Echo Chamber

Ideas worth repeating

Peace in Lebanon -- now!
Posted by Rep. Dennis Kucinich on July 24, 2006 at 4:42 PM.

As the situation in the Middle East continues to rapidly deteriorate, the Administration is failing our nation's moral obligation to become actively involved, diplomatically, to resolve this conflict.

This Administration's stated policy of inaction has allowed the situation to degenerate and therefore has contributed to the increasingly violent conflict in the region. Their policy of inaction makes the region, and the world, less safe. It makes Americans more vulnerable here at home and abroad.

Everyday this Administration sits on the sidelines the chance for a peaceful resolution becomes less likely. Every day this Administration sits on the sidelines more innocent civilians on all sides are dying. Every day this Administration sits on the sidelines America's already poor reputation in the world community gets worse.

The region urgently needs diplomatic assistance. The only way the US can reclaim its role, as a mediator is to speak and act like a mediator.

The US must become involved immediately in seeking a peaceful resolution to the current conflict. To help accomplish this, I have introduced legislation, H.Con.Res.450, calling upon the President to appeal to all sides in the current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of violence and to commit US diplomats to multi-party negotiations.

My resolution is not about assigning blame, it is about seeking an end to the conflict.

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President Bush sent me an internet
Posted by Evan Derkacz on July 24, 2006 at 7:34 AM.

In Bush's email plea to my Republican alter ego, I found this passage especially interesting -- though it took me a minute to figure out why:

nothing threatens our hard-won reforms and economic prosperity more than a Democrat victory this November.

Today, many Democrats want the tax relief we passed to expire in a few years. Some even want to repeal it now.

The Democrat Party has a clear record when it comes to taxes.

Give up? No, it's not the proper grammar exerted by the president but it is the language.

Back in 2003, for example (when the Iraq War was about WMD, remember that?), the White House still opted for "Democratic" as the preferred adjective to modify "party" or "victory" or what have you.

Now that the Iraq War (and much of the administration's botched foreign policy) is about installing democracy or "democratic reforms" -- and my fondest wish is that this comes true -- the administration has chosen to quietly separate their opposition party from their policy by opting for the clunky: "Democrat Party" and "democrat victory."

That way, you know, nobody will confuse the Democrats with people who advocate Democracy.

Plus, it has the added benefit of sounding ever-so-slightly ominous.

--> Sign up for Peek in your inbox... every morning! (Go here and check Peek box).

A new kind of money
Posted by Julian Darley on July 20, 2006 at 1:01 PM.

The decline in the availability of cheap energy is likely to be accompanied by an equally ominous possibility of world financial meltdown. That we are facing both of these threats now is not an accident: energy and financial stability are intimately linked. I believe the solutions for dealing with these twinned threats are equally linked. To build an environmentally sustainable, monetarily stable world, we need to create an economy in which locally produced energy provides the backing for local currencies.

Let's start with energy first. Energy decline will soon challenge just about every common notion of life that we have developed during the industrial era. Most of what we have built in the globalizing world of the last half century depends on cheap energy, particularly oil and natural gas.

After years of oil-industry financed obfuscation, there is a broad scientific consensus that our profligate use of fossil fuels is producing global warming. And despite similar oil industry denials, there is a growing consensus that we are rapidly approaching Peak Oil, after which world oil output will go into permanent decline. (The United States experienced Peak Oil in 1971.) After global Peak Oil, oil will still be available, but at ever increasing prices.

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Was Israel Justified?
Posted by Evan Derkacz on July 18, 2006 at 3:10 PM.

My mom called last night to tentatively ask: "But do you think Israel is justified?" She knew the answer but didn't have the words.

Which is the genius of good framing. You ask a question in a way that forces even your opposition to be conflicted about identifying as the opposition.

A recent Israeli poll asked, among other questions, whether "[the] aerial campaign in Lebanon is justified," according to the Washington Post (The raw data isn't available). 90% of Israelis agreed that it was.

But the question leaves little wiggle room. What if a person believes that a targeted and extremely careful aerial campaign is "justified"? And what if a person is pissed at Hezbollah's attack and capture of Israeli officers but doesn't agree with Israel's response at all? That person is apt to put a check in the justified box too.

The same question dominates U.S. news coverage. Israel regularly employs...

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Stop professional hate-mongers
Posted by Evan Derkacz on July 17, 2006 at 12:34 PM.

Media Matters has launched a campaign because "right-wing pundits -- who have called for the execution of public officials and others -- are given a platform in the major media," which they call "unprecedented."

They're referring to "conservative hate merchants like 'The Tall Blonde Woman in the Short Skirt With the Big Mouth' [whose column was recently dropped from the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa], Glenn Beck, and Melanie Morgan," whose work is promoted by Universal Press Syndicate, CNN, and Disney, respectively.

Add your name to the petition HERE.

The WWIII Meme (video)
Posted by Danny Schechter on July 17, 2006 at 9:09 AM.

There are screws loose in high places.

Elements of the intelligence "community" which have done such a fine job in Iraq, and their Israeli counterparts, along with the cadre of paid and unpaid cheerleaders in the TV punditocracy, seem to have decided that what the world needs now is another world war.

And they are not shy about saying so.

First, last week, David Twersky, the Tel Aviv correspondent for the New York Sun, a mouthpiece for the Israeli hardliners, compared the kidnapping of a corporal in Gaza to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the incident that triggered World War 1.

The parallel was planted.

Then, just yesterday Sunday June 16, New Gingrich, former House Speaker and still a darling of the GOP right, stated as a matter of fact on Meet that Press that a new war is already underway in the Middle East. It is, he insists, already a world war. "THIS IS, IN FACT, WORLD WAR 3," he said for emphasis, with no regrets and an apparent longing to "bring it on."

Columnist Dave Postman elaborated on his message in his Seattle Times blog...

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Pro-choice groups' out-to-lunch endorsements
Posted by Bob Geiger on July 13, 2006 at 8:20 AM.

For many years, people inside the Washington D.C. beltway have called Social Security the third-rail of American politics. For progressives, I sometimes think the same hands-off status can be assigned to saying anything against a pro-choice group, lest one appear unsupportive of one of the central tenets of being a liberal. But, as NARAL Pro-Choice America once again decides to endorse Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and might-as-well-be-Republican Joe Lieberman, it's past time to start questioning the wisdom behind their myopic logic.

For some reason, it seems to be an almost universal policy of abortion-rights groups to endorse all pro-choice incumbents, regardless of party affiliation and with no regard whatsoever to whatever other unfortunate baggage those politicians bring with them -- even if that baggage includes stances and votes that directly trash the mission of the very groups promoting them.

By what insane rationale do pro-choice organizations like NARAL – and, in my own New York backyard, the Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion (WCLA) -- believe that promoting a Republican majority in any legislative body is good for the abortion rights movement in the long term?

In endorsing even a moderate Republican like Chafee, NARAL is making a decision to also promote the broader agenda of George W. Bush and to galvanize the growing influence of the Religious Right on our national dialog. With the showdown over Republican efforts to eliminate the Senate filibuster in 2005 and the very real possibility of yet another Supreme Court justice appointed by the Bush-Cheney team, it is difficult to remember when the danger of this kind of support has been brought into such specific relief.

In addition to Republicans holding control over the executive and legislative branches of government, they have now almost completed a takeover of the judicial branch – which is the single biggest threat to Roe v. Wade and, presumably, everything organizations like NARAL are fighting for.

So, what in the world can NARAL be thinking? I understand that organizations like NARAL and Planned Parenthood are single-issue groups, whose charters compel them to accomplish their pro-choice mission by all means necessary. This includes endorsing whomever can have the most sway on behalf of their cause.

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Note to dense mainstream media:
Posted by Cenk Uygur on July 10, 2006 at 8:46 PM.

I am constantly amazed by how uninformed people are when their job is to inform others. Every press article or editorial I've seen on the Lieberman issue completely misses the point. We are not against Joe Lieberman because we are leftists who require ideological purity. We are against him because he aids and abets an out of control Republican Party.

I have been a centrist all my life and I was a Republican until five years ago...

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Wasting resources and the real fight to protect America
Posted by Jeffrey Feldman on July 5, 2006 at 11:20 AM.

Republicans are on the warpath again, returning to their old strategy of accusing Democrats of cowardice and treason on Iraq. And again, American frustration grows over a ruling party that uses the lives and ideals of our soldiers to fast-talk their way to re-election.

But Democrats, unlike Republicans, are again getting lost in the details of the debate, while the Republicans--despite their obvious political weaknesses--have kept their eyes, and their words, squarely on the frame.

In a national debate of this magnitude, the party that comes out on top will be the party that controls the frame because the frame--not the details--dictates the terms of the discussion. If Republicans dictate the terms of the discussion, they will win the debate, no matter how bad Iraq looks on the ground.

Two Frames Now Define Iraq Debate

The two frames are: 'War' and 'Waste.'

The 'War' Frame vs. The 'Waste' Frame: What is happening in Iraq?

Whether we realize it or not, the debate on Iraq is unfolding at two levels: message and frame.

At the level of 'message,' the debate consists of Republicans accusing Democrats of being cowards and of treason and betrayal and defeatism.

Also at the level of 'message,' the debate consists of Democrats talking about 'time tables for withdrawl and asking the Iraqi's to take 'responsibility for themselves' and so forth.

But there is a second level in the debate that is much, much broader. Rather than taking the form of the actual words people are saying, this second level--the level of the 'frame'--is unspoken.

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Taking the message to the heart of the Democratic establishment
Posted by Cenk Uygur on June 29, 2006 at 8:49 AM.

This post first appeared in the Huffington Post and is republished here with permission.

Peter Daou is one of the most astute and aggressive bloggers in the country. Senator Hillary Clinton is the poster child for equivocation and triangulation. So, it was interesting news when we found out that Senator Clinton has hired Peter Daou to be her web consultant. Hillary hiring Peter Daou is a little like Nixon going to China.

I know Peter and consider him a friend. I know for a fact that he understands the problems with the Democratic establishment and what needs to be done to fix it. And as much as anyone, Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party establishment.

So, that sets up an interesting question. Will Mohammed go to the mountain or will the mountain come to Mohammed?

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Vegas Blogasm creates fantasy-driven backlash
Posted by Don Hazen on June 26, 2006 at 12:28 PM.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Ghandi

The New York Times should be embarrassed, and its right-wing columnist David Books sent to pundit reeducation camp for his column in Sundays' New York Times attempting to slime uber-blogger Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.

Playing with metaphors that would have gotten him a D in freshman writing class, Brooks writes, "The Keyboard Kingpin, aka Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, sits at his computer, fires up his Web site, Daily Kos, and commands his followers, who come across like squadrons of rabid lambs, to unleash their venom on those who stand in the way," writes Brooks. "And in this way the Kingpin has made himself a mighty force in his own mind, and every knee shall bow." (it costs money to reads this column under the New York Times' misguided policy. Hint: it's not worth it.)

Brooks' effort is a pathetic attempt, on behalf of the wingnut right-wing bloggers, to trash Markos with silly innuendo derived from a couple of leaked emails off a rollicking list serve of hundreds of progressive bloggers writers and pundits. Brooks' piece is so light on nuance, meat and insight, it's clear that all his information came second hand from reading the hyperventilation of right-wing blogs and obsessed New Republic contributor, Jason Zengerle. Zengerle thought he stumbled onto some really juicy stuff, pointing to a powerhouse Moulitsas flexing his newfound political muscle, and petty corruption in the liberal bloggger ranks. In reality he found nothing new or interesting.

Basically Brooks' and Zengerle's whole premise belongs in the dumpster, and reflects a desperation on the part of journalists threatened that writing, language, coordination and passion have helped create a new power base within the political constellation, and that old style pundit writers are facing irrelevance.

For a little background...

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Frist slips 'poison pill' to minimum wage bill
Posted by Bob Geiger on June 21, 2006 at 10:40 AM.

It was so much easier for Senate Republicans to kill both attempts by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to raise the minimum wage last year with no midterm elections looming right around the corner. With nothing more than their routine disregard for the poor as an excuse, the GOP leadership killed two bills offered by Kennedy in 2005 to raise a federal minimum wage that has remained the same for almost a decade.

This year it's tougher, because Republican Senators up for reelection may have to explain screwing working Americans in a more recent vote while, at the same time, managing to give themselves nine pay raises, totaling almost $32,000, in the same ten-year span.

So Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has found a new way to pull his Simon Legree act and this time it takes the form of attaching a "poison pill" amendment to Kennedy's S.AMDT.4322, which would gradually raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour over the next two years.

A poison-pill is a procedural maneuver in which an onerous amendment is attached to a bill under consideration to force proponents of the original legislation to bail out and drop the whole issue. It's designed to either kill a bill entirely or create a situation that forces the other side into a negotiation to water down their original legislation to an unrecognizable point.

And the best way for a Religious Right go-to guy like Frist to do that -- and to poke a sharp stick in the eye of Senate Democrats -- is to attach an anti-abortion bill, that must be voted on before the minimum wage measure. Frist's S.AMDT.4323 would criminalize the transport of a minor across state lines to get an abortion and Democrats have to contend with that before they can get to the minimum wage issue.

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The war is over!
Posted by Joshua Holland on June 20, 2006 at 8:06 AM.

The Democrats are trying to take control of the Congress by running on an issue that Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg says is the sixth most important to voters in the coming elections: corruption in Washington.

As a party, they're not going to be able to come up with a unified position on the issue that's most important -- the war in Iraq -- so many Dems won't focus on it. They'll talk about healthcare and jobs, but not the open-ended occupation of Iraq (of course they're related; we're spending $5 billion a month -- not including reconstruction -- in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Consider that while handicapping the 2006 midterms.

(The data raises an important question. Does it really indicate that voters think corruption is way down on their list of problems, or does it reflect the fact that many feel that neither party is capable of tackling it? And to what degree is it an indication of how tough it is for Dems to frame our national debates, given that they've been talking about the "culture of corruption" for over a year now?)

According to several recent polls -- Greenberg's included -- a majority of voters a) think Iraq was a mistake and want to see the U.S. out and b) don't want to leave Iraq until stability has been established. It's a bit schizophrenic (and assumes that creating a stable and pluralistic government in Iraq is within our power).

Perhaps the way to reconcile those views is by shifting the rhetoric of withdrawal.

Thom Hartmann thinks so, and he proposes that it's time to declare victory in the war on Iraq:

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Kos on media reform: Use the tools we have
Posted by Jan Frel on June 16, 2006 at 2:20 PM.

From the latest issue of The Nation by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga:

The media landscape is changing dramatically, seemingly on a daily basis, and what we once considered serious dangers to our democracy -- things like media consolidation and the absence of balance and fairness -- will become increasingly less important. We are at the beginning of the age of citizen media, where corporations can own vast, billion-dollar media outlets yet fail to control the flow and content of information. It's quite hard to be a media gatekeeper when everyone becomes media, and that's what we're seeing happen in the age of blogs, wikis, social networking sites, podcasting, vlogging, message boards, e-mail groups and whatever wonderful communication technologies emerge tomorrow.

Consolidation isn't saving newspaper circulation numbers. And television is likewise confronted by two looming trends. First, great video can be produced on gear costing less than $1,000, and technology (such as Apple's iMovie) has dramatically simplified once-technologically-complex tasks so that the most casual hobbyist can create great content. Second, the convergence of the Internet and television is imminent.

This means that by the end of the decade there will be little distinction between traditional television content and that distributed via the Internet. Televisions will be web-enabled, able to pull content from the Internet. Much as blogging has allowed writers to bypass traditional publications, video producers will be able to ignore the corporate broadcasters and deliver their content directly to the masses. The wildly popular upstart YouTube is already doing this on the web. The jump from computer screen to television screen is closer than most of us realize. The fight over media consolidation is becoming increasingly anachronistic. We need to focus on making sure progressives learn to use the tools of this new media landscape. That's where the new-century media wars will be fought and won. Not in a corporate boardroom.