In the year 2008... I predict... These three stories will bedevil us all. But now, that hellish battle lies ahead, in the unfathomable mists of three more years of BushCo.
While now... A horrible monster keeps coming up through the floorboards. When it isn't flailing its arms around making a mess of the place from that cracked trap door in the cabin floor, it is trying to hypnotize us: "Hillary in 08, She Can Win. Centrism, centrism, electable, electable, hawkish, hawkish."
No, this isn't an attack on Hillary. It's an attack on Hillary's candidacy and a counterattack on the Feingold nay-saying. I'll take Feingold plus Roberts, and no Iraq and no P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act in his presidency, over Hillary plus Roberts regardless, and an accelerated rollback of rights and march of militarism plus no opposition party.
But it's also an attack on one of the two Republican front-runners that keeps being bandied about. Thanks to helping to end (or at least reduce, even if that sweeping under the rug) torture this past week, I'm gonna lay off McCain just now.
This is, in short, a study in contrasts...
I'm going to let theses three articles do most of the talking:
Grotesque Patronage, Before Bush and Brownie Made It Topical...
Giuliani '08 Seeks: Mentally Ill Child-Porn Collectors For High-Level Position
New York Press drive-by from this summer.
Once elected, Rudy did a dance (minus cabaret license) and became the king of patronage, going so far as hiring a self-proclaimed "mentally ill" college-dropout named Russell Harding who had no qualifications whatsoever to head the city's gigantic Housing Development Corporation. (Oh, wait--he did have one qualification: he was the son of Ray Harding, the boss of the Liberal Party, whose ballot line helped Rudy win. By strange coincidence, Rudy also hired Ray's other son, Robert.)
The good news is that the mentally ill Russell just got sentenced to five-years for not only stealing hundreds of thousands of tax-dollars (to go on plush vacations and attend strip clubs) but also for having a big stash of child porn on his computer.
Okay. So who do we want to contrast against a hypothetical Giuliani?
Obviously, competence.
Also a clear, strong, non-greasy, squeaky clean reformer sort, no whiff of corruption real or long-ingrained.
Some would say we want an uptight pursed-lip scowling puritanical neo-lib....
Something To Chew On For All Hillary-IS-A-Libbers...
Mrs. Triangulation
Sunday Oct. 2nd NYTimes Mag Article
U: dkos@dailykos.com
P: dailykos
The truth that emerges from talking to many of those who have worked closely with the Clintons is that Hillary's ideology is best understood through the prism of her upbringing. She was raised as a Republican and a devout Methodist in suburban Chicago, and these influences, particularly in the turbulence of the 60's, created two philosophical impulses that were commonly linked in that era. The first is an unshakable notion of right and wrong and an almost missionary zeal for imposing it on others, mainly through political action. The second is a strand of moral conservatism that borders on prudishness.
[...]
This would be a very different kind of moral crusade than the one Robert Kennedy led in 1968, using New York as his point of departure. Kennedy's journey, followed by his violent death, helped unleash the powerful social movements that would dominate Democratic politics for the rest of the century. More than three decades later, however, the party remains entangled in the last remnants of that 60's culture. Wouldn't history be something if it were Hillary Clinton, of all people, who finally set it free?
Ugh. No thanks. Yes to fighting gross online chickenhawks (in the old, Times Square sense of the word) as political patronage appointments to important positions.
No to a war of one-upsmanship versus two people trying to out-puritan one another while residing in glass houses.
That is not the kind of campaign that is going to extract good promises from either candidate to fight creeping totalitarianism on the one hand, or the growing legislated Disnification of our
mainstream media.
(Not Disnification in a gay marriage kind of way. Hillary opposes that. Try to wrap your mind around a race versus a Republican who is on the left of divisive issues like that.)
What I want, instead, is a contrast on Iraq and P.A.T.R.I.O.T. which Russ Feingold is in a unique position to provide.
Remember, the Supreme Court is not supposed to legislate... Roberts is not supposed to believe in doing that.
Yes I'm concerned about Roberts and all the others, but we want a strong Democratic Party that can provide the right legislation, and win the executive branch for the right reasons. We want a man like Russ Feingold who isn't going to cave to polls, and is going to stick to the principles we cherish. If he leads a filibuster of Miers, he will be that man.
Top Generals Say Troops Cause Insurgency
And the insurgency will not wane until troops are gone.
U.S. troops part of problem in Iraq, their generals say
LA Times, October 2nd
U: dkos@dailykos.com
P: dailykos
During a trip to Washington, the generals said the presence of U.S. forces is fueling the insurgency, fostering an undesirable dependency on American troops among the nascent Iraqi military, and energizing terrorists across the Middle East.
For all these reasons, they said, a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops is imperative.
[...]
The generals' comments reflect an evolving outlook that senior military officials and even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have articulated in recent months: The battle against Iraqi insurgents will not be won by the U.S. military, and that the insurgency will go on long after U.S. troops have left Iraq.
So if the insurgency will go on long after our troops are gone whatever we do, which is the expert professional opinion of our military leaders, then there is no utility to staying, beyond domestic politics.
When we look at Hillary's "stay the course, no regrets" position, can't we please imagine the pain if she's inaugurated and the war still rages (occupation still festers)? And she still has that same position? Are we the same sorts of suckers as the conservatives who fall for Bush's coded lip service only to be abandoned?
Russ won't do that to us.
But more important than the strangling that damn triangle, is doing the RIGHT DAMN THING. Not going into Iraq was the right thing, that was a death warrant for many. Not signing the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and thus the torture and death warrant of many, and the miscarriage of justice.
Russ would never cynically triangulate on such matters.
Let's be clear... The Pentagon says Iraq is FUBAR... When they aren't drummed into touring to promote Bush's war, that is. And Russ is right to say other Democrats are too cowardly to stand up on Iraq. He is doing it. Hillary is sticking with, not any military expert, but BushCo on this war. Most of the public opposes it! A candidate who continues to back it at this late date, who cannot possibly undo that position now, is a really, really, bad idea.
I like Clark. But Clark is not with us on Iraq, and people are dying while every elected Dem of high national office save Feingold putters around. While Dean leaves it off his top ten plan.
Feingold is the one.
Everything anyone ever hoped was true of Dean, is true of Feingold.
He really opposes the war and has had the staying power to keep opposing it.
He opposed the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and works regularly to reduce its most broadly invasive and absurd measures.
He's got proven red state appeal, a Democrat surprising people will come out to vote for and they'll do it for some of the same reasons we will, and not (in the disputed Hillary centrist appeal scenario) for reasons we're crossing our fingers we won't regret.
He's got clarity, organization, foresight, and he is somebody I damn sure would like to have a beer with.