Money PLUS Slice and Dice Advantage

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Wednesday October 18, 2006 · 8:11 AM PDT

2006/10/18 · 08:11

When I first started working campaigns, part of the thrill was the giant disparity between Rep and Dem funding. The interest income from the Rep warchest was what the Dems hoped to get. The Dems had 1/12 of the funds that the Reps had.

So the Dems used technology to counter the Reps money. The Dems invented micro-targeting versus the Reps blanketing. The Dems developed and coded sliceable databases while the Reps advertised to everyone, blanketing whole areas with their materials and TV.

Often the latter paid off: in California the Reps mailed every Rep household and asked whether the recipients wanted to vote absentee. This was the first time that anyone took advantage of the loophole that you didn't have to be out of the country or state to vote absentee. The result was that a dull Governor won over a popular Black candidate who actually won the non-absentee vote. Read More

Hypocrisy Begets Immorality

expolitico

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Wednesday October 04, 2006 · 1:06 PM PDT

2006/10/04 · 13:06

Similarities Between Foley and "State of Denial"

Isn't it hypocritical to be Co-chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives whilst writing sexually explicit e-mails to an underage congressional page?

He publicly crusaded against the very activities that he appears to have done himself. By definition, doesn't that make him a hypocrite? And a corrupt one at that?

This is very similar to what happened with evangelist Jimmy Swaggart who advocated moral and marital purity but was caught with a prostitute.

There's a psychological component in play here: contradictory actions such as these are consistent with those of a person struggling with an internal moral battle. "The righteous, fervent crusading against something often may represent an attempt to keep one's own impulses under control," said Dr. Jon Shaw , director of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the U of Miami(i).

expolitico

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Sunday October 01, 2006 · 8:10 PM PDT

2006/10/01 · 20:10

I opened up the Sunday SF Chronicle to find this full-page story. It scared me beyond imagine. Numerous rumors abound about what President Bush might do in his lame duck years. One particularly fearsome report came from an Israeli press interview with the head of their IDF that either they or the U.S. would knock out Iran's nuclear program before the 2008 U.S. elections. And then I saw this article which never did say why an attack such as the one described would occur; it only talked about the mechanics of the attack itself.

It's unclear how many targets U.S. bombs would need to hit, and how often. "Could very well be 2,000, 2,500, 3,000 after you begin to add in all the other things like air bases, missile storage sites," he said. "The nonnuclear part is expanding."

Holy shit! That's like the air war in Bosnia. Read More

You've got to be taught to hate and fear

expolitico

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Monday September 25, 2006 · 8:22 AM PDT

2006/09/25 · 08:22

A Long-term Solution to Ethnic Strife

Excerpted from The Origins of Ethnic Strife by Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D.

You've got to be taught to hate and fear.
You've got to be taught from year to year....
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate.
You've got to be carefully taught!

The words of this song from the musical South Pacific pertain to one aspect of a powerful psychological defense mechanism that reifies the family, shrouding it and other forms of group identification in a fantasy bond that assures immortality in the face of the conscious and unconscious anxiety associated with death.
Read More

"If you don't vote, you don't matter!"

expolitico

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Sunday September 24, 2006 · 8:00 AM PDT

2006/09/24 · 08:00

"It's up to you to nail up any bastard that get's between you and the roads and the bridges and the schools and the food you need."

A timely message from the movie character Willy Stark (patterned after Huey Long) in the just-released remake of "All The King's Men" starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Anthony Hopkins and lots of others.

$479,000,000,000 is standing between you and the roads and the bridges and the schools and the food you need. That's what we are spending (and have spent) for the Iraq war. That money is lost forever. It's not a valuable investment; it's the opposite... in fact it's going to cost us a lot more in the years to come. It's why Hugo Chavez got such resounding applause at the UN (reportedly the longest and loudest of any leader who spoke thus far this session). The people know of what he spoke. Of the lies and favoritism; of the corruption and misinformation. Of the hipocricy. And of the people dying for no real reason. Chavez gave voice to all those thoughts.

But Willy Stark said it best: "If you don't vote, you don't matter!"

It's Really a Choice Between Life and Death

expolitico

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Saturday September 16, 2006 · 2:53 PM PDT

2006/09/16 · 14:53

Yesterday I saw a comparison of Nixon and Bush when I watched the new movie/documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon. The movie begins with Lennon singing: "Nobody told me there'd be days like these" and was summed up by Gore Vidal who said:

Lennon represented life... and Mr. Nixon and Mr. Bush represent death.

The similarities between then and now are so evident: the misuse of the government to coerce, misdirect and scare; the purposeful misdirection of the media; the outright lies; the usurption of the Constitution and international law; and the specifically personal traits: the meanness, stubbornness and outright lies. Mario Cuomo said in the movie:

Their distortion of the Constitution was the greatest disloyalty to this country.

expolitico

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Wednesday September 13, 2006 · 9:12 PM PDT

2006/09/13 · 21:12

What is it going to take to counter voter apathy - to rally Democrats to vote - to inspire Democrats to support their candidates with their dollars, their energy and their votes. What came to mind was a person that could persuade me. So I listened to Mario Cuomo's speech at the 1984 Convention in San Francisco.

I was in tears. He was passionate, exuded honesty, and made clear sense -- with a poet's sense of integration, timing and color.

His speech had great one-liners (for which I'm quite jealous):

"The lucky and the left out" referring to rich Republicans and the trickle-down (or supply-side) theory of economics for the rest of us.

"Divide and cajole" about their campaigning tactics. Certainly Rowe and Bush are graduates of this one.

I excerpted three of Cuomo's comments from that convention speech which are as relevant today as they were then. Read on to find the links to listen to those clips. Read More

Tipping Point

expolitico

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Saturday September 02, 2006 · 12:29 PM PDT

2006/09/02 · 12:29

There's often a tipping point where choices have more than a casual effect: they affect our lives. Sometimes, perhaps more often than we imagine, those decisions are made incorrectly, misguided or even purposely misdirected.

In a recent Newsweek article about Billy Graham, Jon Meacham wrote:

As he has grown older, Graham has come to an appreciation of complexity and a gentleness of spirit that sets him apart from many other high-profile popular religious figures. Graham prizes peace. He is a man of unwavering faith who refuses to be judgmental; a steady social conservative in private who actually does hate the sin but loves the sinner; a resolute Christian who declines to render absolute verdicts about who will get into heaven and who will not; a man concerned about traditional morality who will not be dragged into "hot-button issues" of the hour. Graham's tranquil voice, though growing fainter, has rarely been more relevant.

expolitico

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Monday August 28, 2006 · 7:54 PM PDT

2006/08/28 · 19:54

I'd love to help Jack Carter win his NV US Senate race over John Ensign but when I Googled Ensign, I couldn't find anything wrong with him. He seems like an okay guy.

Anybody out there have the real scoop about Ensign? Something that he's done or lobbied for that's not Kosher?

Can you point me to some information (and facts) that will help me help Carter win?

There's reason to believe that Carter's a good guy and that he'd do well in office yet Reid won't support him. Maybe we can put some pressure on Reid. Any help there?

Thanks.

Legacy/Schmegacy. Ex-Pres. Carter Speaks Out!

expolitico

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Monday August 21, 2006 · 2:09 PM PDT

2006/08/21 · 14:09

As a followup to my open letter to Ex-President Clinton (and my response to a reporter friend's questions about Clinton's legacy issues), here's an example of how a legacy is being created, day-by-day, by another ex-president.

In an August 2nd interview with Der Spiegel, Ex-President Jimmy Carter said:

CARTER: Our country always had a policy of not going to war unless our own security was directly threatened and now we have a new policy of going to war on a preemptive basis. Another very serious departure from past policies is the separation of church and state. This has been a policy since the time of Thomas Jefferson and my own religious beliefs are compatible with this. The other principle is basic justice. We've never had an administration before that so overtly and clearly and consistently passed tax reform bills that were uniquely targeted to benefit the richest people in our country at the expense or the detriment of the working families of America.

expolitico

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Saturday July 22, 2006 · 8:13 AM PDT

2006/07/22 · 08:13

Hello President Clinton,

In the 2006 California governor's primary, Steve Westley said some things about Phil Angelides that the Reps are using in their ads against Angelides.

I'm sure that the same will be true in the CT senate race against Lieberman or Lamont because of the rhetoric that's been flying every which way there.

You said yourself the other week in Aspen that: "If we allow our differences over [whatever] to divide us instead of focusing on replacing Republicans [in Congress]; that's the nuttiest strategy I ever heard in my life." Read More

It feels so bad . . .

expolitico

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Saturday July 15, 2006 · 12:06 PM PDT

2006/07/15 · 12:06

EeeeEEEEaaaah EeeeEEEEaaaah OooooeeeeEEE EeeeEEEEaaaah EeeeEEEEaaaah OooooeeeeEEE EeeeEEEEaaaah EeeeEEEEaaaah OooooeeeeEEE

What more can be said. Every action is a no-win action. There's no winning religious wars. There's no safety.

EeeeEEEEaaaah EeeeEEEEaaaah

It's like a never-ending primal scream.

If feels so bad to listen and watch and see things in the Middle East escalate and deteriorate. And be helpless.

EeeeEEEEaaaah EeeeEEEEaaaah

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Money PLUS Slice and Dice Advantage

Hypocrisy Begets Immorality

How an Attack [on Iran] Would Unfold

You've got to be taught to hate and fear

"If you don't vote, you don't matter!"

It's Really a Choice Between Life and Death

What's It Gonna Take? Some Quotes from Mario Cuomo.

Tipping Point

Helping Jack Carter

Legacy/Schmegacy. Ex-Pres. Carter Speaks Out!

An Open Letter to President Bill Clinton

It feels so bad . . .