Come, Take

Hope went up against Fear in the primaries Tuesday, and for the moment, fear won. The polling data, along with the split between early voters and voters who made up their minds at the last minute and voted in person, proves Hillary Clinton's last minute Swiftboating of Barack Obama worked. Specifically, there's no doubting the effectiveness of her despicable ad implying people's children will not be safe in their own beds with Obama in the Oval Office.

She's also proven there's life in the Republican strategy of campaigning on fear. If it can work now, it will work in November, no matter who wins the Democratic nomination. If this election is about fear, it's already over-- that's competing on Republican terms, not ours.

Unless, of course, Barack Obama responds decisively-- and strongly. This is his decisive moment of testing. Deplore it as we may, fear is not going to disappear from this world, nor the willingness of the unscrupulous to employ it politically. Obama has to demonstrate he is tough and strong enough to be President, so that such ads simply aren't credible.

He needs to show there's Leonidas in him, too, along with Mr. Rogers.

Come, Take in ancient Greek, or, in the English version, Come And Take Them, was King Leonidas retort to Xerxes's demand at Thermopylae that the Greeks lay down their arms. Through history that phrase has expressed the epitome of fighting spirit, that one will do what is required for the defense of one's country, even to one's own death.

It is easy to conceive that phrase coming out of some politician's mouths-- for instance Robert Kennedy or Howard Dean and, also, the post-2000 Al Gore. But not others. For instance, Michael Dukakis was never able to make that credible-- his riding on a tank brought laughter. John Kerry allowed attackers to defame his heroic war record and foster an image of irresolution and weakness. In the end Come And Take Them was not credible, and they lost.

At the moment, it's not so easy imagining those words coming out of Barack Obama's mouth. But that is an image he can change, and must. Leonidas' famous phrase is the gold standard-- if we can imagine him credibly saying that, he can win, both the nomination and the General Election. After all, we all want to be friends. But sometimes we have to stand up for ourselves.

Obama must call out Clinton for what she has done-- attacking his character in a baseless way. That's what that red phone is about, a fundamental attack on his character-- not the specifics of experience or know-how or anything like that. She is trying to frame him as Republicans have traditionally framed Democrats-- as weak, irresolute, fearful, even afraid. She is saying he is too cowardly to be President

He must turn that around and turn her asset-- her vote for the war-- back into her greatest liability, her failure of character.

He must challenge Clinton's courage as bluntly as possible-- she wasn't brave enough to stand up to George Bush. Had she come out strongly against the original Authorization Of Force Resolution, she would have placed the prestige of the Clinton White House against Bush and the Neocon's imperialist fantasy and probably stopped it. But her nerve failed. If she cannot stand up to Bush, why should we expect her to defend our Party, our country, our allies? It's a question her basic character and fortitude. How did she behave at her great moment of testing? She surrendered to the empire builder, to our modern Xerxes.

He must declare his defiance-- and tell her to Come And Take-- his states, his delegates, his voters, the nomination.

And there is more one immediate chance to prove his toughness-- by publicly and loudly firing the idiot or idiots who thought it was smart to talk of out class to the Canadians about NAFTA. They can do their talking after the election.

Dean's $100 Revolution Is Here

Lost in the coverage of the remarkable February fundraising totals of both the Obama and Clinton campaigns was a real turning point in American politics-- the full realization of the "$100 Revolution" Gov. Howard Dean called for in November 2003.

On Nov. 18th, 2003 Dean sent out a fundraising message, not in itself an unusual event, but one that would eventually change the parameters of American politics.

Beginning in the early 1960s television advertising increasingly dominated American politics. Beforehand, campaigns had raised money, and often lots of it, but there were practical limits to how much a campaign could spend. They could open large numbers of local offices, fill them with barrels of free buttons, boxes of bumper stickers and burden mailmen with bales of letters. But, fundamentally, vIctory ultimately depended on a candidate's supporters.

Television changed all that. There was almost no limit to the amount that could be spent on TV advertising. A bizarre "arms race" resulted, where a candidate's political credibility seemed to depend on his or her dominance of the airwaves. If you were drowned out, news coverage usually faltered as well.

Political leaders drifted away from their supporters and towards large donors, which was the most productive way to raise money. As a result, where the Democratic Party had once mainly represented ordinary working Americans, it increasingly became a second corporate party, where the interests of wealthy donors came first. This era peaked during the Presidency of Bill Clinton and DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe. As NAFTA or telecom "reform" demonstrated, America now had two elitist corporate parties who mainly differed on social agenda issues like abortion rights.

It's no wonder the Democratic Party nearly collapsed into irrelevance in the late 1990s and the early years of the 21st century. As Harry Truman famously said, give people a choice between a real Republican and a fake one, they'll take the real one every time. Dean's campaign manager Joe Trippi later aptly defined this period as the Era of Television Politics.

This was the prospect Dean faced when he began his campaign after the 2002 election debacle. He knew the system was broken. But how to change it? As luck would have it his campaign arrived at the same moment the Internet did. His whole campaign soon recognized its potential, and Dean sent his message:

"Today I will speak in Houston, Texas, less than a mile from Enron Tower. We all know what happened to Enron. Moral bankruptcy led to fiscal bankruptcy. Those at the top got rich by deceiving everyone else and robbing ordinary people of the future they’d earned. And the Bush Administration is following their lead. They have created a policy of Enron Economics that enriches their special interest supporters at the expense of the American people."

"Only you can stop this. We can defeat George W. Bush and his corporate interests if two million Americans contribute $100 to our campaign -- that is how we will take back the White House and restore the promise of America. If you can’t afford $100, reach out to others. Get four friends to contribute $25, or ten friends to contribute $10. If we all participate, we will take our country back... Through your support of our campaign, you have changed presidential politics. But this campaign is not just about electing a president -- it is about changing America..."

Using the Internet to raise large numbers of small donations could break the vicious cycle of television politics that had so mis-served the country. The Governor indeed was talking revolution, something comparable to Andrew Jackson's Revolution of 1828 that had returned American Democracy to the people once before.

The response was predictable: the powerful and the vested interests were threatened and they reacted accordingly, ending with the media assassination known as the "Dean Scream." They were able to stop him. But they were not able to stop the $100 Revolution.

The proof is in last month's fundraising totals.

According to the Chicago Tribune,

"One member of Obama's finance committee told the Tribune that some reports from within the campaign indicate their fundraising could hit $50 million this month."
"Even by the most conservative reading, the campaign totals have now shattered yet another ceiling—for the amount of money raised in a single month."

According to the campaign, Obama now has over one million individual supporters, who gave an average of $109 each.

What Dean prophesied, Obama has done.

But the totals from the Clinton campaign were even more important, because they came from a campaign famed for its connection to, and reliance on, big money donors, a campaign and a camp that was often bitterly opposed to Dean's vision. According to New York Newsday, Clinton brought in $35 million in February,

"The windfall represents a radical shift for a Clinton fundraising strategy long predicated on attracting a relatively small group of large contributors. About 200,000 new donors gave an average of $100 each, most of them galvanized by word of (her) loan to the campaign."

Both campaigns brought in at least a million dollars a day with Obama regularly bringing in over $2 million a day in order to reach his $50 million take for the 29 days of February.

What is equally important, because these donations mainly came in over the Internet, they were frictionless, requiring little effort. No swank banquets or cocktail parties for big donors, no phone calls begging for money, no promises made, no debts incurred-- except to the people themselves. Both campaigns will be better for it-- it's the rarest thing in politics, a true win-win.

This is a revolution in political affairs, properly understood, a real turning point in our history. Given what happened in February 2008, the era of big donor politics is finally passing. With it goes the constant pressure for parties to serve the interests of their donor base, instead of their voting base. In particular, the Democratic Party, which was so debased and corrupted by its turn to big money, can return to being the party of the people.

In an odd way, too, these dual victories have almost made campaign finance reform irrelevant, however desirable it may still be. If we can't get the big expenditures out of politics, then we can at least neutralize the corrosive effect of those costs by sinking them in a large pool of donors.

The $100 Revolution will change America-- no matter who wins. The flow of money through a system organizes it. Now that flow will organize it for ordinary people.

Gone are the days of raw deals for average people like NAFTA or tax cuts for the rich. Healthcare for everyone will come now that big money cannot derail it. Defense spending can be brought down to levels really needed for national defense. It will also make election reforms like Clean Money, Clean Elections seem, well, pretty much what we have already, and so what is the big deal, anyway? That, too, will now come.

Even the hard core, big money Clintonites will be transformed in the end. Do they really want to spend their lives on the phone pleading with rich people or kowtowing to them at fundraisers instead of doing the people's business? In fairness, I don't believe it. The attraction of big donor fundraising was that it seemed the only way to win. Now they know better. Those tedious chicken and peas dinner will never look the same again. In fact, I suspect in time they will seem intolerable. Converting your former opponents represents the greatest transformation, and the most final.

The battle is over. The $100 Revolution has won.

It is sad that Governor Dean and his campaign will likely not get the credit deserved, especially from the mainstream media. As the Bible says, and it is often quoted, prophets are without honor in their own country. But however credit is apportioned, history belongs to the history makers, and now it belongs to Howard Dean as much as it belongs to the campaigns-- both of them-- that are now his legacy.

The Surge, Mao's Rules & The Primaries

Claims the Surge is "succeeding" in Iraq appear to be confusing, even rattling some Democrats. John McCain is now mainly basing his campaign on it, and it seems to have boosted him in the Republican primaries. Meanwhile, there are growing numbers of articles like neo-con prophet Bill Kristol's in The New York Times demanding to know why Democrats "can't admit we're winning the war in Iraq." The short answer is we're not. But this uncertainty is starting to have a serious effect on the Democratic primary race.

From a long view, this race should've been in Hillary Clinton's pocket from the start-- a total non-contest. The reason it was not was because Clinton's support for the war created an opening for anti-war candidates like Obama and Edwards. The war split away the women voters who were long assumed to be Clinton stalwarts: they were repelled by her positions on Iraq.

Restoring some missing clarity on the nature of guerilla war is over due.

A better understanding of guerilla conflict will put the surge in context and puncture the euphoria being peddled by war cheerleaders like Kristol. It would also clarify the position progressives need to take in the primaries. The best starting place is Mao Tse-Tung's Rules For Guerilla Warfare. They can be summarized as:

*When the enemy advances, we retreat
*When the enemy stands, we harass
*When the enemy tires & retreats, we attack

This cycle wasn't new to Mao-- resistance fighters have followed it throughout history. One example is the patriot campaign against the Royal Army in the South during the American Revolution. Mao's cycle is responsible for the normal ebb and flow of action and activity in a guerilla war, for instance, the period of relative quiet before the Tet Offensive. This ebb and flow is also one of the most striking features of the war that most resembles our incursion into Iraq, France's misadventure in its Algerian War.

Accordingly, it should not be a surprise that last summer, Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of what had been the most active resistance group in Iraq, declared a unilateral six month cease-fire. This act alone was responsible for the most of the statistics behind the claim violence is down in Iraq. Indeed, why wouldn't violence go down when the most powerful, active force just stops shooting for awhile?

In a sense, we were not responsible for this part of the decline in violence, and that part was due only indirectly to our actions, and-- very importantly-- it means we do not hold the initiative in that area.

Why would al-Sadr call a ceasefire? Because he is not an idiot. He understands what he is about: fighting an urban guerilla war. When his enemy advanced, he retreated, just as Mao stipulated. Al-Sadr has a satellite dish, an internet connection, and probably very good intel reports from his supporters in the Iraqi government inside the Green Zone (our supposed allies) and knows full well that the surge is unsustainable.

In order to create the surge, the Pentagon had to first scrape the bottom of the barrel to dredge up the man and woman power to find the extra brigades. Duty tours in Iraq were extended to 15 months, with the time back stateside to rest, retrain and rebuild war weary units slashed.

To put this in perspective, before D-Day the U.S. Army built up for two and a half years. But from D-Day to VE-Day, only eleven months passed. Each duty tour in Iraq is four months longer than the war in Northern Europe in WWII. And unlike WWII, some of these soldiers, marines, aircrew and sailors have already done multiple tours in Iraq, in some cases as many as two or three previous tours. The U.S. military is being ground to powder by over-deployments. 58% of new West Point graduates now do not reenlist after their first mandatory term of service. That means the future officer corps of the U.S. Army is being gutted. The Army is being broken by Iraq.

What's more immediately perilous, is that essentially all our reserves were thrown in to make the surge. The U.S. Army has almost never been "all in." It was all in during the Battle Of The Bulge-- there were no reserves. It was make or break. Gen. Washington went all in during the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. If he had failed, there was nothing to fall back and the Revolution was over. But other than that, it is hard to see where and when the U.S. Army was ever all in. It was never all in, in Vietnam: the Guard and Reserve was never even called up. Ditto Korea. In WWI 250,000 fresh troops were arriving in France every month. Even in the Civil War, only the Confederate Army was all in-- the Union always had plenty more troops available, particularly in the big fortification regiments up and down the coast and facing Canada.

The surge cannot be sustained, everyone in the Pentagon knows it, so does al-Sadr and the other Iraqi guerilla fighters. Why should he hurl his troops against a force that has to be withdrawn before long anyway? That makes no sense. No, instead, like a classic guerilla fighter, he can wait to shift to the next phase, as the surge is inevitably drawn down.

That means the moment of greatest peril may well be approaching U.S. forces in Iraq, which is why U.S. commanders, as opposed to Bush himself, or his ideologically blinkered neo-con cheerleaders, are considerably more reserved about the future in Iraq.

In a widely overlooked but major story, on January 8th, in an address at the Heritage Foundation, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle Eastern Affairs Mark Kimmitt said 2008 will be “far more difficult” than 2007 for the U.S. strategy because “it depends far more on the Iraqis themselves to show progress on key legislation, on their economy, and reconciliation.” Kimmitt predicted only a mild chance that “surge” security gains will last: "2008 and beyond will be a success, the surge will be a success, if the gains in security can be translated into gains in stability…if I had to put a number to it, maybe it’s three in 10, maybe it’s 50-50, if we play our cards right."
Chances Of Surge No More Than 50-50

Maybe three in ten, maybe 50-50. Given the natural "can-do" spirit of military cultures, and the usual White House pressure to spin success, the real number is probably the three in ten. That's like playing russian roulette with a revolver with ten cylinders, seven of which are loaded.

Everyone in the Pentagon also knows Mao's rules by heart. And that brings up al-Sadr's ceasefire. As the surge is drawn down, not only will the various insurgent groups be facing a weaker U.S. force but, in a development completely different than at any point in the war so far, the insurgents will be facing a U.S. force that cannot be reinforced, precisely because the surge used those units up. The surge was a one-off. It cannot be repeated. The units that were sent cannot be sent back. If the U.S. Army and Marines get in trouble facing a big wave of attacks, there are no longer any forces to ride to the rescue. The force that will remain in Iraq is on its own.

Something else has happened along the way that could also increase the danger ahead: as part of its pacification strategy, the U.S. military has essentially been trying to buy peace by paying and arming the so-called "awakening councils." That is, they are trying to bribe their way to peace.

According to a recent story in the Boston Globe:

"the funneling of money to Sunni sheiks has alarmed some US officials and members of the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, who fear that the Sunnis could resume their attacks against either the government or Shi'ite militias if and when the cash dries up."

"They say the United States needs to develop a longer-term strategy to ensure that the sheiks continue to support the Iraqi government when the US funds disappear."

"We're not thinking through the impact of abetting further corruption and perpetuating tribal power," said a senior US military adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity."

Andrew Bracevich makes much the same case in Surge To Nowhere in today's Washington Post.

What's interesting about this is that this is really a form of appeasement-- so it is amusing to see the neo-cons, who try to view every foreign policy issue through the lens of the 1938 Munich Conference, now supporting it.

We are arming men without gaining or conditioning their support on a political settlement. It's temporizing with guns and suitcases of cash, hoping something develops later. But, since there is no political settlement, and the prospects for one still seem very dim, there is nothing to stop those weapons from being turned on American forces. If this policy of appeasement fails-- and here the neo-con's long standing aversion to appeasement may be right-- the level of violence in the Iraqi civil war and danger to the remaining American troops will be that much higher.

Will this gloomy scenario occur? Will there be a bloody Spring offensive as the U.S. garrison inevitably shrinks? There's no way of knowing. It may not happen. But even top Pentagon officials seem gloomy about our prospects. In either case, the likelihood of a political settlement is low, because the parties in Iraq do not appear to want one, and this is widely conceded.

Could all this policy of bribery and appeasement be a final riverboat gamble by our gambler president, the last double-down, to buy a temporary lull, just to get the Republicans through the election before all hell breaks loose? Maybe. It would certainly fit the pattern of the last five years. However, the draw down will be complete by summer, well before the election but, unfortunately, after the primaries.

One thing is clear from this: progressives should not fear sticking to their positions against the war. What we are witnessing is partly the normal ebb and flow of guerilla conflict, the rest a perilous bet on bribery. Either way, the Iraq war is far from over, and, as an issue it is not "off the table."

That takes us back to the primaries.

If HIllary Clinton had come out against the original Authorization Of Force Resolution, she would have put the prestige and credibility of the Clinton White House against the war, which would probably have prevented it from happening. Her responsibility for this war is real, and far greater than other Senators who voted for it, because of her status as the former First Lady and self-proclaimed co-president, a status that is the basis of her current campaign. She cannot reduce her responsibility for the war without undermining her own claim to the White House.

But because the war issue is has been slowly drifting off Democrat's front burner, many voters, including women voters, are beginning to forget these facts. The exit polls on New Hampshire appear to indicate women voters have started gravitating back to Clinton, a phenomena confirmed by pollster Andrew Kohut in today's New York Times.

That opened the path to her victory in New Hampshire. Candidates like Edwards and Obama need to keep reminding voters, particularly women voters, of Clinton's role in this bloody mess, or the window of opportunity opened up by Clinton's support for the war may well close.

Governor Dean showed Democrats the way back five years ago by speaking out strongly against the war.

"What I want to know... is why in the world the Democratic party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq?" -- DNC Winter Meeting, February 21, 2003.

Amazingly, what he was saying then is every bit as as relevant today. There can be no Great American Restoration that Dean talked about, no Taking Back America, that is, returning America to its original priorities, without taking on the war and the political forces that back it. Progressives must continue their attack on the Iraq war, keep its failures fresh in everyone's mind, and the culpability of those responsible. Indeed, there is nothing to be gained in slacking off, and little to be risked in keeping up the pressure.

Political Earthquakes Out of Iowa and New Hampshire

It's now clear there is a great upheaval underway in the Democratic Party.

I group I belong to, Democracy For America, along with others, pushed for a progressive win in Iowa, and they got it: Obama-Edwards, first and second, a more than 2-1 victory for progressives.

What has happened is really the continuation of what Governor Dean started five years ago-- to move the Democratic Party back to its roots and away from another "me-too" party of corporate power. Both Obama and Edwards ran smart, 21st century campaigns in Iowa, campaigns based on people power, not money power.

It is very important to note that Republican Mike Huckabee did the same thing and beat a much more heavily funded Mitt Romney. Both Clinton and Romney spent tens of millions for their poor showings.

The days of top-down campaigns, where the goal was to raise as much money as possible, in order to crash a truckload of cash into a TV station, like a suicide bombing, only for ads, has come to an end. So, too, the era of overpaid campaign consultants.

Joe Trippi, Governor Dean's former campaign manager, and now John Edward's chief campaign strategist, aptly dubbed that time the era of Broadcast Politics. It started in the 1950s with the rise of television, and it upended our democracy, turning both parties into institutions that represented rich donors, not constituents.

The purpose of television advertising is to "sell the eyeballs" of viewers to advertisers-- that's how TV stations and networks make money. Popular programs bring in more "eyeballs" to be sold. Similarly, the purpose of Broadcast Politics was to deliver voter's attention to a candidate. It was not about finding or getting elected officials to represent constituents in government. This change reversed the direction of accountability in our political system.

Like the companies that bought advertisements, those who could pay for this process actually held power, not the public, the owners of our democracy. This negative transformation caused both the corruption and gross trivialization of modern American politics. It's no wonder on issue after issue, both parties failed average Americans as our country steadily drifted to the right. As American political life degenerated and also increasingly failed to address their concerns, tens of millions of Americans, reduced to passive spectators, tuned politics out, and then dropped out of the system. Political participation was no longer part of their life.

Governor Dean talked of a Great American Restoration. Maybe now we are going to finally get it. The Obama-Edwards win is also, in every real way, Howard Dean's victory, for it is his vision of American Democracy that has prevailed. The Governor realized the answer to our political dilemma was to change the dynamics by getting discouraged voters who have dropped out to return to participating in the political process, to turn them from passive spectators, for whom politics was something they received, into participants and the joint masters of their own destiny. Bringing in tens of thousands of new people to the caucuses-- over 100,000-- is precisely what Obama and Edwards did. There looks to be a record turnout in New Hampshire as well. In this sense both are true successors to the Dean campaign.

This political earthquake is also, it should be noted, in good measure a repudiation of Hillary Clinton's votes on Iraq. Democrats expected their leaders to stand up to George Bush and his criminal war of aggression, were furious when they did not get that strong leadership, and are still upset. This failure too, ultimately, owed much to the reversal of the direction of accountability that Broadcast Politics represented.

Democrats Act As A Caucus: Republicans Act As A Party

Given the exposes in the Sunday, March 11th Washington Post on the House Democrats' divisions on Iraq, there is growing reason to doubt anything effective will be done by the new Democratic Congress, despite its November victory, to end the war in Iraq, or, according to late reports, do anything to prevent an attack on Iran.

There is a particularly distressing aspect to the current "debate" among Democrats in the House of Representatives on what to do. As party we do not seem to be able to learn from the successes of conservatives. A major reason Republicans are so united and disciplined is that their leaders are not afraid of going to their rank and file to discipline errant members.

Democrats in Congress are acting as a caucus: Republicans are acting as a party. This is a major reason why they win.

Last November the American people, and Democrats in particular, went to the polls and gave Congress to the Democratic Party in the expectation they would act decisively to do the right thing, and also act in the national interest, to bring the Iraq war to a conclusion. If there are Democratic members of Congress who are seeking to subvert that mandate, then the leadership must act as Republican leaders have in the past. It must expose who those members are so that the people back home who put them into office can bring them back to acting as representatives, not free agents.

We need to understand the consequences of this kind of free agentry. Democrats "won the war" last November in retaking Congress, but now are "losing the peace" because a small number of individual always seem to succeed in dragging the Democratic Party in Congress down to the lowest common denominator. By threatening to vote against their Party's agenda and with Republicans, they force our Congressional leadership to approach them on bended knee, begging and pleading with them to do the right thing. By comparison, the Republicans lost the election, but they are having their way because they do not tolerate this kind of prima donna behavior.

Let us also be honest in who these obstructionists represent: certainly not the people of their districts. If any of the number of bills to end the war by the end of 2007, or ever earlier, were put to a referendum in each congressional district, it is doubtful that so much as a single district would vote to continue the war into 2008.

If these spoke-in-the-wheel Democrats are not representing the people of their districts who sent them to Washington, then exactly who do they represent? I think we all know the answer: big money, including companies like Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin and others that have a vested interest in the war continuing. We've all known for a long time Republicans aren't the only ones with a problem with a "culture of corruption." One only has to look over a list of grantors to the Democratic Leadership Conference to see this problem made manifest.

In the face of an issue of such enormous gravity, both moral and practical, it is well past the time of being "nice guys." It is time for the Democratic leadership to get tough on the miscreants who always seem to be seeking to subvert our party's standing for anything other than cynical calculation, opportunism and rank self-interest. Some members of Congress need to be reminded this is not pro sports. They are not free agents looking for the highest offer. They are the agents of the people who voted for them.

If it comes to it, it would be better to actually lose on a bill to end the war, than vote for the pointless fraud presently being prepared as a solution to ending the war by October 2008. It is the height of naivety to think this bill will perform as claimed, were it actually to be enacted (and it will not). If enacted, Bush will lie in the face of its benchmarks and under his radical theory of a unitary executive he will place a signing statement on it exempting himself from any provision he doesn't care for, which, effectively, would be all of them. By Autumn of 2008 the troops will still be there, which is the Republican plan: dumping the mess on the next president, presumably a Democrat, and then blaming Democrats. What will Congress do when this happens come October 2008? Impeach Bush with three or less months left in his term?

The only answer is to use Congress' budgetary power to cut off the money. If the spoke-in-the-wheel members balk at voting with the people who elected them, Democratic leaders need to go to the nation. The votes will come around, or at least if not this time, then the next. They need to start acting as the leaders of a party, not a caucus.

Obviously, this approach applies not only to the war, but any other number of issues like a single payer healthcare system or curbing CO2 emissions that have powerful monied interests that run contrary to the public interest, but sing a financial siren song some Democrats choose to listen to.

Uncle John's Bullet's Burning

You may have heard about Sen. George Allen, who made up his own, new racial slur this week. (We really needed another one of those, didn't we?) Now video has surfaced of Allen dressed as a Confederate general merrily singing Confederate songs of treason: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/19/235221/760 In the dKos pic he's on the right in the white hat with the three stars on his lapels. Click the pic to see the video.

There's also a great dKos posting that my late mother would've loved on how the Confederate cause was simply traitorous and how the Confederacy is still a factor in driving right wing politics. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/20/12175/6193

You see, as a very young child Mom was sometimes looked after by her elderly Uncle John, who was a disabled Civil War Union Army veteran. Uncle John was shot in the chest in the famous Cornfield at Antietam. A musket ball lodged very near his heart and he was never able to work again (he had a full pension), but when it got hot, he could feel it and apparently it did cause him discomfort. He would pace and tell her stories of the War and taught her old Civil War songs, like Tenting Tonight, which she sometimes spontaneously would whistle even late in life. As the neighborhood children put it, "Uncle John's bullet's burning." They would all come and gather around.

Mom-- we actually always called her Ma, the old country Yankee appellation-- ultimately succumbed to Alzheimer's, so you can understand how deeply they stayed with her. She always regarded the Confederates as traitors (as did Uncle John.)

To her, and this is the point of all this, the Republican Party, of which she has always been a member, was still the the party of Lincoln. That a man like George Allen, who isn't even from the South (he grew up in Southern California, of all places!), could be seriously considered for the Presidency of her and Old Abe's party would have confounded her to no end-- as it should all of us. It's a sad commentary on how far the Republican Party has fallen, that today it has become the Neo-Confederate Party.