...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, July 29, 2003
      ( 10:56 AM )
 
Renegade Politics - Watch Out America!

It's interesting to note how the GOP is working so hard to initiate its new version of democracy: "Impeach, Appoint, Recall and ReAlign Districts" lately. With the California Recall already in process, Republicans are trying to subvert the electoral process by claiming that 5% of the California voting population is enough to claim that all the votes cast last November should be null and void. One has to wonder if the GOP realizes that this is not necessarily a boon to their party, even if they win the recall election (which from all appearances looks to be a long-shot). And if they lose, then they have one more mark against them going into 2004. Keep up to date on the California Recall with Calpundit.

In Texas, the GOP, aided by Sen. Tom Delay, are trying to redraw district lines to add 6 new congressional districts to the GOP for the 2004 election. Lt. Governor Dewhurst decided to simply forgo the required 2/3 majority needed to pass legislation and thought that this would then allow the GOP to push through this bit of political maneuvering with a simple majority. But the Dems in the Texas Legislature were already thinking ahead and vamoosed out of town yesterday to block a vote because of the needed quorum. It looks like there may be a showdown at high noon...and the Dems may yet win this one, despite the GOP's conniving. At least Delay wasn't allowed to invoke Homeland Security to fetch back the Dem legislators this time. They are currently holing up in Dem-Friendly Gov. Richardson's New Mexico.

And the Campaign to Elect the President is again putting out press releases flaunting its massive amounts of fundraising. One has to wonder why they feel so compelled to wave about their millions of dollars? Could it be because they know they don't have the actual VOTERS to get Bush elected in 2004, so they are trying to distract us with their bank balance? This theory was proven true yesterday by the Dean campaign. In a call to match Dick Cheney's fundraising luncheon in South Carolina ($2,000 a plate - raising $250,000 in one sitting), the Dean Campaign asked its supporters to try and match the Veep's fundraiser. They not only matched, but far surpassed it, raising over $508,640.31 from 9,621 Dean supporters. That's an average of 53 bucks a person. And Gov. Dean even sat down and had lunch with his supporters to counter Cheney's red-plate special.

The GOP may have the millionaires and big business, but so far, Gov. Dean is only accountable to the people who support him. That truly is renegade politics in this day and age.


Looks Trump Truth?

In a fantastic article today, Paul Krugman discusses the fact that American still seem more influenced by style over substance. Comparing the backlash on Tony Blair from the British population to the small (but growing) disapproval of the American public for Bush, Krugman points out that perhaps the Bush Administration itself is underestimating American voters.

In June only 36 percent of the public
described Mr. Blair as "trustworthy," while
54 percent called him "untrustworthy."

Now the Bush administration was at least as
guilty of hyping the case for war. It was a campaign
not so much of outright falsehoods — though there
were some of those — as of exaggeration and
insinuation. Here's what the public thought it heard:
Last month, 71 percent of those polled thought
the administration had implied that Saddam Hussein
had been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

And when it comes to domestic spin, Mr. Blair isn't
remotely in Mr. Bush's league. Whether pretending
that the war on terror — not tax cuts, which have
cost the Treasury three times as much — is responsible
for record deficits, or that those hugely elitist tax cuts
are targeted on working families, or that opening up
wilderness areas to loggers is a fire-prevention plan,
Mr. Bush has taken misrepresentation of his own policies
to a level never before seen in America.

Krugman goes on to note that the Administration itself seems to be fine with this, and in fact are manipulating the American public based on the assumption that the lies don't matter, only that he tells them convincingly:

Another answer may be that in modern America,
style trumps substance. Here's what Tom DeLay,
the House majority leader, said in a speech last
week: "To gauge just how out of touch the Democrat
leadership is on the war on terror, just close your
eyes and try to imagine Ted Kennedy landing that
Navy jet on the deck of that aircraft carrier." To say the
obvious, that remark reveals a powerful contempt for
the public: Mr. DeLay apparently believes that the nation
will trust a man, independent of the facts, because he
looks good dressed up as a pilot. But it's possible that he's right.

I hope that he's not right. I hope that Americans are beginning to shed the wool from their eyes and become very disturbed at being misled and fed a bunch of lies in order to prop up an administration that has accomplished nothing to make us more economically secure, more secure from terrorism, to improve our children's chances at a good education, to ease the burden of the cost of health care and prescription medicine, or even just to keep our natural wildlife safe and free from development. No amount of pandering to the corporations and big money is going to save Bush/Cheney in 2004 if the American public decides to take back their country and prove that the power is with us, and not with those who would lie in order to line their own pockets at our expense.

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