Wampum

He thought it would be cute to ask Obama would offer Gore a position as Secretary of Energy (mostly nukes, and 15th in line of succession under the the Presidential Succession Act of 1947), or Energy Czar (whatever that is, no budget, just some drapery and a conditional podium that doesn't face Wall Street or Main Street), Senior Adviser on Climate Change and Global Warming (same as Energy Czar) or "nothing".

Clearly "nothing", as in Jefferson-Jackson in Des Moines. What the hell other than the threat of a primary challenge mounting about the time the honeymoon wears off and the "100 Days" accomplishments is ... no single payer until the next administration, no smart, purposeful, use of public money to transform the transportation sector, no radical energy plan, ...

We wanted a Democrat, and if all we got was center-right administration attempting to market its image as center-left, then we'll have to get us a real Democrat.

I checked "nothing". We've been to Iowa. For Gore.

Posted by EBW at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Al Gore at the Clinton Global Initiative this morning.

The current economic crisis was triggered of course by the sudden collapse of an assumption. The so-called subprime mortgages were many of them without collateral -- that people weren't expected to pay back. The assumption was that if you lumped them together and securitize them, and magically that is going to remove the risk ... That assumption just went splat, and things began to unravel. And now in the midst of this frenetic effort to find a bailout, many are saying we should have prevented this. We should have realized that the short-term greed was overcoming a clear vision of what the risk was. Well, now is the time to prevent a much worse catastrophe, because the world has several trillion dollars in sub-prime carbon assets, based on the assumption that it is perfectly alright to put 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours.

Since we met here last year, the world has lost ground in the climate crisis. This is a rout -- we're losing badly. The water supply is partly held in the ice packs of the mountains and the glaciers. They're disappearing. Haiti was ravaged by four different hurricanes, and of course the devastation came after the environment had been devastated with all the trees had been cut down. There are still people in Galveston waiting for food, for water, and medicine. A half a million people were evacuated from their homes in California because of record fires. The University of Tel Aviv just published research showing that for every one degree of warming, there will be a 10 percent increase in lightning strikes all over this planet, with drier vegetation in a warmer world and more dead vegetation because beetles are no longer held back by frost.

The fires are out of control on every front -- the strength of the storm, the depth of the drought, the movement of tropical diseases into areas that never experienced them before. This is the result of a dysfunctional, insane global system that we have to change. For the first time in all of human history, we as a species have to make a decision. If we make the right decision ... the answer to the economic crisis can truly provide an opportunity to make the right kinds of change.

...

We should stop burning coal without sequestering the CO2. The coal and oil companies have spent in the United States alone half a billion dollars in the first 8 months of this year promoting the lie that there is such a thing as "clean coal." "Clean coal" is like "healthy cigarettes" -- it does not exist. It could theoretically exist. The only demonstration plant was canceled. How many such plants are there? Zero. How many blueprints? Zero.

...

Today the U.S. Congress is talking about energy. They are, without debate and without a single hearing, preparing to lift the moratorium on the development of oil shale, which would vastly multiply the amount of CO2 from every gallon of gasoline. This is utter insanity, and it demonstrates that the wealth and power and influence of the entrenched carbon lobby, that twists policy and puts out illusory impressions, is overwhelming the free debate. We need to stop this.

...

I believe that for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying public that there's no risk from the global climate crisis represents a form of stock fraud, because they are misrepresenting a material fact. If you're a carbon company and you're going out there and trying to convince people to buy your stock and that the climate crisis isn't that big a deal, and you're superstitiously giving money to these phony think-tanks that go out and try to gin up phony arguments while the entire scientific community has put out five unanimous reports in the past years practically screaming from the rooftops about how we need to solve this -- if you're a carbon company doing this, in my opinion you're guilty of a form of stock fraud, and I hope the state attorneys general around the country will try to take some action on that.

...

And if you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what's being done now, I believe we've reached the stage where it's time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal-fired power plants that do not have sequestration.

Posted by EBW at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The new slide show is at TED. At 22:11 Al is asked "When you look at the leading candidates in your own party are doing now are you excited by their plans on global warming?"

Somewhere in the next two minutes Matt Stoller finds his wee little brass ring. Its all MB's fault, she let him post at It's Still the Ecomony, Stupid (a post I'm fond of is the link to Max Sawicky, in April, 2003, on what to do with Iraq's oil revenues -- we'll be coming back to that next week when we visit Susan Collins' latest idea.

MB and I will be writing in Al Gore's name on the ballot. The Maine 1st CD is wicked safe blue, so its not likely to reverse gravity, but its the only vote we feel represents us.

We'll write in John Edwards just below Al Gore.

Posted by EBW at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Friend,

Global warming is a problem of unprecedented magnitude and that's why we've launched the largest mobilization campaign ever. Actions by individuals like you will be the driving force behind this campaign and our ultimate victory. We're going to succeed, but I need your help today.

More than 850,000 people have already joined us, but if leaders in business and government are going to make stopping climate change a priority, we need you to urge your friends to get involved today: http://wecansolveit.org/invitealliance

We need to grow to 1,000,000 members by April so we can send a loud message that we want action now. That is why I need you to forward the email below to all of your friends and family right now and ask them to add their voice.

Thank you,

Al Gore

P.S. You can donate to our efforts here.

While many in the South characterize climate change as an environmental and/or economic issue, to us it raises questions of culture and survival.

It seems odd to me that in the climate change community, the effect on agriculture, and therefore human misery, in Black Africa, is front-and-center, yet in the civil rights community, the quest for social solidarity that transcends race ends at the waters' edge, and contemporary Africans are no more necessary than contemporary Inuits, or particulate and gases (other than greenhouse) on urban populations.

Posted by EBW at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lost in the clutter of browser tabs was Al Gore arrives in Geneva, which has the advantage of being in English. Enjoy!

Posted by EBW at 03:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I opened the papers today to find that Al Gore is in town, doing the "responsible, durable" at Banque Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch (LODH).

In Le Temps, in Radio Suisse Romande.

My co-workers, in from Norway, Germany, Catalonia, France, and Switzerland for Monday and Tuesday ask if Al Gore can still be nominated.

I answer "Yes, but there are some complications ..."

I will try and make the car show, it is wierd writing using a Swiss-German keyboard.

Posted by EBW at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Origanlly posted on July 6, 2004. If we'd known then, what we know now, that MoveOn and SEIU wouldn't endorse Edwards, that Florida would be repeated in Ohio, that all those flashes, Dean (ok we knew that by February) Lamont, any of the specials, in fact, the entire '06 miracle, wouldn't throw as much light as the steady candles of the Catholic Workers or the American Friends Service Committee ... well, we might be changed by that knowledge.

North Korea and Iran are treated as a nuclear ensemble in the common-to-both-parties political lexicon. I'm going to try and seperate out the Iran part, and try and delineate that part of the JRE text that differs from the standard Axis-of-Evil text. New readers please keep in mind that I write about Iran from time to time, in a series called Return of the ... One True King. A link to the last part is here.

In his major primary piece on pre-emption and nukes, the only "justification" offered by the Bush/Cheney administration for its Iraq War with any theoretical legs, Edwards thoughtfully listed the Soviet-era warhead inventory management problem first.

60 percent of Russia's nuclear material remains unsecured. That country has 20,000 nuclear warheads and enough material to produce 60,000 more Hiroshima-size bombs.

Edwards' first "post-Soviet" talking point is establishment of a new Global Nuclear Compact (GNC) to reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The implementation language is overtly multi-national and repeats the explicit mechanism of assistance for peaceful use in exchage for strict controls over waste and reprocessing of the Clinton/Gore administration. While not explicitly a UN or an existing Treaty Organization, "leading nations" and nuclear technology overlaps with the Permanent Members of the Security Council, which means France, the Federation of Independent States, and China, as well as Japan and Germany. Broadly, an approach distinct from the Bush/Cheney record, and one Tehran appears to seek.

Edwards' second "post-Soviet" talking point is a UN Security Council vehicle to make economic sanctions easier to apply when the requisit condiditions arise. The "carrot and stick" approach of the GNC institutionalized by the primary Treaty Organization. Again, an approach distinct from the Bush/Cheney record, and one Tehran appears to seek.

Edwards' third "post-Soviet" talking point is to triple the spending on securing the "loose nukes in the former Soviet Union", and to end development of two new weapons technologies -- "bunker buster" nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic missiles. This is as anti-Bush/Cheney as one can imagine, and Tehran has no interest in "loose nukes in the former Soviet Union" finding any use in West Asia.

Edwards' fourth "post-Soviet" talking point is to strengthen our intelligence capability, and no sane person in Tehran or anywhere else wants to see another US military adventure based upon bad intelligence. This approach is inconsistent with the administrations punitive and criminal outing of working WMD covert intelligence officers.

Edwards' fifth "post-Soviet" talking point is creating a high-level NPT role in the administration. Again, a position Tehran is more likely to appreciate than the current incoherence and outing of working WMD covert intelligence officers.

Having less time than Professor Cole to write (I've a housefull of unruly post-vacation weasels to mind and lots of washing to attend to, not to mention paid work) my Edwards-and-Iran thinking is that he's wicked better than the BC04 war-rhetoriticans. Granted, the US-Iran war hasn't happened, yet, but the insane desire for war has been bubbling under the surface of both states since the fall of Reza Shah and Jimmy Carter, and it is only one accidental or one calculated act away. As Vice-President of the United State, John Edwards seems more unlikely than most to succumb to the lure of the ongoing phoney war with Iran, let alone let the fiction escape from its confines and consume whole armies and cities, as the phoney war with Iraq has. I will sleep better at night when he is Vice President.

Afternote: Since "breach of the NPT" gets so much attention in the Axis-of-Evil demonology, it is useful to read Article X of the NPT:

1. Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.

Posted by EBW at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

link.

I'm not surprised to see that for Joe, neither the ground nor finance exist. We'd planned to hit every meat packing plant in Iowa, and Yucca Mountain activist in Nevada, and always take enough to beat the 15% floor and simply accumulate delegates. It can't make us better or smarter than he, he got the job and we got bumpkis, but its good to know how Joe sees the big picture.

Posted by EBW at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It hosts johnedwards.com, so it matters.

Update: 12 hours later 70.42.42.155 is responsive.

Posted by EBW at 08:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning I clicked on this to listen to Bonior's postmortem -- I wanted to hear how Nevada came unglued after all the effort Edwards made over the past two-plus years for labor. It was the HERE half of UNITE HERE!, the hotel, restaurant and casino half, that refused to make an endorsement until after Iowa. The textile workers at UNITE wanted to endorse Edwards but the hospitality workers didn't.

The third segment of the show was Ralph Nader, who announced an exploratory the day John Edwards announced the suspension of his campaign.

I'm not ready to turn my face to the wall or do whatever it takes to become blissfully numb, and we've already been down the Gotta-Unite-Behind-the-Indian-in-High-Office road -- it has no peyote, no roadmen and no soul, and it's called Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

Al Gore is not running. Chris Dodd is not running. Dennis Kucinich is not running. John Edwards is not currently running.

Freedom is choice. Here's a link.

Posted by EBW at 07:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The six of them had this schtick -- run something to save Bill Clinton's ass. Dance with Gore without ever getting to the sticking point of will-you-must-you-draft-you. A waste. A diversion from the declared progressive(s) in the race.

And today the six DLC (the next gen) endorsed the guy who thought that Donald Rumsfeld was mainstream, along with the vast majority of the Bush nominees. h/t Lambert @ Corrente

Posted by EBW at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

IF mail from congressional candidate contains alignment reference to {Clinton | Obama} THEN exercise the unsubscribe {embedded link | mailbot address}.

Several yesterday. Probably more today.

Woke up thinking if Edwards had to drop out within four weeks of the first Party caucus to extract a promise from the Hero Twins, who claim they alone can make the trip to Xibalba and defeat the Lords of Death, to protect the hopeless, the downtrodden, the poor and the working poor, what did the Hero Twins promise to inflict upon the hopeless, the downtrodden, the poor and the working poor, if he stayed in a fifth week or a sixth week or longer?

Something worth reading is this.

Posted by EBW at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

via Indianz.com, this gem -- "If he wins the November election, Obama plans to appoint an Indian policy advisor at the White House".

So, he's going to rise to the level of Nixon, Haldeman and Erlichman, which is actually the gold standard, the high-water mark for the Federal-Tribal relationship, but he's too inexperienced to actually know what he's doing, and in all liklihood, he'll just promote Ross Swimmer. That plus an annual "Summit", which either means a do-nothing 400-and-some-plus-ONE media circus, or a USET+NCAI+IGA+ONE clubman's foursome that excludes Hawai'i, Alaska, and all the fucked-over-by-the-BIA, the fucked-over-by-corrupt-Chairs, the fucked-over-by-Abramoff, and all of the Urbans.

Edwards actually worked the Lumbee issue, which counts far more than the promise of symbolism and circuses. Edwards could cut to the chase and just say "I will invite Ms. Eloise Cobell to join my Administration as Secretary of the Interior. He could run that into the seam of dirt MB's mined since we set our sights on Saint John McCain, hitting Haliburton and the Petro-Oligarchy as casually as children chase crows out of the garden corn.

Cobell v Babbit began under Clinton, and the MMS mess wasn't invented by the RNC, they just improved on a pre-existing condition.

Posted by EBW at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I missed my chance to phone back to South Carolina, 6pm plus a few PST is after 9:05 pm EST, when the calling window for voter ID and persuasion ends. The volunteer who called to vet me after registering at the website was smart and when she was walking me through the call and script and I mentioned I'd done GOTV, she switched to operative-speak, which made it a lot easier for me.

Posted by EBW at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Link to the video.

And if you use sendmail, or an operating system product that at any point in its licensing history, ever required a license from the Regents of the University of California, even if unknown to you, your email transits sendmail relays on Berkeley Unix hosts, which is what most ISPs actually use in operational practice, you're using the work products of two men who've been married for longer than I've known them, to each other.

Happy Everyday, Kirk and Eric!!!

Posted by EBW at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Le Monde is front-paging a story -- Un climat très politique that has absolutely no coverage in the US media market -- on June 23rd, 1988, a climatologist, Dr. James Hanson, then, and now, Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA, was called before a Senate committee to give scientific testimony on what was then the hottest summer on record.

He was recalled on May 8th, 1989, and testified before a Senate committee headed by Senator Al Gore, who asked "Why have you contradicted your written testimony?" Dr. Hanson's reply, "Because I didn't write the last paragraph of this section. It was "added" to my statement."

Hanson had alerted Gore that his testimony had been falsified, faxing Gore the sections he knew had been falsified, allowing Gore the opportunity to ask Hanson if his testimony was in fact, his, or that of a political censor. And of course, the answer was there in plain sight.

Coverage: NPR ran a 20 minute audio interview segment on January 8th, five days after the Iowa caucus. Hanson is an Iowan. link. Good luck finding much else in the US media.

Author Mark Bowen's Censoring Science site has links to online booksellers where the book may be ordered.

Need something funny to brighten your stockmarket day? Try this gem from co2science.org:

GOPE3_DVD - The Greening of Planet Earth and The Greening of Planet Earth Continues Video Set
Is carbon dioxide a harmful air pollutant, or is it an amazingly effective aerial fertilizer? Explore the positive side of the issue in two half-hour documentaries -- The Greening of Planet Earth and The Greening of Planet Earth Continues - yours free today with a qualifying tax deductible donation of $20 plus shipping and handling. DVD burned in -R format, original release dates of 1992 and 1998.

Gee, is CO2 an amazingly effective aerial fertilizer? Instead I think I'll send $20 to the Edwards campaign link. Today is a good day to try.

Posted by EBW at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The moment has come and gone for the Edwards campaign (John, Elizabeth, David Medina (PD), David Bonior (NCM), Joe Trippi, ...) to use a Nevada venue to make a distinguishing statement on Yucca Mountain. Oh well, perhaps they have considered and discarded the issue on its political merits.

The Reno Gazette-Journal ran a poll of likely voters (which isn't at all the same thing as likely presidential preference caucus participants, and as Nevada has never had an "early contest" primary, that difference is wicked significant, see MB's piece on the eve of Iowa on our experience in Maine and Iowa caucuses) eight weeks ago.

21% of the registered dems in the sample used the "very important" answer to the does Yucca Mountain determine your presidential preference.

That's more than the 15% needed simply to accumulate delegates. A candidate could drool on three cylinders, as Ron Paul does on the RNC side of the early contests, yet make the delegate accumulation threshold firing on only one cylinder, in Ron Paul's case, the Bi-Partisan Wars of 2003-2009. The Edwards campaign is easily firing on three out of four cylinders, its just missing fire on this, the fourth, which is the deciding issue for a fifth of all voting dems, and could, if used effectively, have disproportionate effect on Nevada's first early contest presidential preference caucus.

53% of the registered dems in the sample used the "important" answer to the does Yucca Mountain determine your presidential preference.

That's a lot more dems who will have to decide if their "most important" issue, perhaps something to do with symbolisms external to Nevada, really does trump Nevada's being used, since November, 1951, as the place where Washington carelessly scatters its atomic trash.

42% of the registered dems in the sample used the "strongly oppose" answer to the Yucca Mountain question.

40% of the registered dems in the sample used the "oppose" answer to the Yucca Mountain question.

The earned delegate count this far is 25 Obama, 24 Clinton, 18 Edwards, and at least one national polling firm announced it is dropping Edwards from the candidates listed questions.

Given a choice between a base of 21%, more if executed correctly, which should have been part of the Nevada field plan, plus anything in the three-way competition for "important" issues, and rasing $7,000,000, I'd go for base-plus.

When this is all over, I'd like to know why they passed on this one. I mailed Political Fiction with a "for Nevada" headnote to Trippi on the 15th, just in case they didn't have an Auntie Nukes message and plan at hand. Of course, who reads email?

On the bright (and glowing side), this issue will be around in the next cycle, and the cycle after that, and the cycle after that, and the cycle after that, and ...

Posted by EBW at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow is raise-the-bat-day for the Edwards campaign. We've given and if you're also so inclined, here's the link.

We're using cricket as the theme, as the MSM is covering the Edwards campaign like it covers the major cricket matches, which is to say, not very well.

If you have a favorite cricket image, stuff the URL in comments. If its not a bug, I may run it tomorrow. If it is a bug, I'll see if I can get one of Gracie's lizards to eat it. We go through a lot of crickets in a week.

Posted by EBW at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Le Monde has this: Pour les Européens, la sécession de la Flandre reste de la politique-fiction

So what are the political fictions on this side of the pond?

How about Yucca Mountain? Its a wicked big issue in Clark County (Las Vegas), where most of the votes are, and sure everyone's nominally against the DOE's Repository, just how deeply this position is held by each candidate is a variable only those with Rad-Radar can be certain of.

Yucca isn't about commercial waste, that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's rods in pools at the former site of Maine Yankee, at Vermont Yankee, at ... and of course the operating company for each commercial reactor will eventually have to build more storage pool if Yucca isn't built ... so stopping Yucca is how we stop commercial nuclear power, right? right??

No.

Kerry got it right in the last cycle. The stockpiles of fissiles -- weaponized and mated with delivery vehicles, weaponized and not yet mated with a delivery vehicle, and fissiles not yet weaponized, they are the greatest threat to the United States -- whether they are under the custody of the United States or the Russian Federation. Rust observes princes and their pretenses not a wit, and rust will not reason.

Yucca Mountain is about either pretending there is nothing wrong, that death comes not for thee and thee and we, and happy, confident nuclear engineers can power a two car garage indefinitely into a future where no one ever has to duck and cover, or closing down the grand madness of The Cold War, and taking with it the latent threat of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium remaining in economic circulation, rather than being vitrified and down-blended, respectively, until stone cold dead.

John has the opportunity to give the speech John Kerry should have four years ago, when Bush and Nunn and Turner went for the "lone nuke" thesis -- Saddam's mushroom, putting appearances where needed (for the American psyche) in Baghdad, Tehran, and where ever the young turk of the moment at Homeland Security wants some tarting up and is willing to reach for the gold.

John has the rare chance to give the speech that Helen Caldicot would sit still for and attend on every word, every nuance. The speech that would make it plain that we'd get under a thousand in his first term, and into the low hundreds in his second. The speech that would make plain that deterrence, even massive deterrence, does not need weapons, it needs only ... the ability to fabricate weapons, mate them to delivery systems, and retaliate. A speech that North America is a submarine, it is the survivable element of the triad, and therefore that no weapons are necessary to deter. Any who strike, will eventually be counter-struck, and that certainty, not any present weapon, let alone two vast heaps of aging weapons and one decaying command and control system, is sufficient to ensure the peace. A speech that we're safer without weapons, not because of the Soviets, but simply because of rust, and the things men and women do in fear and panic.

Nevada isn't about the Strip. It isn't about the Clark County housing market out-plunging the San Diego County housing market. Nevada is about the test site and all of its sequela. The long tail, that runs from lung cancer clusters in uranium miners in Dinétah to the down-winders in Saint George, all the way through the pit facilities in the weapons labs to the cheery nuclear nutmen who promise cheap, unlimited electrical power and carefully managed waste.

Nevada's a pretty sane place, the Strip and the overwrought newcomers who fill I-15 each weekend excepted. This evening Jonah asked me for a fire, so I burned some of the wood we picked up in Panaca.

The smell of ceder smoke has heightened my memory of place.

Posted by EBW at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We read that Edwards' message doesn't resonate, and of course, it doesn't -- things aren't bad enough, the social distance between the people who live "in need" or "at risk" and those who don't, remains an unbridgeable chasm, and of course, the MSM "resonates" a very select range of messages.

AT&T terminated access lines to almost half a million residences in July, August and September. The trend for October, November and December is more terminations, not less. AT&T is not (yet) disclosing how many $50/mo price-point (aka "broad band") connections are in default each month, or in effect converting to $5/mo price point (aka "dial-up") connections.

The man who parks his car in front of the playground every day at 9am, and sits there, all day, and at 5pm moves his car to site #19, who hasn't been voted for years, won't be voted in the current cycle, because the Democratic Party doesn't vote his kind of people. Assisted housing wasn't voted by Portland Dems, and mobile home parks, public travel trailer and private "RV parks" aren't voted, and for sure the Dems don't vote work camps. Not worker camps -- that a UFW problem. Not the camps, because poverty -- clapped out cars and clapped out campers and clapped out trucks pulling clapped out trailers, all firing on three out of four cylinders on moving day, all having to pack up and move every 7 or 14 days, even if one day "out" before another 7 or 14 days "in" ... not to mention the tens of thousands of full-time or snow-bird retired couples and singles who manage to get their RVs or trailers to BLM "extended stay" no-pay camps in the desert each winter...

The color line is still intact, and it will remain so until there is no social chasm between those who shop at the thrift shops, the donation outlets, and eventually the food pantries, and those who's politics is limited to friends-don't-let-frineds-shop-WalMart, which is miles away from "don't let friends go broke and cry in unrelieved dispair". This line hasn't been broken in my lifetime, it was in my parent's lifetime. My mom's 80. She spent her teens in a travel trailer between Philly and LA, and in her time, both townies and campies voted, not just the more fortunate townies.

Nader's critique is that both parties are corporatist. Ours is too well off to truck with the poor.

Kevin's a janitor. Susie is working poor. We live in camps and have been on relief and off. Not many of us who blog write about poverty from experience.

Posted by EBW at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'll call and ask what they think of endorsing a candidate who has done nothing for them (Obama) over a candidate who has done more than something (Edwards), and who may have been a fool to have bothered.

They begged me to blog about them, and to ensure that ICANN didn't ignore them and ... if they'd have told me they'd go to bed with rightie on the first date, I'd have told them to go ahead ... without me.

On second thought, if the stewards I spoke with on the picket line on October 31st don't have what I consider to be the correct answer on January 11th, I'll encourage ICANN to schedule its next LA meeting at the Hilton Hotel at Los Angeles International Airport, and Local 11 can play with tamborines, signs, bullhorns and 10 word chants until gravitational polarity is reversed. Or they can tell UH to take a hike.

Posted by EBW at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This just dropped into my mailbox. It is about as #@$%! dumb as I ever hope to see.

3. In answer to your questions about why I didn't support former Senator John Edwards on the second ballot in Iowa: I have serious concerns about his connections to a Wall Street hedge fund, Fortress Investment Group. While attacking others for accepting campaign money from Washington lobbyists, he is up to his ears in money from Wall Street special interests.

He made half a million dollars in a single year for attending a few meetings for Fortress and has invested a substantial part of his own personal wealth in the hedge fund whose portfolios are responsible for sub-prime predatory lending practices, Medicare privatization, and an entire range of corporate sharp dealings that are driving the middle class into poverty.

I sent the following back to info@kucinich.us:

I want you to know that I'm not satisfied with this statement.

First, there is the choice between uncommitted and other-committed for caucus attendees who chose to stand for Dennis during the first division, and who failed to obtain 15% in that caucus. It can't be a surprise to this cycle's staff that the 15% threshold would be achieved in very few of Iowa's nearly 2,000 caucuses, and so the 2nd choice plan has to have been thought through, and "uncommitted" evaluated and rejected for "other-committed", independent of determining the best "other" to instruct KuDem caucus leaders.

It appears that Dennis, and/or the campaign PD, and/or the Iowa CM, just grasped at a straw hours before the doors closed and the actual caucus contests began.

Second, Dennis has had the better part of a year to figure out how to advise his delegates, at the Convention next August, at the State Conventions over the next several months, and on the caucus floor on January whenever (now the 3rd and 19th), how to move for best effect when their pledge to Dennis is vacated, either by the respective processes of the events I just mentioned, or by Dennis himself. This is a core policy issue for the Campaign, just like the last cycle. There is no way we're going to accumulate enough delegates to win, let alone determine the winner in a brokered convention, and in most places (unlike Maine), even pick up state-level delegates. We shouldn't even be doing this if we don't know how we're going to lose to best effect.

It appears that Dennis, and/or the campaign PD, or who ever wrote this unfortunate piece of trash, was unaware that no later than August, if not a lot sooner, a delegates-to-other message would be needed, and therefore a to-other evaluation made.

Further, this isn't a Dennis-and-Dog-in-a-confessional issue, this is the presidential preference of thousands of progressives, in Iowa, Nevada, Washington, Maine, and the rest of the caucus contests, and at each following state party convention, where the presence and coherence of KuDems has a disproportionate consequence in the drafting of each state's Party Platform. In '04 we got important stuff into the MDP's platform, something we couldn't have done if we hadn't worked with a plan, if we just had a mercurial and remote candidate.

Finally, I personally don't share Dennis' evaluation of John Edwards' choices -- perhaps because of my spouse, but probably not.

What can the Campaign senior staff do, what can the candidate do, to correct the error made the afternoon of the 3rd?

Nevada is the next contest where the to-other moment is on calendar in the second round of a caucus. It is January 19th. You all have 10 days to recover the trust and the confidence of your Nevada caucus supporters, and your later caucus supporters and those who support the campaign and don't live in caucus states. Either make your case that John Edwards is the poorer choice for progressive policy and Democratic Party primary politics, or recant. What you've got so far is cum hoc ergo propter hoc nonsense that makes Dennis look like an idiot. I advise recanting. I advise recanting and doing so in a way that shows that Dennis listened to his supporters and considered the near-term and long-term policy and political issues and came to a better conclusion than the error of January 3rd.

My spouse and I organized the largest metro area caucus in Northern New England. We know how important it is to work correctly in real time during the stand-and-divide process, to barter with other sub-15's and identify undecideds who would stand with us if they got to be delegates or alternates to the subsequent County or State conventions, and we know that there is no tactical advantage for candidates like Dennis not to make the strategy of their alternate choice known generally in advance, though not necessarily the edge conditions where the proper tactical choices can affect the outcome of an individual caucus room. So I'm not advising utter bottomless transparency. I'm advising we don't experience profound surprise and dismay when an operational moment occurs in our campaigns -- as your supporters live with being KuDems and caucus-working and convention-working progressive Democratic Party activists long after Dennis goes back to commuting between Cleveland between Washington.

In solidarity, and in principled difference on the policy and politics of the "to-other" pledge issue,
Eric

Posted by EBW at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Qui Bono?

I've thought a bit about the universe of possible authors of the successful political assassination operation conducted on December 27th at Liaquat Bagh, in Rawalpindi. I've gotten mail from members of the Hizb ut Tahrir which I've organized here. The Hizb position is that elections as practiced are inherently flawed, a position shared by Ralph Nader, John Edwards, and just about everyone aware of the role of overt institutional influences -- corporate, religious, military, etc., and covert institutional influences -- criminal organizations, foreign agencies, etc -- have in determining the "correct" outcomes of one-person-one-vote contests, See in particular the Political Program of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, which dates from the attempt by Uzbeck Dictator Islam Karimov and Bush ally to award blame for three coordinated explosions that took place in Tashkent in August, 2004.

So, probably not the Hizb or any Hizb-like movement, even those with operational abilities.

Then there's the AQP theory, denied by Baitullah Mehsud as soon as the government's finger pointed towards "Al Qaeda", whether domestic or foreign. Benazir's brothers operated in the same area with the same local tribal vs Punjabi political alignments, from Soviet-occupied Afganistan against the Zia ul Haq dictatorship, the prior incantation of military rule in Pakistan. Assassination of the opposition PPP candidate (or the PML-N candidate) would not weaken the Musharaff dictatorship, unless of course, the "AQP" could hang responsibility on the government or its political supporters -- or Inter-Services Intelligence operatives.

So, probably not the AQP or any AQP-like movement with operational abilities.

In fact, individual assassination isn't going to change the balance of forces overtly organized as political parties with political platforms and material interests, as there is always a "next in succession".

Random shooters don't manage two hitters plus enough bodies to flood the killing zone and block escape by the target vehicle.

So, what organization is capable, and can expect a better outcome from assassination prior to the election than from allowing the target to survive the election and re-acquire limited command and control over the state?

From Dawn's January 2nd edition:

Benazir was set to file dossier on rigging
KARACHI, Jan 1: Benazir Bhutto was poised to reveal proof the night she was assassinated that the Election Commission and a shadowy spy agency were seeking to rig the elections, a top aide said on Tuesday.

Senator Latif Khosa, who authored a 160-page dossier with Ms Bhutto documenting rigging tactics, said they ranged from intimidation to fake ballots, and were in some cases unwittingly funded by US aid.

Ms Bhutto had been due to give the report to two visiting US lawmakers over a dinner on Dec 27, the day she was killed in a gun-and-bomb attack.

"The state agencies are manipulating the whole process," Mr Khosa, a top aide of Ms Bhutto and head of the PPP election monitoring unit, told Reuters.

"There is rigging by the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), the Election Commission and the previous government, which is still continuing to hold influence. They were on the rampage."

President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman Rashid Qureshi dismissed the claim as "ridiculous".

"It makes one laugh," he said. "The president has said a free, fair, transparent and peaceful election is essential, which forms part of his overall strategy for transforming Pakistan into a fully democratic (nation)."

"Benazir's coming back to Pakistan was part of a national reconciliation ordinance," he added. "Take it from me, it's going to be perhaps the best election that Pakistan has ever had."

Mr Khosa said the report, entitled "Yet another stain on the face of democracy", details how the spy agency was planning to issue 25,000 pre-stamped ballots for each of 108 candidates for NA seats in Punjab from the party that backs President Musharraf and formed his government. "They have used intimidatory tactics, they intimidated the returning officers into rejecting nomination papers ... they prevented candidates from submitting their nomination papers," Mr Khosa said. "This happened in Balochistan and in the other central areas of Pakistan. It happened in Sindh." --Reuters

McClatchy is running a piece that is surprising to find in the US media market. Commentary: Sins of omission and sins of commission haunt Bush in Pakistan, by Joseph L. Galloway. Via Susie.

That's part 1. There's a part 2.

Posted by EBW at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday Allan Nairn was on the radio talking about his research on Detachment 88, and his reasonably likely claim that uniformed and non-uniformed members of the US armed forces are performing intercept (wiretap) within the telecommunications infrastructure in Indonesia. Allan's work was published by Counterpunch.

It should come as no surprise that yesterday Paula Dobriansky warmly thanked the Indonesian presidency (and host nation of the Bali Climate Conference) for removing all numbers, in particular those of the IIPC, endorsed by the EU, and the G77, from the "consensus" text.

When Chris Dodd returrns to Washington City to filibuster a FISA that exculpates domestic corporate wiretappers, there's more at stake than just the civil liberties of a few political elites in North America, not a single one of whom live in, or make use of telecommunications infrastructure which originates in, terminates in, or otherwise transits, Harry Reid's Nevada.

Posted by EBW at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And here it is -- link.

Posted by EBW at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

SPEECH BY AL GORE ON THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
DECEMBER 10, 2007
OSLO, NORWAY

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.

I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.

Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life's work, unfairly labeling him "The Merchant of Death" because of his invention - dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.

Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.

Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken - if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.

[the rest of Al's speech is in the extended area. ebw]

Continue reading "A Political Obituary" »

Posted by EBW at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I started the shutdown. I'll be closing up the site and doing the FEC paperwork to close the PAC.

Posted by EBW at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've posted Spanish language news copy from El Universal (Mexico City) at DG08. Call me a fool, but this line, the last from Univision's coverage, caught my eye. Su mujer, Tipper, con la que ha tenido cuatro hijos, está siempre a su lado en los actos públicos.

MB and I both thought of Jim Capozzolla in the last 24 hours. Jim would have really savored the reversal, by a higher court, the fashion and good taste ruling rendered in the Summer and Fall of the first Year of the Zeros by the Alpha Girls.

Chuck Schumer is running a test-the-party-pulse using the DSCC's website. Click through and v-sign. Its not a simple senatorial "Congrats Al" thing, or a cynical "update the ATMrootz database", though these are present also. Its a check, what is the pulse of the party?

Personally, I've put on a Gathering of Nations CD and gave the player a little juice, or as Jonah says "Up Vol!"

Posted by EBW at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have public finance for state house races in Maine, and while there are down-sides to the mix of public finance and term limits and the farm system from municipals to the legislature -- the number of women elected to the legislature is now half of what it was before public finance and term limits -- we're pretty much of a single mind in Maine that the federal legislative and executive races would be improved if less money went into paid media (broadcast primarily).

So John Edwards' determination that public finance is in his, and our interests, is a welcome one.

Posted by MB Williams at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Anyone who has read Wampum for any length of time knows how I feel about lobbyists. So I was quite pleased to find this email from Joe Trippi, on behalf of the Edwards campaign, in my mailbox this morning:

Dear Mary Beth,

If you want to know why we need change in Washington -- and I mean real change, not just trading corporate Republican insiders with corporate Democratic insiders -- then just look at Senator Clinton's schedule for today.

Today at noon, Hillary Clinton will be hosting a fundraiser in Washington, D.C. for a select group of lobbyists with an interest in homeland security.

Tickets for the Clinton fundraiser are $1,000 a ticket and $25,000 per bundler. And for that money you get more than a meal -- you get to attend one-hour breakout sessions in four different areas of homeland security that will include House Committee Chairs and members of Congress who sit on the very committees that will be voting on homeland security legislation.

The American people know that the system in Washington has become corroded and corrupt -- that the nation's capital is awash in campaign money from lobbyists seeking to gain influence to impact legislation.

Yet too many in office have fallen under the spell of campaign money at any cost -- and do not see that when they defend the system, they are protecting those that have rigged the game that puts corporate profits ahead of the interests of working Americans.

To truly end that game, it's going to take more than a change of heart from other candidates: it's going to take thousands of committed Americans like you who are willing to take on the powerful interests dollar for dollar to elect a president like John Edwards -- who has never taken a dime from any Washington lobbyist, and never will.

...

Today's Clinton fundraising event is a "poster child" for what is wrong with Washington and what should never happen again with a candidate running for the highest office in the land.

That no one in the Clinton campaign -- including the candidate -- found anything wrong with holding this fundraiser is an indication of just how bad things have gotten in Washington -- because there isn't an American outside of Washington who would not be sickened by it.

Just last month, John Edwards asked Senator Clinton to join him in taking the Democratic Party on the first step towards real reform -- to become the first party to refuse and reject the money of Washington lobbyists.

Senator Clinton refused to stand up to the lobbyist game. But you can send a message today to all of those in Washington that it's time for all Democrats to stop playing this rigged game by contributing what you can today

Posted by MB Williams at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's the text of Edwards' remarks:

This week -- as we will forever -- we remember those lost on September 11th. And this week, Washington refocuses on Iraq. But the question of Iraq is separate from September 11th -- as it has always been, whatever George Bush would have us believe.

It is time to end this war.

Posted by EBW at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Movement: Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, and Richardson

Waiting: Biden, Clinton and Obama

Not too surprisingly, the standard narrative is that our choices are limited to Waiting or Waiting.

Posted by EBW at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today's was the third time I've made an appearance at Department 3 at the Malibu Court, in the Western Division of Los Angeles County, and I've sat through most or all of four cycles of 50 cases per half-day. These are my personal observations:

1. the inability of Mexican nationals to obtain a California driver's license causes Mexican nationals to have to pay several hundred dollars more in fines and penalties than US nationals,
   
2. the fines levied for offenses are much, much less than the total monetary cost of accepting a reasonable plea offer, every overt amount should be multiplied by three or four, without taking any other form of cost into account,
   
3. the overwhelming majority of Mexican nationals processed in any session at the Malibu Court were operating vehicles that were either not currently insured, or otherwise cited for a vehicle defect, for vehicles registered themselves or to an employer, and are plead out in one appearance,
   
4. the overwhelming majority of US nationals processed in any session at the Malibu Court were operating vehicles while under the influence, or at speed or some similar form of dangerous recklessness and their cases, between alcohol treatment progress hearings, community service hours progress hearings, run to an order of magnitude more appearances,
   

The hidden cost of penalty assessments is a policy that should also be discontinued. Each person accepting a plea should be told not just the amount of fine, but also the amount of penalty assessment, and the use of secondary fines, the penalty assessments themselves, should be discontinued. Defendants accepting plea agreements which benefit the State vastly more than it benefits the defendants should not be told the full cost of "no contest" after they have entered a plea, at the clerk's office, when this knowledge could have been provided to them before they accepted the Court's standard offer for the offense charged.

John Edwards knows about poverty and he knows about courtrooms, though perhaps not the retail criminal court side as well as the complex civil litigation side. He's doing a poverty tour this week. So have I. I hope we can compare notes some day. I'm looking at people who are working to pay fines in the company town called ... Malibu, California.

Posted by EBW at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Of Al Gore.

Live Earth Adds DC Show to Global Event
By ERIK SCHELZIG
The Associated Press
Friday, July 6, 2007; 12:22 PM

-- Al Gore announced Friday a surprise Live Earth concert in Washington, foiling Senate Republicans who blocked Gore's attempt to bring his global warming extravaganza to the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.

The former vice president said the all-day "Mother Earth" concert would be held on the National Mall at the National Museum of the American Indian _ about two blocks from the Capitol _ as part of Saturday's concert series focused on climate change. The headliners are Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

"Global warming naysayers in the political world have not been able to have their way, because this will _ despite their best efforts _ be held on the Mall," Gore told The Associated Press.

The "Mother Earth" show had been previously planned, but Gore announced Friday that it would be part of the Live Earth series. The concert will also feature films, music, dancing and guest speakers, including scientists and cultural leaders from the American Indian community.

"There is no more important matter before us than the question of how to live sustainably on the Earth," said Tim Johnson, acting director of the American Indian museum and a descendant of the Mohawk tribe.

Clearly I'm an Al Gore fan, but on one issue, I was never completely thrilled with the former VP. Back in 2000, as Deputy Field Director for Gore-Lieberman in Maine, I organized the first ever meeting of the heads of the five Maine tribes and the visiting Gore. Unfortunately, at the very last minute, Gore's idiotic Executive Director, a woman they sent to a rural state who did not even possess a driver's license, declared the meeting off, as "Indians shouldn't be treated any differently than other "interest groups", such as labor unions." I submitted my resignation, but was convinced by other friends on the campaign to reconsider. But I never completely let go of my disappointment in Gore, that he never contacted the tribal leaders to apologize for his offending staffer and her clear lack of understanding of the inherent nation-to-nation relationship of Indian tribes to the US government.

So I hope that the NMAI's bailing out of Gore sticks with him, going forward, and he appreciates that, with this Administration in power, the good deed will not go unpunished. But I also hope Gore is smart enough NOT to have his picture taken with Principal Thief, er Chief, racist and Abramoff client, Chad Smith of the CNO.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jjames Martin Capozzola received the 2002 Koufax Award for Best Post for "Al Gore and the Alpha Girls" (published November 25, 2002). Capozzola's record in the Koufax Awards includes two additional nominations for 2002 (Best Blog and Best Writing), three nominations for 2003 (Best Blog, Best Series, and Best Writing), and two finalist nominations in 2004 (Best Blog and Best Writing).

We're re-linking to Jim's post because if you think about Al Gore differently this summer than you did in the summer of 2002, when most Dems had co-sponsored the USA Patriot Act, and were lining up to co-sponsor the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and were pre-voting "correctly" in the final quarters of the phoney Iraq disarmament crisis, its probably because Jim wrote this piece and the light went on for the rest of us.

Posted by EBW at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Poll of Democrats reveals Gore could still steal the show

Posted by MB Williams at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Eric,

In the months following the release of An Inconvenient Truth, I began to focus on why our democracy has been so slow to deal with the climate crisis. The unwillingness to solve this problem is not only the result of a lack of political will, but it has also been caused by the emergence of a new political environment dangerously hostile to reason, knowledge, and facts. In the long-term, this poses a threat to the very basis of American democracy: the ability of a well-informed citizenry to use the rule of reason to hold government accountable.

This Assault on Reason is the focus of my new book that goes on sale today. You can purchase the book at your local bookstore or by visiting:

http://www.amazon.com/Assault-Reason-Al-Gore/dp/1594201226

When George Bush launched his preemptive war in Iraq, more than 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorists who caused 9-11. After the 2004 election, when asked what stuck in their minds about the campaign, voters in Ohio named two ads playing to the fears of terrorism paid for by the Bush Campaign. One pattern that has held true since 2001 is that this White House is less interested in openness and truth than any previous administration.

We are facing so many long-term challenges, from the climate crisis and the war. We are facing so many long-term challenges, from the climate crisis and the war in Iraq to health care and social welfare. To solve these problems and move forward we need to reverse the damage done to our democracy. We have little time to waste.

My goal in The Assault on Reason is to explore why our public forum now welcomes the enemies of reason. More importantly, the book focuses on what we can do together, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason to our democracy.

You can purchase The Assault on Reason by visiting:

http://www.amazon.com/Assault-Reason-Al-Gore/dp/1594201226

My team will be emailing those of you who live in the cities that I will visit for book signings. I hope that I'll have the chance to see you in person.

I'll be back in touch soon.

Thank You,

Al Gore

Posted by EBW at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The point of LD 1866 is to change the current standard of Maine PUC review of Telcom mergers from "does not create a public harm" to the higher standard of "benefits the public." The real issue is what to do about the spin-off of the Verizon rural wireline business units in Northern New England and their employees and their contracts to Fairpoint management, in a merged entity that Verizon would own 60% of the equity.

I took a look at Fairpoint's last balance sheet and was underwhelmed. the Verizon/Fairpoint deal looks like a labor ripoff. It sure isn't going to be more capable of bringing broadband to Maine north of Lewiston, or New Hampshire north of Manchester, or Vermont east of Montpellier.

Dennis Kucinich chairs the Domestic Policy subcommittee of the Government Oversight and Reform Committee of the House of Representatives, and he was in Prescott Park on the banks of Portsmouth Harbor today and he announced that he would hold a hearing to review Verizon's sale to Fairpoint.

Smart move. Not just union-smart, but digital-divide rural smart, public policy and sustainable infrastructure smart. Its a two-Americas thing, and its in the New Hampshire media market.

Good job Dennis!. I hope John has something to say. Fairpoint is headquartered in Charlotte, NC.

Posted by EBW at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I made a call to whoever is staffing phones at Tom Allen's constituency office in Portland. Its on my cell phone, along with the Portland constituency offices of Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and the Bangor constituency office of Michael Michaud. Still, none of them are numbers I dial with any frequency.

The purpose of my call was to urge my Rep. to vote to for Murtha's two-months bill and for the current out-by bill, to stop the show in Iraq. I'm sure the staffers doing phones yesterday got more calls than just mine.

After I made the call I started thinking why I'd made the call. I get lots of party-activist mail, from the MDP, from other state Democratic parties, the DCCC and the DSCC, and the national candidates, as well as mail from some 527s and PACs. To a man (or woman), the managers of these lists and the people who's copy goes out under the name of the party or committee or whatever, are just exercising lists. Scan and dump, just like paper mail.

So why did mail from Working Assets, whom I've no institutional fondness for, they being an MBNA front that tried to milk the NSA digital snoop poop into a marketing tool for a long-distance reseller -- basically, their existence helps stifle cooperative, or credit union, or simply less rapacious than Deleware's gift to Maine, the call-centers of MBNA, alternatives to the real authors of the Bankruptcy Bill of 2005, and cooperatives, or simply less marginally gimick-driven alternatives to virtual downstream LD resale programs sold by all of the baby Bells and their still surviving competitors -- why did I respond to their mail to call Tom? Further, one that is, as usual, using the Standard American Narrative, that military operations in Iraq constitute a civil war, not the ongoing engagement of the Occupation forces and its indigenous allies by the indigenous resistance.

I think its becase I'm like most everyone else, and after the 5th or so ad impression, I bought the product. That is why eveyone who does paid media in campaigns does it by impressions. How many times will what percentage of the likely voters see or hear some visual or audio? That's what we plan, that's how we execute our paid media campaigns. No surprises there, except where did those four prior impressions come from?

That's what I thought about after the call, where in the universe of activist-targeted mailing list exercises did my four impressions originate? It wasn't the DCCC or the DSCC, they don't push issue votes. It wasn't any of the congressional campaigns, they don't push issue votes either. It wasn't the state parties, it was a national policy test issue vote. That left the DNC, the 527s, and the national candidates. To be sure, there was something from Howard, something from one or another 527, but the early and frequent question didn't lead to the DNC or any 527.

So on the national policy test issue vote of yesterday, and I don't think Iraq is the most important issue, or the most important aspect of the Commons vs Crown contest since the coup of December 2000, its just the issue and aspect that was voted yesterday, the leader of my party, of the party that I followed the leadership initiated message and committed one act of constituency push, was John Edwards. It was the last two weeks of videos and push mail.

Had it just been Dennis, there wouldn't have been the follow-on impressions by the 527s and others focused on policy rather than a vote of record by a primary or general election target.

If you made a call to a member of Congress yesterday, why did you and more importantly, who lead you to make that call? Not the first take-action message or the last take-action message, but the one(s) that made them stick. Who is the leader of your party?

Posted by EBW at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There are many criteria one may choose from to distinguish national candidates. We choose that of the record of candidates on the relationships between the United States, the states, and the tribes.

This week the House Natural Resources Committee holds a hearing on two federal recognition bills. H.R. 65 To provide for the recognition of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and for other purposes, and H.R.1294 To extend Federal recognition to the Chickahominy Indian Tribe, the Chickahominy Indian Tribe-Eastern Division, the Upper Mattaponi Tribe, the Rappahannock Tribe, Inc., the Monacan Indian Nation, and the Nansemond Indian Tribe.

John Edwards has an affirmative record on the relationships between the United States, the state of North Carolina, and the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Chris Dodd has a negative record on the relationships between the United States, the state of Connecticut, and the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation. Of course, as a national candidate, Chris Dodd may critically reexamine the posture of a Senator elected by the State of Connecticut, which in his lifetime affirmatively recognized no Indians whatsoever, and the posture of a candidate for national office, which has more International, Federal, State, and Tribal relationship complexities than that of one rich state intent on keeping Indians poor, landless, and without law.

This is important, not just for Indians, but for non-Indians. What is the basic relationship between Indians and non-Indians. Is it mutual respect and affection, or is it something less? The question is the same since May 3, 1493, when a Christian Prince answered "something less" (Inter Cetera), and June 2, 1537, when another Christian Prince answered "mutual respect and affection" (Sublimis Deus). As a matter of law, the United States formally operates under the first, not the second, of those two fundamental relationships.

Posted by EBW at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

When we tell people we've been on the road with four children for almost two years, a lot of people ask if we're homeschooling our kids. Of course we are spending time every day on encouraging each one to learn, and to develop specific skills -- Kezzie's started on sight words and arithmetic, Jonah has to use words to get everyday wants meet, even simple echolalic speech, and read, Sam has to read and write and speak in French to get his everyday wants meet, and Gracie has to study Latin and middle school math and read a dozen books a week. Even so, I never answer "yes".

Instead I say something like Kezzie being too young and something about the boys and autism and special ed, and Grace being unschooled, which I expect very few of our casual acquaintances at public camps grasp the nuances of -- the regime of Applied Behavior Analysis is a lot more rigorous than any concept of "school" as structured time and curriculum, and unschooling is not about dressing up truancy.

But "homeschooling" means participation in some religious cult, or worse, the rejection of shared education for reasons that have to do more frequently with race and class exceptionalisms than with the actual logistical challenges of moving from camp to camp, frequently because of what are the present form of the same anti-poor and anti-migrant laws that make Steinbeck and other producers and reproducers of the grim social realism of the 1930s mandatory reading for the adolescents of the present comfortable. In a week, away for 48 hours. 14 days in any 30 day period. No more than so many weeks in any campground in each region per year. A "reservation" system that favors the wealthier snowbirds, and adds $7/night to the cost of life, over local campers who, for any number of reasons, don't or can't "schedule" their time and place weeks, even months in advance.

Two years ago I remarked to MB that John Edwards, who was then working up a book on people's first houses, and all the work and hope, all the ordinary progressive civitas that goes with the idea of starter homes and young families, should be hitting the camps. The narrative of "first homes" is fine, and possibly less fictional than the narrative of "villages raising children", but the narrative of "last homes" is where the poverty is, where the illusions fail and the variable rate mortgages win. It where payday loans and no medical insurance play havoc and it all gets swept under a differently shared rug as "trailer trash", as if there is a biological explanation for life on a knotted shoestring.

He hasn't yet, but he does continue to talk about poverty, and its inverse, social privilege, and after today's arrest¹ -- once again, a "vacationer" who wanted something Jonah had, this time an unhurried walk down a shared auto/pedestrian right of way to the beach, and had a car and the car's horn to lean on to make Jonah surrender his carefree moment, because he should live in surprise and fear so someone with a real life and no handicaps can drive into a parking lot and get on with their scheduled, structured recreation -- poverty and social privilege and the hardly ever remarked upon keys to who is arrested, and who is not -- it's the Spanish speaking families that are warned off from picnics outside the day use area, not the English speaking families (Iowa City camps), it's the ...

Walter Shapiro interviewed John Edwards, and he probably thought he was being culturally cute when sparing with a parent about keeping his family intact during migratory work season, asking if "evolution" would be on the Edwards children's "homeschool" curriculum.

Now Salon is not the magazine of choice of migrants, it doesn't have a section on how to make do with what you, and your neighbors have, hand tools and electrical tape, and if it did, the Red Green show would, in all likelihood, be less inauthentic, and a whole lot funnier. Salon is also not the magazine of choice of parents of autistics. It wasn't until Robert Kennedy's piece, published the month MB and Gracie and Sam and Jonah and Kezzie and I gave up our home because of Sam and Jonah's autism, because of the need to never, ever, leave Jonah unsupervised, and the need to impose the draconian regime of measurement and challenge that is Applied Behavioral Analysis, to simply get "eyes" and all things that come from "eyes", that Salon had anything of note at all. If the public health event we know as the Autism Epidemic were the War in Iraq, Salon's writers and editors, and Salon's readers too, would not know there was a question about the WMD rational until well into the next decade. Their "quagmire" issue would appear in the Fall of 2017.

Last week in the Mojave Kezzie, Sam, and Gracie learned two dozen plants. Kezzie developed a special relationship with beavertail cactus, and of course Jonah met an aloe and took part of it to the nearest clinic for removal. Before that it was the truely awesome geography of the Lower Colorado, and as Tom noted in comments, migratory waterfowl that we never see in the west except in the winter. Before that, Joshua Tree. We traveled Route 66. We traveled the Mojave Road. We live history, Indian and non-Indian.

Somewhere along the road of working for a national campaign I began to appreciate that the people who take America seriously, who do the highways and byways conversationally, really are serious, regardless of party. There's much, much more to this than rhetoric at roadhouses, and chatting up the editoratti, and I think the Edwards' are making a good choice taking their children, and their children's education and expectations on the road with them. They may see camps and campers and wonder about lives like and unlike their own, and begin to tease out the invisible lines that divide us.

¹The crime for which I'm charged, damage to a vehicle used to intentionally menace and panic an autistic child, while between the car and the child, is a felony. The text from the California Penal Code is in the extended area. An additional charge of assault may be developed. Pedestrian right of way is something of a fiction in California State Parks and/or Los Angeles County, and car mirrors cost more than $400.

Continue reading "A Blog Entry of Little Importance" »

Posted by EBW at 06:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Suppose Dennis Kucinich acted today on the advice I offered two months ago, and put out policy on humanitarian relief for Iraqi refugees in Syria.

Would he be ahead of Bush, or behind him?

Amusingly, Raouf Rachid Abdel Rahmane went from Baghdad to London on a tourist visa in December and is looking for some kind of hand out. If you don't recall who he is, he was the hanging "judge" of the failed non-trial of the legal president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

Posted by EBW at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There are only two candidates in the race who's position I care enough to wish improved -- John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich. In what follows JRE is vastly improved over his remarks at the Herzliya Conference which Ynet picked up on January 23rd and I wrote up two days later in John Edwards and Wylie Coyote.

The complete interview is at Tapped.

JRE begins with this:

Number one, you have a radical leader, Ahmadinejad, who is politically unstable in his own country. The political elite have begun to leave him, the religious leaders have begun to leave him, the people aren't happy with him, for at least two reasons: one, they don't like his sort of bellicose rhetoric, and second, he was elected on a platform of economic reform and helping the poor and the middle class, and he hasn't done anything. In fact, while he was traveling, the leaders of the legislature sent him a letter saying, "when are you gonna pay attention to the economic problems of our country." So, I think we have an opportunity here that we need to be taking advantage of.

JRE is clearly better informed than, and smarter than anyone else, other than perhaps Dennis Kucinich, who's actually running, on Iran. But I don't know how many SWUs, how many centrifuge-years, in JRE's mind, constitutes a causus belli. I know that JRE will never allow Iranian Nuclear Fuels, Inc to compete, on price or availability or product quality, with USEC (NYSE:USU) or with BNF (UKGOV) or COGEMA (NYSE:CCJ) in the global LEU market. I just don't know at what point he's willing to go ballistic over market share.

Finally, there's a problem common to all the declared candidates. The NPT is dead. States from Brazil to Singapore are going to be acquiring fissile inventories and the means to transform those inventories into weapons for a long time to come. Every Congress, every Executive, of the most, or the second most, heavily armed nuclear weapons state on Earth, will have to reason intelligently, and correctly, about states approaching acquisition of fission weapons, and those which have weaponized some fissile inventory.

Its not one "first nuke", its a long series of "first nukes", and far too many nukes.

Posted by EBW at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Was it poor advance?

If your guy was doing a floating head via satellite in a hall where Richard Perle and Gordan England and James Woolsey set the standard for American policy makers, and you suspected that Dan Halutz might resign due to the total political and military botch-up of the 33 Day War, and if you knew that the first third of Orna Ben Dor's documentary on the screw-ups and cover-ups in the IDF, Guilty of his own death, was scheduled for national TV the evening after your guy was doing the floating head via satellite, and you wanted your guy to come off a whole lot smarter than the Ameri-Morons present in the hall, would you have advised doing the AIPAC-approved Ameri-Moron Standard?

Was it a bad book cover?

If the "blogger" who front-pages at Ha'aretz (Rosner is a "blogger" like I'm the US correspondent for Ha'aretz ) single handedly charged, tried, and convicted Jimmy Carter of anti-Semitism for writing critically about the "Roadmap for Peace" and the racial disintegration of the Israeli state, is your guy immunized from Carter-syndrome-by-proxy by doing the AIPAC-approved Ameri-Moron Standard?

Was it diving for dollars?

Political campaigns run on dollars and Finance Directors of national campaigns have their own ideas about what the Political Director is allowed to put in front of the candidate, and the Clinton campaign is committed to no public (small donor qualification) money and outspending (no caps) the competition.

US presidential candidate: Iran serious about its threats The text from Ynet is in the extended area, and there is a ton of video at the Ynet site.

It was a Wylie Coyote moment.

It was an opportunity to tell the Friends of Israel what every American who lived through, and many who didn't, the Second Indo-China War knows. Cluster munitions and daisy cutters produce casualties, they don't produce tactical or strategic advantage where the OpFors don't cooperate and mass for targeting, and the casualties are predominantly non-combatants. It was an opportunity to name the guys most responsible for putting Olmert, Peretz, Halutz and Adam at risk of political failure, who just happened to be in the hall ... Richard Perle and Gordan England and James Woolsey.

Wicked safe political territory.

It was a chance to talk about crime and politicians, to run the rhetorical tongue over the broken teeth of responsibility, resignation, no confidence votes and bills of impeachment, to wax lyrical about the role of law in a democracy, knowing that the US audience would fill in the blanks with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and the Israeli audience would fill in the blank with Katsav, Olmert and Halutz.

More wicked safe political territory.

It was a chance to talk about stolen elections and the distance between the perpetrators of electoral fraud and the average voter, on core issues like ... bellicosity. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's campaign voted the dead and flirts with war, mostly to avoid the heavy lifting of helping the poor in Iran, Ahmadinejad's signature campaign promise. George Bush stole the Florida and Ohio elections and has done everything to everybody except Osama Bin Laden. He could have talked about Katami and Rafsanjani and Karubi and Mooen -- the political alternatives in Iran, and the history of and potential future for Iranian-Israeli cooperation, and in the next breath, the history and potential future of American-Israeli cooperation, in the post-NeoCon period. Israel has poor too. One in four. It was a chance to talk about poverty and war, as if they are casually related.

Still more wicked safe political territory.

It was a chance to simply ask if there was anyone in the hall willing to stand and accuse James Earl Carter, the 39th President of the United States, or any President of the United States, of Anti-Semitism. Doing that and letting the people in the hall sit and squirm for a full 60 second count would have let everyone know that John Edwards values his friendship with Jimmy Carter, the office of the Presidency, and has no doubts about the military, political, economic and social dependency of Israel upon the United States. Mench oder Maus?

Not so wicked safe but who'd want to go with maus?

No candidate is perfect, no campaign executes perfectly every day, and anyone who can't recite the AIPAC-approved Ameri-Moron Standard in their sleep isn't ready, but it is the wrong message. The standard is just "stay the course", which simply leads to transit tubes for the returned dead.

A quiet day to reflect on why he wants his narrative to make Americans as uneasy as they are with standard narrative. This is one of those things that won't go away. And we can laugh at Wylie because its only celluloid.

Continue reading "John Edwards and Wylie Coyote" »

Posted by EBW at 08:29 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

On February 1st, 1954, Radio Luxembourg broadcast "Mes amis, au secours !"

The voice that came into the kitchens and living rooms of France simply said:

Mes amis, au secours... Chaque nuit, ils sont plus de 2 000 recroquevillés sous le gel, sans toit, sans pain, plus d'un presque nu. Il faut que ce soir même, dans toutes les villes de France, dans chaque quartier de Paris, des pancartes s'accrochent sous une lumière dans la nuit, à la porte de lieux où il y ait couvertures, paille, soupe, et où l'on lise sous ce titre "Centre fraternel de dépannage", ces simples mots : "Toi qui souffres, qui que tu sois, entre, dors, mange, reprend espoir, ici on t'aime."

My friends, help ... Each night there are more than 2,000 homeless people, in freezing weather, without a roof, without bread, some of them nearly naked. There must be this very evening, in all the towns of France, in every quarter of Paris, illuminated signs at the doors of places where there are blankets, straw, soup, where one reads under the heading of "Fraternal Relief Center" these simple words: "You who suffer, no matter who you are, enter, sleep, eat, restore hope, here you are loved."

The man who spoke those words just died.

Before 1954 the nightly guillotine of the poor during the winter was unmentionable. Eviction during the hardest part of the winter was a death sentence, usually carried out within 24 hours. After 1954 silence on the issue of shelter for the homeless was impossible.

L'Abbé Pierre changed France because French people wanted change. The function of public piety in French worked for the poorest of the poor, les sans-abri. It has worked better than the parties that control the distribution of wealth, and poverty, in France.

As recently as this winter tents were put up throughout Paris to provide shelter for the homeless not yet in any shelter. It is a public policy issue even the ever-triangulating, "trou dans l'air", post-Socialism, candidate of the Socialist Party, can't quite get away with by simply being photogenic and waving her hands.

L'Abbé Pierre is the author of the most enduring, the most sincere, program of work in the last half century to reduce the inhumanity of the comfortable towards the discomforted, in the French Republic. His conception of duty towards the poor was not limited to those comfortable enough to be members of a political party, to those comfortable enough to vote, to those with political currency left to spend, or those comfortable enough to affect piety.

It is impossible to imagine the piety that prevails in American political life of anything approaching the works of l'abbé Pierre, yet we have a duty, not simply to the voting poor, but to the non-voting poor. Climate change is reducing agricultural yeilds in Africa by a quarter. Our conception of "sans-abris" from the elements must extend to Muslim, Christian and Animist men, women, and children in East Africa, who face famine as fatal as freezing, because of Global Warming.

We should not follow the example of those who seek to replace health clinics in East Africa with churches.
Drought resistant seeds, not sermons, are what necessity requires.

Posted by EBW at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

According to Reuters Al Gore said on Monday in Tokyo that he will not be a candidate in 2008.

Posted by EBW at 09:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In 2004, John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign. Today, he has unfortunately chosen to open his campaign with political attacks on Democrats who are fighting the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

Howard Wolfson

We weren't at Morningside Heights yesterday. Senator Chuck Schumer, D-NY was, as were a lot of Clinton paid staff and hopeful clients. We don't know if they didn't applaud when 1,200 others present did, or remained sitting when the response of those others moved from applause to a standing ovation ... for what Howard Wolfson, a very experienced communications director, has characterized as a political attack on Democrats fighting the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

Not one of Wolfson's better efforts as a CD.

You don't have the right to ask your member to vote, although lobbyists obviously do have that right, and just as obviously, you don't have the right to vote for a primary challenger to an incumbent member who does attend to lobbyists and who doesn't answer your mail, because those are political attacks on ... Democrats fighting the Whatever Mumble.

Then there the choice of phrasing, "John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign" vs "John Edwards ran a positive campaign in 2004". The poorer choice was made, framing his client as the owner of the fairly tin-foil-hat story that there was a 2004 primary that all of us missed.

I've no idea if he or anyone else had anything to do with the person who asked JRE about his 2002 vote for the war. Marian Wright Edelman's reaction in praise of candor seems pretty balanced and normal to that "It turns me on to hear a political leader stand up and say 'I made a mistake."

Finally, there's the symbolism of the venue and the status and egos of the people who stood up when someone other than his client delivered decent lines. Wolfson doesn't appear to notice that a historic church isn't any old hall, and that a politically active congregation isn't a paid focus group. As far as he's concerned, the hall and the hicks aren't places and people, they aren't in politics.

I don't know if Wolfson's on-staff for the HRC presidential campaign this week, but he's been senior staff to HRC, and the DCCC, in the recent past. He didn't say "Great speech, great church, great people, but ..." and then work some doubt, some defensible weakness, into his target's position. Like "no" means complications with 140,000 troops marooned in the field while we settle authority and standing orders.

That's seven words before the ellipses.

He is right that Johnny Sunshine, all hope and happiness, is history. Its Johnny Get To Work this cycle.

Posted by EBW at 08:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Being interested in how Hossein Derakhshan (Hoder) is doing in Israel, I read Editor: Myself this morning, and at the bottom of his post When Thom Connects Tehran to Tel Aviv; After a Joint was this:

How about getting some Israeli DJs remising old Iranian pop-songs and start playing them in Tel Aviv clubs and making them available online for download; and some Iranian DJs remixing old Israeli popular songs and play them in Iranian parties in Tehran?

After four years of warfare, have you ever heard "enemy music" on the radio? Is everyone too patriotic to dance to the music people dance to from Tehran to Tel Aviv? Is it like playing a Mexican polka at a gathering of Tancredo's special people?

Courtesy of Jonah's sleep disorder I'd plenty of time for ... research in the pre-dawn hours this morning, and yesterday's pre-dawn hours, and ... I'm down to eating coffee beans.

I was reading the archives of The Arab American, a break from reading Al Ahram and the Star and everything else I normally read in the pre-dawn between Dehli and Paris. I know so little about Arabs in North America.

The number of people killed by AC-130 gunships on the southern extremities of Somalia on Tuesday and Wednesday at Hayo, Afmadow and Ras Kambona appears to be greater than three, and Fazul Abdullah Mohamed, Abu Talha Al-Sudani, and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan were not among the slain.

So, without further ado, what do I think of Dennis Kucinich's statement of the week.

First, is it the statement of a member of Congress, or the statement of a candidate for some other office?

If the former, it must be "co-equal aware", or even "congressional", that is, aware and either neutral to the growth of power of the Executive Branch since 1942, or explicitly diminishing the Executive Branch. A document Oliver Cromwell could have writ, while Parliament was subordinate to Charles Stuart.

If the latter, it could be "presidential", that is, having little regard for Congress as a co-equal branch of government. A document Cromwell could have writ, after Parliament made the already diminutive Charles shorter still by a foot.

The short answer is its obvious, he uses "The US announces" rather than "Congress votes to". I'll come back to that, if I don't fall asleep.

1. The US announces it will end the occupation, close military bases and withdraw.
2. US announces that it will use existing funds to bring the troops and necessary equipment home.
3. Order a simultaneous return of all US contractors to the United States and turn over all contracting work to the Iraqi government.

There really isn't a lot of meat in the text that accompanies these three items, and there should be. It is as big as the TVA and if Congress found out that the TVA wasn't generating electricity, or that it was damning roads, not rivers, or that the water was flowing upstream, there would be real detail in the Congressional proposal to provide oversight to the Army Corps of Engineers and every other domestic Halliburton along the way.

Dennis mumbles some dollar figures, but he's in the House, dollars are the instrument of policy.

4. Convene a regional conference for the purpose of developing a security and stabilization force for Iraq.
5. Prepare an international security and peacekeeping force to move in, replacing US troops who then return home.
6. Develop and fund a process of national reconciliation.

These are a little better, but it remains too close to his 2004 position "US OUT, UN IN". Everyone loves to wear penguin suits and be seen being important at big important peace conferences, but Blue Player (the US command in central-west Iraq) and Red Player (the 50+ overlapping and autonomous platoon-strength and above units of the Opposition Forces) need to disengage. They need to decrease their targeting of each other, and move from attrition to limited, and eventually non-engagement.

That means US arms, ammo, air, artillery, uniforms and non-uniforms stop riding shotgun with militias that are competing with Red Players' political wings. No direct conflict and no conflict by proxy.

At the point of cease-fire is when diplomatic and political work can begin, and the penguin suits and champers can be hauled out of ceder boxes and refrigerators. Just as each "six months more" puts off the day when it isn't "six months more of the same foolish failure", cluttering up the theater of military and police operations with extra states and jigsaw puzzle pieces of regional actors is simply avoiding the hard stuff. Not shooting back when shot at. Taking casualties. Taking "unnecessary" casualties. Moving from the kill-them-all nonsense of the reduction of Al-Falluja to measured response, always tending towards no response to diminishing provocations.

That's the hard part. Its toe tags and plasma bags and asking to fetch the dead and wounded rather than just calling in artie and air to "secure" the ambush site. It means not firing on enemies as long as they are deployed as police, or in ordinary transit, or doing anything except ... engaging US forces. Men don't get elected for saying that. Men don't retain commands for doing that. Yet we look to Grant and Lee as the greatest surrender makers of our history, and two vast armies passed through each other in peace, one surrendering only its artillery because they equally surrendered the cause of belligerency.

7. Reconstruction and Jobs.
8. Reparations.
9. Political Sovereignty.
10. Iraq Economy.
11. Economic Sovereignty.

These are his weakest points. Iraq was a socialist country before the War. Will it be afterwards? Forget about oil, look at the millions of jobs lost in all of the factories and workshops. "Free Market" and post-Soviet chaos, or does the economy go back to where it was during the "Golden Age" of sanctions? A few thousand orphans isn't the true size of the bill owed, and again, a member of the House should have appropriations numbers and a few pages from George Marshall's and Douglas MacArther's memoirs to support those numbers for the several two-year appropriations cycles while some fraction of the true bill is paid.

It wouldn't hurt if nationalizing Halliburton and rendering the chickenhawks for lamp oil and skin grafts was included, to cover the budget offset necessary to rebuild what Halliburton and the chickenhawks were happy to wreck.

12. International Truth and Reconciliation.

Die Groot Krokodil , PW Botha, died of natural causes in his home in post-reconciliation South Africa. Ian Smith is living a quiet peaceful life in post-reconciliation Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Its more than just a phrase. Its not arresting G.W. Bush at 12:01 on January 20th, 2009. Its not lynching down the childish "deck of cards" down to the duce of spades.

In sum, John Edwards' abstract proposal to decrement the head-count by a real number, and his concrete proposal to Congress as a co-equal branch of government, to use the power of the purse, are better attempts at a set of hard questions. They are less "candidatorial" and more ... substantial.

I wish I could write about Al Gore's recent public statements on the same question, but I haven't gotten the memo.

I knew I'd fall asleep. Here's what's really been worrying me since I knew Dennis had a statement in the offing. Is he listening? Not to me, that's a liklihood 1/very-large-integer probability, but to others.

If you read that post you'll find two recommendations at the end of it, made by people who were speaking to Dennis for above an hour -- Les Roberts, associate professor of Clinical Public Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and Juan Cole. What could have been in the N Points of a member of Congress was money to fund Les Roberts' recommendation -- to make a first-order survey of the public health needs of Iraq. I've no idea how much money that is, but I can say $10,000,000 faster than you can read it, and as a member, that amount can always be revised up, if too little, and any "overage" can be spent on medical supplies without a second's thought or instant of buyer's remorse. That's only half of what the US has paid in direct compensation to a very small fraction of the total mortality and morbidity bill.

The other recommendation was by Juan Cole, that the US cease killing Sunni Arabs for the Shia Arabs of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a proxy for Tehran.

Dennis glossed over that one too. So he's not listening. Yet.

Posted by EBW at 04:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Edwards for President Campaign just sent out a pointer to a message John Edwards' video production team produced today in preparation for a statement tomorrow. He's asking viewers to contact their representatives in Congress, directly or via his web site's user registration system, and cut off the funding for the war.

Here is the YouTube link, and there is more at the wetb site of the RIverside Church.

I wish that 24 hours ago there had been confidential communication between the JRE campaign, the DK campaign, and any of the Draft Gore projects, perhaps even ours, so that their candidate won't have to go through the first several news cycles after saying "Silence is Betrayal", that he's un-American or un-Patriotic, and digging his way out of being the only leading Dem really supporting the troops.

Its not who goes first. Its saving the Army as an institution, saving a lot of lives, and saving the Republic a lot more trouble.

I'll post something lauditory on draftgore, but I wish we weren't as headless as the French left, progressive and ecological parties and non-parties, their candidates and non-candidates, and their hacks and activists, trying to find a unitary candidate to run against the MSM's duet of triangulating "centeriists".

Posted by EBW at 08:54 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

We've three good men on our sidebar. Al Gore, John Edwards, and Dennis Kucinich. Yesterday John Edwards sent us this:

Dear Friend,

For the past two years, we've worked together to build an America that lives up to its promise -- one where we all share in prosperity at home and one that shows real moral leadership around the world.

I'm proud of our successes fighting poverty, supporting working families, and standing up for what we believe.

Now, we have a big decision to make -- and I do mean we.

I'm getting ready to take this effort to the next level - to bring Americans together in all fifty states to tackle the big challenges facing our country, from poverty and lack of health care, to energy and global warming.

But this is our effort, and we can only succeed if we're all in it together. So before I make a final decision, I need to hear from you: Are you ready?

If you're ready to take this to the next level, and launch a renewed national effort to change America, send me a note and let me know: JohnEdwards@readytochangeamerica.com

If you have friends or family who share this vision, I want to hear from them too. Please forward this on to anyone you know who might want to join this big new effort.

I believe we can run a totally new kind of endeavor -- one that puts our ideals into action, and puts the hopes and dreams of the American people above the personal ambition and play-it-safe strategy of traditional politics.

I can't promise you where this will ultimately lead. But I can promise you this: if you're on board, we'll launch a renewed commitment to change our country from the bottom up. We'll always speak from the heart. And together, we'll reach out to millions of people to let them know it's still okay to dream big dreams, and do everything we can to make them real --because that's what America is all about.

So the only question is: Are you ready?

If you want to take this effort to next level, send me an e-mail and let me know: JohnEdwards@readytochangeamerica.com

Stay tuned: I'll let you know what we decide early next week.

Happy holidays, and may it be a bright new year for all.

Your friend,

John

PAID FOR BY JOHN EDWARDS

If you would like to unsubscribe from email communications sent by John Edwards, please visit this link:
http://www.readytochangeamerica.com/unsubscribe.html

I wish he'd substituted details from his plan, either the '04 plan of public record, or the '08 plan, for how we can work together, for the generic committment of joining.

But if I wrote the letter I'm dead certain there would be parts I'd re-write every time I stepped away from the copy and then came back to it and re-read again, freshened by its absence. I know asking for money would be the part I'd write awkwardly in every draft.

Its a good letter. It presents an obvious problem directly. If we are to have good candidates, we need to create good campaigns. If John is your preference, write to him.

Posted by EBW at 11:29 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In yesterday's Taz there was a surprise.

CIA-Entführungen schon vor 9/11

Die US-Regierung hat die Verletzung von Menschenrechten im "Krieg gegen den Terror" mit den Anschlägen auf das World Trade Center gerechtfertigt. Doch schon vor dem 11. September hat der US-Geheimdienst CIA mutmaßliche Al-Qaida-Mitglieder verschleppt. Dies geht aus bisher unveröffentlichten Dokumenten des CIA-Ausschusses im Europa-Parlament hervor, die der taz vorliegen.

During the Bosnian War, Islamists were the targets of renditions. However, the CIA didn't actually torture the rendees until after the Atta Gang's attack with hijacked heavy aircrat on symbolic structures in North America. At least, as far as anyone was willing to disclose to Taz.

Who knew?

Then First Lady, now Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton?

Then Vice President Al Gore?

Then Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Wes Clark?

Posted by EBW at 08:06 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Eric,

After a quarter century, it has been interesting to be re-introduced to the political world. I have had the opportunity to meet congressional candidates Tessa Hafen and Jill Derby by attending a few rallies and fund-raisers for our son, Jack Carter, who is striving to become the next U.S. Senator from Nevada. Some notable differences have evolved in political campaigning.

These include the need for candidates to have great sums of money (I had practically none), a need to defend against negative advertising (Ford, Reagan and I just referred to each other as "my distinguished opponent"), and a need to overcome extreme partisan divisions (I relied heavily on moderate Republicans in the Congress).

In my inaugural address, I quoted my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, who said, "We must accommodate changing times but cling to unchanging principles." In fact, the basic moral and ethical values that define the American people have not changed. What we have seen is a radical abandonment of our principles in Washington during the past five years. This is a disturbing trend that Jack will help to correct when he is elected.

Recently, a young girl who came to Plains with a group, and asked whether she should be a Democrat or a Republican. I asked her a series of questions, and her answers let everyone there know that she was already a Democrat.

• Do you favor using America's great strength to preserve global peace or for launching pre-emptive wars?


• Do you believe we should protect the environment or let it be destroyed for immediate commercial advantage?


• Do you think that major tax reductions should be designed to favor the richest families or those who have to work for a living?


• Do you agree that the accumulation of enormous and unprecedented government deficits is a fair burden to be placed on our children and grandchildren?


• Do you approve of our government incarcerating prisoners without charges against them, legal counsel, or family visits -- and even excusing or condoning their torture?


• Do you believe we should ignore the advice of Jesus ("Render under Caesar...") and Thomas Jefferson ("Build a wall...") in keeping separate the church and state?


• Do you believe our government should reject or ignore all the nuclear arms control agreements since the time of Dwight Eisenhower?


• Do you consider it appropriate for our government agencies to spy on American citizens without first obtaining the legally required judicial approval?


• Do you believe that political leaders should deliberately strive to divide Americans from each other?

Click here to make a donation as we make history and "Change the Course of America"!

Sincerely,
Jimmy Carter

Paid for by Nevada Victory Fund 2006
A Joint Committee to Raise Funds for Jack Carter, Jill Derby, and Tessa Hafen
Funds will be allocated as follows. Jill Derby 33.3%, Tessa Hafen 33.3%
and Jack Carter 33.4%

Nevada Victory Fund 2006
607 14th Street 7th Floor
Washington, DC 20006

Posted by EBW at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Sara Robinson writes at David Neiwert's Orcinus an interesting piece on messaging in Red States. She starts with a note from Dave:

I simply don't believe that progressives will win rural districts by selling out their core values. I believe a lot of it has to do with framing those values in a way that rural people can identify with.

We've spent most of the past 14 months in rural districts¹ and we've some thoughts on the subject also.

Water is an issue. Drought relief is an issue. The RNC hasn't done very well on drought relief, and economically irrational draw-downs of Upper Mississipi tributary impoundments, from the Missouri south to the Canada, to float Upper Mississippi barge traffic, have killed hydro-electric and irrigation in the Northern Plains.

Since we know that running on inside-the-beltway issues -- choice, peace, and so on, our view, "the correct view", isn't competitive, why bother? Why not run on water? Why not run on draught? Yes, it is Climate Change, Al's issue, but what farm, what ranch, between the Mississippi and the Cascades and Sierras, will be saved by burning western coal? They can stomach our godless communism, or sell off everything down to the homestead trees and go where ever the Hoover/Bush economy takes the dried out.

We won't know unless we try, if bread and butter trumps Rove's script in the national kabuki theater. And we can level with them, if they won't save themselves, we can afford to let them fail.

¹MI-01, MI-02, MI-04, NC-11, KY-02, IA-01, IA-02, IA-04, WI-07, MN-01, SD-AL, NE-03, WY-AL, CO-01

Posted by EBW at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last February I wrote that while there was no substantive difference between Lamont and Lieberman on health care, Lamont, the insurgent, could be for single payer, that it makes no sense not to run against a system that can't be fixed, but is wildly profitable, and wildly unpopular.

Today I've worse. There is a substantive difference between Lamont and Lieberman on global warming. Lamont is opposed to prescriptive standards, the core of Kyoto. The Climate Stewardship Act of 2003, aka "McCain-Lieberman", co-sponsored by John McCain, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, and Jim Jeffords, contained limits, prescriptive standards, on the amount of greenhouse gases U.S. power plants and industries could emit.

George Bush opposes the Kyoto Protocol and McCain-Lieberman, because they are prescriptive standards. Ned Lamont also opposes prescriptive standards, according to his website link.

Three years ago much of the blogosphere (y! sctp!) was less aware of the importance of Global Warming as a public policy problem than it is today, so as a reminder, here is a portion of the statement of David G Hawkins, Director, NRDC Climate Center, on the day The Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 was defeated, 46 to 53.

The vote marks a turning point in the global warming debate. For the first time, Americans know where their senators stand on this critical issue. The strong, bi-partisan support for the McCain-Lieberman bill shows the growing number of senators who reject a voluntary, do-nothing approach. This vote is a wake-up call for the White House and those big polluting industries that have been fighting to stop progress at all costs.

"The bill combines sensible standards with a proven, market-based system that fosters maximum technological innovation at minimum cost. It is a serious and balanced approach that has strong support from both business and the environmental community. The opposition to the bill is based on pessimism that is alien to the American spirit. We don't cover our eyes in the face of a challenge; the American way is that when we see a problem, we fix it.

A careful reading of Lamont's "Energy Independence and the Environment" issue page reveals much more interest in non-environmental process issues, e.g., confirmation votes for Alito and Roberts, rather than in fundamental environmental policy. The same issue page hits at Lieberman's vote on HR 6, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, in several paragraphs, but if Lieberman had switched his vote, the bill would have passed by 73 to 27, rather than 74 to 26, so that's an utterly non-serious waste of policy discussion space.

The latest polls show three-quarters of the electorate favor prescriptive standards. Insurgents should know these things.

Posted by EBW at 07:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Pat's never been a Bush War koolaid drinker. Here's a fragment of an OpEd he wrote that is in today's Merky News

...
Think back. Had President Reagan done to Lebanon, when half a dozen Americans were seized as hostages, what Israel has done, when two soldiers were taken hostage, Democrats would have denounced Reagan as a war criminal. Conservatives would have begged him to ease up.

Yet almost to a man and woman, our politicians are falling all over one another to express their 100 percent support of what Israel has done to Lebanon. Even Israelis must feel a measure of contempt for this kind of groveling.
...
Whatever happens to Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, the new center of gravity of the Democratic Party is anti-war. Democratic hawks are a dying species. Al Gore now emerges, given his authentic anti-war credentials and emergence as a world leader of the global-warming movement, as the left's best hope for the nomination.

Kerry and Edwards, the 2004 ticket, know which way the wind is blowing. Both have declared that had they known in 2002 what they know today, they would not have voted for the war. Hillary Clinton senses the ground shifting beneath her feet. Last week, she scourged Donald Rumsfeld, called for his resignation and denounced Pentagon mismanagement of the war.

Two years and three months before November 2008, the Democratic Party has pulled out of the Bush coalition; two-thirds of the nation considers Iraq a mistake; and a majority wants the troops home.
...

Here is the link to the original.

¹Mr. KUCINICH (for himself, Mr. RANGEL, Mr. ABERCROMBIE, Ms. SLAUGHTER, Ms. KAPTUR, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. CLEAVER, Ms. LEE, Ms. WOOLSEY, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. FILNER, Mr. STARK, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr. HONDA, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Ms. WATERS, Mr. MORAN of Virginia, Mr. RUSH, Ms. BALDWIN, Ms. KILPATRICK of Michigan, Ms. MCCOLLUM of Minnesota, Ms. SOLIS, and Mr. MEEKS of New York)

Posted by EBW at 02:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Thirteen months ago we were on the Western shore of Lake Champlain, the remnants of Katrina were dumping inches of rain on us, and the wireless operator community was beginning to put together what became several efforts, and a collective dive into the least functional of all Federal Agencies -- the Federal Emergency Management Agency, under the Bush Regime's Cheritoff and Brown. It took a full month for FEMA to generate a pass for the wireless operator community volunteer organizations -- in the meanwhile we were simply not getting caught while delivering what it could not -- data to the dataless, and if you think data is a Yuppie luxury, try finding a motel from a single phone that does not accept incoming calls, and is shared by several thousand people, also tring to find a motel, or an aunt, or a social worker.

What pleased me in John's letter (a DSCC mailing, nothing personal) was this:

The tragedy is an opportunity to build the Gulf Coast a "built to last" infrastructure for the 21st Century. That means modern mass transit, like light-rail, that will help connect people to jobs. That means energy-efficient businesses and homes. That means bringing high-speed broadband to fuel jobs and innovation in the region.

The DSCC is hosting a petition to urge the Regime to develop a Comprehensive Plan for the Gulf. It is a worthwhile goal, even if it has to wait until Al, or John, is in the Oval.

Posted by EBW at 04:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Former President Carter has written Stop the Band-Aid Treatment, We Need Policies for a Real, Lasting Middle East Peace, which appears in the WaPo.

Some quotes:

... it is inhumane and counterproductive to punish civilian populations in the illogical hope that somehow they will blame Hamas and Hezbollah for provoking the devastating response.

Israel should withdraw from all Lebanese territory, including Shebaa Farms, and release the Lebanese prisoners.

Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored.

Direct engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Palestinian Authority and the government in Damascus will be necessary if secure negotiated settlements are to be achieved.

We recommend everyone think several times before going off in some other direction.

[Cross-posted at Draft Gore 2008 PAC.

Posted by EBW at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I've just posted the Arab-American Institute's list of humanitarian organizations working in Lebanon at Draft Gore 2008 PAC.

Do the right thing.

Posted by EBW at 06:44 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Vaughn Walker's decision on AT&T's motion to dismiss the class action brought by the EFF (NSA collaboration) is here (72pp, 245KB).

It is a tour of the "state secrets privilege", from United States v Burr (1807) to the present.

Posted by EBW at 09:52 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Joe Barton gets Ten Gs from electrical utilities. A lot of them. As the Chair of Energy and Commerce, he's got their interests, converting cheapest coal into highest share prices, on his todo list. Yesterday he conviened a hearing Questions Surrounding the "Hockey Stick" Temperature Studies: Implications for Climate Change Assessments, which sought to discredit the "knee" in the curve of the "hockey stick" -- the part where modern data differs significantly from six centuries of historical data, rising from a baseline towards ... a slap shot into a net we can't defend.

Michael Mann's hockey stick study is now eight years old. It is as secure as Andrew Wiles' roughly contemporanious proof of the Shimura-Taniyama-Weil Conjecture for a class of examples, including those necessary to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.

Real Climate, a climate science blog where Mann sometimes posts, has a reply to the Wegman report. It's pretty dismissive. The URL is The missing piece at the Wegman hearing.

Posted by EBW at 03:33 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

MB's kicking off a "how many are in for an eagle" fund and levee raising over at Draft Gore 2008 PAC. I'm fond of rare coins. Its a platonic relationship, the closest I've come to holding rare coins was in Munich, when an elderly White Russian woman spilled her store of Athena's silver owls into my hands -- which just about stopped my heart. Warfare does odd things to national collections, even the Romanoff's.

If you don't happen to have a 1914 Indian Head Eagle lying about the house, please use something more prosaic to let MB know the count and therefore, the amount, of support Al has circa End of May / Start of June in this minor arm of the spiral galaxey known as the blogosphere (y!sctp!).

Posted by EBW at 12:21 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The spruce-fir coniferous boreal forest that replaces the mixed stands of pine species and yellow birch, sugar maple, and American beech, which in turn replaces the mixed pine and white and black oak stands of the Piedmont broadleaf forest, has been present at and above the 6,000 foot level of southern Appalachias since the retreat of the Wisconsin ice sheet, 14,000 years ago.

In a uniform mixing model of global warming, the contour that demarks the spruce-fir and mixed pine and deciduous species forests will, as global temperatures rise, simply move upwards, like the sea levels at Diego Garcia and Bikini Atoll, until the last spruce-fir climbs into the clouds, like the woman who decended from the sky land on the root of a turnip in Siksika legend, in reverse.

I don't know that a uniform mixing model of global warming will be supported by data. I do know tree stress when I see it, and I saw a lot of it today in the spruce-fir stock at the top of the highest peak east of the Rockies. Dew and ice collected at the summit has had pH values as low as 2.1.

The primary cause is atmospheric sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), of which 2/3 of all SO2 and 1/4 of all NOx comes from burning coal by electrical utilities.

The Clean Air Act isn't simply some aesthetic fashion statement. Slowing the rate of increase of atmospheric carbon loading isn't made more trivial by taking the northern and eastern forests out for a century long non-reproductive stress test via acidification on the conifers and ozone on the broadleaf species. Thats a lot of carbon dioxide not taken out of the atmosphere.

Posted by EBW at 07:56 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

DRAFT GORE 2008 PAC, aka "DG08 PAC" is now registered with the FEC as a Non Connected Committee. Would everyone not a primary CO or holding an electoral politics 4F deferrment kindly report to the closest induction center. Thanks in advance.

Posted by EBW at 07:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

William Arnold, the film critic for the Seattle Post Intelligencer is not an Alpha Girl. He recently sat down recently to interview Al Gore. Please check out his impression of Gore:

At age 58, he radiates energy, good health and, above all, this idealistic sense of purpose. Unlike a lot of celebrities out of the camera's eye, he seems totally relaxed and easy in his own skin, even though he would rather be wearing jeans than the standard-issue business suit with which destiny has stuck him.

As we talk for the next 45 minutes, his manner is funny, self-deprecating and effortlessly charming but his message is deadly serious. He does not talk down to me in any way and it seems crucial to him that I get what he's saying, and fully grasp the gravity of the problem he's outlining.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is the opening of the new Al Gore movie, An Inconvenient Truth. The opening of the movie will allow a test of the accuracy of years of media and pundit spin about Gore.

After all, for years we have been told over and over again that Al Gore is stiff. He has a wooden persona and a pedantic speaking style. He is not authentic. He lacks passion. You need another cup of strong black coffee just to make it through one of his talks. He is known in some circles as AlBore.

If all of that is right, the movie will be a great big flop. The movie is just Al Gore giving a PowerPoint presentation about global warming. If the pundits and the alpha girls have been right all along, no one is going to go to the movie and if anyone actually does see it, they will be bored to tears.

If, on the other hand, the film is a success, the alpha girls need to get a different mantra about Al Gore. What will constitute success? Well, first of all the movie is a documentary. It should not be compared to The Da Vinci Code, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter. A more relevant comparison will be the success of other politicians promoting their pet issues. George W. Bush has spent innumerable hours on our TV screens promoting the Iraq war. How popular has that been? Being the guy people want to have a (non-alchoholic) beer with doesn't seem to have helped the popularity of that issue. How many people would plunk down seven bucks to watch John McCain talk for two hours about his pet issue, campaign finance reform? Those are the appropriate comparisons.

If the movie is a success, what new mantra should the alpha girls adopt regarding Al Gore? He has been a journalist, a successful politician, a best selling author, a teacher, a visionary businessman, and (perhaps) a movie star. Instead of portraying him as the boring nerd with the pocket protector, perhaps the alpha girls should consider him "most likely to succeed" in the class.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, while doing my daily trolling of news on Al Gore, I came across this opinion piece in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Democrats will err if they pick Gore By Eric Peters

WASHINGTON -- It took three election losses as the Democratic presidential candidate to push William Jennings Bryan onto the Chataqua circuit expounding a version of fundamentalist Christianity that would make Pat Robertson seem as tame as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

It took only one presidential loss - although surely the most controversial one in U.S. history - to send Al Gore onto the true believer's lecture trail spreading the doctrine of catastrophic climate change.

After taking a brief respite from politics to dabble as a college lecturer, Gore has been touring the national TV and town hall lecture circuit sharing his apocalyptic vision of our future - one that not so coincidentally resembles that in the disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow."

To be sure, he has wandered from his "the sky is falling" litany to denounce the Bush administration for its questionable pursuit of nation-building in the Middle East. But other than to drop real world matters to thwart the evil forces of future global warming, he said little about how he would stymie the here-and-now forces of global terrorism. We also know only what we can assume on how he would address such pressing domestic issues as Social Security, immigration, tax reform and health care.

Still, whatever his current disclaimers, it seems certain he currently is in training for a run at the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 - if only to derail the megastar senator from New York, the more moderate, brighter and harder-working Hillary Clinton.

(Emphasis mine)

Before I go further, just who is Eric Peters, you might ask? According to the Tribune, Peters "is a columnist for The Army Times and AOL.online." But a little Googling provides a bit more of a biography:

Eric Peters is a veteran Washington, D.C.-based automotive writer who has written extensively about new cars, the automobile industry and its products. He also enjoys writing about regulatory issues affecting cars and their owners.

Peters has contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Human Events, the Free Market and numerous other publications.

A member of the Washington Automotive Press Association (WAPA) and the International Motor Press Association, he has written hundreds of new car and truck reviews during the six years he's been a staff writer at The Times.

An "automotive writer"? And where else has Peters plied his journalistic skills? How about The American Spectator and the National Review Online.

But back to Peter's most recent column:

[Gore] and a number of other old Democratic bulls, including John Kerry and Joe Biden, would like nothing better than to plant some political land mines in the path of Hillary Clinton, the clear front-runner for their party's nomination. Gore's political allies are quietly whispering to key Democrats that Mrs. Clinton can win the primaries, but can't win the general election because of her high negatives.

But many of those negatives are starting to disappear. Hillary has moderated her views substantially since her election to the Senate six years ago - or at least, the expression of those views. She has learned the art of compromise and reached out to her colleagues across the aisle - even earning their praise at times for her hard work and reasonable attitude.

Now, this is in no way yet another "bash Hillary" hit piece. I'm more concerned as to why Peters, who only two years ago, singled out Clinton for trashing in the American Spectator due to her support of tougher seatbelt laws (along with Republican John Warner, who strangely enough, was not the subject of Peter's wrath), has decided she is worthy of such glowing praise. And why does such an overt, oil-loving conservative, suddenly show such interest in Democratic primary politics anyway?

In short, she has become the antithesis of Gore, who has become increasingly bitter and partisan as he pushes his green agenda around the country. Whoever takes the oath of office in January 2009 must be, for the good of the country, a person amenable to reason - and reasonableness. Hillary may be a better alternative of the two.

Gore has shown no capacity for compromise and, indeed, is building his base only on the far left with the help of MoveOn.org and Howard "The Scream" Dean's squadrons of online zealots.

It is he, not Hillary Clinton, who is too far to the left to win the general election.

After reading Peters' April 30th column linked above, "There's no good substitute for oil and gas", I decided to dig a little deeper. That was how I came across this 2003 piece at the National Center for Public Policy Research, entitled "The Car They Want You to Drive", co-authored by none other than president of NCPPR, Amy Ridenour.

Those of you who have followed the tribal fund scam side of the Abramoff scandal may be familiar with Ms. Ridenour. Seems she unwittingly allowed her old friend, Jack Abramoff, to launder a couple million dollars in tribal client money through her organization. Of course, Senate Indians Affairs Committee Chairman John McCain found no reason at all to question Ridenour's honesty, despite the fact that Ridenour also had strong ties to other Abramoff accomplices, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, as they'd all been officers in the College Republicans together, back in the 1980s, and kept "in touch" over the years, particularly with Norquist. Over the years, Norquist has actively promoted the NCPPR, particularly their efforts to undermine government regulation of energy companies.

NCPPR, with financial backing from energy companies, took on the issue of global climate change in 1997, with V.P. David Ridenour's editorial, "Cure to Global Warming Could Be Worse Than the Disease" and the formation of the Kyoto Earth Summit Information Center to oppose US participation in the Kyoto Treaty. In 2002, funded primarily by ExxonMobile, NCPPR launched the Envirotruth website, which lists on its front page, the "Top Climate Change Myths".

From the mid-90s on, open warfare on then VP, and assumed 2000 Presidential contender Al Gore was the moving force behind NCPPR's "environmental" campaign. Ironically, they weren't alone in that regard. As I written on extensively, Norquist and Colorado AG Gale Norton, with help from Republican Congressional leaders Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott and Texas Governor George W. Bush, and funded by oil, gas and mining interests, formed the green-scam organization, the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates (later renamed the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy) or CREA, whose apparent sole mission was the undermining of VP Al Gore's environmental credentials. Ironically, beginning in 2001 CREA was also used to launder tribal funds from Abramoff clients, with proceeds used to promote drilling in ANWR.

Eric Peters' ties to Amy Ridenour and the NCPPR, his history of shilling for oil and gas companies and ties to rabidly conservative media outlets should be seen as fair warning that the "exploitive" arm of the Republican Party is very concerned about the possibility of Al Gore running in 2008, just as they were in the late 1990s. I'm not about to try and analyze why Peters' seems so amenable to Hillary over other potential Democratic nominees, including moderates such as Mark Warner and Evan Bayh. But I'm frankly perplexed over the animosity shown towards a man who even yesterday claimed,

"I don't really like politics anymore," Gore said. "I don't think I'm particularly good at it. I used to really enjoy it. I'm not at a stage of my life where I'm going to say, 'Never again under any circumstances would I consider it.' But that's more the internal shifting of gears. It's not an effort to be coy. I'm not planning to make another campaign."

The question we should be asking ourselves is whether it's purely coincidental that such an open campaign against a non-candidate takes off within a month of the previous campaign's architect, one Grover Norquist, returning to King Bush's Court after a year in scandal-induced exile?

Posted by MB Williams at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The One America Committee. As JRE is MB's favorite Breck girl, you really should check it out.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We returned from our rescheduled-due-to-relocation trip to Mouseland last night, and I've spent much of the day depressurizing. I did have computer access while away, but chose to ignore all but the most pressing Koufax issues, eschewing you all to bath in the glow of four happy Disney-overdosed children.

So today was my first opportunity to sift through last week's buzz, and saw that my favorite Breck Girl, John Edwards, joined by Jack Kemp, was Russert's guest on last Sunday's Meet the Press.

I'm sure that Edward's performance didn't go over well with the some of the perfection-demanding purists on the Left, but after reading the transcript, I have no major bones to pick. In particular, I have a hard time not respecting a public figure, particularly a presidential candidate (former and future) who can say this to one of Russert's "gotcha" attempts:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Edwards, in November of 2005, you wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, and said this: “I was wrong. Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told—and what many of us believed and argued—was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda. It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake." Why were you so wrong?

SEN. EDWARDS: I don't think I was the only one who was wrong, but I'm the one who had to make the judgement about how to vote on this resolution about Iraq. I listened to the information we got on the Intelligence Committee which I served on. I talked to former Clinton administration officials. And it turns out that the very premise for voting for the resolution and for the invasion of Iraq, which was the presence of weapons of mass destruction, was inaccurate. It was wrong. I had an independent responsibility to make a judgement and cast this vote. It turns out that the vote was wrong and my judgement was wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: In February of '05, you praised the turnout in the election as a wonderful, extraordinary thing. And then back in November of '03, you were on MEET THE PRESS and I asked you about your vote then. Let's listen to your response in November of '03.

(Videotape, November 2003):

MR. RUSSERT: Do you regret your vote in giving George Bush, in effect, a blank check for the War in Iraq?

SEN. EDWARDS: No. I voted for what I believe was in the best security interest of the American people.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: That was after the war had begun considerably. We hadn't found WMD. What, what caused the change in your thinking?

SEN. EDWARDS: Well, the truth is I was, then, I was still trying to defend my vote. When the election was over and I had time to think about this and reflect on it, it became increasingly clear to me that I talk a great deal about the need for moral leadership in America and for America to provide moral leadership for the world. Well, the foundation for moral leadership is the truth. And for me, saying that my vote was wrong is the truth. And so I thought it was important to say it.

MR. RUSSERT: In October - I'm sorry, in February of '02, you said, "I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country." Do you believe that was accurate?

SEN. EDWARDS: No. No, it's not accurate. I was wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: Just dead wrong.

SEN. EDWARDS: I was wrong. Absolutely.

Frankly, I can't get my head wrapped around how some in the anti-war contingent will rip John Edwards apart for his original support of the war, despite admissions like this, and yet not only give Jack Murtha a pass, but hold him up as a more palatable Democratic presidential nominee than Mr. Edwards. On nearly every other subject of import to Progressives, Edwards stands head and shoulders above the exceedingly conservative, and borderline corrupt, Jack Murtha. (It would be quite the irony to see Murtha, who showed up for but in the end declined the bribe, face off against Keating Five tainted McCain for the White House in 2008.)

Edwards support of poor and working class Americans and resident immigrants, from the creation of the Center on Poverty to his hands-on support of hotel workers are actions which, not unlike Al Gore's recent projects, should be viewed as the call to arms for the Democratic Party, not just a quaint, yet insignificant hobby. The issues within US borders are no less important than those thousands of miles away.

Also in the MTP transcript were the first strands of what I imagine will be the theme of Edwards' 2008 campaign: Responsibility. Not all that surprising from a man who made his fame and fortune demanding large corporations be held responsible for injuring children. And thus not surprising that he's willing to hold himself to the standard to which he believes we should hold all those in power, whether Eli Lilly or the POTUS.

(Note: I've included the entire transcript on the Edwards/Kemp segment in the extended entry.)

Continue reading "Catching up, and a review of JRE on MTP" »

Posted by MB Williams at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Just before the approaches to Portsmouth, NH, on the Boston-Portland road, there is a turnoff named "Greenland". It catches my eye every single time I drive the Boston-Portland road. I've seen Greenland once from the air, utterly white, then.

Peter Høeg's other book, Borderliners, is worth the read. Recommended to other POAs. Rodale is sending me a reviewer copy of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

Posted by EBW at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

We've a copy of the Gore text link. We were on the con-call, courtesy of the The Liberty Coalition and the American Constitutional Society.

Posted by EBW at 08:28 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Liberty Coalition press release:

News Advisory:

-- Major Address: Monday, Jan. 16 at 12 p.m.

-- Al Gore to Warn of Threat to Constitution From President's Actions

-- Wake-Up Call for Legislative, Judicial Branches: Wiretap Policy Only Latest Extension of Unchecked Executive Power

-- Introduction by Former Rep. Bob Barr highlights breadth of ideological concern over abuse of executive power

WHAT: Major address by Al Gore

WHEN: Monday, Jan. 16 at 12 p.m. (doors open at 10:30 a.m.)

WHERE: DAR Constitution Hall, 1776 D Street, NW, Washington, D.C.

Former Vice President Al Gore will deliver a major address Monday on the threat posed by policies of the Bush Administration to the Constitution and the checks and balances it created. The speech will specifically point to domestic wiretapping and torture as examples of the administration's efforts to extend executive power beyond Congressional direction and judicial review.

The Vice President will make the case that the country -- including the legislative and judicial branches and all Americans -- must act now to defend the systems put into place by the country's founders to curb executive power or risk permanent and irreversible damage to the Constitution.

The extent of bipartisan concern over these issues is highlighted by former Republican Rep. Bob Barr's introduction of the Vice President next Wednesday, and by the organizations cosponsoring the speech.

The Liberty Coalition brings together ideologically diverse organizations across the political spectrum, including liberal and conservative groups, to preserve the Bill of Rights, personal autonomy and individual privacy.

The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) is one of the nation's leading progressive legal organizations. Founded in 2001, ACS works to ensure that the fundamental principles of human dignity, individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, and access to justice are in their rightful, central place in American law.

Just how far is it from Pittsburgh to DC?

Update: Eric spoke with the PR contact at Current TV. Al's speach isn't being handled by Current. This is a good thing. Eric's still trying to get the video/audio bits that C-SPAN will be streaming live noon EST Monday (and in reruns) so we can wrap them up for a URL click.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It is a little trite in spots, but there it is, with the NRO's hitcount -- link.

In a recent piece on blogs and journalism, E. J. Dionne remaked that some bloggers are completely parasitic upon newspapers, a fair point. When Jonah has a sleep event and I'm too unfocused to read technical documentation or write code, I read newspapers. When the sameness gets unendurable, I look for sources, usually in West Asia.

Ryan Lizza's piece in the NRO is completely parasitic upon blogs and scoop sites that aren't blogs. In computer science everything is just indirection, and parisitism (upon parisitism upon journalism) attempting to pass as journalism is ... one of those indirection jokes that put smiles on the faces of programmers.

Its one of the "Only Al can stop Hillary" pieces, which sort of misses the point that Al and Hillary are very different, hypothetical heads of the Executive Branch.

Posted by EBW at 06:24 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

According to Sarahlane in a DailyKos diary this afternoon, this will appear in tomorrow's Washington Post:

The Right Way in Iraq

By John Edwards
Washington Post Sunday, November 13, 2005; B07

I was wrong.

Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price.

The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth.

While we can't change the past, we need to accept responsibility, because a key part of restoring America's moral leadership is acknowledging when we've made mistakes or been proven wrong -- and showing that we have the creativity and guts to make it right.

The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.

George Bush won't accept responsibility for his mistakes. Along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, he has made horrible mistakes at almost every step: failed diplomacy; not going in with enough troops; not giving our forces the equipment they need; not having a plan for peace.

Because of these failures, Iraq is a mess and has become a far greater threat than it ever was. It is now a haven for terrorists, and our presence there is draining the goodwill our country once enjoyed, diminishing our global standing. It has made fighting the global war against terrorist organizations more difficult, not less.

The urgent question isn't how we got here but what we do now. We have to give our troops a way to end their mission honorably. That means leaving behind a success, not a failure.

What is success? I don't think it is Iraq as a Jeffersonian democracy. I think it is an Iraq that is relatively stable, largely self-sufficient, comparatively open and free, and in control of its own destiny.

A plan for success needs to focus on three interlocking objectives: reducing the American presence, building Iraq's capacity and getting other countries to meet their responsibilities to help.

First, we need to remove the image of an imperialist America from the landscape of Iraq. American contractors who have taken unfair advantage of the turmoil in Iraq need to leave Iraq. If that means Halliburton subsidiary KBR, then KBR should go. Such departures, and the return of the work to Iraqi businesses, would be a real statement about our hopes for the new nation.

We also need to show Iraq and the world that we will not stay there forever. We've reached the point where the large number of our troops in Iraq hurts, not helps, our goals. Therefore, early next year, after the Iraqi elections, when a new government has been created, we should begin redeployment of a significant number of troops out of Iraq. This should be the beginning of a gradual process to reduce our presence and change the shape of our military's deployment in Iraq. Most of these troops should come from National Guard or Reserve forces.

That will still leave us with enough military capability, combined with better-trained Iraqis, to fight terrorists and continue to help the Iraqis develop a stable country.

Second, this redeployment should work in concert with a more effective training program for Iraqi forces. We should implement a clear plan for training and hard deadlines for certain benchmarks to be met. To increase incentives, we should implement a schedule showing that, as we certify Iraqi troops as trained and equipped, a proportional number of U.S. troops will be withdrawn.

Third, we must launch a serious diplomatic process that brings the world into this effort. We should bring Iraq's neighbors and our key European allies into a diplomatic process to get Iraq on its feet. The president needs to create a unified international front.

Too many mistakes have already been made for this to be easy. Yet we must take these steps to succeed. The American people, the Iraqi people and -- most important -- our troops who have died or been injured there, and those who are fighting there today, deserve nothing less.

America's leaders -- all of us -- need to accept the responsibility we each carry for how we got to this place. More than 2,000 Americans have lost their lives in this war, and more than 150,000 are fighting there today. They and their families deserve honesty from our country's leaders. And they also deserve a clear plan for a way out.

John Edwards

For nearly four years I have supported this man, despite that terrible vote. Thank you, Senator Edwards for admitting that mistake. I look forward to supporting you for the next ten, particularly as POTUS.

Posted by MB Williams at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Eric asked that I provide him with my collection of links to speeches of Al Gore. I decided to post them instead. As I am a blogger, the speeches are listed in reverse chronological order. I have others in my files (particularly from his Senate days, his time as Vice President, and the 2000 campaign) and will add them if anyone is interested. If you have links to Al Gore speeches (particularly since Decmber 2000) that do not appear on the list below, please send me a link.

This Time, Let Him Serve

October 5, 2005, New York, New York, American Democracy

September 9, 2005, Katrina and global warming speech Sierra Club

April 27, 2005, Hyatt Regency Capital Hill

October 18, 2004, Georgetown University

July 24, 2004 at the Democratic National Convention

May 26, 2004, Critique of the Bush Administration

August 7, 2003, New York University

October 2, 2002, Brookings Institute, Matching our Nation's Economic Course to Our Current Realities

September 23, 2002, Commonwealth Club

December 13, 2000 Presidential race concession speech

November 20, 2000, Families

October 17, 2000, Third Presidential Debate

October 11, 2000, Second Presidential Debate

October 3, 2000, First Presidential Debate

August 17, 2000, Presidential nomination acceptance speech

January 17, 2000, MLK Day

April 25, 1999, Columbine

January 29, 1999, Davos

January 12, 1999, Lifelong Learning

May 8, 1998, Economic Club of Detroit

April 30, 1998, Fiftieth anniversary of Israel

March 3, 1997, Press Conference

October 9, 1996, Vice Presidential Debate

August 28, 1996, VP nomination acceptance speech

June 9, 1994, Harvard Commencement

January 11, 1994, UCLA

1992 Vice Presidential Debate

1992 Vice Presidential nomination acceptance speech

Posted by Dwight Meredith at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Avedon has a post discussing whether or Al Gore will run for President in 2008 and whther or not he could win if he did. She concludes that Gore may be a candidate despite his recent disclaimer. She also thinks he could win. For anyone interested, Avedon provides a link to the Draft Gore site.

I hope that Gore will run. I support him for the simple reason that I think he is the most highly qualified potential candidate and, if elected, would make a very good president. Count me in.

Oh, by the way, my eleven year old suggests �This time, let him serve� as a campaign slogan. Count me in on that, too.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I got a call from Nashua.

I'd examined and discarded the Kucinich campaign in September. The Maine campaign was headed by two people who never really worked a campaign, all the technology was either in Hollywood (and optimized for broadband) or in Cleveland (and a mystery), and the Native American contact was a non-Indian living in a hay-bale house on the Rosebud with weakness for "spirituals". My cost of entry "inside" the campaign, doing my State, doing technology, doing NDN policy and/or outreach, was simply too great. It was too much. I worked hard to make Dennis' entre into the blogosphere memorable, and the result was worth it. Dennis wrote Lights out on Deregulation. That was real, and obviously, Dennis worked harder.

I had another responsibility. The historic opportunity of transforming a modern State's governor's adverse record towards an Indian community with no out-of-state hooks, no Federal protection, into a political issue in the Democratic primaries -- putting the political futures of the "Indian fighters" who've risen through the ranks of the Demcratic Party in Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, New York, ... at risk. On January 11th and January 18th, my work made ABC's The Note. The acknowldegement of the 11th was an endorsement of a competing campaign (Clark's) by the Mississquoi (Vermont Abenaki) Tribal Council. The acknowledgement on the 18th (AfterNote) was even better. Campaigns were doing paid-calls in Iowa on the Vermont Abenaki record. That's issue advocacy success. The one good thing dating the Clark campaign got me was a line of poetry. Paula Gunn Allen wrote me, and I read her poem "Hoopdancer".

... soft stepping feet
praise water from the skies ...

Thats "pray for rain" in Laguna. True thirst. It is foreign now, here in the water-wealthy east.

My call came from someone I trust. Someone who got "inside" and saw and heard what I needed to see and hear . I asked "red-diaper babies, grown up?" The reply was "yes". I asked "in for the whole cycle?" The reply was "yes". So I've work to do.

My caller found her real thing in July in Senator Edwards. There is no one single real thing. Perhaps the most important thing is that members of that set play well with each other, and ourselves.

we want what is real, we want what is real
do not deceive us.

That was a good song. I'm glad my grandfather sang it.

Posted by at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

"I'm going to nationalize significant portions of the pharmacutical industry and militarize an equivalent portion of the medical industry, and we are going to invade West Africa, and drop a serious chunk of change in direct costs, peace keeping costs, and development costs, with the French and others ... because that is the prudent, and humane policy choice."

The Sunday Herald (Scotland) has a must read this season of giving link on public health in West Africa.

N.B. I got to thinking about this when reflecting on what Rev. Sharpton attempted to do earlier in the campaign when "off-rez", or could have attempted during any of the debates, and what Gen. Clark (Ret.) accomplished for International Law while in The Hague, and how much quality campaign policy exposition time is wasted on the moral equivalent of Sam Donaldson's hair, or John Wayne's teeth.

Posted by at 02:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It is probable that tomorrow Slobidan Milosevic will win a seat in Serbia's Parliment, as will Vojislav Seslj.

To recap: 6.5 million voters, 250 deputes, some 4,000 candidates, distributed across19 party and ad hoc coalitions. Three years ago 18 parties found common purpose in ending the Milosevic autocracy. Beyond that goal -- to the problems of national reconstruction after the NATO War and the UN Sanctions, their center could not hold.

Mr. Milosevic heads the list (trans: top of the ticket) for the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS). Mr. Vojislav Seslj heads the list for the Serbian Radical Party (SRS). Mr. Seslj also holds the distinction for standing in this election from a cell in The Hague.

Photo: AFP.

Mr. Seselj surrendered voluntarily to the ICT in February 2003, where he will also answer to charges of war crimes. Mr. Milosevic was involuntarily transfered to the ICT in June 2001, which had as a side effect the fracture of the 18 party coalition into two principle segments -- the Serbian Democratic Party (DSS) lead by Vojislav Kostunica and the Democratic Party (DS), lead by Zoran Jindjic, who served as Prime Minister until his assassination on March 12th 2003 in Belgrade.

So, why is this happening? Why is the smart money on the Parties of deposed war criminals to at the very least seat their leaders tomorrow? Are Serbians depraved? Are Serbians stupid? Is this the Balkan form of Holocaust Denial?

Three years of internicine bickering, visible corruption, and the vulnerabilities of Parties and candidates who are "reformist" and "pro-western" to critiques of opportunism, self-agrandizement, lack of social solidarity, and corruption after a period of prolonged militarized isolation. Which means that about the time GWB's second term draws to a close, if similar or worse conditions of reconstruction are achieved in Iraq, there may be quite a few Baathists and Integralists who are as popular as, if not more popular than, "reformist" and "pro-western" candidates in the first genuinely free elections -- that is, elections in which the "bad guys" are allowed to run, perhaps even allowed to win -- in Post-Occupation Iraq.

Here in the US the opposition party is divided -- is the weakness of the incumbent party its economic record, or is the weakness of the incumbent party its military record? What really distinguishes this electorate from the Serbian electorate, or the eventual Iraqi electorate?

In Serbia, a platform that has had its military plank removed by NATO (N.B., under the command of Wes Clark), relieving it of a liability, but otherwise unchanged, and adamantly opposed to the current administrations of the EU and the US, looks to be competitive with a platform that had no military plank to exercise, or be exorcised, and presents a profoundly differing economic plan from the prior regime's. The return of the Serbian War Party, pacified.

In Iraq, a platform that has had its military plank recently removed by the US/UK (N.B., under the command of George W. Bush), relieving it of a liability, but otherwise unchanged, and adamantly opposed to the current administrations of the US and the UK, may be competitive with a platform that had no military plank to exercise, or be exorcised, and presents a profoundly differing economic plan from the prior regime's. The (future) return of the Iraqi War Party, pacified.

In the US opposition, a platform that defines itself primarily by the removal of the military plank from the current administration's platform is highly competitive with a platform defines itself primarily as offering a profoundly differing economic plan from the current administration.

Everyone who writes for wampum acts on the premise that the incumbent party can be defeated on its economic record. A premise that may not be tested. After a morning of chasing children about and fixing meals and running appliances and stealing moments to string together disjoint concordances, I think I understand why war criminals are going to elevated from international detention to national chambers of deputies, and some part of why our party is feverish and shivering from political influenza.

Posted by at 10:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier in this cycle Al Sharpton went off-reservation, and spent a week in West Africa working a set of issues that is more important than ... well, who sits in the Oval Office for a term or two. I tried to get him to guest blog that week, which allowed me to chat with Frank Watkins, who was his campaign manager at the time, but I missed the window of opportunity. I thought then that what he was doing was simply more interesting than what Howard Dean had done a week or so earlier on Lawrence Lessig's blog.

I mention this because this week another candidate has gone off-reservation. Wes Clark is in the Hague, which isn't holding a Democratic primary or caucus before, during, or after, Super Tuesday. While Wes Clark does not suffer the same degree of white-out that Al Sharpton endures in the media, all the news cycles this week belong to the incumbant. If he could blog from the Hague, it could be interesting. Profoundly interesting in fact, because we could put the thumbnail sketch of the process that puts Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in UN custody and facing indictments at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the process that puts Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in US custody and facing ... something that no one has bothered to give much thought to until today. A pair of thumbnail sketches should be revealing.

Prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal accuse Slobodan Milosevic of committing the following offences in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995:

See Florence Hartmann's contribution on Bosnia in The Crimes of War for a summary.

Prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal accuse Slobodan Milosevic of committing the following offences in Croatia between 1991 and 1992:

Prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal accuse Slobodan Milosevic and four of his colleagues of committing the following offences in province of Kosovo between January and June 2001:

For the full text of each of the indictments and accompanying documents at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, click on the respective links: Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo. In a nutshell these are: that after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995, almost all captured Bosnian Muslim men and boys, altogether several thousands, were executed (Bosnian indictement); Milosevic planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of the persecution of the Croat and other non-Serb civilian populations (Croatian indictement); the killings occurred in a widespread or systematic manner throughout the province of Kosovo and resulted in the deaths of numerous men, women, and children (Kosovo indictement).

What Wes Clark is doing this week is important. Important like working to improve the human condition in West Africa. He's working to improve the human condition in that part of the world that is subject to, or perhaps celebrates in is a better turn of phrase, the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal(s) of the United Nations. It is worth recalling that in May 2002 the US formally renounced participation in the new International Criminal Court.

Credits: The BBC (London), The Globe and Mail (Toronto), The RTBF (Bruxelles). Photo AFP.

Oblig personal note on the capture, not arrest of Saddam Hussein :: a distraction from policy to personality. I'll continue to blog on Le Procès Milosevic.

Posted by at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)