Responsibility on the Left
Many progressives and other reform-minded Democrats have been yelling at, and about, the Democratic Party operation for a few years now. With Howard Dean as a point of rallying cry, we've pledged to "take back our Party" as we "take back the country" for the cause of a rational government of equal justice and opportunity. We've accused the Party of forgetting its roots and principles, throwing barbs at McAuliffe, at Washington Democrats, at the Clintons, at the DLC, whenever any of them have seemed to undercut the efforts of Dean and the reform community.

Now, it looks like a battle may be won. We wanted to take control of the Party and steer it in a new direction, and our man is in charge. It is a moment of truth for progressives/liberals and reform Democrats: stay on the sideline and continue to lob bombs at the process and denounce the corporatized national Party culture? Or turn that activism more directly into major party politics and get seriously involved in the Democratic Party. Dean meetups should be essentially replaced now with Democratic Party meetups. And the ranks of regular Party events should be infused with progressives and Dean supporters. We've told our fellow Democrats for 2 years now that Dean's approach would be good for energizing the Party. Now that they are set to name him as the Party chair, it's time to get about energizing. It won't happen on its own.

You wanted to take back the Party in the name of grassroots activism as opposed to top-down hierarchy? Now, you've got it, in a leader that agrees with you. Time to put up or shut up. Let your County Party organizers know you're with them, and ready to work.

This does it...medical scientists don't know crap
What's good for helping to fight skin cancer??
The sun! That's what. I give up.

Kennedy Rips Gonzalez
Ted has had enough. (Via MyDD) In a letter outlining the reasons why Gonzalez should not be AG, the Massachussetts Senator says:

The continuing effort to blame the torture scandal on a "few bad apples" among our soldiers while rewarding Mr. Gonzales with promotion to Attorney General is a despicable signal for America to send the world. We should not support a nominee who has done so much to harm America's basic interests and fundamental values.

It would seem that all the Senate Dems (who have shown a remarkable unity against Bush's Social Security plans) are planning or seriously considering voting against Gonzalez, except for newly elected Ken Salazar from Colorado. They could filibuster this successfully and keep him from being appointed. The question remains if this nomination is worth that kind of fight. In the Washington Post, Kevin Drum explains how the rules have changed under Republican control to leave filibuster as nearly the only way for a minority party to register their opposition to a Presidential appointment. It hasn't always been that way--I didn't know. It's interesting/depressing.

Is Deanmentum Enough? [UPDATED]
Dean won the endorsement of the State chairs, (and that of one of his former competitors) but will they all vote as a bloc as promised, and is it enough anyway? For sure, he's way in front in terms of endorsements, but this has the stink of the primary campaign to me. The truth is, anyone who is for Dean at this point has every incentive to come out and announce it, and none to stay quiet. So as promising as it is that Dean has the backing of an overwhelming number of those who have announced, it's still only 23%, and he needs 50% + 1. I remember all those Iowa polls that had him in front with 25% of the vote, but that only meant that 75% weren't comfortable jumping on, even though he was the frontrunner with all the attention. Hopefully the same isn't true here, but what would keep someone from announcing support at this point except for a hesitation over him running the Party? Just means there are 77% out there that are still not sure about him.

In the primaries we assumed all the undecideds would split with some similarity to what the polls showed, but that ignored the political reality. Supporting Dean was, and is, a thing you do with a proud passion. In the primary we hit a ceiling and didn't realize it. His push for endorsements has a similar ring to it. Obviously, I hope I'm wrong.

[UPDATE] Martin Frost is out. Is it really all Dean's now? Fingers crossed.

Trotter, Kenny T...Do something about this
As President Bush once said, "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

It goes on to say that 75% believe flag-burning to be illegal.

History Lesson
Via Kevin Drum, a news clip from 1967...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

Hopefully, this one will go better.

MEDIA MONDAY

What have you been watching, reading, listening to?

If this is what it takes to get some Media Monday comments I'll do it
Caitlin's Alan Alda Fansite

SXSW
One of these years, my spring break will coincide with the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin and I'm going. Until then, I'll have to just dream of a lineup that includes Sleater-Kinney, Blind Boys of Alabama, Son Volt, Aimee Mann, Robyn Hitchcock, Billy Idol, The Donnas, Stephen Malkmus, Brian Wilson and - according to the Hollywood Reporter -- Elvis Costello. I've been to Sundance once. South by Southwest is still on the list.

Million Dollar Baby, Part II
There's just no way that Eastwood deserves acting or directing accolades for this picture. Not because he fell short in either--both were probably just right for the movie. He doesn't deserve it because neither was ambitious or involved enough to compete with Scorsese's work in The Aviator, or Michel Gondry's in Eternal Sunshine, or probably lots of others I could name. Even the boxing scenes, with a couple notable exceptions, were mostly filmed from angles that made it pretty simple to pull off, and the one shot I remember that dared to glimpse an actual punch from the side showed Ms. Swank missing by a considerable distance. Don't get me wrong - I'm not against this movie. It's good, and challenging (though I'm really left questioning, not the big issues the movie raises, but the film's own judgment). But the very idea that Clint Eastwood with this boxing effort could and probably will beat out the man who made the greatest-boxing-movie-ever-made in Raging Bull, for which he didn't get a best director Oscar, is really maddening. More later, as I can't get this film out of my head, probably a sign that I will grow to like it more the more I think about it.

Book Ignorance Alert
Has anyone here read one of Japanese author Haruki Murakami's novels? I'll admit I've never heard of him, but this review in the Times makes me very curious.

One of the characters in Haruki Murakami's trippy new dreamscape tries to explain himself as follows: He doesn't have a name or shape. He has decided to materialize as Colonel Sanders but could just as easily have been Mickey Mouse. He isn't beyond good and evil, but they don't matter to him. He's "not much of a detail person." But he serves as a metaphysical overseer, checking the correlations between worlds and making sure that past, present and future occur in the right order. That way, causes and effects don't get mixed up. "Listen, every object's in flux," he explains. "The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box."

His website is fabulous.

Sopranos in syndication
A & E Network gets the show! Aren't they the ones that first put Law and Order on the syndication map, playing it a couple times nightly? I am not sure how well the Sopranos can work on TV. Of course the nudity will be gone; what about all the language? If you take out all the F words you can probably fit an entire season into an hour. I'm a big fan of Six Feet Under, but The Sopranos is the best.

It's the truth, It's factual...
If my memory is right, I saw Song of the South as part of a double feature alongside "Condorman." Haven't seen the brer rabbit film since, in the theater or on video because Disney won't allow it. Its racist depictions (Uncle Remus, plus the 2 black crows come to mind) have kept it in the vault. Some people protest this decision and, of course, they have a website. It's satisfactual. from boingboing.

Article 19 Recommendation: Million Dollar Baby
I can't remember the last time I was this conflicted about a movie as I was leaving the theater. I'm still mulling. You should go see it pretty quickly.

There are plenty of boxing-movie cliches and alot of it is really contrived, but there are plenty of genuinely funny scenes and lines, some big questions about religion and ethics, surprises, and maybe a few things to be offended by. I shouldn't say much until everyone's seen it. But I'm still trying to decide which side of bold and manipulative I am coming down on. Has anyone else caught it?

Weekend Box Office
1. Hide and Seek
2. Are we there yet?
3. Million Dollar Baby
4. Coach Carter
5. Meet the Fockers

Sunday Reading
Fareed Zakaria: Elections are not Democracy
Ted Kennedy: speech on Iraq
Ron Paul, Republican Congressman from Texas: What if (it was all a big mistake?) via truthout.

DNC Chair could wrap up this weekend
AFL-CIO members, plus the ASCD (the state chairs and directors) are considering an endorsement, that could end up deciding the Democratic Chairman, especially if they go with Dean.

Close Clinton buddy Harold Ickes shocked everyone by endorsing Dean. My prediction is that if Rosenberg makes it to the final 2 he can defeat Dean, but if it's Frost v. Dean, then Dean is the man. Either way we end up with a reform-minded candidate, and that is good news.

Let there be breasts!
Why argue with this? I'm certainly not going to. Maybe if we didn't go to such lengths to keep them covered, teenage boys wouldn't be so obsessed with them. (As opposed to, uh, thirty-something boys. We hardly think of them at all...honest.) But, really, it's all about the equal rights.

Problem Solving, Yer-a-peein' Edition
Europe has been hit with its heaviest snows in more than 50 years. Richard Kral, a Sloviakian man trapped in his car beneath an avalanche, yearned to get out; then he used urine to get out. Thanks to about 3 cases of beer and the will to survive, Kral escaped behind a trail of yellow snow. That is, if you believe this story. I'm having trouble with it.

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.

There's no way this story is true, right? How would you even breathe long enough to drink 60 beers, even if you could drink them all in one sitting, which you could not.

Cheney embarrasses America, again
This is the kind of thing I would let slide for a person with a reputation as being kind-hearted, empathetic and compassionate, even for a world leader. But not so when it's Dick "go f**k yourself" Cheney, world's biggest asshole.

He deserves all the derision he gets for disrespecting the anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation as representative of America. Maybe if he had a gay son instead of a gay daughter, he'd have been forced, by family peer pressure to accept a more distinguished dress code? A little queer eye for the angry guy might have been in order. Or maybe if the Vice President and his staff would learn for once to take seriously the death of others amid the horrors of genocide and war, somebody would have thought twice about this kind of thing.

Senator Boxer posts a diary on Kos
Or, well at least her staff did for her, who knows. Either way there's a post with her name on it. Watching elected officials gradually embrace blogging communities is interesting. And it makes perfect sense: she probably just increased her donor base by a factor of 10. Is Barbara up to something else, politically, like a Presidential run? Or is this more of a sign, like I'm guessing, that she's given up on ever making one, so now she's free to kick more butt?

Also, I had no idea that the 13 votes against Condi represent the most against a Sec. of State nominee since 1825. I'm sure her self-esteem is still intact. But not too high, to continue that debate, if you think like I do that playing loose with the truth to make yourself look better, and an arrogant refusal to admit mistakes are both signs of low self-esteem.

Civil Disobedience (of sorts) on Feb. 8
I mentioned earlier the plight of the Eyes on the Prize documentary which is not available on DVD and is not available for public showing due the enormous licensing restrictions on footage and even the "Happy Birthday" song. Downhill Battle has made the film available digitally in an attempt to save it through grassroots, community-based sharing and screenings. It is a truly fabulous idea and perfect use of the Internet for civil disobedience against the corporate lunacy that is some of our copyright/licensing laws.

They are asking everyone to organize a screening of Part I on Feb 8 as a part of Black History Month. Download the film and watch it with friends and family or organize a larger screening. Scroll down the link above to read more information about the film and the laws that have now hidden it from further distribution or public showing.

Iraq Ex-Citizen Voting Update
While I was just complaining and being ignorant of the facts, Doug was actually doing some helpful research. Here is the Iraq out-of-country voting requirements. They are more involved than I was guessing.

Self-Esteem
I'm no psychologist (thank god), so maybe that seriously dents the credibility of my disagreement with Roy Baumeister's very scientific (apparently) conclusion that self-esteem is not really that helpful in life, and probably brings as much negative as positive consequence. More to say later, but I think he is really, seriously wrong, unless we concede the most shallow understanding of self-esteem. For one thing, why is it opposed to self-control and self-discipline and humility?

I know there are Article 19 readers that have thought and read more about this kind of thing than I have. What say you? I believe my opinion is borne less of the cultural brainwashing he suggests and more of direct observation and personal experience. But I guess making you think that is one of the powers of brainwashing. So I could yet be a victim.

But this seems right out of Lakoff's playbook for conservatives (not that I have reason to believe Baumeister is one): to portray self-esteem (a legitimating force from within) as weakness and lack of production, where self-control and self-discipline (taught, handed-down order from a legitimating authority from outside) are the opposite. I'm surprised Kevin Drum fell for it, though it sounds like his mother's fault (again, I'm no psychologist...).

Let me just say this for starters: I don't believe in giving students good grades that are undeserved just to boost their self-esteem. But, that's mostly because I don't believe that giving students undeserved good grades does in fact boost self-esteem. Since when did arrogance and misplaced confidence count as self-esteem? Those things sound more like what he's talking about. And of course they don't help. Can't we hold self-esteem up in a higher place? I do.

HaaaaHaaa
Bush and social security reform, a match made in la-la land. See this spot-on political cartoon. Via TPM.

So Sad
Like the "transfer of power" several months back, these Iraqi elections--though they are the announced point of it all--will change nothing about the day-to-day reality. Even the best case scenario, in my opinion, leaves treacherous likely outcomes. That would be if an elected government actually rallies a great number of the Iraqi people behind it, probably by kicking out the Americans. But, that of course leaves Iraq open to an even greater possible increase in chaos, despotism and the rise of heavy-handed Islamic fundamentalism, should the elected officials not have the capacity and the public legitimacy to govern and keep order.

The alternative is to keep us there for a modicum of security and the implicit threat of overwhelming force keeping fanatics from at least an organized takeover. This choice, we know now, has the added insult of turning more Iraqis into fanatics in the first place. And, maybe worst of all, American troops will continue to suffer days like today, the deadliest for US soldiers since the invasion.

When and how will this phase of 100,000+ troops on the ground end? Will we have to be asked to leave by a legitimately elected Iraqi government? Will we have to be satisfied that there is an effective Iraqi police force to maintain order? Or will we have to finally lose the public will to continue with no end in sight? Which sounds more likely to you? I suppose a fourth option would be a new conflict (real or imagined) necessitating our troops elsewhere.

I have been a believer through most of this in the you-break-it-you-own-it theory that says once we demolished their infrastructure and toppled their government, we had a duty to stay and help rebuild. The saddest part of all this is team Bush's apparent lack of interest in developing a reasonable plan to address this stage. There is no end in sight, plus I am very dubious about the training of an Iraqi police force, what with reports of desertion, inadequate training, and the constant threat of violence by extremist guerrilas.

I am sure we are doing plenty of good things in many part of Iraq, but I am starting to gravitate toward the get-the-hell-out-of-there camp. It rings especially true when thinking that most of the fighters would seem to be more angry about American occupation than they are about the idea of self-government which is supposedly keeping us there. Sure, if we break it we should fix it. But when does our presence there start amounting to further breakage (through sheer incitement) in itself? Among a horizon of horrible options, leaving pretty quickly is starting to feel like a less horrible one than the others.

Am I wrong?

Pie Graph Hilarity
The Daily Show Headlines last night were the funniest I've seen in a while. You can watch the 5 1/2 minute segment here. There are jabs at Nashville for being one of the 5 locations in the US where ex-Iraqis can vote in the upcoming election, and at the President for calling rather than attending the anti-abortion rally that happened right outside the White House (though this joke is blunted a bit by reading the CNN caption explaining that Bush is calling from Camp David, so not as if he just refused to step right outside his home).

But the funniest is Rob Corrdry's segment on the confusing Iraqi election, in which most all candidates and political parties have tried to keep the fact of their running a secret, an interesting campaign strategy designed to keep them from getting killed or their families kidnapped. Against a backdrop of a pie graph of hundreds of differently colored little slivers, representing recent Iraq polls, Corrdry explains (my rough transcription):

Voters are getting ready to choose from 8,000 candidates representing roughly 270 political parties. And according to the latest polls, things are really heating up. As you can see, the Iraqi Unity Party seems to be sitting strong with 0.8%. But, Jon, anything can happen in a week. I thought this was interesting: The Islamic Islamic Party is now giving ground to the Unbelievably Islamic Party, though of course both are still beating Sharpton by a comfortable margin.

Watch it if you can. That pie graph is still making me laugh.

And another thing I've been meaning to look in to. Why are ex-Iraqis allowed to vote anyway?

Giving up the faith-based fight?
There is no question that African-Americans remain the strongest demographic support for Democrats. But Bush did make some slight inroads in 2004, partly because of his embrace of faith-based funding. Now we hear that the program was highly targeted, politically. If you were a faith-based program in a swing state, you had a much better chance of getting federal money. And it worked:

The administration's attention to faith-based programs in battleground states appeared to pay off.

In Florida, where record black turnout in Democratic precincts nearly put Gore in the White House in 2000, Bush's support among African Americans in November rose 6 percentage points to 13%, helping to increase the president's victory margin and avoid a repeat of the 2000 squeaker that inspired the recount.

In Wisconsin, the president drew 14% of the black vote last year, 3 points above his nationwide performance.

In all-important Ohio, Bush's vote tally among African Americans more than doubled his 2000 total, and he gained 7 percentage points to draw 16% of the black vote. If Bush had received the same proportion of black votes in Ohio as he did in 2000, the president's margin of victory would have narrowed from the actual 118,000 to about 25,000.

And this is Jim Towey, actually trying to defend the program against charges of politicism, but sounding more like a confirmation...

"If you look at where the battleground states are, it's where the action is in the faith-based initiative,"

Adding faith-based funding to school choice and gay rights, Republicans believe they have found the 3-sided leverage to pry African-Americans away from the Democratic Party, a development that would surely spell doom for the donkey for many years to come. The worst news is that Democrats believe it too:

On the eve of the presidential inauguration, US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton last night embraced an issue some pundits say helped seal a second term for George W. Bush: acceptance of the role of faith in addressing social ills.

In a speech at a fund-raising dinner for a Boston-based organization that promotes faith-based solutions to social problems, Clinton said there has been a "false division" between faith-based approaches to social problems and respect for the separation of church of state.

Are we caving on federal funding for faith-based programs? Is it worth fighting? Is Hillary trying to shore up the base already for an '08 run?