Howard Dean

american job loses and BUSH

alex papp — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:36:26 -0400

the job loses in america have grown to the millions since bushy-boy was illigally elected in 2000!! the democrats need to start telling the voters how they are going to straighten out the economy and bring good paying jobs back to this country!!! people loosing their homes and jobs want to know when will things start to get better????? the democratic party has a ship load of ammunition to sink the republicans in november,but they are not using it!!!eighty-five percent of workers polled said they join a union if the act to join one was available.there was a bill that passed the house that would let workers join a union without a secret ballot but the senate voted the bill down. the democrats need to champion causes like this to win the whitehouse in november!!!the middle class is dieing in a sea of red ink brought on by bush-cheney ,the iraq war, the mortgage melt-down,fuel-prices,ect!!! Let me tell the democrats that this election is critical for the party,loose i8n november and life long democrats lke myself will abandan the party FORGOOD !!!!!!! alex papp NORTH CAROLINA....

Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives

Chip — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 15:24:16 -0400

According to Democratic candidates who ran for House of Representative seats in 2006, Rahm Emanuel, then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took sides during the Democratic primary elections, favoring conservative candidates, including former Republicans, and sidelining candidates who were running in favor of withdrawal from Iraq....

...According to Doug Thornell, spokesperson for the DCCC, "The policy of the DCCC is not to get involved in primaries, unless there is an unusual circumstance that demands it. I cannot speculate on what those circumstances might be. The majority of these cases [2008 primaries] will be left up to the voters on the ground. Meddling hasn't taken place this cycle, and for the most part last cycle. That isn't an accurate way to describe what happened. We are cognizant of having local support for our candidates."...

However, a source close to the DNC indicated that there was disagreement between Dean and Emanuel over election tactics. In his recent book, "The Thumpin'," Naftali Bendavid, a journalist who spent months inside the DCCC operation and at Emanuel's side, reported a heated conversation between Dean, Emanuel and Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) regarding election strategies of the DCCC and the DNC. At the time, Dean was focusing on helping local organizations across the country to mobilize their communities to support Democrats. Emanuel wanted to focus the resources of the national party on specific races that were the most likely to be competitive for Democrats. According to Bendavid, Emanuel said to Dean, "You're nowhere, Howard. Your field plan is not a field plan. That's fucking bullshit ... I know your field plan - it doesn't exist. I've gone around the country with these races. I've seen your people. There is no plan, Howard."

How Emanuel came to his decisions about which candidates to support against Democratic opponents is known only to Emanuel and his staff. Emanuel declined direct comment on this story. But an examination of individual races reveals a pattern of financial and political support for wealthy conservative candidates and an assault on their grassroots-supported opponents who were running on platforms that included a full withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

Read the whole report on the DCCC's smarmy "We're Not in Kansas anymore" tactics.

The Swiftboating of Governor Kathleen Sebelius

theBlueHighwayman — Fri, 11 May 2007 01:32:13 -0400

New sign on the Highways!

Dispatch from a Hotel in Normal, IL - 12:15A CST

Karl Rove and the gang are at it again, this time it is to destroy the Democratic Governor of Kansas. Her mortal sin was to tell the truth about the Kansas National Guard equipment.

Tony Snow, living up to his name, started the snowball rolling by stating "Governor Sebelius never requested anything from the Federal Government." Today that ball was picked up by none other than Sean Hannity. He interviewed two idiots from Pittsburgh, PA, who have a morning show on 104.7 FM (a Clearchannel station) and XM Radio named Quinn and Rose, and accused Howard Dean of orchestrating the Governor's statement for political gain.

The story goes like this:

Quinn and Rose say they have a "Confidential Source" who somehow managed to hear a conversation between the Senator and the Governor. It seems the Senator was displeased with Governor Sebelius's statements concerning the National Guard. In response she repents and claims that Howard Dean got her to do it. Presumably Howard Dean planned with Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, Senator Durbin and Senator Leahy to use the tragedy in Kansas to launch a political attack against Bush concerning the National Guard issue.

Here is the interview on Sean Hannity (It's an MP3 file about 6 minutes long)
INTERVIEW

After listening to these morons I called the radio station in Pittsburgh and left a message for Quinn and Rose's producer Jay Bahanon who returned my call and said:

We do have a confidential source on our report about the conversation between the governor of Kansas and Senator Brownback. I'm not going to give you any names if that's what you want, that's not going to happen. But we do have a good credible source on it.

If you would like to contact Quinn and Rose:
quinn@warroom.com
rose@warroom.com

Let them know how appreciative you are that they are busy carrying out Rove's dirty work! While you're at it maybe Jay Bahanon, their producer, would like to hear from you: 412-920-2796

I also think it would be a great idea to contact Senator Brownback to let him know how disgusting it is for a Presidential Candidate to be involved in this sort of thing.

Washington Office:
303 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-1604
Phone: (202) 224-6521
Fax: (202) 228-1265

Main District Office:
612 S. Kansas Ave
Topeka, KS 66603
Phone: (785) 233-2503
Fax: (785) 233-2616

If you'd like to contact Governor Kathleen Sebelius just to let her know she has your support and that this despicable lie will never stand.

Website: http://www.governor.ks.gov

Contact the Governor
Office of the Governor
Capitol, 300 SW 10th Ave., Ste. 212S
Topeka, KS 66612-1590

Voice 1-877-KSWORKS (1-877-579-6757)
Local 785-296-3232
For the Hearing Impaired 1-800-766-3777

It is truly pathetic how desperate the Republicans have gotten. Don't let them get away with these grotesque attacks on Democratic politicians. This will probably not play big in NYC but out in Kansas Governor Sebelius is going to have to deal with the Rove machine.

Update 1: Media Matters has a transcript of the Hannity show and full documentation on the national guard equipment shortage.

Update 2: On Thursday, the DNC's lawyer, Joseph Sandler, sent cease and desist letters to XM Radio and FreeRepublic.com adamantly denying Gov. Dean had any such conversation with Gov. Sebelius. The letter to XM Vice President Dara Altman demands they:

immediately cease and desist, and instruct Messrs. Quinn and Rose to cease and desist, from further dissemination of the above-quoted statements or any statements similar in substance and
immediately - on tomorrow morning's show or the next morning's show, at the latest - broadcast on the Quinn & Rose show an express retraction of these statements.

The letter to FreeRepublic's James Robinson demands they:

immediately cease and desist from further dissemination of the above-quoted statements or any statements similar in substance and
immediately post a retraction of these statements in a location on its web page a[t] least as prominent as that on which the story appeared.

Update 3: Several rightwing blogs jumped on the story. HotAir published flat denials from Dean, Sebelius, and Brownback. GatewayPundit published a denial from Brownback. Wizbang has not published the denials.

Tell Congress To Support The Kucinich IMPERATIVE For Impeachment

thepen — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 20:59:24 -0400

Minutes ago the U.S. Senate AGAIN failed to exercise meaningful oversight for the national suicide which is our policy in Iraq. It is by now abundantly clear that the Republican caucus is determined to go down with the Bush presidency, and take our military and our country with them while they do nothing. Instead, a bipartisan cattle stampede of senators approved two "we don't hate the troops" resolutions, nothing but vain puffery, swearing to take "no action" about this or that. We don't in the slightest care about what action Congress is NOT going to take, we want to know is what they ARE going to do to reverse the insanity of current policy.

ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/impeachment_now3.php

On the occasion of the guilty verdicts against Scooter Libby, Howard Dean was quoted as saying we would have a new president "soon enough." If he is talking about the 2008 election that is NOT soon enough, not even close. Day by day, ever more outrageous scandals and abuses of power spew forth from the White House, as we now learn that they have been so corrupted beyond redemption by their power grabs, that they even used the U.S. attorneys themselves for nakedly partisan witch hunts, to try to influence our elections, and fired all who would not bend under their political dictate.

And what was Bush's response when called on this monumental affront not just to the checks in our government, but also to the independency of our very justice system? "What was mishandled was the explanation of the cases to the Congress," he said. In Bush's mind there are no policy mistakes, let alone policy crimes. In his world there are only SPIN mistakes, when we the people aren't quite stupid enough to buy their criminal hypocrisies. We hear admissions that "mistakes were made," as if mistakes somehow made themselves. But even where there is verbal responsibility taken, there is NEVER actual accountability. The sacrificial fall guys will reluctantly resign, but NEVER is there a price paid by the core perpetrators for their conduct.

The Bush presidency is one of false appearances, phony and disingenuous words of compassion and democracy, while the true underlying agenda is the embezzlement of our national treasury, and even those of other sovereign countries, on behalf of their biggest campaign contributors, who then remorselessly relocate to evade taxes on their ill-gotten profits. The Bush presidency is to create wars out of whole cloth, to demonize not only their critics but entire innocent populations, first Iraq, then Lebanon, now Iran. It is a mission to exacerbate terrorism to the maximum extent possible, while ignoring its actual roots causes and laying off pursuing its ringleaders, at the mortal peril of our true national security. And it is not going to STOP in any respect until the day that Bush is lawfully removed from office.

It was not enough that president Bush should pack our courts with radical ideologue judges, one of whom just this week presumed to overturn two centuries of 2nd amendment case law, to let the NRA rewrite our very Constitution. No, even the choice of cases to bring to court they must warp so that only Democrats could ever be prosecuted for any crime, despite the fact that most of the wrongdoing they were actually finding was by Republicans. How their talking head cronies howled after the Libby verdicts that it was just a political prosecution. Their new rule of law is that it's against the law to prosecute Republicans, no matter what the crime, and that any attempt to do so is by definition a political vendetta. And if the Libby trial exposed anything, it was that Cheney was the king culprit.

And hanging over everything is the preemptively declared threat of a presidential veto of any attempt, no matter how timid, to confront these high crimes. And that is why we have concluded that Dennis Kucinich is speaking the essential truth. We have long known that Bush was planning an illegal war of aggression against Iran. Shame on the leadership of the House for the sudden demise, without even a vote, of the provision in the war supplemental appropriations bill to preclude an attack on Iran without express congressional consent. Let there be a vote so we can know which members of Congress think it's OK for the president to launch horrific and disastrous new wars without even a peep from them.

What Kucinich so clearly understands in his call for impeachment is that all these things are mere symptoms of the foundational problem, the cowardice of members of Congress as they run away from actually restraining the abuse of executive power. What are non-binding resolutions except avoidance of actually challenging the policy issue? What are bills that write into themselves exceptions if the president takes "responsibility" for them? Is the role of Congress to be relegated to courteously writing the president's signing statements for him?

ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/impeachment_now3.php

Bush loves to lecture the American people on the lessons of 9/11. There was only one lesson to be learned from 9/11 . . . that we had the WRONG president.

And in five years since there are still too many who have not learned that critical lesson, which failure is the reason New Orleans was left to sink by a guitar strumming photo-op president, which failure is the reason even the administration drafted Patriot Act has been abused to conduct massive illegal surveillance of innocent American citizens. That failure is the reason torture of those even suspected of being our enemies has become official U.S. policy, in utter defiance of all norms of international law and civilized decency.

That failure is the reason our entire intelligence operation against weapons of mass destruction, the life long specialty of Valerie Plame, was sabotaged and jeopardized to try to gain cheap political advantage. Or was it to keep concealed even more heinous acts of treason. That failure is the reason our military is still pursuing a fool's mission in Iraq, chasing an enemy who is not there in any significant numbers. We face nothing but two more years of such disasters and outrages every minute that George Bush, Dick Cheney and their pod people remain in any office of authority.

So what if Gonzales bites the dust. He is just one more water-carrier. He would already have been long gone had not Bush PERSONALLY intervened to quash investigation into the abuse of administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, when that first came to partial light. We have a president and vice president for whom obstruction of justice is just another burglar tool in their black bag, as they rob the balance of powers in our Constitution. Let the subpoenas now issuing in the U.S. attorney scandal lead to door of the oval office, where the trail surely does directly lead.

ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/impeachment_now3.php

And let us renew again and again our call for Congress to impeach ALL those who have harmed we the people so grievously, and to prosecute those impeachments at the most mercifully swift speed.

Dr. Dean's Diagnosis on the Libby Verdict

CactusPat — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 05:25:50 -0500

The DNC's callin' it a video note, my security software is blocking the akamai server the DNC's using so I snagged it from someone kind enuff to upload it to YouTube...

(bonus video)

Dr. Dean's reaction to the Libby verdict on MSNBC...

Howard Dean Lays the Curse of Nixon On John McCain

CactusPat — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:06:42 -0500

The Doctor delivers the smackdown., layin' the curse of Nixon on John McCain...

OUCH!

That had to hurt...

hi ya'll

australian1 — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:07:48 -0500

hi, im an australian and even i am hoping (for the people of americas sake the democrats can stop the rot ) with the election, i pay attention to what i get to see of american politics here in australia, and im always amazed at how the people of america can put up with such incompetence when the republicans are in power, united we stand in the fight against terrorism yes and always will, but what they ( the republicans ) have done ( iraq ) to the fine young men that serve your country in time of its need is CRIMINAL, god bless these brave men and women and their families, good luck with the election, oh and howard dean is my favorite democrat ( a fine politician ) long live freedom !!! its bye from this aussie, and if ya find the time come on down here for a holiday you'll love it. c ya

Impeachment

valsmom — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 18:40:57 -0400

I was horrified to receive an email from democrats.com that actually advocated that if democrats win the House, they will ignore Nancy Pelosi. John Conyers will call for the investigations that will lead to impeachment.

I believe that the president has committed impeachable offenses, however he only has two years left until his term ends. More importantly, Democrats have the chance to do good for the American people and hopefully set themselves up for a win in 2008.

Impeachment would be a huge distraction from all the important work that needs to be done, especially undoing some of the bad legislation.

This same email had a request to sign a petition to stop the war that Cindy Sheehan will take to the White House. I think she is an embarrassment to the Democratic party and should just go quietly away. I have no respect for any American citizen who would stand next to Hugo Chavez. This is why Democrats LOSE!

We have too many members who would rather be progressively correct than
win elections. This is why I don't donate to the party at the national level - not as long as Howard Dean is the party chairman.

Dean and Warner Rock YearlyKos

Bob Geiger — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 19:50:54 -0400

Blogging from YearlyKos

Serving up a healthy dose of political red meat to an audience primed and ready, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean and former Virginia Governor (and presidential hopeful) Mark Warner rallied the troops Saturday at YearlyKos.

"Those guys win elections by scapegoating people," said Dean referring to the Republican party. "[It's always] 'those people' from Ronald Reagan's 'welfare queen' to George Bush's gay and lesbian Americans and immigrants. Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat! It's the way they win elections."

"We will not do that because it's bad for America and the one big difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party is they will put the interests of the Republican party ahead of the interests of the United States of America and we will not do that," continued Dean, to thunderous applause.

Dean addressed a massive crowd that managed to get there for the 8:00 AM speech, despite most having attended the extravagant gala hosted by Warner -- complete with open bar and lavish buffets -- last night at the Stratosphere Casino. Though many attendees may have been blurry-eyed, Dean got them revved up when talking about the role of the new generation of activists and bloggers and the extent to which people like those attending YearlyKos will be key in returning our country to greatness.

"What we are now engaged in is a new generation, a community, that wants to restore American values. The best American values. Not the American values put forth by Dick Cheney and George Bush every day," said Dean, as the crowd roared in approval. "This is a movement that is not so different from the movement in the 60s to take back America to a better place or bring America to a better place than where it was. In the 60s what we fought for was individual rights, equal rights under the law for every single American and we're still fighting for these things today. But we have lost our way starting in 1980 when the me party took over from the we party."

Dean discussed how the Republican party fights for votes every day between presidential elections and emphasized the need for Democrats to work as hard -- or harder.

"The Democratic party is the vehicle to reform America. This is a tough fight and you don’t win just because you're right," he said. "You win because you out-work the other guys, you're tougher than the other guys but you also win because you appeal to the higher instincts in people instead of people's worst instincts."

After again castigating the GOP as "the party of big government and interfering in individual personal decisions" and "the party of secrecy and dishonesty," Dean made a direct plea to the audience to go beyond simply voting and making donations and moving to a higher degree of involvement.

"If a generation wants to make its mark on politics you have to actually participate in politics," the DNC Chairman told the enthusiastic crowd. "Voting is not enough -- voting is the bare minimum. And even giving money is not enough. We need people to become active either being involved in somebody's campaign or running themselves."

Mark Warner, who many people consider a rising star in the national Democratic party, spoke to a lunchtime crowd that, while not providing the standing ovations accorded to Dean, was eager to hear how his well-known centrist approach would address progressive political concerns.

Before he was introduced, the audience saw a five-minute promotional video that highlighted Warner's considerable accomplishments as Virginia's governor, including ensuring that 136,000 more children have health insurance, presiding over Virginia being named the best-managed state by Governing Magazine and being heralded as one of the top five governors in America by Time Magazine.

"Democrats are starting to think that outgoing Virginia Governor Mark Warner may finally have figured out what it will take for their party to start winning in the South again,” said the Time article. "But the real political miracle is the fact that Virginians have only grown to love him more as he has slashed popular programs and raised taxes.”

Speaking today at YearlyKos, Warner embraced the 50-state message delivered by Dean earlier in the day, citing the fact that Democrats are running 427 candidates in races for the House of Representatives in November.

"A lot of that is due to your hard work," said Warner. "But we cannot just go after 16 states and then try to hit a triple bank-shot to get Ohio or Florida."

Warner was self-deprecating, talking about failed business ventures in his 20s that left him, at age 26, living out of his car and sleeping on friends' sofas and also talked about his run for the U.S. Senate 10 years ago.

"I ran for United States Senate in 1996 -- I got a silver medal," he said, as the crowd laughed.

Warner, who attended public schools his entire life and is the first person in his family to graduate from college, said that a driving force in his public life has been trying "…to make sure that other people got the same fair shot that I got growing up"

"The most quintessential version of American values is that each person should get their shot at their version of the American dream."

While urging the partisan crowd to look beyond the labels of red and blue states and liberals versus conservatives, Warner took the opportunity to launch some well-deserved shots at the Bush administration saying "I can't remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when America has faced more challenges." He then ran off a laundry list of the problems facing the country under Team Bush and declared there to be "no visible action in sight."

"This president has never tried to bring this country together. He's never asked us to step up, to sacrifice," said Warner, who left office recently with an 80 percent approval rating. "We could actually start by having a foreign policy that unites our friends and divides our enemies and not the reverse. When things aren't working, you hold people accountable -- and that ought to start with a new Secretary of Defense."

And he slapped at Bush for his posturing when talking about values and for having no respect for the rule of law.

"For America to lead we need an administration that doesn’t just talk about American values, but that actually lives American values. We need an administration that doesn’t have an 'on' and 'off' switch when it comes to following the law."

But the day so far has clearly belonged to Dean, who gave exactly the kind of pep talk we've come to expect from the former Vermont Governor. He emphasized that Democratic values are far more consistent with what most Americans believe than what Republicans are invoking.

"Most people believe that it is more immoral to send a child to bed hungry than to let two gay people get married," said Dean, who then ended with a flourish.

"We have to put aside whatever we disagree on [within the party] and keep together. Because block by block, vote by vote, precinct by precinct, and year by year, we will take America back for the people who built it."

You can reach Bob Geiger at geiger.bob@gmail.com

30 Republican House Seats in Jeopardy

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 07:18:04 -0400

From the conservative InvestorsInsight Publishing

The Mid-Term Elections: More Bad News For The GOP (scroll down)

[T]here is now the possibility that the Democrats could retake the House of Representatives, and maybe even pick up a couple of Senate seats as well.

There has been a gigantic shift in the electoral map, perhaps one of the greatest shifts in recent political history. I must tell you going in, that most of the blame for this massive shift lies with President Bush and his administration…

The GOP has actually LOST ground on … national security issues where they have (or did have) the voters' confidence. And the issues they are articulating - flag burning, family values, etc. - are narrowly focused at the far right portion of their base…

The GOP's trump card has long been national security. The Dubai ports deal single-handedly derailed national security as a solid GOP issue. Whether you were for, or against, the ports deal, you have to admit that it was very badly handled (bungled really) by the Bush administration. You have to wonder how Bush's political advisors would not have foreseen the public's outrage over a deal that appeared to give control of several key US ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates…

You can expect the issues of immigration and national security to be BIG in this election cycle. These are issues where the GOP is historically strong, but this time around, these issues could turn on them. This explains in large part why so many congressional races that were not in play in early February are clearly in play today…

As usual, the Dems are doing nothing, except for enjoying the GOP slide. Don't forget one of the great political maxims: "Never interrupt your opponent when they are in the process of imploding." And the Republicans have done a brilliant job of that thus far…

Howard Dean invested heavily in building a national, 50-state ground organization. At the time, he was roundly criticized for it by the Democratic congressional leadership; now, however, it appears to be a stroke of political genius, as we predicted in our February 7 E-Letter. The fact that the Dems now have a ground game will doubtless play an important role in the 2006 mid-terms.

The Democrats are in an enviable position heading into the elections. Many Dems believe they now have the luxury of not having to articulate any specific positions or policies, and simply continue to criticize those taken by the president. It remains to be seen if the American people are so disgusted with Bush and Republicans in general that they will not insist on hearing what the Democrats plan to do if elected. This is sad.

From the also conservative Human Events

30 Republican House Seats in Jeopardy

With President Bush's popularity at an all-time low, hovering in the mid-30s in most national surveys, and the conservative base of the Republican Party increasingly dismayed with the President's performance on issues such as runaway government spending and immigration "reform," chances are increasing that the Democrats could eke out a majority in the House of Representatives in the elections this fall.

Four months ago, I concluded that there were 20 Republican House seats that were vulnerable to Democratic takeover, now I believe that there are 30. To achieve a majority, the Democrats would need to win a net gain of 15…

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com