The Dem Diatribe Project

“If any reporter needs to understand how we feel about the war, all they need to do is come to Iraq and read what’s on the walls of the outhouses.” The national conversation about the war largely has taken place absent those who are fighting it. The military makes it hard for its members to speak independently. In a culture that prizes obedience, loyalty and duty, no one is rewarded for breaking rank. Further, the Bush administration over the past three years has sent the message that dissent is un-American. From " In These Times " ...

Interesting Letter: I am writing this letter to the people in the red states in the middle of the country -- the people who voted for George W. Bush. I am writing this letter because I don't think we know each other. Read more ...

Mean-spirited remarks are nothing new for Jerry Falwell. It just seems that the whacko religious right feels somehow justified in all its hateful attacks and misguided attempts to theocratize America since Bush's re-installation. The American public is being brain-washed into believing that this "moral values" anomaly equals a mandate to persecute anything considered non-religious. We need to see more analysis similar to the article that SaucySarah posted last week ["A Few New Views of the Election"] that show the true make-up of the US population. ... Or perpahps the Dems need someone as whacko as Rush, O'Reilly, or Falwell: Reverend Jerry Falwell, national chairman of the Faith and Values Coalition and Moral Majority founder, labeled the National Organization for Women (NOW) the "National Order of Witches," said he was going to invite People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to Christian men's gatherings called "Wild Game

This seems very odd. A 62 ft. statue of Jesus just seems . . . odd, to me. And I think of myself as a pretty spiritual, if not actually religious, person. I'm not an atheist. But I kind of wonder if Jesus even likes 62 ft. statues of Jesus. I did enjoy the quote from Larry Flynnt at the end of the article.

I found this article incredibly interesting and well written. ... A little history lesson to boot. ... A hundred and forty years after the last Civil War ended, a new one is brewing, at least in the minds of Yankees on the losing end of this month's presidential vote. The week after the election, ABC news correspondent Carole Simpson drew the parallel between Blue versus Gray and Blue versus Red during a panel discussion at the National Press Club. "I got a little map here," Simpson said, "of pre-Civil War free versus slave states. If you look at it, the Red states are all down in the South, and you have the Nebraska Territories, the New Mexico Territories, and the Kansas Territories. But the Pacific Northwest and California were not slave states. The Northeast was not. It looks like the map of 2004." Read more ...

Any hope that Bush & Co. might tack toward the center is gone. All signs points to more extremism in policy, more police-state tactics at home, more death and destruction abroad. Read more ...

I received this message this morning: In the last two weeks, thousands of people - deeply concerned about the direction our country has taken - have spontaneously joined the ACLU. They've added their names to those of over 400,000 other Americans committed to defending the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Today our most fundamental freedoms are in jeopardy. Only a bold, spirited movement of people like you who refuse to surrender your freedoms can protect our civil liberties. On January 20th, George Bush will pledge to uphold the Constitution. Our goal is to recruit 100,000 new ACLU supporters by that day to proclaim "I REFUSE TO SURRENDER MY FREEDOM." Let's make it clear to those who seek to take away our freedoms that they are on the wrong side of the law...the wrong side of core American values...and the wrong side of history. The more forcefully we speak out and the more voices that join us the more effective we can be -- in the courts,

I came across an interesting “euphemism” if this is the correct word for it. The U.S. Forces in Iraq refer to insurgents as “anti Iraqi forces”. Considering that US soldiers in Iraq have killed far more Iraqis than insurgents have, it seems that US forces are more anti-Iraqi than the insurgents. Language is not a transparent medium for representing reality, but rather a cultural system that shapes our values and beliefs. As the US certainly has the upper hand in Iraq, we are in a position to write their history in any manner we see fit. The language we use to describe present history in Iraq will influence how present and future generations perceive the US war on Iraq. Let us please, please hope that the term “anti Iraqi forces” as defined by the US military does not replace “insurgent” in the US media’s reporting of the events in Iraq.

For three decades, whales and dolphins have been protected from being accidentally caught by commercial fishermen, thanks to the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Today, though, influential members of Congress Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) and Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) are moving to add a loophole to that law that would allow thousands more dolphins, whales, and other marine mammals to be killed every year. One dolphin decided to do something about it. This is his story...

This is a link to a Salon news article. You might have to subscribe in order to view the full story, but it is also an AP headline out of Columbus, OH, detailing some possible instances of problems with the voting in Ohio. In one case, a couple is accused of voting several times; in another case in Sandusky county some 2,000 votes were apparently counted twice, due to worker error. The article doesn't say for which candidate the fraudulent votes were cast, but this could certainly add to valid questions about whether President Bush really has the "mandate" he has been proclaiming.

Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004. This effect cannot be explained by differences between counties in income, number of voters, change in voter turnout, or size of Hispanic/Latino population. - In Broward County alone, President Bush appears to have received approximately 72,000 excess votes. - We can be 99.9% sure that these effects are not attributable to chance. Details: Because many factors impact voting results, statistical tools are necessary to see the effect of touch-screen voting. Multipleregression analysis is a statistical technique widely used in the social and physical sciences to distinguish the individual effects of many variables. This multiple-regression analysis takes account of the following variables by county: - number of voters - median income - Hispanic population - change in voter turnout betw

The Dem Diatribe: "Tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freakshow...." -From that hilarious attack ad on Howard Dean. When we first saw this on the Daily Show, we thought it had to be a joke. It was for real. The spot ran in Iowa two weeks before the Democratic caucuses by the Club for Growth Political Action Committee. Occasionally we joke about this while reading the Sunday NY Times over coffee.

Russia Develops New Missile I guess it is a good thing that Bush and Putin are such good buddies because if we go by the logic of why we bombed the crap out of Iraq, Russia should be next. ... Well, after North Korea and India. Oops! Neither of those countries have oil! So look out Russia. You have WMDs AND OIL!

According to this article on Wired, the Senate may soon pass a bill labeled HR2391; a bill which lumps together many other copyright bills. If passed the bill "would criminally punish a person who 'infringes a copyright by ... offering for distribution to the public by electronic means, with reckless disregard of the risk of further infringement.'" In addition the bill would "permit people to use technology to skip objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- in films, a right that consumers already have. However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited ." If any of this worries you, please contact your Senators and Representatives and voice your concern."

Confessions of a Textbook Editor Note: This concerns K-12 textbook adoption. Why are so many textbooks bland and unimaginative? A former editor describes the daunting combination of bureaucratic hurdles, political correctness, and self-appointed censors that stand in the way of a good educational read. The Thomson bloggers probably already know all this. ... Still it is a nice view from the trenches. More ...

Not that any of this amounts to even a molehill of beans to the Bush Administration. We already know that the Bush administration makes the US look like a bunch of inbred, uncultured hilljacks and rich irresponsible uncultured hilljacks (the Bush base). I particularly like this slam on Rumsfeld: “It is like that nice guy in America — what’s his name again? — who spoke about ‘old Europe’. It has no sense. It’s a lack of culture to imagine that. Imagining that there can be division between the British and French vision of Europe is as absurd as imagining that we are building Europe against the United States.” Read more ...

Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Click on the image to see a larger, more readable picture.

My owner voted for Nader and look what happened to me!

Kerry voters demand investigation of count You thought the presidential election was over in Ohio? President Bush, Sen. John Kerry, the Ohio secretary of state, and both national and state Democratic and Republican parties certainly think so. But on the Web, in e-mails, on radio and on television, a mounting chorus of Kerry supporters is pushing the notion that Bush won Ohio through fraud, conspiracies or voting machine malfunctions. More...

A large number of Americans are very unhappy - indeed, many are extremely depressed - about the 2004 presidential election returns. Countless supporters of Senator John Kerry are literally scratching their heads, unable to fathom how seemingly rational people voted for President George W. Bush to serve a second term. Given our poor economy, and the disastrous Iraq war -- with its bogus justification and its thousands of American casualties - Kerry supporters find it hard to imagine, let alone understand, the case for casting a Bush vote. Read more...

Post Election Membership Surge In a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, the American Civil Liberties Union called on civil libertarians to redouble their efforts to oppose the Bush Administration's "unrelenting assault on our civil liberties." Even before the advertisement ran last Thursday, the ACLU experienced our largest ever surge in online donations - more than 1,200 unsolicited gifts totaling more than $65,000 (an average of $54 per person) in one day. "Over the past four years, the ACLU and its members have shown that we can successfully defend freedom even in the most inhospitable climate," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "Working with both Democrats and Republicans, we intend to build on that success, and we intend to win. The spontaneous outpouring of support we have seen is clearly a sign that the American people are ready, willing and able to fight to preserve our civil liberties." You can help sust

I received this message yesterday. I am not really sure what can be done at this point. What if they do find that we were cheated and robbed? What then? I am certainly up for adding to the noise. Here is the info if you wish to sign the petition as well: Dear MoveOn member, Questions are swirling around whether the election was conducted honestly or not. We need to know -- was it or wasn't it? If people were wrongly prevented from voting, or if legitimate votes were mis-counted or not counted at all, we need to know so the wrongdoers can be held accountable, and so we can prevent this from happening again. Members of Congress are demanding an investigation to answer this question. The decision on whether or not there will be an investigation could come as soon as Monday. Join us in supporting the call for one now, at: www.moveon.org/investigatethevote Then please invite your friends and colleagues to sign, as well. We need to show Congress that hundreds of th

On the one hand, I'd rather not pay four to seven dollars a gallon for gasoline. On the other hand, I would really rather see the price of fuel reflect its true cost to the environment. The price of gasoline in the United States reflects the cost of oil extraction, refinement, transportation, corporate profits and state and local taxes. What is not reflected in the cost is air pollution, road construction and maintenance; property taxes lost from land cleared for freeways; free parking paid for by taxes; noise and vibration damage to structures; protection of petroleum supply lines (our government seems more than willing to bare this cost); sprawl and loss of transportation options; auto accidents; and congestion. This is just one example of the “true” costs of our petroleum consumption. Still more costs could be applied to aviation, food production and consumption and obesity. More...

There is a new postcard going out this week. Considering the role of the major networks in covering the presidential race, It is doubtful that any of the majors can be considered “liberal media”. Indeed considering the U.S. mainstream coverage of the war on Iraq, can any of the big media corporations be considered fair, balanced or complete? Forget FOX. We know where they are coming from. Coverage from CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC and the mainstream print media is less than complete, as well. If we want to get the whole truth, we will need to explore alternative media outlets and foreign newspapers. Unfortunately, this requires a little more effort than turning on the TV: ----------- Whoever controls your source of information controls you. -W.E.B. DuBois Big media and the news organizations they control are no longer independent of government or corporations. Indeed, these news organizations have become the mouthpieces of governments and corporations and they can sell you anything

Common Cause, MoveOn.org, and several other organizations have launched a campaign to take on Fox for pretending partisan news is "fair and balanced." They've posted a really horrifying but funny video clip highlighting Bill O'Reilly's hypocrisy as well as a complaint to the FTC at: www.moveon.org/fox/ The challenges to Fox's partisanship are mounting. It's crucial that we voice our disgust with Fox's deceptive advertising now.

I am not a huge conspiracy theorist but I am not above adding to the noise. So here is a brief article on exit polls v. electronic voting (without paper trails). It is no secret that the CEO of Diebold promised Ohio’s electoral votes to Bush. Conflict of interest? Perhaps. Opportunity for shenanigans? You bet! Read on: Counterbias: November 5, 2004 By Joseph Cannon: Ignore the rightist snickers. Ignore those who would straightjacketpermissible thought. We have a right to ask difficult questions. And thequestion of the moment concerns exit polls and electronic voting. A trulylopsided vote would have been impossible to hide, because oversized gapsbetween polls and election night counts would prove too suspicious. Remember when networks used to trumpet the accuracy of exit polling? On Tuesday night, I saw on-air talking heads (especially on CNN) loudly deride these same exit polls as untrustworthy. Exit polls published on Tuesday afternoon (by Slate and a number of blogs

Someone whose son is in Iraq said that he is fighting so I have the right to vote in this election. I suppose this is how she is coping with her son fighting in an unjust war. According to W. her son is fighting for the right for Iraqis to vote. At no time have Iraqis threatened Americans' rights to vote. Indeed, there were NO Iraqis among the 9-11 terrorists. It seems to me that American soldiers are fighting for our right to drive SUVs.

Anyone can publish on the Internet. Should they? Well here goes your proof. I am suffering from serious post presidental election depression. So let's just add to the noise. I am embarrassed to say that I am from Ohio. Part of me wants to leave the country right now. Part of me wants to stay and fight. While this blog may or may not get updated regularly, the political art will continue to go out for some time to come.