You may have heard that Libby was found guilty today. Apparently, the decision for the jury was easy.
But what do you think the FoxNews-watching mouthbreathers are hearing? The official spin, of course. Which they will continue to believe for years to come. As in “Libby not guilty“:
Keep it simple: somebody in the White House lied and as a result we went to Iraq. Period.
And you don’t even have to believe in dinosaurs to share their fate.
From here. And the preceeding paragraph? Another great quote:
“You know how taking so long to end slavery is a shameful part of our history, and how long it took us to give the vote to women is a shameful part of our history? Well, I think in 20 years, we’re going to think that denying marriage to gays for so long is one of the great shames of our nation, too.” That’s from a teenager in Redneckville. She’s our future–and Donohue, LaBarbera, and company are just desperate dinosaurs.
Democrat Tom Vilsack is abandoning his bid for the presidency after struggling against better-known, better-financed rivals, a senior campaign official told The Associated Press on Friday.
Vilsack left office in January and traveled through states holding early tests of strength. He had faced a tough challenge from rivals such as New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards, who have had more success raising money and attracting attention – even in Vilsack’s home state of Iowa.
Vilsack was scheduled to make a formal announcement later in the day. The official spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the Democrat’s statement.
Evolution works according to a very small set of simple rules. If a) there is variation in a trait in a population and b) that variation is heritable and c) one variant is better adapted to the current local environment, then d) the best adapted trait will increase in the proportion within the population in the next generation. Once you understand this simple algorithm (perhaps, for fuller understanding, learn some basics of the ways genotype maps onto phenotype via development), everything about the living world is explainable without magic.
John McCain works according to a very small set of simple rules: “If the wind is blowing from the Right, blow your wind towards the Right, if it blows from the Left, blow your wind to the Left, if it comes from the Center, blow straight ahead.” Once you understand this simple algorithm, everything about John McCain is explainable without magic.
If you do not know the simple evolutionary algorithm, everything about Nature looks mysterious and you are likely to come up with ridiculous notions such as “irreducible complexity”. You become a creationist and join the Discovery Institute.
If you do not know the simple McCain algorithm, everything about him looks mysterious – why did he say one thing today and the oppsite yesterday? – and you come up with ridiculous notions such as “McCain the Maverick”. You become a lazy, incurious beltway journalist and join the CNN crew.
Also, have you seen McCain’s website? Jet black. Worthy of Loni Riftenschtal (sp?). But the “McCain wind theory”, as a true scientific theory, has predictive power. It predicts that, the day McCain wins the nomination (if he does), his website will turn red and sunny and lose the 1930s Germany feel to it.
So, there is no surprise that Discovery Institute is one of the sponsors of the McCain campaign stop in Seattle today.
And don’t expect the media to notice anything strange about it, either.
…Amanda Marcotte still supports John Edwards. Puts to lie the media framing of “bloggers vs. Edwards”. It was all along “bloggers AND Edwards AND many more ordinary people vs. the Establishment (of both parties) AND the Right Wing smear machine.
OK, they call it a ‘forum’ on economic issues only. In Nevada today at noon (local time – 2pm Eastern), streaming here (It will also be on C-SPAN live). Obama is the only announced contender who will be missing.
Not to be confused with the August 2007 debate in Nevada, which, believe it or not, will be hosted by FOX News as if it was a legitimate news channel! Why are the Democrats agreeing to this? Don’t they remember the last time they endured a debate on Fox? Why are they legitimizing a Republican PR agency?
Use new media to influence old media, for example, and read the Web to find out what people are talking about outside the campaign bubble. Understand that the news cycle is dead and that stories don’t just fade away anymore; the Web operates in an eternal present, where information gets posted in close-to-real-time and remains a click away forever.
After writing her side of the story in Salon, Amanda Marcotte is quite busy in the media these days, making various apperances on radio, including NPR’s DayTo Day next week. She will also be joining TPM Cafe and has a post up on Huffington Post: Think Tanks, 503s and Rush Limbaugh–What’s The Real ‘Soft Money’
Now, Melissa McEwen published her take on the whole affair in Guardian: My life as a rightwing target. Check the comments and tell me that the Rightwingers are not delusional, dangerous psychopaths. And they are in the White House right now. (Oh, and if anyone thinks that Amanda and Melissa were wimps for quitting, you should read this)
I think that Donohue has jump-started their careers. And what they will do, now that they have more prominent soap boxes, is reveal to everyone how the Rightwing sliming machine works, how it is financed, and how it can be counteracted.
What Donohue has done successfully is make the story of Amanda and Melissa be framed as Bloggers vs. Edwards. And it pains me to see how many on the Left bit that bait (and hook and sinker). It is a multi-faceted story about the Rightwing sliming machine and how it works. It is also a story about the way the Party Establishment (both Left and Right) resists the democratization of the political process (it is the old-Millennium, dinosaur, computer-illiterate campaign managers who, I guess, wanted to get rid of the bloggers in the first place until Edwards stepped in and said No). It is also a story about the way Media resents the citizen journalism and the many-to-many conversation of the new media unrestrained by the he-said-she-said tropes. It is a story about the Beltway protecting their turf against the “rubes.”
If this is the future, we are now in the middle of the war between the powers of the Old-Way-Of-Doing-Things that tends to protect the old power sturucture, and the New Way that gives the little man a say and overturns the old power structure.
Check out this Salon editorial as an example of this turf-protection. It is all about silencing the people. As I stated before, the netroots ARE the grassroots. It is the same people who knock on doors and donate money. Except, this time around, they do not just take orders and write checks, they have the means to talk back and tell the campaigns what to do (or to shove it). Of course the campaign managers used to the old way of thinking are afraid of the new world.
Here is another example from ABC: Loose Lips in the Blogosphere Don’t Sink Presidential Ships
I hate the subtitle – what do they mean by “even Edwards” when everyone (including the techies with no political axe to grind) agrees he is the leader on the use of Internet and netroots: his website is by far the best, he announced to the bloggers first, then by video on YouTube, then by Video and post on his own website, and only the next day announced to the MSM dinosaurs down in New Orleans. He hired and (stood by in spite of calls for their heads) two of the most outspoken and popular feminist bloggers. He is prominently present and active on all social networking sites, not just MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Del.icio.us and Facebook, but also the second-tier places, like Gather.
There are 199 Groups on Facebook for Edwards. The two biggest ones have 2,126 members and 1,849 members respectively – the rest are smaller, mainly due to being geographically restricted. Barack Obama has more than 500 groups, with the biggest one having 5,002 members and the others being small, local chapters. So, even including the overlap (people joining more than one group), there is not such a huge advantage for Obama on Facebook as the Media likes to point out. Edwards is right behind.
And he is the first candidate on Second Life. Yes, on Second Life! If you have no idea what that is, or if you want to know what techies and politicos think, follow the links here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Also, note that in fundraising, Hillary Clinton is expected to raise $100 million from the Beltway power-mongers and Holywood, Obama somewhat less, from the same sources, while Edwards is expected to raise about $50 million mostly from small online donations. He is killing all other candidates together in such donations through ActBlue ($860,861.35, compare that to Richardson’s two separate funds at $284,916.57 and $10,154.85 and Obama’s $16,885.56).
Oh, and if you do not believe Edwards stood by his bloggers and does not understand the netroots, I hope you watched the Situation Room earlier today (there should be a YouTube clip of it here soon). Listen to his defense of the bloggers and phrases like: “I stood by them,” “new brave world with the net and the blogosphere,” “a powerful world which will have a huge effect,” “grassroots politics at it’s best,” etc. Here is the clip:
As for the bloggers, Jude, aka Iddybud, has an excellent take on the bloggers saga and Dave Neiwert takes another look at the ‘Christofascists’ who are Unhinged indeed. Also read important posts by Ampersand, Jeffrey Feldman and Richard Cranium.
And finally, let’s look again at the posts for which Amanda got so much flak from Donohue and his ogre minions. They are about Plan B. Here are Part I and Part II.
She is not the only blogger explaining Plan B and why the opposition to it by wingnuts (including but not only Catholics) is bad politics and bad public health. For instance, Ema of Well-Timed Period blog wrote at least two posts on it here and here. PZ Myers of Pharyngula wrote about it here, here and here. DarkSyde of DailyKos wrote about it here and Bitch, PhD wrote about it many times, most recently here.
Is there any difference between these posts? They all get the facts about Plan B right. They all demonstrate that the opposition to it is hypocritical and based on mysogyny. And they are all written in typically blogospheric colorful language. Yes, those who deserved to be insulted got insulted. Now, tell me. If any campaign hired any of these bloggers to work on the technical and esthetic parts of their campaign blogs, don’t you think Donohuse and his basement monsters would not come out against them? Of course they would – their goal never was to destroy the careers of Amanda Marcotte and Meilissa McEwen. Their goal is to undermine a Democrat – any Democrat – running for President because their job (for which Donohue is paid $300,000) is to go on TV and lie for Republicans. It has nothing to do with these two bloggers, it has to do with silencing the voices of the people who are actually telling the truth as it is, as opposed to The Truth as the conservatives want “to create” for themselves.
This is less than a year old (March 05, 2006), but instructive now that the campaigning has actually started…Also, click on the spiderweb icon to see interesting comments on the original post.
Words have meanings; they express ideas and ideas are important. The word “surge” came with the idea of a relatively small short-term increase in force that would be effective. Such previous troop increases had been ineffective and the joint chiefs saw no reason that this one would be effective either. The actual proposal called a “surge” was the opposite of what the word meant. In short, the very use of the word “surge” was a lie.
People all over the country noticed the “surge” framing immediately, and quickly — and accurately — reframed the President’s proposal as an “escalation.” Escalation is a strategy employed by an apparently superior power that is losing when it was expected to win. It is the strategy of raising the level of force and, hence, of violence, bringing in more troops, deepening one’s commitment to a strategy already in place, raising the bar for what is to count as “success” and for the removal of troops.
In recent years, many progressives have been learning that facts alone — without framing that conveys their context — are not enough. This lesson is forcefully demonstrated in cases in which conservatives tenaciously resist the use of language that reveals truth and lays bare their failed policies. The latest examples of this include a proposed non-binding Senate resolution opposing the deployment of greater numbers of troops to Iraq and an international report on the future of the world’s climate.
The $2.9 trillion budget that the Bush administration proposed this week cuts the budget for public broadcasting by nearly 25 percent. The cuts have already prompted the reaction that the Bush administration surely expected: progressive groups are asking their members to lobby Congress to protect PBS and NPR. Are progressives falling into a right-wing trap that reinforces the conservative framing of PBS and NPR as tools of a “liberal elite”?
Conservatives have long invoked family values to promote wedge issues and win elections, but the implications of family values on our politics and society run far deeper than campaigns and elections. In the Rockridge Nation video that we have just released, George Lakoff examines the extraordinary influence of James Dobson on parenting in America. He also discusses progressive and conservative conceptions of family values, and why progressives must overcome the conservative dominance of this subject.
Last week, John Edwards put forward his healthcare plan which got pretty positive reviews – not an all-out single-payer system, but a good step in the right direction, pitting private and state providers in direct competition with each other (and since state can provide better care more efficiently for less money than any business, in the long run it should become popular enough to displace private health insurance from all but the richest people’s plans) which should reduce the cost of healthcare over time.
Unfortunately, the Right-wing attack on bloggers on the matter of science and medicine (not to mention the angry astronaut, Libby trial, Obama announcement, and the death of a Playboy playmate) reduced the amount of space given to the plan in the media.
I hope there will be more coverage of this week’s proposal. A few minutes ago, Edwards posted his comprehensive proposal to enact his plan to end the war in Iraq:
* Cap funding for the troops in Iraq at 100,000 troops to stop the surge and implement an immediate drawdown of 40-50,000 combat troops. Any troops beyond that level should be redeployed immediately.
* Prohibit funding to deploy any new troops to Iraq that do not meet real readiness standards and that have not been properly trained and equipped, so American tax dollars are used to train and equip our troops, instead of escalating the war.
* Make it clear that President Bush is conducting this war without authorization. The 2002 authorization did not give President Bush the power to use U.S. troops to police a civil war. President Bush exceeded his authority long ago, and now needs to end the war and ask Congress for new authority to manage the withdrawal of the U.S. military presence and to help Iraq achieve stability.
* Require a complete withdrawal of combat troops in Iraq in the next 12-18 months without leaving behind any permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.
I regret to say that I have also resigned from the Edwards campaign. In spite of what was widely reported, I was not hired as a blogger, but a part-time technical advisor, which is the role I am vacating.
I would like to make very clear that the campaign did not push me out, nor was my resignation the back-end of some arrangement made last week. This was a decision I made, with the campaign’s reluctant support, because my remaining the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign, and making me increasingly uncomfortable with my and my family’s level of exposure.
I understand that there will be progressive bloggers who feel I am making the wrong decision, and I offer my sincerest apologies to them. One of the hardest parts of this decision was feeling as though I’m letting down my peers, who have been so supportive.
There will be some who clamor to claim victory for my resignation, but I caution them that in doing so, they are tacitly accepting responsibility for those who have deluged my blog and my inbox with vitriol and veiled threats. It is not right-wing bloggers, nor people like Bill Donohue or Bill O’Reilly, who prompted nor deserve credit for my resignation, no matter how much they want it, but individuals who used public criticisms of me as an excuse to unleash frightening ugliness, the likes of which anyone with a modicum of respect for responsible discourse would denounce without hesitation.
This is a win for no one.
Ten months later (this was posted first on March 22, 2006), he has a tenure-track position there. Not a bad idea to give a good talk at various places….
Amanda resigned.
You know, if they were going to hurl this kind of crap at me every day, I’d have resigned, too. Not just that they lie about what she said and what that means, they even lie about who they are:
The Catholic League is the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization. It defends individual Catholics and the institutional Church from defamation and discrimination.
Yeah, right! Didn’t we just spend the last couple of days showing that this is a loudmouth organization of anal sphincters defending other individual anal sphincters from the – oh, horror! – hearing the truth every now and then.
We do not know the complete story yet, but of course trolls arrived on Kos insisting that she was fired, not that she quit. I don’t know, but I do not expect Amanda to lie – she would have not posted anything until she could post everything.
The dominant mood, though, at comments there and elsewhere is that this means we need to redouble our efforts in countering the rightwing swiftboaters of all kinds, religious nuts included. Especially religious nuts. Not just Donohue-The-Major-Anal-Sphincter.
Also, support Amanda by blogrolling Pandagon and hit her paypal button. If you think she was too mild on Donohue and religion so far, wait until she unleashes her real wrath on them, now that she is free of editorial shackles. This is going to be fun to watch.
Ah, why do I have to be so busy on a news-filled day (no, not Anna Nicole Smith)? I barely saw the computer today. I’d get home, have about 5 minutes before I have to go out again and so on. NPR did not mention Edwards until 4pm or so (that I heard in the car), so when I first got home I only had time to open e-mail, scan about 50 new messages, home in to the one that had the news, open it, get the links and quickly post without more than a quick skim of the statements by Edwards and others, let alone any time to add commentary (except for what the title implied I felt at the time). And then there were comments I did not have time to respond to. And all the other blogospheric responses I was missing…Ah, well. The family is asleep so I’ll try to catch up now.
The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte’s and Melissa McEwan’s posts personally offended me. It’s
not how I talk to people, and it’s not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it’s intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I’ve talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith, and I take them at their word. We’re beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can’t let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.
My writings on my personal blog Pandagon on the issue of religion are generally satirical in nature and always intended strictly as a criticism of public policies and politics. My intention is never to offend anyone for his or her personal beliefs, and I am sorry if anyone was personally offended by writings meant only as criticisms of public politics. Freedom of religion and freedom of expression are central rights, and the sum of my personal writings is a testament to this fact.
Shakespeare’s Sister is my personal blog, and I certainly don’t expect Senator Edwards to agree with everything I’ve posted. We do, however, share many views – including an unwavering support of religious freedom and a deep respect for diverse beliefs. It has never been my intention to disparage people’s individual faith, and I’m sorry if my words were taken in that way.
If they think that something like this will endear them to anyone not certifiably insane (via PZ), or to think that WorldNutDaily isnotsatire… It’s like when you catch your kid in a lie and he starts spinnikng and digging himself depeer and deeper. Exept that thse guys, like wounded beasts, can be dangerous.
The Democratic candidate who wins the 2008 nomination for President will not be the candidate who simply puts forward the best policy proposal on Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or any other individual military issue. The candidate who wins will be the candidate who reframes the entire debate on national security in progressive terms–the candidate who steps up and liberates the country from the destructive logic of the propaganda frame that President Bush calls “The War on Terror.”
Read the whole thing. Also check his blow-by-blow analysis of framing of the recent DNC speech by Edwards and others and compare.
People ask me that question often. Many assume that it is because Obama constantly invokes God in his speeches, while Edwards never does. But I know that religiosity is important in American politics today. Hopefully one day it will not be, or even better, overt religosity will become a handicap, i.e, being viewed by voters with suspicion. But that is not the reason why I made my choice the way I did.
My response to people who ask me this question is to explain how the GOP over the past 20-30 years systematically moved the entire political discourse in the USA to the Right. What used to be the Center is now called “Left”. What used to be the Right is now called “Center” and what used to be unthinkable depths of almost-fascistic ultra-right-wing ideloogy is now called a “Respectable Right”.
Obama, by appealing to “compromise” and “purpling” and “bipartisanship” is playing straight into the conservatives’ game – he is letting them shift the discourse further to the Right by redefining the new center. The Right has no intention of ever making a compromise: their definition of “compromise” is “you shut up and do as we say and smile”. Obama does not understand this. He is still naively giving them a benefit of the doubt that there is a trace of human decency still somewhere to be found in them.
This strategy is often called “triangulation” but the average person I meet does not know or understand that word, so I feel compelled to explain it the way I just did above.
On the contrary – and this is the biggest difference between the two of them (and Hillary Clinton is similar to Obama in this regard) – Edwards is aware (by being more experienced than Obama, or due to growing up in the South, or Elizabeth’s influence…) of the trick and is trying to counter it and to move the political landscape of the country back to the left, so the Left is Left, Center is Center and Right is Right again.
I do not dislike Obama personally, and I do not dislike Clinton personally either. Most of their policy proposals are fine, and very similar to Edwards’. I am just worried about the future of the American politics if they are elected. They are liable to leave conservative ideology intact and within the domain of respectable, thus giving it a space to breath, to recuperate and, down the line, attack again.
I don’t think Edwards will let that happen (and I would have no problem with Obama for Veep – he can learn on the job – though my personal favourite for VP is Richardson). He will go as far left as he can to still be able to win. Who knows how much more left he will go if he actually wins and has a Democratic Congress to work with? Perhaps this country can join the modernity of the civilized world in a few years after all.
Alan Sokal (famous for attacking the Lefty postmodernist abuse of science in the 1990s) and Chris Mooney (famous for attacking the Republican War on Science in the 2000s) sat down and wrote an excellent article in LA Times that came out today: Can Washington get smart about science?
The article gives a historical trajectory of the problem, how it moved from political Left to the Right and what the new Democratic Congress is doing and still can do to bring back the respect for science, or for that matter, the appreciation for reality (which, no matter what the Bushies wish, they cannot make out of thin air):
For, in the end, all of us — conservative or liberal, believer or atheist — must share the same real world. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria do not spare deniers of evolution, and global climate change will not spare any of us. As physicist Richard Feynman wrote in connection with the space shuttle Challenger disaster, “nature cannot be fooled.”
To avoid nature’s punishment, we must take steps now to restore reality-based government.
Global Warming threat may be even harsher than the latest UN report suggests, but the Wingnuts want to make sure we teach the kids quite the opposite. Yeesh!
On Iran:
Ezra Klein gets the interview and comments on it. Breathe a deep sigh of relief. The House:
Elizabeth explains and Jim Buie and Sam Spencer defend. Nature preserve and a Green House, not a McMansion. Gay Marriage:
Better honest and open than wishy-washy, says the LGBT community.
Some politicians fear blogs. They must have something to hide, dontcha think?
Other politicians love blogs and run their own. Unsurprisingly, they are beloved by their constituencies.
Continuing with the last week’s topic (originally posted on March 11, 2005 – click on the spider-clock icon to see the comments, including by Mark O’Connell – who I subsequently met and blogged about, on the original post)
These examples highlight an interesting problem for candidates: while YouTube offers tools to manage posting comments, you cannot control what content your page links to. In going to “where the people are,” you leave yourself open to direct commentary from the people. Counter-commentary may be located directly beside your stumping. Contrast this to Brightcove’s promise of control, an interface that does not link directly to intertextual documents. Additionally, even when you find commentary on Brightcove, it is coming from established sources. While you might get criticized it is coming from the media, rather than the people you are trying to reach.
Some old school campaign advisers and PR folks may think that the main stream media has the loudest final word on truth about politicians. Wrong. Perception is an important factor. Word of mouth effects perception more than traditional media. Why? Trust. People don’t trust corporate media as much as they used to.
The democratization of communication has let loose a giant amount of opinions and facts hereto unavailable to so many people. It balances and counterbalances the spin corporate media has on it. The Internet give us choice and teaches us how to be responsible media users. (previously known as media consumers)
In short, Moser’s new article (part of a series on Southern Politics) debunks the myths perpetuated by the DLC and national pundits, skewering John Kerry’s “anti-Southern strategy” and Thomas Schaller’s “Whistling Past Dixie” and advocating a new Democratic Populism to win back not only large sections of the South (not to mention the industrial Great Lakes states).
Edwards Is First Presidential Candidate to Accept SEIU Challenge to Spend a Day in the Life of a Working Family
—
Former Senator John Edwards has agreed to be the first presidential candidate to spend a day on the job and at home with a member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
The day the independent inspector came to evaluate the house, we were on pins and needles while he tested our home’s energy performance. As he packed his equipment, he gave us the good news: we are an Energy-Star home!
This is a interesting angle of hires from the netroots for Edwards. Shakespeare’s Sister and Pandagon are blogs that I think would be characterized as ‘ideologically-centered’ as oppossed to being ‘big-tent’ democratic blogs. This is actually the first move by the Edwards campaign in the netroots that I find ground-breaking.
However, not being familiar with these websites, what I liked from both was they were not centrist, mushy, can’t we all get along blogs. They are clearly left of center, with strong and witty writing. I like that Edwards seems to be pushing both the presidential agenda AND hopefully his blog and netroots outreach leftward.
Posted onJanuary 31, 2007byBora Zivkovic|Comments Off on The Most Fantastic Blogospheric News of the Day (or longer) – Part Deux!
How many such pieces of news can one survive in one day!
Now that Amanda has been welcomed by concern-troll-mysoginists who followed her from her blog to the Edwards campaign blog (where, frankly, nobody lets them stir the pot) there is another great piece of news!
Melissa McEwan, aka Shakespeare’s Sister was also hired by the Edwards internet team. Go say Hello to her as well. Edwards certainly has great taste and good sense how to win over the netroots!
You may have heard that Joe Biden announced today (or was it yesterday, who pays attention any more) that he is running for President. Just like he announced last week. And the week before. And several consecutive weeks before that. Still hoping someone – anyone – would notice.
But also, Joe Biden announced today that his Presidential campaign is over: Biden Biden? Biden!
Posted onJanuary 30, 2007byBora Zivkovic|Comments Off on The Most Fantastic Blogospheric News of the Day (or longer)!
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, the quickest draw of the Internets, the master of witty blog titles, and the scourge of mysoginists worldwide (like my regulars could avoid my almost-daily links to Pandagon and don’t know who she is…), has just become the Blogmaster of the John Edwards campaign blog. Some of the bestest, snarkiest bloggers are joining Pandagon at the same time. And Amanda is moving to Chapel Hill so we finally get to meet! Waaaaay tooooo cooool!
….I think that says a lot about his seriousness and commitment to addressing the experiences of women in society. I think it speaks very well of him. And while I’ve been a leader on women’s liberties and equality, I’m known mostly for my work on reproductive rights, which could make a candidate feel somewhat reluctant or questioning. But it didn’t with John and Elizabeth.
I have often felt that in the past, campaigns have paid lip service to women, or treated them as a constituency. Well, excuse me. I hate to be treated as a constituency. We are people. We are a force, a vital centerpiece of society as a whole — and in the past I have felt insulted that issues of concern to women have been given only lip service. But John is doing anything but that. Bringing someone like me on board is a real statement about that…
After a very pleasant dinner on Saturday where we discovered we agree on pretty much everything (e.g., religion, evolution, etc.), I am pleased that Larry Moran and I also agree on yet another thing.
This is two years old (February 16, 2005) but still as provocative….(also my belated contirbution to the Blog For Choice Day) and I’ll repost the second part of it next Friday.
Just in time for “Best Writer” Koufaxes (LOL), Lance gets back to business: Why we don’t like him
Seriously, that is exactly the way we all feel. And Lance knows how to put it in words. Perhaps even words that Republicans can understand. Update: Amanda comments
Too busy these days with the conference and the anthology and getting my life back afterwads to pay too much attention to politics, but I heard that Hillary Clinton is running, Bill Richardson is running, John Kerry is not running and that there was some kind of a meaningless speech the other night that everyone is talking about.
Rep. Brad Miller, familiar to Daily Kos readers from his frequent posting here, will play a critical role in a new subcommittee formed by House Democrats to investigate allegations of GOP science and policy abuse. The new Science Oversight and Investigation (I & O) subcommittee will report to the House Committee on Science and Technology. The parent committee has jurisdiction over non-defense Federal spending. That includes agencies such as NASA, DoE, EPA, NOAA, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, just to name a few.
Miller, who won reelection in a 2 to 1 landslide last November against Republican challenger Vernon Robinson, had these exciting details to announce:
Read the rest of the interview here!
Subpoena powers, bay-bee! Can’t wait to tune into C-Span in the near future and watch the Republican War On Science unravel in front of our eyes!
I just saw Rep.Miller at the after-conference dinner on Saturday and I was asked to keep mum about this until it is finally announced – so here it is! Please follow the link and ask additional questions – Rep.Miller is a very blog-friendly guy and is likely to read your comments and perhaps respond.
You can hear more about the news on BlueNC (the North Carolina version of DailyKos).
A Blog Around The Clock 