Jan 30 2008
I am all for running everywhere, and the 50 state strategy.
But neither we nor the Republicans are running everywhere (at least not yet!) In this series, I will look at where we are not running (I am not going to look at where Republicans are not running, as I have no desire to help Republicans, however modestly)
This diary is partly inspired by the great work done by BENAWU.
crossposted to dailyKos and SwingStateProject
Jan 30 2008
 Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
Jan 30 2008
How stupid is the political media? This stupid: they take seriously the notion that Giuliani’s decision to avoid the first six Republican nomination contests was a failed “strategy.”
It was a strategy of sorts, I suppose, in that had Rudy been able to pull off a win in Florida he could very well have been positioned to land a death blow in the Northeast and California on Stupor Tuesday. But calling it a failed or foolish “strategy” ignores the fact that it was not his free choice or original intention to run to win the nomination in this way. Rudy waited until Florida for one reason only: because he was hemorrhaging support in the wake of the “Sex on the City” scandals highlighting his misuse of city resources (including the police) in conducting his affair with Judi Nathan, and he needed to lay low. His alternative to this “strategy” was not to run hard, under the bright media spotlight, in Iowa, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Michigan Nevada, and South Carolina. His actual alternative at that time was to drop out in disgrace. He has been running since last fall to avoid that end.
Jan 30 2008
How stupid is the political media? This stupid: they take seriously the notion that Giuliani’s decision to avoid the first six Republican nomination contests was a failed “strategy.”
It was a strategy of sorts, I suppose, in that had Rudy been able to pull off a win in Florida he could very well have been positioned to land a death blow in the Northeast and California on Stupor Tuesday. But calling it a failed or foolish “strategy” ignores the fact that it was not his free choice or original intention to run to win the nomination in this way. Rudy waited until Florida for one reason only: because he was hemorrhaging support in the wake of the “Sex on the City” scandals highlighting his misuse of city resources (including the police) in conducting his affair with Judi Nathan, and he needed to lay low. His alternative to this “strategy” was not to run hard, under the bright media spotlight, in Iowa, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Michigan Nevada, and South Carolina. His actual alternative at that time was to drop out in disgrace. He has been running since last fall to avoid that end.
Jan 30 2008
(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)
When he woke up, before he opened his eyes, he smelled tea. And cedar. And he was supposed to be meditating damn it, not sleeping.
Shit.
He smelled where the tea was coming from, stood up facing the other way and started walking away from the tree again. He didn’t look over when he was getting up and he didn’t look back as he walked away.
Jan 30 2008
Who cares who won the Democratic beauty contest in Florida? Well, Clinton supporters, of course. What the returns indicate is that if there had been no campaign anywhere in the country, Hillary Clinton would have won easily. But we knew that. (That’s why we have campaigns, and not just polls.)
Here’s the worst news:
From the WashPost blog, The Trail:
Early network exit polls out of Florida show the economy is the breakaway issue, with nearly half of GOP voters and more than half of Democrats calling it the nation’s top concern…
Among Republicans:
Top issue: economy 47%, terrorism 19%, immigration 17%, Iraq 13%
Among Democrats:
Top issue: economy 55%, Iraq 25%, health care 17%
Why would that be?
Jan 30 2008
NB: This is a candidate diary with the references to the candidate removed. The candidate diary itself will go live on the Big Orange, sometime a little after midnight.
One serious confusion in some progressive populist thinking online has been a misunderstanding of the role of the progressive blogosphere as a tool for building a progressive movement.
However, as a progressive populist looking at the passive-voice descriptions that “populist messaging fails because there is not a populist movement” … I feel like jumping up and down and yelling, “read your history books you idiots!”
A populist movement is not created in coffee house discussions, whether live or online … it is created in the process of fighting for things, and in the process learning how to engage in a political fight and transform ourselves from political consumers to citizens of a Republic.
And without populist messaging leading the way, there will be nothing to take to our fellows when we get out amongst them.
Picture Credit: David Leeson (#8)
Jan 30 2008
The library was too close to bike, so I made my way over on foot and tried to cram for two hours, but I couldn’t focus and periodically fell into sporadic catnaps. I jerked awake after one of them, feeling bulldozed, with just a hint of the nightmare still flickering across my mind. I could almost smell the smoke in my dream, but I pulled free before the calaveras arrived, and I had no chance to give in to the small shiver of fear rippling across my skin as I got up and hurried to class.
UPDATE: Edited a bit per helpful suggestions…
Jan 30 2008
Agence France-Presse had these hopeful words:
Amid the chaos, a mediating team led by Kofi Annan, which has been in Kenya for a week, said it would launch formal dialogue between President Mwai Kibaki and his opposition rival Raila Odinga at 4:00 p.m. (1300 GMT) in Nairobi.
If Annan’s mission fails, however, it might be time for the international community to step in. With force. Because this was the real story, in that story:
The slaying of a Kenyan opposition lawmaker sparked riots Tuesday across the east African nation already reeling from weeks of deadly clashes set off by disputed elections.
Police fired tear gas and hundreds took to the streets of opposition strongholds in western Kenya and Nairobi’s slums to protest the murder of opposition MP Mugabe Were from Nairobi’s Embakasai constituency.
Heavily-armed police patrolled two recent western Rift Valley flashpoints of violence, the lakeside towns of Nakuru and Naivasha, where scores have died in gruesome attacks in recent days, pushing the overall death toll since the December 27 election to more than 900.
Plumes of smoke rose from Naivasha’s slums and machete-wielding youths burned houses and roamed the streets, an AFP correspondent said.
The machetes should chill the blood of anyone who remembers the genocide in Rwanda. Both sides have charged the other with committing or approaching genocide, Genocide Watch has called a Stage 6 alert, and the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide is sending staff. It does not get more serious.
Jan 30 2008
Crossposted from Out Of Iraq Bloggers Caucus
The Beginning of the End
By William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist, Tuesday 29 January 2008
And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
– Revelations 8:1, King James BibleGeorge W. Bush’s State of the Union (SOTU) speeches have been the basis for a new kind of drinking game for several years now, basically because the things have always needed some kind of actual substance from somewhere, and because it was a good way to dull the pain of it all. The rules: 1. When he says the word “terra” or “terra-ists,” take a drink. 2. When he says “tax cuts,” take a drink. 3. When he says “Iraq,” take a drink. 4. When he says “nook-yuh-lerr,” take a drink and a shot and a good swift kick to the head. Et cetera.
But that’s just one night out of the year. Reality has proven to be far more alcoholic in nature. For seven years now, the whole phenomenon of this government has been one long drinking game played out each and every day. The rules of this game? 1. Say the words, “George W. Bush is in charge of the country.” 2. Turn off the TV. 3. Just drink.
Sounds familiar, right? Just about everyone has played that game a time or two by now. We have endured seven Bush SOTU speeches as of last night. Seven years worth of lies, carnage, greed, disgrace, failure, ignominy, calamity heaped upon calamity heaped upon calamity for more than two thousand five hundred days now, with three hundred and fifty seven more days still to go.
Seven speeches. Seven years.
No more.
Jan 30 2008
Most here seem to be very astute observers of current events.
I am saddened by what I have just seen and I have only gone through half of it yet it shines a bright beacon of light on the subject. Don’t dismiss the man behind it simply connect the dots. Remember what your not too distant past was like.
Now for viewing on Google. Required viewing.