There is a lot of soul searching going on in my family these days. And by “my family,” I mean the liberal and progressive people in this country.

There have been perhaps thousands of pieces written throughout the blogosphere since the election about spreading liberal values.

This obsession has a lot to do with the surging popularity of a book by Berkley linguistics professor George Lakoff entitled Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and frame the Debate. In this short book, Lakoff provides some badly needed discussion of how framing an issue is crucial to winning political debates. It is required reading for any liberal who has ever been driving home from work listening to the local talk radio “talent” wanting to call in take ‘em on.

The subtitle of Lakoff’s book—Know Your Values and Frame the Debate—is very important for citizens to understand. Let’s face it: debating and arguing is very hard. It is challenging to break through the static and have an exchange with someone who you oppose politically.

At the post-election Democratic meetings I have been to, however, there is such an intense focus on building the infrastructure of a competing message machine that the meaning of this subtitle for ordinary liberal people or low-level activists may get lost. The same has been true of the blogosphere, where most framing discussions seem to talk mostly about "what Democratic leaders should do..."

Viewing that subtitle as only a message to would-be Democratic talking heads, to local party officials or to campaign organizers is to cut out a very important level of analysis in Lakoff’s book. That is: liberal individuals must be in touch with their own values. They must also be able to articulate coherently why they are liberals regardless of whether the Democratic Party apparatus gets it together or not.

In other words, a top-down talking-point factory will not carry the day in future elections unless we learn to speak from our personal values and spread our ideas. Word of mouth advertising is the most effective form of advertising, say the experts. And it is no secret that liberals have as hard a time at the backyard barbeque as they do on Fox News. If we wish to grow liberalism in "Red States" especially, this has to change.

So over the next few days, I am going to embark on a very personal level of analysis. I am going to look back into my childhood and ponder the roots of my political values. I will take a look at how I became a liberal. What events and experiences informed my values system? Why do I think about national affairs the way I do?

I hope this will generate some reflection on your part as well and I invite you to fill the comments with some of your own formative experiences.

A Yankees fan won an eBay auction to name Boston's FleetCenter for a day. His choice: the Derek Jeter Center. The FleetCenter's response?

"All names have to be rated 'G'. We determined that Derek Jeter Center is an obscene and vulgar use of the English language in Boston," Krezwick joked.
























pwned.

Blogging can't get much better than this.

Oh Baby
By Anne Coulter

I think Garemko has done a damn good job responding to the Deroy Murdock column, but I decided to throw in my two cents as well. Garemko is right, the story of racism and hatred is neither a Republican nor Democratic story. Its a sad story of America and it belongs to no one party or person. However, Murdock tries to make it the story of Democratic "racism" and Republican "triumph." Well fine, I'm willing to get down in the mud and wrestle with the pig as they say.

Murdock has to go back nearly 140 years to find a geninue Republican intiative to assist blacks. Nearly every single thing he mentions after the Civil War is rooted in progressivism and liberalism and actually were not that strong. I'll say it right now, the Democratic Party for the majority of its existence was the party of racists and reactionism prior to FDR. That is why they lost most of the elections between 1860-1932. That is why blacks (who could vote) voted overwhelming Republican. The reason blacks stopped voting Republican is because frankly, Republicans became the party of reactionaries and racists.

Between 1860-1932, there were only two Democratic Presidents. Both Congress and the Presidency and the Supreme Court were all dominated by Republicans between 1860-1932. Republicans ruled American virtually non-stop during this period and tell me, did they stop Plessy V. Ferguson? Did they fight against the segregationist South? Did they stand up to those racist Democrats? What did they desegregate after Lincoln? Republicans stood around and did little to nothing while those factions of racists and reactionaries that were the Democratic party butchered thousands of blacks and disenfrancished millions more. Again, Democrats were the racists, but Republicans did little to help following Reconstruction.

FDR and Truman desegregated the armed forces and added civil rights legislation to their platforms. There's a difference between "meeting" with a black guy in the White House and using every bit of executive power to assist blacks as possible.

Murdock mentions Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren, but he fails to mention that Eisenhower would tell anyone who would listen that he absolutely regreted appointing Earl Warren and Ike opposed the Brown decision. Murdock also mentions the toothless Republican civil rights bills in 1957/1960, but neglects to mention that it was LBJ who was the Senate majority leader at the time trying to get those bills sheparded through.

I hate this damn lie about Republican "greatness" toward blacks because Truman split the Democratic party and nearly lost the Presidency rather than keep civil rights out of the 1948 platform. Kennedy and LBJ destroyed the old Democratic party and stood up to the racists of their OWN party. And where did those old reactionary, black hating Democrats go? Mmm.where is Trent Lott, and Strom Thurmond, and Jesse Helms, and Zell "dark pottage" Miller, and all the old racist Democrats? Why lo and behold they are now Republicans!

You wanna know the difference? When Republicans were power and the reactionary Democrats and racists worked hard to disenfrancise and defeat the rights fo all citizens, the Republican party sat on their hands. When the Democrats came to power after the 1930's, they used their majority to work against the racists and reactionaries. That is the difference sir. You point me a Republican President after Lincoln who would destroy his party rather than give quarter to homophobes or racists. You show me a Republican President after Lincoln who stood up against the reactionaries in his own party. You show me a Republican President who sacrificed his Presidency or chances thereof for the sake of Civil rights the way Truman, Kennedy, and LBJ did.

Lastly, look at the leaders of the Republicans today or in recent history versus the Democratic leaders of today. John Kerry, Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman, Teddy Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton all supported and in their own way, fought for civil rights and voting rights for blacks in the 1960's. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan , George Bush Sr., and Newt Gingrich all opposed civil rights and voting rights for blacks in 1960's. Even Al Gore's much maligned dad eventually supported Civil rights and lost his seat for it to the pseudo-racist William Brock. Just my two cents.

Saw this name used in a comment at Brilliant at Breakfast. Did a Google search and only three hits came up on the entire internets! Well, four.

(Photo credits: bushorchimp.com, srimedia.com, stephenjaygould.org, CNN/Money)

Now this is a pretty good idea. I agree with the general sentiment, though the problem with religion is that a focus on an unknowable and yet highly desirable afterlife makes the opening for the kind of totalizing and exclusionary rhetoric that characterizes the terrible perversion of religions over time. The problem is in the style of thought, which emphasizes reasoning backward from a set of texts rather than outward based upon observation and verification--or science. This is a problem because there is no possible way to falsify many claims by simply referring to a text or group of texts that often contradict.

Still, for the vast majority of religious and non-religious people, they will have a hard time arguing with most of the moral ideas put forth by Jesus. Atheists, agnostics, deists and most Christians should be united by the common morality they share and oppose the fake plastic morality of the Christian [Wrong].

Curt at Museworld made a little table to illustrate the relationship between being anti-war and pro-troops.

War	Pro-Troops	Anti-Troops
Pro-War	A: Lots of people	B: Bush Administration
Anti-War	C: Lots of people	D: Hardly Anyone

(Photo credit: boardgamers.org)

So I went to the Politicker’s post entitled The Indefenseable [sic]. As far as I can see, P never even attempts to answer my claims about Deroy Murdock’s article, so I will repeat my argument using a little teaching aid I found on the Politicker’s own website. Check it out. Scroll down to "Current Highlighted Term." His site has a neat feature that grabs and displays a definition from a glossary he has created.

What sweet irony that the definition for today is “wanker.”

According to the Politicker:

Wanker n. Wayn-kur - A person who has no concept of how law and/or society works. Often they confuse what they want to be true with what is true.

Simply put, Deroy Murdock is being a “wanker” in his National Review piece. He satisfies both parts of the definition with that masterpiece. By conflating party name with ideological stances—instead of seeing that the parties represent different coalitions at different times in history--he betrays a faulty “concept of how society works.” I frankly would not be surprised if it was deliberate—intended to muddy the waters and throw up a smoke screen--but hey, only Deroy himself knows that one. Still, we are not talking about a letter writer to the Bubmlefudge Chronicle. No, Deroy is a contributing editor to the National Review, perhaps the premier conservative publication and an advisory board member of Project 21, a black free-market advocacy group in D.C. So the utter incoherence of his argument is pretty good evidence that he has intentionally confused “what [he wants] to be true with what is true.”

Sound the wanker alarms. This one’s not getting away!

I thought the column was absurd because it totally ignored the fact that when LBJ signed the civil rights legislation, he did it with the full knowledge that he would lose “for a generation” the southern white conservatives—who had been Democrats since reconstruction—originally because they opposed the party of Lincoln and later because the Democrats were the party in power and pork came their way. The governing coalition assembled by FDR held poor white conservatives in the party because it aligned with their economic interests. But when the liberals took their stand on civil rights, the conservatives were outraged and they bolted for the opposition. Liberals—not Democrats, not Republicans, liberals—were on the side of civil rights reforms. Conservatives found it outrageous.

Well, apparently the Politicker didn’t quite understand my argument. He says that I claim erroneously that “Democrats got rid of Jim Crow laws” when I should credit the “collective [action of] Congress at the time and the wise judgment of the [Supreme Court] in upholding Congress’ power to regulate such things.” Liberals did it. Liberals liberals liberals. Not Democrats. Although can we please give LBJ credit for being so righteous in the face of inevitable electoral losses? Most southern whites, traditionalists and conservative Democrats did not stand for civil rights and they either reformed (like Robert Byrd) or they became Republicans.

The Politicker also said that I claimed that the Republicans had only done three things since 1964, one of which being the attempt to assemble a calendar containing the previous two accomplishments. Pretty thin record, indeed. But his argument should be with Deroy. They are his facts.

The Politicker offers two other loosely related main critiques of my position. First, he complains about the way I argue. He says I blindly hate Bush and lie to cover it up. Actually, I oppose Bush for a whole host of good reasons and this blog should at least indicate that I am not trying to cover that up. And call it rhetoric if you must, but every one of those things in the “Bar of truth” is well documented. Call me a liar. At least I don’t condone torture like W, the President. See how that works?

He says I am a hypocrite because I am prejudiced against conservatives and that I hate people with certain ideologies. Umm… were you actually born conservative? Did you grow one of those Tucker Carlson bowties in the womb or was that part of puberty? Big difference between being born black and becoming a conservative--all bowtie jokes aside.

I think he misunderstands this blog, too. This is a liberal partisan blog. It is not an academic blog. I am interested in helping liberals win more elections. I am here to defend liberalism. I operate here with activist intent. So my jokes tend to be partisan. Sometimes they are over the top. Sometimes they are provocative. That it frustrated the Politicker lets me know that I am annoying to conservatives. That makes me very happy indeed.

As a liberal, however, I believe in science. I believe in fact based problem solving. Surely no one side has all the answers. Government exists to serve the people as people, not as numbers for the bottom line. Good government serves the people well. But the Republican Party’s ruling coalition, as it is currently assembled, has at its essence a proposition with which I am unable to compromise. That is: it is ok to trash minorities and society’s most vulnerable in order to hold on to power. They have to divide and conquer because if those poor white conservatives ever became convinced that their poverty was more important than opposing blacks, gays and Bruce Springsteen, their power would evaporate.

He says that I challenged him to prove he isn’t a racist. All I said was “let’s see those post-1964 GOP civil rights accomplishments.” He couldn’t name one, so he says that I called him a "racist" person. He says he is not a racist. Fine. I didn’t even ask. And why wouldn’t I take him at his word? I start from the assumption that most people have good intentions.

I don’t view the issue as an issue of labels. Fundamentally, there are terrible vestiges of intolerance in all of us (on both sides) so I doubt he is without sin any more than I am. It is just whether we confront it honestly or not. Some think the struggle for racial and other forms of equality is over and some think we have a lot of work still in front of us. I am in the latter camp.

Finally, he argues that Conservatives “[see] the world for its progress.” Liberals “[see] the world for what it used to be.” He uses the example of affirmative action, which he says is bad for two reasons. One is that it doesn’t solve racial problems but rather reinforces difference. But difference is not what we want to overcome--it is the deliberate or unintentional negative bias that comes from people associating most comfortably with their own kind. That has to be understood and guarded against. Crusaders against Affirmative Action and political correctness argue that we should not understand and undermine these biases; rather we should just let them be. No! Why? Because unexamined bias causes people to lose in the system for reasons other than their ability to perform. If they argued that there is a better way to be inclusive and were sympathetic to the goals, we would have a lot more to talk about.

The other reason he gives is that Affirmative Action focuses on race, when it should be focused on poverty. He thinks that conservatives are ready to focus on poverty if only the liberals would let them. Well, what’s stopping them? They control the government right now. Where is this focus on poverty? I don’t see Bill Frist rolling out the “nuclear option” to shatter opposition to Bush’s war on poverty.

There is no conservative focus on poverty mainly because the Radical Right’s idea of addressing the issue is to use new wedge issues—gays and “culture”—to divide poor minorities so that they can continue to represent Wall Street interests. They can’t win elections without the wedge.

He also says some stuff about France and Asia. I don't see how that is relevent to American racial problems.

So I hope you don’t take this personally…

Yeeeeerrrrrrr outtaa here!

Well, at least we know where they stand.

Curt from Hunting the Muse, a good blog I came across, has a first-hand account and analysis of the Howard Dean/Richard Perle debate, during which an audience member twice threw a shoe at the former Bush official. Good argument here about what is wrong with the neocons:

Overall, there was one pretty important undercurrent to the whole discussion. Perle's policies really are internally consistent if you adopt his world view. The problem isn't that he's making errors within his own defined parameters. The problem is the parameters themselves. The problem is that he declares irrelevant some very damaging effects of the policies he defends. On Dean's end, he pounded home the point over and over again that being strong on defense and looking out for our long-term future are not mutually exclusive. There was one key point in the debate where that point really came through. Perle had been deriding the concept of "soft power" by saying that it was a poor alternative to using necessary force. Dean took him to task for restating the question and said that no Democrat had ever defended abdicating force; that instead, the Democrats believe we need both.

What he said...

The American Prospect interviews him here. This reminds me, I was certain that banning the death penalty would be on the table for Democrats again after Republican Governor of Illinois George Ryan cleared death row a while back. Why can't we get some prominent Democrats to make some waves about this?

It shouldn't be too hard to make a case when two of the most egregious offenders of the broken system are sitting in the White House and heading the Justice Department. Bush killed hundreds--some were retarded--while he was the Governor of Texas and it has never been used against him.

SCLM.

I left a flippant comment about that "wanker" Deroy Murdock. He went nuclear and responded in full.

Response forthcoming...

I'm so lazy, though. So liberal....


(Courtesy of this site:http://www.nkf-mt.org.uk/)

There is a persistent effort on the part of conservatives to argue that they are at least as good as liberals on civil rights. Often they say that we are the racists.

Deroy Murdock hides behind party--ignoring the ideology of the parties through history--in order to make this argument in the National Review:

Today marks the 90th anniversary of a very special White House ceremony. President Woodrow Wilson hosted his Cabinet and the entire U.S. Supreme Court for a screening of D. W. Griffith's racist masterpiece, Birth of a Nation.

[snip]

This vignette — recently recounted in Ken Burns's PBS documentary, Unforgivable Blackness — was neither the first nor last time a prominent Democrat plunged a hot knife in black America's collective back. Each February, Black History Month recalls Democrat Harry Truman's 1948 desegregation of the armed forces and Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson's signature on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the greatest black legislative victory since Republican Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in 1863. This annual commemoration, however, largely overlooks the many milestones Republicans and blacks have achieved together by overcoming reactionary Democrats.

He proceeds to list off lots of good GOP dates.

Uh huh.

Umm, one question, Deroy. Anything on this list AFTER conservatives took over the Republican Party BECAUSE of the Democratic support for civil rights after 1964?

By my count, this article illustrates exactly three GOP accomplishments since then:

1) MLK Day (bravo)
2) Not rolling back the Voting Rights Act (thank you?)
3) Printing a calendar with liberal Republican accomplishments (2005)

Hmm...

Eliminating Jim Crow and shoring up the franchise vs. a holiday and a calendar to document that holiday.

Great argument.

[UPDATE: Reading my own post again, I caught what is obviously a Freudian slip: "overcoming reactionary Democrats." Political reactionaries are political conservatives. Can't lie with a straight face apparently. Ha! Now watch Deroy's CPU malfunction...]

If I do say so myself...

So let me get this straight. We’re going to borrow $2 trillion to fail to fix a system that doesn’t need immediate fixing in the hopes that we can get rid of a guaranteed benefit and replace it with a risky program that might, but probably won’t, pay out more than we’d get now? And we’re going to do it all while cutting the deficit in half in the next five years?

I was inspired to write it in response to this baloney.

[Umpire G here: Tahir was being way too modest by not posting the full text, so here it is. He drives this one out of the park. The last line is well worth the wait. Ha!]

Courtesy of the Emory Wheel:


Social Security: Democrats' high point, Republicans' failing
Tahir Duckett
February 22, 2005

Social Security has infuriated conservatives for years. Almost certainly the most popular government program ever created, it has maintained a consistent base of support for Democratic politics and provides a terrific example of just how well Democratic policies can work. And like a game of chess, the Republicans have put all the pieces in place to launch an all-out assault on Social Security — our queen, if you will.

But it seems they’ve chosen the wrong time and the wrong battle. Turns out there quite simply is no crisis, no reason to dramatically overhaul Social Security in a phase-out program. The reality is that Social Security is more financially sound than it has been for much of its history. The worst-case scenario is laid out by the Social Security trustees, who estimate Social Security can pay out all benefits through 2042 and 70 percent of benefits after that. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is more optimistic, arguing it can pay out through 2053 and 80 percent of benefits after that. Existent in neither of their analyses are beliefs that the program will be “bankrupt” or unable to pay out any benefits at all at any portion in the nearly immediate future. Both of them argue that new retirees will still receive more money, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than today’s beneficiaries.

Let’s say that you believe, for some reason, that a program that will be solvent for the next 40 to 50 years is in a crisis (I wonder what Iraq is …). Even the Bush White House has admitted, reluctantly, that the transition to private accounts will do absolutely nothing at all to solve the “crisis” (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3). So why continue to push Social Security? It must be much fairer and efficient for younger workers, right?

Wrong. Bush’s privatization plan is devastating for young workers. Social Security is far more efficient than private accounts, as they spend 0.6 percent and 15 percent respectively on administrative costs (Center for Economic Policy Research, Nov. 16). The CBO also argues that younger workers would receive better benefits from Social Security as it exists now than it would if it were privatized. Plus, Bush’s proposal would require the purchase of an annuity that could not then be passed on to heirs (i.e. surviving spouses). But none of this even gets to the point: Bush is attempting to get rid of the “guaranteed” part of Social Security’s “guaranteed benefit.” Social Security was created to provide stability even in light of the stock market, which had just crashed. And now we’re going to tie Social Security back to the stock market?

The privatization of Social Security will incur $2 trillion in transitional costs (ironically, that amount alone is two thirds of the projected shortfall over the next 75 years), all of which the Bush administration agrees they will be borrowing. By the way, the cost of making Bush’s tax cuts permanent? $11.6 trillion over the next ten years.

So let me get this straight. We’re going to borrow $2 trillion to fail to fix a system that doesn’t need immediate fixing in the hopes that we can get rid of a guaranteed benefit and replace it with a risky program that might, but probably won’t, pay out more than we’d get now? And we’re going to do it all while cutting the deficit in half in the next five years?

But hey, this is Bush administration logic. Next, we’ll hear that invading Iraq will pay for itself ….
—Tahir Duckett is a College senior from Peachtree City.

the AARP attacks couldn't get any weirder, we find two more ads here and here, courtesy of Josh Marshall.

First, there's this ad putting AARP in a line-up with other liberal hobgoblins Bill Clinton, Hillary, Jesse Jackson and Ted Kennedy as one of "America's Liberal Powerbrokers" and then this one that let's you participate in a "conservative flash poll" to determine which "organization is the MOST liberal." Your choices are AARP, the ACLU, the NAACP and NARAL -- sort of a right-wing phantasmagoria with everyone from the crooks' lobby to the uppity negroes to the baby-killers, and now AARP, the notorious homo retiree outfit.

Where do these people come from??

I know I am way late on this, but one part of John Ashcroft's classic patriotic ditty has always bugged me:

This country's far too young to die
Though she's cried a bit for what we've put her through
She's soared above the lifted lamp

For what we put her through? This song was penned in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and if I remember correctly, there was a fringe element of the right that thought that our cultural decadence had led God to punish us in the form of 9/11. Was John Ashcroft an early adherent to that view? That is the only sense I can make of that lyric in context. Bear in mind, he was speaking at a southern theological seminary.

Some journalist should ask him now that he is retired if he was in the Pat Robertson club. I would certainly like to know.

Orcinus got a letter from a guy who couldn't stand the criticism he received "on campus" for bothering to ask a question. So what did the letter writer do? Why the most logical thing, of course...

He became a Nazi.

Wouldn't cracking a book have been better?

If you listened to the Townhall "campus conservative" wingnuttosphere, you would think that 90% of class time is spent hurling apples at the lone right-wing kid in the class and 10% of class time is spent handing out the apples.

Maybe that is what school is like if you have a pathological need to have all of your views reinforced 24-7.

But, hey, c'est conservatisme...

A hilarious mainstream pickup of this whole jive.

If you haven't heard, the Swifty Thugs have reemerged and they are joining forces with USA Next to slime the AARP for opposing Bush's grandparent hatred. I know, that is a lot of hatred for one sentence. Well, check out their first web ad, courtesy of Daily Kos:




John Aravosis from AmericaBlog has called a fun contest to make response ads about the real GOP agenda. What can I say? The dude abides:

The GOP on Priorities:



On music:



On soap delivery mechanisms:



(Photo Part Credits: Bin Laden: Findlaw.com, Grandpa: http://tsa.blockoland.com, Janet: BMI, Ashcroft: CNN, 9-11: Unknown, Sponge: Unknown, Loofah: http://www.prism-smhs.org)

This appears in its entirety at my latest expansion into the blogosphere at Campus Progress.

It's become everyday. Normal. Page A12 of the Times. Certainly not an ISSUE.

Corruption has become such a hallmark of this administration that the American public has come to accept it as fact, inevitable, and not even particularly bad. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure Clinton had his smoke-filled rooms and backdoor deals. But the tragically scary thing about this administration is that their corruption gets aired out to the public, and Bushco just doesn't care. And why? Because WE don't care.

More on the flip....

I am a big fan of the work my friends at Outside Report do. Andrew is in Thailand right now and he has put together a provocative analysis of U.S. vs. Thai media coverage of the tsunami recovery. It is worth reading.

Which brings me back to an argument I have made before. I still think the tsunamis are potentially a defining moment for liberal ideas--sort of an anti 9/11. The response to this view has been so tepid, however, that I should probably just resign it to the ash heap. But, I'll try again anyway.

My basic argument is that 9/11 is an event that, by its very nature, makes conservative arguments about America's role in the world more plausible to people. Think about it: an attack on our soil implies that we should tighten up our borders, exact vengeance in response, relentlessly focus on our own self interest. All of these responses align beautifully with conservative/corporate aims, stances and goals. Here are some off the top of my head:

1. might makes right (taking the war to the terrorists),
2. zero-sum geopolitics (with us or against us),
3. weariness of foreigners (racial profiling),
4. rallying around the flag,
5. militarized budgets and militarized politics (Halliburton, dissent=gay),
6. constant fear of an outside enemy (Cold War=good, ideological struggle),
7. excuses for crony capitalism (defense spending=sacred, business=patriotic),
8. survival of the fittest (vanquish foes, hierarchy of toughness among nations),
9. surveillance on and marginalization of domestic minority groups.

9/11 can be framed in such a way to imply a common-sense reason for all of these. And the conservatives have been relentlessly effective at taking full advantage of all that 9/11 implied in order to make a coherent argument for their view of society. Liberals got hip to this way too late and lost the early opportunity to debate the meaning of 9/11. That was understandable at the time--though I was afraid of this exact phenomena as soon as Lee Greenwood's God Bless the U.S.A became an important American, rather than wingnut, song. Sadly, it turns out that I should have been shouting far louder than I did.

The Democrats have not been nearly as effective as they could be at implying obvious liberal conclusions from the Asian tsunami disaster. I have outlined the basic frames in this short piece. I have so far barely generated discussion after having posted it at Daily Kos several times, MyDD, Rockridge and Demspeak.

This is not an ego thing, it is just something I think is important. Maybe I need help saying it more clearly. Is there something I am missing? Is there an idea that would make it better? Comments are welcome because I really think it would be a shame if we miss another opportunity to scope out a bold, coherent view of America's role in the world that competes with conservative aims--and does it without fear.

"Yeah, your going to love it here...Cherry." [sic]

Our man Red2Alpha arrives in Iraq.

We landed in a muddy puddle filled LZ in what may have been a court yard or parking lot at one time and filed out the back. I was just coming out of the rotor wash when I noticed a shadowy line of Soldiers in the direction we were heading. They were waiting to load the helicopter that we had just gotten off of. They were going Home.

Shit.

"Range walk!" Bellowed an unseen NCO from the group ahead."Hurry the fuck up! We have to get these birds loaded!"

We'll be listening, Red. Best of luck.

Dr. Laniac has syndication for most of the web logs that opposed Gonzales. This means that the last three to five updates from all of these blogs are clickable from that site. This is a great place to find out what the blogosphere is talking about. A-wowwie-wow!

I just found this. Maybe I am way behind. But I am stoked because these guys are in Dallas!

What a shame. Hunter S. Thompson dies by his own hand. Jill from Brilliant at Breakfast on Thompson and fighting the good fight:

In some ways it's a kindness that is done to us when we get older, that death no longer holds the terrors it did when we were eight years old and would sit bolt upright at two in the morning trying to wrap our minds around the concept of not existing anymore. For if we got to be sixty-seven, Thompson's age when he decided to check out of this level of reality in his own distinctive, if appalling, way, and were still waking up with night terrors about death, we'd never get out of bed. On the other hand, there's a weariness that sets in; a sense that we just don't have it in us to fight that battle anymore.

I'm sorry that Brandon J. Snider and his compatriots won't have Hunter Thompson around to guide them through the morass that is Bush II. But then, Thompson never set himself up as some kind of sociopolitical messiah. He was an eccentric, a complete wackjob, who could set fire to a page simply by putting words on it. But you can't spend eternity pulling up rocks only to find maggots underneath them. Sooner or later you burn out, retreat to your compound in Colorado, and spend your days shooting at targets -- and then at yourself.

You kids are going to have to find your own way now. But if you look carefully, you'll see the footprints in the snow that Hunter S. Thompson left for you to follow.

Ugh.

Always interesting, Chris is bloggin' about Iraq again. He raises an important issue at the end:

I still don't know, however, whether to view these negotiations as a sign of peace or a recipe for disaster. Perhaps the insurgents will either go the way of the Shining Path in Peru and not quit until they are wiped out or they will go the way of Hamas in Palestine, the Da'wa Party (which will now rule) in Iraq, and the ANC in South Africa (all terrorist organizations that are now involved in the political process of their respective nations).

And in my opinion, neither proposition is good. If the insurgents go the way of the Shining Path, look for a long, bloody, conflict that will last well into our adult lives. But the other side, in my opinion is worse, because it confirms what I've always feared but what no American is willing to admit: terrorism works.

The question that puts his argument in context is: what is the true nature of the insurgency in Iraq? What are its aims? Is it unified or is it a loose coalition that can be broken by dividing it? Is there a good historical example that sheds light on Iraq--in other words--what kind of insurgency is it likely to become from here on out?

Every once in a while, I browse the letters to the editor in the Dallas Morning News just to pass on any wingnuttery coming from my fair city of Dallas.

Well, I found an interesting tidbit in the letters from Friday:

Proudly smoke-free

Re: "Butt Out, Boss – Employer's anti-smoking ultimatum unfair," Feb.
10 Editorials.

What employees do on their own time cannot be totally separate from their job performance. If an employee drinks excessively all weekend and reports Monday with a huge hangover, the work suffers. If an employee is infected by AIDS, the work suffers. If an employee spreads malicious gossip about the company, it can destroy the company.

The law requires us to provide sick leave. I have operated a small business for 40 years, and smokers are sick more often and stay off the job longer than nonsmokers. For several years, I have
refused to hire smokers, and I make no apology for it. I am proud of our clean work environment.

C.H. Whiteside, Kilgore

Interesting. Not hiring someone because they have AIDS?

So I did a Google search. And lo and behold, this person was appointed by then Governor George W. Bush to the Board of the Texas Workers Compensation Insurance Fund in 1997. Whiteside is still on the board, but it is now called the Texas Mutual Insurance Company. It is supposed to provide a safety net for the workers compentation market in Texas. I don't think this is too remarkable, but maybe it says something about the priorities of people appointed by the Bushies.

I don't get to listen to the show much, but I wanted to plug PRI's This American Life. I have found it to be very insightful and engaging. I caught this segment today (you may have to scroll down and it will be available on Real Audio next week) about a protester who found himself at a George Bush '41 speech hollering and shouting. He had expected to be arrested and dragged off. What actually happened is that George Bush engaged him and let him ask a question. The protester admits that he was unprepared for this moment since he had only planned on being arrested. He eventually asked something about nuclear power plants, but it was no gotcha moment.

This has bothered the protester ever since. He had a chance to "change the world" and make the President "really think about something" but he feels like he failed.

Reminds me of a similar moment of impotence I had. A couple weeks before the election, I had to blow off some steam. So I went to the batting cages. Behind the counter they were talking about the election. I don't know how I got into the conversation, but I think one woman said something like "I don't like that John Kerry."

At this point I was fine. I asked politely, "Well, why not?"

then she said, "I think he is a fake."

In the words of George Costanza, I became a volcano: "How could you say that?? Bush is the biggest faker on the planet. He was given the presidency. He was a drunk 'till he was 40, blah blah blah..."

Needless to say, it wasn't my shining moment. The more I think about it, the more I think that she may very well have been undecided and I probably sealed the deal for the preznit with that little outburst.

This is one reason why I have tried to focus so much more on framing since the election. When you aren't reacting to what other people are saying all of the time, you can build your own, affirmative case for your worldview. Mastering values based language (and by this I mean progressive values) will help liberals and progressives actually contribute to a competition of ideas, not a shouting match.

Ultimately, limiting shouting matches will probably help liberalism more than it will help conservatism. Liberalism thrives in a collaborative, problem-solving environment in which openness is encouraged and valued. Conservatism thrives in competitive, zero-sum games. Shouting matches help achieve their world.

Note: this protester now has a public radio show as well.