Martin Wisse

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Top Stories Wednesday 06 Nov



Counterspin has written a series of posts on what the Democratic Party should learn from the election:



POST ELECTION REBUILDING STRATEGY: The Democrats need to rediscover their souls. They’ve been too bogged down in trying to find wedge issues that appeal to strategic voting blocs [like Precription Drugs for Seniors] than in developing an overarching governinig philosophy, and STICKING to it, even if it doesn’t initially poll well.


Atrios is disappointed about the
election results:

Well, bugger. Gave up and went to bed as I couldn’t take it anymore.



My post election wrap up is that the Democrats believed they shouldn’t make this a national election. They were wrong. Gephardt should go, and probably Daschle as well.


Here comes the flat tax!


Here comes GOP uterus control!

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Top Stories Tuesday 05 Nov


FABlog has good advice for anybody
worrying about the possibility of The Draft being reinstated:

If George W. Bush and his cronies have their way we will have a war that should lead to the re-instatment of the draft. My advice? Check the “Whoopie Box.” Don’t go. Stay home and tend to our Men in Uniform — by helping them out of it.


Counterspin goes back
to Jeb Bush’s abysmal record on child protection:

THE DEAD BABY CAUCUS: Notice the absence of any kind of protest or complaint from “pro-life” forces about Jeb’s abysmal Child Protection record? Babies and young children are being slaughtered due to Jeb’s incompetent Department of Children and Families, and the “pro-life” crowd says absolutely nothing. In fact, they SUPPORT Jeb!

Any so-called “pro-life” advocate who votes for Jeb Bush is a colossal hypocrite. They demonstrate, conclusively, that their “concern” for children ENDS the minute a child is actually born.


Terminus is upset about the
Republican’s treatment of black voters:

The point is that Republicans don’t want blacks to vote. But you can’t blame them for that. What we can blame them for is actively, and illegally, preventing them from exercising this precious Constitutional right. But as long as they get away with it, they’ll keep doing it. Especially when they are running in elections so tight that a few thousand illegally disenfranchised blacks make all the difference.

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Top Stories Monday 04 Nov


The special Election weblog has a story to make your blood boil:



Unless turnout is ridiculously low, there is no way that voters in Broward county will have enough time to vote using the new touch screen machines. It is estimated that it should take on average 15 minutes per voter. There are 987,000 registered voters in the county. There are 5765 machines. With, say, 500,000 voters turning out that means 86 voters per machine. With polls scheduled to be open for 12 hours, that means that just over half of voters would have time to vote – assuming an even distribution of voters across machines. Election officials in Florida have declined to allow paper ballots to supplement the machines in case of long lines, and two congressmen are taking it to Ashcroft and possibly to federal court.


Full details are here.

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US politics
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Through the Looking Glass on the Massachusetts governational election race:

Yet in an important race in what should be a Democratic stronghold state, the professionals running her campaign aren’t stressing the issues, but are instead going straight for the sleaze. They have somehow convinced themselves that voters don’t want to hear which candidate supports government programs which actually matter to them, but could be motivated instead by hearing about factories in Nebraska in the 1980s. The latest “issue” they’re flogging to the press is an absurd claim that there were sexist implications when Romney described O’Brien’s attacks as “unbecoming”. “Unbecoming” is a fine word to use. For both of them.



And so it goes nationally. We have an administration with unpopular positions on the environment, business issues, and many other things, which is trying to gain power for its adherents in Congress by distracting the voters from real issues, turning politics instead into a debased freakshow of charges and countercharges. There are two messages here — one being that government is corrupt, and involvement with it is unbecoming (a truly fine word); the other, which comes through loud and clear on a network news whose coverage of “politics” and the legislative process is dominated by horse-race analysis and personal smears, is that this unseemly business has nothing to do with the voters. Which is wholly false. The horse-race analysis and personal smears may have nothing to do with the lives of the voters — but politics does. Very much.


Pandagon questions Forrester’s ad campaign:



No link, but Forrester is running ads now with newspapers basically saying, “We didn’t like the switch for Lautenberg, so, um…vote for Forrester.”


How bad of a candidate do you have to be when the sole bit of advocacy you can put forward on the part of newspapers is that a vote for you is a rebuke to someone else? I swear to God, give me a briefcase full of unmarked $20 bills, and I will run any Republican campaign into the ground. It costs less than what they’re doing now.

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bigotry, Blogs, US politics
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The Sideshow on anti-semitism and anti-zionism:

The religious aspects of the situation can be terrifying, but let’s not pretend that it’s only the Islamic world that’s being horrible and bigoted about it. The Pentecostal Christians who “support” Israel with such fervor are possibly even more nasty and dangerous than Israel’s overt enemies. Virtually all of them are extremely anti-semitic, and the outcome of their planned “defense” of Israel is even worse for Israelis than merely dissolving the state. We’re talking about people who aspire to seeing virtually everyone in the Middle-east, Muslims and Jews alike, wiped out.



So let’s be clear: You can not distinguish anti-semitism merely on the basis of support for Israel – and I’m not just talking about the particular policies of this or that Israeli government: I mean any degree of Zionism or anti-zionism at all. There are plenty of Zionists who are anti-semitic, and there are even anti-zionism who would be perfectly happy to have their daughter marry a Jew just as long as Israel itself no longer existed.


Body and Soul:
Diary of a blogging hiatus:



Day 1: Life is better if you don’t read the New York Times.

Day 2: We are burdened by the obvious and nevertheless absurd idea that nonfiction is real and fiction is false. Newspapers are full of lies and there is nothing as honest as a Raymond Carver or Alice Munro story. I don’t think I ever want to bother reading nonfiction again.

Day 3: The New Yorker’s fiction isn’t as good as it used to be.

Day 4: I should at least look at the headlines. I mean, I’m still a citizen and all, right? I ought to have some notion of what’s going on in the world. It doesn’t require me to express an opinion or anything.

Day 5: I should save that article. I might want to write about it if I start blogging again.


Counterspin:



A VOTE FOR JEB IS A VOTE FOR MORE DEAD KIDS: The Miami Herald has just published an explosive report on the appalling state of Florida’s Child Welfare system under Jeb Bush.