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January 31, 2006
New Poll: Majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents All Support Murtha Withdrawal Plan
This is a fascinating story. The progressive weblog MyDD raised $17,000 to hire a pollster, just like the pros in Washington do. One question asks:
Here are the numbers in response:
Strongly Support 11.8 8.8 17.9 9.5
Support 51.5 50.5 46.8 56.4
Oppose 22.3 25.1 23.6 18.7
Strongly Oppose 14.4 15.6 11.8 15.4
As myDD notes:
MyDD :: Polling Project, Fifth Release
Posted by tedf at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)
Roll Call of Shame . . .
Here's a list of all the Democratic senators who voted either to confirm Alito, or to cut off debate and end the fillibuster. May all of them hear loud and clear from their prochoice constituents what this betrayal will cost them poltiically.
Salon.com News & Politics | War Room
Posted by tedf at 07:45 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2006
Smart Analysis of Neoconservatism in a Global Context from Matt Yglesias
TPMCafe || Neoconservatism and Gaullism
Posted by tedf at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)
January 20, 2006
This Is a New One On Me: Fake-Blog Spam
This is really bizarre: what appears to be an entire fake blog, filled with randomly-generated text, designed to build up Google page ranks for various webscams. In the middle of it is a completely arbitrary link to one of my old blog posts (that's how I stumbled across it - as a longtime alllergy sufferrer, I was curious what some blogger who called themselves "Flonase" had to say about my site). I guess this is latest variant on comment spam and trackback spam.
This kind of randomly-generated text always has a weird poetic quality, like William Burroughs's experiments with writing by cutting up newspapers and drawing words out of his hat. Like those proverbial monkeys at typewriters, presumably if this goes on long enough, somebody will accidentally produce the complete works of Shakespeare . . .
On the subject of webspam, I'm about to upgrade to Movable Type 3.2, which should hopefully help me fix the infestation which forced me to drop comments a few months ago. More on that to follow in a future post . . .
Posted by tedf at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2006
More from Gore's Great MLK Day Speech
"One of the other ways the administration has tried to control the flow of information has been by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. President Eisenhower said this: "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America." Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote, "Men feared witches and burnt women." The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk. Yet in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the full Bill of Rights. Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of nuclear missiles ready to be launched on a moment's notice to completely annihilate the country? Is America really in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march, when the last generation had to fight and win two world wars simultaneously? It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. And yet they faithfully protected our freedom and now it's up to us to do the very same thing."
Transcript: Former Vice President Gore's Speech on Constitutional Issues
Posted by tedf at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)
Al Gore's Speech on the Present Constitutional Crisis
Gore may have been a disappointing candidate in 2000 - bashing Bradley from the right in the primaries, running away from Clinton's record in the campaign, failing to stand up to the Republican's thuggish tactics during the recount - but he's been a mensch of an ex-candidate. Here's the latest in a string of candid, astute speeches on the sorry state of American democracy. His emphasis here is just where it should be - that the separation of powers isn't just an inconvenience, but the mechanism which forces accountability and ensures competence.
Here's the crux of his argument:
"Vigilant adherence to the rule of law actually strengthens our democracy, of course, and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint under the rule of law. And make no mistake: The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the normal processes of government that are designed to improve policy and avoid error. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents overreaching and checks the accretion to power. A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability helps our country avoid many serious mistakes that we would otherwise make. Recently, for example, we learned from just-declassified documents after almost 40 years that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which authorized the tragic Vietnam War was actually based on false information. And we now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq war 38 years later was also based on false information. Now, the point is that America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. And that is the reason why following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable."
I don't know for sure whether this line of argument can be a winner for the Dems in the '06 elections. But it's true, and it's vitally important to the survival of democracy in the most powerful nation in human history, and that ought to count for something.
Transcript: Former Vice President Gore's Speech on Constitutional Issues
Posted by tedf at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
Peter Daou on the Dysfunctional Liberal Establishment
Daou's astute point is that the Democratic establishment has utterly failed to incorporate the power of the blogosphere and take their message to the media, leaving them completely ineffectual on issue after issue - the Alito hearings, the warrentless wiretapping outrage, and so on.
One might hope that Dean being in charge of the DNC would have improved things, but the bottom line appears to be that the Democratic establishment - especially in the Senate - is far to the right of the grassroots, with little interest in the kind of structural reform and courageous backbenching that might threaten their own power bases - even if, at the national level, the party is currently powerless.
Posted by tedf at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)
Great Post from Atrios on How Bush Will Demagogue on Iran
The one place I diverge from Atrios is in his assumption that this will be only election-year rhetoric. This adminstration is perfectly capable of starting a real war just to back up their phony rhetoric.
(This is all separate from whatever security threat/human rights tragedy Iran actually poses, which certainly could be significant. But expecting this administration to make any of that better is preposterous. The best we can hope for is that they keep their hands off Iran until a responsible regime - Edwards, McCain, whoever - shows up to clean up Bush's messes in 2008.)
Posted by tedf at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)