Something Worth Sharing

Apparently this little gem has been going around various progressive listservs. I myself spotted it on Virtual Pus and was fascinated. My summer job involves market research and polling, and I've always appreciated when numbers can paint an accurate picture of American society. Granted, statistics are malleable, but some of them can't be argued with.

I was most taken aback by the divorce number. That's one of the most important weapons in the conservative arsenal; the claim that red-state, moral-values voters are Pro-Family, dammit. Which is patently ridiculous, because they get divorced a hell of a lot more often than us effete, blue-state moral relativists. I understand that going after the Bible Belt divorce rate is a low blow, but if they're going to bash gays using The Family as a hammer, they deserve it.

The piece's author is anonymous, but I wish I could get his or her e-mail address to talk about where they got their facts. Not just for purposes of verification, but because it sounds like a gold mine of information that I'd like to dig into.

I made a few slight revisions (deleted a paragraph about Iraq that I didn't agree with) and added a few tidbits of information that I thought my particular audience would enjoy. Otherwise, it's pretty much verbatim as I found it.

Enough talk. I'll let you read it.



"Dear Red States,
We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the Northeast.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma, the Southwest and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches.

We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole Miss.

We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs.
You get Alabama.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, and the University of Georgia.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent think Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in Nueva California."

Supporting The Troops

I was taking a summer EMT course last year when I overheard an exchange between two of the students in the course. One was about as liberal as you could get. She was a tattooed art school graduate with profane, anti-Bush stickers plastered across her fuel-efficient car- she was almost cartoonish. The other one was an enlisted guy in the Air Force who'd overheard her talking about how she was against the war in Iraq.

He ambled over. "So you're one of the ones who spits on our guys when they get home from Iraq, huh?" he asked. He wasn't being sarcastic, either. He was legitimately curious.

She shook her head. "Oh, no, I don't have any problem with military personnel. I just don't support Bush or the war."

He nodded. "So you support the troops, though?"

"Yeah," she responded, "of course I do."

What does this mean? "Support the troops." The most common expression of this sentiment is to put one of those yellow ribbons on the back of your car, which don't exactly seem designed for longevity (they're all magnetic.) Even people who are against the war, support the troops. Huh?

In 2005, we take our all-volunteer military for granted. A lot of us don't see the military as a particularly attractive option, especially the more privileged among us. And everyone in the military has their own reason for joining; some needed college money, others wanted to see the world, some wanted better opportunities, and others just wanted to serve their country.

The fact is that, regardless of why they're doing it, military personnel are serving the country's best interests, even if they're doing something that a lot of us- including me- don't support. Having an established corps of professional, well-trained warriors is not something that a lot of other countries can pull off- most major European nations still have a draft between high school and college. We have enough courageous people who, for many different reasons, are willing to serve without being required to.

And they get ordered into some things- like Iraq- that many of us don't believe in. But nobody is disputing that the job they're doing is honorable, and they deserve to be supported by the people they serve. So it seems like a lot of anti-war folks say they "support the troops," but really just mean that they don't bear them any ill will.

I think it's fair to say that most military personnel would choose to be deployed to Iraq about as quickly as most liberals would choose to send them there. It's a miserable place, and 1,700 of them have gotten killed there, and counting. Not to mention all the servicemembers who lost limbs or eyesight or hearing in combat. We claim to support them, but many of us just don't pay them much attention.

And the body of evidence, from recent polls, shows that blue America believes in what the military is doing there now. There aren’t many liberals who would agree with the decision to go to war in the first place, but the majority would agree that since we did, we’re obligated to clean up the mess in Iraq before we head home. We broke it, so to say, and we bought it. Even if there is widespread dissatisfaction with how things are going, it’s safe to say that Americans believe in bringing peace to Iraq after we brought war.

So we all support the troops and the mission of rebuilding Iraq, but the liberal establishment hasn’t exactly been printing up “Hug A Soldier” bumper stickers. I’m not saying that MoveOn.org ought to start selling camo. I do think that, since blue America supports the troops, too, we ought to do something about it. If I had my way, the College Democrats would start sending care packages overseas.

That might be tough, so I decided to start doing it myself. There are a lot of Americans getting shot at, in the middle of a godforsaken desert, who are in need of stuff like air freshener and a couple DVDs. I don’t make a lot of specific appeals, but please check out www.anysoldier.com, browse through the profiles of the personnel deployed overseas, and do what you can. If you support the troops, do something about it.

Okay, I'm Back Now

So it's been four months since I updated this beast, and Jeff Gannon/James Guckert was the hot item back then. There are a number of things I want to get to (filibusters, Bolton, creationism, McCain vs. Hillary, 2008 in general, and the looming war about judicial nominations) but I'm gonna start out one at a time.

I think Blue America handed Bush his first major defeat in Social Security, and I'm pretty psyched. If you read in depth about his Social Security tactics, it was essentially an issue of accounting. I'm a writing student. I don't do much accounting in my line of work. But the Bush Social Security plan was based upon the assumption that the Social Security trust fund was going to
run out. Answer being, that depended on the economy. Okay, fine. Looks like
we need to do some long-term planning. Agreed.

Here's what started to get me mad- although you'd think, after five years of this pigheaded ignorance in the White House, I'd be used to it. The Bush team claimed that anybody who opposed their team was "against Social Security reform." Are you kidding? Everyone in Washington has a plan for Social Security reform, and it's my personal belief that everyone's is a little bit different. But claiming that your plan is the ONLY plan? Even Teddy Kennedy doesn't pull this kind of crap.

I was reading The Hill, which I highly recommend to anybody who gets their regular news from CNN.com (like me.) If you want a lot of intelligent commentary on the most up-to-date political scuffles- and some good early warning before they arrive- the Hill has it. Granted, Roll Call (the other daily Capitol Hill newspaper) is significantly better written and researched, but they're kind of expensive to sign up for. When I win the lottery, or rob a bank, I'm going to shell out the $309 a year to get Roll Call delivered to my apartment. After I pony up the extra $40 to renew my Foreign Affairs subscription.

Side note about Foreign Affairs: They raised the price from $24 a year to $44. I paid $18 because I sent them a photocopy of my student ID and paid the student rate- and because it was cheaper than the Economist. It bugs me that FA expects me to pay an extra $26 a year now, but they must assume that their target market can afford to pay it. Most of the ever-multiplying ads are directed at CEOs, and not political-science-nerdy college kids. They even eliminated the student discount. Maybe I can get a CEO to pay for my subscription.

ANYWAY. Back to the Hill. I was reading a commentary by Lynne Sweet, who discussed a recent interview with former Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois. Rosty, as she refers to him, claimed that Bush could probably strike fear into the hearts of Democrats by taking his plan off the table and saying, "Fine. You come up with a plan of your own." Theoretically, all of us blue-state types would be running around like chickens with our heads cut off since we'd been focusing primarily on dismantling Bush's ideas. (Rostenkowski, I might add, was a Democrat.) The fact is, Rostenkowski (and Scott McClellan, who I hate even more than Ari Fleischer) has forgotten about the over-$90k rule. All earnings are taxed at 12.4% to fund Social Security until you pass $90,000. Then they're not taxed at all. Removing this cap would essentially eliminate the funding shortfall.

This seems like a pretty logical option to me, but I strongly doubt anybody on the red side of the aisle would get behind it. It brings me back to one of those things that drives me crazy about Republicans (and here I'm not saying conservatives, I'm saying Republicans.) They manage to convince the rural poor that there is more value in voting "guns, God and gays" than in doing anything that would economically benefit them. I have no doubt that people like Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts would be hollering all the way back to Kansas, distorting the plan and saving a lot of money for the wealthiest folks in America at the expense of their rural, poor constituents.

(Does anybody else ever get Pat Robertson the evangelist and Pat Roberts the Kansas senator mixed up? I think they're one and the same, and it's a Republican plot.)

Regardless of how obvious the solution to Social Security seems to be, and how disgusting it seems to the Republican Party, it seems to be a moot point. A comfortable majority of the country thinks it belongs in the trash can, and even though Bush is out there campaigning for it, he's getting hammered. He's even taking a one-two hit from Social Security and the Iraq war, where the rest of the country is finally starting to wake up. Like I said on my day-after-Election-Day piece, look to 2006. If we build a strong Democratic identity, and include some decent contenders for 2008, we may not be able to derail the Republican freight train, but we can sure as hell slow it down.

An important aspect of this is exploiting the "six-year itch" and making Bush look vulnerable. If his leadership comes under major fire- which he's thus far been able to avoid by simply ignoring the question- and he can't ignore the criticism any more, he falters and collapses. Guaranteed. The reason George W. Bush has succeeded so far is because, when he's confronted with intelligent people who disagree with him, he claims that they're out of touch with reality and instead of offering alternatives, they're creating roadblocks. When a majority of this country starts to move in a different direction than George Bush, he's going to become accountable-and then we're going to eat him alive.

Jeff Gannon. Journalist. Hero.

I’m not going to gloat about Jeff Gannon, I swear.

Nope. Not gonna do it.

Oh, hell, how can I resist?

Granted, tearing into Jeff Gannon and Talon News/GOPUSA.com is like driving my 1992 Ford Taurus over a lump of right-wing roadkill that’s already been hit by every 18-wheeler on the road. But honestly, the whole thing was an incident, the sort of which the Daily Show’s writers couldn’t have dreamed. Leaving out this guy’s sordid personal life, Jeff Gannon (a.k.a. James Guckert) was a “reporter” who wasn’t even cleared as a member of the White House press corps, yet managed to make it into the most heavily-guarded building in Washington on a near-daily basis. This raises the first important question- who was letting this guy in the door?

Gannon (I’ll use his pseudonym because I can’t type “Guckert” without giggling like a schoolgirl) was getting into the White House on what’s known as a “daily pass.” This is for visiting reporters, the type for whom a trip to the White House might be a once-in-a-career deal, or high school students who won a 500-word essay contest.

Real reporters have to go through a vetting process, including an FBI background check, to get into the White House. Even the Senate Press Gallery denied him a pass, citing questions over his press credentials (his host website was GOPUSA.com, for God’s sake- a right-wing rag sponsored by a Texas Republican named Bobby Eberle.)

However, Jeff Gannon was coming into the White House, since February of 2003, on a near-daily basis, billing himself as the “White House Correspondent for Talon News.” And I know the Secret Service doesn’t just hand those press passes out like lollipops. While I don’t trust the administration very much, I do trust the White House security apparatus- and their ability to find out things like whether you used to be a paid male escort for hotmilitarystuds.com. If somebody like that just keeps wandering in on a “daily pass,” you better believe that the Secret Service will notice.

To me, it’s obvious that the White House knew who this guy was, because the alternative is too unpleasant for the likes of Scott McClellan to contemplate. (“Really? He was a reporter for a site sponsored by GOPUSA.com? Well, WE didn’t know that. We thought he’d just gotten lost off the White House tour.”) When the Press Gallery at the Republican-controlled Senate tells you that your employer isn’t a real news agency, the White House should say the same thing- unless they know who you are, and want you to be there.

I’m not suggesting that the White House wanted the former star of a gay-prostitution website asking President Bush softball questions about whether the Senate Democratic leadership was “divorced from reality.” (I think that “divorced from reality” is an accurate term to describe the White House Press Office at this point.) But what I am suggesting, is that President Bush- influential Texas Republican- got a phone call, a while back, from another Texas Republican, Bobby Eberle who was running GOPUSA.com. Bobby asked George for a favor- give his “news service” its own White House correspondent. George (or, more accurately, George’s press office) found a way to do this that wouldn’t require the unpleasant publicity of digging up the reporter’s association with the aptly-named GOPUSA.com. Enter Jeff Gannon.

(Brief aside. Can you imagine what would have happened if, in the Clinton or a hypothetical Gore White House, a reporter- gay hooker or not- was found to be representing DEMSUSA.com or some such? FOX News would be so happy, they’d probably sacrifice forty goats to the Dark Lord, Rupert Murdoch.)

While the hypocrisy of a gay prostitute, working as a conservative “reporter” in the heart of the White House, is hilarious, it raises questions which are decidedly un-funny. Armstrong Williams, a conservative black columnist, was exposed earlier this year for receiving $240,000 to promote Bush’s education plan. It blows my mind. They were paying him off to publish rave reviews of administration policy in news outlets which were ostensibly independent. He even interviewed Education Secretary Rod Paige and encouraged other black journalists to promote No Child Left Behind.

I’m going to repeat this. The Bush Administration spent $240,000 of taxpayer money to bribe a journalist into promoting their policies. You better believe that “this column sponsored by the White House Press Office” didn’t appear on Armstrong William’s byline.

Of course, Armstrong Williams and his unfortunate sources of supplemental income weren’t the first Bush administration attempt to pollute the independent media with propaganda. (I’m not shying away from the P-word, because, honestly, that’s what it was.) They developed “video news releases,” meant to sound like the print kind- sheets of paper attributed to the White House, written like a news article and outlining a new policy or making some kind of statement. However, “video news releases” were filmed to look like real TV journalism- and didn’t make any mention of the agency that produced them. The General Accounting Office, one of the few Congressional watchdog agencies that retains teeth in this day and age, called the Bush White House out on it. It was illegal, and the GAO made them stop.

The fact is that unbiased research and reporting makes conservatives and their policies look really, really bad. Listen to the incessant complaints about the “liberal media” and conservative complaints about how colleges and universities are overwhelmingly left-wing. Think about it. Media outlets and universities are paid to sit around and carefully analyze the facts of historical and current events. They have codes of ethics (which do not condone getting paid off by the government to promote their agenda.) That’s all they do- learn from history and research what’s currently going on. And for some STRANGE reason, most of these organizations seem to have a liberal slant. Huh. That’s funny. I wonder why.

I don’t mean to extol the virtues of the modern media. They make mistakes and they screw up (look at poor Dan Rather.) But over the past decade, Republicans and conservatives in general have realized that their policies don’t hold up under the scrutiny of the professional media. This is not because the media is liberal. This is because an accurate look at the truth is liberal, and when the media reports the truth- about Iraq, Social Security, gay rights, evolution or health care- Republicans look bad. Via FOX News, “video news releases,” the bribing of Armstrong Williams or the illegitimate clearances of “Jeff Gannon,” it’s become very clear that a lot of conservatives in this country are afraid of the truth, so the answer is to broadcast lies.

I’m still making Jeff Gannon jokes, and so are my friends- my girlfriend told me today that she was sad about the whole affair, “because Jeff Gannon and Talon News were my source for unbiased and no-spin reporting.” But the whole affair lays bare a frightening conservative mentality- that if smart people are reporting something that’s not friendly to the way you look at the world, you should report the opposite, regardless of whether or not it’s the truth. And if you do that, your supporters will believe that your “news,” however morally and factually questionable it might be, is a legitimate alternative to what the real media is saying. In America, in 2005, the truth is bad news for Republicans, and Jeff Gannon was one of their ways to make it go away.

(Post script: For more on this, you should read Al Franken’s slightly-dated “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” However, a current, better-detailed, and significantly less humorous look at this situation can be found at Media Matters for America, online at MediaMatters.org. I had to stop reading after a while, because it was too upsetting- and more importantly, too true.)

Retroactive Justification

A few weeks ago, the search for weapons of mass destruction was called off and nobody cared. It wasn’t really a story. The Presidential inauguration was coming up, the Iraqi elections were in various stages of disarray, and Iraq itself was getting merrily car-bombed back to the Stone Age. There were much more important things going on in the world than the Bush administration’s oh-so-quiet admission that the original pretense for going to war in Iraq had failed.

I noticed, and so did the Daily Show, which has transitioned from an entertaining and goofy way to spend a half-hour, to my sole source of political gallows humor. Of course, Jon Stewart was able to spin this into something funny, but I can’t. We went to war for one reason and, instead of admitting we were wrong, the administration and the America right simply created a new reason for the same war.

I grant that it must be unspeakably difficult to walk in front of America and say, “I screwed up. We went to war to find nonexistent weapons and thousands of American soldiers died. Oops. Sorry. Won’t happen again.” But while the war in Iraq is a tough issue for conservatives, the war on terror isn’t. Solution? Make them one and the same. Iraq, prior to our arrival, was a terrorist backwater- when you start killing clerics and instituting a secular regime, al Qaeda won’t exactly be banging down the door to lend you a hand.

Of course, AFTER we arrived, we created a cause celebré for the Islamic radicalist movement. Regardless of who had been running the show before us, al Qaeda affiliates had a new battleground on which to kill Americans- conveniently across the street from their spiritual base of Saudi Arabia. So yeah, Iraq is now a front in the war on terror- one which we, by wrongfully invading a country, created. Oops.

What upsets me most about neoconservative foreign policy, is its inherent fear of showing weakness. If you break down the neocon ideology, they are fully convinced that we need to be such a strong, unstoppable force that no terrorist group will dare to challenge us- and that we should use that force to influence the spread of “freedom and democracy throughout the world.” There’s a little truth to that- very few democracies have bred terrorist cells- but to paraphrase an Iraqi man in Fallujah this week, people don’t usually appreciate a democracy that arrives on the back of a tank.

Today’s American foreign policy is being dictated by the same mentality that convinced the middle-school bully to beat up the smaller kids. Theoretically, fear should inspire respect, and to the people who are instilling fear, it looks like it’s working. But a foreign policy that instills respect is infinitely more complex and subtle, and requires an approach to the Iraq problem that the Bush administration is unwilling to adopt and totally incapable of implementing.

It requires us to support the Iraqi government by working better with its neighbors- including Iran- to protect the viability of the fledgling democracy. It requires a broad-based foreign policy with a conciliatory message to bring in more support from European and Asian countries who want little to do with Iraq. But most importantly, it requires Americans to leave. Soon.

Paradoxically, American forces are the only thing that is keeping the Iraqi resistance viable. There are two primary types of Iraqi insurgents- Shiite religious zealots in the southern regions, and Sunni fighters in the Baghdad area, who draw their support from regime loyalists and foreign, al-Qaeda-linked fighters. Currently, they have a common enemy- the American imperialists. The American Humvee and helicopter are targets that any militant can shoot at, without angering the local population. However, when insurgents kill Iraqi police, National Guardsmen and civilians, Iraqis tend to blame the Americans for the death, saying Iraqis would not kill their own countrymen.

I’m not advocating leaving tomorrow, and I’m not advocating a departure simply because Americans are dying. We made this mess and we need to clean it up. But there is going to be a civil war in Iraq when we leave, no matter how strong the government is. The Sunni minority is better-armed and battle-hardened, and the Shiites have suffered for a long time under Sunni repression and are looking for revenge. This battle will happen, no matter what. When the Americans leave, and these sides can’t make common cause anymore, they’re going to war.

Islamic militants are fond of telling the civilian population that the Americans came to conquer Iraq and take its oil. That may have been the Bush administration’s idea- cheap oil from Iraq and convenient military bases in the Middle East. But even Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld can tell that American troops need to leave Iraq. So they need to start now, by publicly announcing the beginning of the American departure from Iraq. They don’t need to pull out more than a hundred troops or so, and they can take longer to withdraw the main body of the force. They just need to make it clear that we plan to leave, and leave for good.

But once the Americans start to leave, the fight between Sunni militants and Shiites will begin. That’s when the first major challenge to the truly independent Iraqi government will unfold. No matter how much progress American troops make against the Hydra-like insurgency, the Iraqi government will lack legitimacy until they can protect their people without foreign- especially Western- help.

The fact is that we went to war to find weapons of mass destruction, and we found ourselves in a country without them. So the Bush White House invented a new reason- bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. He claimed that’s why we went to war originally, which was false. But he was telling the truth when he said that American troops are fighting for a free and secure Iraq. I just wish he would add the obvious reason WHY American kids are dying to protect Iraqi freedoms.

The American military, at this point, is fighting a war to go home, and that's about it.

Senator Joe Biden Throws Thunderbolts

There are days when politics feels a lot like sports. You can celebrate the victories for weeks, and rue the defeats for years. And regardless of how many teams there are in the league, there are never really more than two- your guys and the other guys. (Of course, if politics were like 2004-2005 sports, the Boston team would always be winning, and therefore Kerry would be in the White House. Oh well.)

Obviously, politics is a lot more complex, because you don’t root for your entire team. There are plenty of different voices in the Democratic Party, and on the left as a whole. Some of the people in the Party barely even qualify as liberal in the first place- Zell Miller being the obvious example. But there’s actually an unpleasant crew of Democrats called the Blue Dogs. They take their name from the old Southern “Yellow Dog Democrats” (i.e. their constituents would vote for a yellow dog, before they voted against the Democrats.) The Blue Dogs are socially conservative Democrats who are mainly from Southern states, and they love to vote against the party line just about every time an important vote comes to the floor.

Anyway, everybody’s got a team- Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, whatever- and within those teams, political nerds like me have a few players that they really like. Not just your own elected representatives, since they occasionally suck, but the ones you agree with, almost every time they say anything. These guys might not have the most promising future, or might not make the evening news every night, but we like them- cringe at their scandals and applaud whenever they score political points.

Tom Daschle was one of my favorites. He represented the Democratic Party when it was truly a big tent. He was able to appeal to the progressive instincts of a socially conservative state, anchor the party in the American heartland, and avoid looking wishy-washy. And he was a damn good politician, too. He used his decades of Washington experience to work the system and effect change for the people who put him in office.

Of course, Tom Daschle isn’t playing anymore. So, if Capitol Hill was a fantasy football draft, I’d have a couple other picks for my team. North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy is one of them. A former insurance commissioner, Pomeroy- who I actually got to know during my time on Capitol Hill a few years ago- represents a rural, socially-conservative state whose people still recognize the need for a progressive approach to education and the economy.

Wesley Clark is another one. If it hadn’t been for the fickle nature of the New Hampshire primaries, Wes Clark could be President today. Should be President. Wesley Clark had a progressive agenda with a smart Iraq policy and the guy spent his entire career in the military. Democratic strategists have dreams about a guy like him, and because he couldn’t rile up the Granite State, his candidacy faltered. Christ. Wesley Clark would have embarrassed George W. Bush on the campaign trail and the Values Voters would have been split right down the middle. I’m keeping my eye on him because I can see him as a senator or, God willing, a Presidential candidate in 2008.

But if anyone would be the all-star on my fantasy political team, it would be Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, who proves that the size of the state you represent is not proportional to your influence in Washington. (Can you name a Texas Senator? I can’t. Okay, fine, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, but she’s evil.) Joe Biden is a center-left Democrat from Delaware who’s been around for a good long time. There are four Senate committees that actually get things done: Appropriations, Foreign Relations, Judiciary, and Select Intelligence. He’s on the Judiciary and the ranking Democrat on Foreign Relations- in the Democratic Senate, he was the Chairman. It would be safe to say that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to foreign policy.

This is good, because he’s a staunch opponent of the Iraq war for the same reasons I am. We went in there to find weapons of mass destruction and therefore make the world a safer place. Now the administration claims it’s about “spreading freedom and democracy.” If Bush had said we were going into Iraq just to spread freedom and democracy, Colin Powell would have thrown Donald Rumsfeld off the roof of the White House. So Biden- and I- are pretty upset about the way the war is going, because something like 1,300 Americans have gotten killed in a war that was launched to find imaginary weapons.

The difference between Joe Biden and me, is that he has the ability to do something other than whining about it on his web page. Specifically, he can put people like Condoleeza Rice in the hottest of hot seats. And this brings us to the #1 reason why Joe Biden is my hero- when it comes to the important issues, he doesn’t talk like a politician. He says the things we all wish we could say to the guys who are screwing things up. (The following quotations came from CNN.com.)

Last week, during the Rice confirmation hearings, Biden decided to- in political terminology- beat the snot out of soon-to-be-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. I read the transcript later and it was like reading the play-by-play of this year’s Red Sox Game 7 against the Yankees. It just made me ecstatic.

Biden set the tone pretty quick. “It seems to me, Dr. Rice, that you have danced around [the issue of Iraq] and…stuck to the party line, which seems pretty consistent. You’re always right. You never made any mistakes. You’re never wrong.”

He kept going, saying he hoped that Rice would have the courage to say, “Hey, boss, it’s not going that well. Hey, boss, read a little history.” (You would think that such statements wouldn’t require that much courage, but when it comes to the Bush administration, it does, and I understand why. If for a moment they admit they’ve done anything wrong, their whole demented foreign policy unravels.)

“God love you, please do us a favor,” Biden told her. “Start to tell us the whole deal.” (At this point, I was practically cheering.) “And for God’s sake, don’t listen to Rumsfeld, he doesn’t know what in the hell he’s talking about.”

So what’s the conclusion here? (Other than Joe Biden being the thunderbolt-flinging God of Kicking Ass?) The point is that, while Republicans may have control of Congress and the White House, there are plenty of Democrats out there who are not about to roll over and let the newly-re-elected (shudder) Bush team just do what they want. The important thing is that we maintain that fighting spirit.

Obviously, we don’t have the luxury of setting our own agenda- it’d be impossible to count how many Democratic bills get killed before they even see the floor of the House or Senate. And we can’t fight every Republican initiative- some are worth actually supporting, and many aren’t worth the effort it will take to fight them- because if we do, we’ll come out looking like obstructionists who are still sore after 2004.

The important thing is that we fight for the stuff that needs to be fought for. Stem cells. Health care. Fixing the steaming pile of ineffectiveness that is No Child Left Behind. And for God’s sake, opposing any new Rumsfeld-powered adventures in the Middle East. I know Joe Biden will be leading the charge when that fight comes. And if we stick to our guns, then come November 2006, we can really win one. Kicking the neoconservatives out of Congress so we can finally rein in the excesses and ignorance of the Bush administration.


(Post script: For those of you who aren't from the great state of Delaware and want more information, Joe Biden's office runs a great website, and it's worth checking out.)

Hillbilly Political Armor

First, an update on the Secret Service thing. Over the last two days, there has been zero indication that the President has made any stops at Johns Hopkins Hospital. However, after Dick Cheney's December 7th trip to Afghanistan for Karzai's inauguration, the last place he was seen was a hangar at Shannon Airport in Ireland, early in the morning on the 8th. There hasn't been any word on his location since. Then again, Dick Cheney moves in mysterious ways. I'm going to guess it was either Cheney- in secret- or a massive exercise. The exercise would be less interesting, but it would explain that strange afternoon event. Also, www.isdickcheneydeadyet.com has posted no updates on his condition, so I'm inclined to believe the Vice President is okay.

(Also: My favorite quote of the week. Paul Wolfowitz on TV, stating, "No one could have foreseen that it would take more troops to stabilize the country than to overpower it militarily." Well, I guess if you deliberately ignore it, nobody can see it coming, Paul.)

Anyway. This recent ruckus about how National Guardsmen and Marines are running around Iraq without any armor on their Humvees is really good for the country to hear, but I'm fairly nervous about the backlash that's going to occur, since a reporter helped script the questions for the soldier who put Rumsfeld on the spot yesterday. Without doubt, the conservative press is going to try to spin this one into a cautionary tail of the liberal media, exploiting the honorable servicemen in Iraq and causing our enemies to perceive us as weak and incompetent in battle.

Okay, granted, I don't really like the fact that Ed Pitts from the Chattanooga Times Free Press had to manipulate two soldiers into asking Rumsfeld the kind of tough questions that are now getting all this coverage. It makes the story a lot less heartwarming, that the courageous Guardsman, a specialist named Jerry Wilson from Nashville, had actually been coached on what he was going to say.

On the other hand, I feel pretty bad for Pitts. He'd been embedded with a regimental combat team for a while now, and was regularly exposed to the same dangers as the National Guard soldiers he worked with- especially since the Humvees he was riding in weren't armored. He saw firsthand how the Tennessee Guardsmen had to scrounge for whatever extra armor they could find in scrap heaps.

Of course, Donald Rumsfeld and the administration hadn't been making his life as a reporter any easier. Throughout the war on Iraq, the communications wing of the Bush administration has made it supremely difficult for journalists to gain access to major figures and ask real questions. The gentlemen's agreement between the general press, and the administration, used to go something like this; if the press were allowed occasional, unscripted access to major policymakers, then the press would grant decent coverage to the administration's more scripted events.

At this point, those scripted events are all the press can get. This President has held, by far, the fewest solo press conferences in his first four years of any recent chief executive. Granted, if I were Scott McClellan, I'd want to keep that linguistic goofball 100 yards from a microphone. If your boss is the kind of guy who calls suicide bombers "suiciders," then it makes sense to play the game safely. Keep him from speaking off the cuff and make sure he sticks to his core message.

I understand what McClellan's doing, I just hate that it's working. Bush and his cabinet end up preaching the same ridiculous platitudes every day- "We're resolute, we're strong, this is crucial to the war on terror, we have to make sacrifices," and especially my new favorite, "You go to war with the Army you have." To add to this, the only media opportunities become staged events, like campaign stump speeches but worse. The President's unavailable for questions, every time- supposedly because of his busy schedule, but not so busy that he can't spend more time on vacation than any other sitting President.

When your foreign policy- and domestic policy, I might add- is really tanking, it's a good idea to get out there and be honest with people. I've always wondered what would happen if the President walked out in front of the White House Press Corps tomorrow and gave us a "you break it, you buy it," speech. (Yeah, we really dropped the ball on Iraq, but we gotta fix what we did wrong so we can go home.) It wouldn't represent a change of policy whatsoever- Bush and the hawks would just admit they were wrong, try to fix their mistakes, and once we got out of there, the only casualty would be their pride. And our European allies might suddenly be more willing to help out, to say nothing of the UN.

I'll stop with the what-ifs, because asking an administration like this to admit they screwed up is borderline delusional. (Remember what happened when that poor woman asked Candidate Bush what his regrets were over his first term?) Granted, some might see the administration as completely delusional. I actually think they see the situation just like we do- ("Holy s--t, this is really bad-") but every appearance on TV is one more chance to save face and convince Americans that, nah, it's not really that bad.

But thanks to Ed Pitts and Jerry Wilson- a soldier from Tennessee and a previously-unknown reporter from a fairly conservative newspaper- the most hawkish hawk of them all, Donald Rumsfeld, finally had to face some real questions about why the war in Iraq is going so damn badly. And hopefully, there are going to be some American lives saved over in that hellhole, because so many people are paying attention to the problem now.

If the right wants to complain about how Rumsfeld was embarrassed by a newspaper reporter, fine. Let them. Because they're hiding from the real issue. The embarrassing moment didn't come when Rumsfeld was put on the spot by a soldier who'd been coached by a reporter.

It came when, after hearing Wilson's pointed question, 2,300 soldiers all started cheering.

And I'm pretty sure nobody was coaching them.

Breaking News (Wednesday, 12/8)

The glory of the Internet is that I can put up news that even the wire agencies haven't gotten ahold of yet.

About an hour ago (1:30 pm Eastern) I got a phone call from a friend who works at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. A motorcade of around 25 vehicles, all black SUVs surrounded by Baltimore police cars, had blocked off the entrance to most of the hospital. A SWAT team, with "SECRET SERVICE" on their vests, was moving around on foot. And an all-black ambulance, with Secret Service markings, had pulled into the Hopkins emergency department.

The only Secret Service ambulances (that I know of) are stationed at the Naval Observatory (the Vice Presidential residence) and the White House. However, this makes very little sense. Even though Hopkins is the best all-around hospital in the mid-Atlantic, any emergency procedures could be done at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, or the George Washington University Hospital, three blocks from the White House. Why come to Hopkins?

My semi-educated guess is that it's a routine procedure, like a minor surgery or a cardiac monitoring session, for either the President or the Vice President. They would bring the motorcade for a routine procedure, but would keep it a secret until it was complete and the President/VP was home safe. And since, after an hour of searching, I can't find any information on where either the President or VP are today, I'm going to presume that one of them is at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

I know that most people don't check this blog for late-breaking news, or even late-breaking speculation, but hey. I just got the information, so here you go.

The D.C. Nationals

According to CNN, Paula Zahn has “Today’s Toughest Questions, Asked and Answered.” This, of course, got me wondering what I would ask Paula, and I think it would be something to the effect of, “Paula, do you know that your last name means ‘tooth’ in German?”

I’m going to follow up that random tidbit with another one. I was reading Sports Illustrated online, specifically Pete McEntegart’s Ten Spot, which mentioned the uniforms for the new D.C. Nationals baseball team. He joked that, like the country, they would be mostly red, with blue trim along all the edges. I chuckled to myself- and then, panicking, checked the old Expos website, to see what the jerseys actually looked like. Turns out they haven’t designed them.

(If there’s one thing I’m more obsessive about than politics, it’s baseball.)

Regardless of what the Nationals end up wearing, I don’t really like the fact that the mainstream media continues to promote this notion of “red vs. blue” states, especially since people I know have begun to identify themselves based on their state’s “color.” I’ll admit that I’m guilty of this myself- it’s comforting to know that your friends and neighbors probably didn’t vote for the bad guy.

But the red/blue state split only takes the Presidential race into account. The red states voted Bush, the blue states voted Kerry. But that ignores some important differences in Senatorial and Congressional races. New Hampshire, a Kerry state, still re-elected Republican Senator Judd Gregg. And Colorado, which went for Bush, still sent arch-conservative Pete Coors packing in favor of environmental attorney Ken Salazar. Now Pete can go back home and brew mediocre beer, make commercials about twins, and take a bath in a pile of his own money.

It’s not that splitting the party ticket is anything new. My home state of Massachusetts- widely reputed to be the most liberal locality this side of Toronto- has had Republican governors since the first Bush administration. It doesn’t prove anything- it just reminds us that November 2nd wasn’t a numbers competition between all-red and all-blue voters. It still boggles my mind that the whole thing was less than a month ago.

But over the course of the last 27 days, it seems like some of the divisions are starting to heal. The election threw everyone’s political opposition into caricatures of themselves; every red state was packed with gun-toting, bloodthirsty Christian evangelists out to turn the country into a conservative theocracy, and all we could do was hope they didn’t cross the border into our bastions of blue. We, of course, didn’t help our image by screaming about moving to Canada and being terrified of the “moral values” discussion- we came across like a bunch of effete Communist pansies.

Of course, it just seems like some of the divisions are healing, and that’s because we don’t have to hear about the red-vs.-blue state thing as much anymore. It’s divisive and it needs to stop, and unfortunately, it’s not over yet. Websites like www.sorryeverybody.com are continuing to promote the spirit of election-night defeatism that seeped into the brain of every committed liberal in the country.

I guess all I really have to say is that they’re not going to stay red- or, to be fair, stay blue- forever. Time’s beginning letting the ideological heat cool down, and I think that’s good. Because when you get people to calm down and start thinking, they start voting Democratic.

The Two Truths

Sorry, I've been a little late in posting. but my typing fingers have been handicapped after a terrible accident involving a hot bowl of clam chowder.

My grandfather came of age in the Great Depression, and worked his way from basically nothing to the top of the corporate ladder. He was an extremely intelligent man, who was quick to promote and defend his beliefs. And they were pretty conservative- one of my earliest memories is a photograph in his kitchen, of him shaking hands with Ronald Reagan.

He died a few years ago, and I was reading his memoirs in September, in which he describes how his son (my uncle Bob) loved to debate him when it came to politics. I thought about how I'd never argue with my dad about policy, but then again, my dad is almost as liberal as I am. Also, my uncle likes adventurous activities, such as delivering babies, racing sports cars and jumping into icy lakes.

However much my uncle Bob likes to live on the edge, I don't think that was why he would butt heads with my grandfather. Some kids change their political affiliations just to get their parent's proverbial goat, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't my uncle. He was going to Princeton in the late 1960s, and that environment had to be pretty liberal.

Regardless of where your political views are formed, or how they're formed, the political lines in this country are becoming tougher and tougher to cross. Elections are won by appealing to the hard-line base voters, and no longer by aiming for the moderate swing voters. Texas Democrat Jim Hightower once said, "The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos." The problem is that he's right.

I hate the thought of compromising with a hard-line Republican. It makes me want to throw up on my keyboard. There is almost nothing I can agree with them on, short of the sky being blue. And even then, we'd disagree; I'd tell them that blue light is refracted through the atmosphere from solar radiation, and they'd say God made the sky blue. But at this point, the country's reached a point of such polarization that Canada has set up a website (www.canadianalternative.com) for liberals fleeing the nation. You can tell how much I love that idea.

While the talk of "moral values" has apparently made the Democrats scramble to court the religious, rural poor, I wouldn't be fooled. Both sides were taking aim at each other's constituencies throughout the race, and it worked a lot better for the Democrats than the Republicans. The Republicans worked pretty hard to sway Jewish voters, and on Election Day, there were 200,000 more gay Republican voters than Jewish ones. (Yeah, I didn't believe it either, but the Washington Post doesn't lie.) So much for that appealing-to-moderates idea.

This makes me really sad because it spells the end of meaningful political debate. The right and the left in America don't argue about ideas anymore. They can't even agree on what the issues are in the first place. This started with the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice." Neither side was against anything. They were supporting an amorphous concept that nobody could argue with.

This has continued all the way through the Presidential debates. Bush accused Kerry of voting against the troops, against $87 billion to give them body armor and special equipment and such. Technically, this is true; however, Kerry would simply avoid the attack, instead of refuting it by saying that he'd voted against an enormous, pork-laden Republican largesse that included no plans for long-term Iraqi stabilization.

The "voted for/voted against" tactic has become the main weapon in the America political arsenal. Every article of legislation allocates money or resources to some entities at the expense of others. Therefore, it's child's play to assign a positive or negative spin to this. I think Kerry voted against that bill because it was a massive waste and he supported a different, better bill. Republicans think he voted for it because Kerry hates America. So I can say, "Bush passed a bill that's bad for you and America." They can say, "Kerry voted against the troops because he hates America."

The fact is that Kerry voted against a bill. Assign whatever value you want to the bill. Maybe it took money away from a social program for veterans. Suddenly Kerry doesn't support our veterans! Or maybe it gave money to a scholarship program for fluffy bunnies. Kerry's the only pro-fluffy-bunny candidate! Bush doesn't support fluffy bunnies!

At the end of the day, it becomes politically expedient not to debate ideas, but to frame every issue into a leading question. The candidate will only make a statement that's politically unassailable; Bush was "resolute and determined," and who would argue with resolution or determination? Kerry "had a plan," and why wouldn't we want our President to have a plan? The only way to argue with a politician (or their supporters) is to claim their facts are wrong or the candidate is lying.

So the only way a candidate can take on an issue, is to frame it in a context where their actions can't be argued with. This creates two "truths." The basic facts of a situation can't be argued with, but the policymakers put their actions- and those of their candidates- in a "frame," or a spin-motivated context that fits so tightly that (if you listen only to them) it's impossible to separate the frame from the facts.

At this point, our prior political affiliations, whether we learn them from our parents or our friends or the general sentiment of our community, dictate which truth we choose. Learning about the other side's point of view, from the general American perspective, seems to be an exercise in futility. A Republican and a Democrat have about as much to learn from each other as a Red Sox fan and a Yankee fan. The other guy is just wrong, and that's that. (This isn't helped by the Christian right's involvement in politics. Not only is the other guy wrong, he's going to hell, too!)

The fact is that political affiliations are drawn along different lines by the people who get elected. It's a chicken-and-egg conundrum (which came first, the issues or the candidate?) because parties delineate their core issues based mainly upon what will get their candidates into office. (I think the Republicans lack a core political philosophy, but they'd say that about the Democrats, so we're back where we started.) If the political battle lines in this country were just re-drawn, people in New England and Texas might be able to agree on a lot more, but right now, the two halves of the country are ignoring each other on a fairly arbitrary basis.

Every major politician publicly proclaims their affinity for "straight talk," and "telling the truth to the American people." And, if the American people agree with them, they're doing the right thing. But just about 50% of the population disagrees, and therefore tunes the opposition out. The standard political M.O. today requires that your supporters completely ignore everything the other side is saying- or pay close attention to it, and destroy it.

I actually pay pretty close attention to the "other side." I read the National Review Online as well as the Weekly Standard, and sometimes even the Washington Times (if I'm not reading on a full stomach.) I try to understand what's motivating them, and I can see where some of them are coming from. But the guys who write for intellectual, conservative publications are probably not the same guys who are voting in Alabama and listing "moral values" as their top priority.

But I'm a liberal. Not a surprise. So my view on conservative opinions might be just as colored as their views on mine. That's the problem; the New York Times Op-Ed section isn't exactly flying off the shelves in Kansas, and nobody's making any money selling the Weekly Standard in Boston. People want to hear their political beliefs reinforced by leaders of public opinion, and aren't interested in listening to someone tell them they're wrong.

So I lament the national inability to debate ideas. I'd like to watch a debate in which the neoconservative vision of America goes up against the progressive vision, and they're discussed simply as political ideas; without frames, without spins, without pre-calculated answers. "I think this approach is best, and here's why," vs. "I think that approach is best, and here's why."

I try to understand the conservative viewpoint, and in doing so, I'm continually reminded of why I choose not to join them. But the new language in which political ideas are communicated seems to obscure the original intent. Politicians simply want to rally their pre-existing supporters. The elections seem pretty heavily based upon sentiment- and not even creating new feeling, but simply stirring up notions that the electorate had held beforehand.

I'd try to come up with a good conclusion here, but this vision of two halves of America alternately talking past, and ignoring, each other, has me too depressed. Yet even with this in mind, I know that the Democratic Party, in its depressed and haphazard way, is still trying to do what's right for the people of this country. And the Republican Party is trying, in a supremely organized fashion, to get the people of the country to do what's right for their politicians.

P.S. My November resolution is to post more often.

An Elephant Only Forgets Mistakes

I opened the Washington Post this afternoon to find that Newt Gingrich had been forced to respond to my recent post, ridiculing his mid-90s reign as Speaker.

Okay, he wasn't actually responding to me.

But he did write an article which outlined a plan for building upon the recent Republican electoral windfall. He stated that a focus on health care, stronger relationships with minority voters, and an honest appraisal of the party's failures combined with efforts to improve in the future, would secure fifty years of Republican rule.

I had to take a break from the article because I was laughing so hard, since Newt Gingrich lecturing the Republicans on building a stable majority sounds a lot like Alex Rodriguez lecturing the 2004 Yankees on how to win a playoff series.

I gave it another look, because, after I'd finished laughing, I reminded myself that hindsight is 20/20. The guy who turned the Republican Party into a horrendous joke might have a pretty good idea of how not to repeat his mistakes.

Most of the article was crap- he seemed convinced that Republicans could come up with a health care system that worked for free, AND cure cancer while they were at it. This gave me a fantastic image of Majority Leader/Dr. Bill Frist working hard in a Capitol Hill laboratory, until Tom DeLay, accompanied by Karl Rove and the Rev. Fred Phelps, kicked in the door and broke all Frist's equipment, insisting that his medical research "conflicted with our moral values."

However, Newt actually did make a legitimate point, which was that if the Republican Party did a better job of acknowledging their failures, they would have won by an even wider margin. I think that, had George W. Bush gone out and said, "Yeah, Iraq's a mess. We didn't expect that. But we're gonna fix it. Same thing with that ," John Kerry would have packed up and been back in Boston before August.

Maybe it wouldn't have been that extreme, but the 2004 Presidential campaign was marked (in my mind) by each candidate refusing to acknowledge they'd ever done anything wrong. Any criticism was simply dismissed as a "partisan attack," and was either ignored or redirected back to the attacker. Nobody- especially Bush- would ever acknowledge that, maybe once, back in the day, they might have made a mistake. Bush was "steadfast, resolute, determined," but never thoughtful, and never had any regrets.

All people, especially those in highly-visible positions, want to seem strong and determined. But at this point in American politics, admitting you're wrong- or even admitting you were wrong and are trying to amend that- is perceived as opening the door to unlimited liability. One admitted mistake, it seems, sacrifices the credibility of the person and their entire party.

This is a problem for both parties, but especially the Republicans. Their failures are visible to anyone who can read. We went into Iraq with the stated goal of eliminating a WMD threat- and now, anyone who asks about the WMDs is asked why they wanted Saddam Hussein in power. I would dearly love to hear any Republican say, "Yeah, we f---ed up with the weapons thing. But at least that jerk is out of power. And I know it's a big mess right now, but we gotta do the right thing and clean up after ourselves before we bail out, you know?"

Wait. Hang on. I was wrong.

I don't ever want to hear a Republican say that.

Right now, admitting your political failures is an act of remarkable maturity, and since they kept both houses of Congress and the Presidency, the Republicans have absolutely no need for soul-searching. They have to be doing something right, and admitting they've been less than perfect (by compromising with those godless Bolsheviks on the other side of the aisle, for example) would probably open themselves up to a new hail of criticism- much of it coming from within their own party.

It's the Democrats who have to be doing the public soul-searching right now, and that means admitting your failures. This is doing two things simultaneously; opening up the party to new ideas and new tactics, and allowing the Republicans to feel even more secure, self-assured. No one is going to be asking them to examine their own failings. They don't have any. By 2006, we may have an opposition so deeply entrenched within the fortifications of its own arrogance, that no reasonable voter could possibly stomach voting for them.

(The problem here being that this country is choked with voters who are not only unreasonable, I highly doubt that they're even from this friggin' planet. Specifically, fundamentalist Christians. I'm going to reserve commentary on these guys for another article.)

I'm not in the business of throwing out false hope, and the reason I started writing this was mainly because I'd relied too much on it in the past, and I woke up in a very unpleasant, very unexpected world on November 3rd. But if the painful and overwhelming Republican victory convinces them of their own immortal majority (as we can only pray,) we can capitalize on this by talking about our values.

We can go out into the blue states and talk about real values, the kind of values that make you put health care, education and socially conscious tax breaks first. And go after the people who claim to protect family values by promoting hate. By aligning themselves with the evil, ultra-Christian right and putting anti-gay referendums on the ballot, the Republican Party will pay among moderate voters if we make them.

If we go out there without fear, to talk about our values- and move past the smokescreens of abortion and gay rights, to the commitments that motivate the Democratic social consciousness- we'll be in the right place. Many moderate and conservative voters will already be drifting left, away from the firm Republican refusal to acknowledge the obvious.

You might have noticed I'm shooting for 2006, not 2008. I don't believe that a ruling party needs to have their man in the White House. I think that, if we can mobilize the Democratic base in 2006, we can halt the neoconservative Bush agenda in its tracks, stop the hemhorraging of international faith in America, and begin to bring the country back into the 21st century. And an arrogant Republican majority might do a lot of the work for us.

So Newt's right- an honest assessment of the Republican Party, by Republicans, would make them significantly tougher to beat. (Even if they pretended to apologize for the disasters they've caused, it would be bad.) But that probably won't happen. They won. Why admit weakness? In the meantime, we need to exploit this by taking our values on the road, into Red America.

We can take back the halls of Congress, but more importantly, we can demonstrate that the Democratic Party is fighting for the future of this country- and renew our own faith in that future.

The Welcome-To-Canada Party

I really like the apartment building I live in, not only because it's reasonably well-maintained and comfortable, but also because it provides me entertainment on the weekends. The damage done to the hallway areas is like a drive-through version of CSI- you can figure out which drunk broke what, just by walking by. My favorite discovery this morning was the broken lamp and the eviscerated chest of drawers, which some drunken genius had decided to perpetrate directly in the view of the security cameras.

One of the smaller clues about last night was one of the typical party flyers you find around every college campus, which I found on the floor of the elevator. Since I read everything (I mean everything- it drives my brother nuts) I picked it up, and found that the front cover of the flyer featured a now-famous cartoon of the political leanings of North America. (It's available here: http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04485.html.) The title read, "Screw it, we're out!!!!" and below, with a time and address, the flyer advertised the "Welcome To Canada Party."

I regretted missing it, because the idea of a bunch of liberal Maryland college students dressed up in flannel, drinking Molsen Golden and saying "Eh" sounded like a lot of fun. On second thought, I doubt anyone would have gotten into costume except me. But regardless. I did wish I'd been able to witness the shindig itself. It probably would have been reminiscent of a tongue-in-cheek article I read, describing how Canadian immigration authorities had been flooded with 55 million telephone requests for citizenship, most of them sobbing incoherently.

I wanted to flee the country as much as the next guy when we found out that Ohio had gone red. Personally, I wanted to go to Ireland, because they'd recognize my EMT certification and the beer was better. The leaving-the-country jokes were a morning-after coping mechanism, a way of reassuring ourselves that it was only our country that was crazy. But it keeps going. The Canadian immigration page, I'm told, had its biggest day ever on Wednesday. I've heard of at least three people around here who are actually trying to transfer to college in Canada. It's becoming an assumption among the left that our country is now occupied territory.

This crap has got to stop.

The appeal of leaving Jesusland for Canada is that, in our minds, we know that the rest of the world doesn't conform to the anti-abortion, fundamentalist Christian viewpoint that's marching on Washington. And I understand that very few people actually want to leave the country. We know it, and any semi-intelligent conservative knows it, too. But even the casual references to leaving are killing the credibility of the left.

One of the Bush administration's favorite digs at the left is to claim that we don't really love our country; that the liberal ability to recognize and address the glaring problems in American society reveals some kind of deep-seated distaste for the country and its heritage. This is ridiculous- we know it, and they know it. We love America, and so do they. The fundamental difference is how we love America.

Al Franken once said that conservatives love their country like a six-year-old loves their favorite athlete or movie star; they idolize and blindly worship, throwing a temper tantrum whenever anyone points out that the object of their affection might not be completely perfect. Liberals love this country like husbands and wives love each other; the succesful ones aren't squeamish about identifying the other's strengths and weaknesses, and since they love each other, and want the relationship to last, they work through the good times and the bad.

Think of the message we're sending. Conservatives already love to assail the left on charges of disloyalty to America, and being soft on defense. And now we're acting like a bunch of spoiled children. We didn't get our way, so we're throwing a temper tantrum and talking about running away where the people will understand us, and love us for who we are. If I were Ed Gillespie, I would be doing the Conservative Happy Dance right now, because the left would be doing my job for me. If you talk about leaving the country, you're handing over one more victory to the elected representatives of Jesusland.

So even if you're kidding, for crying out loud, put a sock in it. It undermines the liberal commitment to make America stronger and smarter, regardless of the fight some of our fellow citizens put up. Think about it. The motivation behind the Republican platform is to scare people into voting for them. Scared of a mythical gay threat to straight families. Scared of abortion clinics, even though they'll never see one. Scared of terrorism, even though the sparsely-populated, rural Red States probably aren't too high on Osama's hit list. The Republican agenda is pushing the country back to the 1950s, but the only way it'll work is if we let it.

At this point, I'm just preaching, and so I'll step down from the soapbox for the moment. But 56 million of us voted against the fundamentalist, conservative agenda, and goddammit, it's our country, too.

The Ghost of Daschle and the Demons of Newt

What were you worrying about ten years ago? Think back to what your problems were. For me, they had a lot to do with math. I was in Mr. Hughes' homeroom class, and though grades weren't a huge priority yet, it was pretty obvious that I was sucking it up when it came to basic algebra. Girls were barely even on the horizon (which was what happened when you went to an all-boy's middle school.) When you weren't even old enough to see an R-rated movie without your parents, the political realities of the world you lived in weren't very, well...real.

But ten years ago, something very bad was happening for Democrats across the country. The Democratic President was mired down in Watergate and Troopergate. The Republican minority had engineered a furious and resounding defeat of the Clinton health care plan. And the election of 1994 had been the worst defeat for the Democrats in 40 years. All this helped to propel a white-haired guy from Atlanta with a funny name to the forefront of American politics. The Gingrich Revolution was on, the Contract With America was rapidly being enforced, and things looked supremely bad.

(A side comment about that chart-topping masterpiece of conservative crap. The titles are amazing. The "National Security Restoration Act" actually helped piss off our allies, and the "Senior Citizen Fairness Act" did great things for forcing the elderly to work until age 70. Whoever came up these deceptive and disingenous nicknames is clearly still employed by the Republican Party, however. "No Child Left Behind," anyone?)

The situation is not the same as it is right now- it's clearly worse. We elected a Democratic President in 1992, and in 2004 we have a President who wasn't even democratically elected (at least the first time around.) But the wild-eyed Republican determination to mold the country in their image (even though this image in 2004 is far more terrifying than that of a decade ago) is the same. And that's a blessing in disguise.

Oklahoma elected a Senator who supports the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and decried "rampant lesbianism" in public schools. South Carolina's new Senator doesn't think that homosexuals or unmarried pregnant women should be allowed to teach. And President-re-elect Bush (who, among a myriad of other reasons I hate him, wants to cripple and eventually destroy stem-cell research) has stated as of today that he has accumulated "political capital," and "intends to use it."

Of course he does, and of course they do. Every political party that gallops into the majority and promotes a reactionary agenda, will implode. Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America had their day, culminating in the glory days of 1995, where a bunch of conservatives shut down the government just because they could. And because that Clinton dude pissed them off. Within a year, Newt Gingrich had become symbolic of the same stagnant political system he had galloped into Washington to supposedly defeat. 60% of Americans had a negative impression of the Speaker. The Republican cheese, hand-delivered to the American kitchen by Newt, had gone decidedly stinky.

The unpleasant and depressing victory of the Republican Party in 2004 no more represents a sea change in American values than it did in 1994, or, for that matter, 1982. Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill, a massive figure (in every sense) who I miss terribly in this age of revolving-door Congressional Democratic leadership, was disgusted with the tax plans and social security cuts proposed by the popular Republican President. And though he theoretically had a majority, conservative Democrats split the party vote and left O'Neill in the minority. But instead of wasting political capital, O'Neill, a crafty Irish politician of the old school, simply smiled at his lieutenants and said, "Give him rope." And he did- just enough rope to let Reagan craft the epic disaster we call Reaganomics.

Our government is currently controlled by the most reactionary, fundamentalist administration in history. And, by their own account, they are hell-bent on imposing their agenda on the rest of the country- just like ten years ago. We should realize that this administration is tearing down a path which was cleared by Gingrich, a path which leads them straight over the same cliff. We can acknowledge that we have been forced to retreat, but we must never consider surrender. We should not give them the opportunity to make us backpedal on the liberal principles which are going to move this country forward. In fact, we should give them only one thing.

Rope.

Coalition Governments and the Tent

In the parliamentary system, the two-party system is a little different; there is a government, and an opposition. Since, in the European political tradition, there tend to be a lot more political parties running around, they all have candidates for representative office. Once they get elected, it's pretty obvious that hundreds of parliamentarians and dozens of political parties aren't going to get along. So they form a government- the parties with the most in common, will team up to create a majority, and the ones who don't join, form the opposition.

Though this sounds foreign, we used to do it in this country, and the Democrats used to be damn good at it. When we got the different voter groups- the middle-class suburbanites, the urban poor, the rural poor- and got them under one big umbrella, things got done. Remember the 1960s? JFK's Democratic party was still heavily supported by the Southern Democrats. (You may remember those guys from such memorable historical moments as, the Civil War, and, Reconstruction.) Though the Dixiecrats jumped ship, and local heroes such as George Wallace weren't known for their support of the civil rights movement or the Great Society, they didn't call it the Solid South for nothing. Up until the late 1960s, the South was one big Democratic stronghold.

How was that possible? Was every Southern Democrat related to our own Zell Miller of today? I don't think so. The tent was big enough for everybody. The fact was that, though the people of the 1960s South didn't always see eye-to-eye with their President on some emotional and relevant issues, they knew that the domestic, social policies of JFK and Johnson were the right thing for them, and for the rest of the country.

The Democrats are collapsing across the country in 2004, and it's for two reasons, both involving the allegorical "tent." The first is that the Republican tent is getting bigger and bigger. Constituencies that used to be solidly Democratic are vulnerable to one of the many Republican messages. We'll start with well-educated, white-collar, middle-class suburban voters. These have been a swing population for both parties in the last decade, but they're slipping further and further to the Republican column, because the Republican party has done an excellent job of redefining the debate. Democratic policies appeal to doing what's right; Republican policies appeal to doing what's right for you.

George Bush was able to gain access to this voter group- which, I'm relatively certain, would have completely ignored him otherwise- through the post-9/11, war-on-terror, world-is-safer-after-Saddam scare tactics. But once he got through to them, he was able to deliver a much more appealing message; it's okay to vote your pocketbook instead of your conscience. When you convince a large voter group that a vote for you is a vote for Number 1, the underprivileged in society are not going to be having a good day. Or a good four years, rather.

The second reason the Democrats are collapsing, is also a "tent" reason. The Republican tent isn't just getting bigger- they're building it differently. It's what gave Bush his win last night. Ever since the late 1970s, the Republican Party has been able to skillfully shift the debate in rural America- the South, the Midwest, the western Plains states. Instead of talking about relevant issues- tax cuts targeted at the working class, serious reform and funding for education, and health care- the Republican Party focuses instead on morals.

What do they mean by morals? Something like 81% of Bush voters listed it as their highest priority. They want their candidate to share their moral perspective- to believe in the things they believe in, and to occasionally act on those beliefs. "I don't believe in gay marriage or abortion, and I'm Christian. Hey, so's my President!" It sounds reassuring, but if you're a poor, rural voter, it's the most articulate lie you'll ever hear, because, once you vote on your "morals," you are unwittingly joining someone else's coalition government.

The Republican Party has managed to become the new coalition government in America; a massive assemblage of poor, rural Americans largely concerned with preserving their moral values, and a smaller, more powerful group of wealthy citizens concerned with preserving that wealth. And they have everything to gain from each other.

Since Republicans have successfully made desperately-needed social programs seem like liberal, big-government intrusions to rural voters, they don't need to spend much money to ensure their support. Supporting a gay marriage amendment, violently condemning abortion, or excoriating the feminist movement don't cost anything. Instead of doing the right thing for your constituents (like securing health care and education) you can just paint yourself as morally principled, and then pack your bags for Washington.

And, if you're a wealthy Republican who wants to make sure his friends remain wealthy Republicans, all you have to do is espouse reactionary moral positions, and keep taxpayer money going to special interests. If you cut social programs, there is more money to cut taxes, and keep Republican special interests flush with cash. Hell, you can even call this a smart economic move, because there will be plenty of economists at the Weekly Standard to provide sound bites that making the rich, richer, is good for America. Somehow, the failure of Reaganomics didn't kill these people. Don't ask me why.

So, to recap. Poor, rural voters want their politicians to "share their moral values," and since last I checked, speeches on moral values didn't cost money, Republican politicans are happy to oblige. As long as those politicians convince them that the help the government could provide with health care, education and job training is actually an intrusive liberal boondoggle, they won't have to spend very much money on those rural voters. This maintains wealthy-voter loyalty.

The problem is not that the rest of the country is insane, though it sure seems like it. The problem is that the Republican Party builds better coalitions in 2004, than the Democrats do. The tragedy is that in the last 25 years, the rich, overwhelmingly-white base of the Republican Party has managed to distract rural, poor voters with meaningless non-issues. (How many Alabama Christians are going to ever see an openly gay person, or have an abortion themselves?)

They've built themselves one hell of a coalition, all right. The inclusiveness of their “big tent” is dependent upon brainwashing the American heartland, and it looks like that tent isn't coming down for a while.

Last Night's Blow-By-Blow

I never figured I'd start one of these things until I woke up this morning, in a country that had just re-elected George W. Bush, and had entirely too much I wanted to talk about.

I'm a dedicated Red Sox fan- it even comes through in the title of this site, which you may recognize if you waste your time reading a lot of baseball postings. And last night started out like a playoff game- a big, long playoff game, with 20 minutes between each inning and Wolf Blitzer talking to Larry King about God knows what. Neither of them had anything substantive to discuss, but somehow, they kept talking.

So, like a playoff game, it began in pleasant, celebratory fashion. I sat there with a bunch of my friends, eating pizza and agonizing every time Wolf Blitzer ran over to the CNN Projection Screen (you could hear the capital letters and bold face in his voice) and announced, in grandiose terms, that Kentucky had most certainly gone for Bush! And Vermont! This just in! Vermont's four people and 19 cows had definitely endorsed Kerry!

There was never a moment where I felt like things were going well; they just seemed to be a different shade of crappy. It wasn't that Florida and Ohio took until 4 a.m. to figure out who they were voting for; it was just that all the other states that were "in play" (more sports metaphors) seemed to be drifting into that sickeningly red column.

Jon Stewart was a momentary bright spot. The Daily Show has a remarkable capacity to cheer you up, or, in this case, make you grin halfheartedly as the tide of impending doom starts lapping around your toes. He was clearly as disgusted as the rest of us when the ugly numbers came in on gay-marriage referendums, and issued perhaps the most eloquent line of the night; "America is looking more and more like it did in a dream I had. A dream in which I wake up crying..."

After the Daily Show, however, life began to feel a lot more like it did during Game 3 of the American League Championship Series. People moved away from the TV, unable to bear witness to the blossoming horror. I didn't watch Die Hard 3 this time- and this time, there was no Game 4 to be played the next day, and no team of happy idiots to pull out the miraculous victory. This was it.

By 11:30, it was clear that Ohio was the only possible way John Kerry could win, and that hope was fading in slow, agonizing fashion. My girlfriend and I were alone with the TV, so we left her apartment to walk around the streets and try to understand how the country could actually re-elect George Bush. We meandered around a bit more, played video games and eventually fell asleep.

It felt like a different world when I left my apartment this morning. 95% of my friends have already commented to me that they're going to leave the country. Canada is the leader right now, with England right behind and Ireland pulling up a surprisingly close third.

The reason I'm starting this site is because I'm in the same boat as them- I want to leave any country that would re-elect George Bush- but on the other hand, it's still my country. And I think that if it could make a decision as horrendous as the one last night and surprise me by doing it, then I don't- and a lot of those on the left with me don't- fully comprehend the enormity of what the hell is going on in America right now.