Bad Math At the DSCC

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Tuesday March 11, 2008 · 9:35 AM PDT

2008/03/11 · 09:35

Some days you just have to smash your monitor in frustration at the sheer stupidity of people in the party you've belonged to for nearly _ years (30 in my case but fill in your own figure).

The latest appeal from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee touts their video series "The Road to Victory" with this line (which is used as a defining slogan):

Watch our new video and learn why real people think 51 Democrats in the Senate just aren't enough.

Are the people putting the DSCC campaign seriously counting Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) as a Democrat? Even after he's endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for the presidency? Are they complete idiots or what?

And who's approving this stuff?

Poll

48 votes Show Results

The people writing and approving the DSCC campaigns are

48 votes Vote Now!

The people writing and approving the DSCC campaigns are

Idiots

23 votes

Or What

15 votes

Too Soon to Tell

8 votes

Hey, don't pick on Joe Lieberman!

2 votes

Kucinich Handily Retains Seat

darrelplant

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Tuesday March 04, 2008 · 10:33 PM PST

2008/03/04 · 22:33

Despite months of claims that he was in trouble in his district and a well-financed opponent supported by the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, former Democratic presidential candidate and Representative Dennis Kucinich has been predicted as the winner in Ohio's 10th Congressional District.

With 41% of the precincts reporting as of 1:30AM Eastern, Kucinich has nearly a 20% lead on his leading challenger, Joe Cimperman, as well as a simple majority of the votes.

I Am Hussein

darrelplant

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Thursday February 28, 2008 · 11:42 PM PST

2008/02/28 · 23:42

Are you Hussein, too? If so, leave a comment below, or leave a response to the video at YouTube and tag it with iamhussein.

To steal from Arlo Guthrie: You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And if three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in saying their middle name's Hussein and walking out? They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in, saying their middle name's Hussein and walking out? Friends they may thinks it's a movement.

— Darrel Hussein Plant Read More

Poll
73 votes Show Results
Are You Hussein Enough?

Yes

No

Unsure

Try Again Later

73 votes Vote Now!
Are You Hussein Enough?

Yes

65 votes

No

4%

3 votes

Unsure

4%

3 votes

Try Again Later

3%

2 votes

A War We Should Have Won

darrelplant

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Wednesday January 30, 2008 · 4:40 PM PST

2008/01/30 · 16:40

In an open letter from October 2007 now featured on the home page of the Democratic Leadership Council, Chairman Harold Ford of the DLC and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius of the Democratic Governors Association define the issues they believe the Democratic presidential candidates need to address and how they should deal with them.

In the introduction of the letter, Sibelius and Ford lay out the challenges facing the next administration, including this one:

We are engaged in what has become a civil war in Iraq -- a war we either should have won, or never have fought.

If you want proof of intellectual bankruptcy at the DLC and the Democratic party leadership, there it is. Just over three months ago -- even after learning all we have about the lies that led the US into war, the hundreds of thousands of dead, and the millions of refugees, the destruction of Fallujah and much of the rest of the country -- the bright lights at the DLC still think the war could have been "won."

Not that there was any justification for going to war in Iraq in the first place, of course.

A Different State of the Union

darrelplant

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Monday January 28, 2008 · 10:02 AM PST

2008/01/28 · 10:02

Don't want to wait for the State of the Union speech tonight? Want to get to the drinking earlier than 9pm Eastern? Well, I can help.

A couple of years back, Stan Ridgway, the lead singer for the 1980s band Wall of Voodoo ("Mexican Radio") and his wife Pietra Wexstun put out an album called Barbeque Babylon, under their alternate band name: Drywall.

The CD has a hidden bonus track Stan composed, which is built from the 2003 SotU -- with a little bit of a beat and just a few edits to make the meaning more clear. You can go to Stan's Download page and grab it for free (look for the second entry on the page, "hidden bonus track # 16") or you can just click here and listen for five minutes and get it all over with.

Democrats Blindsided by DoD Veto (updated)

darrelplant

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Friday December 28, 2007 · 10:49 AM PST

2007/12/28 · 10:49

After caving in to the White House on the Defense appropriations bill, and all of the claims that they needed to do it without any restrictions because Bush would starve the troops in Iraq or shut down the Pentagon without his $70 billion, now this:

Bush to Veto Pentagon Funds Over Iraq Provision

By DAVID STOUT
Published: December 28, 2007

WASHINGTON — President Bush will veto a huge Defense Department bill because of concerns by the Iraqi government that Iraqi assets in American banks could be vulnerable to claims from victims of Saddam Hussein, the Texas White House said Friday.

...

The announcement of the president’s intentions caught Democratic leaders off guard. the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California quickly issued a statement complaining that they had been blindsided by the news from Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tex.

Happy New Year, losers.

Update [2007-12-28 14:56:51 by darrelplant]: Might as well move the discussion over to Susan G's FP diary of the same story (but I was here first!)

How the Democrats Will Get Punked on Impeachment (updated)

darrelplant

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Saturday December 08, 2007 · 11:49 AM PST

2007/12/08 · 11:49

Thursday's New York Times story about the destroyed CIA interrogation tapes is just another crack in the dam holding back the giant pool of crap that is the Bush administration. Everyone knows there's more there, the anticipation from most quarters has been whether the dam's going to hold until the 2008 election or whether it's going to break and cover everyone in its wake with a thick, oozy slime.

The Democratic leadership, by putting impeachment under the table before the 2006 election, has placed their bets on the dam staying intact. There's been no serious attempt to breach it in nearly a year of investigation with the super-special dreaded "subpoena power." They control the speed and depth of the investigations, and they've managed to run through almost a year without actually challenging claims of executive privilege. November is tantalizingly close.

darrelplant

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Thursday November 01, 2007 · 10:27 AM PDT

2007/11/01 · 10:27

Preston Sturges's Hail the Conquering Hero was released in August 1944, nearing the end of the third year of the US involvement in World War II. The Allies had landed at Normandy a couple of months earlier and were fighting their way through France. The war in the Pacific was still in its grueling island-hopping phase. The six-month Guadalcanal Campaign had begun exactly two years earlier with the first amphibious attack of the war.

The story of Hail the Conquering Hero is built around but not on the Marines fighting for Guadalcanal. Sitting in a bar one night, Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie Bracken), born the day his father was killed in battle in World War I and the descendent of a long line of military men, pays the tab for six broke Marines. They discover that Woodrow had joined the Marines a year earlier but was drummed out of basic training for chronic hayfever. Ashamed to admit his failure to his mother, he's dug himself into a hole by pretending that he was shipped off to Guadalcanal, he's broken off his relationship with his girlfriend, and he's been working in a shipyard as a clerk. Read More

St. Crispin's Day

darrelplant

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Thursday October 25, 2007 · 7:57 PM PDT

2007/10/25 · 19:57

This is what happens when you don't pay enough attention to your calendar. I almost missed St. Crispin's Day.

And Crispine Crispian shall ne're goe by,
From this day to the ending of the World,
But we in it shall be remembred;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers:
For he to day that sheds his blood with me,
Shall be my brother: be he ne're so vile,
This day shall gentle his Condition.
And Gentlemen in England, now a bed,
Shall thinke themselues accurst they were not here;
And hold their Manhoods cheape, whiles any speakes,
That fought with vs vpon Saint Crispines day.

Henry V, William Shakespeare

Clamping Down On Olbermann, Matthews

darrelplant

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Tuesday October 09, 2007 · 3:19 PM PDT

2007/10/09 · 15:19

In Portland, Oregon -- a city known to the Bush family for nearly two decades as "Little Beirut" -- we've got limited options for cable service (just like most other major metro areas). In our case, it's mega-giant Comcast.

We've been toodling along with our old non-digital cable hookup for years. An Expanded Basic program has given us more than enough crap to choose from, especially with a DVR to record anything we might want. News on the three main cable networks as well as the Northwest Cable News, the Travel Channel for Anthony Bourdain, Home & Garden TV to laugh at what people call decor, the Sci-Fi Channel for mindless entertainment.

But all of that's about to change at the end of the month. Along with Oxygen and Hallmark Channel and a couple of shopping channels, as we move into the final months of the primary season Comcast is making one of the cable news networks unavailable to non-digital subscribers. Would that be GOP house organ FOX News? CNN with their steady diet of celebrity gossip and Glenn Beck? Or did I give it away in the title?

darrelplant

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Tuesday August 14, 2007 · 9:52 PM PDT

2007/08/14 · 21:52

The Bush administration has been in office for almost seven years. In that time, they've lied or hidden the truth about the energy task force, the warnings they had about terrorist attacks in 2001, Iraqi WMDs and ties to al Qaeda, the cost of the war in Iraq, civilian casualties in Afghanistan, civilian casualties in Iraq, the death of Pat Tillman, torture, secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, wiretapping of American citizens, the response to Hurricane Katrina, progress in the Iraq war, the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity, the political motivations behind the firings of US Attorneys, and that's just a list off the top of my head. That's not a record that inspires a lot of trust from me.

So it kind of pissed me off this afternoon at a Town Hall on Iraq when I approached one of my senators after the question and answer session and asked him if he trusted this administration and he told me that he believed in the Reagan doctrine of "Trust but Verify" and told me that he was my guy in Washington to handle the verification.

Poll

66 votes Show Results

After six and a half years, do you trust the Bush administration?

66 votes Vote Now!

After six and a half years, do you trust the Bush administration?

Yes.

4 votes

Some of the time.

1 vote

No.

61 votes

Why Kucinich Will Never Win the Nomination

darrelplant

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Monday August 06, 2007 · 9:48 AM PDT

2007/08/06 · 09:48

Because nobody who ever says something like this will win the nomination:

It is time that the United States begin the process of withdrawing our troops, and allow a UN peacekeeping force to take over the reconstruction of Iraq.

Because nobody who ever says this will win the nomination:

This Administration has no exit strategy for removing US troops from harm’s way. It is now clear, that in their rush to war the Administration failed to adequately prepare for the post-invasion period.

Because nobody who said something like this on 25 July 2003 -- more than four years, 3,000 US fatalities, unknown Iraqi casualties, and hundreds of billions of dollars ago -- will win the nomination:

The United Nations must be brought in. Negotiations for an exit must begin now. An exit agreement with the United Nations must involve the US letting go of the contracting process.

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Bad Math At the DSCC

Kucinich Handily Retains Seat

I Am Hussein

A War We Should Have Won

A Different State of the Union

Democrats Blindsided by DoD Veto (updated)

How the Democrats Will Get Punked on Impeachment (updated)

Phony Soldier

St. Crispin's Day

Clamping Down On Olbermann, Matthews

In Bush We Trust

Why Kucinich Will Never Win the Nomination