West Virginia Blue
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I'm sure Clem and Wabi will want to weigh in on this, but from my perch here it seemed as if they were treated very well by the West Virginia delegation, politicians, the DNC folks and the sponsors of The Big Tent.
How does the Republicans treat their version of the netroots? Not so well:
Here on what is passing for "Bloggers Row," there is plenty of grumbling about the accommodations supplied by our hosts. Some descriptives [sic] are not printable. Most reflect a huge disappointment with the way the GOP has shunted most of the bloggers off to the side, far from the action ... .
snip
The labyrinth one has to navigate to find the darn place would tax the abilities of a carrier pigeon. I honestly felt like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs when I went out for a quick smoke. Not that it would do any good. The food on our level is so bad that I have no doubt some ravenously hungry media type would have preferred the breadcrumbs to the greasy, tasteless crud they were serving at the kiosks. If I wanted the same stuff they serve at a hockey game, I would go to the Libertarian convention down the way.
snip
Bloggers could do just as well "covering" the convention by sitting in their hotel room. Or better yet, they could have saved a lot of money and stayed home and done as good a job.
I know from talking to Clem that he's got a lot more to post about from the convention, including his interview with Governor Joe Manchin on energy. The access and willingness to discuss issues with our WV Blue bloggers by the West Virginians was fantastic even with some of the politicians we've criticized most. That's to the credit of our party's leaders and to the DNC to take the risk and open itself up to such transparency from the bloggers. In the end, our bloggers were the eyes and ears for the people who couldn't be there, citizen journalists as some have described bloggers. Our WV delegation and our party treated our two bloggers with respect and courtesy.
The rightwing bloggers also represent their readers as ordinary citizens there to cover the RNC. We see how the GOP treats ordinary people, in their own words "shunted" off to the side and away from the action.
That's a very telling difference between the two parties and their leaders.
Glenn Greenwald has a story about massive police raids in Minnesota.
They don't want any protestors outside of the Republican National Convention to show that not all Americans agree with their extremist rightwing agenda. Just as the Republicans politicized the Department of "Justice" they've politicized federal and state police in Minnesota. Your modern Big Government Republican Party at work. I'm old enough to remember when the Republicans at least paid lip service to believing in the Constitution.
During the Olympics just weeks ago, there was endless hand-wringing over the efforts by the Chinese Government to squelch dissent and incarcerate protesters. On August 21, The Washington Post fretted:
Six Americans detained by police this week could be held for 10 days, according to Chinese authorities, who appear to be intensifying their efforts to shut down any public demonstrations during the final days of the Olympic Games. . . .
Chinese Olympic officials announced last month that Beijing would set up zones where people could protest during the Games, as long as they had received permission. None of the 77 applications submitted was approved, however, and several other would-be protesters were stopped from even applying.
On August 2, The Post gravely warned:
Behind the gray walls and barbed wire of the prison here, eight Chinese farmers with a grievance against the government have been consigned to Olympic limbo.
Their indefinite detainment, relatives and neighbors said, is the price they are paying for stirring up trouble as China prepares to host the Beijing Games. Trouble, the Communist Party has made clear, will not be permitted.
Would The Washington Post ever use such dark and accusatory tones to describe what the U.S. Government does? Of course it wouldn't. Yet how is our own Government's behavior in Minnesota any different than what the Chinese did to its protesters during the Olympics (other than the fact that we actually have a Constitution that prohibits such behavior)? And where are all the self-righteous Freedom Crusaders in our nation's establishment organs who were so flamboyantly criticizing the actions of a Government on the other side of the globe as our own Government engages in the same tyrannical, protest-squelching conduct with exactly the same motives?
Just review what happened yesterday and today. Homes of college-aid protesters were raided by rifle-wielding police forces. Journalists were forcibly detained at gun point. Lawyers on the scene to represent the detainees were handcuffed. Computers, laptops, journals, diaries, and political pamphlets were seized from people's homes. And all of this occurred against U.S. citizens, without a single act of violence having taken place, and nothing more serious than traffic blockage even alleged by authorities to have been planned.
So now the federal government under Bush is using the same police tactics to stifle dissent as the Chinese government just as they used the same torture tactics developed by them during the Korean War.
Look! Another very rare sighting of the Bush Republican Rep. Shelley Moore "Country Club" Capito.
An emailer sent this and says she's at not at the country club, nor in West Virginia, but at the Republican National Convention's welcome party. You could have fooled me.
With her glass of wine in hand, she looks like she's in her natural setting of the country club talking about her golf score or latest squash match. Still she's with the country club set and not with the people in her district.
Actual sightings of her in WV-02 are so very rare that the rumor is conservationists want to put her on the endangered species list.
If you have a sighting of Shelley Moore Capito, please send it in. With her Pennsylvania campaign manager Clark Kent Gates hiding her from constituents because he's afraid of what Shelley "I LOVE Big Oil profits" Moore Capito might say, we don't see her out much in West Virginia. She went to Washington and wants to stay away from West Virginians now. After her good friend Dick Cheney began cracking jokes about us, perhaps Capito is ashamed to be seen with West Virginians. It might embarrass her with her fellow country club set.
Listen, the stakes in November are high. This is an important election. Prosperity and peace are in the balance.
Yes, and that's why I'm supporting the Democrats, either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for president, and Anne Barth in WV-02.
Too much is at stake for West Virginians to continue to support the failed policies of Republicans like Shelley Moore Capito. It's time to return to peace and prosperity.
With so much attention on WV-02, we've overlooked the good news that occurred on filing day.
The usually right wing suspects are ignoring the mote in their own eye. Despite aggressive recruitment efforts, the West Virginia GOP failed to find a single candidate to challenge either Democrats Alan Mollohan or Nick Rahall. The state GOP failed to find credible opponents for the gubernatorial or U.S. Senate races.
With all their eggs in one basket, the state GOP has nothing to crow about.
I'm not really sure why Republican activists have apparently no ability to engage in self-starting activism of this nature. I've floated some theories on this in the past, but this complete lack of creativity and self-directed content production stuns even me. Republicans are clearly facing a massive creativity gap at the grassroots level, one that cannot be easily explained away. In fact, the NRSC recently asked supporters to post videos saying what they were thankful for, and only got one response.
Truly and utterly pathetic. Republicans seem to have created an army of zombies that can't think for themselves. In the past, I have been reluctant to apply the term dittohead to the Republican rank and file, but their continuing failures to conduct any self-starting activism whatsoever is making the word more apt all the time.
Of the five (count 'em baby!) entries in the NRCC's contest, I agree with Bowers that this one is by far the best.
I've written before how little original thought is shown by the rightwing bloggers in West Virginia like Don Surber and the gone and forgotten Bow Tie Boy and how they're just cogs in the rightwing noise machine.
One of the difference between the Democratic side of blogtopia (yes skippy coined that phrase) is we don't take top down marching orders, but rather push from the grassroots up.*
The Republican tendency to fail at governing has caught up with them. Again. It seems that you have to believe in government as something other than a supply mechanism for military incursions in order to do it well. The results of corporate welfare and self-regulation are evident from the mortgage crisis to the lead paint on your baby rattles to your workplace non-safety to that bridge you won't drive over any more until someone scares up the money to shore it up. And a whole host of issues that impact our daily lives from potholes to cost of groceries.
Republicans criticize government regulations like it's a mantra to them. So when Republicans are in the White House, they put industry officials in charge of overseeing their own. What happens next shouldn't surprise anyone.
EVERY few weeks, it seems, West Virginia gets a fresh reminder of what happens when the government does not do its job. Unfortunately, the reminder comes when another coal miner is killed.
On Sunday, Charles Jason Keeney, 34, of Danville, became the seventh West Virginia miner to die this year when a piece of rock or coal struck him while he worked with a crew cleaning a conveyor belt and building roof supports at the Long Branch Energy Mine near Wharton.
Although federal law requires each underground mine to be fully inspected four times annually, the mine where Keeney died had not been inspected for almost a year.
Indeed, reporter Ken Ward Jr. recently discovered that 60 percent of all Southern West Virginia mines are overdue for their regular inspections from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. Missed inspections are also a problem around the country, but it is most severe here, the nation's most concentrated coal-producing area.
Budget and staffing cuts dictated by the Bush administration have left MSHA with too few employees with enough training and experience to keep up with their important work.
UPDATE:
The Republicans also hate regulations intended to keep the public safe from dangerous products too.
The nation's top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation intended to strengthen the agency, which polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.
On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency's authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.
Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistle-blowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.
The measure is an effort to buttress an agency that has been under siege because of a raft of tainted and dangerous products manufactured both domestically and abroad. In the last two months alone, more than 13 million toys have been recalled after tests indicated lead levels that sometimes reached almost 200 times the safety limit.
Ms. Nord's opposition to important elements of the legislation is consistent with the broadly deregulatory approach of the Bush administration over the last seven years. In a variety of areas, from antitrust to trucking and worker safety, officials appointed by President Bush have sought to reduce the role of regulation and government in the marketplace.
Sorry for another copy and paste post from me. I want to be first with this breaking news.
The Times (link not available yet)
WASHINGTON - The Republican National Committee named Lord Voldemort as chairman Friday evening to replace Sen. Mel Martinez.
"I am deeply honored to be able to lead my followers," said Voldemort. "With Democrats acting as effective as the Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, I feel it is safe for me to operate in the open."
Republican insiders hailed the announcement as a positive step to help turn around the fortunes of the GOP.
"He is the perfect choice to lead the Republican Party in these times," said Republican consultant and former presidential advisor Karl Rove. "He embodies the Republican Party's views on war, power, torture and the health of children."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said he would work in a bipartisan fashion with the new GOP chairman.
"Together we can stop any Democratic efforts to safeguard liberties," Reid said.
Voldemort said he was going to do his best to make sure Republicans remain in control in 2008 - no matter if Democrats or Republicans control Congress or the White House.
"So in that sense I believe in bipartisan solutions," he hissed.
International human rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union said Voldemort's record in Britain was one of the darkest in history.
"This is a new land," Voldemort said in response to his critics. "It is amusing that in my native country I was called He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named while here Republican presidential candidates treat President Bush as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."
So far my record on breaking scoops is impeccable. See here and here.
LAST month, 25-year-old Stevie Joe Browning was killed at Rockhouse Creek Development's No. 8 Mine in Mingo County. The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration had not completed quarterly inspections of that mine as required by law.
Indeed, the federal agency was behind on thorough inspections at four of the eight West Virginia pits where miners have died this year.
Staff cuts and a policy of substituting less thorough spot inspections are the culprits. It gets worse.
snip
The result is that MSHA is behind on its inspections in 60 percent of the active underground mines in Southern West Virginia, reporter Ken Ward Jr. disclosed.
When mine safety laws are not enforced, they are not followed, and miners die.
Under the Bush administration, it became policy to skip some regular, complete reviews. Less-thorough spot inspections were substituted. However useful a spot inspection may be as an additional precaution, it cannot substitute for more general scrutiny of these dangerous workplaces.
MSHA has been struggling for some time. Skilled staff members have left the agency. Others have retired. The turnover and vacancies, combined with a more lax attitude toward safety, have weakened the federal government's role in ensuring a work environment that is as safe as possible.
We've mentioned this before, but kudos to Gazette reporter Ken Ward Jr. for exposing the lack of inspections and kudos to Rep. Nick Rahall and Sen. Robert C. Byrd for doing something about it.
West Virginia Republican Party Chairman Doug McKinney went into a hissy fit earlier this week because MoveOn.org put out a factually accurate ad about Gen. David Petraeus' history of misrepresenting the facts. (Remember when Petraeus claimed the Iraqi military and police would be providing all of the security in the country soon because he was in charge of training them? That was in 2004. How'd that work out?)
From that, McKinney called MoveOn's fact checking a slur against all of the troops (talk about a leap in logic, but Republicans are ruled by emotions and not facts.) and called on Senator Robert C. Byrd and others to condemn MoveOn.
MoveOn.org's malicious attack on General Petraeus and our nation's troops should be condemned by West Virginia Congressional Democrats immediately.
"After trying unsuccessfully to block funding for American soldiers and second guess our commanders on the ground, this radical left-wing organization has resorted to launching slanderous assaults on our nation's brave men and women who are fighting the War on Terrorism. As the father of a United States Marine, I take personal offense at this attack.
But MoveOn's ad was rather mild compared to the name-calling of Petraeus from another obviously far left dirty hippy, Petreaus' superior officer, CENTCOM Commander Admiral William Fallon:
WASHINGTON, Sep 12 (IPS) - In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.
Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.
That extraordinarily contentious start of Fallon's mission to Baghdad led to more meetings marked by acute tension between the two commanders. Fallon went on develop his own alternative to Petraeus's recommendation for continued high levels of U.S. troops in Iraq during the summer.
The enmity between the two commanders became public knowledge when the Washington Post reported Sep. 9 on intense conflict within the administration over Iraq. The story quoted a senior official as saying that referring to "bad relations" between them is "the understatement of the century".
Fallon's derision toward Petraeus reflected both the CENTCOM commander's personal distaste for Petraeus's style of operating and their fundamental policy differences over Iraq, according to the sources.
I'm sure McKinney will be just as quick to condemn Admiral Fallon for his "slanderous assaults" just to remain consistent.
Otherwise, McKinney is a hypocrite.
Maybe McKinney should take a moment and think before he speaks - nah!
The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress.
In a highly unusual political role for an officer who had not yet taken command of a war, Petraeus was installed in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, in early February just before the Senate debated Bush's troop increase. According to a report in The Washington Post Feb. 7, senators were then approached on the floor and invited to go McConnell's office to hear Petraeus make the case for the surge policy.
Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus's role as pitch man for the surge policy in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia -- the area for which Fallon's CENTCOM is responsible.
The CENTCOM commander believed the United States should be withdrawing troops from Iraq urgently, largely because he saw greater dangers elsewhere in the region. "He is very focused on Pakistan," said a source familiar with Fallon's thinking, "and trying to maintain a difficult status quo with Iran."
By the time Fallon took command of CENTCOM in March, Pakistan had become the main safe haven for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda to plan and carry out its worldwide operations, as well as being an extremely unstable state with both nuclear weapons and the world's largest population of Islamic extremists.
Plans for continued high troop levels in Iraq would leave no troops available for other contingencies in the region.
Fallon was reported by the New York Times to have been determined to achieve results "as soon as possible". The notion of a long war, in contrast, seemed to connote an extended conflict in which Iraq was but a chapter.
Fallon also expressed great scepticism about the basic assumption underlying the surge strategy, which was that it could pave the way for political reconciliation in Iraq. In the lead story Sep. 9, The Washington Post quoted a "senior administration official" as saying that Fallon had been "saying from Day One, 'This isn't working.' "
One of Fallon's first moves upon taking command of CENTCOM was to order his subordinates to avoid the term "long war" -- a phrase Bush and Secretary of Defence Robert M. Gates had used to describe the fight against terrorism.
And I'm sure McKinney will call on vulnerable Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito to condemn the remarks made by House Minority Leader John Boehner, who called the deaths of nearly 3,800 American soldiers in Iraq and the spending of $2 trillion a "small price to pay." I doubt if their families who sacrificed their loved ones would think they were a "small price to pay."
Will McKinney be consistent and call on people to condemn Fallon and Boehner or should we interpret his silence that he approves of their remarks?
"I was appalled to hear Minority Leader Boehner's statement yesterday that the loss of American blood is a 'small price' to pay in Iraq. The loss of American blood is never a small price. This war has stretched our military thin, and in order to be prepared for a new or unexpected conflict we must responsibly redeploy our troops. It's time to refocus our efforts on fighting those responsible for 9/11-al Qaeda-restoring our military to peak readiness, and to protecting Americans from terrorism.
"After four and a half years, $565 billion, 3,759 U.S. troops killed, more than 27,770 U.S. troops wounded, and no exit strategy, I hope to hear the President tonight offer a plan for redeployment and a true New Direction for Iraq, rather than continued commitment to a failed policy in Iraq.
"I also think it's important to put some perspective on the President's speech this evening. As he prepares to ask the American people, our men and women in uniform and our military families for continued sacrifice and commitment to his war in Iraq, I think we should keep in mind his promises and declarations throughout the four and a half years of this war.
"The President started us on this rollercoaster in May 2003, when he declared the mission accomplished and the end of major combat operations. Fifty three months later, the combat rages on, with American soldiers stuck in the middle of a civil war.
"In April 2004, he promised we would stay the course and 'complete the job'-a job that apparently wasn't accomplished.
"In May 2005, Vice President Cheney infamously declared that the insurgency was in its 'last throws.' Seven months later, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld took a dramatically different view, reporting that the insurgency was gaining strength. Twenty eight months after the Vice President's remarks, the insurgency continues to surge.
"In June 2005, the president assured us that as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.
"And in January of this year, when the President announced his surge plan, he said he was firm with Iraqi leaders that our commitment wasn't open ended. He said, 'If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people.'
"Here we are, nine months after the surge plan, and the Iraqi government has not delivered on its end of the deal.
"The Iraqi government has failed to deliver on 15 of 18 benchmarks outlined by the Bush Administration. While our military has made progress in giving the Iraqi government some breathing room to make political progress, the commitment and sacrifice made by our brave military has not been matched by the Iraqi government. The line has been blurred between assistance and dependence, and its time to match our deeds with our words."
UPDATE 2.
Republicans so eager to condemn MoveOn's critical ad of General Petreaus hate being asked about Boehner's much worse remarks. Still kudos to Senator John McCain for at least not being a hypocrite (unlike ::cough:: WV Republicans):
On the bus, McCain responded to John Boehner's remark that American lives were a "small price" to pay for a victory in Iraq.
Asked about it on the heels of his demanding that Democratic candidates "repudiate" the MoveOn.org Petreaus/Betray Us ad, he grimaced: "He misspoke. With all due respect, every American wounded or sacrificed is the greatest possible price to pay," and we should all be grateful, "particularly those of us who sit in relative safety while those young men and women are fighting."
It took Democrats taking control of Congress, but now teenage Congressional pages are safe from sexual predators like vulnerable Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito's political action committee partner and disgraced Republican Rep. Mark Foley.
One year after news of Rep. Mark Foley's sexually explicit e-mails rocked the congressional page program, officials, pages and their parents say the program is safer than ever.
House officials have added a bunch of new safety provisions to ensure the teenage pages are well protected and secure. Those provisions include a 10 p.m. curfew on weekdays, a midnight curfew on weekends, constant adult supervision, a buddy system and a "sign-out" process when pages want to the leave their dorms.
In the wake of the Foley scandal, President Bush signed into law the House Page Board Revision Act, adding more members of Congress to the page board and including a parent and a former page on the panel.
snip
Philip Turner, a spokesman for Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., a page board member, said one of the problems with the old page board was its infrequent meetings resulting in a lack of communication between members.
Turner said the pages "just weren't a priority," which "made it harder to monitor the program."
Now, a year later, Kyle Anderson, a spokesman for the Office of House Administration, said, his office is pleased with the way the page board is functioning.
"If there's oversight, you can catch these things and prevent them from happening," Anderson said.
When Republicans controlled Congress, oversight was the last thing on their minds. It turns out many of them knew about Foley's behavior, but did nothing about him.
One has to wonder why Capito, who was on the page-board then too and formed a political action committee with Foley, did nothing about the "infrequent meetings" of the board before Foley's behavior was exposed in 2006.
Congressional oversight is one of the important roles the Democrats have brought back to Congress that was sorely lacking under a Republican majority.
Here's something the financially and morally bankrupt West Virginia Republicans should focus their attention on. The nationally party is headed towards the same minority status as the state GOP.
The issues and demographics that are killing them are the very issues the rightwingers in the state (Abernathy, Sprouse, the usual junior high clique) trumpet most
WASHINGTON -- For Republicans hoping the 2008 campaign will bring a fresh start after the troubled tenure of President Bush, there are sobering signs: Evidence indicates that the party's problems with the American electorate are much bigger than the president and won't go away when he leaves office.
Recent voter surveys, including private polling done by a leading Republican strategist, suggest a broader erosion of Republicans' appeal. In particular, three groups crucial to Mr. Bush's goal of a "permanent Republican majority" are drifting away: younger voters, Hispanics and independents.
The reasons include the Iraq war, conservatives' emphasis on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion and stem-cell research, and a party-led backlash against illegal immigrants that has left many Hispanic and Asian-American citizens feeling unwelcome. The upshot is that Republicans face structural problems that stem from generational, demographic and societal changes and aren't easily overcome without changing fundamental party positions.
Longtime Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio this year conducted an exhaustive survey of his party's voters to update one he did in 1997. He found that the party is significantly older and more conservative than it was a decade ago. That, he says, suggests a Republican Party increasingly at risk of being seen "as very old-fashioned, very old and not in touch with the realities of today's society.
The funny thing is how the state's most famous Republicans like GOP "strategist" Gary Abernathy and former Senate Minority Leader Vic Sprouse advise their fellow Republicans to cling to the "very old-fashioned, very old and not in touch wih the realities" approach on the Iraq war and equality for gays. I only hope vulnerable Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito follows their advice. With their "strategery,"as Mr. Bush would say, my work will be a lot easier.
However, the GOP's problems also should be seen as a warning to West Virginia's socially conservative Democrats. (You all know who you are.) Do you want to tread the same path to political extinction as the Republican dinosaurs or do you want to move into the future? The choice is yours.
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