watching bill maher defend harvard's lawrence summers and distance the democratic party from academia was high quality television, that all during the 26 feb 06 edition of "real time" on hbo.  i felt a zen like peace & harmony inside my mind as maher talked about the absurd non-sense that goes on at most universities these days.  way to go maher!  brave!  it's high time dems distanced themselves from all this crazy crap and got back to the business of helping people.  the dogmatic zealots in top universities are almost as bad as the religious crazies the conservatives have, just as closed minded, just as unyielding and irrational, just as mean and hateful.  i'm glad there are at least some dems who aren't afraid to say enough is enough, dems that expect some reasonable amount of common sense and pragmatics in our universities.

as annoying as a holocaust denier can be, is this the right thing ?  sending a human being to jail for writing unpopular books and making really annoying unpopular speeches ?  the man got three years in prison for just that ... for writing books and giving speeches saying that the holocaust never happened.  i thought the goal was to protect the most annoying speech to insure that everyone gets to talk.  i hope the thought police never get so mad about something i write.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060220/ap_o n_re_eu/austria_holocaust_denial

is the party leaderless ?

feels like the party is swinging at every pitch that's thrown at it.  the most recent being the cheney "incident".  what can the party gain by swinging at this ?  it's embarrassing for cheney and the bush administration but what is there to be gained by going after it from the side of the democrats ... what is the hope ?

- what is the hope here ....

• that it'll somehow lead to a discussion about guns ?
  
• that somehow the party hopes to get rid of cheney ?
  
• and if cheney was gone ... that would help the party .. how ?
  
• that it hurts the bush administration ... how exactly ?
  
• that it serves the parties purposes by ... remind me again how ?
  
• i know, it focuses the discussion on what the party wants to talk about ... uhh, no, that's definitely not true
  
• it helps the party do well in the upcoming election ... how ?
  
• it makes the party look like it's above pettiness and is serious about real issues ... no, that's definitely not it ...

no .. it doesn't help anything.  busting on cheney only serves republicans in the same way that talking about cheney's gay daughter does.  it gets him sympathy.  nobody actually believes that cheney shot his friend on purpose, so that only leaves the "fact" that it was an accident.  so ... if it was an accident ... then why is the party going after him on it ?  and worse, this new angle of cheney tried to hide it ... what is it that the party is trying to say here, that cheney and the bush administration didn't think that the public was going to eventually hear about cheney shooting a man in the face ????  i mean this is stupid!  why is the party wasting it's time here!  what good purpose does it serve ?  what grand strategy ?  who's design ?

there is no design ... because there is no leadership on this or anything else, no unified theory, or at least not one that the majority of party members seem to subscribe to.  instead the party swings at everything, anything ... all the republicans seem to have to do is to throw something out there to swing at.

and what's next ?  for republicans, here i give some suggestions

- bush administration says turkeys aren't just for thanksgiving

oh you laugh, but how many dumb bush quotes does the party jump on just to point out how stupid bush is.  and to what end exactly ... what does the party gain by jumping on every little bushism that gets mumbled ?  what ... that an outgoing lame duck president is incompetent ?  that red staters were wrong/stupid for electing the guy ?  and this helps the party get elected ... how ?

- high level official caught with millions in halliburten funds in his mattress and said to be having orgies

again ... who flippin cares.  yeah, corruption ... the public has heard it, they got it, they don't seem to give a rat's ass.  it's a loser.  who knows why ... they don't believe it, they just don't care, they've been overwhelmed and it's all blurred together, does it matter ?  preaching to the choir, it's just not working.  hey, maybe someone could make a movie about it, oh wait, they already did ... and the party lost an election anyway.

- administration says no more body armor, no armored humvees, and we're taking away you're little dog too.

the public seems to not care, or doesn't believe it .. even people being affected by it!  and this is actually a good argument, but who is listening to it ?  and what on earth is the party hoping to gain here ?  that the party would do a better job of equipping troops for an effort that the party doesn't think should have happened in the first place ?  what is the message ?  that republicans don't care about the troops i know, but the public doesn't seem to buy it, for some reason they believe that the bush administration actually cares about the troops and that democrats don't.  why ?  and is it worth fighting over ?  is it worth trying to convince the public that this isn't "just one of administrative things that happens during a big war" ?

- etc, etc ....

there just seems to be this never ending stream of things the party will go after in response to news and findings but it has no consistency, no common thread or front of attack, it's just kind of react to this, or that, or hey maybe we can make hay out of this comment or this other thing that happened.  but isn't there supposed to be a plan ?  what's the plan ???????  and who is it's architect ??? and where does the party go from here ??

it just seems like everything is "see, we told you so ..." or ... "right see here's the evidence of what we've been saying all along", etc, but it's proving stuff that nobody seems to care about anyway.  i think half the reason they don't care is because they've heard it all before.  i mean it's like if you saw a news headline that said "bush ... (insert something bad)" the public just thinks through the entire line in their head in a microsecond ... "yeah, bush did something bad, the democrats say he's a moron, and bush keeps going doing whatever he's doing" ... followed by ... "oh, right, i almost forgot the carrots", then they put the carrots in the cart, go to the checkout counter, and wait until tomorrow's news headline that they just as quickly tune out.

i think the republicans have the parties number, i think they've got it figured out, and that they can dial it in anytime they want to now.  all they have to do is toss out some crumb of a comment or action that goes against the parties core values and let the party jump on it and try to make a big deal out of it while the republicans quietly go on looting or shooting or whatever else they want to do.  i mean what will they put out next ... a press release saying they are going to allow hunting of baby seals ... or a new initiative to support kicking the dali lama out of india ?  it's like they can tease the party out of it's own power by just doing anything, saying anything that gets the party in an uproar, and the party swings at it everytime, no matter what it is.  then the news cycle runs about meaningless crap nobody cares about instead of talking about things that could actually help the party to succeed.  and there's nobody there to say "hey, let's not swing at this baby seal thing, they aren't actually going to club baby seals, let's stick with the plan".  even if the party DOES manage to make hay out of something, all the republicans seem to have to do is give the party SOMETHING ELSE to swing at, and they forget all about what they were getting traction on!!!!  i mean it's insane!

where is the manifesto, where is the plan ?  where are the big ideas and serious and thoughtful path forward .. one that doesn't just react to bush or whatever crumbs the news cycle dredges up ?  where are the architects ?  besides "we're not bush", why would anyone vote for the party, what reasons are the party giving ... i don't mean just principles, but actual plans, well thought out positive concrete "this is what we're going to do ... and if you don't like it, screw off and vote for the other guy" plans.

did anyone check out what FDR might have said about private accounts before the republican chorus started making noise about it today ?  seems like a pretty big oversight with the party standing beside a statue of FDR saying how much he would have hated the idea.

The Spartan ethic vs. the Athenian philosophy, the city worker vs. the farmer, etc, it's the same old battle.  This year's election map shows it better than any in memory, a wash of red across the entire country except the coasts.  And a detailed map shows that the coasts voted red except for the cities and outlying suburbs, but why ?  Many in the party would have you believe it's because red state'ers are stupid (or not educated), ill-informed (listening to talk radio), responding to hateful messages from Republicans, bible thumping, etc, but that isn't it.

In this message I open a can of worms that probably gets me blasted as being overly simplistic, trite, and just plain silly.  But I'll post it anyway and take my chances. :)  Maybe before you blast me too badly you'll consider that the message is posted with an honest heart and in good spirit.

This site Friends of Democracy has some really good Iraqi election information, impressive, I sat and read this one for quite a while.  Says it is ... "Ground-level election news from the people of Iraq".  No matter what your politics it is really exciting to see people going out to vote.  Ain't democracy grand!

There is a free trade discussion going on in one of the threads, probably more than one, so I felt the desire to report on my own recent trip to Mexico, Belize and Guatemala to hopefully add some value to the discussion.  Maybe not though, I'm not that good of a writer!  haha.  I apologize in advance to the fine folks of these countries for butchering the names of their various cities and things, but frankly I just don't feel like pulling out my notes to be accurate.  I hope you learn something from reading it, cheers!

America lept into the air and landed with it's right foot into Afghanistan and then stomped it's left foot into Iraq.  Now Europe is finally hearing the thunder from it and feeling the ground shake.  It's real, Bush really has gone to war with two countries and been safely re-elected.  Wouldn't you love to know what European leaders are saying to each other behind closed doors, I know I would.  These days don't intrigue a person's idle curiousity ... these days are truly dreadful, or awe inspiring depending on your outlook ... it is almost incredible.