In response to this particularly awful send-up of the Democratic 2008 National Convention  (http://www.xdtalk.com/... warning - you WILL be offended by it, though the Ted Kennedy thread is actually pretty clever), I felt compelled to write my own, which I duplicate here for your entertainment.

Schedule of The Republican National Convention, 2008:

The left and the right argue back and forth with the president: "bring home the troops", "get the job done", "set timetables for withdrawal", etc., but where is the analysis of the actual consequences of any of these actions?   Where are the panels of experts discussing how this decision will affect Iraq, the Middle East, the long-term security of the US?

More below the fold.

The ESA-built probe "Huygens", after being carried from earth by the NASA orbiter Cassini, has successfully touched down on Titan, a moon of Saturn.  We're getting images returned from the surface of the planet now, and the descent images appear to show rivers, a shoreline, and a lake or ocean.  That's exciting and exotic, because Titan is far too cold for liquid water; these would have to totally bizarre oceans, like liquified ethane or other hydrocarbons.  The chemistry leads to the exciting possibility that the huygens probe could even have detected life in the 90 minutes it survived on the surface.  We'll know in the next few days as the data are analyzed.

The Right has framed the debate in their favor by changing the very language we speak; it is time we start to do the same.  Yesterday, I posted my first draft of a set of guiding principles for Crushing the GOP.  Today, my first draft of new language and terms to re-frame the debate in our favor.

Our response to the right's creation of distorted language has been defense.  We whine, we argue definitions, we try to point out their hypocrisy.  But the words are still there, and we even end up using them: "partial-birth abortion", "homeland security", "tax and spend", etc.  We've let them turn "liberal" into a dirty word.

No more.  We can can fight back best by responding in kind.  Change the terms, change the debate. So, here are my submissions for a new lexicon for our side. We can debate them and add more, but the sooner we just start using them, the better.  What is important is that more of us start using the same words, so they get firmly settled into the public consciousness.   Start using them - NOW.

Okay, there's a lot of defeatism out on the liberal web today.  We need to end it, and soon, and we need to start forming a new strategy. Here are some thoughts on re-framing the debate based on things I've read and discussed at Kos and elsewhere today, particularly diaries by galiel and jimrice. I've tried to synthesize a strategy for crushing the GOP, and jimrice's plan is part of it.  Feedback please: let me know where my reasoning is sound and where I've gone off the deep end.

The GOP has a lock on the government, and with the new supremes they will use it to advance a fundamentalist agenda.   So, what can we do? Crucially, their ongoing strategy is alienating much of their own historical base that we are now ripe to co-opt into the democrat camp.

Read on for my detailed strategy for crushing the GOP and saving our country.

Even before the prescription drug plan and completely discounting military spending and the war, Bush had increased federal spending more than any administration since the New Deal.   And he'd done it across every single bracket and category of the federal budget.   With all this money being spent, we should see agencies and budgets flush with cash delivering services to the people.   But we're not:

• Firehouses are closing due to lack of funds.


• No Child Left Behind was not fully funded - an empty promise.


• Of the fifteen billion promised for fighting AIDS in africa, only a tiny fraction has materialized.


• The EEOC is nearly falling apart for lack of money, having fired 943 employees in the last two decades


• The Yucca mountain waste storage site can't open, due to lack of funds.


• The non-partisan CPLHA reports that 184,000 people are at risk of homelessness because the housing voucher program's budget has been cut by $1.3 billion over the first three years of this administration.

By budget category:

• Federal health spending is up 43%, but fewer people are covered.


• Spending on "Administration of Justice" is up by 39%, has crime decreased to match?  No, in fact gang violence is on the rise again... and has been linked to lack of funding for community programs.
• "Central Government" spending (i.e. the salaries and supplies etc. for the Congress and the White House) is up 42% in four years, what has this gotten us?


• Education spending is up 42%, but schools everywhere report budget crises, afterschool programs are broke, and C.F. above for the funding shortfall of No Child Left Behind.


• "Income security" is up 20% from $269bil to $325bil ... but unemployment benefits weren't extended for the recession jobless and welfare enrollment is down.  So where did the money go?

The point is not whether you agree with any of these funding programs in particular.  The point is, the money is being spent and there's nothing to show for it.   President Bush, you've spent a lot of our money lately, a 40% increase across the budget, not including the war.  What has this bought us?

Where the hell is all our money going, anyway?

Look at the numbers for yourself:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/

In the comments, add links to other stories about important services closing or in danger because of lack of federal funds.  Let's get this meme out there.

The right doesn't seem to get this.  They convince themselves of the rightness of military action, ignoring ten thousand years of history teaching us how violence always engenders anger.  You attack someone and kill their relatives, they won't generally care if your reasons were good.  Instead, they will hit back.  Ask Israel and Palestine, both of whom have very legitimate gripes.

Many of us on the Left have been arguing since before the invasion of Iraq that the cost in sentiment would be immense, which would fuel terrorist recruitment.  There hasn't been a lot of hard data to date, but today the Pew Center released a new set of polls.   The results? People in muslim countries overwhelmingly believe that the U.S.  is exaggerating terrorism and that the War on Terra^TM is in fact a cover for an agenda of World Domination^TM.

Which is of course ridiculous, which is my point.  Angry people who feel attacked will believe whatever they want to justify their anger.  The folks in Jordan and Pakistan think we're coming after them, because they've seen us bomb the crap out of fellow Muslim nations Afghanistan and Iraq.  I don't for a minute think even Bush is after World Domination^TM.  

The majority in three of the four countries surveyed - Pakistan, Morocco, and Jordan, now feel that suicide bombings are justified against the West.  The majority.  Talk about a recruiting ground for terrorists.  Even in the one country which disagreed (Turkey), 31% feel suicide bombings against Americans are justified.

The right convinced themselves, as any good moral neanderthal does, that "Showing Strength" would "Win Respect" in the middle east.  Predictably, we've pissed them off instead.

If there's a possibility that votes aren't counted correctly through error or malice, what good does all this campaiging do?

It seems odd, to me, that this isn't a major issue for us.