Remember the arrogance of that Obama turnaround on FISA? Well, the answer is, under the current Daily Kos construction, we have no where else to turn. What else can we do? “Where else can you dirty fucking internet beatnik hippies go? Just give me some more money and shut the fuck up,” Obama might as well have said. He’ll probably say something like that a lot during the next four years. Obama will probably do things that any sensible person would never equate with real “change”.
Here are the Markos rules as far as I can figure them out: We support the democrats no matter what they do. We don’t support Republicans, which I think is smart because they’re an evil party (there shouldn’t be a party that represents private interests against the greater good at every fucking turn)but we also don’t support third party candidates who would better represent us. Further, we won’t expend any energy into building viable third party candidates and/or well funded well organized third party runs. Now, to me, those last two facts, the reality that we don’t support third party candidates or will work to build a viable third party infrastructure, doom us to irrelevance. This is why we lose. I might stress that this is also why we will continue to lose. They simply don’t fear us. Finally, this Markos construction is a boon to the Republicans. I can very easily see a scenario where the republicans stop all meaningful reform/stimulus over the next two years, declare all dem efforts “fails” and make big gains in 2010.
Three: What is a viable third party run?You don’t need a 50 state plan, at least initially, to prove our point to the democrats. You really need to focus on what I’ve been calling my 5/25 plan. You need to fund 25 house races and 5 senate races. You need at least 1 million dollars to compete for a house seat and at least 2 million to compete, realistically and viably for a senate seat. Now, this is where the expertise of the Kos community could come in handy. What 25 house seats would you pick to make your point? I frankly think they should run “Lieberman” style. Run them in the primary first and even if they lose run them in the general. We already have two senate opportunities in Delaware and Illinois for 2010. Tom Morello has openly talked about dipping his toe into the political waters in Illinois. I actually wouldn’t mind Ralph Nader as a Delaware senator because I think he would use the fillibuster. The truth of the matter is that five senators that use the old fashioned Jimmy Stewart fillibuster could change congress. Just once, I’d like to see a senator as supportive of child healthcare as they are for wall street bailouts. I’d love to see a senator talk about that over a several day fillibuster as well. (You would need a stubborn asshole to do that…Nader looks right to me…)
TagKos
Someone at Daily Kos takes a look at media coverage of the church shooting and digs up some interesting details about the Christian group that Murray was most involved with, Youth with a Mission:
The Cult Awareness Network national office in Chicago had several letters on file concerning YWAM. One such letter by Nancy Brown dated March of 1984 from Itheca, New York stated “that Ywam has many elements of a destructive cult”. A major issue cited was “the authoritarian control by the elders”. Allegedly YWAM depicted the “world” as “Satanic”. Members were told that “Satan comes into an idle mind” and were advised “Whenever you have a spare moment memorize. Elders gave out cards with Bible verses to carry and use”.
And:
Denver station KMGH reports that many people at the Colorado Springs church have similar connections: “There is a Youth With A Mission office on the New Life Church campus, and many members of New Life have completed the YWAM’s school and discipleship programs. They have also worked together in local evangelical outreach programs.”
So here’s what seems to have happened: a particularly loony Christian group filled a mentally ill kid’s head with terrifying non-sense and he ended up killing some people, and now the conservative media want blame secularism for it. Well, it makes as much sense as Christianity does in the first place, I suppose.
I’m posting this here because I think there’s a fairly large cross-over between Technoccultists and Ron Paul supporters, and because I’d really like to get the bottom of this. Paul’s not going to get to get a fair shake in the mainstream media or the progressive media, and the libertarian media (such that it is) seems a bit quiet on the issue of Ron Paul’s alleged racism. Though I admittedly skew to the left for the most part, I have a few libertarian tendencies as well so I feel like maybe I can give him a fair shake. For your inspection:
Ron Paul: The Radical Right’s Man in Washington.
The defenses of Paul I’ve seen so far are:
1. Deny that the newsletters even exist and claim that the Daily Kos poster who posted this is “obviously a neocon Guiliani supporter who has been building up a record on this site in an attempt to give you some sort of street cred to run bullcrap like this diary throughout the Republican primary.” (From “libertynow”‘s comments on the Kos diaries).
2. Take the Paul’s defense that he didn’t write the newsletters at face value.
The former I find fairly absurd, and the latter just doesn’t quite work for me. And while it’s true that you can’t choose your supporters, one has to look at why the racist right tends to support Ron Paul. Even before I read about these newsletters, I was worried by Paul’s immigration positions and asserted that he was deliberately playing to the racist right. But I’m quite open to being proved wrong.
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