Archive for: May, 2006

Three For The Day

May 31 2006 Published by under Democrats, Drinking, Politics, Religion, Sports, Surfing

I ran across three really interesting reads in my morning trek through the papers. They have nothing to do with each other, only one touches on politics, and the other two deal with wingmen and surfers respectively. But they’re all worth a look.

The LA Times has a good piece on the internal debate within the Democrat party over whether or not they need to campaign on those pesky little issues that voters care about. The argument breaks down into two camps. One camp believes they need to give people something to vote for, a contrast with the GOP. The other camp says:

“If you start to [discuss] big government programs ‚Ķ you open yourself up to criticism in all directions, and there’s no reason for Democrats to do that now,” said one senior Democratic Senate aide, who asked not to be identified when discussing internal party deliberations.

So that tells you everything you need to know. The Democrat approach is more government, more regulation, and more taxes. Yet they don’t like the GOP to point that out. They know that doesn’t sell well because people don’t have a fondness for more government incursion into their lives. Small wonder that they think the GOP would poke holes in that and portray it as a bureaucratic solution.

The second article, from WaPo, details the trials and tribulations of the wingman system. It’s really kind of an odd article to run. I don’t think it would fly in any other city. Most people around college age who are clubbing every night are unlikely to read the paper. In DC, however, you’re dealing with a different crowd, so there is a good possibility that some of the target demographic is actually consuming this ‘news’.

Finally, back to the LA Times, it appears there are a great many people who need their souls saved and a fair number of them live in Hawaii and hang out at the beach. That’s where Den Sabate and his flock of surfers for Christ minister to those in need who are hanging out at the beach.

Honestly, if I were lost and looking for meaning, I’d probably be at the beach too. I could live at the beach. There is something very cathartic about by the water, being bit by sand fleas, and staring at the waves rolling in. It salves the wounds of the soul. But the last thing I would be looking for is some guy to come and chat me up about the Bible.

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Harry “Ringside” Reid

May 30 2006 Published by under Democrats, Politics

PoliticsDemocratsI love it when hypocrites get the door slammed on their fingers. Now it’s Harry Reid’s turn to wiggle on the hook, and he’s doing a pretty poor job. Accused of accepting ringside seats at boxing events in Nevada – tickets valued at hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars each, and accepted when he was working on federal legislation that would have directly impacted those who gave him the tickets – he’s now trying to claim it was a fact-finding mission.

Reid defended the gifts, saying they would never influence his position on the boxing bill and that he was simply trying to learn how his legislation might affect an important home state industry.

Come on, Harry. Is that the best you could come up with? How, exactly, did having ringside seats inform your vote on this? How exactly, did watching a match impart wisdom regarding the potential impact of that legislation?

McCain, who attended a fight with Reid, paid for his ticket to the tune of $1,400. John Ensign, who also partook of fight night with Reid, took the gift, but bowed out of any role with the legislation because his dad worked for a hotel that hosted fights.

When you start throwing that “culture of corruption” crap around, you ought to be sure you’re clean, Harry.

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Unity08

May 30 2006 Published by under Politics, Unity08

PoliticsUnity08 launched this morning – as promised. It’s actually not a bad offering. The action center looks frighteningly similar to the GOP.com action center and the BC04 action center – so those of us involved in either should feel flattered.

Judging by Nicco Mele’s place on the Founder’s Council, I suspect he had a hand in putting this together. I find that odd given his prominent role in the Dean campaign in 04, but I hear he’s now advising McCain, so I suspect his support for the liberal Dean was based more on his outsider status than his ideology.

The site isn’t bad. It has a couple of technical problems and makes a couple of strategic mistakes.

First, the contact page is a mess. The comment field is 19 characters wide by 2 high. That’s atrocious. Leaving a comment is a horrible experience. It’s made worse by the fact that you are limited to 250 characters.

On the strategic side, they have limited your options for showing support to giving them money, or e-mailing friends. It would be very easy to create a graphic bug that supporters could place on their site and help advance the agenda.

I have a lot of friends in the political internet realm and none of them had heard of this effort. That’s evidence that their blog outreach strategy is failing before it got started. They should have amassed a database of moderate bloggers and had them pumping up the launch. As it is, Technorati lists 15 posts that mention Unity 08 and two of those are me. I’m 15% of their effort thus far.

Oh well, I guess I’ll create my own bug. Look for it later today. If you want it, feel free to grab it.

UPDATE: I got the bug together and it’s in the top right corner. If you’d like to grab it, right click here and save for a gif, or right click here and save for a png file.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mad props (wow! I feel so gangsta) to Anne “Her Magnificence” Champlin for pointing the Unity08 effort out to me. She is truly one in a million. A diamond in a see of rhinestones. You are the cat’s PJs, Mrs. C. Rock on!

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Why Nobody Reads the Washington Times

May 29 2006 Published by under News Media, Politics

NewsPoliticsThere’s a good reason nobody reads the Washington Times. Take the first line of this editorial from Sunday.

More than 60 million people in America voted in the “American Idol” final — more than in any U.S. presidential election.

Ok, where do we begin? Clearly Daniel Gallington had an agenda and he was not going to let facts get in the way. In 2004, roughly 121 million votes were cast for President with a little over 62 million for Bush and a bit over 59 million for Kerry. So whether he meant that 60 million votes had never been cast, or 60 million had never been cast for a single candidate, he’s wrong on both counts.

Second, I have trouble buying the vote count at 60 million people voting. Only 36 million people watched, and I imagine a fair number of those abstained from voting (let’s say 90% voted). That leaves a gap of about 28 million voters. I find it hard to believe that 31 million people were invested enough in the outcome to vote, but not to actually watch the show.

American Idol allows you to vote multiple times. The host even encourages you to vote as often as you’d like. They make no claims regarding the integrity of their ballot. In fact, a cottage industry is developing around their ridiculous voting schema to provide voting “software” that will cast “hundreds of votes per hour” for your favorite contestant.

So it’slikely that was 60,000,000 votes, not 60 million voters.

To be honest, I didn’t read Gallington’s op-ed any further. It may have made a brilliant point somewhere, but after the stupidity and falsity of his opening line, I stopped reading.

To the editors of the Washington Times I would say this. You are doing your few readers, and indeed the conservative movement no favors by publishing articles that repel readers after only 20 words.

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A Moderate Revolution

May 29 2006 Published by under Conventions, Democrats, Elections, Politics, Republicans

PoliticsDemocratsRepublicansMy friend Anne tipped me off to this one…

Tomorrow, Unity08 launches their effort to elect a bipartisan, moderate ticket. The effort is organized by Doug Bailey (of Hotline fame) and a handful of seasoned political operatives. Seasoned? Hell, some of these guys are centenarians that served in the first Roosevelt administration. Ok, that last part is an exaggeration, but Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon are holdovers from the Carter campaign and Bailey worked for Ford. I hope they have someone under 60 putting together their Internet strategy.

The idea, though, is desperately overdue. I have railed against the primary/redistricting processes here and this effort is one logical outcome of those failed systems. When redistricting guarantees that the only real challenges come from the fringe, not in the general, you end up with primaries that pit the ideologues against one another.

Hopefully this effort will call attention to the inherent flaws in the two parties and result in the two having to fight for the middle once again.

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