It looks like the Pledge of Allegiance case is going all the way :

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether the Pledge of Allegiance recited by generations of American schoolchildren is an unconstitutional blending of church and state.

The case sets up an emotional showdown over God in the public schools and in public life. It will settle whether the phrase “one nation under God” will remain a part of the patriotic oath as it is recited in most classrooms.
. . .
A national uproar followed a federal appeals court ruling last year that the reference to God made the pledge unconstitutional in public schools. That ruling, if allowed to stand, would strip the reference from the version of the pledge recited by about 9.6 million schoolchildren in California and other western states.

The First Amendment guarantees that government will not “establish” religion, wording that has come to mean a general ban on overt government sponsorship of religion in public schools and elsewhere.

The Supreme Court has already said that schoolchildren cannot be required to recite the oath that begins, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.”

Dammit. This isn’t gonna end well. Here’s my predictions for how this is gonna play out :

Today’s the day that we celebrate the life and accomplishments of a man who sailed across the ocean to discover a new world that was already inhabited (which is about as remarkable as “discovering” your next door neighbor’s house). Nevermind the fact that he was really looking for India (I guess mentioning that makes him look less like a hero and more like a screwup). President Bush commemorated Columbus Day by giving a speech that doesn’t mention Native Americans at all (but he did mention the 9/11 attacks twice).

A few of my favorite non-political blogs have been part of this “blogger interview” thing. Seeing as how one of my best friends (and occasional co-blogger) Brian was part of this, I figured I would have him send me some questions with a slightly more political bent :

How it Works

1. Send me an e-mail, saying you want to be interviewed.

2. I will respond by asking you five questions.

3. You’ll update your website with my five questions and your five answers.

4. You’ll include this explanation.

5. You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

The interview.

1. Which of the nine candidates for the Democrat primary would you most like to wrestle? (NOTE: We’re talking WWF here, not “Hotel New Hampshire.”) Please go into as much depth as you’d like. Please be extremely graphic with your answer.

Be “extremely graphic”? What are you getting at here, Brian? Of all the candidates, I think Dennis Kucinich would be the easiest one to beat since he’s small and a pacifist. Since it’s WWF-style, Sharpton would be the most amusing because of the pre-match interview. But of all the candidates, I think Joe Lieberman would be the most fun to wrestle. After throwing his bony ass around the ring for a while, I’d ask him if Hollywood was responsible for the violence that I’d be inflicting on him.

2. Do you think Bush is just acting stupid for the sake of plausible deniability, or is he actually as dumb as a box of hair? Feel free to answer using a ratio of “Acting Stupid to Being Stupid” in your answer if it helps.

I think he’s too dumb to act dumb, if that makes any sense. I don’t think the problem with Bush is that he’s dumb, but that he’s arrogant, apathetic, lazy, and willfully ignorant. If he was dumb, he wouldn’t be able to understand the issues that he’s in charge of making decisions upon. I think he has the capacity to learn, I just don’t think he wants to know anything. I think he purposely avoids any information that may challenge his views. This is evidenced by his admission that he never reads the newspaper, the way he shrugged off the largest war protests in human history, and his overall management style which can be best summed up as “delegate and ignore”. He lets others make all the big decisions because he really doesn’t care what happens.

3. How soon do you think it’ll be before the federal government sets up a Department of Obesity? Who do you think they should appoint to head it up?

Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually obesity is covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Since obesity is an epidemic, I think the whole knee-jerk reactions that many people have are somewhat inappropriate. This is obviously a problem that’s as much societal as individual in nature and I think there really needs to be something done to look at the big picture here. So, while a “Department of Obesity” seems like a silly idea on the surface, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to have an agency somewhere in the government that exclusively deals with this. This is a serious public heath problem that doesn’t get the attention it deserves because people all over the place are more interested in mocking fat people than actually helping them. Who should head it up? Hmmm…well I can’t think of anyone who’s helped more fat people than Richard Simmons. Plus, he’s like the Al Sharpton of the fitness world.

4. If you had the chance to spend an evening one-on-one with Bush, in which you both got blind stinking drunk, would you take it? If there were an admission involved, would you pay for the privilege? Finally, what bar would you take him to? (NOTE: Drag shows are fair game.)

Hell yeah. I’d pay whatever it costs and I’d bring along a camera to blackmail him with the pictures later (“Unless you want these pictures getting out, Mr. Bush, I suggest you rethink your faith-based initiatives plan.”) I don’t know all the places we’d go during the evening, but you can bet that we’d start in an Irish pub, end up in a leather bar, and along the way we’d hit every place that held an opportunity to make Bush look like a drunken jackass (Karaoke, Raves, Mosh Pits, etc.)

5. If you had to spend a year living in the White House with the Bushes, and becoming an intimate part of their family life, what would the highlights be for you? Is the idea so repellent that you’d pick the option of living with Dennis Kucinich in his car for two weeks? Discuss.

I wouldn’t want to live in a car with anybody. The highlights would probably be finding out firsthand how little time and attention he spends on running the country. I’d love to live in the White House with the Bush family. I’d imagine myself turning into the American equivalent of Salam Pax, anonymously giving people an inside look at just how screwed up the people who run our country really are.

I should have posted about this last week. For those of who who hadn’t noticed, there’s picketing going on in front of most big grocery stores here in Southern California. Since Saturday, all unionized grocery store workers have been on strike :

A four-year-old contract between the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the AFL-CIO affiliate that represents about 1.4 million workers, and the region’s three dominant supermarket chains expired on Oct. 5.

The labor dispute, which hinges on health-care costs, comes as unionized grocery workers across the United States have contracts up for a difficult renegotiation as their employers look to cut costs to offset weaker sales growth.

Union workers in Southern California on Friday voted 97 percent in favor of rejecting a contract offer from the grocery chains and authorizing a strike.

The union charges that the chains, using the competitive threat of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as a stalking horse, are trying to shift hundreds of millions of dollars in health-care costs to workers.
. . .
Grocery store baggers covered by the UFCW start at $6 per hour while the most experienced workers who oversee departments make about $17.90, Andreder said. The average wage is between $12 and $14 per hour, she said.

Wal-Mart, besides being the world’s largest company, has expanded to become the biggest player in the fiercely competitive $680 billion U.S. grocery industry it joined only a decade ago. Wal-Mart is a nonunion shop.

Now if we had labor laws that allowed Wal-Mart’s employees to unionize without the threat of being fired, this would all be a moot point. Instead, we have a situation where the grocery stores are taking the position of “They treat their employees like shit, why can’t we?”

Of course this is the same line of reasoning that makes it acceptable in the business community to outsource labor to countries whose human rights standards are much lower than our own. “American businesses can’t stay ‘competitive’ if they’re forced to live up to tougher standards.” Yeah, but as a society, we’ve determined that there are a number of things that take moral precedence over securing profits. Think of it this way : If CEO’s had been running the country for the past 150 years, slavery would still be legal, your children would be working in factories, there wouldn’t be any regulations ensuring the purity of our food, and we’d all be a lot poorer.

You may think I’m exaggerating here, but I’m serious. Sure, this particular strike is only about a few bucks a week, but it’s all part of a much larger effort to destroy the last 100 years worth of gains by the labor movement. Conservatives and the media like to portray union workers as greedy opportunists who are blackmailing management (as if asking for $5 a week is somehow more greedy than a CEO’s $100 million “golden parachute”).

If you aren’t forced to work more than 40 hours a week, then you owe it to the labor movement. If you get heath care through your employer, then you owe it to the labor movement. If you get a lunch break, make more than minimum wage, or get time off for weddings, funerals etc., then you owe it to the labor movement. Every progressive change that has benefited worker’s rights in the past century was a direct result of an active labor movement who, at times, has been forced to strike in order to force business leaders to make the kinds of changes that our laws don’t require.

Even if you don’t agree with the current grocery store strike, I think we all owe it to the labor movement to no cross the picket lines. So if you live in Southern California, don’t go to Vons, Ralphs, or Albertsons until the strike is over. Until then, I suggest going to Trader Joe’s instead.

[Update : In comments (as well as his site), Kevin Thurman points out that there are quite a few other stores that aren't trying to bust the unions. For a complete list of alternate grocery stores to support during this strike, click here. You should also check out Kevin's site for a little background into why this strike is happening now. ]

The efforts to portray Bush as “God’s president” continue in this barely-subtle photograph from the Associated Press :

Is it really news, if they’re telling us what we already know?

Democrat Dennis Kucinich, the liberal four-term congressman who has been steadfast in his opposition to the Iraq war, formally launched his long-shot bid for the White House Monday.

“Miracles occur when our faith meets our vision, when believing is seeing,” said Kucinich, who recalled years ago watching the flames from the stacks at an Ohio steel factory and imagining running for president.

Kucinich, who has been campaigning for months, made the announcement in his hometown of Cleveland, the first stop of a 12-state tour that will include Michigan, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Iowa.

“I’m running for president of the United States to enable the armies of peace,” Kucinich told some 300 supporters in the chambers of the Cleveland city council, largely quiet on the Columbus Day holiday.

No, this isn’t another one of my “Kucinich is a weenie” posts. All the candidates seem to do this “announce that you’re running when you’ve already been running” thing. I guess it’s a cheap way to get free publicity. Since he doesn’t really have a chance to win, I hope he runs for his House seat as well.

That reminds me, next week, I’ll be sending out an email to officially announce my intentions to become a political blogger. Although I’ve been doing this site for about seven months, I think now is the time to officially “kick off” my campaign.

It’s Angle-Grinder Man!

As a one-man vigilante force, Angle-Grinder Man, who takes his name from the boot-destroying circular saw he wields, has made only a modest impact: by his own estimates, he has freed about 20 cars so far (he does it only part time). But his campaign against the city’s effort to immobilize cars for parking violations and other infractions has touched a nerve in a city of strict parking regulations, zealous traffic police officers, ubiquitous speed cameras and car owners increasingly aggrieved at what they believe is mean-spirited law enforcement.

Although he hardly melts into the background, particularly when he switches on his noisy machine, Angle-Grinder Man has so far managed to elude the authorities by a mixture of luck, cunning and quick work: once he gets going, he can liberate a car in less than a minute. He does not accept money and says his main motivation is “anger at how politicians in this country treat people in general, but particularly in regard to motoring regulations.”
. . .
Long-haired and lanky, he is becoming well known in some parts of south London. About a month ago, 25-year-old Petite Tendai arrived home to find a boot on her illegally parked car. (“There were no signs saying `no parking,’ ” she declared.) She had barely begun to rail at the injustice of it all when Angle-Grinder Man suddenly appeared.

“Basically, he jumped out of his car in his outfit and said, `If anyone can, Angle-Grinder Man can,’ ” Ms. Tendai said in a telephone interview. “Then he just started sawing it off. It was wicked.” He was gone almost as quickly as he came. “It was just a `good luck,’ and what-not, and then he was off,” she said.
. . .
His Web site and his hot line for distressed car owners have drawn hoax messages, threats and dozens of fan notes, including one from a man who noted approvingly, “It’s time we had a gay superhero.”

For the record, “I’m a heterosexual superhero,” Angle-Grinder Man said, “although I have no problem being a gay icon.”

So, yesterday I was stuck in traffic behind a silver Chevy Avalanche. Since this that really bad Friday night, rush hour traffic, I had a lot of time to stare at it. At first I thought “Jesus Christ, that’s an ugly car. Is that a ‘Join Arnold’ bumper sticker? Go figure..” Then I noticed that license plate number : NUK OPEC.

That’s right, “Nuke OPEC“. This dumb asshole, who’s driving one of the most fuel inefficient cars on the road, wants to nuke the Middle East (I’m assuming he’s not referring to Venezuela and Indonesia). To most conservative wingnuts (the kind who would vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger), I’m sure this is a hilarious thing to say. I, on the other hand, don’t think this is funny at all.

What do you think the reaction would be if I had a license plate that said “NUK ISRL” (Nuke Israel)? Well, I’d probably get my ass kicked, my car keyed, and be labeled an anti-Semite. So is advocating the nuclear annihilation of Arabs hate speech any less than advocating the deaths of Jews? I don’t think so.

Of course, even if I tried to put something that hateful on my license plate, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be allowed to in the first place. Section 5105 of the California Vehicle Code says the following about personalized “environmental” license plates :

The department may cancel and order the return of any environmental license plate heretofore or hereafter issued, containing any combination of letters, or numbers, or both, which the department determines carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency or which would be misleading.

If you agree with me that advocating the nuclear destruction of the Middle East (jokingly or not) “carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency”, I invite you to call the California Department of Motor Vehicles at 1-800-777-0133 sometime this week.

So you may or may not have heard the interview of known Fox News jackass Bill O’Reilly by Terry Gross of NPR’s “Fresh Air.” (If you’d like to listen to it before continuing to read this, you can listen to it by clicking the link above.) Among frequent NPR listeners, it’s been a hot topic this week, as O’Reilly ends it with typical decorum by whining about how biased NPR is and actually storming out of the interview.

I listened to the entire interview as it was aired; there may have been more of it than I heard, as “Fresh Air” tapes very long interviews, usually an hour and a half or so, then edits them down to the most interesting stuff.

The middle of it was kind of interesting. After the first ten minutes or so, wherein Terry Gross challenged some of his more retarded public assertions (among them that he won a Peabody Award while working for “Hard Copy,” or some crap show like it; Gross actually did win a Peabody Award for “Fresh Air,” but this is no doubt due to liberal bias by the good folks at the Peabody Awards), prompting him to deny obvious facts, she kind of gave up on that tack and asked him about what growing up was like for him, which was actually kind of interesting to me. In the way asking, say, Jeffrey Dahmer about his childhood would be.

By the end, though, he got all incensed about how she was being harder on him (a political commentator, who bills himself as such) than she was on Al Franken (a political satirist, who bills himself as such) when he was on the show. He did so without letting her finish a sentence, except when he kept yelling the question, “WERE YOU THIS HARD ON FRANKEN? WERE YOU THIS HARD ON FRANKEN?” in a way that made me fear for his children, if he has any. He capped things off by blustering about how biased NPR is, and, as mentioned before, leaving.

I understand there’s some stuff on O’Reilly’s Web site about the interview; I haven’t investigated, as the second I opened the site up I felt like I was entering some horrible, forbidden corner of the web. (Seriously, I’ve seen porn pictures of a woman taking a dump in some guy’s mouth, and I felt about equally dirty typing “www.foxnews.com” into my browser.) At any rate, it’s all basically to say that the interview went about like you’d expect it to.

If anything, I thought Terry Gross was too easy on him at the end, when he started bellowing at her like a drunk dad, and that she didn’t push her rebuttal about Franken being a satirist far enough. But she’s always been a soft touch, and very nonconfrontational, so I imagine she was a little rattled by the whole thing. It’s worth listening to if you’re looking to irritate yourself on a Saturday afternoon; they’re replaying the interview on “Fresh Air Weekend” this weekend, so if your local NPR affiliate carries the show you can hear it there.

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I work for KWGS, Tulsa’s NPR affiliate. I tried to work for Fox News, but they muttered something about my “lack of trainability.”

Well, tonight’s debate was a pretty good one overall. Judy Woodruff did an alright job of trying to get the candidates to go after each other instead of Bush, as evidenced in this response to Carol Mosley-Braun’s criticism of the war :

WOODRUFF: General Clark, you’re very familiar with the way the military works. Is that the right solution?

CLARK: I think she’s given us a lot of great ideas.

Let me tell you the problem with what we did there. We went into it without a strategy for success.

WOODRUFF: With all due respect, General, we’ve heard about the criticism of President Bush. What I am trying to determine here is what is the differences among the nine of you.

CLARK: Well, what I say we should do in Iraq is we should have a strategy for success. The administration doesn’t have one. They need to lay it out. They need to lay it out block-by-block. They need to turn the economic and political piece over to the United Nations. They can do it best. They need to keep control — we need to keep control of the military piece and support our armed forces. We need to bring our allies in around us and we need to work for that success strategy.

Did Clark not hear what she just said? Sure, it felt like Woodruff was trying to shield Bush a little, but I think it kept the debate a lot more focused.

Compared to Woodruff’s slight bias, this loaded question about John Edward’s background from Jeff Greenfield made me want to shoot my TV Elvis-style :

GREENFIELD: The two most revered members of your party, John Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, weren’t exactly born to hard scrabble lives. They were sons of wealth and privilege, and they were regarded a lot more favorably in your party than, say, Richard Nixon, who was born under modest circumstances.

The question is: Why should any voter care any bit — why should it give you any more points with that voter because of who you are any more than a voter should resent you now because you’re a multimillionaire?

Now, If I were in the debate, my answer would be something along the lines of this:

“Go fuck yourself Jeff. The Bush family dynasty was build on old oil money earned through associations with the Third Reich and the Bin Laden family. Bill Clinton grew up poor, in a one parent home, and worked his way to the top. Your insinuation that the Democratic party is less understanding of the plights of the poor is offensive and wrong.”

Of course John Edwards had a much better answer than I did (without even using the F-word)

EDWARDS: The only relevance of your background and the way you grew up is the credibility it gives to your vision and your ideas for what need to be done with the country.
. . .
You’re right about one thing. The biography in the abstract is not important. But what is important is when you lay out your ideas, your vision for the country, and you have lived it, every day of your life, from the time you grew up, through today, then the American people know that, and it gives you credibility on those ideas and that vision. That’s why it’s important.

GREENFIELD: But if Senator Kerry or Governor Dean, both born in more comfortable circumstances, lay out their vision for health care and education, is there any reason why we should be more suspicious of them because they didn’t share your background?

EDWARDS: No, no. First of all, you’ve identified two great presidents who come from similar backgrounds. We grew up a very different way, Senator Kerry and Governor Dean and myself.

What I would say to the American people, if you are looking somebody to stand on a stage with George Bush in 2004, which I intend to do, and make our case to the very group of Americans who he has to get in order to be reelected, the working middle class of this country, that we have a more powerful case to make if in fact our advocate, our voice, is somebody who has grown up with it, lived with it and fought for those very people their entire life.

That doesn’t mean that Governor Dean and Senator Kerry aren’t completely sincere in their ideas. I think the world of both of them. And I think that their heart is in the right place, they want to do the right thing. They have terrific ideas for the future of this country.

One of the things you can always count on when it comes to these debates is for Joe Lieberman to attack the frontrunner and then have his ass handed to him in the response.Until now, it’s been Lieberman vs. Dean, but tonight it was Clark’s turn :

LIEBERMAN: This is a very important discussion, because each of the nine of us want to be the commander in chief of the United States military and protect the security of this country. That requires a clarity of judgment and the courage to stick by the judgment you’ve made.

Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, Al Sharpton, Carol Moseley Braun — they were clear and consistent against the war. I was for it clearly and consistently, but I respect them for that clarity.

I must say that I’ve been very disappointed since Wes Clark came into this race about the various positions he has taken on the war against Saddam Hussein.

Howard Dean is right, last fall, a few days before the voting in Congress, he said he would have recommended it and would have supported the resolution. After the war, he wrote a piece in the Times of London praising President Bush and Tony Blair for their resolve. When he became a candidate he said he probably would have voted for the resolution.

The American people have lost confidence in George Bush because he hasn’t leveled with them. We need a candidate who will meet the test of reaching a conclusion and having the courage to stick with it. And I intend to be that candidate and that kind of president.

WOODRUFF: All right, General Clark, looks like two of them are after you.

CLARK: Well, Judy, I would like to rebut this. I am not going to attack a fellow Democrat, because I think everybody on this stage shares the same goal.

Now I know it doesn’t seem too damaging in print, but this line went over really well on TV. They even cut to reaction shot of Lieberman looking like he wanted to crawl into a cave and die.

Unfortunately for Clark, he’s the new kid on the block, so everyone wanted a piece of him. A few minutes after the exchange with Joe, Kerry got into the action with a defense of Lieberman’s criticism.

KERRY: Well, I disagree with General Clark that this is an attack when Joe Lieberman raises an issue.

People are trying to decide who can lead the United States of America. And the positions we take are critical to their capacity to make that decision.

The fact is that last year General Clark did say he would vote for the resolution that was in the Congress. In addition to that, at the time in May when he said that the right people were in charge, referring to Bush and to Cheney and Rumsfeld, at that time it was just a few days before Jim Jeffords switched and became an independent because of what they were doing to this country.

And at that moment, the general was prepared to say they are the right people. At that moment, those of us who were fighting for senate principles, and have been for 35 years or more, were fighting against what they were doing to this country, and we had no lack of clarity about what compassionate conservative meant to this nation

The honeymoon is officially over for Clark.

Now the biggest highlight of the debates has been Al Sharpton’s wit, and tonight was no exception. I especially loved his description of the “coalition of the willing”

One, I think that in order for us to get our allies, or the rest of the world, to help us in Iraq, we need to go to the United Nations and be honest. The president went to the U.N. and said, “Help us on my terms.”

If I were president, I would go in and say, “We were wrong.” Tony Blair and George Bush had a meeting, acted as though it was a world summit. Two guys in a phone booth acted like the whole world had met.

…and his apt description of the California recall.

I think, lastly, the whole notion of our showing our differences is good. But let us not forget that our differences should be toward the aim of winning against Bush.

We are 48 hours away from watching an actor that couldn’t win an Oscar winning to be the governor of California.

We need to deal with how we beat George Bush in 2004.

But it wasn’t all jokes for the Reverend. He also had a great response to how the Democrats can get their message out to the middle class.

GREENFIELD: Reverend Sharpton, you referred to the necessity of your party winning, so let’s focus on that for a minute.

Ten years after Bill Clinton won the White House by appealing to the forgotten middle class — he ended welfare as an entitlement, he endorsed and expanded the death penalty, he took on the labor unions — 10 years later the middle class is giving the Democratic party some serious problems.

According to one senate pollster, by huge majorities the average voter feels the Democratic party is too liberal, doesn’t share their values and most especially is beholden to special interests.

As a candidate for the presidential nomination, what would you do to bring that forgotten middle class back to the party?

SHARPTON: All I think you have to do is explain to the middle class what has happened under George Bush and those that have made their life less fruitful than it was.

When you look at the job loss, when you look at the weakening of the economy, when you look at the fact that their children have gone to war under a premise that did not exist, I think that we have to get our message to the middle class.

When you look at the fact that there was a vote about a deficit in California and we tell the American people, particularly the middle class, we have a record historic federal deficit, we’ve got to bring the message to the middle class. And we’ve got to use everything from the Internet to the interstate highways to get that message out.

What they’re beating us at is that message and how they get the message in the trenches and grassroots. The facts don’t speak for what we are talking about here.

Middle class people were able to buy more homes under Clinton. Middle class people were able to afford more college education for their children.

If you lay the facts out, there’s no way, in my judgment, middle class people would keep those feelings that you just said that poll says.

But what about the other frontrunner? Well, Dean stayed true to his “straight talking” reputation by being the only one to directly address Judy Woodruff’s request that the candidates differentiate themselves.

DEAN: The last poll I saw showed that there are five of us up here that are going to beat George Bush. So the question is not whether we’re going to beat George Bush, but what kind of a president do you want.

Here are the differences between me and the other folks, from Washington.

First, our campaign is changing the political system in this country. Last time, last quarter we raised more money than any other candidate by three times, 200,000 donors, average gift $72.

Secondly, I have a record. Everybody is going to talk about health insurance. Every kid under 18 in my state has health insurance. A third of all the seniors have prescription benefits. Working poor people have health insurance.

And the third area is the war. General Clark, a year ago today, advised Katrina Sweat to support the resolution. Senator Kerry, Senator Lieberman, Representative Gephardt, Senator Edwards, all gave the president a blank check to go to war in Iraq, putting people today in the position of having to decide whether we’re going to spend $87 billion on health care or spend it in Iraq.

A little while later when Gephardt tried to pull that “he sided with the Republicans on Medicare” crap, Dean had a pretty good overall defense of his campaign.

DEAN: Let me first say that the folks that are running against me have had the greatest time — first they said I was George McGovern and I couldn’t win, and now they’re saying I’m Newt Gingrich and I couldn’t win.

Let me tell you what the answer to the question is about why the Democrats aren’t winning.

It is because we don’t stand up for what we believe in.

Why do you think I am where I am, having come from no place at the end of January? It’s because I’ve gone out and given 50 percent of Americans who have given up on voting in this country a reason to vote again.

We can’t just change presidents here. We’re trying to change America, and that’s what I want to do.

We have to have the values of the Democratic party, but in Washington the culture is say whatever it takes to get elected. And the minute you’re willing to say whatever it takes to get elected, you lose, because the American people are not nearly as dumb as the people in Washington think we are.

This campaign is about changing America. And until we’re willing to stand up and say what we think, regardless of the consequences, we never are going to have a chance against George Bush.

And I intend to have a chance against George Bush. And I intend to have the half-a-million people who are supporting us and the 2 million who are going to be supporting us by the end of election season to get to the polls, because this time the person with the most votes is going to win.

And while I’m on the subject of Howard Dean, here’s an interesting exchange between him and Kucinich on what to do with Iraq.

KUCINICH: Mr. Dean has said that he believes — he says what he believes. I want to ask him, do you believe in spending $87 billion to keep our troops in Iraq? Because I don’t. Do you?

DEAN: I get to answer the question?

WOODRUFF: Yes.

DEAN: I believe if the president is serious about supporting our troops in Iraq that he has to say where he’s going to get the money from, and that means he’s got to get rid of $87 billion worth of the tax cuts that went to Ken Lay and his friends at Enron.

KUCINICH: Would you fund keep the troops in Iraq?

DEAN: Yes.

KUCINICH: You would?

DEAN: If the president was willing to pay for it.

KUCINICH: I would say bring our troops home, Governor.

DEAN: You can’t do that. And I’ll tell you why.

KUCINICH: We have to bring our troops home. They’re targets right now.

DEAN: Can I tell why I disagree?

KUCINICH: Yes, finish.

DEAN: First of all, let me tell you what I agree with you about. And in all due respect to John and Joe and Wes and John Edwards and Dick Gephardt, maybe you thought the war was a good idea and maybe you thought it wasn’t a bad idea. It wasn’t a good idea. The problem is that we empowered the president to run roughshod over us in the last election because nobody stood up to him on the October vote. If you all had voted no, we could have gone out and made our case to the American people. But instead you didn’t vote no.

KUCINICH: You said no, and that’s not true. I led the effort. Do you want to correct that statement?

DEAN: No, no, I didn’t mention you. I didn’t mention you.

Now if I can explain what my position on Iraq is, it’s this. Now that we’re there…

WOODRUFF: Could you make it brief so we could let…

DEAN: I’ll try to make it as brief as I can.

Now that we’re there, we can’t pull out responsibly. Because if we do, there are more al Qaeda, I believe, in Iraq today than there were before the president went in. If they establish a foothold in Iraq, or if a fundamentalist Shiite regime comes in, allied with Iran, that is a real security danger to the United States, when one did not exist before when Saddam Hussein was running the place.

Now, to be fair, Kucinich did give a rough outline of his plan to bring the U.N. into Iraq, but his absolute opposition to keeping our troops in there makes me seriously question his judgment. My biggest beef with Kucinich isn’t his positions, it’s his plans, which tend to come off as short-sighted.

Now, it wouldn’t be a good debate without a few great one liners. Here were my two favorites :

GEPHARDT: Well, let me just say this: We got a great story for the American people and the middle class and all the people of the country. We did this.

I led the fight for the Clinton economic program in 1993. It created 22 million new jobs.

We didn’t get a Republican vote in the House or the senate. We passed it by one vote in both houses.s

And it’s clear, we get this. We know how to do this. They do not.

If you want to live like a Republican, you’ve got to vote for the Democrats, and we’ve proven it over and over again.
. . .
KERRY: What I want to come back to, there are two ways for you to have lower prescription drug costs. One is you could hire Rush Limbaugh’s housekeeper… or you can elect me president of the United States.

Finally, I’ll end this round of debate highlights with this great answer from Braun that I think accurately sums up just how evil the Bush Administration is.

BRAUN: You know, you can’t fool all the people all the time. And this administration has mastered the art of fooling people. They’ve misled the American people on just about every count.

Their environmental policy is called “clean skies and healthy forests,” when it means they want to cut down trees and put more junk in the air. “Leave no child behind” means an unfunded mandate for local governments.

“CrazyrantingJoe” just left this comment for my So, what now? post that reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about for a while :

The Right is much less prone to “circular firing squad” behaviour than the left is. On the right, no one cares how crazy you are as long as you tow the line on coporate tax breaks and symbolic gestures aimed at theocrats. On the left, however, a Nader or a Kucinich is actively derided for having the balls to say what the rest of us are thinking. Ironically, those public speakers who speak the mind of the p?rty are called “divisive” and “electoral poison.” The right has long ago made room in its big tent for the full range of loonies, and the very fact they are comfortable with their diversity, such as it is, impresses voters. Or something

You could say the same thing about Lieberman. Just as Kucinich is derided for being “too liberal”, Lieberman is constantly called “Bush Lite”. If those of us that generally fall on the left could agree to disagree on certain issues, we could work together to better stop the right-wing onslaught against the environment, women’s right to choose, healthcare, etc.. Just as the Republicans make room for Pat Robertson and John McCain, we liberals need to be more inclusive of the more conservative members of “our team”.

Not to single out “CrazyrantingJoe” here, but I’ve heard a number of people refer to those on the far left saying “what the rest of us are thinking”. I totally disagree. Mainstream America is much more conservative than those on the far left are willing to admit.

What I find ironic is that when many people make these kinds of “we need to work together” arguments is that it’s never about finding a common ground. It’s about convincing moderate Democrats to join their cause. I agree that the left needs to work together better, but the way to do that is to compromise on a candidate we can all agree on, not to shoot yourself in the foot by running a spoiler candidate while complaining about the rest of the left.

If those of us on the left are serious about working together, then we all need to be willing to lose a few little battles in order to win the war.

Slate has a pretty funny senate Debate drinking game. Here’s a few suggestions of my own, separated by candidate :

Howard Dean

It’s no secret that our government is being run by Republicans from Texas. When you elect someone like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Tom DeLay, it’s a good idea to know what kind of crazy-ass right wing agenda they’re going to try to implement. Kevin Drum has posted a rundown of the Texas Republican Party Platform for 2000 that shows just how scary our current leadership really is. It’s worth noting that there’s a loyalty oath that’s part of this platform, so it’s not like this is some crazy, fringe belief. This is a set of ideals that every Texas Republican has literally signed off on.

[By the way, Calpundit.com seems completely screwed right now. I don't know if this is permanent or not, but just in case his post disappears, I've archived Kevin's post in the extended entry for this one.]
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Special thanks to my Tulsa correspondent Brian Byrne (and by proxy, Agent Foxxy Boxing) for turning me on to the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life, The World Beard and Moustache Championships. Here’s my faves :

      

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You know what’s funny? When a subculture is so poor that the crime rate in their neighborhood jumps through the roof! Isn’t that hilarious?? No? Oh…well…then I guess you won’t think this is funny either :

Black leaders are outraged over a new board game called “Ghettopoly” that has “playas” acting like pimps and game cards reading, “You got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $50.”

Black clergymen say the game, the brainchild of a Pennsylvania man, should be banned, and have called for a boycott of Urban Outfitters unless the company stops selling Ghettopoly in its chain of clothing stores.

Urban Outfitters has not publicly commented on the issue, and did not return a call seeking comment on Wednesday.

“If we are silent on this issue there is more of this type to come,” the Rev. Robert P. Shine Sr., president of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia & Vicinity, said at a sidewalk rally Wednesday in front Urban Outfitters’ corporate headquarters in Philadelphia.

Shine displayed the game board, with properties including Westside Liquor, Harlem, The Bronx, and Long Beach City, and squares labeled Smitty’s XXX Peep Show, Weinstein’s Gold and Platinum, and Tyron’s Gun Shop.

Players draw “Hustle” and “Ghetto Stash” cards with directions like, “You’re a little short on loot, so you decided to stick up a bank. Collect $75,” and “Steal $$$ if you pass Let$ Roll.”

The creator of Ghettopoly, David Chang, did not immediately answer e-mails or phone calls seeking comment about the game.
. . .
“It draws on stereotypes not as a means to degrade, but as a medium to bring together in laughter,” Chang maintains, adding, “If we can’t laugh at ourselves … we’ll continue to live in blame and bitterness.”

Could somebody explain to me how a mocking celebration of black stereotypes for sale at Urban Outfitters falls under the definition of laughing “at ourselves”?? Now I’ve only been to Compton or South Central a handful of times, but I don’t remember ever seeing an Urban Outfitters there (or an Old Navy, the Gap, etc.)