Month: October 2005

The Latest on the CA-48th

In the Open Primary race for the CA-48th district there were 17 names on the ballot. The two real Republican contenders were State Senator John Campbell and Marilyn Brewer. Brewer was the more moderate of the two. She based her campaign on a truly dumb idea of attracting enough Democrats and Indy’s to beat the Campbell Machine. (Campbell is a millionaire plus a good fund raiser.)

Anyway, two-three weeks prior to the Primary a four color full sized mail piece arrived with the portrait of Jerry Patterson, a 5 term past Democratic Congressman from Orange County, and several former Kerry city chairs all endorsing in the strongest terms Marylyn Brewer and urging Dem’s to vote for her. They had all drank the typical Republican Kool-aid in any Red District….Democrats  Can’t Win Here.

This mail piece went, as best we can tell, to every Democrat in the district. It was a blow at best. Having a 10 year DEMOCRAT former Congressman endorse your Republican opposition isn’t exactly a good day! Infuriating too.

Roll Call (subscription) reports that the Dems are about to roll out their modern-day counterpoint to the GOP’s Contract on America:

It is a good idea to create a positive agenda for Democrats to campaign on, but it is a little depressing to realize that we are already half drowned in Grover’s bathtub. But, we can’t exactly campaign on massive new spending programs, while deploring the deficit spending of the GOP. Or can we? We could if we had no shame and always stayed on message. Alas, we are Democrats and that won’t happen.

When we talk about stronger investments in our armed forces, I hope that translates into more support for our troops’ training, pay, benefits, and equipment, and not to more massive spending on unneeded aircraft, anti-missile programs, and foreign expeditions.

I am particularly fond of the decision to focus on energy independence within ten years. I think Americans can understand that goal and get behind it. And I think it is probably the single best thing we can do to improve both our security and the global climate.

Universal college is an interesting concept. I suppose we will need to continue to be extremely lax in our immigration policy to fill all the jobs a nation of college grads refuses to do. And I expect immigration to be a tricky issue in the upcoming elections (for both parties).

In any case, I’m glad the Dems are putting forth a positive agenda, and that they have coalesced around a timetable (with benchmarks) for withdrawal from Iraq. Maybe the party won’t split in half after all. Maybe.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice will be visiting the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikstan this week. Amongst other things (including US relations), she will be promoting democracy. (Or at least what passes for it these days.)

In a statement that’s sure to piss off SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers’ critics on the left and the right, Laura Bush cries “sexism”.

Courtesy of WaPo:

Excuse me?

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~ Cross-posted from comment in diary by catnip I Am Not My Leaders ~

I am not my brother’s keeper, unless you begin to strike at him.

To debate the Iraq War and get hostile over WWII makes no sense to me. Such a complicated flow of events leading up to WWII, the Anschlüss of Austria and the Blitzkrieg of the Pantzer divisions of the German Army, the most disciplined group of men any Army has ever seen. The SS, Gestapo, occupying forces, later new battalions added with enlisted nationals from the Ukraïne, France, Belgium and the Netherlands fighting at the East Front of Stalingrad.

The rules of engagement in fighting a war has evolved from the period of Napoleon and his defeat at Waterloo, where both sides agreed on a timetable of warfare and breaks when hostilities would cease, and let the forces get some rest.

The worst kind of wars and most brutal are the civil wars between brothers and families of a single nation: U.S. Civil War, Rwanda and Yugoslavia in the nineties. The world community find it difficult to engage in these battles, the United Nations could not provide legality to intervene within a sovereign nation. This is starting to change, the reformed U.N. will also address these conflicts in the future.

Debate between Deward Hastings and Spiderleaf ::
German Occupation and Iraq Compared – below the fold  »»