Like so many opponents of a war launched on a series of lies, I have become increasingly enraged with the conduct of the so-called Democratic Party opposition to the neocon tyranny known as the Cheney-Bush Administration in order of real importance.

Once that the American people spoke loud and clear in the 2006 elections by ending Republican leadership in both houses of Congress polls clearly revealed that the cutting edge issue was the Iraq War and the desire to extricate America from it.  

Americans voted for Democratic candidates not because of any strong party preference, but based on a desire to end an unpopular foreign conflict with mounting death tolls and no end in sight.

The 4th Annual DemocracyFest in New Hampshire is approaching! At this posting, only 128 weekend tickets are left for sale!

http://www.democracyfest.ne t/

Bring someone you care about, and meet new people. It’s time to take our country back.

End the Iraq occupation. Build respect in the world again. Protect our lives and liberties at home. Provide real (economic) security for our families. It’s our country, and we need to leave it in better shape for our children and their children.

Greg Palast, author and progressive journalist, has joined the list of speakers for the 4th Annual DemocracyFest. Other speakers include Gov. Howard Dean (free and open to the public), Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Mike Gravel, Bev Harris, Jim Dean and more! See the schedule and get your tickets at http://www.DemocracyFest.ne t

Trainings and panels offered include Impeachment, Creating Community Websites, Service Politics, Anatomy of a Grassroots Campaign, Framing, Peak Oil, Election Law, Democracy and the Religious Right, Pollworker Training, Making the Most of Grassroots Volunteers, the DFA Training Academy, and more!

All this plus lots of live music, films, and most importantly, networking with liberal activists from across the country. Don’t miss this chance to form working relationships that will have a lasting effect on our issue-based activities and our efforts to elect fiscally responsible and socially progressive candidates.

The 4th Annual DemocracyFest will take place June 9-10 at the Wayfarer Inn near Manchester, NH. More information is available at http://www.DemocracyFest.ne t

Greg Palast, author and progressive journalist, has joined the list of speakers for the 4th Annual DemocracyFest. Other speakers include Gov. Howard Dean (free and open to the public), Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Mike Gravel, Bev Harris, Jim Dean and more! See the schedule and get your tickets at http://www.DemocracyFest.ne t

Trainings and panels offered include Impeachment, Creating Community Websites, Service Politics, Anatomy of a Grassroots Campaign, Framing, Peak Oil, Election Law, Democracy and the Religious Right, Pollworker Training, Making the Most of Grassroots Volunteers, the DFA Training Academy, and more!

All this plus lots of live music, films, and most importantly, networking with liberal activists from across the country. Don’t miss this chance to form working relationships that will have a lasting effect on our issue-based activities and our efforts to elect fiscally responsible and socially progressive candidates.

The 4th Annual DemocracyFest will take place June 9-10 at the Wayfarer Inn near Manchester, NH. More information is available at http://www.DemocracyFest.ne t

The 4th Annual DemocracyFest is coming June 9-10 to the Wayfarer Inn in Bedford, NH. The event will feature progressive speakers, trainings, and entertainment. Organized by volunteers who met through Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, the event has previously been held in Massachusetts, Texas, and California.

DemocracyFest Incorporated, the producers of the event, have just confirmed that Sen. John Edwards will be speaking. DNC Chair, Gov. Howard Dean will be speaking Sunday evening. Gov. Dean’s speech will be free and open to the public. Other speakers and trainers include Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, Bev Harris, William McNary, Mark Crispin Miller, Jim Dean, Bob Fertik, Jeff Feldman, and Sec. William Gardner. Entertainment will be provided by Cecilia St. King, Rebecca Padula, and The Subway Serenade.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

The silly season of presidential politics is here. Posturing, fundraising and repositioning to simultaneously win support from party activists and independent voters that decide general elections. A candidate that can thread the needle with their party's base and remain viable to the center has achieved a sublime nexus.

In our current culture a candidate must demonstrate fidelity to their party's core principles and a maverick streak of independence. They must project manliness (or in Hillary Clinton's case toughness) with a soft side of empathy. After six years of Bush's insipid rule a winning candidate will also need to project gravitas but not appear above us. As women are burdened with a double standard Hillary Clinton will have to demonstrate firmness without coming off as shrill. Most importantly a winning candidate better have terrific hair.

The diary below was originally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

I was raised Jewish but my personal beliefs are agnostic. I'm not so arrogant to reject the concept of a higher power. I don't claim to know what the divine truth is and reserve the right to have a deathbed conversion when I reach old age.

For the time being I'm inclined to believe a higher power is really a more evolved life form that doesn't respond to prayer or monitor my personal morality meter. In my opinion John Lennon put it best:

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

This was history in the making. Don't anyone downplay it. As pointed out by Michael Bouldin at Daily Gotham, "for the first time in American history, a political party lost no seats it was defending. Ain't never happened in 230 years, folks." This was historic.

But there is one very key lesson to be learned by us...by Democrats and by the left in general. This was won big because we worked together. When we are united, Democrats win. When we let the Republicans divide and conquor us, we lose. It is up to us to maintain that unity. Unity does not mean conformity. Mostly it means mutual respect even when we disagree. More below.

While President Bush recently visited New Orleans in the Katrina aftermath, DNC Chairman Howard Dean issued a newsletter. Following is an excerpt from that letter. I had tried to warn the Democrats to cut Bush some slack, since accepting full responsibility for lackadaisical response IS an honorable thing to do. Instead, Dean wrote these words:

"The callous and inept federal response to Hurricane Katrina revealed that, when faced with a crisis that experts had actually predicted, the Republican administration was utterly unprepared and unresponsive."

What makes a good candiate? Groups like Emily's List and Working Families Party have a tendency to look to the candidates who have money, whose skills are in fundraising. Some people seem to think only lawyers can be effective politicians. And some simply think all candidates are pretty much the same and despair of finding excitement in supporting a candidate.

I don't buy any of those. I do get excited about candidates. They do not tend to be the ones who are supported by big money interests, and they are not always lawyers, but they are the candidates who are smart, articulate, and good on the issues. But there is one thing more that really makes a candidate kick ass. Dedication to the community. In some ways this may be the thing that can break through racial, cultural and political divides, because a candidate who proves him or herself to the community can get broad support: black and white, rich and poor, liberal and moderate. I want to discuss just such candidates.

The AP reports:

"Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean on Wednesday called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki an 'anti-Semite' for failing to denounce Hezbollah for its attacks against Israel. ... 'The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite,' the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. 'We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion dollars bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah.'"

As the Washington Post reports, Maliki "declined to disavow his critical comments on Israel's incursion into Lebanon or denounce Hezbollah's killing and kidnapping of Israeli troops that precipitated the fighting, handing Democrats a wedge that they eagerly used." In addition, President Bush's "promise to fortify troop presence in Baghdad virtually foreclosed major troop withdrawals before November's midterm election."

The diary below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal on May 11th.

I was an avid reader of Bill James' annual Baseball Abstract while growing up in the 1980s. As both a nerd and baseball fanatic, his methodical statistical analysis and incisive prose influenced me almost as much as listening to the Beatles. Perhaps the most memorable essay of James' career was in his 1983 abstract when he wrote about, "The Law of Competitive Balance." Twenty-three years ago I copied words of wisdom from that essay into the spiral notebook I was supposed to use for algebra:

"The Law of Competitive Balance: There develop over time separate and unequal strategies adopted by winners and losers; the balance of those strategies favors the losers, and thus serves constantly to narrow the difference between the two."

Senator Joseph Lieberman has been the recent recipient of solid praise from Sean Hannity at Fox News.  Lieberman has been appearing with such delightful frequency that he has received the tag "Fox Democrat" for that and the compatibility of his views with those such as Hannity who interview him there.

Hannity in a recent broadcast took the step of endorsing Lieberman for reelection in Connecticut, adding that he would either praise or denounce him, whichever yielded the most positive results.  

In that same conversation Hannity delivered another of his unwittingly side-splittingly humorous lines in stating that perhaps he and Lieberman should start a third party, where his own Reagan conservative values could be better represented than in the current Republican Party.  The statement was particularly revealing in analyzing the beliefs Hannity imputes to Lieberman.  

The Connecticut solon responded revealingly by stating sadly that so many members of his current nominal party, the Democrats, have trouble embracing traditional American values, presumably the kind he and the Hannity Fox mainstream come by naturally.  

Dennis Kucinich was written off by the mainstream media as an outside the mainstream candidate with insufficient support to mount a serious challenge to George W. Bush.  

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, while concededly capable of raising large sums of money on the Internet while attracting large numbers of volunteers, was too unstable and politically unseasoned to successfully contest Bush in a presidential race.

The mainstream media was uncomplimentary to both candidates because they were raising issues that caused concern to regulators of the status quo on the one hand.  

On the other there was a pervasive fear that, with both candidates coming from unconventional circumstances outside the traditional Washington power structure and unbeholden to lobbyist influence, a Pandora's box could be unleashed in the system if essentially unregulated candidates were thrust into the presidential picture.

As the first crucial test of the 2004 Democratic presidential primary season approached with the Iowa Caucuses the mainstream media continued chipping away at Howard Dean's credibility as a candidate in two ways, through making him appear irresponsible and erratic on the one hand and unelectable on the other.

When Dean with his populist message delivered from outside the orbit of the regular Democratic establishment began to resonate the media coined a name for his grassroots followers.  They called them Deaniacs.  

With labeling such an important and closely watched element in this technological era with its emphasis on spin control, users of the term surely recognized the similarity between the label Deaniac and that of maniac.  It dovetailed with the image presented of an angry warrior eager to return to the wrestling mat he frequented years before in his school days.

Because Dean had been the frontrunner from the outset of his campaign based on an early start coupled with his ability to raise funds over the Internet while attracting large numbers of volunteers, the mainstream media adopted a coy tactic.  As Iowa campaigning activity heated up with organizational concentration intensifying on behalf of all candidates, a tactic was employed that put Dean at an unfair disadvantage.