I just voted in the DailyKos presidential straw poll and was pleasantly surprised to find that my guy Wesley Clark is winning. He has 2,396 votes. Number 2 is “No Fricking Clue,” with 1,454 votes, and 3 is Sen. Russ Feingold (?), with 992. Hillary is close behind Feingold with 922.
I voted for Clark, but my odds-on favorite to get the nomination at this point is Bill Richardson.
Go vote here.
Rose Aguilar is a San Francisco-based journalist who decided to leave the safety of the liberal bubble to travel to states that voted overwhelmingly for President Bush in 2004. Her mission is to look beyond what divides us to discover what binds us together as progressives, no matter what state we live in.
Aguilar has been in Texas recently, where she has interviewed Democrats and Republicans about their political views. She posts these interviews to her website, Stories in America. These conversations make for fascinating reading – taken together, they offer a direct feed into a critical piece of the body politic in mid-2005.
There are many encouraging signs, the progressive cause is strong and vibrant behind the Red Curtain. From Republicans, what is most shocking is how they spout the party line without apparently having given what they are saying the slightest bit of analysis.
And then there are dismaying moments, like this from a liberal Texan:
I would rather have a gay person get married to their significant other than to go out and be a pedophile or a stalker. If you love somebody, you love somebody. I don’t have a problem with that.
Yikes! So gay and lesbian folks can only choose between finding a significant other and settling down OR pedophilia and/or stalking?
Nonetheless, I would encourage anyone who is interested in poltiical strategy to visit Stories in America regularly.
Update: Rose Aguilar has a column up today on AlterNet – The Loneliness of a Lonestar Liberal. The article opens with this statement, which sums up the conundrum that faces progressives in Red states like Texas:
It’s not easy being a progressive activist in Texas. Not only are the state’s progressives up against a conservative majority and completely ignored by national politicians, they’re also stuck with the media’s label of “red state voters” who have completely different values from “blue state voters…”
The repetitive use of the term “red state voter” makes it easy for the country at large, including progressives living in Democratic cities, to lose sight of the fact that Texas is a diverse state full of activists.
Borowitz Report line:
…Elsewhere, a new poll shows that less than half of all Americans approve of the way Dick Cheney is handling President Bush’s job.
From Roll Call via Capitol Buzz
From being busy with other legislative business to a belief that the measure was simply not necessary, 13 Senate Republicans offered a variety of explanations for their decision not to co-sponsor a resolution apologizing for the chamber’s past inaction on lynching…
The following quotes come from the 13 Senate Republicans — or their press staff — explaining their reasons for not signing on as co-sponsors of the bill apologizing for not approving legislation outlawing lynching during the civil rights struggle. These statements were provided by the Senators’ offices or culled from the Congressional Record. Some of the offices could not provide explanations by press time Friday.
Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) “I also condemn lynching. … But, rather than begin to catalog and apologize for all those times that some Americans have failed to reach our goals, I prefer to look ahead. I prefer to look to correct current injustices rather than to look to the past.”
Bob Bennett (Utah) “I come from a State that does not have a history of lynchings, but that does not mean I should be absolved from the concern that all Americans should have over the lynchings that have occurred. I note that it was the filibuster that made it possible for the Senate to be the body that blocked this legislation in the past. I would hope that in the future, we would all realize that the filibuster should be used for more beneficial purposes than that.”
Thad Cochran (Miss.) “I don’t feel I should apologize for the passage of or the failure to pass any legislation by the U.S. Senate. But I deplore and regret that lynchings occurred and that those committing them were not punished.”
John Cornyn (Texas) “There are different ways to acknowledge those times when Americans have failed to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.”
Mike Enzi (Wyo.) “Sen. Enzi believes the lynchings that took place were tragic and that they never should have occurred. The legislation was passed by voice vote. Sen. Enzi agreed to that. He did not object.”
Judd Gregg (N.H.) “The fact that this amendment passed unanimously showed the depth of the support this resolution rightfully received, and Sen. Gregg was pleased to offer his support.”
Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) “You don’t have to co-sponsor everything that you are in favor of. She abhors lynching and thinks it is a horrific part of American history.”*
Jon Kyl (Ariz.) No response.
Trent Lott (Miss.) No response.
Richard Shelby (Ala.) “There are many instances where Sen. Shelby supports legislation and resolutions without being a co-sponsor.”
Gordon Smith (Ore.) “Sen. Smith strongly supports the resolution. He has a long record protecting civil rights.”
John Sununu (N.H.) “Sen. Sununu supported the resolution, and was on the Senate floor Monday evening when the resolution passed unanimously by a voice vote.”
Craig Thomas (Wyo.) “The Senator was working on the energy bill and CAFTA when that came around. … If it passed by unanimous consent, that means everyone supported it. I don’t see the news value.”
Extra bonus hackery points to Bob Bennett for tying the Senate’s lack of support for anti-lynching laws to today’s controversy about the filibuster.
*Hutchinson announced over the weekend that she will seek another term in the Senate, rather than running for governor of Texas.
There’s trouble in the rightwing paradise of Indiana. Gov. Mitch Daniels – whose previous gig was director of the Office of Management and Budget for President Bush – is in disfavor with rightwing Christian extremists in the state who feel he is not being sufficiently abusive toward the civil rights of Indiana’s gay and lesbian taxpayers.
Micah Clark, leader of the 12,000 members of the American Family Association of Indiana, a conservative, pro-family group, used his Web site to call Daniels “a disappointment in the family values department.”
He criticized Daniels for not being out front in favor of issues such as a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and for having an office policy banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Family values spokesman Clark says he would prefer the GOP to remain the party of bigotry:
“I don’t believe in the big tent,” Clark said. “I don’t believe you get to be that big offending a large portion of your base.”
When forced to comment, Daniels accidentally revealed his real position – thereby permanently scuttling any hope of winning election to national office as a Republican:
“I don’t believe in discrimination, period. We had that (anti-discrimination) policy in our campaign. We left it in place. Basic rights of assembly, employment, housing and so forth ought not be limited based on a person’s race, creed, color or lifestyle,” [Daniels] said.
Making inclusive statements like that will get the governor nowhere in today’s GOP.
US News & World Report “Washington Whispers”:
Here’s Why Jeb Bush Won’t Run: Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has for months sternly rejected running to replace his brother in the White House, but only now are we finding out why. Friends say it’s his wife, Columba, who closed the door. “His wife has just said no,” a close Bush Florida political pal tells us.
Poor Columba, she has a target on her back. She ought to know by now that nobody stands in the way of the Bushes.
How I decided to go into P.R. and marketing is a long story, but “We Are Everywhere” by Chicago 7/8 “conspirator” Jerry Rubin is tucked on my shelf between the A.P. Stylebook and Roget’s. What Rubin called “theatre” back then we now term “guerilla P.R.,” “word of mouth marketing (WOMMA),” and viral marketing, among other things.
That’s probably why I love this idea, posted in the comments at thinkprogress.org, so much.
1. Paint Cardboard White – Then Print ( DOWNING STREET ) On Cardboard
2. Then Tape SIGN To Your Local… Street, Road, Highway Sign – NOW – Repeat
3. Hang ( DOWNING ST. ) Sign Under Your Mail Box
4. Downing Street – On A Stick – As A Yard Sign – What-Ever
Inspired by: snowho. Let’s do it People… ECs
Help Make Every Street… ” Downing Street ”
Until Bush Is Impeached !
Paste… ( Downing Street ) Over Every Street Sign… Across America
OGC adds… And Around the Planet Earth (www.OneGlobalCommunity.com )
Add You & Yours… To this Listing…
Copy, Paste And
Pass It On
Repeat…
More info @ www.AfterDowningStreet.org
The big surprise is that Jeb seems to realize how fortunate he was to have been born a Bush. Certainly, like Paris Hilton, he never would have gotten where he is in life had he been say, Jeb Griswold.
“I thank God every day that when I was born on February 11, 1953, I came out with my mom who’s my mom, which meant that I got to have my dad, who has been an incredible inspiration to me in every way,” Bush said of his father, former President George H.W. Bush.
You kind of lost of me for a minute, but a big “duh,” there Jeb.
And didn’t George H.W. spawn kids to be proud of?
o George W. — nuff said
o Neil, the poster child for failing at both business (Silverado Savings & Loan) and marital fidelity (Chinese calls girls, divorce and paternity tests)
o Marvin, who was director of the firm that provided electronic security for the World Trade Center and Dulles International Airport, the airport where American Airlines flight 77 originated on the morning of September 11th
o Dorothy, or Doro, as her family calls her, whose husband #2, Richard Koch, is son of the founder of the John Birch Society. His family foundation funds Libertarian causes and conservative think tanks including the Cato Institute. During the Clinton administration, one of his companies, Koch Oil, was charged with 97 counts of covering evidence of a benzene spill in Corpus Christi and another 315 acts of pollution.
o Jeb himself, who is only too happy to give fathers credit for how children turn out.
The governor touted studies that indicate that a child with an involved father is “more likely to meet success, to live a healthier lifestyle, maintain higher self-esteem, and perform better inside and outside the classroom.”
Bush said his own parenthood has been “the most rewarding experience of my life.”
…Bush’s 27-year-old daughter, Noelle, graduated from a 16-month drug court program nearly two years ago after her arrest in 2002 for attempting to obtain the drug Xanax with a forged prescription at a Tallahassee pharmacy.
What dad wouldn’t be proud to take credit for raising his kids when they turn out like that? Makes me kind of tear up just thinking about it. Noelle lives with Jeb and Columba at the governor’s mansion but his sons, George P. and Jeb Jr. (does this family have any imagination at all?) have been exiled to Texas.
While still in Miami, George P. had the police called on him after he broke into his ex-girlfriend’s house at 4 a.m. and began arguing with her father. Twenty minutes after he fled the scene, he returned in his Ford Explorer and tore across the front lawn, grinding a path through the grass.
Jeb Jr. had Tallahassee police summoned after someone called mall security about a couple in the back of a Jeep Cherokee. They found them in the parking lot, both naked from the waist down although Jebby, as he is known, showed his fine Bush breeding by retaining his socks.
If Jeb is half the father that he is a governor, and judging by his kids, I’d say he is, it’s no mystery how they’ve turned out.
Arlie Hochschild – who wrote an article titled “Let Them Eat War” in 2003 accurately predicting that President Bush would use fear of terrorism to manipulate blue collar voters into voting for him, against their own best interests, in the 2004 presidential elections – says in the current Mother Jones:
I’m continually appalled by the Bush administration. But I’m also an optimist. The whole mess we’re in — the trade of butter for guns, clear skies for soot, good will for Abu Ghraib, an open society for a closed one, live soldiers for dead ones — this whole mess could be reversed. It would only take a change of heart among just a few percent of blue-collar voters the next time around. But the change of heart depends on understanding and exposing a certain underlying logic of our present situation — that Bush is manipulating feelings of anguish, fear, anger (especially among those faced with job loss and lower wages) with one hand, while pursuing policies that exacerbate exactly those situations with the other. In my next piece, I’ll be continuing to chip away at that underlying logic, the one I first tried to lay out in “Let Them Eat War” with a modest faith that, at the end of the day, reason will win out.
Here is a story published last fall that offers yet more evidence that President Bush and his team had planned to invade Iraq even before the 2000 presidential campaign was fully underway:
Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.
“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”
Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker…”
According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush’s beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House – ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.”
Bush’s circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: “They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches…”
To hear Trump talk, he’s the only one
Who’s ever stood trial for crimes he’s done.
But instead of courtroom drama,
We get Trump in his pajamas,
That’s how he earned his new nickname: Don Snoreleone.
