John Moltz

Partial points

Kevin Drum has a good post about framing - short synopsis: we can do this - but he's clearly wrong about one thing.

The Bush administration has shown that it can slap a catchy phrase on something and rely on enough people to not notice that the actual meat of the effort is completely antithetical to the catch phrase.

The "war on terror" is actually increasing terrorism. The "Clean Skies" initiative is allowing companies to pump more pollutants into the air. The "No Child Left Behind" act is, well, leaving children behind.

The list goes on and on.

Now, simply because they get away with it doesn't mean we should do it. Besides, we shouldn't have to cover up the real purpose of our proposals because people actually want those things.

Browser blues

Like everyone else in the world, I'm digging the hell out of Firefox. With all the spam comments I've been getting on CARS, I now have over 1,000 banned IP addresses (for all the good it's doing me). Safari seems to have some memory management issues as it very slowly loads that list of addresses and after repeated loading it has trouble doing much of anything.

Firefox does not display any of these behaviors. But I've noticed the following which I know I've seen mention of somewhere before but I can't remember where.

Loading Political Animal for example, some of the text looks like it's bold, when it shouldn't:

If I resize the window even a little, it'll correct itself:

It's small potatoes compared to the fact that Safari won't allow me to do what I need to, but right now I'm using both.

Enron nation

Hey, remember when there was a big uproar about shady accounting practices and we were assured it was all taken care of but we all pointed out that it was our preznit who was in tight with Ken Lay and all the guys who invented those practices?

Well, congratulations! Now we're all Enron employees! Don't worry, though, some of us will land on our feet!

Kerry

According to Atrios and Josh Marshall, Kerry will have a statement later today that looks to be good stuff.

Also, it looks like he's going to use some of the vast amount of money he inexplicably saved to help other candidates.

Why he didn't use it to help himself we'll never know, but seeing as we are where we are, these are good moves.

New Hampshire recount

You have to give credit to the Nader campaign for pushing for this recount.

It is absolutely astounding that in some states people are willing to take the word of private corporations with a history of partisanship and incompetence that their votes are being counted correctly.

Powell gone

I'm shocked... shocked!... that Colin Powell is stepping down (is it still called stepping down if your integrity hit rock-bottom a couple of years ago?).

Oh, wait, no I'm not.

Just a question

What if they stole the election?

To tell you the truth, I don't think they did. I don't think it's possible to pull it off without someone coming out and talking about how they were told to put more votes into Bush's column than Kerry's.

The point is, if they had stolen the election - or, if Kerry had managed to steal the election - no one would have any way of proving it.

This is no way to run a democracy. I don't want to look at these issues because I think it will change the results of the election. I want to look at them because there is a serious problem with the legitimacy of what is supposedly the world's preeminent democracy.

Oh! Hi!

That's right! I have a blog! Almost forgot.

No, turning 40 did not kill me in some Logan's Run-esque ritual of youthful purity. But I did have a busy weekend with visitors in from out of town and the bowling and the drinking and the whoring...

Uh... OK, not that last part. As far as you know.

But, still, there's more to my lack of posting than just being busy, because I haven't been busy since Sunday. No, in light of our failure to get the nation to hold the worst president in 70 years accountable for his failure, lies and incompetence, I've been thinking. I've been thinking about where I should be spending my time.

This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone, but blogging is not a political act, it's more of an an exercise of personal expression. As much as it might feel like you're doing something when you blog against the establishment, you're not doing anything if no one is reading it.

Of course, it's likely that someone will read it and even making a small contribution online is better than screaming at the radio in the car. I did that for years and it never got me anywhere.

But I've been asking myself if the effort I put into blogging politically might be better used somewhere else (politically). I haven't come to any firm conclusions yet, but I'm looking at my options.

So, forgive me if my posts aren't coming as fast and furious as before. The last thing I would want you to think is that I've given up. I haven't. I'm just trying to be as effective as I can.

Today is my birthday

I am 40.

As often happens to us in life, I didn't get the one thing I really wanted for my birthday - the one thing I certainly would have given up all the others for.

So, I'm left to console myself with a 46-inch HDTV. Bad for the country, but good for me.

Tomorrow night we will bowl and drink in my honor and I will revel in the company of my friends. Yes, as I said below, I shall take these lemons that life has handed me and I shall make delicious lemonade.

And, knowing me, I'll probably put some vodka in it.

Bush's mandate

Have you heard about the Bush mandate?

(Thanks to Corrente via Atrios.)

One more thing...

Before I roll off to what I hope will be a better night's sleep than last night's.

Remember how Bush didn't win the previous election but acted like he won by a landslide?

Well, we didn't win this election.

So now it's our turn.

This isn't the time to roll over.

Marketing

Great post by Chris Bowers at MyDD about how there are more of them than there are of us.

Why? Well, why is "liberal" a dirty word? They've made it a dirty word. Why is "card-carrying member of the ACLU" bad? They've made it bad.

But there's nothing wrong with us. We're not bad or dirty (we're only good and dirty!). Fuck, we're better than they are. They're just better at marketing themselves.

We're gonna change that. Right now.

From these lemons I shall make delicious lemonade

Here are two companion posts from the Left Coaster and the Carpet Bagger on how el Slackidente managed to win. Long story short, they were able to sell snake oil to people dying from tuberculosis. The Republicans have managed to turn religion into, well, religion, or at least the worst of religion. An opiate for the masses who picked the guy who looks more religious even if he's going to rob them blind and kill their children. And even if they know that.

Over at Pandagon the soul-searching is so deep they're saying "Now, tell me more about why you hate the ass fucking..."

And they're right to do that.

This is something that occured to me when thinking about Nader supporters over the summer. While I have my ideological problems with the Democratic party and wish they could be more progressive, I recognize a simple fact that they refuse to acknowledge: we have to live with the other parts of the country that just flat out are not socially progressive. They aren't going away. If anything, they're becoming more powerful. Clearly, the Republicans have managed to have their cake and eat it, too, by tapping into this group. By picking certain wedge issues, they managed to get people to vote for them even against their economic and personal self interests.

Contrary to the DLC's opinion, this does not mean running to the middle. How do I know? Because the most right-wing administration in the last 30 years if not more just won the election. They didn't do it by taking centrist positions.

Our challenge is to get these people to vote in their personal self interests and against their baser social beliefs.

We need to pick our issues. Simply because Uncle Karl came up with God, Gays and Guns doesn't mean we have to try to outdo them on those issues. Folks would probably rally around "free big-screen TVs" as a platform, too, if we could afford it.

This is the kind of thing that takes market research to figure out and is not going to be solved by looking at what the Republicans did and trying to jam it into our platform.

And, speaking of our platform, scrap it. "We are for affordable health care for all, a more rational foreign policy that engages rather than confronts, a..." is not going to cut it. There's nothing wrong with our agenda. It's smart, it progressive and it's right for America. But this is a country with a weight problem and while you see a lot of people on fad diets, you don't see many just eating more sensibly.

This doesn't mean we won't get them to eat better but these people want a fad diet.

[I'm watching Super-Size Me right now, hence the reference.]

So how do we do this?

Organize - We've started something big. We need to keep going. we're still not as organized as they are - that much is obvious. We need to turn this organization to work now for 2006 and 2008. Where can we win? How can we win? We need more people doing the next two things.

Investigate - We need to figure out how to reach the rest of the country. Look at the electoral college map and figure out how we sell - yes, sell - to folk in the south and the middle parts of the country. We know our agenda is in their best interest - how do we close the deal? Candidates with religious values? Free toaster? We need to know.

Educate - A large percentage of the people who voted for Bush were not only unaware of his many, er, shortcomings, but were completely backward on his stance on basic policies. They thought Iraq was involved in 9/11, they thought al Qaeda was tight with Iraq... the list goes on. We need to keep exposing this administration for the fraud that it is.

Of the three, the second will be the hardest for us. We already know we're right and we think that if we just explain it loud enough, people will see the light of reason. The links above prove that's not the case. This is listening and market research and we haven't done enough of it.

There are going to be two fronts to this battle. Picture Apple's product grid and think of a "pro" and "consumer" front. We're getting the "pro" down - building our own media infrastructure and getting organized through MoveOn and Democracy for America.

Where we need work is on the "consumer" front. We need an iMac.

These are just the thoughts of a well-educated but politically wet blogger. I've never won a race. I have no special knowledge whatsoever.

But I know one thing - whatever we've been doing ain't working.

A lot of people put in a lot of hard work for this and it didn't turn out the way we'd hoped. But think about the people you've met, either in person or online. We're building a community of people who love their country and have nothing to be ashamed of or to apologize for. We need to act just as audaciously and with conviction in our beliefs as our opponents. They may run this country, but they do not own it.

Go back? Oh, you can't go back. Gotta go forward to go back. Better press on.
- Willy Wonka

The Daily Show

Steven Colbert on why Americans should not take this opportunity to come together:

Our identities have become wholly dependent upon rejecting each other. For who am I, if not not you?

Fatty.

Well THAT could have gone better!

Kerry just conceded.

Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick! I don't blame him - it really didn't look like he had the votes. But what the fuck is wrong with this country?

I understand that there were a lot of ballot initiatives involving gay marriage that turned the religious right out just where Karl Rove needed them.

So that's what it's all about? It's all about the ass fucking? And the Democrats are just not sufficiently anti-ass fucking to overcome a guy who got us into an illegal war and blah, blah, blah?

Well, that's GREAT! What do we do about THAT? Do we have to try to leapfrog the Republicans and say "We're SO opposed to ass-fucking that we're even against ass! How 'bout that?!"

While I regret losing a Democratic senator, I won't miss Daschle. Maybe we can get someone in there who will actually stand up for Democratic principles and, you know, BE a minority LEADER. Kos says Dean for DNC chair and Durbin for Senate Minority Leader. It'd be a start.

Last night when Albert came over with a bottle of tequila as things seemed to be slipping away, I shared a dual toast with him and my wife.

"To victory!"

Or...

"The resistance begins tomorrow!"

We came very close. That doesn't count for a hill of beans right now, but remember that this isn't the same atmosphere that existed right after 9/11. There is criticism of this president even if there isn't enough. We need to work our message, we need to continue to organize and we need to fight back.

Let the resistance begin.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein has some good thoughts on "Where do we go from here?" In particular he recommends this Washington Monthly piece by Todd Gitlin written back in September.

Those in the Democratic camp and the rational liberal-left who believe in long-term institutional politics should conclude that they could not possibly have compensated for 30-plus years of right-wing base-building with one year's fever of anti-Bush resolve. They should, like the Republican Party after the Goldwater cataclysm of 1964, sigh, shudder, mourn--and organize. They'll pick themselves up and get back to work building their start-up think tanks and media and Internet networks, from the Center for American Progress through Air America Radio through MoveOn.org and various 527 soft money distributors, all of which, despite starting late, made up for a good deal of Democratic organizational weakness in 2004.

Still alive

Remember the Red Sox.

Someone asked me tonight, "How are we going to deal with four more years of Bush?" I said, "What? We already know how to do this. We've been doing it for four years."

The game's not over. Ohio's still up for grabs. But I'm going to bed.

Good night.

Fucked up

Via Atrios, Oliver Willis notes Lucas County, Ohio, has 4,685 votes for a guy named David Cobb, 1,917 for Bush and...

...zero for Kerry.

Hmm.

Via Google, I see Lucas County uses Diebold e-voting machines.

Hmm.

Earlier in the evening in Hamilton County, Kerry had exactly the same number of votes as David Cobb. Hamilton also uses Diebold machines.

I smell a big, fat, hairy rat.

Sweet

GOTV fever.

Catch it.

They just don't get it

Via Kevin Drum, here's an amusing example of either willful ignorance or plain ol' stupidity.

Let's explain it slowly for the slower people in the class.

Doing any of the following...

• Delivering leaflets into heavily Democratic areas indicating that the election is on the 4th
• Delivering leaflets into heavily Democratic areas indicating that if you've ever had a parking ticket you can't vote
• Calling voters to tell them, incorrectly, that their polling places have moved

...in an attempt to deter people from exercising their constitutional right to vote IS NOT EQUAL TO issuing a leaflet stating the law that governs challenging voters.

Frankly, it's not equal to that no matter who it's passed out to, but the fact that it was intended for Republican thugs with the sole goal of trying to prevent as many Democrats from voting as possible makes their whining all the more pathetic.

Boneheads.

Ladies and gentlemen...

Boys and girls...

Children of all ages...

This is the moment you've been waiting for.

The main event.

See you under the Big Top.

More lies

Remember when Bush said he'd be the one who'd better protect America from having to institute the draft?

Well, that's why it was so strange to learn of this Seattle PI article about a meeting Rumsfeld had about how to implement an expanded draft.

This may come as a shock to the Pentagon chief, but most of the rumors have arisen from actions within the Bush administration, which has studied how to expand draft registration to include women, target some civilian work specialties for special attention by the draft and extend the required draft registration age from 25 years old to 34 years.

That is so weird! Isn't that weird?