Nagourney Slashes Away at Howard Dean
I think Adam Nagourney can do much better than writing a "factual" article about Howard Dean while using Bob Kerry, who is supporting Dean's DNC chair contender Leo Hindery, as a primary source of opinion for the piece. SHEESH! Where's the fairness...the balance? From some of Nagourney's first lines..."What precisely Dr. Dean is running for is not entirely certain during this period of transformation for the Democratic Party and its better-known leaders...."
I could smell the establishment bias. It's rank.
I'm disappointed. I expect much better journalism from Adam Nagourney.
Rhetoric and the Spiritual Life
"About the rhetorical use of words nothing much need be said. There is rhetoric for good causes and there is rhetoric for bad causes-rhetoric which is tolerably true to facts as well as emotionally moving, and rhetoric which is unconsciously or deliberately a lie. To learn to discriminate between the different kinds of rhetoric is an essential part of intellectual morality; and intellectual morality is as necessary as a pre-condition of the spiritual life as is the control of the will and the guard of the heart and tongue."
-- Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy
Photo credit:Channel14.com
"Welcome to the Great Democratic Party Identity Crisis of 2005."
One of the many reasons I love Arianna
1. Her latest column..
*..for those in my family reading this, I don't mean my niece Arianna, although I do love that little wondergirl dearly.*
Arianna Huffington writes, in her latest column THE NEXT DNC CHAIR: WHY YOU SHOULD CARE:Last week’s meeting of the 21-strong Democratic Governors Association was similarly an orgy of centrist groping, best summed up by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who said, “This, for us, is our moment to push an agenda . . . that is centrist and that speaks to where most people are.”
If Gov. Granholm, a rising star in the party, really thinks the center is where the majority of people were located this past election, the Democrats are in even worse trouble than we think. Have these people learned nothing from 2000, 2002 and 2004? How many more concession speeches do they have to give — from “the center” — before they realize it’s not a very fruitful place?
......cognitive psychologist George Lakoff told me: “Democrats moving to the middle is a double disaster that alienates the party’s progressive base while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the other side is where the good ideas are.”
....The party needs a chairman able to drive a stake through the heart of its bankrupt GOP-lite strategy and champion the populist economic agenda that has already proven potent at the ballot box in many conservative parts of the country.
Copyright 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
My companion piece from yesterday: DNC: Stop eating your own best candidates
Howard Dean Speaks at GWU
Former Gov Howard Dean spoke at GWU today and made what I believe are some very important points. The transcript is not yet available, so I'll share a few of them with you:
--Four years ago, the President won 49 percent of the vote. The Republican Party treated it like it was a mandate, and we let them get away with it. Fifty one percent is not a mandate either. And this time we're not going to let them get away with it.
--There are no red states or blue states, just American states. And if we can compete at all levels and in the most conservative parts of the country, we can win ... at any level and anywhere.
--The GOP has abdicated their responsibilies to America in the areas of economic, fiscal, civic, personal, moral, and social responsibility.
--Health care, education, a sense of community..these are all moral values. HONESTY is a moral value. IF this last election had been decided on moral values, the Democrats would have won.
--Democrats have to learn how to say what we believe, to be proud to say what we believe, because we ARE what we believe.
--How can we be worthy as an example for the world's aspirations for freedom if we've failed to insure electoral reform within our own nation; for our own people?
--As a party, we need to learn to "punch our way off the ropes" and WE should be setting the agenda.
Governor Dean assured us that he'll be speaking about the reforms he believes will be necessary within the Democratic party in days to come.
UPDATE: Transcript is now available
C.S. Lewis: A Glimpse of The Unfallen World
Seen at The Window in the Garden Wall, one of my favorite blogs:
"...I said that everything a man does to a beast is either a lawful exercise or a sacrilegious abuse of an authority by divine right. I didn't say which of the things we now see men doing to beasts fall into which class. The robin in a cage and the over-fed Peke are both, to me, instances of the abuse of man's authority, tho' in different ways. I never denied that the abuse was common: that is why we have to make laws (and ought to make a good many more) for the protection of animals.
I do know what you mean by the sudden ravishing glimpse of animal life in itself, its wildness--to meet a squirrel in a wood or even a hedgehog in the garden makes me happy. But that is because it is, being partly exempt from the Fall, a symbol and reminder of the unfallen world we long for."
~C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Volume II, Letter to Mrs. Stuart Moore (Jan 1941)
I was listening to a beautiful rendition of the Christmas carol Silent Night by John Michael Talbot while reading this passage, and the lyrics "God's pure light" reminded me of that which I perceive whenever meeting a wild creature in the wood.
In the Headlines Today
Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia yesterday tried to discover how the militants penetrated the defences of the US consulate.
In Iraq, the Red Crescent has been ordered to leave Fallujah by the US Millitary. The Red Crescent had been delivering food, water and blankets to approximately 1,500 people in the city. Now, conditions have become dangerous enough to warrant evacuation.
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer officially declared yesterday what New York's political establishment has suspected for months: He'll be a Democratic candidate for governor in 2006.
The House of Representatives passed the bill intended to overhaul the US Intelligence system on Tuesday, voting 336-75. The Senate had passed a largely identical measure before Thanksgiving. It's far from a done deal, however. The bill's implementation "will require careful oversight", in the words of the 9/11 Commission chairmen Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean. Them, there is the question: Will More Power for Intelligence Chief Mean Better Results?
As part of a compromise to end Ukraine's political crisis stemming from the presidential runoff election, the Ukrainian Parliament overwhelmingly voted today for sweeping political and constitutional changes. Reform candidate Yushchenko has called it "a day of historic compromise", although the reaction of his supporters on the Kiev street is decidedly skeptical and subdued.
