Iraq - Two pieces that all should read

First, this article by Robert Dreyfuss spells out exactly why we shouldn't be afraid to leave Iraq. I'm so sick of people still listening to the same idiots that got us into this war. Perry spells out better than could I why these same people who were wrong at the end of 2002 are wrong still. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0703.dreyfuss.html Second, a moderate and obvious statement from Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. It's just this simple. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022307K.shtml

Berman's Pop Quiz

Ari Berman Pop Quiz! Who said this? "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." Or this? "I don't know where he is. I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." Or this? "Deep in my heart I know the man's on the run, if he's alive at all...I just don't spend much time on it, really, to be honest with you." And who disbanded the CIA unit dedicated to finding bin Laden? Hint: It wasn't Bill Clinton.

Another Flat out Lie by W. Inc.

So the current administration is full of it and can't be trusted to tell the truth...nothing new here. However, here's a recent statement that is a clear lie that you may have missed. In Bush's latest campaign/terrorism speech he defended the use of coercive interrogation by saying that such techniques, specifically waterboarding, revealed valuable intelligence during the interrogation of al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. Bush stated that Zubaydah, who initially refused to cooperate, later revealed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a key figure in the 9/11 attacks, used the alias "Mukhtar." This information, according to Bush, "was a vital piece of the puzzle that helped our intelligence community pursue KSM." According to a fact sheet released by the Director of National Intelligence, Zubaydah was captured in MARCH 2002. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, however, the CIA learned this information in AUGUST 2001. From page 277: "The final piece of the puzzle arrived at the CIA's Bin Ladin unit on August 28 [2001] in a cable reporting that KSM's nickname was Mukhtar." It is still so difficult for me to believe that while all of these Republicans actually impeached our previous president for supposedly for "lying" absolutely none of them are even upset by the laundry list of flat out lies that we continue to be told by this president, let alone the one that was going to "restore honor and integrity" to the White House. Do Americans really have that bad of a memory? We'll it turns out that they just might, considering that 30% of us can't even remember what year 9/11 happened in. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060809/od_afp/usattackspolloffbeat_060809145351;_ylt=ArnrtaXH3JkyylylP

What Democrats Stand For

WE STAND FOR effective government; Government that can be a tool for people to improve their life, increase their liberty and help them in their pursuit of happiness. WE STAND FOR the safety and health of all Americans. Our union must be protected in the strongest and most efficient way possible against all threats. WE STAND FOR fairness and giving all Americans equal opportunity in all endevours. Every citizen that contributes full-time to our society has the right to a 1st class education, adequate and affordable healthcare, and a guaranteed retirement no matter their socio-economic background. WE CARE ABOUT people; their dreams and their everyday problems, not their ideology or lifestyle. WE STRIVE FOR PROGRESS in our government's operation, finances and foreign relations. A more efficient, debt free government that works well with other countries will help strengthen our nation for all.

You know I'm on board, KERRY IN 2008!

I am an avid John Kerry supporter and will gladly help lead his effort in '08 if he choices to run again. He will make an incredible President. He has the intelligence, the gravitas (don't you love how this word only appears in the American vocabulary every four years) and the leadership abilities to lead this country in a truly awesome direction. He was my first choice since '01 when I was at the base of the capitol watching W. Inc. get inaguarated and he is my first choice now. For all of the people that I hear saying he ran a "terrible" campaign I have yet to hear a comprehensive strategy on what he should have done instead. The Democratic Party is running a terrible show and the Republicans are firing on all cylinders. Don't go blaming it on any individual candidates when they don't even have a strong Party backing them up. This is a team game we are playing and our TEAM needs to get its act together. We will need to develop a clear theme(s) from which to build our messages upon as well as our own destruction machine in order to gain back the majority (you'll hear more on these points from me later). For all of the talk of other candidates I seem to remember a pretty fantastic slate of them running in the last primaries and Kerry clobbered them all. He did this because he ran a kick-ass campaign. I was in Iowa from Nov. through the caucuses volunteering for Kerry and he won because he had the best message and the best field organization. When Kerry was down in the polls by 18 points in IA and by 22 points in NH did he quit? Did he decide to skip Iowa and focus on the later primaries? Hell No. He took out a second mortgage on his house, brought on new staff and dug in. Let me repeat; down 22 points in NH, written off by the media, goes $6,000,000 further into debt (I don't care how much money his wife has, that takes balls). If that isn't a sign of a true leader than I don't know what is.

Dean should not be chosen to lead the Democratic Party

I urge all my fellow Democrats to NOT support Howard Dean as the DNC chair. The rapid support of a small minority of his supporters (God bless them) is smoke and mirrors. I respect Howard Dean and his political ambition. However, I do not believe he would be the right choice to lead our party. I believe Dean has continually demonstrated that he will put his own interests ahead of those of the Party. Dean was looking out for only himself when he entered the primary and pursued a scorched earth policy that continues with his supporters' anti-Democratic Party statements today. On numerous message boards, Dean supporters have been the very first to speak out against the Party and many of its most prominent members. This is not the kind of movement that will unite our party. Dean was looking out for himself when, instead of getting behind and campaigning for the eventual Presidential nominee, he took his grassroots support and turned it into the DFA. Some might argue that there was the risk that some of his organizers would not have worked for another candidate and thus it was necessary to institutionalize his support structure in order to maintain his many activists' commitment and energy. I have three problems with this. First, he was the one during the final primary debate that insisted on a commitment from all of the candidates that they would all get behind and campaign for whoever the eventual nominee was. However, as soon as he lost he started his own group instead of getting on the fundraising/campaign trail for Kerry much like Wes Clark and Al Sharpton did. Second, what good do these DFA supporters do the Party if they will only answer to Dean. Most of the Dean supporters I know are incredible Democrats and worked tirelessly to elect Kerry as soon as Dean dropped out of the race. If there are others who will only stay involved under the DFA banner than that seems to only help us as a Party if Dean is a candidate for office. Lastly, we must unite the party to win and the decision to start yet another third-party group shows a tremendous lack of understanding on Dean's part regarding how to do this. We need everyone who believes strongly in the Democratic Party to get on board and work together. Many have argued that in order to win we must reach out to every splinter and independent group we can to build a large coalition that can take on the Republicans. Guess what? We just did that and it didn't work! We need to build a strong vision based upon the shared values of the membership of the Democratic Party and be resolute in promoting that vision and our ideals. Trying to cater to all these various constituencies looses us more votes than it gains us. We look weak and the Republicans look strong to so many voters because instead of standing up for what we believe in we are worried about alienating so many different groups. I'll bet Howard Dean would agree with this, but it is exactly the reason he would not make a good party leader. He is not the person to lead us forward on building and promoting a common vision. Again, I respect Dr. Dean and his supporters. They have done tremendous work and their energy should serve as an inspiration to us all. I welcome their criticism of my comments and their fight to put Dean in charge of the Party. I do not speak out against these efforts due to any ill-will towards Dean, only out of my love for the Democratic Party. Please go to the following link and tell the DNC not to elect Dean as our next Party leader (#7). http://www.democrats.org/feedback/

Deaniacs please shut up or get out

Dean would have gotten his ass kicked even harder than Kerry. I used to be a big fan of Howard Dean's when he headed the governors' association. Then he entered the primary and pursued a scorched earth policy that continues with his supporters' anti-democratic statements today. What is it with the Deaneacs' hateful and unfounded comments towards other Democrats? Why don't they start their own party if they hate leaders like Kerry and Clinton? If Dean was such a badass than he wouldn't have gone down so hard in the primaries. Kerry fought a good campaign in both the primaries and the general election. Dean had all the money, all the media attention and all the momentum. In the end, Dean was defeated because he was just another politician saying whatever it took to get elected. Now, I am not naive enough to believe there are any national political leaders that are able to speak entirely from the heart while still hoping to be elected and I don't think less of Howard Dean for doing the same. What I do have a problem with is Dean's self-righteous bullshit that he was actually a candidate that was speaking only the truth from his heart. The truth is that Howard Dean was probably watching t.v. before our invasion of Iraq, saw the thousands of anti-war protesters in city streets across the country and decided that those energized masses were the key to his electoral victory. He suddenly became the anti-war candidate and 'the only one that was speaking out against the Iraq war' (oh yeah, because Kucinich wasn't in Baghdad in March proclaiming that he didn't see any evidence of WMD). Then he was 'the only candidate from the democratic wing of the Democratic Party' (right, because Al Sharpton doesn't belong to that wing as well). In fact it can be argued that if Dean's smoke and mirrors campaign hadn't pushed the primary battle onto anti-war footing, Kerry and Edwards never would have had to vote against the $87 Billion supplemental spending package which was probably the death-nail in their campaign against Bush. Howard Dean is an intelligent guy and shares many of my political views, but he is a politician just like everybody else running for office. For the Deaniacs so enamored with Dean's independent, uncanny, earth-shattering political views there is good news; you can run him again in less than 3 years. Either way it does not help our cause as Democrats to continually hear the wining of his supporters. Either get on board and let's find a way to work together or GET OUT OF THE PARTY.

Independents, get off the donkey and start your own damn party!

I know John Kerry and he would have done one hell of a job as President. As it was he ran a pretty fine campaign and almost won against a war-time President. Now changes to the Democratic party have to be made, obviously. We can no longer rely on the remnants of the New Deal coalition to win office and must find new constituencies to rebuild our base. I am starting to believe however that how we might want to start that process is in much the same way that the Republicans gained their prominence. Namely by cleansing their own party. The more I hear obnoxious independents slander the Democratic Party the more apparent it becomes that their involvement in, and critiques of, our efforts may be the problem. It seems that the Democratic Party has lost its way by trying to appease all of these independent and/or single issue constituencies in an attempt to piece together a broad coalition that can take on the Republican destruction machine that they have built over the last 25 years. Instead of wasting our time on trying to attract independent votes we should focus on the core ideology that makes us Democrats who we are. That ideology of fairness, equality of opportunity and lifting all boats has been muddled over the years by our attempt to encourage closet Democrat-haters to join our efforts during election time. If this election has taught me anything it is that running to the middle is no way to win nationally. Although I believe strongly in governing from the middle in order to build the most effective government a party must expand its base in order to run the most effective campaign. If you are an independent and don't like the two-party system than start your own party and start building that base. The Grand Old Party did so in the mid-1800s and look where they are today.

527s and GOTV in response to "Post-Concession Reflections" by Robert L. Borosage

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/postconcession_reflections.php While I agree with and appreciate much of Mr. Borosage's commentary I must adamantly disagree with his assertion regarding the "sophistication" of the 527s and the wisdom of their efforts. As a long-time volunteer organizer for the Kerry campaign in Chicago I helped coordinate hundreds of supporters in canvassing trips to Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio. Although the media buys, the voter registration drives and the get-out-the-vote follow up on these new voters by these independent groups was definitely helpful, their overall GOTV strategy was not. The Democratic Party may not do the best job executing many tasks, but getting out the vote is one they do very well. Since the Party and the 527s are legally barred from coordinating their activities they inevitably end up duplicating each others’ work. Now the more advertising the better and the same goes for registering new voters. However, GOTV should be left to the Democratic Party to lead. The 527s would best serve everyone if they utilized a limited number of volunteers or paid staff to get the specific voters that they had previously registered to the polls and advise the rest of their membership to independently contact the Party (of their choice) to get involved during the last week or two of the campaign. Why? It’s simple. If we have 150,000 voter reminder calls to make to Kerry supporters in Lucas County, Ohio doesn’t it make more sense to have one group making sure that all these contacts are made? Instead, what we had just recently was a situation where maybe only 120,000 of these voters were contacted, but those voters were called by each of these numerous groups amounting to 3-10 calls a piece. If the volunteers working for these 527s had been on the phones for the Democratic Party, every one of those 150,000 voters would surely have been called and perhaps not felt so stalked. Another perfect example is in Ohio last Sunday 10/31, while I was driving between two phonebanks, and ran into a 527 canvasser still doing persuasion door to door. Now that is crazy! That same volunteer could have made hundreds of phone calls and reached literally dozens and dozens of people in the same amount of time it took to go door to door. Throughout the last year, volunteers were pulled from our coordinated activities by these 527 organizers. There wasn’t a consistent message offered to voters as every canvassing group had their own agendas and talking points. The total votes needed to win, and whether we had them or not, was not tallied in one place. The list goes on. One thing is clear. Despite the fanatical energy of so many to get rid of George W. Bush, this hodge-podge coalition of independent groups was not able to put the cumulative number of votes together to win. We all need to register new voters and keep in constant contact with them, we all need to do our best to affect the content of our nation’s numerous media outlets and we all must do so using the message(s) that we are most comfortable with. GOTV should be coordinated by one group and the best group to do so is still the Democratic Party.

FAIR Media Advisory - Defining Bush's "Mandate"

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/bush-mandate.html So I usually like FAIR, but in this case I must disagree. Although Bush did win by a slim majority (if you consider 3,500,000 votes slim) this seems like it was one of the most widely watched presidential races in history. Regardless of the large numbers of citizens that voted against him, Bush blew past several historical indicators, offered a clear choice of both ideology and policy and, most importantly, won in an election with record turnout. We Democrats are clearly missing something (o.k. many things which I surely will continue to learn with the help of all the conservative senators here). I still don't like Bush's policies and I'm still not crazy about the views of many of his supporters but this election only served to further impress me with his leadership. With an unnecessary and mishandled war (my opinion), record budget and trade deficits, surging national debt, a rough job market and the inability to complete a major sentence George W. Bush still kicked our ass. I don't care what anybody says, this guy is a real winner. I can understand why so many Americans love him so, even if I think they're all crazy.

Congrats to my Republican Friends - You clobbered us Good

Congratulations to Republicans and Bush supporters. You guys ran one hell of a campaign across the board and what a fantastic feeling it must be to see those extra seats in both the House and Senate. The Republicans come away from this election with a clear majority and a strong mandate from the American People. Regardless of my disappointment with the outcome the Democrats have shown themselves to be a weak party clearly in the minority. We must find new leadership, a larger constituency and stronger stature. There is much work to de done and I will continue in my efforts to transform the Democratic Party from the ground up. In the mean time the Republicans have many issues to address and much work to be done. They have strong majorities in the Congress and most states and I wish them the best in improving our nation for all.

Fahrenheit 9/11 - No Suprise

Moore's movies usually have a pretty straightforward theme. He makes a blunt point and then beats you over the head with it. This movie is a bit more subtle and makes many points. One that came through loud and clear to me was peoples’ ignorance regarding the Bush family and what they are up to. The ruthless pursuit of money and power by, of all people, the Bush's (Oh, my God!) should not surprise anyone. That they and the Saudis are willing to operate with such blatant sinister intent should be a revelation to no one, they've been doing it for decades. What continues to amaze me is just how ignorant the American People are (myself included at many times and with many subjects). The vast majority of events in Moore's film happened within the last few years and most of the Bush history reviewed in the film has resurfaced numerous times in many major media outlets within the same time period. We shouldn't be shocked at all. This is our history and it will be written as such. What should continue to surprise us from this movie is the clear cataloguing of our government working against the interests of the American People; instigating unnecessary wars resulting in the deaths of our brave soldiers, degrading our civil liberties through ill-conceived legislation crammed through Congress without debate, withholding of information and stonewalling congressional oversight by the executive branch, possibly even incitement of terrorism. Now more than ever we need a real leader with real experience & expertise in foreign affairs & national security who will operate in an honest and transparent fashion as President. That man is John Kerry and Moore's film reminds us just how important it is that each of us, as patriots, do whatever we can to help John Kerry become the next President of the United States. The stakes are high.