Linda, great post.  I hope you consider encouraging some of these candidates to apply for a DFA endorsement!  www.democracyforamerica.com/application

Julie, I have. Some will. Thank you for your comment.

Turning? It looks pretty Blue to me!

Way to go linda b!!!

And for those folks trying to turn the sea red, full of lies and hate, they earn themself "Worst Person in the World",


http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00...://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/&fg=

Jihad Joe LIEberman

30. (last thread)

Not to be a spoilsport.  Mark Warner is a nice guy, smart, and certainly was a better Governor than anyone the GOP would put up, but he's a classic corporate Democrat.  Shoot, he comes from a business background.  He's a Blue Dog.  He'll be another vote for the "get along" coalition, probably not as bad as Joe Lieberman, but far from someone who supported Howard Dean can be happy with.

The "Rockefeller Republican" caucus in my local committee, I'm sure, will tell me that's what we need to win in Virginia.  I don't believe that.

In a local appearance last night, Warner said, "voters were reaching out to candidates willing to work for reasonable solutions to the state's problems rather than to impose their own ideology."

The lede from a"Virginiaian Pilot" story says " Former Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, is widely expected to announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate on Thursday, pledging to bring a spirit of bipartisanship to Washington."

Can't we do better?  Why doesn't Bobby Scott make a run, for example?

Rich, I would love to have Bobby Scott run but he is not as well known as Mark Warner.

Agreed we don't need no bipartisanship anymore, we need to kick ars.

The premise of my post now is women candidates.

PETRAEUS: THE PARIS HILTON OF GENERALS

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/62302/

There has been a drumbeat of growing excitement in the press, preparing us for "pivotal reports," a "pivotal hearing," "highly anticipated appearances," and "long-awaited testimony," or, as both the Washington Post on its front page and ABC World News in a lead report put it, "the most anticipated congressional testimony by a general since the Vietnam War."

Petraeus himself has been treated in the media as a celebrity, somewhere between a conquering Caesar and the Paris Hilton of generals.

Nothing he does has been too unimportant to record, not just the size of his entourage as he arrived from Baghdad, or the suite he was assigned at the Pentagon, or even his "recon" walk through the room in the House of Representatives where he would testify Monday, but every detail.

So who, exactly, was so eagerly awaiting the jogging general's testimony? If a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll is any indication, a majority of Americans weren't among that crowd. They had already discounted whatever he would say -- I doubt the ambassador even registered -- as "exaggerated" and "a rosier view" than reality dictated before his face and that chest full of ribbons hit the TV screens. ("Just 23 percent of Democrats and 39 percent of independents expected an honest depiction of conditions in Iraq.")

This was simple good sense. What exactly could anyone outside of Washington have expected the general -- who had a hand in creating the President's "surge" strategy, is now in charge of the "surge" campaign, and for months has been delegated the official administration front man for what was, from day one, labeled a "progress report" -- to say?

I am going to ask mark this weekend on his stance on the war.

The premise of my post now is women candidates.

INCLUDING HILLARY?

OPRAH'S CLOUT WON'T HELP OBAMA

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/62265/

Oprah Winfrey thinks things can be different now that she's signed on as one of Barack Obama's major bankrollers, an ex-officio campaign cheerleader, and celebrity marketer. After all, how could millions of voters refuse a command from the closest thing to America's earth mother to back Obama?

It's simple. Almost no one pays any attention to what celebrities have to say about politicians. A September Newsweek poll removed any doubt about that. Barely three percent of respondents said that a celebrity endorsement had any influence on who they voted for.

Mark Warner will make an excellent Senator. Bobby Scott maybe even a better one and I don't think primary races hurt a thing as long as the party stands behind the winner.

but linda b your post is one of the most impressive I've seen here

your effort is inspiring, and exactly what Howard expected of the "You have the power" bunch

Thank You!

Youre a true patriot Linda...........this country needs toughies like you..........cheers

Oprah has a pretty big megaphone and if she uses it for voter registration and turnout will make a difference.

GO LYNN!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091207O.shtml

  Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) is encouraging anti-war activists to find challengers to centrist Democrats, with the aim of moving the party to the left and ramping up opposition to the war in Iraq, to the chagrin of top Democratic aides.

    "You folks should go after the Democrats," Woolsey said in response to a suggestion from an activist during a conference call last month organized by the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

    "I'd hate to lose the majority, but I'm telling you, if we don't stand up to our responsibility, maybe that's the lesson to be learned."

AMEN! LET'S GET RID OF THE BLUEDOGS!

Oprah has a pretty big megaphone and if she uses it for voter registration and turnout will make a difference.

Repugs will just purge rolls and intimidate voters at the polls, not to mention DIEBOLD.

Oprah might end up helping Edwards by cutting into Hillary's womens base and dividing that group.

In fact anything that cuts into Hillary's base helps all of the other candidates.

The quicker Edwards can get the contest into a two person race with Obama the better if they can trade first and second place finishes in the early states it takes away the name recognition edge Hillary counts on in the media states.

Go Oprah.

Great work Linda!!

Just last evening I was on the phone with a woman asking her to consider the U.S. House instead of the GA House. The gentleman i was/am encouraging may well be too hesitant. My observation is that once inspired, women carry thru wonderfully, and survive to try again if not successful the first time.

... and heck, my mother was a woman. lol

Repugs will just purge rolls and intimidate voters at the polls, not to mention DIEBOLD.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

no doubt they will try.

they could never win a fair vote with a large turnout

Kucinich/Boxer '08!!

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0907/5783.html

Obama advisor worries Israel supporters

By: Ben Smith
Sep 12, 2007 06:00 AM EST

Barack Obama is outlining his views on the Iraq war in a major speech Wednesday in Iowa, and bringing along a gray-haired source of foreign policy gravitas: Zbigniew Brzezinksi, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, who says that Obama offers “a new definition of America's role in the world.”

With the gravity, though, comes a some baggage.

Brzezinski, 79, stepped into the crossfire this summer when he published an essay in the summer issue of the journal Foreign Policy, defending a controversial new book about the power of the “Israel Lobby” in American politics.

The book’s authors, Harvard’s Stephen Walt and the University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer, thanked him for his “incisive defense.”

But the article inserted him into one of the most heated debates in America-Israel politics, a bitter dispute about whether the authors’ claims smacked of bigotry, whether their critics are – as Brzezsinksi put it — “McCarthyite.”

“It is a tremendous mistake for Barack Obama to select as a foreign policy advisor the one person in public life who has chosen to support a bigoted book,” said Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, one of the most visible critics of the Walt and Mearsheimer volume, titled “The Israel Lobby.” (Dershowitz has contributed to the campaign of Obama’s leading rival, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York.)

...

7.

Understood, but by the time I wrote my post for the last thread, the thread was over.  

I'm just saying, it takes more than a "D" by the name to be the kind of Senator we want to see.  Mark Warner is certainly the best known, and best liked, Democrat in the Commonwealth, but that doesn't make him my ideal candidate, unless "just win, baby" (the motto of the Oakland Raiders) is the basis for selection. 

26.
Phil Specht
Wed, 09/12/07
6:08 am

Reply to this

Obama impressed me yesterday. I'm going to give him another look.

+++

Phil -

Thanks for the openness. (that son of your's must be having an influence too ?)

I second what you said upthread about the tremendous work linda b is doing in VA.

VERSE CASE SCENARIO

by Tony Peyser

"Five senators vying to become commander in chief railed, postured and questioned the top U.S. general in Iraq about the war Tuesday — all they can do unless they get their wish, win the election next year and inherit the quagmire." 9/12

And for a little bit of R and R, tonight in Gillette Stadium, in neighboring Foxboro, MA, a friendly game of Brazil versus Mexico kicks off at 8:30 pm.

There's lot of Brazilians in the Boston area and here's one expressing his sentiments:

http://www.salemnews.com/punews/images_sizedimage_255004531/resources_photoview

Berto Oliveira of Peabody holds up the Brazilian flag. He said he is excited to see the Brazilian soccer team play at Gillette Stadium for the first time today.
Kristen Olson / Staff Photo

STAN GOFF (BLESS HIM)!

http://www.counterpunch.org/goff09122007.html

In military drill there is something called the preparatory command and the command of execution.  These were the two commands, followed in lockstep by the press yesterday:

Prepare to kiss ass.

Kiss ass.

Or should I say David Petraeus' ass.

Members of Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War, who had infiltrated the hearing room, were serially arrested when they took their turns shouting things like "How long will you listen ot these people?" and "Liar!" from the back of the room.  God bless 'em.

The articulate, level-voiced General, though he only went to combat when Bush invaded Iraq, has more fruit salad on his chest than any veteran of three previous wars.

Cheney's input was in evidence in the  psyop, mantra-like repetition of the key phrases as a form of mass mesmeric suggestion... "al Qaeda Iraq" ... "ethno-sectarian"... "al Qaeda Iraq" ... "ethno-sectarian"... "al Qaeda Iraq" ... "ethno-sectarian"... "al Qaeda Iraq" ... "ethno-sectarian"...

All designed to instill the same refrain we heard in the runup to the war, Iraq associated with 9-11…oh, that's tomorrow!  Surprise!

With Rumsfeld's metrics in Petraeus' mouth yesterday, we have squared the circle with the simultaneous reincarnation of Robert MacNamara and William Westmoreland.

Light at the end of the tunnel, anyone?

Petraeus invoked Iran early and often, beginning with the now widely accepted and completely unsupported claim that Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi "insurgents."  This is one that provoked the arrest of a Code Pinker in the back benches, when she shouted "That's a lie!"

She was right, of course.  This phony claim, originated out of the Public Affairs offices of the Pentagon, has nonetheless become an article of faith with the "journalists" of the American corporate  fourth estate.

Last year, I shocked many colleagues by recommending they vote for Democrats across the board in 2006, but folks didn't read the fine print.  We needed to put these people in power to expose them.  They were taking cover in the "we're-just-a-minority" bunker.  Now they are in the open, and the institutional rot as well as the class loyalties of the Democratic Party are on vivid display.

The Code Pinkers and Iraq Veterans Against the War represent a minority in American politics right now, just as anti-slavery advocates once were.  But let there be no confusion; this minority -- which numbers now in the millions -- has the power to put its principles into action in an instrumental way:  by threatening the fortunes of one of the ruling class parties in the United States on the issue of a criminal imperial war.

Misbehavior works.  Delegitimate.  Disobey.  Disrupt.

Mark Warner has a D after his name.

Better than Tom Davis with an R.

Bobby Scott does not want to run, as I have heard.

The women candidates here are impressive. I interviewed some personally before we endorsed them. Some got money, some got endorsed  along with the money.

I am impressed with the ones running in places like Montgomery County , where the repubs have had a lock on the leg. for many moons.

Peggy Frank is impressive. For 16 years a prosecuter.

Connie Brennan from Nelson County is a find. I have talked to her personally and she has a great resume.

Visit some of the websites. And you will come away awed by their backgrounds.

The premise of my post now is women candidates.

INCLUDING HILLARY?

I am working on women candidates in Virginia. Onward and upward.

Three cheers for linda b!!!! Way to go, Linda and all you blue Virginians.

American Economy: R.I.P.

By Paul Craig Roberts

09/10/07 "ICH' -- -- The US economy continues its slow death before our eyes, but economists, policymakers, and most of the public are blind to the tottering fabled land of opportunity.

In August jobs in goods-producing industries declined by 64,000. The US economy lost 4,000 jobs overall. The private sector created a mere 24,000 jobs, all of which could be attributed to the 24,100 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders, and the government sector lost 28,000 jobs.

In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to create jobs in export industries and in industries that compete with imports. US job growth has been confined to domestic services, principally to food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders), private education and health services (ambulatory health care and hospital orderlies), and construction (which now has tanked). The lack of job growth in higher productivity, higher paid occupations associated with the American middle and upper middle classes will eventually kill the US consumer market.

The unemployment rate held steady, but that is because 340,000 Americans unable to find jobs dropped out of the labor force in August. The US measures unemployment only among the active work force, which includes those seeking jobs. Those who are discouraged and have given up are not counted as unemployed.

With goods producing industries in long term decline as more and more production of US firms is moved offshore, the engineering professions are in decline. Managerial jobs are primarily confined to retail trade and financial services.

Franchises and chains have curtailed opportunities for independent family businesses, and the US government?s open borders policy denies unskilled jobs to the displaced members of the middle class.

When US companies offshore their production for US markets, the consequences for the US economy are highly detrimental. One consequence is that foreign labor is substituted for US labor, resulting in a shriveling of career opportunities and income growth in the US. Another is that US Gross Domestic Product is turned into imports. By turning US brand names into imports, offshoring has a double whammy on the US trade deficit. Simultaneously, imports rise by the amount of offshored production, and the supply of exportable manufactured goods declines by the same amount.

The US now has a trade deficit with every part of the world. In 2006 (the latest annual data), the US had a trade deficit totaling $838,271,000,000.

( ... ) 

Recently an economist, Susan Houseman, discovered that the reliability of some US economics statistics has been impaired by offshoring. Houseman found that cost reductions achieved by US firms shifting production offshore are being miscounted as GDP growth in the US and that productivity gains achieved by US firms when they move design, research, and development offshore are showing up as increases in US productivity. Obviously, production and productivity that occur abroad are not part of the US domestic economy.

Houseman?s discovery rated a Business Week cover story last June 18, but her important discovery seems already to have gone down the memory hole. The economics profession has over-committed itself to the ?benefits? of offshoring, globalism, and the non-existent ?New Economy.? Houseman?s discovery is too much of a threat to economists? human capital, corporate research grants, and free market ideology.

The media has likewise let the story go, because in the 1990s the Clinton administration and Congress overturned US policy in favor of a diverse and independent media and permitted a few mega-corporations to concentrate in their hands the ownership of the US media, which reports in keeping with corporate and government interests.

The case for Marx is that offshoring has boosted corporate earnings by lowering labor costs, thereby concentrating income growth in the hands of the owners and managers of capital. According to Forbes magazine, the top 20 earners among private equity and hedge fund managers are earning average yearly compensation of $657,500,000, with four actually earning more than $1 billion annually. The otherwise excessive $36,400,000 average annual pay of the 20 top earners among CEOs of publicly-held companies looks paltry by comparison. The careers and financial prospects of many Americans were destroyed to achieve these lofty earnings for the few.

Hubris prevents realization that Americans are losing their economic future along with their civil liberties and are on the verge of enserfment.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Not very often do I agree with a member of Reagan's team, but those problems and my fear as to what another Clinton administration would do about them equals my fear as to the post about the "national security" team mentioned in the fundraiser story.

Hillary addressed those issues when she gave her major economic speech inn Dubuque, but when Bill was President he made those trends worse. The temptation is very great to continue to devalue the dollar as more and more of them end up if foreign hands and it becomes a death spiral.

Phil, great article by Paul Craig Roberts.

30.

speaking of offshoring:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-buffalo30jul30,1,5022434.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

But the article inserted him into one of the most heated debates in America-Israel politics, a bitter dispute about whether the authors’ claims smacked of bigotry, whether their critics are – as Brzezsinksi put it — “McCarthyite.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

just wanted to comment that the fissures of the Party that Howard exposed are alive and well

and that the race for the White House is more that the rate of troop withdrawal from Iraq

bbl

Drive by but will return. Saw this on an email and thought it was too cool for school and way too nerdy :~) to resist -- I have class or would try to go. If there are any Alachua County FL lurkers, this is at Santa Fe Community College NW campus.

Wikipedia Expert Brion Vibber on Campus Tonight

Brion Vibber, chief technology officer of Wikipedia, will speak from 6-8 p.m. today in the W Annex, room 104. He was invited to campus by the Gainesville Gator Java Users Group. His talk is free and open to the public.

Vibber is the chief architect of the Wikipedia website and has lessons learned and future plans to discuss about Wikipedia, arguably the most innovative, popular Web2.0 website in the world. Wikipedia has grown from a single server, one database website into a multi-continent source of information. Wikipedia is unique in many respects. It encourages full download of its data, is based on open source (LAMP) and has a process designed to ensure integrity of the information it contains.
For a preview, listen to this November 2006 Swampcast interview and see the write up on the Gainesville Gator Java Users Group website.

that=than

and Rich's concerns about Warner echo mine about Clinton, but in the end any of the Democrats are better than any Republican because the neo-cons use the engine of the American economy to kill people.

look at Bush's threat to veto the bridge repair bill because it costs too much but it is less than 100 days of war to fix every bridge in the country

could it be because bridge construction is still done by American Union members?

34.

...

just wanted to comment that the fissures of the Party that Howard exposed are alive and well

...

+++

Indeed.

IMO Alan Dershowitz reminds me of Joe Lieberman.

Alan used to be quite stable. Has gone over to the dare, er I mean lie'berman side.

13.

Yeah, well, I've got a candidate. Ike Skelton of Missouri. He's been in the House since 1977 and now he chairs the House Armed Services committee, having changed seats with his old buddy Duncan Hunter with whom he shared the opinion that those "a**holes" need to be removed from his hearing room, those people who are wearing pink. Of course, it seems someone had instructed the Capitol Police ahead of time to exclude a black minister, Rev. Yearwood.

Republicans aren't the only ones who confuse "represent" with "in loco parentis"--that elections are little more than an opportunity to select one's parental stand-in and then submit to their wisdom and control. An elected elite enjoys the security of being able to argue that if they're not doing a good job they can be removed, as long as the nominating process is properly "fixed" to insure their "approval" rating or "mandate" as George likes to say.

Maybe we should start a RETURN TO SENDER list.

In Skelton's case he probably owes his longevity to people who still remember that "I like Ike" and that Red Skelton made them laugh.
For that matter, I'd suspect that Mark Warner derived considerable benefit from the confusion over who it was who once married Liz Taylor.
I tend to agree that celebrity endorsements don't count for much, but their money is nice. Which raises the question how much a party thrown by Oprah is worth and will it exceed the $2500 limit on individual contributions. If she's been writing her parties off as business expenses, that might be a problem.
Woodward and Newman opening their house for Chris Dodd is probably different because they're not usually in the party-giving business.
In my book, endorsements by Oprah would count more, if Obama weren't the first. I don't know if she invited Howard to her show. I know a lot of people were hoping she would.

linda b -

Indeed.  As a lawyer, Alan used to do a lot of pro bono work helping disadvantaged young men (typically black) get representation.

Then along came the case of Claus von Bulow appeal case in 1984.

He successfully reversed the 1982 guilty verdict of inherited-wealthy Claus's and, well, IMO he reversed a lot of what he once stood for.

30. That's what happens when the accumulating habits of the pack-rat are combined with the destructive habits of the predator.

39.

Monica Smith
Wed, 09/12/07
11:00 am


Republicans aren't the only ones who confuse "represent" with "in loco parentis"--that elections are little more than an opportunity to select one's parental stand-in and then submit to their wisdom and control. An elected elite enjoys the security of being able to argue that if they're not doing a good job they can be removed, as long as the nominating process is properly "fixed" to insure their "approval" rating or "mandate" as George likes to say.
---------

!!!

...at the same time..., Demos are the only ones who pretend they interested in "unfixed" nominating process.
Reps are more honest, they do not even pretend they are.

Kucinich on Ed Schultz show for 3 hours, live blog for questions.

we now have rethugs in my part of va that want to get rid of  "government" run schools i.e. public schools and busing.

they say most housing developmemts are integrated. not here.

they  just don't stop. dismantle anything for the masses.

Hmm, what to think about life in the US in the next coming months/years............

I got it............does anyone recall the last few scenes of Titanic? The Kate Winslet/Leonardo Dicaprio film?  Where the masses are all heading for the stern of the ship in panic mode, after the bow has already sunk below the water?

Thats how I see it..........every man, woman and child........for 'imself.

Wow! Great blog linda b.

Virginia has beautiful, ultra-smart women. Good luck to all of them.