Here’s some damn good advice :

“The…party needs to shake itself loose from top-down management, undergo a grassroots renewal and adopt a vigorous, positive agenda that flows from the priorities, views and values of citizens who involve themselves in that process … Our party needs to frame its priorities more in terms of what we’re for rather than what we are against.”

- John Ashcroft, immediately following Republican loss in 1992

As to how we can accomplish over the next two years what the GOP did from 1992-1994, the flood of contradictory advice from every corner of the political world has given me a month-long migraine. At the risk of adding even more unrequested advice to the kindling pile, here’s my five points of advice :

Fire every pollster and political consultant. If they worked, we’d be winning.

Never use ten words when five will do.

Find the core message that ties together every thread of your platform and beat people over the head with it (something like “Democrats stand for expanding freedom and making our community larger and more diverse”)

You’ll go a long way with religious voters if you talk more about what Jesus actually said than what their ministers insist Jesus meant. There’s a reason people say Jesus was a hippy.

Don’t forget, Republicans don’t understand terrorism.

Notice I didn’t say anything about going to the left or right. I’m still not entirely sure what the problem is or how to fix it, but I’m sure it’s got a lot less to do with where we/they stand on given issues and a lot more to do with how they actually communicate this information to the voters.

Have any of you heard much about the movie “The Assassination of Richard Nixon”? I’ve read a few review now and it sounds like it could be really interesting. Here’s a brief review :

The year is 1974. Richard Nixon is at the midpoint of his second term as president, and the United States is a country divided. For one man, Sam Bicke (Sean Penn), the Land of Plenty has become a place where ?there’s plenty for the few and nothing for the plenty,? a travesty he blames squarely on the administration of Richard Milhouse Nixon. For another man, Sam’s boss Jack Jones (Jack Thompson), the owner of an office furniture store, Nixon is ?the greatest salesman in history.? Telling his sales staff that the key to successful selling is ?belief,? he points to Nixon, marveling that the man got himself elected on the promise to get the country out of Viet Nam, instead proceeded to send in an additional 100,000 troops, then got himself re-elected on exactly the same promise to end the war.
. . .
Based upon the true story of a Baltimore man who, in 1974, hijacked an airplane with the intent of crashing it into the White House, The Assassination of Richard Nixon is highly relevant to the mood of America today as well as being chillingly prescient to the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. It is also another acting tour de force for Sean Penn, who at times is barely recognizable as a meek man whose self-worth is defined by his neatly trimmed mustache.

This review gives a little more background about what motivated Bicke in his attempt to hijack an airplane :

The platitudes collectively known as “The American Dream” are one of the most powerful forces in the world. The dream holds immense promise, a potent affirmation of a country’s belief in equality, free enterprise, and the human capacity to better oneself. However, the dream’s idealism places the country’s failings in stark relief; all men may indeed be born equal, but soon after that birth, America’s social and economic realities prove that all men are NOT equal. The Constitution allows all Americans the opportunity to be its President, but only its white, rich, straight male members have attained that position.

The unavailability of the American Dream to many Americans creates a problematic social paradigm — its promise, in effect, becomes a lie, and its esteem-building subtext builds a cultural impotence instead. For although the founding fathers were clear about guaranteeing only the pursuit of happiness, the American Dream seems to demand it…and if one is not happy, conversely, then it is America that is broken, not the individual. This sense of entitlement, many might argue, is America’s biggest problem. We feel we have the ‘right’ to happiness, to success in our work, in our private lives, in our families. And when — for whatever reason — that happiness eludes us, it creates an impotent rage that can explode with a frightening force.

Sean Penn brings one such explosion to the screen by inhabiting the scabrously nervous soul of Sam Bicke, who in 1974 attempted to hijack an airplane and fly it into the White House. . . .Niels Mueller’s claustrophobically compact debut film retrieves Bicke from history’s dustbin to explore how one man’s sense of American entitlement went awry…with dismayingly torturous consequences.

I also love that the film’s poster show Sean Penn looking like an odd cross between Inspector Clouseau and Rupert Pupkin. Seems like this could be a pretty good movie if the director is able to avoid making it pretentious or overwrought. Have any of you seen it yet?

This morning on CNN, Wolf Blitzer was shocked that the military would lie to news organizations :

Amid a debate over the use of misinformation by the U.S. military, the Pentagon says it is investigating an October incident in which a Marine spokesman gave CNN misleading information about an attack on the Iraqi city of Falluja.

In an October 14 interview from Iraq, 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert announced that a major U.S. military operation was under way in Falluja — three weeks before the offensive that eventually recaptured the city began.

A senior Pentagon official told CNN that Gilbert’s remarks were “technically true but misleading.” It was an attempt to get CNN “to report something not true,” the official said.
. . .
Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned commanders not to mix up “information operations” with the dissemination of news to reporters. But some in the military are concerned about blurring clear distinctions among three goals: psychological operations against enemy forces; offering timely and accurate information to reporters; and influencing international audiences.
. . .
The objective, Los Angeles Times reporter Mark Mazzetti said Wednesday, was “to see what the enemy was up to.”

“The Pentagon people I spoke to said that the intended audience was the insurgent population around Falluja [who] might think that the U.S. military was coming to get them, and the U.S. military wanted to observe what they did when they thought the U.S. was coming,” Mazzetti told CNN’s “Newsnight With Aaron Brown.”

Let’s get this straight…the Bush administration has been using the media to lie to the American people for four years and now they’re getting pissed??? You know America has jumped the shark when the only time the media gets outraged over being used to distribute misinformation is when those lies are intended for our enemies.

What makes this even stranger is that, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think this incident is that big a deal. If anything, I think a little white lie about troop movements is a pretty clever tactic (even if it didn’t seem to work that well). I’m much more concerned about the “big lies” like WMD’s and links to al Qaeda, but apparently the brass at CNN only take offense at being lied to, not being lied through.

Happy World AIDS Day everybody! If you’ve got the AIDS Day spirit in you, might I suggest this gift?

Criticism of condoms and restrictions on access to them are undercutting the fight against HIV/AIDS in countries ranging from Nigeria to Peru to the United States, Human Rights Watch said in a report Tuesday.

Marking World AIDS Day, the New York-based human rights organization described condoms as the single most effective weapon against sexually transmitted HIV, but said they are subjected to government-backed constraints in numerous countries.
. . .
The U.S. government, although the leading donor to HIV/AIDS-fighting initiatives, was criticized for its support of “abstinence until marriage” HIV-prevention programs that often depict condoms as unreliable and withhold any practical information about their use.

“The Bush Administration is spending millions of dollars on abstinence-only programs that mislead people at risk of HIV/AIDS about the effectiveness of condoms,” said Rebecca Schleifer, another Human Rights Watch researcher. “Exporting these programs to countries facing even more serious epidemics will only make the situation worse.”…

Tony Jewell, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the U.S. government does fund condom distribution through some of its HIV/AIDS programs, but he defended the philosophy behind other programs which espouse the abstinence-only approach.

“It’s a scientific fact that you will not get a sexually transmitted disease if you do not have sex,” he said.

Of course, that’s where the Bush Administration’s respect for “scientific fact[s]” ends. If they delved a little deeper, they’s know that (1) you’re never, ever going to be able to talk people out of having sex and (2) if they’re gonna have sex anyways, the safest way for them to do it is with a condom. Unfortunately, the people who get to make the big decisions in these life or death matters are still living under the assumption that making condoms available will “promote” sex, which is sorta like arguing that seat belts encourage unsafe driving.

Yes, there are other countries that are also guilty of this misguided moralism, but we don’t get any say into how they spend their money. As an American, I’d love to see our country start stepping away from the religious arrogance that’s crippling our fight against the spread of AIDS. Needless to say, the fight against ingorance at home will be a long one.