The result of Hurricane Katrina is unlike anything America’s ever seen. We’ve seen a major American city essentially wiped out with casualties on a biblical level.
Where is our president, and where the hell has he been?
Archive for August, 2005
So says the liberal associated press.
Hey, at least it isn’t Barbara or Jenna, right?
US forces in Iraq suffered more combat deaths in August than any month this year
U.S. forces in Iraq suffered at least 74 combat deaths in August — more than in any month since last November and the third-highest total for any month of the war, according to Pentagon figures.
The total number of U.S. military deaths in August, including those deemed non-hostile, was at least 83, according to figures available Wednesday. That was the highest since 107 in January, when there was an extraordinary 53 accidental deaths for the month, including 30 Marines and a sailor who died in a Jan. 26 helicopter crash.
Bush Error 404. It’s amazing how quickly some of us end our vacations when it gets too hot.
Conservative groupthink dictates that to privatize is to be divine. Since the election of Reagan, we’ve seen a steady drumbeat to privatize everything on earth - from our schools to the armed forces and beyond, in the world of the Republicans privatization is next to godliness.
Except, reality declares otherwise.
Let’s look at two recent examples. John Thune ran his senatorial campaign on the platform that Tom Daschle was more liberal than average South Dakotans, and that his close ties to the White House would allow Ellsworth Air Force Base to stay open. When the base closing recommendations came out and Ellsworth was on the chopping block, it became clear that Thune would be DOA if the closing came to pass. Now that Ellsworth will remain open, it’s more than a bit humorous that the savior of John Thune’s political career will be a massive influx of government money into the biggest area of taxpayer funded spending in the entire federal government.
The other example is the current relief efforts involved in Misssissippi and Louisiana. Both states voted overwhelmingly for President Bush (60% and 57% respectively), an apparently strong endorsement of the conservative movement. But the savior of Mississippi and Lousiana will not be some privatized entity, some benevolent source of private funding. When Mississippi and Lousiana recover - and they will - they will have the much derided federal government to thank. It will be money from the federal government, along with disaster relief from federal agencies like FEMA and the National Guard that will aid these states and bring them back to glory.
And that’s how it should be.
Sometimes I think the chairman is reading this site
“Democratic Presidents Roosevelt and Truman led America to victory in World War II because they laid out a clear plan for success to the American people, America’s allies and America’s troops. President Bush has failed to put together a plan, so despite the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, we are not making the progress that we should be in Iraq. The troops, our allies and the American people deserve better leadership from our Commander in Chief. In fact, President Truman made this very clear: the buck stops at the Oval Office. Who knows where the buck stops in the Bush White House?”
Jorgey reminds us about the importance of Emmit Till in America’s history.
Max finds the work of Horowitz’s kook crew somewhat incomplete.
This thing looks a nightmare come to life.
As a proud Democrat it hurts to say, but Frank Rich’s conclusion is right.
Among Washington’s Democrats, the only one with a clue seems to be Russell Feingold, the Wisconsin senator who this month proposed setting a “target date” (as opposed to a deadline) for getting out. Mr. Feingold also made the crucial observation that “the president has presented us with a false choice”: either “stay the course” or “cut and run.” That false choice, in which Mr. Bush pretends that the only alternative to his reckless conduct of the war is Ms. Sheehan’s equally apocalyptic retreat, is used to snuff out any legitimate debate. There are in fact plenty of other choices echoing about, from variations on Mr. Feingold’s timetable theme to buying off the Sunni insurgents.
But don’t expect any of Mr. Feingold’s peers to join him or Mr. Hagel in fashioning an exit strategy that might work. If there’s a moment that could stand for the Democrats’ irrelevance it came on July 14, the day Americans woke up to learn of the suicide bomber in Baghdad who killed as many as 27 people, nearly all of them children gathered around American troops. In Washington that day, the presumptive presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a press conference vowing to protect American children from the fantasy violence of video games.
The Democrats are hoping that if they do nothing, they might inherit the earth as the Bush administration goes down the tubes. Whatever the dubious merits of this Kerryesque course as a political strategy, as a moral strategy it’s unpatriotic. The earth may not be worth inheriting if Iraq continues to sabotage America’s ability to take on Iran and North Korea, let alone Al Qaeda.
You don’t have to be in the majority to exhbit leadership qualities, and when it comes to Iraq, the Democratic party just hasn’t led at all.
How long?
How long do we have to wait for the media to truly acknowledge how unpopular George W. Bush is?
A new Gallup Poll reflects further erosion in President George W. Bush’s job approval rating, continuing the slow but steady decline evident throughout the year so far. The poll — conducted Aug. 22-25 — puts Bush’s job approval rating at 40% and his disapproval rating at 56%. Both are the most negative ratings of the Bush administration.
You wouldn’t know this to watch the media. It’s wall to wall laudatory coverage of the popular wartime president as he chops wood, and makes straw man speeches against hippies. George Bush is getting away with what Bill Clinton never could: a drop in popularity that the media refuses to acknowledge.
Previously:
Somebody - Anybody, Please Tell The Media
The Out Of Touch Media
Who Will Tell The Media (Redux)
Who, Who Will Tell The Media?
Some argue that you’re either with Cindy or against the idea of America…
This is pretty ridiculous
Several prominent figures in the African American community today strongly rebuked Mychal Massie and other right-wing African Americans for comparing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, who has a record of opposition to civil rights, to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In a press release from the right-wing front group Project 21 announcing an event scheduled for this morning, Massie said Roberts “represents the beliefs of great Americans such as James Madison and Martin Luther King, Jr.
But Roberts’ record clearly shows he tried to limit voting rights protections, permit federal funding of discrimination, and strip the Supreme Court of its ability to protect civil rights.
“I knew Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a friend of mine. John Roberts is no Martin Luther King, Jr.,” said George Mason University Professor and civil rights leader Roger Wilkins. “As a matter of fact, John Roberts is far closer to Brad Reynolds, whose tenure at the Justice Department was devoted to tearing down everything that King and the civil rights movement had achieved in the 1960 s.”
It amazes me that we’ve put these brave guys in these situations when they could be out and about killing terrorists that actually threaten us.
Insurgents in Anbar province, the center of guerrilla resistance in Iraq, have fought the U.S. military to a stalemate.
After repeated major combat offensives in Fallujah and Ramadi, and after losing hundreds of soldiers and Marines in Anbar during the past two years - including 75 since June 1 - many American officers and enlisted men assigned to Anbar have stopped talking about winning a military victory in Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland. Instead, they’re trying to hold on to a handful of population centers and hit smaller towns in a series of quick-strike operations designed to disrupt insurgent activities temporarily.
“I don’t think of this in terms of winning,” said Col. Stephen Davis, who commands a task force of about 5,000 Marines in an area of some 24,000 square miles in the western portion of Anbar. Instead, he said, his Marines are fighting a war of attrition. “The frustrating part for the (American) audience, if you will, is they want finality. They want a fight for the town and in the end the guy with the white hat wins.”
That’s unlikely in Anbar, Davis said. He expects the insurgency to last for years, hitting American and Iraqi forces with quick ambushes, bombs and mines. Roadside bombs have hit vehicles Davis was riding in three times this year already.
“We understand counter-insurgency … we paid for these lessons in blood in Vietnam,” Davis said. “You’ll get killed on a nice day when everything is quiet.”
As part of my duty to help the progressive blogosphere get smarter, I’ve asked you to send me links. Not just links on an issue, but links on a regular basis. The right-wingosphere thrives on links but the progressive blogosphere is too stingy with them and way too insular for its long-term viablitiy. I don’t get enough emails with people saying “check this out”.
So start doing that. Send me emails and send them to other bloggers.
Chris Bowers has a good post on this issue
While progressives admire and appreciate those trailblazers who came before them, unlike conservatives we are not bound to follow in their footsteps. Iraq is not Vietnam, and we should not mistake it as such. The actions that succeeded in ending the war in Vietnam will not succeed in ending the war in Iraq. Even more importantly, the progressive movement cannot suffer another twenty-five years of ossification where we offer unrequited worship to the institutions and methodologies of our forebearers.
This is what bothered me and has bothered me since I went to the Take Back America conference. Way too many of the constituents were of the aging hippie variety who don’t have a clue that the way we fight these battles nowadays is via organization and the media and not singing protest songs with Joan Baez.
It is 2005. Stop protesting.
Currently under discussion at Forums @ OliverWillis.com
Graph of gas prices vs Bush approval rating
Pat Robertson wants Hugo Chavez dead
The Religious Policeman is back on the beat!
Alba: It’s A Tradition Now
Gaza: What’s Your Take?
[ Poll ] ABC: Commander In Chief
Longoria!
[ Poll ] Average Bush approval in next three polls
Feel free to come add your two cents (or more).
Yes, it’s perfectly in line with America’s interests to keep this up
Political violence surged Thursday along many of Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian fault lines, while Shiite and Sunni Arab political leaders haggled past a third deadline without reaching accord on a draft constitution.
As the two-day death toll around Iraq reached 100, fighting between two powerful Shiite militias in the southern city of Najaf subsided, with 19 reported dead overall. The clashes Wednesday night and Thursday between the Mahdi Army, loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, and fighters allegedly linked to the government-allied Badr Organization were the deadliest between Iraqi militia forces since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
Progressives have a problem: they’re gun shy. Not in a military sense - in fact World War II was presided over by two Democratic presidents whose domestic policies would appear practically socialist on today’s sliding scale - but in a rhetorical sense. Democrats have decided that they are going to eternally doom themselves to responding to the right, when in fact the only way to get anything done - especially in the press - is by dominating the story, owning it.
Republicans were able to set the media agenda against President Clinton even though he had the bully pulpit of the White House, yes, having the congress to investigate every cockamamie scandal Newt Gingrich could dream up was a heck of a tool, but it didn’t stop there. Right-wing pressure groups overwhelmed the press with a neverending stream of press releases, media availabilities and flooded the zone with information of their own to create an alternate universe where the moderate, popular, Democrat was transformed into a power hungry socialist. Clinton’s only advantage was that he fought fire with fire and the public never fully bought into the whole caricature.
Progressives and progressive groups need to get that they’re not just in place to issue pleas to Republicans. If I get one more email to “request” that so-and-so apologize, or “ask” that so-and-so be removed from his or her job, I’ll scream. Progressives need to learn the language the right has used to great success and turn it up to eleven. It is long past time to demand things of the government and the opposition party. It is long past time to pound your fists on the table and issue press releases and marching orders to media surrogates to tweak the national agenda to do your bidding.
The media has effectively outsourced its research function to the nonprofit sector, rarely is their any original reporting done - and certainly not enough to fill the gaping maw of the 24-7 news cycle. Progressive nonprofits and media organizations must do the press’ legwork for them. Document the excesses (and they are numerous) of the conservative movement, and beat up on the press until they report the story - and beat up on them again if they don’t report the story appropriately. The media is nothing more than an amalgamation of human beings and subject to the same sort of browbeating and persuasion that produces results.
Again, it’s time to cease the supine posture of prostrating yourselves and begging for decency. Instead its time to be aggresive, forceful, and repetitive to the point of numbness if you want to get anything real done.
RELATED:
Steve Soto: Democrats Need To Prepare Now For Another Social Security Push By The GOP
This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Ever.
Yesterday Bush pulled out his dog whistle and signaled to the minions that it was now time to declare open warfare on the anti-war majority. In the next few days and as Bush’s record-long vacation comes to an end, you can expect the rhetoric to get a good ratcheting up in order to shore up those poll numbers. He’s not running for re-election but there’s the supreme court fight coming up, along with the 2006 elections and general legacy building to be done.
For the first time in about 5 years, the Bush team is playing defense. It isn’t unprecedented unity amongst the progressive movement that has brought this about - in fact until Cindy Sheehan’s protest the anti-war movement has been idiotic in its attempt to persuade opinion, and with the addition of relics like Joan Baez to the proceedings the protestors are once again becoming ineffectual - but the simple fact that the facts are bad for Bush and his supporters. The daily drumbeat is U.S. troops being killed by insurgents, along with mass casualties for Iraqi civilians. It’s gotten so bad that the Republicans have not even bothered to use the draft of the Iraqi constitution as yet another sign that relief is around the corner, the same way they did with the toppling of Hussein’s statue, Bush’s “Mission Accomplished”, the Iraqi “elections”, and the result of the 2004 elections.
With 2006 on the horizon, we are at a definite turning point, one in which history chooses a path and our nation follows. But we aren’t simply slaves to the passage of time, rather, our actions define the times. That is why the Democratic party and its leaders needs to quit weighing the pros and cons and ups and downs and maybes and shouldas. They need to forcefully and stridently challenge this unpopular president directly to his face. It is smash mouth time, and its quite clear that these guys can be taken down if Democrats just present some backbone.
This isn’t just one speech where you come out and demand something then tepidly disappear, instead this needs to be a daily drumbeat firmly and patriotically demanding that there be a reasoned withdrawl from Iraq and the president present to the congress a realistic timetable for doing so. Again, I cannot stress how important it is for this mantra (whatever the actual text may be) to be repeated over and over again, not just by individual Democrats but by everyone associated with the progressive movement. Too often we see progressives stray off the reservation because they want to be seen as mavericks or because they’ve got some sort of pet issue at stake. That is a formula for failure. In today’s mediaverse, achievements are made through rapid repetition.
There are a lot of Democrats who voted for the war, either because they really believed what Bush was selling or because they wanted to protect their rears come election time. At first blush, these folks may say that challenging the war will hurt them. Wrong. It’s that sort of namby-pamby thinking that got us stuck like this in the first place. It’s a simple matter of leveling to the American people and stating that you were wrong.
“I voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, because I believed the President when he made the case that Iraq had ties to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As we know now, those reasons were deceptive, and the decision to go to war has made America less safe from the threat of terrorism. It is time for our troops to come home to defend America and their families. It is time for us to exit Iraq in a sensible fashion, and return to destroying the terrorists who threaten America.”
Why do I think saying something like the above would make sense to people? Because its largely the same decision making that the public has gone through. When the president of your nation presents a threat, it is historically in your best interests to believe him. I was always skeptical of the case made for invading Iraq, but I do understand that the authority of the office spoke to many people and convinced them to support the war. But these people haven’t just all turned off their televisions. They see that we’ve found no WMD, that Al Qaeda is alive and well and attacking London, and they see the daily increase in our casualties and the obvious lack of a coherent strategy from the president and his supporters.
It is long past due, but it is time for prominent Democrats to make some variation of this message resonate, before the GOP’s message machine springs back to life in the fall as it always does. Progressive bloggers can help create noise, but none of them has the authority of prominent Democrats (in this case, Senators, a few governors, and Clinton/Gore). If this case and this line of attack is to be made, it must be made by those who have a following within the Democratic party:
Howard Dean
John Kerry
John Edwards
Joe Biden
Hillary Clinton
Russ Feingold
Evan Bayh
Mark Warner
Al Gore
Bill Clinton
While I support Leaders Pelosi and Reid, there comments will not get the traction needed for this initiative to take hold in the press. The ‘08/’04 candidates can get coverage because they are known names or making their names known. President Clinton because he is a former president and a popular elder statesman of the party, and Al Gore because he could still be president and has the added advantage of being right about Iraq all along.
If prominent national Democrats do not begin challenging the Republicans and their version of the war in Iraq, the Democrats and the progressive movement will once again damn themselves into irrelevance in our national conversation. There is only so much that can be done at the grassroots level, by morally clear protests, and by people with keyboards.
At some point people need to be led.
Related:
The Gut Primary: It s Safe To Go In The Water
Democrats: Time to Cowboy Up
CNSNews claims to have video evidence of protesters somehow taunting wounded soldiers, and if that’s true - it would be quite horrible. But you would think something like that would have made the real news and not just Brent Bozell’s news propaganda organization, right? These are the guys who promised us those documents proving Iraq had WMDs that seemed to never have materialized, and the story is being pimped by Matt Drudge whose truthfulness is about on par with Rush Limbaugh’s.
UPDATE: And of course it’s another exercise in lies from CNSNews and the RNC. In fact, the protestors are quite clearly demonstrating their support of the troops and their disdain for what the Iraq war has done to the soldiers. This won’t matter to the cons who trumpet this sort of thing, they don’t care about the facts as long as they can smear and move on to the next thing.
The auctioning of John McCain’s soul continues as he endorses teaching “intelligent design” in schools.
Here’s my stake in the ground: I will not support a Democrat who endorses teaching “intelligent design” in our schools. It’s perfectly reasonable and American for someone to believe in religion, and that their religion is what has created our world, but “intelligent design” is pseudo-science hokum that has no place in our houses of learning.
Origin of Species
