It is beyond argument that the primary goal of the Democratic Party and, by extention, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is to see to it that the principles of the Democratic Party are advanced and that Democratic candidates are elected to office.  The DNC's stated purpose, aside from planning and operating the quadrennial nation presidential nominating convention is to "work[ ] with national, state, and local party organizations, elected officials, candidates, and constituencies to respond to the needs and views of the Democratic electorate and the nation."  Throughout the last several months, since the unfolding of events that have resulted in the embarassment and disenfranchisement of the Michigan and Florida electorates, the Party and the DNC has heard from the state parties, elected officials, national officials and the two remaining presidential candidatates.  Now you've heard from the Michigan Democratic Party (MDP), which, we assume, has a similar mission.

     

The Michigan Wildlife Conservancy (formerly, the Michigan Wildlife Habitat Foundation) was founded in 1982 by the Jackson, Michigan, businessman Russell Bengel and several others who had the vision and understanding that for wildlife to be preserved, it is necessary to preserve vital habitat.  But, as with many of our formerly wild places, preservation bowed to the pressure of commerce.  As such, the MWC was formed to help restore at least some of what has been lost to that pressure.  Since its founding in 1982, the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy has helped restore more than 6,700 acres of wetalands, 2,400 acres of prarie habitat, installed more than 1,000 stream improvement structures, and have demonstrated the existence of a wild breeding population of cougar throught most the state.

I have been a member of the MWC since 1983, a past president, and currently serve on the executive committee of the Board of Directors.    

This diary is to demonstrate what can be done when public and private interests, rather than opposing each other, work together towards a common goal.  

You know, I've had just about enough of all this party in-fighting.  I'm sick to death of Obama's preacher and Clinton's Ferraro.  I don't like Tony McPeak calling Bill Clinton a McCarthyite, and I've had just about enough of James Carville's charge that Bill Richardson is some modern-day Judas Iscariot. Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson are wholly loathesome for their open declarations that Obama can't beat John McCain, and for David Axelrod to so much as intimate that Hillary Clinton's vote on Iraq somehow lead to the death of Benazir Bhutto is enough to make me vomit.

So, after all this time as a Democrat (since my first vote in 1976) and all my time on this site (October 2003), I've decided that neither of these campagins deserve my vote.  

I'm voting for John McCain.  And don't try to talk me out of it.

This is all that needs to be said about Jeremiah Wright from this point onward:

                                                                                                                               

The timing of this could not be more perfect.  On the day after the night before, when John McCain sewed up the Republican nomination, and afer allowing sufficent time for him to collect the official kiss on the cheek from his new benefactor--and former adversary--George Bush, another unlikely tag-team act has formed to promote the candidacy of the one candidate that truly unites half the Democratic Party with that portion of the GOP that voted Hillary Clinton "Most Likely to Lose to John McCain."

In a joint statement signed by Michigan governor, Jennifer Granholm, and Florida governor, Charlie Crist, the two parties have been petitioned to seat their respective states' delegations to the national conventions.

In full, the governors have written:

Like so many of you, I came to this site in 2003 (or later) after a long run of supporting and campaigning for Howard Dean--indeed, my first donation to Dean went not to his presidential campaign, but to the predecessor exploratory PAC, the Fund for a Healthy America.  Those of you who were around here back then and into and through the waning days of the campaign in early 2004 remember Daily Kos as the largest Dean-friendly blog on the Internets (outside of the ground-breaking Blog for America) where many of us were first introduced to idea of online activism on behalf of a presidential candidate.

Well, how far we have come.  This site jumped from a few thousand to closing in on a couple hundred thousand users, and in turn Markos went from "just a guy with a website" and part-time Dean internet consultant to a regular commentator on the state of Democratic and progressive politics.  

 

By now I'm sure you've all read of the despicable actions of some overzealous staffer, who apparently replaced Edwards campaign lit with that promoting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton at the stoop of a still anonymous Iowa resident.  According to one eye witness, a Ms. sarahlane,  in an account that she says, "You will not believe,":

My mother and I were stomping through the Iowa snow going door to door. If someone was not at home we would leave some John Edwards literature for them. We arrived at one house where the Iowan was not home and we left some literature at her door. We crossed the street and began walking to our next house. A car pulled up at the house where we had just left the literature. I had a feeling that it was another canvasser from another campaign. I told my mom we should walk further down the street and pretend to be busy flipping through papers. I told my mom, who was wearing sunglasses to keep an eye on him.

Well that's not the half of it.  Uhhh, better meet me at the extended diary box . . .

In the the did so/did not of whether former Michigan governor George Romney ever marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Politico has now reported that on account of an alleged eye-witness statement, King and Romney were seen marching hand-in-hand in the streets of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, in the summer of 1963.  The problem is that it never happened--at least not as the alleged eye-witness, Shirley Bashore, claims.  The Politico reports:

Shirley Basore, 72, says she was sitting in the hairdresser’s chair in wealthy Grosse Pointe, Mich., back in 1963 when a rumpus started and she discovered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and her governor, George Romney, were marching for civil rights — right past the window.

With the cape still around her neck, Basore went outside and joined the parade.

"They were hand in hand," recalled Basore, a former high-school English teacher. "They led the march. We all swung our hands, and they held their hands up above everybody else’s."

The Politico article continues:

These candidate and anti-candidate diaries are getting to be toxic cesspools--just about all of them--and I'd have to think that none of them are doing your respective candidates any good whatsoever. The name calling and the backbiting at Democrats is bad enough, but nonetheless expected in a primary season.  For many, I'd imagine, the first reflex is to find the scroll bar.  Perhaps that's why some try to skirt the scroll bar by resorting to the photobucket image of headline-sized type--red, of course--imploring those fucking fucks who that fucker does not agree with to, rather expectedly, fuck off.  My, how the level of what passes for political discourse on this site has been elevated.

The point of this diary, though, centers on the fact that for too many here, it seems, the slings and arrows of political campaigning are so virulent so as to cause grown adults to loose all sense of proportion and to melt into fetid pools of sludge every time a cross word is directed toward our beloved candidates by one of his or her rivals. Well, enough of that.  It's time to toughen up a little.  Yes, it's time we all lost our political virginity and look like we've been through this before.  

This is not a call-out diary.  I do not submit it to inflame or start some sort of range war on the issue of the diaries of one person.  And for those of you whe believe that this diary is contrary to the site rules, I will remind you that the proscription of calling out, even if that is what you believe this to be, applies not to the content of the diary, but the diary title.  From the FAQ:

"Calling out" other site users by name in diary titles is prohibited. Diaries which "call out" another by name tend to needlessly inflame. If you feel compelled to address another user's comments or diaries in a diary of your own, please do so cautiously. Avoid ad hominems and stick with substantive, constructive criticism only.

As I believe it at least somewhat fair to say that the diary OPOL and the True Power of Daily Kos is in some measure aimed at me or what I write, I offer this explanation and statement of my position on this issue in like means (a diary) as this issue was today here raised.  

For those of you who consistently read Jonathan Schell, you will not be surprised by position he lays out in his most recent article in The Nation.  In his piece, one of the very few that The Nation sets behind a subscription wall, Schell essentially argues that the Democrats, if they are legitimately and sufficiently of a mind to affect the outcome in Iraq, should force an implacable president to a Constitutional confrontation over which branch of government will determine the war's future course. He argues that the half-measures proposed by the likes of Levin and Jack Reed (and, by extension, Feingold and Harry Reid) are constitutionally dubious, militarily illogical, and politically disastrous.

I believe Schell is correct, and that the time for finessing this war is over.

This just in:

From the New York Times:

The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call and e-mail patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.

Essentially, we are now being told that so-called "communities of interest," of a terror suspect's network of people with whom contact is made, are also the subjects of telecommunications analysis by the FBI, though the project has allegedly been halted while the Bureau is currently under scrutiny for abuses of process as it relates to the national security letters.

Don't be so sure.

As is being repoted this evening on Politico, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are to announce tomorrow that they will be unveiling a plan to force a series of votes, starting in July, to bring an end to the Iraq War.

Reid has already publicly declared that Senate Democrats will offer four Iraq-related amendments to the upcoming 2008 Defense authorization bill, including a proposal by Reid and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to set a firm timetable to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by next spring.

Pelosi is planning to announce that the House will also vote on a bill setting a new withdrawal timetable of April 1, 2008, although the details of the proposal were still up in the air at press time, according to Democratic sources. The House will consider this proposal as a freestanding bill, said the sources.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the top:  I most assuredly believe that George Bush, Richard Cheney, and Alberto Gonzales are categorically worthy of impeachment and removal from office for committing high crimes and misdemeanors while in the performance of the duties of their respective offices.  Still, clamoring for impeachment at this time and under the circumstances currently apparent is to me a potentially catastrophic folly, a waste of precious time and political capital, and the one thing that can, more than anything else, give the next presidential election to the Republicans.  (The frequency and repetition of the almost daily impeachment diaries is still annoying as hell and, to my mind, counter-productive, but that’s another diary that I’ll not now write.)  Rather, I’d like to focus on the simple to phrase but difficult to answer question of whether we should commence impeachment hearing against any or all of these political officials.

I'm frankly mystified in how one can believe that we as posters -- even those of us who paid for lifetime subscriptions -- to this site have any degree of ownership interest in it.  If you are saying that we have an obligation to be responsible enough so as to not cause this site to be thought of as little more than some online playground for the liberally bent, I suppose I could agree with you to that extent.  But I don't believe that is what you are saying.

One thing is clear, and should be held above all else, and that is that this site is owned lock, stock and barrel by Markos Moulitas, and no matter how long any of us have posted here, or how often, or how many others our pearls of wisdom have attracted or kept posting, this is his site, and we continue to post here at his suffrage.  

Michigan Kossacks Meet Tonight!

These are just some of the luminaries who won't be at tonight's Fourth Occasional Meeting of the SE Michigan Chapter of the DailyKos Bloviator's Club and Benevolent Assoication.  But, DHinMI, emptywheel, Dump Terry McAuliffe, Cordelia Lear, Liberal Lucy, Rob Cole, Olds 88, and a host of others will be.  Unfortunately, Funny David Boyle is currently on assignment in the West -- something about locating retirement digs for Cheney, I think -- and maybeeso said she's, well, rather fittingly, "a maybeeso."

This time, we're trying a new locale, Ann Arbor/Ypsi's progressive heroes' Matt and Réne Gref's Corner Brewery.  Here's the details:

Fresh from his recent one-night stand at the smoke-filled room that was the D.C. Kossacks gathering, DHinMI will be holding forth along with emptywheel, Dump Terry McAuliffe and Cordelia Lear, Funny David Boyle, Ann Arbor Blue, GOTV, and countless others at the newest progressive pub:

The Corner Brewery
720 Norris Street
Ypsilanti, MI 48198

734-480-2739

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2006, at 7:30 'til ???                               CLICK HERE FOR MAP

It's an easy Sunday morning, and since we've now gone past the 100,000 uid, I thought it might be interesting for everyone to see what this little survey might reveal about us.  Many (most) of us are familiar with the Bravo program, Inside the Actors' Studio.

And, if so, you are certainly familiar with the segment where James Lipton draws on the questionnaire developed by the host of the French (I love the French, don't you?) program Bouillon de Culture, Bernard Pivot.