Month: October 2005

With the new appointment of Cheryl Halpern as the chair of PBS the republicans are going for broke. They want the absolute control of all public airwaves.  Public Access television all across America is under attack by legislation being introduced in both the House of Reps. and the Senate (thank you, John Ensign of Nevada and John McCain of Arizona). The bills are designed to eliminate the source of funding for the public stations and to take away control from the local governments.

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(Cross-posted at Daily Kos)

Some of the most prominent Democratic leaders seem to believe that with everything blowing up in the GOP’s face, now is not the time to take any unnecessary risks.  They counsel patience and caution, and a strategy of essentially letting Republicans hang themselves with rope from all the concurrent scandals involving Iraq, “Brownie” at FEMA, no-bid Halliburton contracts, Valerie Plame, Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Ohio’s Coingate scandal, Kentucky’s GOP Governor’s employment scandal, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, ad nauseum.

The center piece of this approach is the negative campaign buzzword phrase, “A Culture of Corruption” which if you haven’t heard parroted by Democratic mouthpieces on the Cable News shows yet, well — then you haven’t been watching Cable news.  The idea, as Senator Obama put it oh-so-politely, is not to make waves; i.e., don’t give the GOP any ammunition to fight with, just sit back and take potshots at them for their myriad failures.

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it.  The ony problem?  It won’t work!

To find out why, follow me below the fold . . .

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This is somewhat of a response to Senator Obama, the DLC, and any Democrat who still doesn’t get it… it’s also a slice of American history which parallels our own time….

All of the below quotes are taken from “American Aurora” by Richard Rosenfeld, which tells the story of a Philadelphia newspaper from the late 1700’s whose editor was Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, Benny Bache, who was also Tom Paine’s publisher in America. The newspaper claimed that George Washington wasn’t the “father of his country”, was corrupt, and ultimately may have forced him to resign, and that John Adams wanted to be king. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison & James Monroe agreed.

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First of all, I want to thank all of you that have already been supporting the site through visiting the advertisers, buying t-shirts and coffee mugs, using Powell Books to purchase books and DVD’s, linking to the site, telling your friends about BT, and just by writing diaries and comments and making this community great.

Many of you have asked how you could be supportive without having to buy stuff you don’t need.  Wolverine and I put our heads together and came up with an idea.  What could people buy that doesn’t take up much space?  Eureka!  A bumper sticker!

If you visit the store you’ll see that we have two new bumper stickers available.  The black and white one is offered for a reasonable $5.  You can tell your neighbors what you think about Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Duke Cunningham, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and the rest of the crooks running our country.

But for those of you that would like to make a more substantial contribution to the BT community, we offer the full-color version for $25.  It’s a way for me to offer something tangible in return for your generosity.  

The financial side of the site is starting to improve after a dismal August.  We upgraded the server, doubling the costs, but also really improving the speed of the site.  Blogads have come back, I just got my first check from Google, and the Powell sales have been surprisingly strong.  I just may be able to pull this off. Thanks again for all your good-will and support. And, as always, thanks to Susan, who is the straw that stirs the pond.

Boo

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You could tell who we were at the busy local Oakland, CA bar…

Matt had an anti-Arnold hat on, and more than one political button adorned his jacket…and I was the only guy in the place with a yellow legal pad.

We talked about Richard Pombo the scuzzy GOP congressman in neighboring CA-11, we talked about Jerry McNerney, Pombo’s 2004 grass roots environmentalist opponent, we talked about the upcoming vote on ballot initiatives and that day’s protest by Alliance for a Better California…

and we talked about the heartbreak that ABC wasn’t opposing Proposition 73, an anti-choice proposition that would change the California State Constitution to put in “life begins at conception” language, in addition to opposing Propositions 74-78…

but Matt had some other interesting things to say that I thought I’d pass on:  thoughts about the state of organizing and the netroots today…

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