A red, black and blue campaign season …

September 27th, 2006

… like a spreading bruise on our sensibilities. My area is being hit hard with radio and tv spots on “values” — letting me and my neighbors know in no uncertain terms who has them, and who doesn’t. In my opinion, anybody who lets fly with that kind of mean-spirited gunk DOESN’T have any … but that’s just me. Big Republican bucks are being spent here to outrage the country folk. This ploy may work with the religious, they vote their repression issues, anyhow — we’ll see how it does with the rest of the state, who seem to be pretty fed up with the performance of the “values” party. The cities used to be blue and union … now they’re just blue.

It’s a problem, isn’t it — progressives, by their very definition, are tolerant and gather people together under a big umbrella. They’re willing to thrash out their idea’s respectfully because, at the heart of it, they would defend your right to have them, and speak them, with their lives. Even their campaign ads focus mainly on the record, not the personal qualities of the opponent … although this year they seem to be at least trying to adopt that strategy. Such are the stakes at hand.

And, of course, you need a ticket to get under the Red umbrella … absolute obedience to the First Rule of Bushy Republicanism — here, gulp down this Kool Aid and come on in, but no talking … just agreeing. Their ads are character assassinations — because winning is more important than ethical considerations … and I observe it as a “me, mine” mindset that drives them. The “other guy” wants something that’s theirs … in order to protect against that, they will circle the wagons and go John Wayne on anybody who comes close. If their Dubby has turned out to be more of a flawed, dysfunctional Doc Holiday than a confident, polished Wyatt Earp, no matter … he’s still their very own gunslinger. The gun is still the thing. Even if Dub’s shot himself in the foot with Iraq, he’s still got the gun — the Left is perceived as unarmed.

The only way to stop this regular political bloodletting is to take the money out of it — create the whole campaigning process differently. And don’t hold your breath — cash talks AND walks on this gameboard. Consequently, this will get worse before it’s over … this year, 2008 … however long. Count on it.

We wail about how the average citizen isn’t well informed, but there are reasons [other than denial] for that — it takes all their time and emotional capacity to “do” their daily life, make the commute, meet the mortgage, feed the family. Although the blame for this can’t be laid entirely at Bush’s feet, under his policies we’re quickly closing in on a kind of capitalistic feudalism. The flat earth, as suggested by Friedman, has given corporations a borderless world, with options and plunder for all. You and me? We’re just along for the ride — and too preoccupied to have much fight left.

Personally, I’ve had about enough of it — the money money money dance. We need to put a different face on this as we enter the 21st century. It will take an “awakening” … maybe a crash … we’re working on that, aren’t we.

In that regard, there’s a link to a bonus read at the end of this post that you should open. It’s very encouraging … it’s where we need to go; business is at the base of our culture — a new paradigm of business ethic is establishing itself now, today, in fits and starts and as a grassroots experiment. We’re all looking to find that workplace where we can be our ethical selves and express our highest values, experience our talent being encouraged, find satisfaction and excitement in our daily contribution. I envision a world where to do less will no longer be profitable.

Jude

The Great Issue Of Our Times: America is a Big Country and a Good Country
Brent Budowsky, BuzzFlash
Wed, 09/27/2006
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/434

In his latest farewell address, Tony Blair made a statement that reveals more than anything the poisons that have been injected in our politics today.

Blair said, the terrorists had attacked on 9-11 before anyone had thought of invading Iraq. He actually said that, an amazing falsehood since the neoconservative theorists had been pushing the Iraq war more than five years before 9-11, Vice-President Cheney had demanded intelligence information to prepare for the invasion of Iraq even before President Bush was inaugurated, and President Bush put planning the Iraq war ahead of killing Bin Laden even when warned in a presidential daily briefing about coming attacks against our country.

America is a big and good country, based on some big and good ideas, beginning with a respect for truth, a respect for the diversity of our people, a respect for the integrity of our democratic debate, a respect for the idea of an informed people making intelligent decisions in a country that believes the truth will keep us free.

How ironic, a British leader could utter such a total falsehood, with such a staggering contempt for truth, claiming that no-one had thought of invading Iraq until 9-11, which reveals so much of our dilemma today. Is this dishonesty or delusion?

America is a big country and a good country and at the heart of it all, is a respect for truth, and what we have lost, is this respect for truth. Nothing is more dangerous to our democracy than leaders who promote the disrespect for truth.

America is a big country and a good country, and at the heart of our respect for truth, is respect for each other, respect for the notion that Oliver Wendell Holmes called a clash of ideas. Nothing is more alien to our democracy than leaders who rip at the wounds of our divisions and tear apart the things that bring us together.

America is a big country and a good country, and there is no place for a Senator from Virginia who uses bigoted words and points to a fellow American with a smirk and says welcome to the real America. This is a man who does not understand the real America.

What is it about the poison of this politics where a Senator from Pennsylvania blames a child abuse scandal on liberals? What is it about the poison of this politics where a Senator from Montana speaks derisively about his Guatamalan employee? What is it about the poison of this politics where a Republican propagandist demeans even the widows of 9-11 and our President lacks the honor to condemn even this.

What is it about the poison of this politics where war heroes are slandered by those who never served? What is it about the poison of this politics where Hispanics are mocked because they sing our anthen in Spanish? What is it about the poison of this politics when gays are turned into demons by partisans looking for domestic enemies? What is it about the poison of this politics when newspapers are called traitors by partisans afraid of the truth?

Go back and read the talking points and the public statements when a brave man wearing our uniform publicly confronted our Secretary of Defense for not providing our troops with the protective equipment they deserve. For 24 hours the demonizing spin was directed in attack against the troops themselves, who were called whiners and complainers, by partisan spinners making cell phone calls from plush Washington restaurants, while they ate their shrimp diavlo dishing their dirt in talking points of war.

The President says, either you are for us, or against us, and like a law of nature fueled by a politics of poison and destruction, he turns virtually the entire world against us.

Even when the entire list of American agencies of intelligence agrees that the Iraq war creates more terrorists and more danger, the President uses 9-11 for a two week partisan tour claiming the exact opposite, and when the truth comes out, in the words of his own government, he then says they are trying to confuse our people.

There is a difference between the Democrats and the Republicans and it begins with the first principles of American democracy. At their worst, the Democrats never initiate this politics of poison and venom, this organized and systematic demeaning of our neighbors, and this organized and systematic contempt for truth.

America is a big country and a good country, and our people hunger for leaders who know it, and believe it, and understand why.

America is a big country and a good country, and our people hunger for a return to the first principles of our freedom, the respect for the integrity of our debates, the respect for the insitutions of our democracy, the respect for the very notion of truth itself.

America is a big country and a good country, where we are all welcome in the real America, where Lady Liberty raises her torch without regard to our color, where the Liberty Bell rings without regard to our religion, where the great documents of our democracy rest in our archives not as dead hands of the past, not as cheap words for the politicians, but as time honored truths to preserve, protect and defend.

America is a big country and a good country, and that is the case we take to the country, in this election year. ++

New Campaign Ads Have a Theme: Don’t Be Nice
ADAM NAGOURNEY
September 27, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/us/politics/27ads.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — Republicans and Democrats began showing at least 30 new campaign advertisements in contested House and Senate districts across the country on Tuesday. Of those, three were positive.

For Republicans, it was the leading edge of a wave of negative advertisements against Democratic candidates, the product of more than a year of research into the personal and professional backgrounds of Democratic challengers.

“What do we really know about Angie Paccione?” an announcer asks about a Democratic challenger in Colorado. “Angie Paccione had 10 legal claims against her for bad debts and campaign violations. A court even ordered her wages garnished.”

For Democrats, it was part of a barrage intended to tie Republican incumbents to an unpopular Congress, criticize their voting records, portray them as captives to special interests and highlight embarrassing moments from their business histories.

In Tennessee, Democrats attacked Bob Corker, a Republican candidate for Senate, saying his construction company had hired illegal immigrants “while he looked the other way.”

The result of the dueling accusations has been what both sides described on Tuesday as the most toxic midterm campaign environment in memory. It is a jarring blend of shadowy images, breathless announcers, jagged music and a dizzying array of statistics, counterstatistics and vote citations — all intended to present the members of Congress and their challengers in the worst possible light. Democratic and Republican strategists said they expected over 90 percent of the advertisements to be broadcast by Nov. 7 to be negative.

At the national level, the two parties are battling over issues like national security and the war in Iraq. But Congressional races play out on local airwaves, and the flood of commercials amounts to a parallel campaign, one that is often about the characters of individual challengers and obscure votes cast by incumbents. Frequently lost in the back-and-forth are the protests of candidates who say the negative advertisements are full of deliberate distortions and exaggerations.

While Democrats have largely concentrated their efforts on the political records of Republicans, the Republicans have zeroed in more on candidates’ personal backgrounds.

Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said his investigators had been looking into prospective Democratic challengers since the summer of 2005.

“These candidates have been out there doing other things — they have never seen anything like this before,” Mr. Reynolds said of the Democratic challengers.

“We haven’t even begun to unload this freight train,” Mr. Reynolds said.

Democrats are learning just how deeply the Republicans have been digging. John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat who is running for a House seat, has spent much of the past few days trying to explain editorials unearthed by Republican researchers and spotlighted in new advertisements. Mr. Yarmuth wrote the editorials for his student newspapers, and in them he advocated the legalization of marijuana, among other things.

Across the airwaves, Democratic challengers are being attacked for having defaulted on student loans, declaring bankruptcy, skipping out on tax bills, and being a lobbyist, a trial lawyer or, even worse, a liberal.

Steve Kagan, a doctor and Democrat running for Congress in Wisconsin, is being attacked for having sued patients who did not pay their bills. “Why not just tell the truth, Dr. Millionaire?” said an advertisement shown Tuesday.

Heath Shuler, the former Washington Redskins quarterback running for Congress as a Democrat in North Carolina, is being attacked in advertisements for owning a business that was late in paying $69,000 in back taxes.

Democrats are equally aggressive in their advertisements, going after Republicans on votes, ties to campaign contributors and, in the case of challengers, their own personal foibles. In one Democratic advertisement, the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff is shown in shadows wearing a hat as an announcer notes that he made contributions to Representative J. D. Hayworth, Republican of Arizona.

Democrats are even attacking Republicans on what should be their signature issue, taxes, most recently in an upstate New York race between State Senator Raymond A. Meier, a Republican, and Michael A. Arcuri, a Democrat, to fill an open Republican seat. “Raymond Meier raised taxes in Oneida County,” the announcer says. “Meier raised taxes in Albany. What do you think he’ll do” in Washington?

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that relatively inexperienced candidates might be vulnerable, but that Republicans had even worse problems this year, with a record of votes that he said had provided a steady stream of damaging information for Democratic campaigns.

“Let me tell you: candidates with lesser name identification are vulnerable to being defined,” Mr. Emanuel said. “But candidates who are associated with an institution are also vulnerable. There are two sides to this sword.”

While some public officials have criticized negative advertisements as destructive and blamed them for discouraging voter turnout, other analysts say they have come, if only by default, to play an important role. At a time of diminishing local news coverage of House and Senate races, they are one of the few ways in which voters learn about the candidates and their positions.

“Negative ads are more likely to talk about policy than positive ads,” said Joel Rivlin, deputy director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which monitors political advertising. “How else do you find out about the flaws of a candidate besides a negative ad?”

Incumbent Republicans and, to a lesser extent, Democrats are being attacked on their voting records and positions taken on issues large and small.

With dollar figures scrolling across the screen, Democrats belittled Republicans for taking money from oil companies, suggesting that was a reason for high gasoline prices. “Drake voted for billions in tax breaks for the oil and gas industry,” said a Democratic advertisement aimed at Representative Thelma Drake, Republican of Virginia. “She gets her way, big oil and gas get theirs.”

In a blizzard of conflicting advertisements, Republicans and Democrats in all regions of the country are accusing one another of supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants or providing government benefits to them.

Bruce Braley, a Democratic candidate for a House seat in Iowa, attacked his opponent, Mike Whalen, on Social Security. “He actually backed George Bush’s half-baked plan to privatize Social Security,” an advertisement said. Mr. Whalen accused Mr. Braley, in his own advertisement, of wanting to pull out of Iraq and thus “risk the safety of our troops to advance his extreme liberal agenda.”

Mr. Emanuel said he had warned his candidates about this part of the campaign, though he made a practice of waiting until after they had signed on to run. “I tell them: ‘I’m glad you’re running. Now get ready. This is a tough business. This is the hellfire you are going to go through,’ ” he said.

Mr. Reynolds has long believed that it would be this kind of information about Democratic challengers and not voter opinion on, say, President Bush or the war in Iraq that would determine whether Republicans held Congress this year. By way of example, he pointed to the case of Mr. Shuler.

“When he was a quarterback, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t paying $69,000 in taxes,” Mr. Reynolds said. “When you run for Congress, it matters.”

Mr. Reynolds burst out laughing when asked why he was not using more positive advertisements. “If they moved things to the extent that negative ads move things, there would be more of them,” he said. ++

‘Sissies’ and ‘faggots’ and Republicans, oh my.
Evan Derkacz
September 27, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/#42213

The 2006 “Values Voters Summit” was a real success. Oh, everybody was there: Gonzales for torture, Coulter for killing, Hannity for hate, George ‘Macacawitz ‘ Allen and many others shooting their love all over the place.

Even Tony Snow, the White House spokesman.

Wellington Boone, a preacher of hate, said the words below and none of the above has yet to disavow any tie to this hatred. The PRESIDENT’S SPOKESMAN, remember. Via Nico Pitney:

“I want the gays mad at me.” Boone said that while “the gays” are “saying a few things” about him, “they’re not coming at me strong.” In an effort to change that, Boone declared:

Back in the days when I was a kid, and we see guys that don’t stand strong on principle, we call them “faggots.”

I don’t particularly care about Boone — ditto Coulter and Hannity. They can spout whatever diarrhea they like, but representatives from our government are another story. I just long for the day when the Republicans have the balls to pitch a tent for the gays. A big tent.

But here’s the kicker: According to a recent poll, the Values Voters myth is even more myth-y than believed, at least according to the conception that hatred of gays and control over women are of utmost importance to voters. Among the findings that should increase love for your fellow man and woman:

Social issues such as abortion and gay marriage rank last in importance to the vast majority of Americans when deciding how to vote.

An overwhelming majority of Americans, including at least three-quarters of every major religious tradition, say issues like poverty and health care are more important than hot-button social issues.

When people think about “voting their values,” more people think of the honesty, integrity, and responsibility of the candidate than any other values.

Americans overwhelmingly agree that too many religious leaders focus on abortion and gay rights without addressing more important issues such as loving our neighbors and caring for the poor. ++

Rove’s Theater of Fear
Ira Chernus
Wednesday September 27, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0927-33.htm

Congress is set to make it legal for the U.S. government to kidnap and torture pretty much anyone, any time, anywhere. Now our lawmakers are moving on to other things. There’s a homeland security funding bill to pass. And there’s the ever-vexing problem of immigration.

Hey, here’s an idea: Why not deal with both issues in the same bill? Actually, the Republicans have already thought of that. They’re attaching immigration “reforms” to the homeland security bill. If Democrats want to stop the GOP’s anti-immigrant measures, they’ll have to vote against funding the Department of Homeland Security.

As the Washington Post informs us, “Homeland Security Bill Is More Style Than Substance, Analysts Say.” Even at the conservative Heritage Foundation, senior research fellow James Jay Carafano admits that “most of it, quite frankly, is a lot of political theater.”

Which is exactly why it makes sense to put new immigration laws in the homeland security bill. It’s all part of the same theatrical drama: “Are We Safe?”, starring George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, written, produced, and directed by Karl Rove.

You know the basic plot: The United States of America, the innocent ingenue, is threatened by evildoers on every front. If we don’t fight ‘em in Baghdad, we’ll have to fight ‘em in Boston and Baltimore. If we don’t pay Boeing $2.5 billion to build a “virtual wall” around the whole nation, the terrorists will engulf us. If we don’t build a stout wall on our southern border (the House wants it 700 miles long, but the Senate, every mindful of cost, is looking at a mere 400 miles), we’ll be swamped by an even bigger tidal wave of foreigners who can’t speak the English language. In the final act, we find out if America has the will and resolve to keep itself safe.

It’s a theater of fear — and a theater of the absurd. But with a devastating loss looming in the Congressional election, Rove has no other card to play. So he is betting that his production will pack in the voters of middle America, where fear and insecurity run rampant.

Advocates of draconian immigration laws talk about issues of justice and fairness and the financial woes of U.S. citizens. But beneath it all, the immigration issue sparks such powerful feelings because it conjures up images of hordes of people — people of color, no less — invading our land. The immigration laws are supposed to prevent that. They are supposed provide a stout wall to regulate the flow of foreigners in the country.

But Americans encounter more and more people every day who speak a foreign language. So it’s easy to persuade them that the immigration laws aren’t working. The literal walls in places like El Paso and Chula Vista don’t seem to work either. The border, which is supposed to protect us against every danger, is full of holes. Anyone at all can breeze through — and perhaps end up living next door. Why, who knows? They might even be terrorists. So let’s spend more billions on homeland security and walls on the border.

Of course it’s all irrational. The foreign language speakers that most U.S. citizens meet are doing poorly paid service jobs like mowing yards or flipping burgers. There’s no way to know whether they are here legally or illegally. In either case, it’s almost always obvious that they are hard-working, pleasant, totally harmless people. (The crime rate among illegal immigrants is said to be startlingly low.) It’s equally obvious that these folks perform useful services for wages that few citizens are willing to accept. Even citizens who support strict anti-immigrant legislation usually acknowledge that they personally live more cheaply because we have so many illegals working for low wages.

Yet all those logical considerations are overriden by emotion. The emotion is triggered by old images — the “lazy foreigner,” the “dirty foreigner,” the “alien” — that are woven together into a widespread cultural story. Robert Reich aptly calls it “the mob at the gates.” People who worry about open gates, crumbling walls, and porous borders are obviously insecure. They need to feel safe, and they feel that the boundaries they’ve counted on for protection are no longer doing the job.

It’s hardly surprising that people who have seen the Twin Towers fall and heard for five years that the enemy still threatens would feel insecure. In one recent poll, 78% of Americans said they expect another terrorist attack on U.S. soil within the next year. 60% expect it in the next few weeks!

From now until election day, Republicans will be whipping up that anxiety, painting a picture of a global network of “terrorists” busy killing our friends and planning to kill us. They’ll build their campaign around the “I” words: Iraq (”the front line in the war on terrorism”), illegal immigration, and insecurity. If violence in Lebanon and Palestine sparks again, they may very well add another “I” word: Israel.

The Republicans won’t have to spell out the connections. They can just drop hints and count on millions of insecure Americans to connect the dots by themselves. Insecure people are quick to see threats everywhere and to link those threats together, often unconsciously, into a single network of impending danger. Republicans have been relying on this technique to dominate the White House for over a half a century, and in the last few years they’ve used it to dominate Congress too.

In poll after poll, most voters endorse the Democrats’ position on every major issue but one: “Which party can best keep America safe?” Yet that one issue trumps all the others for a small but pivotal group of voters. It can send enough of them over to the Republican side to give the GOP victories.

So what’s a Dem to do? Some try to outdo the Republicans at their own game, insisting that the dangers are real but the Democrats can actually keep up stronger protective walls. It may work, sometimes, in the short run. In the long run, though, it’s a game the Democrats can’t win. When they focus on insecurity they whip it up, and that plays right into the only strength the Republicans have, as Rove well knows. He wants to goad his opponents into an endless debate about who is tougher against terrorists, immigrants, and all of our supposed enemies.

The real challenge for the Democrats is to resist getting sucked into that debate. They have to redirect the political debate to a very different question: Which party can create a better life for the average American? It shouldn’t be that hard, if the Dems are willing to focus confidently on their own strengths: good-paying jobs, decent health care and education for all, serious environmental protections—all those things that the polls tell us a majority of Americans really want and care about. If the name of the play is “How Can We Have A Better Life?”, Bush and Cheney won’t even get bit parts. ++

How We Discovered The Power of Nice
Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval Bio
09.26.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-kaplan-thaler-and-robin-koval/how-we-discovered-the-pow_b_30240.html

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves