Stax

I wanna listen to stax all weekend!

Senator John Edwards on the South:

"'We've never elected a Democrat in the United States without winning at least five Southern states,' Edwards said. 'If Democrats across the country want to take a risk that for the first time in American history that's a possibility, then they can do that.'"

Edwards is making a quick $top in MS again this week.

Givers and Takers or WHAT A BUNCH OF DAMN HYPOCRITS!

Every few years i see this study telling where our tax dollars go. usually its in Time or Newsweek with this big map showing what each state pays in Federal Taxes and what the state yields in federal dollars spent there in return. We in Mississippi usually get $1.72 for ever dollar spent, which makes the 'get the guvmint outta our bidness' folks seem a little disingenuous (much like VP Cheney's claim that the Gov't. didn't have anything to do with his fortunes...um, so Haliburton HATES Gov't. contracts?).

Anyway this article sheds even more light on the nature of the "small government republican states" and the "big government democrat leaning states". basically, we dems subsidize the GOP'ers sense of independance with our federal dollars and we don't even get a thank you! see the giver vs. the taker states:

78 percent of Mr. Bush's electoral votes came from Taker states.

76 percent of Mr. Gore's electoral votes came from Giver states.

Of the 33 Taker states, Mr. Bush carried 25.

Of the 16 Giver states, Mr. Gore carried 12.

Republicans seem to have become the new welfare party — their constituents live off tax dollars paid by people who vote Democratic. Of course, not all federal spending is wasteful. But Republicans are having their pork and eating it too. Voters in red states like Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are some of the country's fiercest critics of government, yet they're also among the biggest recipients of federal largess. Meanwhile, Democratic voters in the coastal blue states — the ones who are often portrayed as shiftless moochers — are left to carry the load.


Question: how do you win over voters in states that are willing to tell themselves they don't need the government, but grab government dollars any way they can?

Answer: You vote for GOP'ers that rail against liberal "tax-and-spend" democrats yet somehow manage to bring in less revenue and spend more tax dollars (see Bush 1 & 2).

How do you win if you are a Democrat?

...lots of work my friend. lots of work.

The Dead Center

Great article on the Dems trouble getting the middle class:

It has a system for recruiting and electing officials nationwide who share the same world view and who will vote accordingly. And it has a coherent ideology uniting evangelical Christians, blue-collar whites in the South and West, and big business — an ideology in which foreign enemies, domestic poverty and crime, and homosexuality all must be met with strict punishment and religious orthodoxy.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has had no analogous movement to animate it. Instead, every four years party loyalists throw themselves behind a presidential candidate who they believe will deliver them from the rising conservative tide.

The biggest losses for Democrats since 1980 have not been among suburban voters but among America's giant middle and working classes — especially white workers without four-year college degrees, once part of the old Democratic base. Not incidentally, these are the same people who have lost the most economic ground over the last quarter-century.

Great comments from | span |

On dean this week:
Here’s a good idea of something NOT to do:

Admit you are very cash-strapped, pull every ad in states holding a primary next Tuesday, and then say you don’t need those states.

QUESTION

I was talking to Gorj last night, and he brought up a great point. Who the hell likes John Kerry?

Let me say right now that Gorj and I both prefer dean, clark, and edwards over kerry.

Now all bias aside, who LIKES this guy? Gorj is a democrat, former campaign manager and worker, and he has never met one person ANYWHERE that's a Kerry supporter. I haven't either. Now i realize we live in the South and that shapes things some, but how in the hell does he get to be the 'front runner' and i never meet one supporter? i've been in Democratic politics since my teens! hell, i can even name kucinich supporters!

Who are theses masses, and what the hell are they doing to my party?!

In Case You Missed It.

the White House's own chief detective searching for weapons of mass destruction has said that Iraq has no WMD and did not have them in the build up to our invasion. MANY CIA operatives have spoken out about the exclusive use of bad intelligence and the avoidance of contrary intelligence so that the White House could build the case for war. at least one of these agents has had their cover blown (Agent Valerie Plame anyone?).

Lately the White House's movement has been made to move the talk away from Weapons themselves to "weapons related program activites."

Have no doubt in your mind, this war was built on misleading the nation and the attempt to connect iraq to 9/11. if you are unsure, read below and tell me what you think:

"There's no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States."
- White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03

"We ended the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
- President Bush, 7/17/03

Iraq was "the most dangerous threat of our time."
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 7/17/03

"Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat...He was a threat. He's not a threat now."
- President Bush, 7/2/03

"Absolutely."
- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03

"We gave our word that the threat from Iraq would be ended."
- President Bush 4/24/03

"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03

"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."
- Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03

"The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."
- President Bush, 3/19/03

"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations."
- President Bush, 3/16/03

"This is about imminent threat."
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03

Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03

Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03

Iraq "threatens the United States of America."
- Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03

"Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/29/03

"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03

"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. They not only have weapons of mass destruction, they used weapons of mass destruction...That's why I say Iraq is a threat, a real threat."
- President Bush, 1/3/03

"The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq whose dictator has already used weapons of mass destruction to kill thousands."
- President Bush, 11/23/02

"I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?"
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 11/14/02

"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America."
- President Bush, 11/3/02

"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."
- President Bush, 11/1/02

"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein."
- President Bush, 10/28/02

"The Iraqi regime is a serious and growing threat to peace."
- President Bush, 10/16/02

"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
- President Bush, 10/7/02

"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
- President Bush, 10/2/02

"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."
- President Bush, 10/2/02

"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
- President Bush, 9/26/02

"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02

"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain. And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/18/02

"Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/02
---------------------------------

So, when do we impeach him?

SPOILER!

OK, its over. Joe Lieberman is officially a 'spoiler'. a guy that has clearly no chance but stays in the race to take votes and money from other candidates that actually MAY have a chance at winning. come on joe. take your ball and go home.

Dean Slows Down (or starts doing what everyone else is doing).

Seems the Dean campaign is losing some steam and having to pinch pennies. Dean is now going against his previous pledge to 'be everywhere'...and that's fine. he's going to have a presence, but he will not campaign full strength everywhere, he will concentrate on large delegate states, which he HAS TO DO now to win.

Some have commented on how/why this 'DC outsider' dropped his famed campaign Mgr Joe Trippi in favor of Al Gore's Roy Neel. some are clearly upset with this--the idea of ditching Trippi who built him up or getting ANYBODY that was on w/ Gore involved--but i wonder if he had to do it. If the old Dean method is not working (get the masses of young voters and those left out of 'bush's america' to the polls), if that groundswell of angry liberals is not there....you have to chane it up. As i've mentioned here before, that seems to be the WHOLE idea from Joe Trippi.

The problem is that its been about connecting people over the net and talking about this idea, all of which has raised a lot of money. this ignores the fact that your supporters are spread out in states away from the primaries, unable to vote. sure they can stoke the fires but that's the PRESS and newspapers don't vote. i think this may be necessary, but i'm not certain getting some of that election winning, Al Gore magic is the angle to take. we'll see. the gig is likely up in 2 weeks anyway.

the wyeth wire

blog of southern (dem) politics.

New Hampshire

My take on New Hampshire....
NOTE: greatly cut from various things i wrote elsewhere today. i ramble here. forgive me.

Kerry--Looks good, but NH and IA have BARELY ever been indicators of the final winner, however they are important, especially in this year's compacted schedule.

i think the conventional wisdom is to believe its a virtual tie btw Edwards and Clark for 3rd. it will not be easy for them from this point, but i'm just not convinced its over yet for any of the top 4. Dean has the $$. Kerry has the momentum. Clark and Edwards are out of their home base, but coming back to it. they also have the money to make a fight when they get there.

look at the number of minority voters in these 2 states compared to what's coming up.
look at the success rate of NH winners since '72. then look at the IA winners since '76.
Hell, NH has picked the Dem Nominee correctly 3 times in the last 52 years. (not including times when a dem was in the white house already)
Personally, I don't mind if we aren't sewed up yet.

I should point out that I'm not a Kerry fan, so maybe i'm clinging to something here. i find him slightly more inspiring than Lieberman (whom i assume is dead--literally a corpse). that along with the track record of NH rarely predicting candidates (or winners for that matter) make me wanna say HOLD ON!

Dems have wanted SOMEONE outta the crowded field of 10 for a long time now. The MEDIA...my word! they have pretty much said it's all over for anyone that's not the flavor of the moment. they want to call it now, for somebody...anybody. they want this so badly that its beyond reality and has long shaped the coverage. Again, look at these 4. they can all withstand 3 more weeks. we get out of New England and we see who can keep it up. it may 2/10 before we really know for certain.

Clark is not out. everyone keeps talking about SC, which IS important to Clark and Edwards (And dean plays like crap there), BUT don’t forget about Missouri and Oklahoma. Both are neighboring states to Clark’s Native Ark. I say all 3 of those have to go down before we see the real race (and we will see clark fall, if he does not survive/succeed there).
also note that Clinton was the “comeback kid” after a THIRD in N.H., so…despite the compacted schedule, its not over yet…as well it shouldn’t be. I do not believe that IA and NH are good reads on who wins the general election.

CNN.com - Candidates trade jabs as New Hampshire votes - Jan. 27, 2004

Been looking at the NH stuff and i'm kinda shocked at the number of sites using John Edwards' picture for their general photos alongside the article. not a bad thing at all. The General gets some in there too, but Edwards has the most...

AGAIN, so good i had to post it all...

WEEKLY REVIEW

[Image: Silver-spangled Hamburgs, 1890.]

David Kay, the outgoing head of the Iraq Survey Group, said
that Iraq got rid of its illegal weapons programs years
before the United States invaded. Kay made it clear that the
United Nations weapons-inspection process had succeeded in
disarming Iraq and said the Iraqis had been reduced to
experimenting with ricin, a primitive but deadly poison
easily made from fermented castor beans; Kay also said that
the CIA had completely misread the situation in Iraq,
largely because the agency had no on-the-ground spies after
the U.N. inspectors were removed. More than 100,000 Iraqis
filled the streets of Baghdad in a march supporting the
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in his demand for direct
elections; thousands also marched in Basra, Najaf, and
Kerbala demanding that Saddam Hussein be turned over to the
Iraqi people to stand trial. Skepticism was growing that the
United States will succeed in handing power over to an Iraqi
client regime before the presidential election, and the head
of the occupying authority's Tribal Affairs Bureau admitted
that he had been relying on a 1918 British report in his
attempts to make sense of local politics. President George
W. Bush made his State of the Union address just one day
after the Iowa caucuses and appealed to voters to reelect
him so that he could continue to wage war on terror.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on the United States and its
allies to confess that the conquest of Iraq was wrong. Vice
President Dick Cheney defended Halliburton, which continues
to pay him a salary, from what he said were "desperate
attacks" by opponents of the Bush Administration. "They're
rendering great service," he said. "They do it because
they're good at it, because they won the contract to do it.
And frankly the company takes a certain amount of pride in
rendering this kind of service to U.S. military forces."
Halliburton, which received most of its Iraq contracts by
administrative fiat rather than through a competitive
bidding process, admitted that its employees in Iraq have
accepted $6.3 million in kickbacks. People at the
Conservative Political Action Conference were grumbling that
President Bush's fiscal policies, which have led to giant
budget deficits, have been anything but conservative; they
also denounced the USA Patriot Act and complained that
"big-government Republicans," who seem to think government
is the solution rather than the problem, have been too busy
"baby-sitting the nanny state."

Republican staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee
were still under investigation for improperly infiltrating
Democratic computers and reading strategy memos, which were
then leaked to the press. Several computers, including a
server from Senator Bill Frist's office, have been
confiscated by the Senate's Sergeant-at-Arms. An expert
panel that was asked to review a Pentagon-funded Internet
voting system declared that the system was fundamentally
flawed. "Using a voting system based on the Internet," said
one of the experts, "poses a serious and unacceptable risk
for election fraud." The Pentagon nonetheless said that it
"stands by" the program, which will be used in several
primaries this year. "We feel it's right on," said a
spokesman, "and we're going to use it." Newly released
documents revealed that the U.S. Census Bureau gave
information on millions of Americans to NASA for a study on
the feasibility of mining such data to look for potential
terrorists, and it was reported that American intelligence
officials have compiled a list of five million potential
terrorists worldwide. President Pervez Musharraf admitted
that some of Pakistan's top nuclear scientists had sold
nuclear technology to other countries but denied that the
government was involved; Musharraf was accused of
scapegoating the scientists to appease the United States.
Art Garfunkel got busted with pot. Russian soldiers rescued
10 tons of beer kegs that became trapped under the ice of a
frozen Siberian river; after divers from the Ministry of
Emergency Situations failed to dislodge the kegs, a T-72
tank saved the day. Senator John Kerry won the Iowa
caucuses. Howard Dean decided to tone down his campaign
persona after the media became alarmed at his "nutty" Iowa
concession speech. There was speculation that Israeli prime
minister Ariel Sharon might soon be indicted for taking
bribes. A Mexican man reportedly hacked open his father's
head with a machete, drank his blood, and then ate his
brains.

The European Mars Express mission made the first direct
measurement of ice on Mars; a second American Mars rover,
called Opportunity, landed on the planet; and new research
suggested that astronauts sent to Mars might be paralyzed by
the prolonged lack of gravity. Scientists found that the
Ebola virus can spread from dead animals such as gorillas to
human beings, and genetic analysis suggested that the five
recent outbreaks of the disease were caused by five distinct
strains of the virus, which is among the most contagious
known, rather than one strain that had mutated. "If Ebola is
popping up randomly," said one scientist, "then things are
pretty hopeless." Avian influenza was spreading across Asia;
the World Health Organization said it was the largest
outbreak in history. Indonesia said that millions of
chickens had died of the flu in recent weeks, and workers in
Thailand were bagging live chickens and burying them in
pits. Laksamana.net Indonesia's agriculture minister said
that his government can't afford to dispose of the dead
chickens. Women who have used dark hair dye for at least 24
years have a greater chance of developing cancer, a study
found, and frequent underarm shaving together with deodorant
use could increase the risk of breast cancer. Saudi Arabia's
highest-ranking cleric said that women's rights are
anti-Islamic, and an American diplomat in London declared
that referring to the American Jewish lobby is anti-Semitic.
The Salvation Army received a $1.5 billion donation, and an
Indian diamond seller who had hidden $900 worth of small
diamonds in a pile of hay was busy feeding laxatives to his
cow. There were new massacres in Congo, Rwanda's former
minister for higher education was given a life sentence for
genocide, and a sniper was still shooting cars in Ohio.
Captain Kangaroo died. Britain's naked rambler completed his
900-mile journey and put on some clothes. A Japanese
scientist created a belly-dancing robot.

--Roger D. Hodge

Al Franken BODYSLAM!!

This is great, plus i think the Larouche people are loons...

"I'm neutral in this race but I'm for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down."

The trouble started when several supporters of fringe presidential candidate Lyndon Larouche began shouting accusations at Dean.

Franken emerged from the crowd and charged one male protester, grabbing him with a bear hug from behind and slamming him onto the floor.


(thanks to gorj on this one)

THIS IS GREAT, from www.busybusybusy.com

Synchronicity.

In today's Washington Post, journalists David S. Broder and Mike Allen write:

The campaign strategists [at the Republican National Committee] said after creating that general picture of an ideological liberal, they will add specific attacks, such as tying Edwards -- a former trial lawyer who has won multimillion-dollar verdicts -- to the high cost of malpractice insurance, which has caused some obstetricians to stop practicing.

In today's New York Times, RNC operative William Safire writes (about John Edwards):

"Those Washington lobbyists are takin' your democracy away from you," says the Suthrin-talkin' former trial lawyer (avidly supported by the trial lawyers' lobby, which has driven up the price of health insurance).

These guys don't miss a beat.
-----------

My obvious complaint? why say edwards is 'Suthrin-talkin' when he IS Southern!

From the NYTimes, I thought this should be posted in its entirety.

Vice President Dick Cheney continued to insist last week that Iraq had been trying to make weapons of mass destruction, apparently oblivious to the findings of the administration's own chief weapons inspector that Iraq had possessed only rudimentary capabilities and unrealized intentions. The vice president's myopia suggests a breathtaking unwillingness to accept a reality that conflicts with the administration's preconceived notions. This kind of rigid thinking helped propel us into an invasion without broad international support and, if Mr. Cheney is as influential as many say, could propel us into further misadventures down the road.

Mr. Cheney has long been the administration's most alarmist proponent of the view that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons ready for use at any time and an active nuclear program. He gave little ground in an interview on National Public Radio on Thursday. He described two flatbed trailers found in Iraq months ago as mobile biological weapons labs and claimed they were "conclusive evidence" of Iraqi programs to make weapons of mass destruction. The very next day, David Kay, who had just stepped down as the top weapons inspector, told Reuters that he now thought the much-feared stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons had not existed on the eve of the war. They were eliminated in the mid-1990's by United Nations inspectors and by Iraq's own decisions, he said, and no significant efforts to make new ones followed.

As for those trailers cited by Mr. Cheney, the consensus view, Mr. Kay told The Times, is that they were intended to produce hydrogen or perhaps rocket fuel, not biological weapons. Mr. Kay had earlier called the trailer assertions an embarrassing fiasco. So, too, with Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Mr. Cheney once famously declared that it had been reconstituted, but Mr. Kay called it rudimentary — hardly capable of producing a bomb in a year or two, as the administration had implied.

Although administration officials cling to the hope of finding some evidence of terror weapons in a cubbyhole somewhere in Iraq, surely it is time to focus on how the intelligence could have been so wrong and perhaps avoid making the same mistakes with the next secretive dictator to come along. Mr. Kay largely exonerates President Bush and blames the global intelligence community. He believes the C.I.A. became so reliant on the much-maligned United Nations weapons inspectors that their withdrawal left it without spies of its own.

Mr. Kay also believes that intelligence analysts failed to realize that Mr. Hussein became increasingly isolated and fantasy-driven in the late 1990's, a condition that enabled scientists to hoodwink him into approving fanciful weapons plans that turned into corrupt moneymaking schemes. That seems hard to believe in a land where people supposedly lived in terror of a brutal dictator. But if it is true that Mr. Hussein wrote novels while the American-led force geared up for war, then perhaps both sides of this conflict were divorced from reality.

Conservative group quietly drops plans for poll

Well, the American Family Association (AFA) was gonna take their poll to congress to show just how much Americans HATE the idea of gay marriage! um, but...the poll shows Sixty percent favored same-sex marriage and 8 percent favored civil unions--32 percent opposed. OOPS! the AFA did have an explaination though:

AFA representative Buddy Smith complained to Wired News: "It just so happens that homosexual activist groups around the country got a hold of the poll -- it was forwarded to them -- and they decided to have a little fun, and turn their organizations around the country (on to) the poll to try to cause it to represent something other than what we wanted it to. And so far, they succeeded with that."

A leader of the (apparent) Gay Illuminati had this to say:

Matt Foreman, the Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce was dumbfounded. "The abject hypocrisy of these people never ceases to amaze me," he exclaimed. "They constantly manipulate facts, and when things don't work out as they want, they run to mama and whine."

Happy New Year!!

Mr. Mooch would also like to point out that this is the year of the monkey.

Pedro the Lion

Once i was on a CD buying spree (i had a gift certificate) and i had ONE left to get. do i get a NEW, untested CD? Do i get something i KNOW i'll like? I followed JasN's suggestion. I got this CD. Pedro the Lion's CONtroL. GOD it was awful, the worst of Christian Indie Rock (BELIEVE THAT!)

if only a used CD store would take this from me...

American Elf: The Sketchbook Diaries of James Kochalka

I'm adding this link to the side. this guy's work is GREAT. for about 3 or 4 years now he's been doing a sketch-diary of his life. often an unfiltered view into his day where he does not hold back, even if he's done something childlike or simple. best read over several days to get the real feel of it. i check it out every day. you can by each year's worth of comics and i recommend them all. I used to own them myself, but i keep giving them as gifts.