only actual point directly addressing anything I have posted is this part:

Aside from the other inaccuracies in your last "frisking" you claimed that I was banished from Vermon courthouse for my obstruction of justice. That statement constitutes defamation in the written form -- libel.

First... I have never used the term "frisking" in reference to anything anyone posts on the web. The only time I talk about "frisking" anyone is when playing "bad girls in prison" in the bedroom with my significant other! (wink)

Matt at the Dean Defense Force however (among others) uses the term "fisking" when refuting erroneous stories, though I myself never use even that term. He actually did use that term (fisking) in his edited post from this blog.

Second, and more directly to the "point" Huminski tries to raise, I do see how it can be read that I implied that he was barred from court for the obstruction of justice charges directly.

My original statement; "He simply could not do so on court grounds, after being barred from court for obstruction of justice charges, which were upheld three times by both state and federal courts." might give the impression that Mr. Huminski was barred because of the obstruction of justice charges stemming from his thrice lost tenant-landlord civil case. He was barred from the courts in another dispute, which grew out of his decade plus battle with the courts stemming from that original proceeding.

He was charged with obstruction of justice in the civil case, but prosecutors agreed to drop that charge if Huminski paid $100 in court costs. Huminski agreed. After that plea agreement was put in place, Huminski's wife sued the Bennington County state's attorney in federal court, and that office sought to reinstate the obstruction-of-justice charge, saying the federal suit violated the terms of the plea agreement. Judge Nancy Corsones granted the motion to reinstate the charge

Mr. Huminski then protested against the court system, parking his van outside the courthouse in Bennington with signs criticizing State's Attorney William Wright and his staff.

In May 1999, he then took his protesting to Rutland, where Corsones was presiding in the District Court, and posted signs on his van critical of her. Several month before however, Huminski sent several angry letters to the state attorney general's office.

In one, Huminski angrily denounced Vermont's judicial system and said he "must take the law into my own hands and initiate activities that will get national media attention."

In the other, he complained again of the state's treatment of him and wrote, "I believe my future activities will prevent the state from engaging in this behavior ever again."

When several months later he parked his van on court property with signs on it saying "Judge (Nancy) Corsones: Butcher of the Constitution." it prompted an order that he remove the signs or leave the courthouse property. He refused, which in and of itself is a violation of the law. He was then removed from the court property after refusing to obey the court officers. This then led to follow-up orders authorized by the court administrator's office in Montpelier and the state Department of Buildings and General Services being issued that effectively barred Huminski from Vermont courts.

The orders barring him from Vermont courts are on appeal, and Mr. Huminski's request for a preliminary injunction against the ban, which was previously granted, was revoked.

Finally, my original statement is not defamation, nor is it libel. Mr. Huminski's comical opinion that they are, and that he "probably "won't waste his time" bringing a libel suit "filed in U.S District Court filed in the United States District Court (North Carolina) under diversity jurisdiction" immediately caused my mind to leap to the notion of blurting out and replying with that Bush phrase so near and dear to my heart... "Bring 'em on!".

However, given how foolish it was for Bush to say such taunts to foreign terrorists... it should perhaps give me pause. We certainly don't want either situations to turn into a quagmire now do we?

Now I certainly have no truck against anyone for being concerned about civil rights, including free-speech in public spaces (oh the irony that Mr. Huminski wishes to anoint himself poster-boy for free speech, yet threatens me with defamation and libel litigation). Especially when it is their own right to speak out which is being curbed by the state. That said however, I think Mr. Huminski's behavior is the very definition of gadfly and certainly raises questions in my mind as to how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in man-hours and public resources have been wasted with his misguided litigious behavior.

Sorry, Scott... you will have to wait for some other fool to punch your tar baby for you.

Dreams of Red Playschool Barn Photos

2003-08-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

Well, did some site clean-up... thanks Moses and Marijane for the heads-up on the typos on the download page. Specific ones were which rally had what copy in the descriptions on the rally poster page (oops). Prone to make typos on my own, but re-working a site at 4 in the morning, while running on about 3 hours of sleep in the previous 48 doesn't help either.

Also added the missing Milwaukee venue poster as well.

Site-wide, I added some more links to fellow "traitors" (as Micah Ian Wright has been described for using his 1st Amendment rights to speak out) and are worth checking out.

I am also working on the next one in the "Re-Select Bush" Campaign. Promises to fit perfectly with Dean's Rural America Restoration policy if I can find/create the perfect image to go with it (anyone have a cute picture of a red barn, be it toy or real?) if so... let me know.

Re-working Design Download Pages

2003-08-18T01:11:00.000-07:00

If anyone has had a hard time accessing these pages from Sunday afternoon till now, that is because I was reworking the entire web pages for the design stuff I have been generating as of late.

I think I have a good track on a formate and template for the design download pages.

Anyway, here is the landing page for it.

Printing and Flyering

2003-08-17T03:15:00.000-07:00

Well.. this morning was hectic and turned into a collaborative effort with my significant other. I finished making the rally posters for all the various venues on the "Sleepless Summer Tour" for Dean.

They are available for download at my Gore for Dean "media page.

They are in PDF format (you will need Acrobat Reader... free from Adobe) and should print fine on a color printer. Have not yet tested them on a b/w printer. If anyone downloads these and prints them out, let me know how they look (i.e. on a bubble-jet, a b/w laser, a color ink-jet, etc.)

Then my girlfriend surprised me by offering to go to her office to print some up so I could make my first venture into flyering.

By 7 this evening, I was in downtown Portland, hammer-stapler and 500+ flyers in hand. I hit quite a few of the downtown restaurants and bars that would allow me to put flyers in the windows. I didn't hit many poles (most being metal traffic signs or lamp posts) since it is a big no-no to tape them to lampposts downtown.

Will hit a large swath of telephone poles in the Hawthorne and Belmont areas tomorrow (when I can).

Did meet and talk for about 10 mins. with a nice young guy Colin (if I recall correctly) at Powell's. He goes to school up in Olympia WA, but was down for the week to catch the rally and to volunteer.

I told him about the oregonfordean.com website, and suggested he get plugged in there to help out.

Anyway, did manage to get some tools (the stapler and a ream of flyers printed) which will hopefully prove useful all this next week.

PDX rally poster

2003-08-15T01:36:00.000-07:00

Well... finally got around to creating the poster I intended to make to promote Dean's visit here to Portland on the 24th of this month.

The downloadable PDF for printing is available here.

Bush is Left of Lenin...?

2003-08-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's letter to the editor at the Washington Post, Grover Norquist offered up a stunningly idiotic and panicked new definition of fiscal conservatism.

An Aug. 3 front-page story regarding Howard Dean's fiscal record during his tenure as governor of Vermont called Mr. Dean a "fiscal conservative."

According to Americans for Tax Reform's Cost of Government Day report, the average Vermonter worked 60 days to pay for Vermont spending in 1992. By 2001, the average resident needed to work an additional two weeks -- 75 days -- because state spending rose so much faster than family income.

State employment soared under Mr. Dean as well. From 1997 to 2002, Vermont's workforce grew from 7,196 (6,939 employees plus 257 vacancies) to 8,239 (7,791 employees plus 448 vacancies). That's a 14.5 percent increase in just the last half of the Dean administration.

Being a fiscal conservative means more than balancing a budget or allowing a scheduled tax sunset to proceed. Being a fiscal conservative means resisting the growth of government and cutting taxes.

Those looking for a fiscally conservative Democrat for president must look beyond the Dean campaign.

That is from the same nit-wit who is the standard bearer of the far-rights strategy of destroying the governemnt, who once quiped:

"I don't want to abolish government, I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

--Grover Norquist, May 25,2001

Ask him what is the increase in state spending over that period in Texas under GWB?

Give you a hint... during the 90s (when Bush was Gov.) Texas along with six other states had its total spending mushroom by more than 30% according to the Cato institute (hardly a liberal bastion of tax data).

In fact between 1990 and 1997, Texas' spending increased by 52.9%!

So please Mr. Norquist... attack the Cato institutes findings and see how well that goes over with fiscal conservatives. (smirk)

Furthermore, Mr. Norquist's sudden and novel notions of what fiscal conservatism is, is nothing but his own twisted myopic contortion to smear Dean. Fiscal conservatism does NOT automatically mean "resisting growth" of government. It means being fiscally responsible. If you increase the size of your population, you must increase the size of government to provide the same level of services. Being fiscally conservative does NOT automatically mean you must ALWAYS cut taxes.

Fiscal conservatism means not running deficits, and being fiscally responsible while growing the economy. Dean has done that, while increasing the number of people covered by health insurance (lowering the actual public outlaw for healthcare costs). But somehow I suppose reducing the cost for healthcare, while balancing the budget, growing the economy, and controlling the growth of government spending (to less than the national average, and far less that states like Texas under the Twig) somehow translates to not being fiscally "conservative" in Mr. Norquist's through-the-looking-glass view of the world.

Remember, Mr. Norquist is the man who wants to eliminate public service en masse and drown government. He is a radical faux-libertarian extremist. By his own criterion, GWB as governor is left of Lenin when compared to Dean. I also find it amusing that he fails utterly to note the historic deficits Bush is running (a key indicator of fiscal irresponsibility, not true conservatism).. but then that fits well with his desires to eliminate public services all together and "drown the government" in the "bathtub" after shrinking it to the point he could manage such a feat.

Someone needs to hand these nitwits (Grover and Bush) their asses on a plate.

Counterpunsh = Counterproductive

2003-08-12T22:03:00.000-07:00

Howard Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up...?

More idiotic attacks from the far-left at Counterpunch, that Dean is akin to Ashcroft by Josh Frank (with the aid of Scott Huminski, an anti-Dean nut with an axe to grind):

Howard Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up

First, Dean has no "hang-up" regarding the Constitution. The overblown headline above is wholly off the mark as will be shown below.

Dean Would Rather Execute an Innocent Man, Than Let a Guilty One Walk Free

Wild hyperbolic nonsense, wholly unsupported by the facts and a clear example of the unvarnished bias of the piece that follows.

By JOSH FRANK

It is worth noting that Josh Frank previously put out the wildly off the mark piece on Dean being "regressive" because he is convinced that Dean is a pro-Zionist zealot and abject supporter of Ariel Sharon. This of course is pure bunk, and certainly introduces a not-unreasonable speculation that Josh Frank is not only 0-2 about Dean but also has an axe to grind with Dean's ascendancy to Democratic front-runner.

As Governor of Vermont, Howard Dean openly claimed that the legal system unfairly benefited criminal defendants over prosecutors.

A google search yields no results which back up this unsubstantiated assertion or even hit on anything resembling this singular claim, aside from one editorial which is also at the bottom of Josh Frank's re-hashing of Scott Huminski's personal crusade against Dean (more about him below). Of course this runs counter to the facts that Dean publicly supported former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who imposed a moratorium on the death penalty because of failings of the legal system. It also directly refutes the absurd allegation in the sub-head of the piece.

He even took measures to cut federal grant money aimed at helping mentally disabled defendants

Did he turn down the federal grant request because, as is often the case, the state would have to match it with state funds?

The only source I can find for this is the assertions of Robert Appel, the former Vermont Defender General which Dean appointed to the post for eight years, but then did not renew his appointment. This allegation came an interview amid his carping that Dean did not give his office the budgets he requested, and after he had been let go.

--as well as appointing state judges who were willing to undermine the Bill of Rights.

Wholesale bunk, and completely unsubstantiated assertion. Note there is zero evidence supporting this wild accusation.

In a 1997 interview with the Vermont News Bureau, Howard Dean admitted his desire to expedite the judicial process by using such justices to "quickly convict guilty criminals."

As opposed to slowly convicting guilty criminals?

He wanted individuals that would deem "common sense more important than legal technicalities." Constitutional protections (legal technicalities) apparently undermine Dean's yearning for speedy trials.

Apparently hyperbole undermines Franks yearning to paint Dean as a fascist.

A right to a speedy trial is in fact a vital portion (i.e. the very first sentence of the sixth amendment) of the very Constitution that Franks screams the sky is falling upon under Gov. Dean's tenure as Governor.

Perhaps he was looking to make Vermont more like George Bush's Texas, where defense lawyers are renowned for lacking the resources necessary to provide their clients a fair representation.

Let's see... Dean supports narrowing the types of crimes in which the death penalty can be persuade, applauded Ill Gov. Ryan's moratorium on the death penalty, and even the Rutland Herald editorial at the root of this nonsense noted:

"Vermont is not Texas, where the public defender's program is notorious for signing up incompetent, inebriated, or sleep-deprived lawyers for indigent clients."

Yet Mr. Frank, like Bush's administration sifting WMD data to fit the results it wants, seems to ignore what is inconvenient to what his already arrived at position will be.

Several of Dean's judicial appointments are now awaiting hearings before the United States Second Circuit Court in New York City. The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Freedom of Expression (www.tjcenter.org) and two other law firms have filed briefs against these justices. They are being accused of violating a number of federal rights including; the First Amendment, Right to Counsel, Double Jeopardy, and Due Process.

It should be noted that the source which Mr. Frank is relying on, is himself the litigant in those cases. In other words, he (Scott Huminski whom Franks is relying on as a legitimate source) is the one suing those judges (he lost three times on appeal) because of his losing his cases.

His appeals were thrown out of federal court.

Regarding one case where citizen reporter Scott Huminski was barred from Vermont courts, a DC lawyer stated

A google search on the quote below reveals the source of this "DC lawyer" mentioned above is non-other than Robert Corn-Revere, Huminski's attorney for the lost appeals.

in an interview with Eugenia Harris from the First Amendment Center that, "the real heart of the issue is whether local government officials can unilaterally silence speech and exert arbitrary power over their citizens."

It should be noted that nobody was preventing Mr. Huminski from speaking his mind. He simply could not do so on court grounds, after being barred from court for obstruction of justice charges, which were upheld three times by both state and federal courts.

Seems Howard Dean stuck by his word and appointed judges that care little about real "justice." And he thinks he's qualified to appoint justices at the federal level?

Mr. Corn-Revere's defense lawyer spin, nothing more.

These are not the only examples of Howard Dean's intentions to subdue the Bill of Rights. Shortly after the September 11th attacks Dean was quoted in the Rutland Herald claiming that the United States needs a "re-evaluation of the importance of some of our specific civil liberties."

It should be noted that it was actually less than 48 hours after the attacks of September 11th when Dean posed those questions during a radio interview on September 13th, and it was not in fact a call to repeal our civil rights, but correctly pointing out that we should have to debate such issues. This is confirmed by the very next sentence Dean made, but which Frank and others who attempt to make hay of this invariably fail to include:

"Again, I think that's a debate that we will have."

Even Benson Scotch, the head of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union at the time said that while it was "too soon" after the attacks to enter that sort of debate, noted that "we're at a moment now of extreme tragedy and sorrow and anger. And tragedy and sorrow and anger are not good qualities to inform a debate about civil liberties."

Unfortunately a substantive debate was not really forth-coming on these issues since there was no real debate on the Patriot Act which sprung out of the 9/11 attacks. More importantly however, is that Dean himself came out against the draconian Patriot Act for the very reasons Mr. Frank tries to insinuate Dean is complicit in, that civil liberties should take a back seat to "homeland security". Read Dean's statement about the Patriot Act:

"Too many in my party voted for the Patriot Act. They believed that it was more important to show bipartisan support for President Bush during a moment of crisis than to stand up for the basic values of our constitution. They trusted this President, knowing full well that John Ashcroft was the Attorney General. Only one senator had the courage to vote against the Patriot Act--- Senator Russ Feingold, and he deserves credit for doing so. We need more Democrats like Senator Feingold-Democrats who are willing to stand up for what is right, and stand against this President's reckless disregard for our civil liberties. We don't need John Ashcroft-or any other Attorney General-rifling through our library records. As Americans, we need to stand up-all of us-and ensure that our laws reflect our values. As President, I will repeal those parts of the Patriot Act that undermine our constitutional rights, and will stand against any further attempts to expand the government's reach at the expense of our civil liberties."

The above directly refutes the assertion with which Mr. Huminski via Mr. Frank's misguided piece tries to paint Dean as an Ashcroft of the left (as he tried to do in his other misguided excursions into the polemic, on Dean) and renders it basically a non-issue.

Later when asked if he thought the Bill of Rights needed to be altered he said, "I think it is unlikely, but I frankly haven't gotten that far I think our freedom is what they find so threatening, our freedom and the power that I think results from that freedom."

That is not what Dean said. Mr. Frank is conflating Deans words "I haven't gotten that far yet. I think that's unlikely, but I frankly haven't gotten that far" with Vermont Law School Professor Michael Mello's later statement... "It's why they attacked us, I think our freedom is what they find so threatening, our freedom and the power that I think results directly from that freedom."

The way Mr. Frank has mangled the actual quotes makes it possible to read Howard Dean's words that he think our freedoms are why we were attacked, hence the problem is our freedoms... and right on cue Frank makes that very idiotic leap:

So according to Dean since terrorists are after our sought after freedoms, we might consider scathing back certain liberties in order to decrease the threat of future strikes. John Ashcroft must be pleased.

As previously noted, the quote Mr. Frank is railing against is his own mangled invention by editing of what was really said. I will leave it to the reader to decide to what end.

There is more. On Meet the Press last June, when asked about his support for the death penalty by Tim Russert, Dean replied,

"So I just-life without parole, which we have which I actually got passed when I was lieutenant governor- the problem with life without parole is that people get out for reasons that have nothing to do with justice. We had a case where a guy who was a rapist, a serial sex offender, was convicted, then was let out on what I would think and believe was a technicality, a new trial was ordered and the victim wouldn't come back and go through the second trial."

A "technicality" to Dean must be synonymous with "Constitutional hang-up." In the case Dean presented to Russert, a man walked free, but should have been put to death instead of challenging his unconstitutional conviction.

The logical fallacy of inventing arguments not made in which to rail against them aside, the problem is not that the convicted rapist should have been put to death, but that he was let out on parole because of a technicality and is now free within the community. Nowhere in Dean's statements or in his position is rape a crime even eligible for the death penalty.

Of course glossing over the fact that Dean supports very narrow application of the death penalty as opposed to the exuberance with which the current occupant of the White House pursued it as Governor, goes completely uncommented upon.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen commented on Dean's statement saying that, "I have never heard a politician admit that he would countenance the death of an innocent person in order to ensure that the guilty die."

Which again is not what Dean's statement or position says or even implies.

Dean's attempts to weaken the Bill of Rights began in the 1990s with his appointments of justices now awaiting hearings in New York for egregious infringements on civil liberties.

A reference to the same court cases his "research source" was a litigant in, and lost.

He then took it a step further after September 11th and indicated the "re-evaluation" of constitutional rights was in order. And now, as Dean steams ahead in his bid for the White House, he's claiming on national television that he would rather have an innocent criminal die than have them released on a "technicality."

More fabricated re-iteration of the same spin.

If elected will Dean attempt to make the United State's a country in which citizens have access to neither a fair trial, nor adequate counsel?

No.

A country where constitutional rights are viewed as "technicalities," worthy of death?

No.

To quote two venerable old sayings: first, "when one finds oneself in a hole, stop digging" and second, "check your sources."

If Mr. Frank wants to have any shred of credibility (not that he has earned any thus far) he would take to heart those bits of advice when he deciding who and what to use as source material and avoid using any desperate person with an axe to grind. He might also wish to stop trying to build a case to fit his obviously preconceived notions that Howard Dean is just short of John Ashcroft on the fascist scale, and join the rest of us back on planet earth.