Congressman Ford, Hillary Clinton are doing just fine on their own. I wish both well, but I will not support them or any other Democrat who supports the war. I will not give money to the DSCC, DCCC or any PAC who gives money to candidates who continue to support the War in Iraq.

Take the Pledge. There are plenty of Democrats who need and deserve your support and mine.

A Powerful New Voting Block Emerges The Antiwar Movement Becoming a Political Force That Cannot Be Ignored

by Kevin Zeese

A new national poll shows that a near majority of voters either strongly or somewhat agree with a pledge not to vote for pro-war candidates. This makes the antiwar movement's potential impact on elections larger than pro-gun, anti-abortion, or anti-gay marriage voters. Politicians will have to pay heed to this new political force. The pledge states: "I will not vote for or support any candidate for Congress or president who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression a public position in his or her campaign."

Dem Activists, Politicos Must Work Together to Stop GOP

Amid the oceans of ink on the Feingold censure proposal dust-up, WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. nails the heart of the dilemma facing Dems in creating a unified strategy. As Dionne says in his most recent column:

Democrats, unlike Republicans, have yet to develop a healthy relationship between activists willing to test and expand the conventional limits on political debate and the politicians who have to calculate what works in creating an electoral majority.

For two decades, Republicans have used their idealists, their ideologues and their loudmouths to push the boundaries of discussion to the right. In the best of all worlds, Feingold's strong stand would redefine what's "moderate" and make clear that those challenging the legality of the wiretapping are neither extreme nor soft on terrorism.

That would demand coordination, trust and, yes, calculation involving both the vote-counting politicians and the guardians of principle among the activists. Republicans have mastered this art. Democrats haven't.

And then the nut question that requires a thoughtful answer from from all Dems who prefer winning to endless factional disputes:

Turning a minority into a majority requires both passion and discipline. Bringing the two together requires effective leadership. Does anybody out there know how to play this game?

Dionne is right. Surely there is some way that reasonable Dems can debate this issue and other questions of strategy and timing in a way that doesn't fracture their shared oppostion to GOP domination. We're not asking for a kumbaya love-in between Dem elected/party officials on the one hand and blogosphere/ grassroots activists on the other. But it's time for a mutual recognition that the circular firing squad has not served Dems well in the past, and better coordination on matters of timing and strategy would add some much-needed tensile strength to the greater Democratic coalition.

Doesn't seem like a lot to ask.

<!-- Posted at 09:15 AM -->Posted by EDM staff at 09:15 AM | link

And as soon as I finish this coffee, I am off to my 8th (?) march to try and end it.

And by the way, how did y'all like Bush's Operation Wag the Dog?

 How Operation Swarmer Fizzled

Iraq Operation Fails to Find Insurgents

Third Anniversary Iraq Antiwar Events

Cobra II: Michael Gordon and Gen Bernie Trainor
PBS NewsHour Interview + Brooks and Oliphant

MEMO
TO: The Usual Suspects - the rationalizers of defeat around TPMCafe

RE: Nota Bene

Tomorrow in US News and World Report an article - Bush is now moving for warrantless physical searches

You were saying about Russ Feingold's Censure Resolution?

I want to impeach Bush and am not afraid to Rush Limbaugh that.

Why don't you?  What are you so afraid of for mercy's sake?

To paraphrase Molly Ivins, only 28% of the American people approve of Bush's War on Iraq. His approvval numbers are in the toilet and sinking. Survey USA's most recent 50 State Approval Tracking poll puts Bush at 39% in Tennessee. So what is the Congressman, the DLC, the Hillary Claque so damned afraid of? How much courage does it take, for mercy's sake?

Bush battered by US pessimism, leadership doubts

By John Whitesides, Political CorrespondentThu Mar 16, 12:32 PM ET

Deep doubts about the Iraq war and pessimism about America's future have shattered public confidence in President George W. Bush and helped drive his approval ratings to their lowest level ever, pollsters say.

As Bush launched a series of speeches to drum up support for the war, a new round of opinion polls found growing skepticism about Iraq and distrust of Bush. His image declined sharply, with one poll finding "incompetent" to be the most frequent description of his leadership.

Bush's approval rating dipped as low as 33 percent in one recent poll after a string of bad news for the White House, including uproars over a now-dead Arab port deal, a secret eavesdropping program, a series of ethics scandals involving high-profile Republicans and a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

The political storm has left Bush's second-term legislative agenda in tatters, threatened Republican control of the U.S. Congress in November's elections and shredded his personal image as an effective leader.

"His strong points as a president were being seen as personally credible, as a strong leader. That has all but disappeared," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, whose latest independent poll found a dramatic decline in Bush's credibility.

Bush Battered by US Pessism, Leadership Doubts 

Flush Bush -Click to see the Nation's Tolerance of Bush Spiral Ever Downward


Doubts?
What's to doubt?
No bout adout it

Helena Cobban's done such fine blogging, I'll let her tell you

Major new article on the pro-Israel Lobby

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are two of the most important thinkers in the "realist" school of US foreign-policy analysts. Mearsheimer is the Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Walt is the Academic Dean at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he holds the Robert and Renee Belfer Professorship in International Affairs. These two men are not, as you can see, fuzzy-headed liberals who are marginal to the mainstream of policy discourse in the United States.Now, they have a major new article in the upcoming issue of the London Review of Books on the power and detrimental role that the pro-Israel lobby in Washington has played over the years. (The LRB piece has no footnotes. But you can access a fully documented, PDF version of the longer article from which it was excerpted, if you click here. 211 endnotes, many of them very lengthy, to document just 48 pages of text... These guys are empiricists after my own heart!)Here is some of what they argue in the LRB version:

Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides. Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.

And this:

 

Continue reading"Major new article on the pro-Israel Lobby

March to New Orleans to Protest Bush War on Iraq

Or if that's too depressing

find a march near you
 

Justin Raimondo referred to the Katrina disaster as the outcome of "putting America last"; but I prefer to think of the levees of New Orleans as "neoconservatism's Berlin Wall." Requiem for Gonzo Conservatism

This time I'm walking to New Orleans
I'm walking to New Orleans
I'm walking to New Orleans
I'm gonna need two pairs of shes
when I get through walking me blues
when I get back to N. O.
I've got my suitcase in my hand
now ain't that a shame.
I'm leaving here today
yes
I'm going back home to stay.
Yes
I'm walking to N. O.
You used to be my honey
till you spent all my money.
No use for you to cry
I see you buy and buy
'cause I`m walking to n. O.
I've got no time for talking.
I've got to keep on walking.
N. O. is my home
that's the reason while I'm gone
yes
I`m walking to N. O.
I'm walking to N. O.
I'm walking to N. O.
Fats Domino

Yesterday our Alle Hoechste Terrorizing WarLord set a timeline for stand up/stand down ring a round the rosie. I thought that we couldn't do that because it would only embolden the terruhrisses who hate our values and want to add South Carolina to the Caliphate.

Color me confused because yesterday the Emperor of Morons also said that Iran was behind all that trouble in EyeRak and Roll.

Today however,

 US general says no proof Iran behind Iraq arms ...

Wanna bet that timeline was more BushS*** too?

Go a demonstration this weekend if you are able.

The WarParty loves to toss the L word about to disparage their enemies. Of course, many liberals have been members of  the WarParty all along, and many conservatives have refused induction.  We liberals who opposed this debacle from the outset have much to be proud of - our manifest patriotism for one.

Nonetheless and all the same, I find it good practice to call attention to the fact that opposition to the Bush Disaster is made up of solid liberals and staunch conservatives. Conservatives like Paul Craig Roberts who asks

Why Did Bush Destroy Iraq?

With the New York Times and SF Chronicle, among others, running Third Iraq War Anniversary specials this week, it appears that the media will be MIA from this the fourth(?) Bush War Pep Rally.  

Things aren't any better on the other side of the pond either.

US postwar Iraq strategy a mess, Blair was told


Senior British diplomatic and military staff gave Tony Blair explicit warnings three years ago that the US was disastrously mishandling the occupation of Iraq, according to leaked memos

John Sawers, Mr Blair's envoy in Baghdad in the aftermath of the invasion, sent a series of confidential memos to Downing Street in May and June 2003 cataloguing US failures. With unusual frankness, he described the US postwar administration, led by the retired general Jay Garner, as "an unbelievable mess" and said "Garner and his top team of 60-year-old retired generals" were "well-meaning but out of their depth".

Episcopal Bishop of California Bill Swing, that is.

From the prison cell to the pulpit
Convicted of second-degree murder 20 years ago, parolee has become priest Convicted of second-degree murder 20 years ago, parolee has become priest

Easter 2004 Bishop Swing reamed Schwarzenegger from the pulpit of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for denying parole.

Ahnold didn't make the same mistake twice when the parole board again granted Fr Trammel's parole this month

Biden: Troops Should Come Home in Summer

 

Oh That Failure Were Optional

Expect to see Democratic "Leaders", perhaps even their Council, pulling their heads out of the sand (and where ever else they've been stuck) and finally telling the truth to themselves, their Party and the public. Failure hasn't been an option for quite sometime.

"In academic terms, this is a civil war, and it's not even a small one," said Larry Diamond, a former consultant to the provisional authority in Baghdad who is now critical of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq.

"I don't know how else you would describe something which has people from one community systematically attacking the other," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia during the civil war in the Balkans during the Clinton administration and who helped negotiate an end to the conflict in Croatia. "Sunni Arab insurgents have been attacking Shiite clergy, politicians and ordinary Shiites for simply being who they are ... and then you have a response, from the Shiites."