I have a couple of practical real-world problems that I'd like Clinton and Obama supporters to address. It might help me figure out who to vote for. The guy best equipped to handle it just left the race. So....is it experience or is it hope? Let me know.

These problems are more fully explained if you read the whole thing at each link.

Let me tell you a true story.

In 2003 my county formed a group of progressive Democrats. We didn't think the local Democratic party had its priorities straight nor did we like the inefficient way they organized and the way the money was spent. They were past their prime.

We took our energy and know-how to the meetings, were elected as delegates, organized precincts in 2004, and worked to get out the vote. The excitement was incredible.

Then we elected progressives as officers of the party. They are much like the people on the front page here, much like the diarists: intelligent, energetic, full of ideas. 2005 was our year.

Our officers made it clear that this was a new day. And it was.

Controversy Follows New DNC Chairman

This Accuracy in Media article points out McAuliffe's considerable shortcomings when he became the DNC chair. There is a lot of interesting stuff including the point that Bill Richardson wanted to be chair, and Gore's choice was pushed out.(January 8, 2001)

"As the Times story pointed out, McAuliffe drew some negative publicity for some of his business and fundraising practices, including a loan guarantee for the Clintons when they were trying to secure a mortgage for their Chappaqua, New York home. That is considered to be an illegal gratuity. He backed off only when challenged by Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog organization with some seventy lawsuits against the Clinton administration.

Left out of the coverage we saw were even more serious scandals in which McAuliffe was involved while serving as the treasurer and chief fundraiser for the Clinton-Gore 1996 campaign. The scheme was a way to finance Ron Carey's campaign against James Hoffa, Jr. to head up the Teamsters Union, and to kick many times more union dollars back to a Democratic fundraising group."

There are a lot of complaints on Daily Kos about the lousy media. Big Duh. Here are three extraordinary ways of gaining access (listen to the audios for remarkably coherent explanations). [Update]More after the flip.

Dear troops in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Korea:

While you are fighting and dying for your beloved country, we at home are taking it apart piece by piece. We are not as brave as you, we are not as careful of the dangers.

You care for your weapons as if your life depended on it--it does. You watch out for unseen dangers, those unseen dangers can take your life. You think about your family at home and you're glad they're safe in the greatest democracy in the world.

I got this from Rapid Response this morning. I'd already e-mailed the Boone paper and Granite Bank in Boone but got no reply. One of our group got hold of two people in the bank both of whom said, "No comment".

From Rapid Response:

"Hello folks I was wondering if you could please help get this story out. It's about a local democrat who was fired from his job because he expressed his views on the Iraqi war. The guys name is Jeff Block and the story is sadly very true. This guy is in a real jam now."

From Jeff Block (changed typo):

 

There were some very interesting insights in Kevin Drum's Billmon comments. One in particular gave voice to my feelings of dissatisfaction on those days when the diaries on dKos seem particularly pointless. The blogger talked about all of the small blogs out there which people don't know about or ignore. I'd like it if at the end of each dKos diary, the poster could enter his/her blog URL. That way if we find the post thoughtful or provocative we could check out the poster's blog.

I read PastorDan regularly even though I'm not interested in religious issues. He always has thoughtful diaries or comments and the people who comment on his diaries also seem thoughtful and interesting. There's none of that degeneration into one-line insults in comment after comment. Those threads are just a turn-off.

of "Can the Democratic Party stay relevant? "

Is anyone else having this problem?

I can access all of the others.

Thanks in advance.

I'm as prone to read polls and pass on the results as the next person but have always been uneasy about them.

A reality-check from the Gadflyer:

When a Good Day For Bush Is a Better Day For Kerry
What he needs to close the deal
by Maeve Hebert, Guest Contributor
7.23.04

"...People lie to pollsters.

The latest WRAL poll shows Kerry in a statistical dead heat with Bush. Only 3 points separate them. The Raleigh area is heavily Kerry. I live in an area they say is Bush country but we are really organizing the Democrats, who are the predominate party in the eastern part of the state.

Now we need to throw out Rep Walter Jones, Jr. Democrat Roger Eaton is our kind of guy!

http://www.wral.com/news/3530287/detail.html

From Robert Novak July 10, 2004

Sen. John McCain, whose enthusiastic endorsement is being used in a television ad for George W. Bush, is privately advising colleagues that the president is not in good shape politically and faces an uphill fight for re-election.

 McCain tells fellow senators that he is particularly concerned about his own state of Arizona, where he feels Sen. John Kerry will be hard to defeat. Although all polls show President Bush still ahead in Arizona, the White House has long been worried about retaining the state because of the rising Latino vote there. Losing Arizona would cast a cloud over the president's national prospects.

 A footnote: Moderate Republican senators grumble that some longtime contributors are refusing their usual contribution to the Republican presidential campaign. Their biggest grievance: Bush's endorsement of the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20040710.shtml

Thursday, June 24, 2004 12:31 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush met for an hour on Thursday with a U.S. attorney probing the Bush administration's alleged leak of the identity of a CIA operative, the White House announced.

Spokesman Scott McClellan also said Bush had retained an attorney, Jim Sharp, to represent him in all matters involving the case.

...

Bush met with the U.S. attorney in charge of the case, Pat Fitzgerald.

http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=883615&tw=wn_wire_stor y

Don't get  Kerrey/Kerry mixed up as you read the following:

Rear Admiral Roy F. Hoffmann is chairman of the SwiftVets group which is questioning Senator John F. Kerry's service in Vietnam.
He has a history which is very interesting. He commanded Task Force 115 in Vietnam when ex-Senator Bob Kerrey was in Vietnam and when Senator John Kerry was in Vietnam. Hoffmann was a "body-count guy".

------------------------------------------------------------------
Capt. Roy Hoffmann (Excerpt)  This is from an article about Ex-Senator Bob Kerrey

"Delta Platoon was assigned to the Navy's Task Force 115, based at Cam Ranh Bay and commanded by Capt. Roy Hoffmann, a favorite of Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr., the Navy's top man in Vietnam. Hoffmann was a cigar-chomping officer who brandished an M-16 assault rifle and wore a revolver when he visited troops in the field. "He was the classic body-count guy," Kerrey says. "Bunkers destroyed, hooches destroyed, sort of scorekeeper."

New York Times: April 29, 2001, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 6;Page 51;Column 1;Magazine Desk
HEADLINE: What Happened in Thanh Phong
BYLINE:   By Gregory L. Vistica;  Gregory L. Vistica is the author of "Fall From Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy" and was formerly the national security correspondent for Newsweek. He is co-producing a segment on Bob Kerrey and Thanh Phong for "60 Minutes II." The New York Times Magazine and "60 Minutes II" have coordinated reporting efforts on this story. "60 Minutes II" plans to air its segment May
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpt from a blog entry about Senator John Kerry:
"Among those scheduled to attend the event at the National Press Club and declare Kerry unfit for the role of commander-in-chief are retired Naval Rear Admiral Roy Hoffman, who was the commander of the Navy Coastal Surveillance Force, which included the swift boats on which Kerry served."

http://www.midwestpundits.com/index.php
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Hoffmann is part of the anti-Kerry group organized by John O'Neill of which we've read so much on the blogs.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005036
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted:
"CAPTAIN HOFFMANN COMMANDED THE ATLANTIC FLEET MISSILE DESTROYER USS CHARLES F. ADAMS (DDG 2) FOR 27 MONTHS COMMENCING IN JANUARY 1966, AND REPORTED AS COMMANDER COASTAL SURVEILLANCE FORCE, REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM AND COMMANDER TASK FORCE 115 ON 3 MAY 1968. CAPTAIN HOFFMANN COMMANDED THE DESTROYER TENDER USS SIERRA (AD-18) FROM 27 JUNE 1969 TO 17 DECEMBER 1970."

http://www.lonesailor.org/Navylog_print.php?navy_log_id=330034
http://www.swiftvets.com/Index2.htm
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/                       [Scroll down]
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200405/SPE20040503a.html

I've read that doctors are keeping a lot of GIs "alive" long enough to be flown home where their families can see them before having to remove life-support.

In effect they were KIA but are they counted? Or are their deaths ignored?

Amy Goodman is the interviewer for Democracy Now.
Coleen Rowley is the FBI agent who was a whistleblower on FBI inactivity.
Sibel Edmonds is the former FBI translator.
The full article is at:  http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/09/1524223

AMY GOODMAN: Coleen Rowley, what was the reaction in your office on the morning of September 11 when the planes hit the World Trade Centers and then when the plane hit the Pentagon?

COLEEN ROWLEY: Unfortunately, within really probably just seconds or minutes of seeing the news, we realized that this connected with the matter in Minneapolis and began then to seek the criminal way of getting a search warrant.

AMY GOODMAN: Was there an understanding that these -- this was a terrorist attack?

COLEEN ROWLEY: Yes. Very quickly from the first footage, I think there was a quick understanding this was not only a terrorist attack, but probably -- al Qaeda was responsible for it. Can I add something, just about the nature of prevention of terrorism. I think there's a misunderstanding that you have to have a "silver bullet" to prevent things like this, and just as a series of mistakes can lead to a tragedy, and it's not just one thing, it can be a multitude of things, it's also a multitude of things that can lead to prevention, and in many cases a tragedy might be diminished simply because of luck, a little bit of luck along with other things. If we're to have this attitude that we have to have a "silver bullet" to prevent things, we will really be in sorry shape in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to just add, Coleen Rowley was named "Time" Person of the Year in 2002 for speaking out as a whistleblower in the F.B.I.

-----

SIBEL EDMONDS: "...Two weeks ago, I said -- I made a statement saying that Ms. Rice has a statement that "we did not have any specific information" was an outrageous lie. Ms. Rice corrected herself yesterday by saying, "I should have said, I personally was not aware rather than we." I think that's a very important piece that not many people have picked up on and who else is left after she herself removes herself from this statement? Who is she referring to when she says we? "

-----

As Maureen Dowd so crisply said about Dr. Rice's testimony:  "Even the terrorists were blamed for not giving specifics."

Question: So, how is the system accountable now and what idiocy in the CIA, FBI and Homeland Security(?) will President Kerry have to overcome immediately upon taking office?

WASHINGTON -- The FBI on Friday disputed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony that it was conducting 70 separate investigations of al-Qaida cells in the United States before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Rice, testifying before the Sept. 11 commission Thursday, said that those 70 investigations were mentioned in a CIA briefing to the president and satisfied the White House that the FBI was doing its job in response to dire warnings that attacks were imminent and that the administration felt it had no need to act further.

But the FBI Friday said that those investigations were not limited to al-Qaida and did not focus on al-Qaida cells. FBI spokesman Ed Coggswell said the bureau was trying to determine how the number 70 got into the report.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-rice0410,0,3695500.story?coll=ny-nation-big-pix

Bin Laden attempts to head to Yemen  
Al-Jazeera - 08/04/2004 09:45:00 GMT  

Osama Bin Laden is attempting to enter the Arabic Gulf state of Yemen by means of a sea vessel which his team hope to board along the coast of Pakistan. Al Jazeera were told by local villagers that two attempts to board vessels have failed due to increased security around the coastal region of Pakistan.

http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/world_full_story.asp?service_id=1356

Quite a few of you have been critiquing Nadar's language and dissing his candidacy.

I hope you saw his CSPAN interview last night since once the excitement is over, he'll be invisible to the media.

Anyway, he went to a meeting with Grover Norquist and here's the very interesting dialog.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/Nader_020612.html