I work in the restricted area in Manhattan--on 31st street between 6th and 7th Aves, to be specific.  All week, I've watched the police move various obstacles and other items into place.

First were the spotlights, small banks of four to six lights on an independent generator base.  These are placed at every corner around the restricted area.

Next came what look like glorified speed bumps, except wider and fatter than any speed bump I've ever seen.  We're talking fresh-poured asphalt, folks. They are placed in the middle of the road on every road leading into the restricted area.

This with a wink and a nod to Attaturk at Rising Hegemon.

What kind of a Republican could even joke about such immoral behavior?  

Not a real Republican.  Not the kind of Republican you can trust to run the country...

into the ground.  I mean.  It's men like Mike Ditka that are destroying the institution of marriage in this country.

The Man's records are up on John Kerry's campaign site, and I have to say, in comparison, our pseudo-president looks like a slacker sleeping in a sack of shit.

Excuse the language, folks.

Let's see.  John Kerry's got:

Bronze star
National Defense Service Medal
3 Purple Hearts
Silver Star
Vietnam Service Medal
1 REQUEST for swiftboat duty (he volunteered, folks)
Top Secret Clearance
and 1 Nuclear Weapons Training Certificate.

I particularly like that last one.  Check out the cute (tasteless) little mushroom-cloud watermark.

But hey, the man has credentials.

And one last thing: Fitness Reports. George Bush is short at least one of these, so I hear...

I can hear the ad now:
Vote John Kerry for President.  John Kerry had time for a complete medical while he was serving in the military. Why didn't George Bush?  What was George Bush hiding?

Check it out folks.  There's a lot more, and I haven't read it all.

George Soros penned a defensive op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37126-2003Dec4.html), a cogent explanation of the political motivation behind his oh-so-legal donations to MoveOn et al.

The op-ed is well-written and clearly pointed, leaving no doubt as to the necessity of his actions (at least for a left-liberal like myself).  But I'm left to wonder: why is such a well-intentioned form of political philanthropy in need of defense?

I call it political philanthropy because George Soros has no need of a more balanced tax code; he will live well regardless of what happens to the environment or our education system or the national employment numbers. Any donations he makes are ideologically-driven, almost certainly altruistic rather than self-serving: he is giving of his monies to advance a democratic agenda which will most help the lower and middle classes, future generations, women...

Why aren't more people rushing to defend him against the conservative attack-dog posturing?  Why aren't more people with insane amounts of money following his lead?

And what can we do to encourage him to give even more, ASAP?

Consider the current MoveOn strategy of getting the political ads out earlier, keeping them out longer, and making them both informative and hard-hitting, the better to initiate a sea-change in political sentiment, with a potentially geometric person-to-person spread?

The strategy is reminiscent of Dean's grassroot networking, but without the top-down branching dispersal structure, relying as it does almost solely upon media--either television or internet--to spread the message.

Doing it MoveOn's way takes money. Doing it effectively takes time--thus their early start.  Time, on television, is money.

Money George Soros has in spades.  And if we buy the conservative argument that money is a form of free speech--as specious an argument as any I've heard regarding specie--the right wing is essentially criticizing him for the exercise of his first amendment right.

Regardless, George Soros's actions are protected under the campaign finance laws.  They are politically justified by the Supreme Court's unprecedented award of the presidency to the popular loser, as well as by the armada of special interests aligned behind the fundament in chief, among which prominently figure the media outlets which so effectively mediate (read: spin) the presidential debates for our consumption.  

A money race such as this shouldn't be necessary in a modern democracy, but at this time, in ours, it is.  Real campaign-finance reform is impossible under the current administration.

I want to see more wealthy people donating to liberal political organizations, and I want to see them donating more, and I want them to do so as unapologetically as George Soros.
But I don't want them to have to defend their actions at the same time.  They shouldn't have to.

What can we do to support, encourage, or inspire a financial get out the vote for the liberal upper classes?

an effective use of computing technology to provide a central clearinghouse for general political information (with a Democratic/liberal slant, of course). And yes, it would have to be open to the public, and free.

It could take the form of a searchable cross-linked database: just type in "Texas Republican Platform" (as in: What is the Texas Republican platform, and how has it changed US politics?), and the database would return not only the full text of the platform, but cogent and powerful critiques of the most damaging and regressive aspects of the platform, together with hyperlinks to entries on some of the authors of the platform, as well as to similar politically regressive documents and programs (Project for a New American Century, anyone?), also complete with explanations of their effects and heavy on critiques of their failings.

Why do we need it? It's about education, stupid. Bush has been able to spin his way out of idiocy after idiocy because 1) the national media hasn't confronted him on his distortions 2) the political opposition hasn't been as vocal as it should be 3) the American public has, as a whole, been remarkably uninformed.

By providing a central clearinghouse for basic political information (think of it as a political encyclopedia, providing basic political background info for the interested neophyte), the DNC or American Majority Institute--or whoever--could provide a quick and relatively inexpensive antidote to Republican spinning.

The advantage such a database would have over blogs is that it would not be time delimited--it would always be there. Blogs provide a very important function--several of them, in fact--but their primary advantage, speed of response, is also a stunning shortcoming. All the political argumentation of months past is quickly, if not fully, lost in time.

Not even google makes it easy to find information in blog archives as quickly or as accurately as I--at times--have wished.

Another advantage would be authority. By presenting full text documents side by side with informative and authoritative argument or counter-argument, it would be simple to create the (I hope accurate) impression of political wisdom for the ages.

Some things to watch out for would be:

Democratic infighting. Best to keep that out of such a database, no?

Meretricious arguments.  We don't need them, and they won't help.

Stick to the big guns: why the gold standard is and should remain history; why the compassionate conservativism of George W. Bush is not just oxymoronic but profoundly hypocritical; what Bush really said on dates X, Y, Z, and Z-squared... etc.

Go visit Encyclopedia Britannica, poke around through their free demo options, and think about what it would be like if there were a free liberal political encyclopedia for the world to view.

What better way to counter the misperceptions about liberal ideas?

And before you tell me that the average person probably wouldn't bother reading it, think about:

a) how many people have subscribed to a pay service like salon.com, or britannica, etc...

b) the geometric, branched nature of information dissemination in human conversation, be that verbal, pedagogical, editorial, or blogged.

Just give it a thought.

love and peaches,
writerCarl