First Door on the Left

WASHINGTON, July 29 — President Bush refused today to declassify a 28-page chapter of a Congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks. He said disclosure of the deleted section, which centers on accusations about Saudi Arabia’s role in financing the hijackings, “would help the enemy” and compromise the administration’s campaign against terror.

Translations:
“enemy” = “the American people”
“terror” = “those dang Democrats who are trying to take my job away”

WASHINGTON, July 29 — Despite renewed warnings about possible airline hijackings, the Transportation Security Administration has alerted federal air marshals that as of Friday they will no longer be covering cross-country or international flights, MSNBC.com has learned. The decision to drop coverage on flights that many experts consider to be at the highest risk of attack apparently stems from a policy decision to rework schedules so that air marshals don’t have to incur the expense of staying overnight in hotels.

Kind of makes you wonder if one hand knows what the other is doing.

Tell the truth now, do you feel any safer now than you did on September 12, 2001? Has the Bush administration really done anything to make our country and safer and more secure place in which to live?

Well, okay, they made their rich friends richer, and they have passed a lot of security mandates down to the states while denying them the funds with which to carry out those mandates. Those two things right there should make you feel a whole lot safer. I know they sure help me to sleep better at night.

One thing I notice when I check my visitor log is that a lot of the visitors to this site come from Movable Type’s website. You see, this site is maintained by Movable Type (which I highly recommend, by the way), and every time I update, a ping is sent to their site and I am listed on their “recently updated” list.

So… to all you Movable Type types (like that, huh?)… welcome! I hope you’ll take a minute and look around. Feel free to comment on anything you read or let me know if you have any questions. I am not employed by the Dean for America campaign (in fact, I am not employed by anybody at the moment), but if you have any questions about Governor Dean, either let me know and I will try to get an answer, or please check out his official website, Howard Dean for America, or his official weblog, Blog for America. And especially, if you have any suggestions on how to make this site better, let me know!

Not too many of my “hits” come from all the other sites I have linked. I wonder why that is? I have links to a lot of mighty fine websites, so be sure to check them out, too!

Anyways… all you Movable Type folks, and everybody else… thanks for dropping in. Y’all come back now!

A good read in tomorrow’s New York Times: “Defying Labels Left or Right, Dean’s ’04 Run Makes Gains“.

I like the way they closed the article:

But with that kind of backing, it is not surprising to hear the question that a man posed to Dr. Dean at a house party for 200 on the muggy sea coast of New Hampshire: Isn’t he too liberal to get elected?

“If being a liberal means a balanced budget, I’m a liberal,” Dr. Dean said, delighted at the opening. “If being a liberal means adding jobs instead of subtracting them, then, please, call me a liberal.”

“I don’t care what label you put on me,” he finished, “as long as you call me Mr. President!”

All-righty then, “Mr. President” it will be, sir!

The President is about to head to his ranch for the month of August, but before his bags are packed, we have what might seem like a far-fetched notion: What about a news conference? Mr. Bush answers reporters’ questions on the run or perhaps two at a time in sessions with foreign leaders, but he has not held a solo news conference for nearly five months. His last such event was March 6 — before the war with Iraq, before the passage of his tax cut, before the latest outbreak of violence in Liberia, before the release of the 9/11 report, before — well, you get the idea. Nor is this lag time unusual for the Bush presidency: During his more than two years in office, Mr. Bush has held just eight solo news conferences. The last one before his March appearance took place four months earlier. By contrast, President Clinton had held 33 such events at this point in his term, and the first President Bush had held 61.

Why won’t George W. Bush hold more news conferences? I think it’s kind of funny that reporters are still asking that question. You would think they would have figured out the answer by now.

Mr. Bush’s handlers are afraid to turn him loose all on his own. They are afraid of what he might say. The policy in this administration has always been to keep the president in tightly controlled, scripted situations. He is intended to say what has been printed on the cards for him to say, and nothing more.

That is, after all, what we pay him for.

Slate Magazine writer Chris Suellentrop recently attended a couple of John Kerry’s campaign events. He found that many of Senator Kerry’s supporters wish the candidate would be more like Howard Dean. This from his article “Be Like Dean!”

At the two Kerry events I attended this past weekend, voters kept encouraging the Massachusetts senator, in effect, to be more like Howard Dean. After Friday’s Kerry speech, a voter walked up to him and told him the Democrats must quit being passive. “Oh, I’m not passive,” Kerry soothed. Today, he does something similar when an angry voter complains about the Leave No Child Behind bill. “Oh, I am so furious about it,” Kerry says matter-of-factly. These are questions Dean wouldn’t even be asked.

As I’m leaving the event, I run into a Kerry campaign worker. He stops me and asks me about Dean and what he’s like. He says he’d really like to hear him speak, but it’s not kosher for staffers to go to other candidates’ events. Maybe if he goes in plain clothes, he muses. Everyone talks about what a great speaker Dean is, he says, but how does he interact with people? I tell him I was impressed.

The more I tell him about Dean, the more crestfallen he seems to get. Without mentioning Kerry, I tell him that Dean never appears to be trying to walk out of a room. He interjects: “That’s a real problem we have, because Kerry’s a senator, so he needs to be back in Washington. Dean’s basically unemployed, so he can spend all day hanging out with three people.” It’s only a feeling I get, but I can’t help wondering if he signed up with Kerry because he thought Kerry would win, and now he’s questioning his decision. As I head out to catch my plane, I think that the girl on his right appears to be consoling him.

We’ll soon be welcoming these people into the Dean camp with open arms!

The Boston Globe has a good article on Governor Dean today. As always, click on the headline to read the entire article.

By Brian McGrory

MANCHESTER, N.H. — He is sitting in his shirtsleeves at a particleboard table in a corner of a barely converted warehouse that is teeming with campaign workers half his age.

And Howard Dean, the irascible Howard Dean, the impatient Howard Dean, always stern, suffering no fools, the guy who tosses insults like a B-52 drops bombs, is smiling.

He is smiling when he is asked if he’s surprised by his extraordinarily good fortune — the early surge, the sustained success, the gush of Internet donations — in this, his first presidential campaign.

He pauses for a long moment, perhaps recalling his vow of honesty a few minutes before, and replies, ”Yes, I am.” And seriously, how could he not be?

Polls show the Vermont governor emerging in Iowa and in a pull-and-tug with John Kerry in New Hampshire. Disaffected voters and liberal students are swarming around him. He is the red-hot candidate in a field of somber gray.

But questions nag, some of them whispered by the operatives of his closest rivals: Does Howard Dean have the demeanor to be president? Has he peaked too early? Does his candidacy go deeper than his opposition to war?

The early line isn’t good. Word from the field is that the impetuous Dean makes Bob Dole look soft and cuddly, that he’s little more than a fad, and, worst of all, that he’s a one-trick pony who doesn’t have the legs for a long presidential run.

So I arrived up here half expecting the candidate to be disemboweling bunnies in his spare time, screaming at staff about the dripping entrails, and railing nonstop about Iraq. I expected, in short, to find someone to be dismissed.

The article demonstrates a very good point… journalists usually have little good to say about Howard Dean until they actually meet the man, then they come away impressed and with nothing but good things to write about.

It is still very early in this campaign. There are six months left before the first primary votes are cast, and a year before the national convention where the party’s nominee will be selected. A lot can happen in that time.

The above article sums it up in this way: “It’s the middle of summer, too early for any sane person to pay a dime’s worth of attention to the campaign. And yet there’s one candidate in a boring group providing a reason to care.” (Meaning, I guess, that those of us who are paying attention are not sane, but that is entirely another story!)

A Zogby International poll released today shows Howard Dean with only 39% name recognition, yet tied for the lead with Richard Gephardt and Joseph Lieberman, both of whom enjoy much greater name recognition. As the campaign progresses, and more and more people become familiar with Governor Dean and his stands on the issues, I cannot help but believe he will be the man the Democratic party (and the nation) selects as George W. Bush’s successor.

PHILADELPHIA, July 28 — The moderate Democratic group that helped elect Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 warned today that Democrats were headed for defeat if they presented themselves as an angry “far left” party fighting tax cuts and opposing the war in Iraq.

The warning, by the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of moderate Democrats that helped move the party to the center 10 years ago, was largely a response to the popularity enjoyed in early presidential primary states by Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont.

Dr. Dean has attracted wide notice for his criticism of the Democratic Party for supporting the Iraq war and some of President Bush’s tax cuts.

Neither Dr. Dean nor any other presidential candidate attended the two-day conference of the leadership council, which ended today.

But the group’s leaders said their concerns went beyond Dr. Dean and reflected what they feared was an emerging perception of the entire Democratic presidential field as supportive of liberal policies that the council rejected long ago.

“It is our belief that the Democratic Party has an important choice to make: Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?” said Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, chairman of the organization. “The administration is being run by the far right. The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left.”

Last evening I sent the following to the DLC via their contact page:

First, let me say that I fully understand the need to defeat George W. Bush in 2004. It is vital to the future of our country that we do so.

Second, I have to say that I am having trouble understanding your constant bashing of one of the candidates who has devoted himself to this purpose. If we are to defeat Mr. Bush, we must stand united in our efforts to do so. A divided Democratic party just is not going to succeed in this important task.

Have any of you sat down with Howard Dean and fully discussed with him his views on national security and the war in Iraq? If you had, you would have discovered that Governor Dean is very strong on national security, and he is not so much against the war in Iraq as he is against the manner in which we were led into that war: with misrepresented and tainted intelligence and with total disregard for the wishes of the United Nations.

This is the first time I have sent a message such as this to any group, but after reading the comments some of you made in the national press yesterday, I felt I had to send this message.

It is imperative that we defeat George W. Bush in 2004, and it is imperative that our party stand united in doing so. We must support 100% the candidate our party selects. I, personally, believe that candidate should be Howard Dean, and I believe your reasons for not supporting him are flawed.

Thank you for your attention.

Thus far, I have received the following automated response:

“Thank you for contacting us.

If you are waiting for a response to a technical question or problem, we will get back to you as soon as possible.”

Will I receive a further response? I don’t know, but I kind of doubt it. I’ll let you know if I do. Somehow, I get the feeling that the Democratic Leadership Council has lost touch with the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, if you are interested in appearing with George W. Bush on television, here is your chance:

Volunteers are needed to be in our “Republican Values” TV show featuring President Bush. The 30-minute national TV program will be appearing on both MSNBC and CNBC and highlights the core values of the Republican Party by showcasing the major accomplishments of President Bush’s first term in office–and we are working on having the show hosted by Rush Limbaugh and/or Sean Hannity.

Of course, you have pay for this great “honor”…

We do rely upon you to provide us with a great quote as to why you are a Republican, a nice photo of yourself to appear next to that of the President on the TV show, your personal details (name, job, city/state) and we also rely upon you to cover our nonprofit organization’s actual, incremental TV production cost of including your material in our TV show, $37–and we’ll even waive this tax-deductible cost for those of you who submit the best, most compelling quotes of why you are a Republican. We also make available to you a DVD of the TV show in which you appear with President Bush.

Now what good Republican could possibly pass up an opportunity like that? And it’s even tax-deductible!

From The Dallas Morning News, another report on the Texas State Senators’ attempt to save our democracy from Tom DeLay and Karl Rove:

AUSTIN – Eleven Senate Democrats bolted the state Monday rather than report for a second special legislative session ordered by Gov. Rick Perry in an increasingly bitter battle over congressional redistricting.

In a walkout mirroring the action by House Democrats in May, the senators boycotted the chamber, slipped out of the Capitol and boarded a pair of private jets to Albuquerque, N.M.

“Today, we 11 Democratic senators have availed ourselves of the tool granted to us under the Texas Constitution to break a quorum of the Texas Senate. This is not an action we take lightly,” said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, as the lawmakers took up residence at an Albuquerque Marriott hotel. “We didn’t want to be here.”

They were greeted by New Mexico’s Democratic Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and several New Mexico state troopers on hand to provide protection – an apparent outgrowth of attempts by Republican leaders to deploy Texas Department of Public Safety officers to retrieve House members from Ardmore, Okla., in May during a similar protest.

“Without question, we did the right thing,” Sen. Royce West of Dallas said of the walkout by all but one of the Senate Democrats. “We’re playing by the rules. When the other side doesn’t play by the rules, you have to find other solutions to deal with it.”

Mr. West said he is prepared to stay away for 30 days if necessary to kill the redistricting effort by denying the 31-member Senate the quorum it needs to do business.

With the lawmakers on the run, the secretary of the Senate issued a warrant for their arrest. But it was unclear that officials had the authority to round up the senators outside the state.

“I’m very, very disappointed,” said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a Republican. “Our Senate Democrats are putting their party affiliation over what they were elected to do.”

Monday’s escape was carefully planned and specifically timed to avoid any effort by the Republican leadership to keep lawmakers from fleeing Austin.

At midday Monday, Senate Democrats huddled in a third-floor conference room adjacent to the Senate chamber.

Mr. Dewhurst met twice with the group, appealing for them to work with Republicans on what he called a “fair” redrawing of congressional boundaries.

When Mr. Dewhurst left the room the second time to convene the day’s Senate session, a cluster of reporters followed him. The senators then left the conference room and headed downstairs to waiting cars bound for the airport, where two private jets awaited. They belonged to constituents of Sen. Juan Hinojosa of McAllen – the David Rogers and Joe LaMantia families. Mr. Hinojosa said the transportation would be regarded as an in-kind contribution to the Democratic caucus.

“I didn’t even know where we were going until we got on the plane,” said Sen. Mario Gallegos Jr. of Houston.

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Vice President Dick Cheney spent about 30 minutes in Columbia Monday, raising about $300,000 for President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.

Some 150 guests paid $2,000 a person at a fund-raising lunch at the home of Gayle Averyt, former chief executive officer of Colonial Life Insurance Co.

The fund-raiser was closed to the public and the media.

Outside the event, about 25 demonstrators chanted and carried placards reading, “Impeach Cheney for Lying” and “Cheney is a War Profiteer.”

Demonstrators first were told to conduct their protests at Maxcy-Gregg Park, about four blocks away from the fund-raiser. After conferring with local police, the protesters were allowed to stand on the sidewalk across the street from Averyt’s house.

At the fund-raiser, Cheney posed for pictures with guests and spoke briefly about the war, the record of the Bush administration and the importance of the 2004 election, according to those in attendance.

“It wasn’t a political speech; it was more of here’s what’s at stake,” said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “It was a very thoughtful speech. I told him afterwards it was a perfect tone because all the people here are all business folks. They understand politics. He made you think about why this election is so important. I was impressed.”

Eddie Floyd, former chairman of the University of South Carolina Board of Trustees, said he will host a Bush-Cheney fund-raiser featuring first lady Laura Bush at his Florence home in October.

Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean used Cheney’s Columbia visit as a fund-raising benchmark over the weekend.

The effort began Friday, when Dean’s Web site challenged donors to match the money that Cheney was planning to raise in South Carolina. Dean took in more than $400,000 over the Internet in a single weekend.

Actually, the total raised by Dean for America was $508,640.31 with a total of 9,621 individual contributors.

Which do you think better represents democracy… $300,000 from 150 contributors, or over $500,000 from over 9,000 contributors?

Sorry, easy question!