Approaching 2007 with hope

You might remember that Sherrod Brown was supposed to be a black woman the Democrats were putting up for Ohio Senate to insert race into the race and the progressive netroots was going to bypass him for Paul Hackett because for some reason the six-term congressman was considered an unknown quantity. Not black or a woman and yes, a progressive and member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Brown won anyway over opponent Mike DeWine, one of the republicans who gratuitously used attack ads, and whose campaign collapsed under the weight of its own lies. Brown said that he was moved to run for the Senate after House republicans won the CAFTA vote after one of their famous illegally kept open roll calls.

Sherrod Brown is one of the Democrats I’m going to be watching in 2007 because he’s talking about FDA reform, taking back one of our governmental agencies that has been taken over by industry cronies and making it work again for Americans. There is reason to take Brown seriously. While in the House, Brown worked on importation of affordable drugs from Canada and the Sustainable Drug Pricing Act (H.R. 4899) ending tax subsidies for companies gouging the public while permitting the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate of affordable drug prices. He also worked on the Medical Advertising Reform Act (HR 3696) which would have regulated advertising of newly approved drugs, provided consumers with access to unbiased information about specific drugs and required FDA approval of drug ads. Of course, in the Congress of let the corporations rule and the buyer beware; none of these bills went anywhere.

However, when Mark Kirk was busy lying to our district claiming that Medicare D was for the benefit of seniors and not the big pharmaceutical industry, Brown was telling his constituents the truth:

Medicare Part D was legislation written by the drug industry to benefit the drug industry. Voters here in Ohio are more and more understanding that their elected officials are in thrall to the drug industry, the oil industry and the HMOs and that we have to take them on.

In the Senate, Brown will be on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee where he hopes to work on healthcare issues as he noted during the recent campaign:

Health coverage is eroding; health care costs are spiral­ing upward. It is a lethal combination and a vicious cycle…. For individuals and families a lack of health insurance is a financial disaster waiting to happen…. For the nation as a whole, it is a drag on our potential.

With members of my own family up against another difficult year of prescription drug bills and months in the donut hole, I hope Sherrod Brown can now make his mark in health care reform. Sherrod Brown is showing us how to be patriotic about something beyond war, as John Edwards recently asked us, and that’s why he gets my last post of the year.

Happy Democratic Congress (hoping Tim Johnson holds up).

Be patriotic about something beyond war

John Edwards made the best comment of the year this week. He asked Americans to "be patriotic about something beyond war." He said this while in New Orleans still un-rebuilt 9th ward and talking about his opposition to Bush's and McCain's plans to escalate the Iraq War.

Despite all the other messes we have made in Iraq, one thing we could have been proud of would have been a real reconstruction of Iraq. We had Saddam executed instead. Bush called the execution "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy." I'd venture a guess that the average homeless Iraqi could think of a better milestone. One of the biggest problems in Iraq is homelessness. Read the details about 1.6 million Iraqis displaced, the shanty towns and refugee camps in yesterday's New York Times article.

We also have a huge problem with homeless Iraq war vets right here. I have seen several of them hanging around near the Metra station downtown every evening on my way home. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans estimates that on any given night there are 200,000 homeless veterans and that 400,000 vets are homeless in a year. As reported on NPR, the GAO recently reported that the VA:
-- is short 10,000 beds needed to serve homeless veterans;
-- underestimated the number of troops that would return from Iraq this year suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder;
-- failed to use millions of dollars set aside for mental-health needs for veterans, including veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan;
-- underestimated its budget to serve veterans by $3 billion in 2005. The story also quotes Maine Rep. Michael Michaud who from the Democratic peanut gallery of the House Veterans Affairs Committee reported that Congress has failed to move a single bill to improve and expand the programs for homeless veterans.

Priorities, priorities. They executed Saddam in a huge rush. Not so fast on housing Iraqis or even American vets. Time to be patriotic about something beyond war. Time for this country to do something it can be proud of rather than what it can get away with.

Dan Seals DOY 2006

Dan and team pictured left.

I think the best way to illustrate how folks in our district feel about Dan Seals is through a true story of an experience I had during the campaign.

When I first decided to support Dan Seals for Congress, I mentioned it to one of my neighbors. She wasn't interested. She had never met Dan and didn't seem to want to. She was still holding onto the notion that her representative and his president were not lying about Iraq and ending constitutional government in this country. She was afraid of terrorists and otherwise showed she had been buying the Bush/Kirk message of fear and hate.

Flash forward 8 months. I happen to see the same neighbor at a Dan function. I had not seen her since that initial discussion about Dan and did not know she was going to be at the event. When she saw me she came running up to me, apparently having had forgotten that I was the first person who mentioned Dan to her. What a difference. She could not stop talking about how much she liked Dan and how she really wanted him to win and how she was going to tell all her friends. Reason articulated for the change: she finally met Dan.

Thing about Dan is, you just have to meet him. His interest in the people and in the issues shines through. He really cares about the waste and corruption that is happening under the current regime and wants to do somthing about it.

During the primary, I called Dan the policymaker because I could see he was planning how he would choose to have our government work. He observed the "slinky economy" where the top is elevated, the middle is stretched out and the bottom drops out and he wanted to change that to help support the middle class and the poor. He observed our budget waste and our energy waste and how that was making us answerable to foreign countries and ruining our planet. He wanted to change current policies that only protect the short term interests of a few connected corporations to real investment in our future, in jobs, in education and retraining and in new and clean energy sources. He was able to show us how that would not hurt business as his opponent always dismissed these concerns. Dan knew these investments would really help business. You don't have to hurt people or hurt our planet to have successful businesses. Dan was concerned about Israel and took the time and risk to travel there during a very dangerous time to see it first hand. He knew the security of Israel was important to the district and it was important to him too, but also understood that the escalation of tension in the region sought by Kirk and Bush was probably not the best answer. Dan and I actually disagreed on the Iraq War issue somewhat. His position was more like Obamas and I wanted and still want troops out now, but I respected his position because it came from real concern for the Iraqi people, our troops and for our position in the world.

On this blog as late as today (and ironically from someone who does't even live in Illinois), I have run across the naysayers who think the 3 block difference between Dan's home and our district (changed while he lived there), was the real issue. What nonsense. Dan is closer to this district in position on Iraq and on our national issues like the deficit, energy and health care. Problem was, not enough people got to meet Dan. Know what? They will next time.

I worried that it wasn't necessarily a good thing to have a real political contender in a silly little contest like this one, but Dan was nominated, seconded and the votes rolled in without any organization that anyone ever told me about. I think the district Democrats just wanted to show in this vote their love and appreciation for Dan as a person and for his great work in taking what was considered to be a gerrymandered safe republican seat and turning it into a real contest.

Hats off to Dan Seals, Democrat of the Year 2006!!!!

It's Dan Seals DOY 2006

The Dan Fans wanted it more and that's what DOY is all about! Dan Seals won DOY 2006 though what must have been the sheer perseverance of his supporters in the final hours.

I am going to write my piece about Ned Lamont anyway in the next few days because his message about the Iraq war is more important now than it ever was as we enter Bush's Vietnam-style escalation the stupidity of which even Nixon probably could not have imagined. Ford knew the Iraq War was wrong, but again couldn't muster up the courage to do the right thing even when he had nothing to lose.

Anyway, to conclude this post, I want to point out that Ross Nickow, super volunteer of Tenth Dems and Moraine Township Dems made a huge surge at the end coming in 4th when up against the likes of stellar Dems like Ned Lamont, Dan Seals and Dick Durbin. That's a huge testament to Ross and his great work. In closing, I want to mention that Christine Cegelis took the initial lead in this contest and is the one I thought I was going to be calling next week because she still works so very hard and still sparks huge passion both in her district and around the state. Ultimately the Cegelis fans stood down in what I think might have been a hat tip to the Dan fans on this 10th district blog. I would have been proud to have presented the award to Christine and that's my return hat tip.

Dan's post is next!

Put this in the comments, but blogger is eating comments today:

I noticed it was sort of hard to read the results. It wasn't easy getting the poll in a jpg file so I could upload it to blogger. It came out fuzzy. Here are the results:

Democrat of the Year 2006Who is your choice for Democrat of the Year?

Dan Seals 45% 2009
Ned Lamont 34.3% 1532
Dick Durbin 6.4% 287
Ross Nickow 4.5% 202
Christine Cegelis 4.1% 183
Russ Feingold 2.4% 107
Marianne Wood 1.9% 86
Sharon Sanders 0.7% 31
George Rosenblit 0.7% 31
total votes: 4468

I'm Back and I'm Laughing and I'm Going to Sleep

I'm back with my lovely Franco Sarto Flats in Pewter suitable for New Year's Eve! And speaking of New Year's Eve, I cannot think of a better event to go to than this:

The Unitarian Universalist Church in Palatine will co-host a Peace Vigil on New Years Eve. Potluck/Social will begin at 8:30 p.m with music, dance and discussion groups to follow. The Zen Buddhist will also lead a discussion group. To ring in the New Year, members will come to together with a peace proclamation.

Note: the church is at 1025 N. Smith Rd, Palatine, IL
http://ccuu.org/:

Well, when I got home I turned on the computer, checked the blog and the blogpoll. Turned the blogpoll off because it's just time to end this thing, and I have to have time to write the winner's post before work tomorrow and get some sleep.

I'm laughing. You guys crack me up. I guess it all depended on whose fans wanted it more.

Check back tomorrow to see the results including a noteworthy surge by a grassroots volunteer and a huge surge by someone else.

All the nominees are terrific Democrats and I would have enjoyed writing about any one of them. I might just write about more than one of them over the next couple of days.

Who gets the donation and the coveted certificate signed (sort of) by Democat? Check back tomorrow.

DOY 2006 Winner to be declared Friday

Criminalizing everyday life to score points

One of my biggest complaints about our government over the past 6 years is that there have been so many instances of political capital being valued over people and over common sense solutions to real problems. Politicians have been using buzz-legislation to pander to fears and prejudices to get campaign dollars and votes. The resulting legislation usually affords little solution to the real problem and are hurtful to the people involved. One example is U.S.--Mexican border politics. This past October, Bush signed the $1.2 bil budget for the 700 mile border fence along the 2,000 mile border, much of which is pristine land along the Rio Grande River. Now, we are hearing the fence will really be a combination fence, wall and other barriers and will cost more like $8 bil.

What Bush and Kirk, who voted for the fence funding and touted it in his re-election campaign, forget to mention is how this affects the people who live along the border. This evening I watched a bit of chef Anthony Bourdain's program, No Reservations on the Travel Channel. Bourdain travels around the world looking for exotic food and meeting the locals. In Tuesday night's episode (likely a rerun), he traveled along the Rio Grande and met up with a local mayor of a small border town in Texas who travels the river in a boat with his Mexican counterpart and with a Mexican chef of Japanese food in a border town on the US side. They talked about the border and the proposed fence all agreeing it was a really bad idea. These are people who have family and friends on both sides of the border and are trying to live their lives. The Mexican chef in the Japanese restaurant run by a Chinese woman on the US--Mexican border (can you get more American than that?) had not see his family for 3 years because he would lose his ability to stay in the US and become a US citizen if he leaves. Bourdain went to the sushi chef's hometown in Mexico to deliver some presents to his family in Mexico as a good deed. (Oh, by the way, a good sushi chef from Japan can come into the US under a special visa requiring special skills, no problem.) It's a sad day when we get more common sense out of a cooking show on the Travel Channel than from our elected officials.

Then, I turned on my computer to check out the DOY 2006 vote and saw this, a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the Mexican American Legal and Education Defense Fund against a Dallas suburb that has passed an ordinance requiring local landlords to be part of the border patrol, interpreting laws and detecting bad paperwork. Do you feel qualified to look at immigration papers and tell if they are genuine...under criminal penalty if you are wrong? This is nothing more than some goofy local politicians using our troubled immigration system to incite fear voting disregarding who gets caught in the middle.

US--Mexico immigration policy has been an abject failure because it represents political capital to be gained by bouncing between the racists and the corporations wanting the cheap labor, and because it does nothing more than criminalize everyday life, separate families and pit neighbors against each other. A little economic justice in Mexico and a lot of everyday common sense law enforcement to prevent drugs and terrorists (not Mexican sushi chefs--although the whole sushi thing all by itself is a bit scary when you consider Fugu and mercury) from crossing the border would solve the problem.

Scroll down to keep voting for DOY 2006. As with last year's vote, the vote lasts a week and there is only one rule: there are no rules.

What's your political New Years resolution?

People can have more than the usual eat less, exercise more New Years resolutions. I have decided that I am going to bite the bullet and read more of what is written by the right wing media and blogs. I tend to avoid it because of the lies and vitriolic hatred, but it is good to know what the other side is saying.


What is your political New Years resolution? Put it in the comments.

Elmo and the Wartime President and six for the price of one

In the Blue Room at the White House:

Cheney: (singing) Oh the war in Iraq is frightful, but the money coming in is delightful....
Rove: What'd you get?
Cheney: A Red Ryder BB gun.
Condi: You'll shoot your eye out.
Rove: Hee hee. No, he'll shoot your eye out Condi. Better keep your distance from old Cheney next year.
Condi: What's he doing under the tree there?
Cheney: Calling soldiers with his new phone, the one Karl bought him.
Condi: Anyone going to tell him it's a toy phone?
Cheney: Why spoil his fun?
Rove: And it's the best way to keep him from getting in trouble calling real soldiers.
W: I appreciate your service Elmo...I really do...your service is much appreciated...it is...where are you again? Is that Sesame Street in the Green Zone?
Cheney: How's it going with Iran?
Condi: Not sure. Sanctions are adoped and the message is going out that sanctions are not enough.
Rove: Soft sell this time. Keep it low key. Let them get the headlines
Cheney: Ahmadinejad will help us out here. Saddam actually started to cooperate with inspections. Ahmadinejad will defy and act out...keep the press on message.
Rove: This one will be a cake walk and a two fer. We get to break down the nuclear non-proliferation structure and get a new war all in one.
Condi: A three fer Karl because we get to push Pakistan toward Iran and increase tensions between them and India.
W: Elmo, you know I'm a wartime president, you know...
Rove: A four fer or maybe a five fer because N. Korea had time to make progress with it's nuclear program while we concentrated on Iraq.
Cheney: And that caused Japan to start looking at nukes.
Condi: Ever worry we're going to start a worldwide nuclear war?
W: But I still sleep well every night.
Cheney: It's not the weapons that are bad, Condi. It's the bad guys that are bad and we get to fight each and every one of them.
W: You make America proud, Elmo! Bye now.
Rove: And our friends, connected military contractors, get to charge the taxpayers to do it too.
Cheney: And we get to look like idealists the whole time. We're not mercenaries or dangerous warmongers. We're idealists.
Rove: And in Iraq, we don't have to draw down, we get to use it to increase tensions with Iran, sell the American people on another war by showing them there are Iranians fighting in Iraq and a permanent war.
W: (Dial Dial) Hello? You say your name is Ernie?
Cheney: That'll teach 'em all for dropping the dollar for the euro.
Rove: And we get to carry all this into 2008. Barack Hussein Obama can put that in his pipe and smoke it, huh?! hee hee We've got the real press going on this one already. They're saying he's a Muslim even though his mom and her family brought him up to be a Christian. Racism and fear all in one. Six for the price of one. How fun!
W: Hey, uncle Karl, uncle Cheney! This is a great Christmas, isn't it?!

Cat Video, no truth, just cat video

This one's for Brian Williams, not that we are irritated with him or anything like that.

Click on it if you dare. It's actually worse than Alvin and the Chipmunks. Democat left the room when I played it.

The Truth With Cat Videos

NBC News Anchor Brian Williams recently made an argument against Time's selection of You as person of the year claiming that democratization of the media would result in a loss of democracy. He said: "We're choosing cat videos over well thought-out, well-reported evening newscasts."

Well, Brian happens to be one of the better new anchors relatively speaking for a better than average network, but they need to face the fact that they are only better because after 3 years they finally figured out that Iraq has become a civil war and because Keith Olbermann on sister station MSNBCTV finally started to talk turkey about Bush and his cohorts, but only after the first 4 years.

Who has been doing a better job reporting the reality of the our country? Here are some of my favorite sources and blogs:

Thomas Legislative is the best source for the law, pending legislation, congressional calendars and it has a great page called On the House Floor Now.

Progressive Punch is a good catalogue of votes on bills and how the laws interrelate and what progressive organizations have said about them. It's a great place to begin research on any number of topics from war and peace, civil rights and liberties to health care and economic policy.

For news that is not filtered through the Bush administration book of political correctness, you can go to Rawstory and Buzzflash. Buzzflash is more of a compilation of news stories with editorial that wouldn't make it past the White House censors. (Did you ever think we'd have White House censors?) It also has some of the best titles for stories I've ever seen. Rawstory began as Buzzflash, but more and more has original content.

Think Progress is my blog of choice for short snippets of news that you don't see anywhere else. Think Progress is part of The Center for American Progress.

Feninisting is a great source for equality and other social issues.

Lesser known, but always interesting is Seeing the Forest. Their idea is to look at the bigger picture of issues and not get lost in the political wrangling that often puts the Dems on the losing side. I got the idea to syndicate through Feedblitz from them.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has a blog that is mostly about economics, but tends to come up with profound truth in between the lines.

10 Zen Monkeys is usually interesting and has the best blog name around.

A new local shining star is Courage Makes a Majority by Nick. Then, there is always our Cranky friend blogging from sunny Florida this week.

Not a cat video among them. For a good cat video, you have to go to MSNBC.com. More interesting from William's was this remark: "I shot video [from Iraq] I would never dream of putting on the air," Williams said. "I think about [those images] when I go to sleep at night."

Hey Brian, maybe if you put some of that video on the air (presumably too rough for our delicate American eyes so NBC paternalistically protects us from it, or maybe containing too much truth that might cause us to lose faith in leaders who often benefit the television network industry), we wouldn't be listening to a White House talking about sending more troops, more American kids, to Iraq.

Don't forget to scroll down a bit and vote for Democrat of the Year 2006.

DOY2006 Candidates

Russ Feingold: Senator from Wisconsin. Voted against the Patriot Act and has been one of the few members of Congress fighting for our civil liberties. Feingold has also been outspoken on the Iraq War and refuses to take the seemingly safe road by just agreeing with Bush. Feingold said he was not going to run for President in 2008, but he'd make a great one.

Christine Cegelis: Christine ran for Congress in 2004 and 2006. She came very close to beating Hyde in 2004 building a strong Democratic organization in a district previously given up to republicans. As her reward for her great work, the DCCC moved in another candidate for 2006 and poured money into the primary to work against her. Hurt, but retaining her spirit and courage, Christine worked around the country for Democrats and worked to build a new Democratic organization in her district: Greater Chicago Caucus. I am sure we will hear more from Christine over the years.

Ned Lamont: Ned Lamont brought the Iraq War to the 2008 elections by beating Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary. During his campaign, Lamont was also critical of the anti-labor practices at Wal-mart. Lamont inspired progressive Democrats when others were pushing them aside for fear that progressives could not win.

Ross Nickow: Ross might be called the backbone of the Illinois Tenth District Democrats. He is the tireless force behind their events and is often the photographer too. Ross is also a frequent writer on their newsletter and an active member of the Moraine Township Democrats and worked tirelessly during the 2006 election in the Moraine office. A scholar of American cinema and a guy with a great sense of humor, Ross Nickow is a bright light in the district.

Sharon Sanders: Sharon is a tireless worker and writer for the Tenth District and frequent blogger. She researches her issues carefully and writes with passion about the ills of the Bush administration and the war. Sharon has also organized many events and is a frequent moderator. A big hearted person who truly cares about our country, Sharon has a never give up personality and is a valuable Democrat in our district.

Dick Durbin: Our hard working Senator from Illinois. Durbin most recently helped put an end to that goofy idea that the Coast Guard should shoot their big guns on our lake. Durbin has also been the common sense of the Senate in opposing the bait and switch nuclear deal with India, working for consumer protection, health care and a more sensible agriculture policy. Currently, Durbin is speaking out against Bush's plan to send more troops into Iraq without a plan. He has recently said that Iraqis need to chart their own future.

Dan Seals: Dan is our courageous Democratic candidate for Congress 2006. He ran a terrific campaign, but was unable to get over the last hurdle and win. Dan is most often noted for his sensible environmental and energy plans that would have helped reduce carbon emissions and create jobs. Dan still sparks incredible loyalty from Democrats in the district and last time I saw him, he looked like a guy who wants to run again.

Marianne Wood: Marianne Wood has done so many things for Democrats in the district, I don't know if I can write them all down. She is a frequent researcher and blogger, works in her township, works on campaigns, letter writing and has walked a precinct or several (sheesh she is a fast walker). She helps bring a lot of national attention to our district by frequently posting on national blogs. All through everything, Marianne has stayed energetic and kept the spirit.

George Rosenblit: George Rosenblit is another backbone of the Tenth Dems finding and coordinating volunteers and fundraising. He is also a researcher, writer, and really great at the computer. George is truly a standard bearer for truth and justice in the IL Tenth. He's frequently published in our local papers and been working hard for health care and senior issues for several years. George was ill recently, but made sure he voted in the 2006 election.

Let's ask the questions Mark Kirk won't ask

Mark Kirk sent an email around asking constituents if we think the US should implement a draft. He wants off the hook for the draft that will become necessary because of his support of the war without any support for the real war effort including demanding accountability for lack of planning and misused resources.

What Kirk did not ask is what his constituents think about the war itself.

Should we increase troops and escalate the war as Bush suggests?
Should we implement the suggestions of the Iraq Study Group?
Should we pull out entirely and as soon and possible?
Should we pursue another strategy and what would that strategy be?

Nor did he tell constituents what he thinks about what to do next in Iraq.

Kirk is skipping the real questions and ducking his own responsibility. We won't skip the real questions here. Consider them asked and put your thoughts in the comments.

More bait and switch with the lives of our children

Now Bush wants to increase troops in Iraq despite the fact that when it would have helped, he wouldn't.

Mark Kirk's no longer talking about staying the course. He's talking about a draft, sending your kids to fight. Actually, he's sending around emails asking constituents if it's ok with them. He opposed the idea here back in January 2003 on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:

REP. MARK KIRK: The role of - or the context which you're in, the modern battlefield is so dangerous and so complicated that an untrained 19-year-old can do very little. About the only job description a 19-year-old untrained can fill is that of casualty.

What will he do if constituents remember his words and rather than saying "A-OK with us, Mark. Anything you think is right." say "no, it's not ok for you to use a war for political capital and then use my 19 year old as a casualty."

I guess if you thought you could vote for Kirk and continue unscathed in his war, you were mistaken in the first place. The day Bush and Kirk decided we'd need more troops was going to come one way or another and since so many troops are on their 4th and 5th tour of duty, the draft was inevitable too. They'll work overtime trying to blame the Democrats for the draft, but they set the wheels in motion for it long ago when they decided to start a war based on lies with no plan and purposely created chaos in an already troubled land. It was always going to be the classic bait and switch.

Do I have a better idea? I think so. Since modifying the terms of an agreement as Bush, Cheney and Kirk have done is usually considered to be a counteroffer in business and law, why don't we take their counter offer and counter again. We'll take care of the mess you made in Iraq and you leave office.

Signing statements give our representatives the old bait and switch

One really great thing about this computer age that we are in is that average folks like you and I can easily research and read laws, find out about public hearings and publish our opinions for the world to see. One problem, however, is that the law is a moving target in the Bush administration. Remember that not so hot law that Congress just passed that allows the US to help India violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? See here too. Well, Bush just made it worse in his December 18, 2006 signing statement.

It's proudly displayed on the White House website, but who's paying attention to legislation with Congress on yet another long vacation (hey, how can I get a job like that?).

Bush signed the bill in front of the press with comments about our natural partnership with India because both countries are democracies and work together to expand our economies (or our corporations expand India's economy and our workers expand their time on unemployment, but whatever, right?). The White House press release is under the topic of Energy, so if you don't bother to look further, you'd never know it involves nuclear weapons. The real statement was released on the hush hush and that doesn't talk about our really cool friendship with India. It talks about the parts of the law passed by Congress that the president intends to disobey:

Section 103 is now only advisory. Do you think the Internal Revenue Code is only advisory too? Section 103 is the statement of policy which reiterates the US commitment to non-proliferation and intent to require India to comply with the Proliferation Security Initiative and require it to help us contain Iran. So all the talk about how India will become a participant in nuclear non-proliferation, help decrease nuclear arsenals in South Asia, and help us with Iran was nothing more than sales talk while the bill was going through Congress. It's gone with the signing statement.

Section 104(d)(2) requiring transfer of materials in accordance with transfer guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group is now an unconstitutionally delegated legislative power to an international body. I thought we needed the federal courts to decide that. Here's the provision:

(d) Restrictions on Nuclear Transfers-
(2) NSG TRANSFER GUIDELINES-
Notwithstanding the entry into force of an agreement for cooperation with India arranged pursuant to section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2153) and pursuant to this title, no item subject to such agreement or subject to the transfer guidelines of the NSG, or to NSG decisions related thereto, may be transferred to India if such transfer would be inconsistent with the transfer guidelines of the NSG in effect on the date of the transfer.

The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is a multinational group founded in 1975 to control the export and transfer materials that can be used to make nuclear weapons. Ironically, the group was created in response to India's first nuclear test in 1974. The requirement that the trades made under this new law were to be approved by the NSG was another part of the sales pitch for the law.

And, as always, the president controls all communications even if mandated under the new law(wiping out portions of sections 104, 109, 261, 271, 272, 273, 274, and 275) because he's the decider.

The changes made by Bush's signing statement is getting press in India, here too, but our press is ignoring it.

The saddest part for Demcrats here is that a lot of them bought into the law because they managed to convince themselves that it would bring India into the lawful nuclear community and actually help reduce proliferation. Boy, were they wrong and a lot of us could have told them if they had asked. David E. Price of North Carolina spoke about his concerns about the bill and his ultimate support on June 28, 2006:

I rise today to cosponsor the implementing legislation accompanying the agreement because I have gained assurances that Congress will play such an active role. I am particularly encouraged by two recent developments.

First, the Bush administration and House leaders have agreed to a two-stage process in ratifying the agreement. Congress will first vote on H.R. 5682 , the legislation I am cosponsoring, which will provide the President the authority to waive provisions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to allow civilian nuclear cooperation with India. Later, after agreements have been reached with the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the International Atomic Energy Agency, Congress will vote on a specific U.S.-India bilateral Nuclear Cooperation Agreement. If our concerns are not sufficiently addressed in these three additional agreements, the second stage will allow Congress to put on the brakes.

Secondly, I am encouraged by the significant steps the House International Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have taken to refine the legislation and fill in important details. Both Committees have signaled that they will not simply rubber-stamp the President's proposal, but that they will conduct due diligence and ensure that the legislation implementing the agreement guarantees our nationalsecurity. This commitment is embodied in H.R. 5682 , which represents a tremendous improvement and refinement of the draft legislation originally submitted by the President.

Not to pick on Rep. Price, here's the statement of Diana DeGette of Colorado:

This agreement also is an improvement over the current situation with respect to India and the threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons. As a nonsignatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), India is outside the international nuclear nonproliferation scheme. This agreement provides incentives to gain its cooperation because under H.R. 5682 the United States can only provide India nuclear assistance if the President certifies that India is taking certain specific steps to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons. These steps include the provision of a credible plan to separate its civilian and military nuclear programs, an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to apply IAEA safeguards to its civilian nuclear apparatus, and the taking of steps to prevent the export of sensitive nuclear materials or technology.

Ooops, that's all advisory per Bush.

Mark Udall of Colorado was skeptical, but said this:

U.S. law prohibits nuclear cooperation with countries that have not pledged under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty--like India--to forgo nuclear weapons. H.R. 5682 carves out an exception for India to allow it to gain access to long-denied civilian nuclear technology in exchange for opening 14 out of 22 of its nuclear facilities to inspections under the International Atomic Energy Agency. Importantly, the bill requires that India and the International Atomic Energy Agency negotiate a safeguards agreement and that the Nuclear Suppliers Group approve an exemption for India before Congress votes on the final cooperation agreement. That means Congress will have a chance to vote up or down once more, this time on the final negotiated agreement. I think that's the right approach.

With all due respect, don't these folks read the internet? We've know about the signing statement bait and switch for a long time now. The Indian press is all over the issue. Maybe we need to elect only representatives who pledge to read foreign newspapers.

Signing statements such as the one Bush just used to decimate the few protections Congress managed to write into the India nuclear deal law have become the center of the abuse of executive power coming from the Bush administration. Can voters add a signing statement to the 2000 and 2004 election results?

You can keep adding nominees for DOY 2006 in the comments.

Uh, let's reinterpret that

The coast guard has decided to drop its plans to hold target practice on the Great Lakes. Lee Goodman ran a grassroots campaign against this bad idea that would have violated an 1817 treaty between the US and Canada. Treaties become part of the law of the land under Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the United States Constitution known as the Supremacy Clause:

This Constitution, and the law of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be Supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

The whole thing was based on another Bush "reinterpretation" of the law, so that it would not apply to him. Same as the signing statements he uses to avoid other laws such as the newest anti-torture law.

I'm wondering if the American people are finally getting sick of Bush's reinterpretation of our laws and will eventually reinterpret the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Congrats to Lee and his group.

A Censored Cartoon is Back, but Science is Cancelled

Buster's back after being censored by the right wing for having two moms. Science is cancelled under the Bush administration sort of reminicient of the imprisonment of Galileo, but when it comes down to it, most people don't want to live under a reactionary, unenlightened regime. They just want to be left alone. Justice Louis D. Brandeis knew that and he also knew the value of knowledge:

"The first essential of wise and just action is knowledge." ~~Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1914

If you have any more DOY 2006 nominations, put 'em in the comments.

The contest fine print: All blog owners, employees, members of their households and household pets are disqualified from nomination.

Nominations for DOY 2006 Still Open

Latest nods went to:

Local grassroots phenoms Sharon Sander and George Rosenblit;
Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama;
State Sen. Susan Garrett;
Dan Seals who yesterday looked like a guy who was ready to run again;
Lauren Beth Gash, the force behind Tenth Dems;
Karen Yarbrough, for her courage and smarts from the Statehouse in her impeachment resolution;
Russ Feingold who never waivered in his defense of our civil liberties;
Ned Lamont for taking on Joe Lieberman;
Marc Curran, our new Lake County Sheriff;
John Murtha who almost won DOY 2005;
Chuck Schumer for his work at DSCC; and
Senators to be Tester, Casey and Webb.

Even Rahm got a nod for the ultimate House Majority (and I guess, a better late than never push for Dan Seals).

Please put your nominations, seconds etc. in the comments.

To keep this from going all over the place, a nomination has to be seconded to get into the final vote.

It had to be you

Congrats to my readers! They were selected Person of the Year by Time Magazine (maybe not as prestigous as Ellen's Blog Democrat of the Year, but we'll get to that before the end of the year). Bush, Cheney and Rove didn't get the prize. Pelosi, Howard Dean and Rahm didn't get it either. Neither did Mark Kirk. However, as I see it, Time's choice does send a message to Kirk.

In their award article, Time talked about community:

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Mark Kirk doesn't want us to have a community in the Illinois Tenth. When we talk to each other, we realize he's not the super-Kirk he claims to be. His campaign was all about those goofy telephone townhall meetings that made sure the audience could not focus on one another, but only on him, and questions other than his staff's hand-selected questions would not be asked, and no one would see someone was actually trying to ask something off Kirk's message. Kirk spent a pile on those telephone townhall meetings too. His FEC site shows that on October 31, 2006, he paid $4,137.16 to Tele Town Meeting of Washington, DC. On November 1, 2006 he paid them $2,547.04. Both expenditures were labeled "Conference Call Service". During Kirk's 6 years in office, there have been no real townhall meetings between Congressman Kirk and his constituents and he limited each of his Democratic adversaries to only one debate.

Kirk has used his time in congress to further stifle community through censorship of MySpace. His Delete Online Predators Act, does nothing to delete the actual predators. It works by deleting use of MySpace, even legal use. Don't bother jumping all over this post decrying me for not wanting to protect precious children. There is a way to do that without censorship. It's called law enforcement and it works. Even NBC's Chris Hansen can bust predators using regular law enforcement methods. Kirk's Delete Online Predators Act had nothing to do with child predators and had everything to do with his campaign of using fear to win and getting our kids used to being censored and wiping out their communities.

People with bad ideas can only turn those ideas into action and stay in power when good people do not know about or understand the issues enough to find the better path. Bush has to censor op-eds to win implementation of his Iran strategy. Kirk had to keep us apart to win re-election. Thing is, as Time Magazine points out, we can talk to each other using technology, and as we recently learned, techonology can foil censorship efforts almost as fast as governments can come up with them.

We can also talk to each other in person. Today in fact. Hope to see you all at the party!

Please think about who has helped create and who has contributed to our national community and continue nominating the 2006 Democrat of the Year in the comments.

Nominations for 2006 Democrat of the Year Continue

Chris Cegelis has been nominated, seconded and thirded.

Other nominations have gone to Speaker to be Nancy Pelosi, blogger and media personality Carl Nyberg, grassroots goddess of the Tenth Marianne Wood, and Howard Dean of the 50 state strategy. All great choices.

Nominations remain open. Please put your nomination or second or third in the comments.

Jonathan Maccabee and the Success of Diplomacy. Nominate Democrat of the Year here!

Last night I happened upon a series on channel 20 WISE-TV: Kingdom of David: The Saga of the Israelites. They were on the Maccabees (good timing). I just caught the last 1/2 hour and they were talking about the push to convert the Jews in the 1st century BC. Syrian royals bent on Hellenizing the region had desacralized the Temple in Jerusalem and were moving an idol of Zeus into Jewish villages, a Jew made a sacrifice at the alter of Zeus and all heck broke loose in the town. Mattathias Maccabee killed the Jew and the royal guard escaping into the mountains with his sons. The guerilla war began and eventually, they took back the temple.

Mattathias' died in 166 B.C. and leadership fell to his son, Judas. Judas was said to be a great military leader and he held onto the Temple for a while. His story at the Temple is the story of Chanukkah and as a kid, I got a present every day for 8 days. Sadly, however, it is also the story of war and martyrdom as Judas was always at war and was eventually killed and the Syrians took over.

Enter Jonathan, the brother. Jonathan's story is not so famous and kids get no presents from the commemoration of his story. Jonathan was the diplomat. He made a deal with a rival Syrian leader, Alexander Balas, and made friendship treaties with Sparta and Rome. The peace lasted for a relatively long time (for the times) through the rule of Simon and Simon's son, John Hyrcanus until the Romans came to Jerusalem.

Time to tell the warmonger in chief in Washington the story of Jonathan Macabee.

Put your nominations for Democrat of the year in the comments and Happy Chanukkah.

The Election is Over But the 100 Year War Marketing Machine Rolls On

With all the choices before the Bush administration on how to proceed with the Iraq War mess, looks like the one that the marketing machine that used to be our government is most busily focus grouping is the one everyone else (other than John McCain) says is out of the question--more troops and perhaps a 100 year war. I don't remember hearing in my high school AP history class that the first 100 year war went all that well for the British and French serfs. They just had to switch from being pawns in the armies of feudal lords to pawns in the armies of kings. Maybe it went better for the bow and arrow makers, the medieval versions of Halliburton. I also don't remember learning that anyone actually planned it right from the beginning to last 100 years (it lasted 116 years), but they didn't have television political pundits and campaign contributions back then. Any similarities to our new 100 year war? The original started to serve the vanity and power hunger of self proclaimed kings who were not subject to any real oversight by the underdeveloped legislative bodies of the times.

One suggestion for finding some real solution in Iraq might be to stop referring to war strategy in gaming language. No, by sending in more troops, you are not "doubling down" like the bold move is called in blackjack. You are playing with people's lives.

If the Democrats don't put a stop to the funding of this debacle, we can expect 100 years of war profits, lost children, fearmongering and whatever further horrors this will bring. They say Cheney is out of the picture. I don't believe that for a minute. More likely, he is fighting for the basic rights he cares about most, the rights of corporations to profit from the war and is a significant force behind the "let's ignore the ISG and the American people" campaign that is surely going on in the White House as I write this.

The election did not stop the need for people to make their voices heard on Iraq. There is no indication that Mark Kirk has retired his war cheerleading pom pons. Stay informed and active.

Nominations for 2006 Democrat of the Year will open next week.

The real war on Christmas

Ok. Don't panic. It's only a VISA bill. It's a piece of paper; a few numbers. I mean, just how scary can a few numbers be?

I stare out of the office window at a bus driving down Oxford street, willing myself to open the white envelope sitting on my cluttered desk. It's only a piece of paper, I tell myself for the thousandth time. And I'm not stupid, am I? I know exactly how much the VISA bill will be.

Sort of. Roughly.

It will be about ... L200. Three hundred, maybe. Yes, maybe L300. Three-fifty max.

I casually close my eyes and start to tot up. There was that suit in Jigsaw. And there was dinner with Suze at Quaglinos. And there was that gorgeous red and yellow rug. The rug was L200 come to think of it. But it was definitely worth every penny--everyone's admired it. Or, at least, Suz has.

And that Jigsaw suit was on sale--30 percent off. So that was actually saving money.~~Rebecca Bloomwood, Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella.

I went shopping on Michigan Avenue with my co-worker after work one day. We happened upon Bloomingdales and looked at business suits and jackets. I really liked one particular black jacket, tried it on and after much thought and consultation with my friend, decided to buy it. When I went up to the sales clerk, she started to ring up my purchase, but stopped when I presented my credit card. It was not a Bloomingdales card. She offered me an application and a 10% discount. I declined and she pressed. I would receive a discount and it would be stupid to decline. I started to get annoyed at her insistence and considered walking out of the store without the jacket. I responded that I did not like to have a lot of charge cards and that keeping all my purchases to one card helped me keep track of my purchases. Finally, she relented. She said I was right and that is what she does too. She went on to tell me she is required to not only offer the store credit card, but to insist.

Paying for debt has become a real problem in the US. Right now, American households pay out $1.4 trillion a year to service debt, says the Fed's Flow of Funds. That’s more than 10 percent of our gross domestic product. If we feel strapped, it’s because we are. A large number of American families are coming to resemble developing countries: They’re foregoing necessities to service debt.

The TomPaine.com article quoted and linked above points out that one of the problems with consumer debt is that "credit card rates, freed from legal limits on usury, have outpaced spending." Usury laws have ancient, religious origins, and are supposed to control interest rates that can be charged for borrowing. Funny thing is that all the holy rollers in Congress who were busy saving Terry Schaivo, forcing religion on prison inmates, worrying about fetal pain (but not the pain of starving living children), and warring to glorify the birth, but not the life of their God, have nothing to say about usury by banks and credit card companies. Federal law only controls disclosures. State usury laws are easy to avoid because under a 1978 case, Marquette vs. First Omaha Services, a nationally chartered bank from a more friendly state can export its high rates to more restrictive states. Making matters worse, in 1987 that law was expanded to retailers. Then, there is consumer ignorance and desire for convenience first. Most people get credit cards without realizing the state of the issuer much less understanding that state's law.

It's up to us to control our own debt spending.

Is Deerfield's Sign Ordinance Good for Business? Constitutional?

I was flipping channels on Wednesday night and happened upon the Village of Deerfield Board Meeting. I wouldn’t usually stick very long on that unless I was having trouble sleeping, but I saw Village of Deerfield Trustee Michelle Feldman passionately discussing the adverse effects on local businesses of a proposed commercial sign ordinance. She had visited 40 businesses that afternoon asking the owners if they knew about the ordinance, understood its requirements and felt that it would increase their business.

The ordinance limits the size and types of signs local businesses can display in their windows. Neon signs would be prohibited, temporary signs could not exceed 10 percent of a window and permanent signs could not exceed 15 percent. Village Trustees favoring the ordinance cite aesthetics for the proposed new rules. Letters about the ordinance were sent to local businesses, but Trustee Feldman found in her research that many local business owners were not aware of the ordinance or did not understand how it would affect them. Many Deerfield businesses feel that effective signage is essential to identify their stores and to inform customers of sales and special events. Deerfield residents need to be concerned about additional limits placed on local businesses because the village has had vacancy issues in some of its strip malls including several current vacancies at Lake Cook Plaza and Cadwell Corners (named for original settler Jacob B. Cadwell circa 1835) in which it took several years to replace its lost anchor tenants.

As a Deerfield resident, I am concerned about local businesses and the aesthetics of our community. As an attorney and political activist, I am also concerned with the constitutionality of our local sign laws. Limits on temporary signage could affect the ability of these business owners to place political signs in their windows limiting their ability to exercise their free speech. This proposed ordinance limits temporary signage, which could include political signs, to 10 percent of a window. Article 9 of the current zoning ordinance specifically affects political signs. Under current Article 9, political signs cannot be displayed for more than 30 days prior to an election and must be removed within 7 days following. Other types of signs in Deerfield such as construction, quasi-public and temporary business signs are also subject to timing restrictions under the ordinance.

The courts strictly scrutinize laws affecting political speech because they affect First Amendment free speech rights. Strict scrutiny of a law generally means that the law must serve a compelling government interest and not just a preference, be narrowly drawn to achieve that interest and use the least restrict means to satisfy the interest. Courts judging the constitutionality of laws affecting political signage have started their analysis by first determining whether the sign law is content-based or content neutral. Laws based on content are most strictly construed. If a law for purposes of aesthetics places a restriction on political signs, but not on other temporary signs, it may be unconstitutional because aesthetics is not a compelling interest when applied to political signs and not others types of signs. McCormack v. Township of Clinton, 872 F.Supp. at 1325-26; Whitton v. City of Gladstone, 54 F.3d 1400 (8th Cir. 1995). In McCormack and Whitton, the subject laws imposed time limits on political signs, but not on other types of temporary signs such as signs advertising yard sales, festivities and other events, or the sale of property. In an Illinois case, City of Waterloo v. Markham, 234 Ill. App. 3d 744, 600 N.E.2d 1320, 175 Ill. Dec. 862 (5th Dist. 1992), a law placing time limits on all temporary signs was upheld because it regulated all temporary signs, not signs displaying one particular type of speech. In another more recent Illinois case, however, Christensen v. City of Wheaton, 2000 WL 204225 (N.D. Ill. 2000), a 30-day restriction on temporary signs, including political signs, was struck down because the law contained more lenient rules for other commercial signs, so the court determined it was invalid for lack of content-neutrality.

The proposed Deerfield law seems content-neutral limiting the size of all temporary signs. However, as part of the greater sign ordinance, there could be an issue because the rules for political signs are different than the rules for other types of signs. True, not all the restrictions are reserved for political signs. Construction signs, arguably having greater safety concerns attached, get 60 days, but have to be removed within 2 days after completion. Quasi-public signs for events and such, help wanted signs and temporary business signs get 30 days and have to be removed immediately. However, there are signs not specifically mentioned that have no such restrictions.

I don’t love those huge and numerous parkway signs all over the place or the old post-election signs any more than anyone else, but for simple residential yard signs, I would like to see the 30 days for political signs extended to match adjoining towns like Highland Park that have no such pre-election restrictions and make Deerfieldians feel less politically engaged than their neighbors and look like they have no political voice during some of the most important weeks before an election. I know a lot of folks will disagree because they think the yard signs make the neighborhoods look bad, but I hope they remember that political speech is not the same thing as commercial speech. Political speech is the most important speech we have and has to be more fervently protected in these times when teachers are dismissed for discussing Iraq war protests, protests are limited to isolated, unseen free speech zones, a person can be arrested for wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt or given a traffic ticket for sporting an anti-Bush bumper sticker, and homeowners associations can forbid a peace symbol on a wreath or a home decoration containing a message of disapproval of Bush. I only hope the Village Board takes constitutional issues into consideration as it works to modify its sign restrictions.

As for the commercial aspect of the proposed sign law, I applaud Trustee Feldman for doing her research and talking to local business owners rather than relying that one form letter would explain the law and give them a chance to speak before the Board. The Village should work with and not against our local businesses on the commercial aspects of the sign laws. We don’t want to lose them for lack of understanding and explanation. If you are interested in Deerfield’s sign laws, you may want to attend the Board Meeting on December 18th at 7:30pm. The proposed change is up for a vote at that meeting.

Time to Make the Donuts... and spread xenophobia

Walk into many Dunkin Donuts in Chicago and you see way more than fattening donuts, muffins and brownies. You'll see a snapshot of the American dream. People who have immigrated to the US can save their money, get some fast food experience and eventually buy a DD franchise starting their own business serving coffee and donuts to cold and hungry office workers like me. You could argue that DD is another corporate chain giving us unhealthy food in this Fast Food Nation of ours and I'd probably be right along with you (I am cutting down), but the coffee is cheaper than at Starbucks or Cosi and its usually good enough as things go and they do provide those business opportunities for those immigrants who can save up the money.

So, why am I talking about donuts here on a political blog? Well, I didn't get all that much dinner last night and because those new commercials are really irritating me, the ones where we are told we should purchase our lattes from DD because they are ordered with an English pronunciation of latte rather than the French or Italian pronunciation, condescendingly named in the commercial,"Fritalian".

As I see it, DD is a company that drove its expansion through franchising to recent immigrants to the US, and now it is running an advertising campaign designed to profit from good old American xenophobia. DD is offering good old American lattes, never mind that the word latte comes from the Italian word for milk and in French it's not latte at all, but cafe au lait, and that the actual coffee itself probably comes from somewhere in South America or Africa. We're not supposed to get that. We are just supposed to look down on foreigners speaking foreign languages.

Starbucks is taking this ad campaign as a humorous swipe at them, but it runs deeper that advertising or coffee. For some reason politicians, and now corporations, feel a good way to win over Americans is by isolating them from the rest of the world with contempt and fear. When the French said "not so fast" on the invasion of Iraq, french fries became freedom fries even though the French had a good point about Iraq (and Vietnam). When the political whoopla died down the fried potatoes quietly regained their French identity even though the French actually call them pomme frits and the English call them chips... in English. Then, we went through the whole republican implosion on anti-immigrant including an attempt to make English the official language of the US while trying not to offend the large corporations that invite immigrants to work for smaller salaries and eventually buy DD franchises.

Me? I've decided to stick to my good old home brewed coffee or blueberry tea and stay away from the donuts (except maybe the occasional chocolate cake donut with chocolate frosting).

Congrats IWIL 2006 Grads!

The Illinois Tenth brags 3 graduates of the Illinois Women's Institute for Leadership: Adrienne Schwarzbach Johnson, Catherine Caporusso and Nancy Rodkin Rotering. IWIL is the program started by Loretta Durbin and others to train and promote Illinois Democratic Women seeking to run for office.

IWIL training spans several months and takes participants around the state and to Washington, D.C. for classes, lectures and events. Classes range from campaign organization, financing, media training and public speaking, party organization and relationships with other institutions, to legislative lobbying and policymaking. The media training and public speaking class is a favorite with both IWIL leaders and students. The class puts students into a simulated press conference and tapes their presentation. If you are an Illinois Democratic woman interested in running for office, you should check IWIL out. My friends who have gone through the program speak highly of it and three of them now hold public office.

Congrats to the recent grads!

Local Update: Kirk has nothing to say about the Iraq Study Group Report

From CBS2 News:

Illinois Republicans who long supported the President on Iraq, kept a lower profile. House Speaker Denny Hastert, North Suburban Rep. Mark Kirk and Dupage County's Rep. Judy Biggert all declined to speak to CBS 2.

Democrats had plenty to say. Schakowsky was focused on the diplomatic end while Rahm said he is looking forward to having bipartisan oversight over foreign policy. Durbin said the study group "reached the same conclusion that the American people reached." I don't know if I agree with that. I think the American people would like us to be out of Iraq sooner than later. Obama said we need to be "as cautious getting out (of Iraq) as we were reckless getting in." I'm not sure what I think about that. On the one hand I agree we were reckless getting into Iraq and created a predictable civil war. On the other, does "cautious" need to mean slow?

Valiant effort on the part of CBS2's Mike Flannery in trying to get Kirk out from under the bed. We've tried Reeses Pieces and an entire election, but sadly the IL Tenth is still subject to "you can't pin me down" representation.

Who will come up with the courage to bring them home?

I've been hearing the reports and arguments around the Iraq Study Group report. Here are a few thoughts:

1. True to form and as predicted on this blog Wednesday morning, Bush grabbed onto the comments in the report requiring consensus, and true to form, the Democrats bite like they won't be in control of congress next month.

2. Russ Feingold makes the good point that the report gives not much more than a watered down compromise that doesn't do much of anything because the writers were the same guys that supported the war from the beginning and they are still ignoring the will of the American people evidenced by the 2006 mid-term election. Take a look at Feingold's statement here.

3. The report, beginning with the words "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" is a far cry not only from Bush's recent "we're winning claims, but also a far cry from H.Res. 861 , debated for 10 hours and passed by a vote of 256 to 153 this past June and declaring Iraq part of the Global War on Terror and that "the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the noble struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary."

4. The report recommends a slow withdrawal from Iraq leaving isolated US troops behind in advisory and training roles. While I am glad to see at least some suggestion of withdrawal rather than escalation as recommended by John McCain or stay the course as Mark Kirk has failed even at this late date to repudiate, I'd sure hate to be in the last group out. Looks like we are leading up to another horrible scene of panicked withdrawal and helicopters on a roof of somewhere in Iraq a la Vietnam or worse.

5. Maybe the key to getting out of Iraq is to dust off the key to getting out of Vietnam, the funding, but will the Democrats have the courage to support the troops, not by funding additional inadequate equipment and not by funding continued war without strategy, but by bringing them home?

Will Bush Accept the Draw Down or Seek Conformity with Bad Iraq Policy?

Last night, CNN reported that it had access to some of the findings of the Iraq Study Group and they are reporting some on their website this morning.

It looks like they are calling for a year-long pullout, but will not set a timetable, suggesting the mission be changed from combat to advice and support, and recommending the Bush administration seek a diplomatic solution. We've heard most of this before from Democrats who were accused of "cut and run".

This seems to be the first suggestion coming from anyone other than progressive Democrats that the US should seek peace in the region:

The report contends the United States "cannot achieve its goals in the Mideast" unless it embarks on a "renewed and sustained commitment to a comprehensive peace plan on all fronts," according to the sources.

The suggested diplomatic strategy is to work with Syria and Iran as suggested by Tony Blair weeks ago.

The report last night on Anderson Cooper mentioned that the Iraq Study Group concluded that one of the problems was the American people's lack of will in Iraq. That irritated me because it insinuated that the war we were lied into and its incompetent maintenance was the fault of the people. The actual quote now reported by CNN seems a bit toned down from that earlier report:

What we recommend demands a tremendous amount of political will and cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government," says the report. "Success depends on unity of the American people at a time of political polarization."

Study Group chair James Baker and Lee H. Hamilton are supposed to meet with Bush this morning and the report on the web and in book form is to come out later today. The press conference is scheduled for 11:00am. The report is titled "The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward -- a New Approach." I don't know if they are going to sell a lot of copies because it seems more like a suggested too little, adopted too late approach that is not much more than a watered down version of what was promoted by Democrats and rejected by Bush months ago as his 2006 campaign strategy. The best suggestion from the report that I have seen so far is that "success depends on unity", but so often from republicans that only means that Democrats are being warned to fall in line with Bush's policies no matter how ill-advised they are. The reported last sentence seems to be leading in that old direction:

Foreign policy is doomed to failure -- as is any action in Iraq -- if not supported by broad, sustained consensus.

New Hampshire's state motto is "Live Free or Die". I suspect the Bush administration is less likely to take the good suggestions of the study group, but grab onto the motto "Conform or Die."

To Sen. John E. Sununu, R-NH Health and Insurance Corps Trump Rest of US Business

Sen. John E. Sununu, R-NH told a group of New Hampshire business leaders that there is nothing that can be done about health care costs, so they should stop talking about how it's making US businesses less competitive.

Apparently, Sununu has decided that health and insurance corporations are more important than other businesses in the US because there is a lot that can be done, he just doesn't want to do any of it.

In an unrelated story, the insurance industry contributed $322,500 to Sununu's campaign war chest and the health care industry another 76,240.

Physicians for a National Health Program disagree with Sununu:

A National Health Insurance Program would save at least $150 billion annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private, investor-owned insurance industry and reducing spending for marketing and other satellite services. Doctors and hospitals would be freed from the concomitant burdens and expenses of paperwork created by having to deal with multiple insurers with different rules - often rules designed to avoid payment. During the transition to an NHI, the savings on administration and profits would fully offset the costs of expanded and improved coverage. NHI would make it possible to set and enforce overall spending limits for the health care system, slowing cost growth over the long run.

A National Health Insurance Program is the only affordable option for universal, comprehensive coverage. Under the current system, expanding access to health care inevitably means increasing costs, and reducing costs inevitably means limiting access. But an NHI could both expand access and reduce costs. It would squeeze out bureaucratic waste and eliminate the perverse incentives that threaten the quality of care and the ethical foundations of medicine.

Read their proposal.

Obstructions to Tyranny Almost Eluded Us

Bush has declared the Senators (Democrats and republicans) who stopped the confirmation of John Bolton as UN Ambassador obstructionists and he's deeply disappointed. Bush is disappointed because he thought he'd be able to roll over the US Constitution and will of the American people with his bad war plan, bad foreign policy, reduction of civil liberties, bad economic policy and the list goes on and on, forever.

Small problem.

There was an election and the republicans suffered clear, unequivocal losses. Suddenly, folks are calling a civil war a civil war, Rummy isn't doing such a great job after all, Rummy talks a good game, but privately conceded changes had to be made. Now John Bolton won't be shoved down the collective world throat at the UN. Maybe its because he said this:

The [U.N.] Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.

and this:

There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along.

More likely, Bush cannot see how Bolton can be confirmed with the new Democratic Senate and the new voice found the the opposition.

What strikes me is that the election was necessary for the opposition to find a real voice. Sure, there were a few great exceptions like Conyers, Murtha, Feingold, Schakowsky and a couple of others made comments and than almost immediately apologized for them, but most Democrats and all of the republicans, including the so-called moderates, were just willing to let all this bad policy and law go through without a peep because no one was forcing their hand otherwise and it seemed the easier and safer route to lifelong government employment. Without the election, it is likely we would still be where we were. Without future elections that we can trust, we are likely to go back there. Few were willing to stand up and make it stick without the election. I don't know about you, but I find this chilling.

E-voting Lawsuit in Florida

On November 21, 2006, a group of republican and Democratic voters represented by election advocacy groups, including Voter Action, People For the American Way Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida filed a lawsuit seeking a revote in the Florida 13th based on that 18,000+ undervote in the hotly contested congressional race to replace former congresswoman Katherine Harris. You might remember that the election was recently given to republican Vern Buchanan over Democrat Christine Jennings by a mere 363 votes amid an outcry of voting irregularities including complaints that voters could see on the summary screen that there congressional votes were not registering on the e-voting machines.

An undervote for a given race is the number of ballots cast minus the total number of votes in that race. An undervote rate of greater than 16% as occurred in the Florida 13th this year is unusual. The greatest problems seemed to have occurred in Sarasota County using a controversial no-paper-trail electronic voting system. In Sarasota County, 3 precincts had an undervote rate of 25% and one precinct had an undervote rate of 38%. Other counties using optical scanning rather than the electronic voting had undervote rates of from less than 1% to 2.51%.

To put it into further perspective, note that the undervote rate in the 2006 Florida Senate race was 1% and in the very same congressional race, but with paper absentee ballots, the undervote rate was 2.5%. In the still disputed 2000 Presidential election, the undervote for President in the entire state of Florida was considered very large at 62,000. The congressional undervote at issue here is about 30% of that very unusually high number for an entire state.

The undervote is not the only issue in the 2006 FL 13th district contest. There are also allegations of misconduct of election officials and improper certification of iVotronic voting machines. According to the lawsuit, the misconduct allegations include failure to "adequately investigate, identify or report equipment malfunctions, software malfunctions or ballot layout errors in the ES&S iVotronic touch screen voting machines, even after receiving numerous complaints about the machines from voters and poll-workers during the two week period of early voting."

Complaints of problems during early voting were made and the response from Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections was dismissive suggesting that the complaints were partisan efforts to discredit her and the election. Maybe she should have just investigated and worked to fix the problems.

ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon commented on this chronic problem with voting in Florida:

For years, Gov. Jeb Bush's administration, including various Secretaries of State, has dismissed reports of problems with electronic voting machines and resisted mandating audits and other methods of ensuring that electronic voting machines are capable of performing a genuine re-count. We even had to go to court to overturn an Administrative Rule issued by the Secretary of State banning recounts in DRE Counties. Now we have mass disenfranchisement and a crisis in voter confidence in the integrity of the elections. It is likely that the faulty machines, not the voters, decided this election.

Fake religion, Fake security, Real warning signs

Last year, Mark Kirk said "I'm OK with discrimination against young Arab males from terrorist-producing states. I'm OK with that." He said it to get votes by catering to the fearful and racist in our district and it worked.

Fast forward a year and read this story about Jerry Klein, a radio talk show host who ran a little test last week. He suggested to his listeners that all Muslims in the US should be "identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band." Some callers objected, but many agreed and suggested even more extreme measures. At the end of the show, Klein revealed his test and said:

Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen ... We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous.

Now, we have Congressmen making up rules and customs that never existed requiring new Congressmen having to swear an oath of office on the Bible. The real rule is that there is no such rule. Our founders were against both establishment of religion and requiring loyalty oaths. The First Amendment prohibits establishment of religion by the government and requiring a US Congressman to be a Christian is the exact government establishment of religion they were against. The British monarchy was big on loyalty oaths and it bugged the colonists, so you don't even have to swear an oath to become a member of congress, you can choose to make an affirmation instead.

The fake religion, fake security and fake rules are simply toys of politicians to gain notariety and power. Pandering to the worst in people is cheap and easy and works well when you have nothing better about yourself to sell to your constituents. I hope the alarms are going off in your head. These are the warning signs that we are choosing the wrong path.

A story of an Iraqi and an article by an Iraqi

UPDATE: You might want to look at this article about corruption in Iraq that is also compromising reconstruction and safety. Here's a bit of it:

Mr Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Sigir), cites Iraqi figures showing that the "virtual pandemic" of corruption costs the country $4bn (£2.02bn) a year, and some of that money goes straight to the Iraqi government's enemies. A US government report has concluded that oil smuggling abetted by corrupt Iraqi officials is netting insurgents $100m a year, helping to make them financially self-sustaining....

But Mr Bowen's office has found that the insurgents and militias have also been abetted by US incompetence. A recent audit by his inspectors found that more than 14,000 guns paid for out of US reconstruction funds for Iraqi government use could not be accounted for. Many could be in the hands of insurgents or sectarian death squads, but it will be almost impossible to prove because when the US military handed out the guns it noted the serial numbers of only about 10,000 out of a total of 370,000 US-funded weapons, contrary to defence department regulations.

I'd ask if it is really US incompetence or US intentions or complete lack of caring who profits from the war. In any event, the administration set a terrible example by allowing US companies connected to administration officials make exorbitant profits. It's either ironic or suspect that the party ruled by big business is completely unable to find competent accountants to prevent this scope of corruption and that is why it is unlikely it's just incompetence. Connected folks are profiting from the Iraq war and the anarchy fuels the war and the profits.

Read my original post below to see how this plays in one community of Iraqis:

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I know a woman who is dating an Assyrian Christian from Iraq. We have discussed the invasion and war on and off since pretty close to the beginning. At first, her boyfriend was very happy about the invasion and became quite the Bush fan. He defended the war for a pretty long time and even made plans to go back to Baghdad and see his relatives.

I hadn't spoken with her for a while, but yesterday I saw her and she said that her boyfriend was very upset about the war. Not only does he feel he'll never see Baghdad again, but most of his relatives who were living there and were financially and physically able, moved here.

Many Iraqis, particularly expatriates, believed Bush when he said America was going to bring democracy and peace to Iraq. What he brought was death, destruction, unlivable conditions and greedy American corporations. They are mad at American and the British and at themselves for putting their faith in them.

See this article where the writer, another Assyrian Christian whose parents came from Iraq, blames several groups. First, he blames the group he calls the good guys: "the men and women who gave of their lives and their time to rebuild Iraq so the Iraqis could be free." He feels they were too trusting of the others. Second, he blames a group he calls the opportunists, which he describes as containing many of the people working in the Coalition Provisional Authority who were there not to see Iraq restored, but simply "to get a good line on their resumes and to get a job in the new administration." Strangely, he goes on to describe them as the people wanting jobs in the Kerry administration. I think that conclusion is lacking evidence because the Bush administration is famous for hiring only true believers, and that has been cited as one of the worst problems in Iraq, too many true believers, not enough knowledge or smarts. It is highly unlikely there were many (if any) folks in the CPA expecting a Kerry victory and caring to be a part of it. Next, the writer blames the British "moslem experts dispatched to guide the CPA." He feels they misused their supposed expertise to sway support to radical Islamic groups. The writer doesn't mention the Bush administration at all and I think he misses something there.

As I see it, Bush said he would bring democracy to Iraq. However, to understand that, one has to understand the definition of democracy to which Bush and his group subscribe. To them:

democracy = American big business
(you might toss in an election, but it doesn't matter if that election is fair or not)

democracy <> fair elections and truly representative government, freedom, liberty, opportunity, equality, or economic justice

American big business is what they intended to bring to Iraq and that is what they brought to Iraq and that is why they believe they were successful despite all evidence to the contrary under a more traditional definition of democracy.

Mind you, the big business they think of is not the big business that would do spiffy job reconstructing the place timely and for a fair price, taking pride in its work. Nope, it is the big business that hordes from others, takes what it wants and leaves whatever is left. Bush brough that brand of corporate greed to Iraq and that is all he is interested in spreading around the world. It's not nation building. It's market building and cheap worforce building. It was never about liberating Iraq and helping the people live in peace and prosperity as the Assyrian Christians and many other Iraqis hoped.

Then, we must remember the neo-cons who provided the theory for how this was all going to be just great for the region. They had a bunch of theory and had no problem with using a country full of living and breathing people as a petri dish for social and political experiment and when it didn't work, had no problem discarding it without further thought.

I wonder if the Iraqis are reluctant to put the blame on Bush and Cheney, and the neo-cons who provided the dogma, because they still have hope it will work. I couldn't blame them for that because hope is all there is left for them.

A Howard Zinn Snowy Friday

I have to figure out how to get to work today, so here's a bit from Howard Zinn from Democracy Now! to get those brain cells started. Maybe we need to break the cycle of propping up brutal dictators and then killing a bunch of folks to depose them in the name of freedom and democracy. It's a though, anyway:

If the American people really knew history, if they learned history, if the educational institutions did their job, if the press did its job in giving people historical perspective, then a people would understand. When the President gets up before the microphone, says we must go to war for this or for that, for liberty or for democracy, or because we’re in danger, and so on, if people had some history behind them, they would know how many times presidents have announced to the nation, we must go to war for this reason or that reason. They would know that President Polk said, “Oh, we must go to war against Mexico, because, well, there was an incident that took place on the border there, and our honor demands that we go to war.”

They would know, if they knew some history, how President McKinley took the nation into war against Spain and Cuba, saying, “Oh, we’re going in to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control.” And in fact, there was a little bit of truth to that: we did go in, we fought against Spain, we got Spain out of Cuba, we liberated them from Spain, but not from ourselves. And so, Spain was out, and United Fruit was in, and then the American banks and the American corporations were in.

And if people knew their history, they would know, you know, that President McKinley said, when -- as the American army was already in the Philippines and the American navy was already in the Philippines, and Theodore Roosevelt, one of our great presidential heroes, was lusting for war, then people would know that McKinley, who did not know where the Philippines were, but very often now presidents need to be briefed and told where something is. You know, George Bush, “This is Iraq is,” you know. Lyndon Johnson, “This is where the Gulf of Tonkin is.” You know, they need it.

And president -- they would know, if they knew history, that President McKinley said, “We’re going into the Philippines to civilize and Christianize the Filipinos.” And if they knew their history, if the history books spent some time on the war in the Philippines in the early part of the 20th century, instead of, as history books do -- they spend a lot of time on the Spanish-American War, which just lasted three months -- they spend virtually no time on the war on the Philippines, a bloody war which lasted, oh, seven years, and which involved massacres and the extermination of populations. That history doesn’t appear. You know, we had civilized and Christianized the Filipinos and established our control.

They would know, if they heard the President say, “We are going to bring democracy to the Middle East,” they would know how many times we brought democracy to other countries that we invaded. They would know if we brought democracy to Chile, when we overthrew a democratically elected government in Chile in 1973. They would know how we brought democracy to Guatemala when we overthrew, again, a democratically elected -- oh, we love democratic elections, we love free elections, except when they go the wrong way. And then we send either our army in or the CIA in or secret agents in to overthrow the government.

If people knew that history, they would never for a moment believe President Bush, when he says, oh, we’re going into Iraq, you know, because of this reason and that reason and liberty and democracy, and they’re a threat, you know. I mean, it takes -- yeah, it takes some historical understanding to be skeptical of the things that authorities tell you.