Some bright spots

[missouri dem 2]

I see the w's speech today as a drowning man clutching at straws. It will be interesting to see if his poll numbers creep up in the next week or so. My theory is that any Carny huckster can sell a brass ring as gold but if he comes back after the ring turns the finger green and wants to sell the mark another one he is shit out of luck.

He would have been better off blaming the whole mess on that bad cheney monster and pleading that he was just a stupid sap. That might sell. He sure enough is a stupid ass.

Bogetto won in a republican suburban district that hadn't elected a Democrat in over 50 years. This is a pattern across the country--- Suburbanites fleeing the r's. Remember the regan democrats? What I think is that we are beginning to see a wave of a new phenom-- bush republicans. Once they leave the party they will not be back for a while.

Arnold's humiliation was very satisfying as well. It reminds me of one of my father's stories of his North Missouri youth. They had a German neighbor who would say about his son, " Poor boy, if we would have stayed in Germany he would have been Kaiser." Alas poor Arnold, If he had stayed in Austria he would have been Der Fur her.

All in all a great couple of weeks in a very bleak 5 years of crap. Moderate republicans (oxymoron) kill the budget and drilling in Alaska. Cat killer frist is done in again by his pal the lottster. falwell and o'liely show once again what total Moran's they are. Give em Hell Harry Reid stages a sneak attack. The list goes on and on.


http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlou...

KIRKWOOD

Democrat Jane Bogetto of Kirkwood achieved a stunning upset Tuesday in the 94th District state House race, snagging almost 58 percent of the vote to defeat Republican Moira Byrd.

The special election in the traditionally Republican district had been increasingly touted as a suburban referendum on the GOP leaders running Missouri state government. And the state Democratic Party jubilantly declared that Bogetto's win on such GOP turf was a sign that the Republican days in power were numbered.

"This is a testament to the hard work of Jane Bogetto and a vote against Gov. Matt Blunt," said state Democratic Party spokesman Jack Cardetti. Bogetto is believed to be the first Democrat to represent the district, which also includes parts of Sunset Hills and Des Peres.





Eleanor Clift snips below:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10005266/site/newsweek /

Bush went on the offensive Friday, saying in a Veteran’s Day speech that critics of his Iraq policies are undercutting American soldiers on the front lines. He also attacked Democrats who claim that pre-war intelligence was manipulated by the White House. But evidence to the contrary will make this a hard sell.

The people who most want Bush to succeed are the alumni of his father’s administration, and they are in despair over the state of the White House. One former diplomat after three glasses of wine at an embassy dinner confessed that he has a recurring image of the White House as a crab with seven atrophied legs and one over-developed leg, which would be Karl Rove, pulling everything along. “If he goes, there’s nothing left.” Exhausted and demoralized Bush aides are turning on each other and leaking stories to the press, a breakdown in discipline that was common in the Clinton White House, but new to the Bush operation. Friends of the senior Bush are blaming Cheney for usurping too much power, but that’s why they wanted him there, as a minder for the man-child who should never have been made president.

This is a battle between the Bushes of Kennebunkport and the Bushes of Crawford, and who prevails will determine which direction Bush 43 goes for the rest of his term. The Connecticut crowd is headed by Bush 41 with Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser, speaking for the father, James Baker the consigliore, and chief-of-staff Andy Card their mole. Scowcroft has terminally offended the White House with his anti-Iraq war views. “He might as well be dead,” says the former diplomat. “If you say anything publicly, you’re frozen out. You have to show comity toward them, or they won’t listen to you.”

Suiting up on the Crawford side is Rove, and of course Bush 43, who reinforce each other. If Bush sticks with Rove and goes to the right, there’s a ceiling on his popularity at best of 45 percent. If he moves to the center, like the Bush 41 crowd would like, the base collapses and he doesn’t necessarily pick up votes in the center. The administration is too far gone, the problems intractable.

[obxhead]

1. The real question is...

Will we get someone in 2008 that has the guts to change some of the wrongs or will it just be another thief that is the lesser of two evils?

[missouri dem 2]

2. A very good point.

The key will be electing Progressive Democrats in 2006. Like the republican wave in 1994 we are poised to make big gains in 2006 and to swing the direction of the country back to the left. Here are some ideas from Robert Reich:

http://www.robertreich.org/reich/20051101.asp

The New Covenant with America (Democrat Contract With America)
by Robert B. Reich

1. Competence. We promise America a competent government headed by people with expertise and experience. We will never appoint or confirm cronies whose main qualification for office is personal connection or party loyalty.

2. Fiscal responsibility and a capital budget. We will get the federal budget back under control by barring special spending (pork to political loyalists back home) and corporate welfare (subsidies to particular industries like agribusiness, oil, and pharmaceuticals). We will create a national capital budget so that federal construction money never again goes to bridges to nowhere in Alaska and instead goes to stronger levees in New Orleans.

3. Fighting terrorism and getting out of Iraq. We will fight terrorism with a strong military and with economic investments and aid for poor nations that are often the breeding grounds for terrorism. But we will withdraw American troops from Iraq. As even our generals now tell us, our presence there is incubating new terrorists and fomenting anti-Americanism around the world.

4. Ending torture and respecting the rule of law. We will respect the Geneva Conventions. We will never condone torture or keep people imprisoned indefinitely without due process of law.

5. Reducing oil dependence and greenhouse gases. We will reduce American dependence on oil and reduce global warming. By 2020, 20 percent of our energy will come from solar, wind, biomass, and other alternative sources. Also by 2020, America will utilize 20-percent less fuel than today.

6. Restoring the middle class. We will restore the growth of the American middle class and of middle-class incomes. Supply-side economics, which rewards the rich with generous tax breaks and tells us that the resulting economic growth will trickle down to everyone else, has proven a cruel hoax. Little or nothing is trickling down. A quarter of all the benefits of economic growth now go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans. We are determined to reverse course.

7. A progressive tax code. The cost of making the nation's homeland secure against terrorism and natural disasters and of providing adequate health care and education -- without falling deeper into debt -- will require more federal revenue. Yet the middle class cannot afford more taxes. It's time for the rich to bear their fair share. We will impose a surtax of one-tenth of 1 percent per year on net worth in excess of $1 million and will roll back the administration's tax cuts for those earning more than $300,000 a year.

8. A minimum health-care wage. The cost of health insurance for the typical family is rising by double digits, while 46 million Americans are without insurance altogether. We will establish a simple minimum health-care wage offering basic health insurance -- one free checkup per year, five free medical visits, one free dental, choice of doctor or dentist limited to an approved list, free drugs up to $1,000 per year -- to any American wishing to join. The expected large scale of this program will give government bargaining leverage to get low prices from providers and drug companies.

9. Lifelong education through progressive vouchers and re-employment insurance. We will finance every K-14 student (that's right -- two years beyond high school) with a progressive voucher in an amount inversely related to family income. (This year, for example, it would range from $15,000 for students from families at or below the poverty line to $3,000 for students from families in the wealthiest 10 percent.) The vouchers could be used at any publicly certified school. In addition, we will turn the unemployment insurance system into a re-employment insurance system. Recipients will get job training, job-search assistance, and, if the new job pays less than the old, wage insurance paying half the difference for a year.

10. Maintain separation of church and state. We will never allow religion to dictate whether an individual must be kept on life support, young people can gain access to birth-control information or counseling, women will have the freedom to choose to terminate a pregnancy, research can be done on stem cells or any other potential scientific innovation, or public schools must teach nonscientific interpretations of sacred texts.

Robert B. Reich is co-founder of The American Prospect

[obxhead]

3. Hey missouri dem 2...

Nice to meet ya. :hi:

I've bookmarked the thread so as to give you a well deserved reply in the future. Check your PM in a few days.

Your post count doesn't match the value of your posts so I'm gonna have to think on this a bit.

[missouri dem 2]

4. And nice to meet you.

PM any time. Here is some more on the subject from David Sirota:


http://www.davidsirota.com /

"As I've noted over the past week, the Beltway media really makes no
effort to do anything other than parrot totally out-of-touch
conventional wisdom - no matter how inane, stupid and ridiculous it
is. Charlie "Let Me Regurgitate What I Watched on Hardball Last
Night" Cook and Stuart "I'll Just Read Back The Washington Post To
You" Rothenberg are only the two most high-profile examples of this,
but today we get another glimpse.

The Hotline - the ultimate Beltway publication - has a little blurb
on the open seat race for Congress in Illinois' 6th district. Rep.
Henry Hyde is (thankfully) retiring, and this is a winnable district
for Democrats. Yet, the Beltway media claims it is only winnable
essentially by a sellout, split-the-difference Democrat, without
providing any proof that's the case at all. Here's the excerpt about
one of the potential Democratic candidates in the race:

"If she runs on a centrist/pro-business economic platform without
being reflexively anti-war -- this has the potential to be an
interesting candidacy."

Where is the proof that you have to run this way to win? There is
none - but this is the standard crap that's peddled in Washington as
"strategy." And over the years, Democrats have listened to it (just
look at votes earlier this year on major economic issues to know
that), to their detriment. The fact is, the country overwhelmingly
opposes the Iraq War, and supports a far more progressive economic
and trade agenda anyone (other than a few courageous heroes) in the
Washington bubble wants to admit. And the sooner Democratic Party
realizes that this kind of spin is baseless nonsense that costs them
elections, the sooner they will be on a real path to a lasting
majority.

The fact is, the party over the years has been too focused on making
the Beltway cocktail party circuit happy. That means the embrace of a
non-confrontational ideology where the best we can ever hope for is
handing over huge amounts of taxpayer money to already-wealthy
corporate interests as a bribe to get them to start behaving
themselves. We get this ideology (euphemistically called
"pro-business") instead of a truly progressive one (dishonestly
titled "anti-business" by the pundit/elitist class), which recognizes
the role of government to be an authority that protects ordinary
people, makes large economic interests play by rules, and enforces
those rules with action - no matter how confrontational.

Thankfully, we are starting to see Democrats re-assert themselves, be
more confrontational, and reject the Beltway mentality. We've seen it
in recent Democratic demands for a windfall profits tax on Big Oil,
their demand for a crackdown on CEO rip-off schemes, and the recent
actions on the war by people like Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Harry
Reid (D-NV).

This is what we have to encourage, because as we see with this
Hotline piece, there is an entire pressure system designed to keep
Democrats emasculated. With President Bush's poll numbers in the tank
(even in the reddest of red states), and Republicans in chaos, the
truth is, seizing the political moment, rejecting the B.S.
conventional wisdom and pressing a new brand of aggressive
progressive politics that is very mainstream outside the Beltway is
long overdue. As a famous philosopher once said, "If not now, when?" "