Click for Main Weblog

   
The Weblog at The View from the Core - Tuesday, February 10, 2004
   
   

"How We Will Wisconsin"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CLXXV

Blogged at The Corner today.

+ + + + +

Memo

From: Mike Tate, Dean for Wisconsin State Director
Date: February 10, 2004
Re: How we will Wisconsin [sic]

We have spent the last several days telling you we are confident Wisconsin's voters will choose the one candidate who as President will be beholden to them, not a Washington politician beholden to the special interests that sponsored their campaign.

Today I wanted you to know how we will win.

Wisconsin Campaign History

Wisconsin voters have a history of bucking conventional wisdom and electing underdog candidates. Successful campaigns by Bill Proxmire and Russ Feingold are examples of Wisconsin's penchant for underdog candidates who take on the special interests.

Young people, one of Dean's strongest supporter blocs, have a history of turning out in Wisconsin elections. Turnout amongst young voters is credited with the victories of Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewic in 2003, and U.S. Representative Tammy Baldwin in 1998. Wisconsin had the highest student voter turnout in country in the 2000 general election. Our campaign has active chapters on 25 college campuses.

Grassroots Organization

Dean for America has been organizing here in Wisconsin since August 1, 2003. Today we have an increasing staff of 80 and tens of thousands of active supporters in every county taking part in 37 monthly MeetUps each month and more than 125 volunteer organized events through on-line Get Local tools. We have offices in Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay, Superior, Eau Claire, La Crosse, Wausau, and Stevens Point.

Paid Media Strategy

This week we launched a Wisconsin focused paid media campaign with a 60 second television advertisement highlighting Dean's biography, record and plan for the future. Tonight a new 30-second television advertisement written, produced and chosen by our grassroots supporters will enter into the mix. It is called "Mike" and features a man named Michael Reinhardt who supports Dean because of his opposition to the war in Iraq, his common sense approach to gun control who would "like to take back my country."

In addition, we are spending significant resources on a direct mail program. The first piece will land in mailboxes today with at least one more piece dropping later this week. Our direct mail program urges voters to keep the debate alive by choosing real change and voting for Dean on February 17. It also highlights the Governor's record of having the courage to stand up to George W. Bush and the leadership to deliver results, not just rhetoric.

+ + + + +

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 02/10/04 06:56:03 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.


   
   

Catholic Bashing in the Movies

Richard Roeper writes at the Chicago Sun-Times today:

.... I've seen the version of "The Passion of the Christ" that will play in theaters starting on Ash Wednesday — and I'll soon share my views on the film. In the meantime, I've been pondering some other religious-themed movies I've seen in my four years on "Ebert & Roeper."
Catholicism has been represented far more frequently than any other faith. I've probably seen more films about the Catholic Church (and movies with nuns or priests as supporting characters) than all other religions put together. Just from the last four years, I could easily put together a Catholic Film Festival — but I don't think too many Catholics would be pleased with the entries....
In these movies, priests are suicidal, corrupt and/or lascivious. Nuns are heartless and sadistic.
Before you run to your keyboard: yes, I'm aware of scandals, past and present, involving the church. And yes, some of the films listed above are powerful, important works based on true stories.
But a lot of this stuff is just exploitative garbage. And no other religious group gets bashed with such frequency. Can you imagine a similar number of films with Jewish leaders playing villains and moral weaklings?
Me neither.

(Thanks, Mark.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 02/10/04 06:31:52 PM
Categorized as Media & Religious.


   
   

"Keeping Abreast of Federal Budget Developments"

The Inimitable One writes at the Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 8:

.... A government with its fingers in every pie is unlikely to have enough left over for the handful of pies it should have its fingers in. It was summed up by Americans' only glimpse of the president on the morning of 9/11: the commander-in-chief being informed of the first attack on the American mainland in nearly 200 years while he was speaking to grade-schoolers in Florida. That image encapsulates everything that's wrong with both parties' approach to government.
As we learned in the days after, because of incompatible computers, the FBI was unable to e-mail pictures of the 9/11 killers to local offices. Yet there's money for rock 'n' roll nostalgia, and an "indoor rain forest" in Iowa. The president should not be the National School Superintendent, the Pharmacist-in-Chief, the Curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or the Inspector-General of Janet Jackson's Breasts. And, if neither politicians nor the electorate understands that at a time of war, then republican government is doomed.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 02/10/04 08:22:02 AM
Categorized as Political.


   
   

"The Coming Rise of Liberal Talk Radio"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CLXXIV

A work of genius.

An hilarious, brilliant, dead-pan, tongue-in-cheek article at The New Republic Online, posted yesterday, dated Feb. 16 (embedded ellipses in original):

Every weekday, from three in the afternoon until seven in the evening, Randi Rhodes delivers her brief against George W. Bush. Much of it is standard anti-Bush fare: He stole the 2000 election, he wrecked the economy, he led the nation into a disastrous war under dishonest pretenses. But sometimes Rhodes takes her critique into less familiar territory. Citing a book titled George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Rhodes alleges that in the 1940s Prescott Bush, the president's grandfather, sold raw materials to the Third Reich. And then there are the Bushes' business ties to the bin Ladens, which, Rhodes says, go back decades and even involve the president himself, who as a young oilman in Texas was partners with Salem bin Laden, Osama's older brother. Indeed, Rhodes contends that it is the Bush-bin Laden relationship — not an anti-American jihad — that accounts for the September 11 attacks. According to Rhodes, Osama bin Laden, disgusted with the corruption of his own family and the Saudi royals, decided to seek revenge against their most prominent American partners: the Bushes. Bin Laden, in other words, doesn't want to destroy the United States; he just wants to destroy Bush.
Crazy as Rhodes's theories may sound, they do not just disappear into the ether. Broadcast by WJNO, an AM news and talk radio station in West Palm Beach, "The Randi Rhodes Show" is the highest-rated program in the local market's afternoon drive-time slot. Rhodes has more Palm Beach listeners than even Rush Limbaugh, whose show immediately precedes hers on WJNO.
And it's likely that Rhodes's anti-Bush brief will soon reach audiences well beyond Palm Beach. In the past year, two groups have formed to develop national liberal talk shows — and both are interested in Rhodes. One, a nonprofit outfit called Democracy Radio, wants to syndicate Rhodes's show across the country. The other, a for-profit venture called Progress Media, is creating a national liberal talk radio network and is considering Rhodes for its lineup. Either way, Rhodes hopes that, sometime in the next few months, listeners from New York to Los Angeles will be able to hear her smoky, Brooklyn-accented voice rail against the president.

One afternoon last fall, I visited Rhodes at WJNO, which broadcasts from a low-slung concrete building in an industrial section of West Palm Beach. Rhodes often jokes on air that she works in radio because of her "bad hair and blotchy skin," but, in person, she turns out to be an attractive bottle-blond who wouldn't look terribly out of place in the front row at an Aerosmith concert. (This is perhaps unsurprising given that, before she became an AM talk-show host in the early '90s, she'd worked a dozen years as an FM rock deejay and managed bands on the side.) As a radio veteran, Rhodes knows that each hour on the air requires at least another hour of preparation, so about two-and-a-half hours before airtime, she was sitting in a darkened studio, poring over a sheaf of articles she'd printed off the Internet. The clip that had her most excited--and agitated — was the transcript of a press conference President Bush held earlier that morning. "These are clearly scripted news conferences," she complained, waving the transcript in the air, "and that's dangerous, because there are a lot of serious questions that need to be asked." Rhodes didn't say what these questions were; instead, she proceeded to read some of Bush's answers aloud in what can only be described as a doofus voice, chuckling to herself.
A couple hours later, Rhodes was still on the same topic, this time with a microphone cradled in her right hand, addressing not just me but thousands of listeners throughout Palm Beach. "You had to actually be married to the Republican Party to believe the president today," she declared. She ridiculed Bush's explanation that the people attacking American troops in Iraq "hate progress": "People are willing to strap bombs on their bodies because they hate electricity ... and they hate school?! This is the explanation we're getting?!" Then she raged over the president's contention that it was the crew of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, not the White House, that hung the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner as a backdrop for his May speech aboard the ship: "Today, he even went as far as to blame the troops for putting up an off-message sign! I can't believe he does that, using the guys that really fought." As she neared the end of the show, Rhodes was still rolling: "The president is a bald-faced liar. Even about little things like a banner, he can't tell the truth." ....

What? You say it's a serious treatment of the subject? Surely, Faithful Reader, you jest.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 02/10/04 07:23:37 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Media.


   

The Blog from the Core © 2002-2009 E. L. Core. All rights reserved.