SwiftVets.com

[streetsweeper95B]

If I may point to something here; I am reading the "Weekly Commentary" that is posted at this midwest academy. Ummmm....
does the term "Anarchy" ring anyone's bell?

I wasn't going to cut and paste this, ahhh the heck! Edit this if you must.

Weekly Commentary

Stand and Fight

By Katrina vanden Huevel
Editor The Nation
One thing we can say for certain at this point, after the grieving, the anger, is that the country is still bitterly divided.

We saw two turnouts and Two Nations last night. Both sides of the chasm saw a major turnout of its voting base. Karl Rove talked about creating a permanent Republican majority. But the truth is, he has a divide-and-rule strategy. And the electoral college amplifies the rural, socially conservative vote. (Twenty percent of voters considered "moral values"--eleven states had anti-gay marriage ballots--more important than the economy or Iraq in this election.)

Perhaps more astonishing than the polling on the murky issue of morality (why aren't poverty and unjust war considered immoral?) are the figures reported in the New York Times: "Voters who cited honesty as the most important quality in a candidate broke 2 to 1 in Mr. Bush's favor..." The most mendacious Administration in American history won the honesty vote?

Progressives, who were on the defensive two years ago, added millions of new voters as well, and tapped a new energy and activism that will last far beyond November 2nd. The extremism and incompetence of this rightwing cabal has sharpened our focus to a razor's edge.

But for me, one of the fundamental questions about this campaign has been whether you could defeat a terrible but clear incumbent without a substantive policy alternative, and this time at least we couldn't. Kerry offered intelligence, a return to fiscal discipline, a bulwark against a rightwing court, and a health plan that few understood. He failed to use the moral message of "Two Americas" to erode Bush's edge. He mounted a late challenge to Bush's disastrous war in Iraq-- but he also talked about "staying the course." That wasn't enough of a coherent positive, populist or moral message to complement the impressive mechanics. We've got to build a politics of conviction, of passion and substance. It's there but it needs to be built and fought for. And the lesser lessons, if that's the big one, are:

1) People really are confused and manipulated (we have a mainstream media that continues to focus on irrelevant stories--Swift Boat, Rathergate and all the rest--abrogating its responsibility to focus on what's important and significant; and too much of it keeps giving head instead of keeping its head.) This makes an expansion of the progressive media echo chamber all the more important; And,

2) Neoliberalism is broken beyond repair and people need to be offered a real alternative not just despair at this point. This is truly a non-violent Civil War between those who think government is basically screwed up and that they're on their own, and those who believe....what exactly? We've got to be much clearer on the latter.

But this morning, we woke to a country at war with itself--as well as Al Qaeda. As America fights Islamic fundamentalism abroad, progressives are re-fighting the Enlightenment here at home. (The two new Senators from Oklahoma and South Carolina are leaders of our homegrown Taliban.)

This is war at a very deep level about how this country will proceed and this war isn't over, it's just renewed.

In that spirit, on Election Day, a friend sent some words by John Dos Passos, from his great trilogy USA. He said these lines, from the part where Dos Passos narrates the death of Sacco and Vanzetti, stuck in his head in these last weeks as we faced the possibility of Bush winning this election:

"America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul

their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the power plants

they have built the electric chair and hired the executioner to throw the switch

all right we are two nations."

The American Right understands we are two nations, and cares less about healing than about holding power. A Bush wins forces us to understand, in a very deep way, what that means for us and for the values and institutions we care about. Not that they are wrong, or rejected or weighed down by "identity politics" or some other rationale for surrender. But that they are in desperate danger and we need to start thinking along the lines of how to resist, delay, deflect, oppose and ultimately defeat the assault on our freedoms. As progressives, we will need to marshal at least as much dedication, purpose, strategic focus and tactical ruthlessness, and The Nation is one of the few places that will have earned the trust of over 40 percent of the American people who were against Bush and all his works from the beginning.

And we should be thinking about the indispensable work of resistance. We need to identify legislative and administrative choke points where Bush's initiatives can be blocked, and make clear to both legislators and their constituents that the days of go-along in the interest of non-partisan comity have to stop.

We need to give a clear sense of priorities and red-lines so that people aren't fatigued by constantly being asked to protest--and we need to identify and work for some early victories, at both the local and national (and international) levels...BECAUSE we all need to remember, and remind ourselves, and everyone else that there are two Nations--not Bush's America and some dissenters-- especially since I'd be willing to bet that numerically there are more of us.

In the end, this election is about what kind of people we are, what kind of country we'll be. Half of the electorate dissents from Bushism. The election still represents an expression of the strength of opposition to the radical and reckless course Bush has followed, despite the ugly campaign.

Unlike 1972, when Democrats were wiped out everywhere--in 2004 there is an emerging progressive infrastructure capable of standing and fighting. Progressives should build on those structures put in place in this last cycle and redouble their commitment to economic justice, peace and environmental movements that can make real change.

In the streets of New York on August 29th on the eve of the Republican National Convention and in precincts across America these past few months, millions of people stood up for democracy. This is the heart and soul of this country and it will be the heart and soul of the defense of our rights and liberties in the months to come.

Sorry for the long damn post. Edit it if you need to....

What bothers me the most is somewhere in here she mentions "neo-liberalizm" & "tactical ruthlessness".
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"Proud Member of the Freak Show"

[MSeeger]

It sounds like a lot of wishful thinking on her part. I think part of her frustration is that people are not out demonstrating and rioting in the streets, demanding to get rid of Bush. Well, they know it will do no good. All they'd get is Dick Cheney.

Unlike in the Ukraine, and other parts of the world, the United States has a stable government. We elect a new president every four years, or re-elect the same one, but four years from now there will be a new one.

And we are a prosperous nation, on the whole. That is one reason why I think that anarchy will not succeed here. There are too many of us who are willing to stand and fight against these people...unlike them, we not only talk the talk but we walk the walk. The conservatives put their money where their mouth is. The liberals just talk about it, but never act.

Maria
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Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Gal. 6:7

[Beatrice1000]

[Beatrice1000]

[fortdixlover]

[fortdixlover]

[streetsweeper95B]

Beatrice, it will not happen again. My fault I hadn't read as careful as I should have. Will not happen again ma'am.
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"Proud Member of the Freak Show"

[scotty61]

Dos Passos narrates the death of Sacco and Vanzetti

Anyone else find it odd, or perhaps telling, the vanden Huevel chose to quote someone waxing eloquent over two anarchrists who were not even citizens of this country.
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John Kerry. A Neville Chamberlain for our times.

[streetsweeper95B]

[streetsweeper95B]

_________________
"Proud Member of the Freak Show"

[Beatrice1000]

[Uisguex Jack]

I have only just now read this thread...... !

This is a keeper.

As I ponder the 'Midwest' academy.... having gone thru the site in its entirety..... I wonder.

Where did all of us of the vast right wing conspiracy go to school for political activism?

..... I guess that might have been history class from sixth grade on.

Thanks for all the insight. For some fun go to the link at the 'academy' for potential 'job' listing's .... The only thing missing is they have yet to advertise for Dan Rathers seat.

[Rurik]

A few words about Katerina vanden Heuvel's background and relationships:

She is the wife of Professor Stephen F, Cohen, professor of political science and frequent talking head. Throughout the 1980s he was Gorbo's leadign public apologist. His main academic wark is "Nikolai Bukharin an dthe Bolshevik Revolution", about one of the leading Soviet politicians of the 1930s who was shot byStalin in 1938 durig the show trials. Cohen's argument has always been that communism failed only because of the rise of Stalin, had Bukharin managed to become the dictator instead of Stalin everythig would have beenwonderful and the comunist experiment would have been a great success, because Bukharin was humane. In fact, Bukharin opposed executing Party members who lost internal debates, but he never had any trouble with the mass executions of members of other parties such as the SRs, Mensheviks, and Kadets, or of the peasants who didn't want to be collectivized. Bukharin just wanted to stop the bloodshed "at the door of the clubhouse". Subsequent to 1991, Cohen has been fairly thoroughly debunked by information coming ut of ex-soviet archives, and the work of Post-soviet historians. Cohen is one of those the Russians themselves call a "govnoyed" (sh__eater) Cohen is not a communist in the sense of ever having been a CPUSA member, but in the sense of one who believes in the path chosen by Marx and Lenin, he most certainly is. This is Katerina vanden Snivel's husband.
Any questions?

Further the term "politically correct" first surfaced in the Soviet Union during the 1920s to indicate that someone properly understood the Party line. Back when the term first began to be used in Academia, over here, during the 1980s, I remember that it was used quite shamelessly, with no sense of embarassment or irony., but with complete righteousness.
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Hating John Kerry continuously since 1971.

Essayons!
Fight Build and Destroy

[Beatrice1000]

PART 1 of 2: Two LEFT organizations to watch out for: “Campaign for America’s Future” and “Institute for America’s Future”

Katrina vanden Heuvel & Robert Borosage edited a book together (below at end of post) and all I set out to do was to look up a review on that book for this post as perhaps a final comment on vanden Heuvel from the previous discussion here -- and then thought I’d better check on who “Borosage” was just for the record. His connection to “Institute for America’s Future” (President) & “Campaign for America’s Future” (Co-Director with Roger Hickey) set me on a whole different path of “discovery” so to speak. (I do eventually get to the book reviews after first looking at these organizations.) Last week I saw Campaign for America’s Future on C-Span taking issue with the panel Bush had sat in on prior to their appearance & they proceeded to tear apart the ideas he had been discussing about SS, etc. My questions of “who are these people” and “what is their agenda” is the cause for this long post, in which I’m only scratching the surface & exposing a little bit about them -- enough to see that they need to be watched in spite of their red, white & blue speakers’ backdrop:

[Beatrice1000]

PART 2 of 2: Two LEFT organizations to watch out for: “Campaign for America’s Future” and “Institute for America’s Future”

Some “Advisors” to these organizations -- CONTINUED: