Probably most of you don't know who I am (and don't care, either. <smile>) Though I've been here for a few years now, I've not written many (or particularly outstanding) diaries. Nor have I ever been chosen for an outstanding comment or anything like that.  I'm not Kos-famous, I'm just a little cog in the greater community, and I'm fine with that. But until lately I've always been proud to be part of what I considered a progressive community dedicated to reality-based thought and action. Passionate, yes, but decent and ethical people whose goal is to change the course of this country and the world by electing Democrats to office.

Democrats Abroad International is the official overseas branch of the U.S. Democratic Party for some 7 million US citizens living overseas. Over seventy countries throughout the world organize local events and activities to encourage participation in the American political process. They offer help and advice on registering to vote and getting absentee ballots via http://www.votefromabroad.org

This year, for the first time, DA is offering Democrats living overseas the opportunity to vote in their party’s 2008 Global Presidential Primary. The first ever online, worldwide U.S. election! Follow me below the fold.

The Larry Craig scandal has kind of sucked the air out of the room in Idaho politics lately, but behind all that hoopla there are signs that Idaho-- or at least parts of it-- is not as blindly loyal to the Bushies as one might think.

Idaho has two Republican Senators and two Republican Representatives. It is a deeply red state.

Yet an editorial titled "Resume the draft and tax the profiteers" in this morning's Idaho Mountain Express, which serves the Sun Valley/Ketchum region, had this to say:

This will be a short diary, for which I apologize in advance. But I wanted to share this email from Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii)

A couple of weeks ago or so I sent an email to Rep. Abercrombie urging him to support H. Res. 333. This morning I received the following response from him (text below the fold):

I don't have the eloquence of so many regular diarists on dKos, so I don't write many diaries. But I have been thinking about dictatorships, and the slow slide of this country toward a dictatorship, for a long time. I have wished I could properly express those thoughts.

Well, someone else did it for me a long time ago. His name was Stephen Vincent Benet, and he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who lived from 1898-1943. The poem he wrote that so perfectly expresses the subject was included in his book "The Burning City" and though it was written in 1935 it could have been written today. We must not lessen our vigilance or our efforts to defeat this movement toward tyranny.

It's a long poem; please excuse me for substituting this  great poet's voice for my own.

I suggest that we stop using phrases about the Plame affair such as "the outing of Valerie Plame", "the outing of a covert agent", etc. That is really not broad enough to cover what really happened, and it allows the right wing noise machine to trivialize it by using narrow arguments and keeping the focus on one woman and her husband. Was she covert or not? Did she send Joe Wilson to Niger or not? Was she just a desk jockey or not? And so on.

What we should be saying is "When the Bush administration blew the cover of its own spy network", "the outing of a covert network", or  "revealed the existence of an entire clandestine network probing weapons proliferation", or something along those lines. Let's get it into the public lexicon that this is not just a question of whether or not the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was violated or whether or not one woman's career was destroyed, but that our National Security was compromised.

OK it's early on a Saturday morning here in Baja California and my mind is free to play. If you guys don't mind a kind of frivolous diary, you can play, too.

I got to thinking about Dr. Strangelove and the treasure trove of wonderful characters in that movie, which-- through a process of mental leapfrog-- led me to wonder how we could recast the movie using the Bush folks. And whether or not a frequent comparison of BushCo with Dr. Strangelove characters might have a (slight) effect on how they are perceived by the public at large (the right joke, that takes hold, is powerful).

Who wants to play?

I'm kind of a pragmatic person, without the eloquence of so many who post diaries here, so I hope you'll excuse the bluntness of this diary.

I have an idea for a campaign strategy that would effectively answer the Republicans' claim that we're safer now than before 9/11. It's simple, I think it would be effective, and if it were used by every candidate at every whistlestop and rally it would take hold in the public's mind.

More below the fold.

Who is contributing to House Majority Leader John Boehner's coffers?

Mish's Global Economic Trends Analysis blog has some interesting information about a bill being championed by Boehner that would lift a barrier to firms that run 401(k) retirement plans that keeps them from giving employees investment advice if they stand to benefit financially. Read on...

I just read a review for a book (which I will promptly be buying) that gives a sobering look at climate change. The book is Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains/ by Mark Bowen, published by Henry Holt, 2005. The review was written by Kelpie Wilson, at truthout.org

Is this scary enough for you?

Climate shock comes from the realization that climate change is not only real, but huge; it is not only huge, but it is now; and it will affect your life very shortly. Not your grandchildren's lives. Not your children's lives. Your life. Soon - if it hasn't already.

More below the fold...

 

This is a short diary, but I want to provide these haunting photos as a visual reminder of the cost of war. Click on the links below the fold.

Lest we forget...

I've been giving some thought over the last few days about MESSAGE. Short, pithy, with an emotional impact-- the kind of things the Repug noise machine has been so good at. Billboards came to mind when someone posted a picture of a scurrilous billboard using Mean Jean's comment about Murtha. It pissed me off.

Quite by accident I stumbled across an old press release (1997) from a Franklin & Marshall Professor titled Ruining Your Holiday....Why the FBI Thought "It's A Wonderful Life" was a Subversive Film.

Yikes! I said to myself, past is indeed prologue. I'm surprised Ann Coulter hasn't written a book about this as a sequel to her tome on why Joe McCarthy was right. This being the appropriate season, I thought I'd share some of it with you. Am I crazy, or does this kind of thinking sound eerily similar to what is going on in this country today?

That's the headline for an opinion piece by Amir Taheri in the Gulf News that I think is important to note. The article begins thusly:

Surprised by the radical reformulation of Iran's foreign policy by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, many commentators in the West have tried to either dismiss it as hyperbole or a suicidal desire to provoke conflict.

Seen from Tehran, however, the picture looks somewhat different.

It isn't just the big Conservative hoohahs who are shooting themselves in the foot. The clown mentioned below was a Board of Education member in Hyde Park, New York. The article from which I'm quoting is available here.

The Board of Education Tuesday unanimously accepted the resignation of board member Kevin Post, who missed a number of meetings while fellow trustees voiced concern over comments he had posted on a conservative Web site.