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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Tuesday, January 27, 2004
   
   

Did I Just Hear What I Think I Heard?

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXLII

Did Doctor Howard "Cliff" Dean just reminisce about the Nineteen- freaking -Sixties as a time when the country was not divided?

No. Couldn't be. I must have been hallucinating.

P.S. Yes, that is what I heard (emphasis added; brackets in original).

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Thank you. My goodness. Thank you. Wow. Thank you. Well, that was - Michael - we really are going to win this nomination, aren't we? You are amazing. You are amazing.

First, let me just say a couple of things. You are unbelievable and I really appreciate it. First let me thank the people of the State of New Hampshire. I really - you took us into your homes and your living rooms, meet us at the Marimack[sp?] Restaurant. I really appreciate all that you've done. The people of New Hampshire have allowed our campaign to regain its momentum and I am very grateful. And the people of New Hampshire have allowed all of you to hope again that we're going to have real change in America.

For those of you who believe that America needs real change and someone in the White House who's really delivered change, we're all together in this. Stand with us to the very end, which is Jan. 20, 2005. For those of you who think that America needs a president who's willing to stand up for what's right, not just what's popular, we are all together again. Stand together, all of us. To those of you who believe the best way to beat George Bush, in fact the only way to beat George Bush is to stand up to him all the time, not just when it's convenient, not just some of the time, tonight the people of New Hampshire have asked for change, a real change.

We can change America, and we will. We can have jobs again in America, and we will.

We can join every other industrialized nation on the face of the earth and have health insurance for all Americans, and we will.

We can invest in families with small children and have those kids grow up to go to college instead of prison, and we will.

We can demand for our young people a better future, a solution to global warming, getting us off foreign oil by investing in renewable energy, and we will.

We can regain the moral leadership of this country as it held from the end of World War I until the time of the Iraq invasion, by having a foreign policy based on cooperation not confrontation, and we will.

We can return our school systems to the control of local school boards, fully fund special education and get rid of the federal mandates of no child left behind, and we will.

We can get rid of the president's pharmaceutical bill and instead have a pharmaceutical bill that helps seniors instead of insurance companies and drug companies, and we will.

We can give the 50 percent of Americans who've quit voting in this country because we don't give them a reason to vote a reason to vote again, and we will.

We can take back America and stand up for working families and middle-class families again, and take our government back for the people who built it instead of corporations and special interests, and we will.

And this time we can have a president who really is a uniter not a divider, and we will.

A lot of you have heard me say this, I'm going to say this to America. The biggest loss that we've suffered under George Bush is not the 2.9 million jobs that have disappeared since he's been president. And it's not the loss of our moral leadership in the world where a majority of people in most countries don't respect us anymore. The biggest loss that we've suffered in this country since George Bush has been president is our loss of our sense of community, the sense that we're all in it together.

When I was 21 years old, it was the end of the civil rights movement and America had suffered greatly. Martin Luther King had been killed; Bobby Kennedy was dead. A lot of other Americans, maybe not so famous, including four little girls in a Birmingham church, died so that every single American would have equal rights under the law.

But it was also a time of great hope. Medicare passed so the seniors would never again have to fear being bankrupted because they became ill. Head Start passed, the first investment in children under the age of 5, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the first African-American justice to the United States Supreme Court. We felt like we were all in this together, that if one person was left behind, that America wasn't as strong as it should be or as good as it could be. We were all in it together.

You know the president ran as a uniter, not a divider. And there wasn't any evidence for that anymore than there was for those weapons of mass destruction or all those bombs.

President used the word quota five or six times on the evening news to talk about the University of Michigan affirmative action program. Not only did the most conservative Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision disagree with him on that one, but the word quota, every politician and every pollster in America knows, is a race coded word deliberately designed to appeal to people's fears that they may lose their job or their place in university to a member of a community of color. In other words, the president played the race card, and that alone entitles him to a one-way bus ticket back to Crawford, Tex.

I am tired of being divided in this country. I'm tired of being divided by race. I'm tired by being divided by gender when the president thinks he knows better than an American woman what kind of reproductive health care that she ought to have. I'm tired of being divided by income. I'm tired of being divided by sexual orientation. I'm tired of being divided by religion.

When we say we want our country back, what we mean is that we want the country that all of us were promised when we were 21 years old, a country where we were all in this together, where we could believe, where we could hope again that America would be a better place as we grew older. We want the country back that J.F.Kennedy talked about when he talked about passing the torch to the new generation and leaving a country to the new generation better off than the country than the country that we found it.

Wow. I just noticed a whole lot of people came out here from San Francisco. I can't believe all these people. Florida. Anybody here from Alaska?

You know something? We are going to take our country back.

The other day I was in Manchester and I was giving a speech in Manchester to a lot of the hard-working volunteers that have worked so hard. And I want to thank some of those people. I want to thank, first of all, Karen Hicks[sp?], our state director, who's been absolutely unbelievable. Where is Karen Hicks? Come on up here. Come on, come on. Not only Karen Hicks, but how about all those incredibly hard-working people, staff members and volunteers, hundreds of them from all over this state. Thank you so much for all you have done. And there's a long, long, long list of incredibly deserving people including an enormous number of people, others - and I hardly dare single any of them out. I don't know, is Fran Eggbers[sp?] here, the super volunteer? Carol Moore[sp?]‘ another one, unbelievable. Meg, you and Gary have been so great, thank you so much for all your help right from the beginning. Is Michael King here? Michael King, our very first person, signed up right from the beginning, thank you. Now I know if I keep doing this I'm going to get in a lot of trouble.

I do want to thank my brother Bill and my brother Jim for coming up here. And my wonderful mother, who came up and campaigned the day before her birthday. And I would be remiss if I did not thank my fantastic wife, Judy Dean.

Let me close by saying something that -- let me close by saying just a couple more things. The first is this. The other day I was in Manchester, giving a speech to a group of volunteers who had worked really hard and a whole lot of people who had -- paid staff as well -- who had really worked hard for this. And we did what we needed to do tonight, and I want to thank them for what they have done. (Applause.)

But I also want to just tell one quick story. As I was speaking, a guy yelled out, "We believe in you, Howard!" And I said, "Far be it from me to rebuke any exuberant -- (cheers) -- any exuberant supporter. But it's not me that you have to believe in. It's you." (Cheers/applause.) And that is really how this campaign works.

And before I close, I do want to thank one other person, the person who introduced me, who I should have thanked in the first place, and that is Jim Casey (sp), the labor commissioner in the state of New Hampshire, who's been with us right from the very beginning. I really deeply appreciate all your help; and also Andy Stern (sp) from the SEIU. They've been enormously helpful. (Cheers/applause.)

I want to thank AFSCME. (Cheers/applause.) I want to thank the painters. You guys have been great. The labor support has been terrific. The CWA and the UAW have been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for all your help. (Applause.) I want to thank Stan Spero (sp), the basketball coach at Southern New Hampshire University. (Laughs.) Terry Jones.

But let me finish the way I always do, because it's always true. And we are going to win the nomination. We are going to win the nomination. (Cheers/applause.) And the reason we're going to win the nomination is because of you, because, sooner or later, all Americans are going to learn what you've already learned -- that the biggest lie told by people like me to people like you at election time is that if you vote for me, I'm going to solve all your problems.

The truth is, the power to change this country is in your hands, not mine. (Cheers/applause.) Abraham Lincoln said that a government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth.

You have the power to take back the Democratic Party and make it stand up for what Harry Truman asked for in the 1948 Democratic Party platform -- health insurance for all Americans -- to make us proud to be Democrats, so never again will we apologize for standing up for environmental protection; never again will we apologize for standing up for the rights of working men and women to organize -- (cheers/applause); that never again will we be afraid of a president with a 70 percent popularity rating who sends us to war without again will we be afraid to stand up for our children and ask that this president not give us pretty names like No Child Left Behind, but give us the money, our taxpayers' money, back into our own communities to stand up for families of working people. (Applause.)

You have the power. You have the power to take back our country so that the flag of the United States of America never again is the sole property of John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell, but the flag of the United States of America belongs to all of us again, every single American. (Cheers/applause.)

And, most of all, to you and every other American who's been abandoned by this administration, struggling hard to pay for college, to keep food on the table, working extra jobs now that don't pay any more overtime, thanks to what this president has done, that every single American, not just you, but all of you have the power to take back the White House in 2004. And that is exactly what we're going to do.

Thank you very much. (Cheers/applause.) Thank you for all your help. Thank you for all your help. Thank you for all your help. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause.)

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 01/27/04 10:17:59 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.


   
   

"Islam's New Voices See Faith With Critical Eye"

An amazing article at the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday:

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, Muslim scholar Omid Safi found himself mouthing a well-worn defense of his faith.
"Islam is a religion of peace," he would say. "These people (the terrorists) have nothing to do with Islam.''
But it didn't take long for Safi to acknowledge — first to himself and then to other Muslims offering the same sound bite — that they were not really telling the truth, or at least not telling the whole story....
Leaders of the progressive movement say they are not questioning the basic authority of the Koran, the Muslim scriptures revealed to the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century. But they do challenge some early interpretations used to justify strict forms of Islamic law, especially as it relates to women, Jews, "unbelievers" and criminal justice.
Ebrahim Moosa, a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, said Muslims who think every line in the Koran must be implemented as law have a superficial understanding of the faith. Much of the Koran, he said, is allegorical, and must be looked at in its historical context....

An amazing article? Yes, indeed. Why? Leaders of the progressive movement say they are not questioning the basic authority of the Koran, the Muslim scriptures revealed to the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century.

Now we have it on no less than the authority of Don Lattin, the religion writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed.

Can you imagine, Faithful Reader, that the writer (or newspaper) has ever — or would ever — refer to the Jewish and/or Christian sacred scriptures in this fashion? Do you think you could ever read in the San Francisco Chronicle that, for instance, the Epistle to the Romans was revealed to the Apostle Paul in the first century?

(Thanks, Kathy.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 01/27/04 08:00:13 PM
Categorized as Media & Religious.


   
   

"The Tyranny of Copyright?"

Interesting article at NYT, Jan. 25:

Last fall, a group of civic-minded students at Swarthmore College received a sobering lesson in the future of political protest. They had come into possession of some 15,000 e-mail messages and memos — presumably leaked or stolen — from Diebold Election Systems, the largest maker of electronic voting machines in the country. The memos featured Diebold employees' candid discussion of flaws in the company's software and warnings that the computer network was poorly protected from hackers. In light of the chaotic 2000 presidential election, the Swarthmore students decided that this information shouldn't be kept from the public. Like aspiring Daniel Ellsbergs with their would-be Pentagon Papers, they posted the files on the Internet, declaring the act a form of electronic whistle-blowing.
Unfortunately for the students, their actions ran afoul of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.), one of several recent laws that regulate intellectual property and are quietly reshaping the culture. Designed to protect copyrighted material on the Web, the act makes it possible for an Internet service provider to be liable for the material posted by its users — an extraordinary burden that providers of phone service, by contrast, do not share. Under the law, if an aggrieved party (Diebold, say) threatens to sue an Internet service provider over the content of a subscriber's Web site, the provider can avoid liability simply by removing the offending material. Since the mere threat of a lawsuit is usually enough to scare most providers into submission, the law effectively gives private parties veto power over much of the information published online — as the Swarthmore students would soon learn.
Not long after the students posted the memos, Diebold sent letters to Swarthmore charging the students with copyright infringement and demanding that the material be removed from the students' Web page, which was hosted on the college's server. Swarthmore complied. The question of whether the students were within their rights to post the memos was essentially moot: thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, their speech could be silenced without the benefit of actual lawsuits, public hearings, judges or other niceties of due process.
After persistent challenges by the students — and a considerable amount of negative publicity for Diebold — in November the company agreed not to sue. To the delight of the students' supporters, the memos are now back on their Web site. But to proponents of free speech on the Internet, the story remains a chilling one....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 01/27/04 07:39:47 PM
Categorized as Media & Social/Cultural.


   
   

What Happens After One-Party Rule For Eight Decades

In the Burgh.

An article at NewsMax yesterday:

In many ways, 1920 was a watershed year for the proud people of Pittsburgh. The world's first commercial radio station (KDKA) started broadcasting in Pittsburgh in 1920. That year also marked the last time that a Republican, Edward V. Babcock, occupied the mayor's office.
Once known for its manufacturing muscle and steel exports, Pittsburgh now leads the nation in another export commodity: people. Over 350,000 people, half of Pittsburgh's population, have left over the last 50 years.
To stem the tide, Pittsburgh's Mayor Tom Murphy has undertaken a massive orgy of taxpayer-financed building projects, ranging from sports stadiums and a convention center to a planned tax-subsidized 500-room hotel and department stores....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 01/27/04 07:35:59 PM
Categorized as Political.


   
   

"The US Is Now In The Hands Of A Group Of Extremists"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CXLI

George Soros, filthy-rich anti-capitalist capitalist hypocrite, writes in The Guardian yesterday.

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The invasion of Iraq was the first practical application of the pernicious Bush doctrine of pre-emptive military action, and it elicited an allergic reaction worldwide - not because anyone had a good word to say about Saddam Hussein, but because we insisted on invading Iraq unilaterally without any clear evidence that he had anything to do with September 11 or that he possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The gap in perceptions between America and the rest of the world has never been wider. Abroad, America is seen as abusing the dominant position it occupies; opinion at home has been led to believe that Saddam posed a clear and present danger to national security. Only in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion are people becoming aware they have been misled.

Even today, many people believe that September 11 justifies behaviour that would be unacceptable in normal times. The ideologues of American supremacy and President Bush personally never cease to remind us that September 11 changed the world. It is only as the untoward consequences of the invasion of Iraq become apparent that people are beginning to realise something has gone woefully wrong.

We have fallen into a trap. The suicide bombers' motivation seemed incomprehensible at the time of the attack; now a light begins to dawn: they wanted us to react the way we did. Perhaps they understood us better than we understand ourselves.

And we have been deceived. When he stood for election in 2000, President Bush promised a humble foreign policy. I contend that the Bush administration has deliberately exploited September 11 to pursue policies that the American public would not have otherwise tolerated. The US can lose its dominance only as a result of its own mistakes. At present the country is in the process of committing such mistakes because it is in the hands of a group of extremists whose strong sense of mission is matched only by their false sense of certitude.

This distorted view postulates that because we are stronger than others, we must know better and we must have right on our side. That is where religious fundamentalism comes together with market fundamentalism to form the ideology of American supremacy.

We may have more difficulty in perceiving the absurdity of pursuing supremacy by military means, because we have learned to rely on military power and we particularly feel the need for it when our very existence is threatened. But the most powerful country on earth cannot afford to be consumed by fear. To make the war on terrorism the centrepiece of our national strategy is an abdication of our responsibility as the leading nation in the world. The US is the only country that can take the lead in addressing problems that require collective action: preserving peace and economic progress, protecting the environment and so on.

Whatever the justification for removing Saddam, there can be no doubt that we invaded Iraq on false pretenses. Wittingly or unwittingly, President Bush deceived the American public and Congress and rode roughshod over our allies' opinions.

The gap between the administration's expectations and the actual state of affairs could not be wider. We have put at risk not only our soldiers' lives but the combat readiness of our armed forces. We are overstretched and our ability to project our power has been compromised. Yet there are more places where we need to project our power than ever. North Korea is openly building nuclear weapons; Iran is doing so clandestinely. The Taliban is regrouping in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. The costs of occupation and the prospect of permanent war weigh on our economy, and we are failing to address festering problems both at home and globally. If we ever needed proof that the neo-cons' dream of American supremacy is misconceived, Iraq has provided it.

It is hard to imagine how the plans of the defence department could have gone more awry. We find ourselves in a quagmire that is in some ways reminiscent of Vietnam. Having invaded Iraq, we cannot extricate ourselves. Domestic pressure to withdraw is likely to build, as in the Vietnam war, but withdrawing would inflict irreparable damage on our standing in the world. In this respect, Iraq is worse than Vietnam because of our dependence on Middle East oil.

Nobody forced us into it; on the contrary, everyone warned us against it. Admittedly, Saddam was a heinous tyrant and it was a good thing to get rid of him. But at what cost? The occupying powers serve as a focal point for attracting terrorists and radicalising Islam. Our soldiers have to do police work in full combat gear.

And the cost of occupation is estimated at a staggering $160bn for the the fiscal years 2003-2004 - $73bn for 2003 and $87bn in a supplemental request for 2004 submitted at the last minute in September 2003. Of the $87bn, only $20bn is for reconstruction, but the total cost of reconstruction is estimated at $60bn. For comparison, our foreign aid budget for 2002 was $10bn.

There is no easy way out. The Bush administration is eager to get the United Nations more involved but is unwilling to make the necessary concessions. We have no alternative to sticking it out and paying the price for our mistake. Eventually a different president with a different attitude to international cooperation may be more successful in extricating us.

The US is not the only country at the centre of the global capitalist system, but it is the most powerful and it is the main driving force behind globalisation. The European Union may equal the US in population and gross national product, but it is far less united and far less comfortable with globalisation. In military terms, the EU does not even qualify as a power, because members make their own decisions.

Insofar as any nation is in charge of the world order, it is the US. That is not to suggest that other countries are exempt from having to concern themselves with the wellbeing of the world. Their attitudes are not without consequence, but it is the US that matters most.

If Bush is rejected in 2004, his policies can be written off as an aberration and America resume its rightful place in the world. But if he is re-elected, the electorate will have endorsed his policies and we will have to live with the consequences. But it isn't enough to defeat Bush at the polls. The US must examine its global role and adopt a more constructive vision. We cannot merely pursue narrow, national self-interest. Our dominant position imposes a unique responsibility.

© George Soros 2004

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 01/27/04 07:30:14 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & International & Political.


   

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