Weekend Music Vid Post….

Yessssss…..Children. Things were a little bit different back in the day:

But we did our best and rocked on through….TURN IT UP!

New Poll from American Research Group….they are fairly accurate….shows….

A tightening race in IA:

	IA		NH		SC
Candidate	Nov (Mid-Nov)	Pollster	Nov (Oct)	Pollster	Nov (Oct)	Pollster
Clinton	25 (27)	28.2	34 (40)	38.0	45 (41)	43.9
Obama	27 (21)	26.2	23 (22)	22.9	21 (19)	23.3
Edwards	23 (20)	21.1	17 (10)	13.6	12 (18)	11.0
Biden	8 (5)	4.6	3 (4)	2.4	6 (6)	2.1
Richardson	4 (12)	8.5	10 (5)	7.9	2 (1)	1.2
Dodd	3 (3)	1.0	2 (3)	1.7	1 (1)	0.4
Kucinich	2 (2)	1.2	2 (3)	3.0	2 (1)	1
Undecided	8 (10	N/A	8 (13)	N/A	11 (13)	N/A

and elsewhere. This thing is not a done deal no matter what the corporatist media are telling you. If you want more Iraq, more
spiraling health-care costs, more of the same in other words, just continue to sit on your hands and let Obama or Hillary take the nomination.

If it’s Obama Rudi will murder him in the general. The Hill might squeak by but so what; then you’ve got a triangulating appeaser ‘fighting’
for your civil rights and and do you trust her to push for the necessary structural changes we must make in the economy so that your children will be able to do more than eke out survival in?

If your answer even might be, ‘Hell No!’.

Get over to our ‘For a Blue Majority Now! page and COUGH UP SOME MONEY!

TIME IS RUNNING OUT ON THE BEST CHANCE IN A GENERATION FOR REAL, SUBSTANTIVE PROGRESSIVE CHANGE.

For Extra Bonus Points who is this speaking?

Republicans let their ideology masquerade as morality. Just where in the Gospel does it say that torture is okay?
How moral is it to give an $85 billion tax cut to people making a million dollars a year and then deny health care to children and to tens of millions of Americans; or to tell 400,000 qualified kids they can’t go to college because they can’t afford it? How is it moral to go to war unnecessarily, without enough troops without the right equipment for the troops we send or the proper care for those who come home? How is that moral?

Before a Democrat can lead, he or she must get elected. We know the Republican playbook. They’ll say we’re weak. They’ll play on people’s fears, not their hopes. Ask yourself: who do you want in the ring to take their best shots and then give it back, better, harder, and faster than they gave it?

They can’t attack me on Iraq. I’m still the only candidate who’s proposed a political solution that will make it possible for our troops to come home without trading a dictator for chaos. They can’t attack me on supporting the troops. I’ve led the fight to get them Mine Resistant vehicles, increasing their chances of surviving a roadside bomb by 300 percent. They can’t attack me on terror. None of them have worked harder to protect our ports, trains, tunnels, chemical and nuclear plants from attack.
I can’t wait for that fight. I can’t wait to debate Romney or Thompson. I can hardly wait for Rudy.

I want it. I relish it. And I will win it.

Masquerade as morality! I like it

The Privatization Plague

I have watched as Govenor Ronald Reagan first attempted to destroy the California state government, and then went on, as President, to do the same to the federal government. We are dealing with this legacy now, as we see gutted state and federal agencies unable to provide essential services in times of emergency, as we see our infrastructure crumble due to corruption. And now we have Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger carrying on this “proud” Reagan tradition.

As someone who has worked as a civil servant for the state of California, as someone who saw his mother and father both work as career civil servants for the state of California, I am offended by the way government workers are often depicted. They are too often described as lazy, incompetent, and worse. My parents worked hard and were proud of their work, and they were very competent.

The problems with government are not due to the civil servants, they are due to the same problem that plagues private corporations, GREED. Greedy politicians and their pork barrel projects, their bridges to nowhere. Greedy politicians ignoring laws and regulations. Greedy, corrupt politicians taking money from corporate lobbyists.

Big government is not the problem, and privatization is definitely NOT the answer. There is far more greed in the corporate world then in government. A prime example of why privatization is not the answer is that of the prison system. The United States has approximately 4.5% of the world’s population, but has the highest rate of imprisionment in the world with almost 2 million people imprisioned. The primary reason for this is GREED. Private prisons are paid by OUR government with OUR money on a per head basis, so it is in their interest to keep prison populations and their PROFITS high.

For more insight into this issue, please see this excellent article:

Arnold’s Privatization Push: A Dangerous Giveaway For California

As A.Citizen has said, this is important!

Improve your vocabulary and feed the hungry at the same time!

Clik on this banner and go to a great site
where you can improve your vocabulary
and feed the hungry the world over. This is
no scam and is a great way to help those who
need it badly. Read this diary from
OrangeLand to learn some more.

I’ve spent some time ‘playing’ this ‘game’
and it’s been fun and challenging.

ps. My best score is 47. Top that
malcontent if you can!

Counting Chickens?

Lotta loose talk about how Hillary/Obama are shoe-ins to be the next President of the United States. Digby, incisive commentator on ‘The Village’, Washington D.C. by a much more apt
name, anonymously quotes a ‘Village Elder’ as follows:

‘ The GOP remains confident, however, on its messaging ability and willingness of the mainstream media to carry its talking points. Just tune in and watch pundits Tim Russert and Chris Matthews, who began their careers as Democratic aides on the Hill, carry on a dialogue that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.” Their former employers, Daniel Moynihan and Tip O’Neill, roll over in their graves. This type of elite pundit narrative is repeated daily on television, radio and op-ed pages. The next media magic trick will be to make George Bush, as Digby notes, “disappear.” It worked for Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales who have made Nixon’s henchmen Haldeman and Mitchell look like amateurs. Rather than Rove being investigated by the mainstream media, he now has a column in Newsweek. The Democratic nominee will not only have to defeat the GOP nominee, but also the elite media narrative.’

I think that’s just about right. But what is truly worrying is how the Democoratic leadership seems determined to ‘run out the clock’ on Bush and the Republicans. From the idiocy of Rahm Emmanuel’s determination that the party will run to the right of the ReThugs on Immigration, to failure on FISA, Impeachment, the CAFTA and many other issues Madame Speaker ‘It’s off the table…’ has allowed oversight to stall, subpoena’s to be ignored and generally carried on as if all that the party need do is wait until The Hill is anointed and then they can get to work. Does not seem to have occurred to her that at that point she and Rahm and Schumer and Reid….

Own the occupation of Iraq.

More from Digby’s column:

‘Congressional Democrats, however, sometimes act as if it is still 2002 when they were still in the minority. The big bad Republicans will distract the country and beat them into submission. Bush has a 25% approval rating. There is absolutely no political price in opposing the initiatives of the GOP. On national security issues, the Democrats need to take the “kick me” sign off their backs. Bush has weakened our national security with this reckless war in Iraq. Bombing Iran will only add to the terrorist threat. This has to be clearly stated.’

A repeat of the disaster of the 2002 off-year election seems more than possible. The Democrats ran away from the war issue and got hammered. Perhaps that is what it will take to generate enough anger in the party establishment to get rid of the Democrat Loser Caucus as exemplified by The Rabbit, Schumer and Reid. Far too high a price to pay but it may be so.

From a Digby commenter we get to the heart of the matter:

‘… it’s like this in politics, every day, with Klein and his ilk. They are advising a course of action that sets off everybody’s embarrassment squick, and nobody’s gonna vote for the guy who you watch and it’s like your baseball team’s getting whomped. You’re up in the stands, having your tenth beer in an hour, pulling your hat down over your face and hoping nobody is looking at you. Or your team. You don’t even want to be there because the yuck might rub off on you.

Is that dumb and irrational? Sure. We’re talking about perception and strategy here, so it’s dumb and irrational. But Democrats won in 2006 by acting like they didn’t give a fuck what Republicans thought, they were gonna fix the mess we’re in, and everybody was happy, and they felt like winners, and people like winning because the parties are better, and so on and so on. I don’t know what it will take for them to act like that again. A veto-proof majority? A Democratic president? Both? The sudden and unexplained silence of every pundit everywhere? A memory transfusion? I really don’t know what it’s going to take but I can tell you for damn sure going back to the glory days of 2002 is not the answer here.’

In conclusion, here’s my comment in response to a Chris Bowers post that Hillary/Obama had the nomination pretty much sewed up, mind you Chris rarely admits that Edwards is even in the race and to him Kucinich is a bad joke, something that for some strange reason kinda pissed me off:

‘I guess I gotta get ready for President Ghoulianni then…

Neither Clinton nor Obama are gonna beat him.
Looking on the bright side maybe we will be able to use the general election defeat to finally put a stake in the heart of the DLC.

The ‘Democrat Loser Committee’.Bleah……’

Another commenter wanted to know if I’d vote for Hillary to which I replied:

‘I will not. Not out of any sense of sour grapes but primarily because both of them have categorically rejected the progressive agenda. They are corporatists and will work solely and exclusively to advance that failed agenda which, in the end, will do great damage to the nation until it is shown to be just as bankrupt of solutions to our nation’s problems as ‘conservatism’ has shown itself to be. See Chris’s post of today, up thread, for some additional insight into why I will not vote for Hillary or Obama.’

Iowa: Too Close to Call!

From our own Pollster.com linky:

The best way to consider what “the polls” say about the Democratic contest is to look at our Iowa chart, though I would recommend focusing as much on the points (representing results from individual surveys) as the trend lines. Consider this screen grab from the 2007-only chart, which shows the Iowa results since late August for Clinton (purple), Obama (yellow) and Edwards (red). The trend lines draw on earlier data not seen in the snippet, but if you focus on the last month it is hard to see much of a trend from all the seemingly random noise.

By and large, the Clinton results have been slightly (but not consistently) better than the Obama results with Edwards generally trailing the two. Some of the differences stem from random noise, some from systematic differences in method. Which poll has been most “right” in recent weeks? We may never know. The best characterization, given the overlap in the ranges for each candidate, is the one that The Washington Post put on their own results: “The top three Democratic presidential contenders remain locked in a close battle in Iowa.”

Do. Not. Believe. The. Corporatist. Press!

This thing ain’t over.

Note: Bold by me.

Are you as sick of Miss Nancy and her ‘corporatist’ Democrat ways? Well I’ve got the tonic for what ails ya!

The woman’s name is Cindy Sheehan. And I’ll let her speak for herself:

RE: IMPEACH DICK CHENEY

It has been rumored that Nancy Pelosi would put impeachment back on
the table were she to receive 10,000 hand written letters encouraging
her to do so. Whether this is a true statement or not we feel it would
be a very powerful message to send the speaker and congress. Help us
take thousands of letters to Nancy. Lets make this action our Miracle
on 34th st. Our holiday present, accountability and justice.

Dear Friends
Instead of sending your Impeachment letters for Dick Cheney to Nancy
Pelosi's office, send them to my office so we can get an official
count.

Please send them to:

Nancy Pelosi
c/o Cindy for Congress
RE: Impeach Dick Cheney
1260 Mission St
San Francisco, Ca 94103

We are extending the deadline to gather as many letters as possible.
Please send your letter by Tuesday November 27th.

Spread this far and wide so we can take sacks of letters to her.
Don't include anything besides the letter (like a contribution)
because we won't be opening the envelopes.

Love
Cindy
Sample Letter

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

I am writing to urge you to support House Resolution 333, Articles of
Impeachment against Vice President Richard B. Cheney.  Please consider your
constitutional duty to step forward to protect our democracy from further harm.

The heart of the current crisis is a Constitutional one.  The American people
elected a democratic majority to restore our system of checks and balances, the
rule of law, and our international standing as an exemplar of democratic
leadership and values in the world community. It has become clear to an
ever-increasing majority of the American people that the President and Vice
President are actively opposing progress in these endeavors.

To date, the evidence of impeachable offenses is overwhelming: the Bush
administrations' use of illegal wiretapping and other forms of electronic
surveillance, violations of the U.N. Torture Convention and the Geneva
Convention, torture and extraordinary rendition, signing statements, and war
lies.  These activities individually and certainly collectively warrant a
complete immediate investigation by the Congress.

As Speaker of the House, you can play a pivotal role in restoring our
constitutional rights and preventing further abuses of power by the Executive
branch by supporting HR333. Please don't betray us.

Sincerely,

www.cindyforcongress.org
Donate to Cindy's Campaign
Join Cindy's Listseve

For me our nation does have something to be thankful for this November. That would be this man.

Speaking at the Iowa Jefferson Jackson Dinner:

Lotta noise about Obama’s speech but….

This is it for me. If you can’t see the quality of this man I feel sorry for you.

Get active to help his campaign at his website here: John Edwards for President Campaign.

Note: All candidates are introduced at the JJ dinner as ‘The Next President of the United States…’ it’s a tradition.

So, no Miss Nancy is not endorsing Edwards here.

State of the Nation…

From Orangeland:

Michael Vick is in prison for torturing some dogs, but the Attorney General will not say it is wrong to torture humans, because he cannot define torture.