President Bush’s approval rating shows only 1/3 (or less) in the US approving of either his military or his domestic policies.  He has taken the sympathy of the world after 9/11 and transformed himself into a video game/comic book type avenger.  Iran is the next country in his crosshairs.  Will the voters put a stop to this?  Will we have time to?

The Republican Party has the majority in the Senate and the House.  They control the agenda and pass the laws.  Whatever the President wants, he gets. 

The courts, including the Supreme Court, have been packed with more Bush syncophants who choose not to investigate policies that break the laws and ignore the Constitution (in the name of national security). 

Military commanders admit they are unable to stop the mounting violence that kills 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month, with overstressed American troops pushed beyond the breaking point, both physically and mentally.  Afghanistan is in no better shape, with both the Taliban and the drug trade booming and US troops continuing to die.  Contamination by depleted uranium will see deaths mount as years go by, as well as increases in birth defects for future generations.  The same scenario may happen (again) very soon in Iran.

Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel, cut off assistance to Palestinian armed groups and pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel’s 1967 borders. The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-US agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. The two-page document contradicts the official line of the administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.  Iran has sent two letters to Bush recently; both have been dismissed without an answer.

Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supposedly said he wants Israel  “wiped off the map.”  Farsi speakers say the translation was intentionally bungled.  The Iranian president was quoting an statement by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (just as the Shah’s regime in Iran had vanished). He was not making a military threat, but was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. 

Iran is in total compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and with an International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards agreement entered into “for the exclusive purpose” of “preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons.”  Director-General ElBaradei repeatedly reports that he can find “no indication” of diversion of “source or special nuclear materials” to a military purpose.

Nuclear armed US ships are now steaming to the Gulf.  Plans for attack have been in place for some time.  The truth is being concealed here, just as it was in Iraq.  American oil companies are our friends.  We are there to serve them. 

What can Republicans do who feel they were blindsided by Bush’s insistence of Iraq’s 9/11 involvement and wmd’s?  Sending more of the same to Congress will make matters worse.  Taking a hiatus in 2006 and 2008 may be an option, while working to bring the Republican Party back to its roots. 

Let’s give the Democratic Party breathing space to give us real security: no more illegal, pre-emptive wars for corporate gain – and let’s (again) use diplomacy instead of bombs.  Protecting Social Security.  No other promises; the out-of-control spending, deficits, corruption and corporate giveaways will take years to correct before we can even begin to have a conversation about what the government should, and can afford to provide the people. We need goals, but we also need to be realistic.  We need to stop the bleeding first and then find common ground. 

(May God help those people on the Gulf Coast, with more hurricanes coming, and no help in sight).

However you feel about third parties in general or the Progressives in particular (and GMD readers know this is a generally – if not specifically – Dem-oriented site, a la Daily Kos and MyDD… my personal reasoning can be found here), it’s hard to argue that they’ve suffered from a specific, classic radical mindset: let’s call it the revolution mentality. Despite all the talk of the grassroots, the Party has been looking at their development as an organization as a top-down enterprise. Throw a high-profile, unabashed lefty out there, the masses will simply rise up in support, and the evil Democratic Party will be supplanted once and for all.

Obviously this political “Field of Dreams” they’ve been trying to build hasn’t made the team magically materialize from the corn field.

But something is different this time. After a lot of noise last year about the prospects of Rep. Zuckerman and Anthony Pollina running for statewide office, neither has followed through (although it’s still possible Pollina will, but I doubt it). Instead, it’s looking like the Progressive Party may be heeding the advice that has perpetually followed it by focusing on following their local, truly grassroots victories with more local grassroots victories.

The Progressives have assumed for a while that the election of Bernie Sanders to the US House wasn’t a case of lightning striking, but a large scale acceptance of their agenda. This has made the statewide races their Holy Grail, but by formally coalescing into an organized Party (as opposed to seizing the opportunity to run more “Independent” candidates and take ownership of that powerful label), they’ve found themselves marginalized outside of specific districts.

In fact, the statewide races have become a bit of an albatross for them, as they peaked in the three-way Lietenant Governor’s of 2002 with Pollina’s 24% of the vote and a clean fracture of the left that put Brian Dubie into office and hung the “spoiler” label tightly around their collective necks. In 2004, when Steve Hingtgen ran against Cheryl Rivers – a Democrat who is as progressive as any Progressive – it just seemed like pure petulance.

But also in 2004, Progressives picked up state House seats in the Northeast Kingdom and Central Vermont, adding to their extra-Burlington foothold in Brattleboro. And now they are running genuinely viable House candidates in Vergennes, in retiring Rep. Rusten’s district in Windham County, and more. Add to that the rumor about Pollina, and it looks for all the world like a sea change in Progressive priorities has taken place. If they accept as a given that the they could run just about anyone for Attorney General and grab that 5% they need to maintain major Party status, it certainly could free up their time and energy for a bottom-up approach.

Interestingly, if that is what’s going on (and I’m just speculating, here), it may not only impact the political geography of the state, but the dynamics of the Progressive Party as well. The Progressives are very concerned about issue discipline among their ranks, writing restrictions into their bylaws requiring political uniformity, but we’ve already seen that as the Progs reach outside of their inner circle for candidates, this sort of rigid management starts to break down. Winston Dowland has deviated from the Party line more than once, and as Jack McCullough pointed out, Vergennes candidate April Jin may come front loaded with similar challenges.

At the end of the day, the paradigm shift taking place that could reshape the Progressives into a more formidable political force may also reshape it into something that may not exactly be what its inner circle had in mind.

But that’s Democracy for ya.

PS (perhaps an overly personal PS…): While writing this diary, ANONYMOOSE who pops in every now and then to bash Dems (as if we don’t do that enough around here…) apparently noticed the blerb from my last Vermont blog roundup that referenced Baruth’s report about Pollina considering a Chittenden Senate run. Of course the blerb lamented the fact that Progressives have historically had a few issues around residence matters and political office. User ANONYMOOSE was apparently so incensed, that after his “goodby cruel GMD” post, he fired off a missive to his allies, as I almost immediately received email from a prominent Progressive legislator entitled “full of crap.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – if the Dems went into the hissy fits when criticized the way the Progs do, I’d never get any sleep around here after the impeachment coverage alone, not to mention everything else. My correspondent is angry that I didn’t “name names” when I referred to a “couple Dems” who have been similarly guilty, and proceeded to wax victimized.

Fine. You want specifics? Have some specifics. ALL of them.

Actually, I did misspeak. I only know of one Dem who was guilty of the same tackiness: It seemed Peter Welch was spending far too much time in Burlington during some of the period he was representing Windsor County. Consider your hand smacked Peter.

Some other things that seemed to be?

• It seemed that Martha Abbott was living in Jericho during some of the time she was a Burlington officeholder.
• It seemed that Steve Hingtgen had moved to Montpelier while he was still representing Burlington
• It seemed that Chris Pearson was living and working in the D.C. area when his name was put forward to replace Bob Kiss — at least according to his company’s website (yes, the website quickly changed when his name was being floated, but guess who has a cached copy?)
• It seemed that Emma Mulvaney-Stanak had changed her voter registration to Barre when her name was floated as a replacement for Kiss, and may have even voted for Burlington mayor under those circumstances causing one to wonder just what the laws on voter fraud look like.

Hands please: smack, smack, smack, smack, and I’ll withhold the Pollina hand-smack until we determine if the rumor proves true or not.

There. Full disclosure, just like you guys asked. Doesn’t that feel better now?

Sheesh. Get used to it. Smacking hands is part of what we do here. Whining about it will not make any diarist here less inclined to do so in the future. It’s a blog for pity’s sake. I printed my one-and-only mea culpa to you guys some time back already. Think I’m not being fair? Take it up with Sen. Welch, Rep. Symington, Rep. Sanders, Treasurer Spaulding, Secretary of State Markowitz, Sen. Leahy…etc etc etc.

Hi!

This is my blog for my campaign.  I do a lot of essay writing and e-mailing.  I’m going to put some of these writings up here on the blog so others can read my thoughts.

Please check out my web site.  I’ve spent a lot of time developing it.  Sound should be coming to it soon.

Steve Moyer
http://stevemoyer.us

Also, Check out the Vermont Democracy Network which is the centerpiece of my campaign.  http://vermont.stevemoyer.us

Sometimes words are not enough. Words like hypocritical, scary, outrageous. Maybe the word sick is appropriate here. If so, it’s a sickness of pandemic proportions, coming soon to a church and a videogame system near you — whether you live in Alabama, or good ol’ Vermont.

So in these days of fanatical religious terrorism and a war launched to counter it, what can you say about a videogame where you control warriors that shout “Praise the Lord!” as they blow infidels away? Would you assume this is some sick Jihadist indoctrination medium from the mind of Osama Bin Laden?

You’d like to assume that wouldn’t you? Still, in this day and age, where there seems to be no level to which the Christian theocrats won’t sink, you can’t honestly say the following surprises you. In the ongoing saga of giving Christians a bad name, this comes from Talk2Action:

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission – both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state – especially moderate, mainstream Christians.

Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

This from the people who regularly rail against anti-American and anti-Christian propoganda in Saudi and Palestinian schools.

The game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, is based on scenes from the first four novels in the [book] series. The game was developed by a publicly-traded company called Left Behind Games, according to SEC records. The developers obtained the license from Tyndale House, the Christian publisher of Left Behind.

Tyndale also publishes Bringing Up Boys and The Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference Guide by Focus on the Family founder  James Dobson, PhD. Mr. Dobson has advised parents to monitor the amount of time children spend playing video games and “avoid the violent ones altogether.” But he has not yet stated his views on whether there should be an exception for video games that role play gunplay in the name of Christ, or of the AntiChrist.

Tyndale’s licensing of the project infuriated one of its authors, Jack Thompson, a conservative Christian attorney and outspoken critic of video game violence, who told the Los Angeles Times that he severed ties with his publisher in a dispute over “Left Behind: Eternal Forces.”

“It’s absurd,” said the video critic. “You can be the Christians blowing away the infidels, and if that doesn’t hit your hot button, you can be the Antichrist blowing away all the Christians.”

Think it’s just a couple whackjobs? Of course it isn’t. These folks have a theocratic, tax-exempt, nationwide network of churches at their disposal. More from talk2action:

Left Behind Games executives Troy A. Lindon and Jeffrey S. Frichner told the Los Angeles Times of their plans to build buzz for Left Behind: Eternal Forces by distributing 1 million sample discs directly through churches nationwide. This is a sign that their approach follows the same marketing strategy that Mr. Warren used to ramp up early sales numbers for his international best seller The Purpose Driven Life.

These are big players in the Theocrat promotional machine. People intimately connected to folks like Dobson, Falwell and Robertson — who, of course, have nothing to say on the matter.

Well, nothing fit for public consumption.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe the “videogames made my child a killer” argument is a ridiculous copout and not meaningfully supported scientifically.

But that’s hardly the point, is it? And besides, Grand Theft Auto is hardly offered to children as young as six years old as a sacrament.