reaction rather than action.

thats the problem with the dems. or so says sf chronicle's jon carroll. ive been suspicious from the beginning of a liberal tendency for excessive self-analysis, and mostly have steered clear of or been bored with all the 'whats wrong with the democrats?' articles. the 'stolen election' thing kinda eclipsed all that for me. still, this one stuck me as a little more interesting and useful.

I'm not sure when I first became fed up with the Democrats. Probably sometime during the Kerry campaign, although at that time I was being eaten up by the Fear and not noticing the flaws of the Kerry campaign so much. I feel foolish now. Many of us feel foolish now.
But here's the moment at which it all crystallized for me: It was at the beginning of what was then called "the great Social Security debate," which was a brief fad that hit America at about the same time as the 2005 Rose Parade.

Congressional Democrats solemnly announced that they were not going to come up with an alternative plan, because that would be politically unwise. It would be much better for the party to just snipe at the Republican plan. Yeah, I know, Social Security was not in nearly as bad shape as the GOP said it was, but could certainly have used -- still certainly could use -- a little help. Innovative thinking, maybe. Or, you know, the appearance of innovative thinking. Something other than "This plan is very terrible, and that's good for our side."

But it's typical. The party of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson is back on its heels. It is reacting rather than acting. It is getting sucked into pointless debates. It is providing zero leadership. Some individuals within the party are trying -- hello, John Edwards -- but there's no vision.

What do Democrats believe? Well, you know what Republicans believe. Well, Democrats believe the other thing. Democrats stand for a vision to be named later.

Poverty was not a secret before Hurricane Katrina hit. The plight of inner-city African Americans was not a secret before the storm hit. If Democrats had wanted an issue, that was always there. If Democrats wanted to stay on message, there was that message. It's not the only possible message, but it's a pretty good one -- and it's a message that reaches across ideological lines to the so-called "values voters."

Here's the first thing the Democrats should do. Stop taking the pundits seriously. Stop responding to every mini-flurry of gossip or speculation that eddies through the corridors of Washington. That is not real life. That is not what we care about out here in people-land.
In the last election, when the Swift Boat Veterans for I'm-With-Stupid started their well-financed reputation-smashing campaign, the Democrats should have appointed one politician as Authorized Bull Catcher. Every Democratic candidate would refer all rumors, allegations, thunderings, rumblings and billingsgate to the Bull Catcher. The Bull Catcher would hold eight-hour news conferences every day and keep talking until everyone walked away.

Meanwhile, the candidates would insist on talking about poverty and racial justice and the benefits of peace over war. (In peace: less killing. You'd think that would be a selling point.)
It would help, of course, if the idiot press would not go chasing after every whiff of a scandal-like odor. Ooh, Teresa Heinz Kerry has a temper. Ooh, Jenna Bush may have gotten drunk. Ooh, someone saw Rick Santorum in a gay bar. Ooh, Russ Feingold is getting a divorce. Are we running a country or a hair salon? I mean no disrespect to hair salons.

The right-wing attack machine knows no shame. It will slime war veterans like John Kerry. It will slime badly injured war veterans like Max Cleland. It'll slime grieving mothers like Cindy Sheehan. It's not a fight the Democrats can win; it's not a fight that any decent person could win. Solution: Get out of the fight. Takes two to have a shouting match.

And Democrats might want to get off the "values" horse too. The fights are mostly futile, anyway, at least short term. Abortion is not going to be outlawed in this country; it's just not. Prayers in schools are not going to be allowed in this country; they're just not. Gay marriage is never going to be the law of the land; it's just not.

And, at the risk of alienating my base and some of my relatives -- I don't think gay marriage is that important an issue. I mean, dead citizens in Iraq; tortured Muslims at Guantanamo; AIDS epidemic in Africa; ice caps melting and fish dying pretty much everywhere. Gay marriage freaks people out -- it shouldn't, but it does. Heck, I think the failure of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy is more important than gay marriage, and even that takes a backseat to, uh, some of the other problems the military is having.

I don't think the Democratic Party should be another talking-points-generating engine, as the Republican Party is. Democrats are always going to disagree; it's a good thing. But please, let us disagree about real things, about real policies and real ideas and real solutions. And, seriously, the Democrats really should find a candidate who's a uniter, not a divider. That job is definitely still open.

It's like, OK, I do not know how to fix this car, but I do know that sitting around hurling slogans rather than reading the manual is not the way to go about it.

again, no big surprise...

.. you knew diebold was up to no good, so many flaws were being reported in their system (esp. on http://www.blackboxvoting.org/), but now, a diebold insider is talking (in an exclusive interview with 'the brad blog').

of course, this was out before the 'election', does anyone remember watching Howard Dean hack the diebold GEMS central tabulator (in just 90 seconds) on CNBC's "Topic A with Tina Brown"? there's never been any shortage of evidence.

still, this anonymous source is the first person to have anything to say about what it all looked like inside the diebold machine - the company who's CEO is a top GOP supporter, and promised to deliver ohio for bush.

no big surprise, but...

... a recent ny times article reveals that the FAA and other govt. officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark". there you have it, folks - it doesnt get much more specific than that.

the information comes from previously secret (to protect national security interests, of course) portions of the 9/11 comission report. the specific warnings about al qaeda strikes and security lapses are interesting enough in and of themselves, but what really intrigues me is looking at what information was censored in the first release of the report, and wondering what information is still being witheld.

from the article:

Commission officials said they were perplexed by the administration's original attempts to black out material they said struck them as trivial or mundane.

One previously deleted section showed, for instance, that flights carrying the author Salman Rushdie were subjected to heightened security in the summer of 2001 because of a fatwa of violence against him, while a previously deleted footnote showed that "sewing scissors" would be allowed in the hands of a woman with sewing equipment, but prohibited "in the possession of a man who possessed no other sewing equipment."

Other deletions, however, highlighted more serious security concerns. A footnote that was originally deleted from the report showed that a quarter of the security screeners used in 2001 by Argenbright Security for United Airlines flights at Dulles Airport had not completed required criminal background checks, the commission report said. Another previously deleted footnote, related to the lack of security for cockpit doors, criticized American Airlines for security lapses.

Much of the material now restored in the public version of the commission's report centered on the warnings the F.A.A. received about the threat of hijackings, including 52 intelligence documents in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks that mentioned Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

A 1995 National Intelligence Estimate, a report prepared by intelligence officials, "highlighted the growing domestic threat of terrorist attack, including a risk to civil aviation," the commission found in a blacked-out portion of the report.

transparency has never been a forte of the bush administration (it hasnt been a administration for that matter, but bushco. is perhaps the worst) but one cant help but wonder (hmmm...) how much of the secrecy is simply an attempt to obsure the facts of what went wrong and why - and specficially why the bush admin. didnt do more to prevent the situation.

as fellow texan molly ivins has said about dubya -

"the trouble with the guy is that while he is good at politics, he stinks at governance. It bores him, he's not interested, he thinks government is bad to begin with and everything would be done better if it were contracted out to corporations."

again and again, we pay the price.

"youre doing a heckuva job, brownie!"

now that FEMA head michael brown has resigned, it may be easy to forget just how totally unqualified for his job he was, not to mention who put him there, and why. lest he become the administration's fall guy, and his resignation draw focus away from the ineptitude of others, let us not forget the old college buddy who hired him.

maureen dowd has a great new column detailing the stupidity.

I understand that politicians are wont to put cronies and cupcakes on the payroll. I just wish they'd stop putting them on the Homeland Security payroll.

At least Bill Clinton knew not to stash his sweeties in jobs concerned with keeping the nation safe. Gennifer Flowers said Clinton got her a $17,500 job in Arkansas in the state unemployment agency, though she was ranked ninth of 11 applicants tested.

W. trusted Brownie simply because he was a friend of a friend. He was a college buddy of Joe Allbaugh, who worked as W.'s chief of staff when he was Texas governor and as his 2000 presidential campaign manager.

Time magazine reported that Brownie's official bio described his only stint in emergency management as "assistant city manager" in Edmond, Okla. But a city official told Time that the FEMA chief had been "an assistant to the city manager," which was "more like an intern."

The breakdown in management and communications was so execrable that the president learned about the 25,000 desperate, trapped people at the New Orleans convention center not from Brownie, who didn't know himself, but from a wire story carried into the Oval Office by an aide on Thursday, 24 hours after the victims had been pleading and crying for help on every channel. (Maybe tomorrow the aide will come in with a wire story, "No WMD in Iraq.")

FEMA was a disaster waiting to happen, the minute a disaster struck. As The Washington Post reported Friday, five of the eight top FEMA officials were simply Bush loyalists and political operatives who "came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters."

'nuff said.

click on the image to blow it up or look for it here.

reconstruction - the second hurricane?

after katrina, what next?

a great naomi klein article, 'Let The People Rebuild New Orleans' , argues that reconstruction in and of itself is not necessarily a good thing. new orleans is now ripe for the picking by big money developers, who would likely take the already devastated poor of new orleans for another ride. seeing that Dick Cheney's esteemed colleagues at haliburton have already been awarded a contract it seems prudent to expect the worst.

naomi describes the precedent:

When I was in Sri Lanka six months after the tsunami, many survivors told me that the reconstruction was victimizing them all over again. A council of the country's most prominent businesspeople had been put in charge of the process, and they were handing the coast over to tourist developers at a frantic pace. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of poor fishing people were still stuck in sweltering inland camps, patrolled by soldiers with machine guns and entirely dependent on relief agencies for food and water. They called reconstruction "the second tsunami."

There are already signs that New Orleans evacuees could face a similarly brutal second storm. Jimmy Reiss, chairman of the New Orleans Business Council, told Newsweek that he has been brainstorming about how "to use this catastrophe as a once-in-an-eon opportunity to change the dynamic." The Business Council's wish list is well-known: low wages, low taxes, more luxury condos and hotels. Before the flood, this highly profitable vision was already displacing thousands of poor African-Americans: While their music and culture was for sale in an increasingly corporatized French Quarter (where only 4.3 percent of residents are black), their housing developments were being torn down. "For white tourists and businesspeople, New Orleans' reputation is 'a great place to have a vacation but don't leave the French Quarter or you'll get shot,'" Jordan Flaherty, a New Orleans-based labor organizer told me the day after he left the city by boat. "Now the developers have their big chance to disperse the obstacle to gentrification--poor people."

and the hope for something better:

Here's a better idea: New Orleans could be reconstructed by and for the very people most victimized by the flood. Schools and hospitals that were falling apart before could finally have adequate resources; the rebuilding could create thousands of local jobs and provide massive skills training in decent paying industries. Rather than handing over the reconstruction to the same corrupt elite that failed the city so spectacularly, the effort could be led by groups like Douglass Community Coalition. Before the hurricane this remarkable assembly of parents, teachers, students and artists was trying to reconstruct the city from the ravages of poverty by transforming Frederick Douglass Senior High School into a model of community learning. They have already done the painstaking work of building consensus around education reform. Now that the funds are flowing, shouldn't they have the tools to rebuild every ailing public school in the city?

For a people's reconstruction process to become a reality (and to keep more contracts from going to Halliburton), the evacuees must be at the center of all decision-making. According to Curtis Muhammad of Community Labor United, the disaster's starkest lesson is that African-Americans cannot count on any level of government to protect them. "We had no caretakers," he says. That means the community groups that do represent African-Americans in Louisiana and Mississippi -- many of which lost staff, office space and equipment in the flood -- need our support now. Only a massive injection of cash and volunteers will enable them to do the crucial work of organizing evacuees -- currently scattered through forty-one states--into a powerful political constituency. The most pressing question is where evacuees will live over the next few months. A dangerous consensus is building that they should collect a little charity, apply for a job at the Houston Wal-Mart and move on. Muhammad and CLU, however, are calling for the right to return: they know that if evacuees are going to have houses and schools to come back to, many will need to return to their home states and fight for them.

These ideas are not without precedent. When Mexico City was struck by a devastating earthquake in 1985, the state also failed the people: poorly constructed public housing crumbled and the army was ready to bulldoze buildings with survivors still trapped inside. A month after the quake 40,000 angry refugees marched on the government, refusing to be relocated out of their neighborhoods and demanding a "Democratic Reconstruction." Not only were 50,000 new dwellings for the homeless built in a year; the neighborhood groups that grew out of the rubble launched a movement that is challenging Mexico's traditional power holders to this day.

anyone looking to send money somewhere - the red cross is getting enough donations, try to send your money to more grassroots relief efforts. specifically related to a people's reconstruction, you can contact the Vanguard Public Foundation, 383 Rhode Island St., Suite 301, San Francisco, CA 94103. Checks should be earmarked "People's Hurricane Fund."
otherwise, check out the list at the sparkplug foundation.

honest obituaries

probably to only reason to be sad that supreme court chief justice william rehnquist is dead is the fact that a bush appointee will likely be even more destructive to individual rights and civil liberties and the common good.

its a sad day what rhenquist looks appealingly like a moderate.

heres the scoop on The Real Rhenquist from the nation's david corn.

It's not hard to conclude that Rehnquist was on the wrong side of history and then lied about it - especially given actions he took later. In 1964, Rehnquist testified against a proposed ordinance in Phoenix that would ban racial discrimination in public housing. As The Washington Post notes in stories on his death, Rehnquist wrote at the time, "It is, I believe, impossible to justify the sacrifice of even a portion of our historic individual liberty for a purpose such as this."

In other words, people are not truly free if they are not free to discriminate. In his 1971 hearings, Rehnquist repudiated that stance. But did he really mean it?

Twelve years later, he was the only justice to say that Bob Jones University - that hotbed of racial discrimination and religious bigotry - had a legal right to keep African-Americans off its campus.

debunking the katrina media myths

the best piece ive seen yet spelling out exactly how mainstream media reporting covered bush & co's collective ass and failed to check them on their outright lies.

Eight Big Lies About Katrina

read 'em and weep.

the wiley urban arayan hunter-gatherer of new orleans

one of the most interesting aspects of watching the tragic effects of hurricane katrina play out in the media has been to watch the way race plays out in the coverage. the prime example has been the tendency to ascribe different names to the same survival oriented activities, depending on whether the people in question are black or white.

one of the most intersting instances of this was the story noting two photos from the yahoo news photo service. both photos show new orleans residents wading in chest deep water with hard-won groceries. one, featuring two white folks, is captioned, "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store...". the other, a photo of a black man, reads, "A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans".

best copies of the photos here.

hmm..

yahoo has pulled one of the photos (the white guys) at the request of the photographer, and issued an apologetic statement, but since the photos and captions were from different sources, the point is not so much to cry 'racist' as to look at the underlying racism in our culture that leads ALL of us to read a black folks attempts to survive as 'looting'.

if anyone has missed kanye west's comments on this subject... well youre in for a treat. at a katrina benefit concert last week, kanye made mike meyers get all squirmy by departing from the standard tragedy script on the tele-prompter to talk a bit more about everybody's favorite president's handling of the disaster.

his comments included these gems:

"I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food."

"America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible".

"George Bush doesn't care about black people."

video here.

now, some humor. as alice walker once said, 'nothing is funnier, or frees the heart more, than the truth.' thats why i like The Onion.

White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters

NEW ORLEANS—Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing African­Americans "looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses." "I was in the abandoned Wal-Mart gathering an air mattress so I could float out the potato chips, beef jerky, and Budweiser I'd managed to find," said white survivor Lars Wrightson, who had carefully selected foodstuffs whose salt and alcohol content provide protection against contamination. "Then I look up, and I see a whole family of [African-Americans] going straight for the booze. Hell, you could see they had already looted a fortune in diapers." Radio stations still in operation are advising store owners and white people in the affected areas to locate firearms in sporting-goods stores in order to protect themselves against marauding blacks looting gun shops.

(from the Onion)