Month: October 2005

For your reading pleasure, I bring you As a Matter of Fact, No, I’m Not Happy It’s a Woman:

Oh, how I wish this guy had to say this crap in a crowded room of women. I’d love to see the carnage.

I love my country. It’s an imperfect, often embattled country faced with major difficulties but it is a country that knows perfection is unattainable and that humility is not a vice. It is a country that has already come through serious threats to its very existence as a cohesive federation in the short span of time that has elapsed since Confederation. It is a country that understands its own worth and role in the world as a nation of compassion. It is a quiet, forceful storm of humanity in a global climate of chaos. It’s my home.

“I think it’s time that we seriously considered the possibility that American politics are irrevocably broken. How will we, the progressives, the lefties, the liberals, the activists, the anti-war radicals, and all the other energized souls of America reshape this country in order to advance the progressive agenda from outside the body politic?”  Shamaniac, blogging on Sister Shakespeare

This quote from yesterday’s Madman in the Marketplace diary, Bowing to the Inevitable:  Why the Democratic Party Fails Its Base, stirred a lot of discussion.  The general consensus seems to be that we have reached (passed?) a point of political bankruptcy in this country with both parties answering to the same corporate masters and not to the people they are supposed to represent.  Short of giving up, the question is:  what can we do about it now?

There’s more….

Paul Hackett, “the Iraq War veteran from Cincinnati who was hailed by national Democrats for his narrow loss this summer in a heavily Republican House district, has decided to challenge Mike DeWine for U.S. Senate in 2006,” reports the A.P. via Yahoo.

Hackett flew home Monday evening “from Washington after meeting with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee,” said spokesman David Woodruff, “who served as Hackett’s campaign manager in his special election campaign for the 2nd District House seat against Jean Schmidt. …”

A WSJ poll, according to Swing State Project, shows:

     Hackett (D) 44

     DeWine (R) 36

From Kos at 12:20 pm:

Incumben Sen. DeWine is myred with low reelect numbers while the Ohio Republican Party implodes around him. Bush is at 37 percent in the state. Governor Bob Taft is at 17 percent. Partisan polls showed Sherrod Brown making a competitive race. That weird (and frankly questionable) internet poll by Zogby yesterday had Hackett handily beating DeWine. So who will DeWine face?

Guess we know now. In August, Chris Bowers wrote:

I like Tim Ryan … he would have an excellent chance … DeWine is arguably the most vulnerable Republican up for re-election … and things only continue to get worse.

However, there is another candidate … who would start with huge support from the netroots, who has already proven he can win votes in areas where most Democrats fear to tread, who will be exactly the sort of truth teller Democrats need … whose position as an Iraq war vet could aid a national Democratic tidal wave in 2006. … Marine Corps Major Paul Hackett.

This map of Hackett’s donors shows that he already has a national movement behind him: … See the map and read more.

Just announced via breaking news on CNN. Mayor Ray Nagin just held a press conference and said that “the city is OUT of money.” The plan, of course, had been to bring people back to the city and employ them…. why isn’t that working? A commentator said that there are garbage piles 15 feet high that only private contractors are picking up.

From the A.P. at Yahoo:

NEW ORLEANS – Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday the city is laying off as many as 3,000 employees – or about half the city’s workforce – because of the damage done to New Orleans’ finances by Hurricane Katrina. Nagin announced with “great sadness” that he had been unable to find the money to keep the workers on the payroll. He said only non-essential workers would be laid off and that no firefighters or police would be among those let go.

And — probably related to the political impact of hurricane Katrina — the Dept. of Commerce “has issued a blanket media policy to employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), requiring that all requests for contact from national media be first approved by the Dept.,” according to Raw Story.

Does this mean that we would have not received the National Weather Service’s urgent warning on Sunday before Katrina hit? Because the courageous weather analyst who wrote it would have been forced to go through the Dept. of Commerce? Do they answer their phones on Sundays? What are their criteria? Would they have made him edit the dire warning he issued, which turned out to be prescient?