Here is a really depressing article about Iraqs Army:

It puts my early post in a grim light.

Howard Dean said Saturday that positive responses from key supporters have reinforced his determination to keep talking tough. Some congressional Democrats have suggested that the party chairman should tone down his rhetoric.

"People want us to fight," Dean told the national party's executive committee. "We are here to fight."

.....

One of Dean's predecessors at the DNC, Don Fowler said, "The controversy over this statement or that statement is a blip and only a blip." But Fowler complained about leading Democrats who aired their gripes last week. "Even if they don't like it, they should have enough sense not to make those comments," Fowler said.
....

Dean said he is bringing in $1 million weekly and that $100,000 was received, unsolicited, from online donors during a 24-hour period in the past week as the furor over his remarks grew.

Records show the DNC took in $13.8 million over the first three months of 2005, compared with $8.4 million during the same period in 2003, the last year without a federal election. Terry McAuliffe was party chairman then.

Dean has given more than $1 million from the DNC to state parties. He said the DNC plans to share some of the money Dean raises for the national party when he is in a state. Both of these moves are winning him support from state party leaders.

read full article from Associated Press

Relating info From Liberal Oasis:

According to ABC’s The Note:

...some Democrats believe Dean's ascension to party chair has generated unusual ill-will among some of the party's top fundraisers.

While The Hill, in reporting that three DNC fundraisers quit on Dean because of his focus on cultivating small donors, said:

Democratic fundraisers say that there is growing concern over what they call Dean’s lack of attention to major donors and that donors are much less likely to give money if they don’t have sufficient opportunity to meet with the party’s leadership.

All LiberalOasis can say to that is: Halley-Frickin-Loo-Yah.

Dean is attempting to fully put the party in the hands of the people and minimize the influence of corporate interests.

And the big money guys don’t like it.

.the congressional wing of the Democratic Party never liked him...

But Dean can’t succeed in empowering us in the grassroots, if we don’t empower him.

The Doubting Dems are fueling reports that Dean’s fundraising is lagging.

Media Matters shows how that is a “baseless claim,” but perception becomes reality.

Just like in the presidential primaries, the media won’t respect Dean until the money is unequivocally on the table.

When the media attacked Dean then, supporters responded by fueling Dean’s coffers.

Dean is under attack again. Let’s respond by filling the DNC coffers.

You can donate via LiberalOasis by clicking here.

GET OUT THOSE CHECK BOOKS! We have to get behind Dean, this is less about him and more about putting an end to the dominance of the inside the beltway corporate funded permanent minority strategy.

From a DCCC @ stake email:

Over the past two years, there has been a growing discussion within the press corps about how to cover the Republicans in power. How does one present a "fair and balanced" discussion when one side is willing to completely disregard the truth, without allowing a "he said - she said" in which ascertaining the truth is a hopeless exercise for the audience? How do you report on shameless deception and corruption when those words are essentially banned from the journalistic vocabulary? All of this came up again with the revelation of the "Downing Street Memo" - and the utter silence that followed for nearly a month in the American media.

The New York Review of Books showed this week that perhaps it is not so difficult as it seems, though, in a long, blistering piece entitled "Selling Washington." Author Elizabeth Drew closes with this passage:

"The effects of the new, higher level of corruption on the way the country is governed are profound. Not only is legislation increasingly skewed to benefit the richest interests, but Congress itself has been changed. The head of a public policy strategy group told me, 'It's not about governing anymore. The Congress is now a transactional institution. They don't take risks. So when a great moral issue comes up - like war - they can't deal with it.' The theory that ours is a system of one-person-one-vote, or even that it's a representative democracy, is challenged by the reality of power and who really wields it. Barney Frank argues that 'the political system was supposed to overcome the financial advantage of the capitalists, but as money becomes more and more influential, it doesn't work that way.'

"Two House Democrats, Rahm Emanuel, of Illinois, and Martin Meehan, of Massachusetts, have introduced legislation to tighten the rules on privately funded travel, strengthen the lobbying disclosure rules, and slow down the revolving door by which former members of Congress take jobs with the trade associations and, after a year, can lobby their former colleagues. Some Republicans are talking about placing more restrictive rules on trips. But the record shows that new regulations can often be evaded.

"Perhaps the greatest deterrent to ethical transgression is that members of Congress don't want to read unfavorable stories about themselves. A Republican lobbyist says that the biggest factor in the growth of corruption has been 'the expectation that all this goes undetected and unenforced.' He added, 'If Jack Abramoff goes to jail, that will be a big message to this town." Since the scandal broke over Abramoff's payments on behalf of DeLay, members of Congress have been scrambling to amend their travel reports, in some cases listing previously unreported trips, or filling in missing details. Public outrage can also have an inhibiting effect: after the Republicans changed the ethics rules earlier this year to protect DeLay, the adverse reaction in the press and from constituents was strong enough to make the Republican leadership back down.

"But the public can't become outraged about something that isn't brought to its attention. The press tends to pounce on the big scandals but usually fails to cover the more common ones that take place every day. Some of the politicians I talked to hoped that the scandal over DeLay and Abramoff might lead to real changes, including more prosecutions and stricter disclosure requirements. But even they admit that, like so many other scandals, it may simply blow over."

President Bush yesterday traveled to Ohio to talk about terrorism, but he arrived in the midst of the biggest statewide scandal in years and to a crowd of angry "Coingate" protesters.

The President made the visit six days after Republican officials said Mr. Bush will return $4,000 in campaign contributions from Mr. Noe and his wife, Bernadette.

The Republican National Committee will return $2,000 contributed by Mr. Noe, who faces state and federal investigations for allegedly misappropriating millions in state money and allegedly violating federal campaign finance laws for funneling money to the Bush-Cheney campaign through others.

The money being returned by Mr. Bush and the RNC will be given to a charity, but one has not been chosen, said Aaron McLear, an RNC spokesman and a former aide to Governor Bob Taft.

The United Steel Workers yesterday said Mr. Bush should return the more than $100,000 that Mr. Noe raised for the President's re-election campaign last year - a level that made him a "pioneer" in the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Mr. McLear said there are no plans to return those funds.

Toni Brandon, 33, said she hadn't read or heard any news about Mr. Noe or the Bureau of Workers' Compensation scandal. She and her eight-year-old son waited on a small hill near I-70 to try to catch a glimpse of the President as he headed toward the event."We love the President. He's a Christian and these people are evil'' said Brandon.

From Toledo Blade

Are there still any people naive enough to think that we can reason, inform, or win over these Pavlov’s dopes? Their attitude is "I don't know anything but you are evil if you don't like Bush". These cretins must be shamed back into their holes with nothing less than the angry truth!

AND [rant]

Average American's must be made to see and identify these type of frightening fanatics with the Republican Politicians that ride their votes to elected office. We should hang these fruit cakes like albatrosses around the necks of any Politicians willing to court their votes. God knows that the "mainstream media" saddles us with every shallow celebrity or Wackoh Activist they can find [or manufacture]

Democrats [and the Main Stream Media] allow Republicans to use these nuts to will elections and yet don't make them pay ANY price for being associated with such rabid zealot supports. Yet when any progressives get too mouthy Democrats immediately distance themselves from them. An amazing double standard and a republican laid path that leads to a permanent minority for us.

I also getting so sick of hearing from business-as-usual Democrats and Moderates that we have to be respectful and treat these people's insanity, bigotry, stupidity, and hatred as if they are ideas and beliefs worthy of respectful consideration.

From Daily Kos:

The story notes the Army is on pace to miss its annual recruitment target by 14,000. That's an entire Army division.

from LA Times:

Read more at Daily Kos

It takes approx 13 weeks for a raw American recruit to become a trained soldier and go over to Iraq.

There is absolutely no reason why the Iraqi government can not train their soldiers at or near the same rate. Even if they have to fly their soldiers over here [or Europe] for training and fly them back.

The reason they do not is that there is absolutely no incentive for the Iraqi government to take on the tremendous cost and responsibility of defending their own country especially while the best military in the world is doing it for free.

We are giving them hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of our children, friends, and spouses [and parents] so they can sit around and argue over parliamentary procedures or the wording of their constitution.

The Bush Administration is willing to close schools and fire teachers if they don't meet certain federally mandated standards. Why don’t we have any standards for foreign governments who are living off our “welfare” and the blood of our soldiers? For the amount of money we have spent SO FAR in Iraq we could have hired over 3 million addition new teachers, 13,887 of them in NH alone. With the amount of money we have spent SO FAR in Iraq we could have paid for 23,240,863 children to attend Head Start.

With all this money gone to Iraq and even more planned to go what will we have to give up so Iraq Politicians can twiddle their thumbs some more? Social Security, Public Schools, Interstate Highways?

And that is just the money! What is the value of an American soldier’s life? Somehow I don't think that it means as much to the politicians in Iraq as it does to us. I am beginning to question whether it means very much at all to the politicians in Washington.

The federal government should immediately set quotas for Iraqi troop training that the Iraq government has to meet and for every Iraq troop that is trained and ready ONE AMERICAN TROOP MUST COME HOME!!!!

Of coarse there is the very real possibility that the Bush administration isn't interested in getting out of Iraq. There is much talk about permanent military bases and the American military becoming the permanent defensive force for Iraq in exchange for access to their oil. AS of this writing we have lost 1685 soldiers in Iraq [another 12762 have been wounded] is there anyone anywhere in this country who is willing to see that number go to 1686 so gas prices will go down?

How's Iraq going, anyone? 

well maybe not a cancer... more like a carcinogenic leach of some sort.. that while is sucks your blood out it spits back in radioactive poisons that make every remaining second of your life more painful then the last….

The DLC [or democratic leadership council] is basically all the democrats that are corporate whores. These are the politicians that represent the interests of lobbyists and corporations FIRST AND FOREMOST above all others.

These are the politicians that exemplify the concept that “the 2 major parties are the same” that “all politicians are owned by lobbyists for large corporations.” These are the politicians that put a lie to every progressive idea the democratic party tries to stand for.

These are the politicians that most exemplify all the reasons Americans no longer participate or believe in their government.

These are the cowards, the democratic party, that are killing democracy. [Or at least willing accomplices to the murder.]

They have set the democrats on a path to permanent minority status. They have handed over the government to the republicans and corporations. They have betray ever ideal of the democratic party, progressive politics, and democracy at the whims of the highest bidding lobbyists.

ALSO... they wrote this craptastic PRO-CAFTA article

Read all this info about why CAFTA is bad bad bad bad bad bad bad…..

More from sirotablog about CAFTA See here, here, here, here and here.

Check out Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D) courageous comments in the New York Times today.

Abetting the conservative agenda, Clinton said in some of her sharpest language, is a Washington press corps that has become a pale imitation of the Watergate-era reporters who are being celebrated this month amid the identification of the anonymous Washington Post source, Deep Throat. “The press is missing in action, with all due respect,” she said. “Where are the investigative reporters today? Why aren’t they asking the hard questions? It’s shocking when you see how easily they fold in the media today. They don’t stand their ground. If they’re criticized by the White House, they just fall apart. I mean, c’mon, toughen up, guys, it’s only our Constitution and country at stake. Let’s get some spine.”

from thinkprogress blog

I am tired of hearing uninformed people parrot the talking point that Hilary isn't "ready" for the presidency or that she is a "bad choice" because the right wing would go after her. Or that old DEAN cop out… she’s too LIBERAL!!

HEY WAKEUP!! The right wing will go after anyone... even a goody two shoes war hero...

AND guess what a lot of people LOVE her

AND a lot of WOMAN who don't vote would vote for her just because she is a woman.

AND GUESS WHAT... it's about time dems ran a candidate that the public actually gives a damn about.. one way or the other.... instead sticking to ho hum candidates that they think they can sneak under the radar of the right wing smear machine…

Energy Bill Gives Handouts to Enron Execs

Los Alamos Lab Whistleblower Beaten

Supreme Court Rules against Medical Marijuana

Pentagon Ignored Guerrilla Warfare Warning

Amnesty Chief: US Kills Prisoners in Secret Jails

Citigroup lost a box of computer tapes containing personal information about 3.9 million customers.

from C4AP

An artcle in the NY Times found:

Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000.

Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000.

From 1950 to 1970, for example, for every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162, according to the Times analysis. From 1990 to 2002, for every extra dollar earned by those in the bottom 90 percent, each taxpayer at the top brought in an extra $18,000.

The analysis examined only income reported on tax returns. The Treasury Department says that the very wealthiest find ways, legal and illegal, to shelter a lot of income from taxes. So the gap between the very richest and everyone else is almost certainly much larger.

..some of the wealthiest Americans, including Warren E. Buffett, George Soros and Ted Turner, have warned that such a concentration of wealth can turn a meritocracy into an aristocracy and ultimately stifle economic growth by putting too much of the nation's capital in the hands of inheritors rather than strivers and innovators.

Bruce R. Bartlett, an advocate of lower taxes who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations [said] "As long as people think they have a chance of getting to the top, they just don't care how rich the rich are."

And that my friends is how the dumbest president in living memory is able to pull this off. Every Joe Lunchpail thinks he has a chance to get rich. We need to not only make the point that the rich have the game rigged in their favor BUT ALSO that they are keeping everyone else from getting richer.

Read this [in newspeak of all places]

Living and working in Iraq, it's hard not to succumb to despair. At last count America has pumped at least $7 billion into reconstruction projects, with little to show for it but the hostility of ordinary Iraqis, who still have an 18 percent unemployment rate. Most of the cash goes to U.S. contractors who spend much of it on personal security. Basic services like electricity, water and sewers still aren't up to prewar levels. Electricity is especially vital in a country where summer temperatures commonly reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet only 15 percent of Iraqis have reliable electrical service. In the capital, where it counts most, it's only 4 percent.

The most powerful army in human history can't even protect a two-mile stretch of road. The Airport Highway connects both the international airport and Baghdad's main American military base, Camp Victory, to the city center. At night U.S. troops secure the road for the use of dignitaries; they close it to traffic and shoot at any unauthorized vehicles. More troops and more helicopters could help make the whole country safer. Instead the Pentagon has been drawing down the number of helicopters. And America never deployed nearly enough soldiers. They couldn't stop the orgy of looting that followed Saddam's fall. Now their primary mission is self-defense at any cost--which only deepens Iraqis' resentment.

The four-square-mile Green Zone, the one place in Baghdad where foreigners are reasonably safe, could be a showcase of American values and abilities. Instead the American enclave is a trash-strewn wasteland of Mad Max-style fortifications. The traffic lights don't work because no one has bothered to fix them. The garbage rarely gets collected. Some of the worst ambassadors in U.S. history are the GIs at the Green Zone's checkpoints. They've repeatedly punched Iraqi ministers, accidentally shot at visiting dignitaries and behave (even on good days) with all the courtesy of nightclub bouncers--to Americans and Iraqis alike. Not that U.S. soldiers in Iraq have much to smile about. They're overworked, much ignored on the home front and widely despised in Iraq, with little to look forward to but the distant end of their tours--and in most cases, another tour soon to follow. Many are reservists who, when they get home, often face the wreckage of careers and family.

read full article here