Edgewise

East Bay Exhortation Sensation: Phone Banking for Moveon.Org

This is an offical, authenticated exhortation to East Bay folks everywhere. Well, East Bay folks in the East Bay.

Short version: The last two nights I went to the MoveOn office in Oakland. These folks have their act together. It’s fun, easy, and unintimidating. You can volunteer any day, any time o’ day between 9 and 9. If you’re in the Bay Area and have two hours in the day or evening between now and election day, let me exhort you to come on down — do some of the easiest, most effective volunteering you’ll find this season and be part of a huge effort that might actually make a difference. Where: 360 22nd Street, Suite 210, Oakland CA (tween B’Way and Webster). Call Adam: 857-383-0736 for more info.

Longer Version: This was my first time working with MoveOn. I’d done phone work before and found it a little gruelling — an impossibly long list of folks in my neighborhood who almost universally didn’t want to be called. Still, we have 9 days left to go and I figured it was time to eat some gruel.

Instead metaphorically I ate, I dunno, let’s say BBQ brisket, like the kind you can get down at Flints or mebbe Everett and Jones.

From the Oakland office we’re calling other MoveOn members and asking them to give an hour of their time as a home phone volunteers. It’s a system designed to create a massive, coordinated, hyper-effective phone bank. MoveOn’s created this slick, simple web-based system that let’s people call infrequent dem voters in the key targeted districts from the comfort of their easy chairs.

In the last two nights I called around 270 MoveOn members. Most weren’t home. About 30-40 answered and passed or say “ok, send me more info.” Most were progressives. Some were Republicans. But every one of them was either nice, pleasant, or at the very least harmless.

Ten people agreed on the spot to give an hour or more of their time in the next four days. Some agreed to give as much as seven hours in the next week. Add it up and you get a great multiplier — my 6 hours turned into 20-40 hours of targeted phone calls.

The word at the MoveOn office was that more than 70,000 people were now part of this effort. It’s the sort of army we need to push back against the other side’s get out the vote infrasturcture.

Which is all to say: I’ll be back there on Thursday. If you haven’t already volunteered, you’ll be hard pressed to find an easier, more efficient, more effective way to get involved and do you bit to help get this ole country of ours back on track.

And needless to say, if you’re not in the East Bay, please consider yourself likewise exhorted to phonebank from home, from house parties, or from your local MoveOn office — see moveon.org for the details.

-Cecil

For election junkies only

Wondering if the Democrats are really about to take the House or if a dirty trick or surge of evangelical voters will deny them (ok, us) the majority? Keep an eye on the odds at Majority Watch.

Think that people betting real money (ok, one dollar per share) have a better take on upcoming elections than all the pollsters in Hell? Then follow the Iowa Electronic Markets, political division. The bettors there seem pretty sure that Republicans are going to hold the Senate (which the pundits say they probably will do unless a tidal wave overtops the bulwarks indicated by the current polls).

They also say a Democrat will be elected president in 2008, but of course they get more accurate as the appointed day approaches.

For the Baker-Hamilton Suggestion Box

Note: This is very dense and wonky, and only marginally informed considering how definite it sounds.

I’m just noodling with limited information, but I have a realpolitik suggestion for the Baker-Hamilton Commission. It can’t be much worse than what has been bruited about so far. It is a variation on the federated partition idea, and involves my old hobby-horse Kirkuk, with its immense gas and oil reserves. I hope the Commission is following this blog.

Every discussion of partition has characterized the central region of Iraq as a) Sunni and b) devoid of oil.

It is not devoid of oil—at least not yet. I guess they consider Kurdish annexation of Kirkuk as a done-deal. It is not a done-deal—yet. Kirkuk is still outside the current three provinces of the autonomous Kurdish region. If it remains that way, the central region would have plenty of oil. Kurdistan is already much better off than the rest of Iraq without Kirkuk, and they would still get a share of its oil revenue.

It is not completely Sunni. Moktada has increasing strength in the south, but his primary base is among the two million people of Sadr City in Bagdad. He is naturally less interested in federation than are rival Shiites; he aligned himself with the Sunni opponents of the recent legislation for federation. He is also very disinclined to let Kirkuk be annexed to Kurdistan, and has vowed to send an army there to prevent it.

So Moktada’s Shiites and the Sunni insurgents could have a common interest in an oil-rich central region, and conceivably could form a united front, possibly a military alliance, against Kurdish expansion. If US occupation were actually winding down, this would give them a reason to come to terms with one another. So if that were the kind of federation the US promoted on its way out, it really might reduce communitarian violence, which none of the other plans shows any promise of achieving.

As a practical matter, Arabs and Kurds can be partitioned; Sunnis and Shiites cannot. And I think once the conflict can be rendered geographical, it stands a chance of being politically resolved.

The Kurds meanwhile have vowed to go to war, if the are not awarded Kirkuk. So this would require the US to completely reverse field and cut loose from its long alliance with the Kurds, including its hope of establishing permanent military bases in Kurdish territory. However, alignment with the Kurds is becoming increasingly problematic in any case, because of…Turkey. Turkey already has more than 100,000 troops on the Iraqi (Kurdish) border, and many more to draw upon in their modern, well equipped NATO army. Turkey has two issues in Iraq over which they are willing to go to war.

Kirkuk. The Turks say they will use force to prevent Kurdish annexation of Kirkuk. An expansive Kurdistan in Iraq would inevitably come to encompass the even larger population of separatist-minded Kurds on the Turkish side of the border. Turkey has waged a bitter and bloody counter-insurgency against them in very recent years.

Cross-border guerillas. Turkey has served notice that they will cross the Iraq border to suppress them, unless the US can somehow accomplish that itself within the next year.

So continued alignment with the Kurds leads to a perilous collision with Turkish military force. Better to slide over to the Turkish side, and at the same time become champions of Arab nationalism. The neocons really want those Kurdistan bases; maybe we could give them Masters of the Universe video games instead.

Chris Bowers' Google Bomb

Chris Bowers of MyDD.com has put together an excellent list of links to articles on various republican candidates. By having large #s of folks duplicate this list of links, the odds go up that when someone searches, for example, Pombo, their results will include this article. Never let it be said that I wouldn’t post a list of links to help in the fight to retire Richard Pombo. -Cecil

—AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
—AZ-01: Rick Renzi
—AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
—CA-04: John Doolittle
—CA-11: Richard Pombo
—CA-50: Brian Bilbray
—CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
—CO-05: Doug Lamborn
—CO-07: Rick O’Donnell
—CT-04: Christopher Shays
—FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
—FL-16: Joe Negron
—FL-22: Clay Shaw
—ID-01: Bill Sali
—IL-06: Peter Roskam
—IL-10: Mark Kirk
—IL-14: Dennis Hastert
—IN-02: Chris Chocola
—IN-08: John Hostettler
—IA-01: Mike Whalen
—KS-02: Jim Ryun
—KY-03: Anne Northup
—KY-04: Geoff Davis
—MD-Sen: Michael Steele
—MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
—MN-06: Michele Bachmann
—MO-Sen: Jim Talent
—MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
—NV-03: Jon Porter
—NH-02: Charlie Bass
—NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
—NM-01: Heather Wilson
—NY-03: Peter King
—NY-20: John Sweeney
—NY-26: Tom Reynolds
—NY-29: Randy Kuhl
—NC-08: Robin Hayes
—NC-11: Charles Taylor
—OH-01: Steve Chabot
—OH-02: Jean Schmidt
—OH-15: Deborah Pryce
—OH-18: Joy Padgett
—PA-04: Melissa Hart
—PA-07: Curt Weldon
—PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
—PA-10: Don Sherwood
—RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
—TN-Sen: Bob Corker
—VA-Sen: George Allen
—VA-10: Frank Wolf
—WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
—WA-08: Dave Reichert

Is North Korea Nuts?

This viewpoint should be common knowledge.

North Korea: A Nuclear Threat—An exclusive account of what Pyongyang really wants. Newsweek International Edition

On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement….to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.” In return, Washington agreed [to] “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations.”

Four days later, the U.S….imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea…branding it a “criminal state”….

The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence…. North Korean leaders view [it as an] effort by dominant elements in the administration to undercut the Sept. 19 accord….

When I warned against a nuclear test,…several top officials replied that “soft” tactics had not worked….

It was no secret to journalists…that the agreement was bitterly controversial within the administration and represented a victory…over proponents of “regime change”….

[Chief North Korean negotiator, Vice Foreign Minister] Kim Gye Gwan…said over and over to me, “How can you expect us to return to negotiations when it’s clear your administration is paralyzed by divisions …? So many of your leaders, even the president, have talked about regime change. We have concluded that your administration is dysfunctional.”

Well, they're not all that concerned.

“The Republican Party is taking pro-family conservatives for granted,” said Mike Mears, executive director of the political action committee of Concerned Women for America, which promotes biblical values.

—“Some Seek ‘Pink Purge’ in the GOP,” LA Times

DKo: No, it’s not a mistake; I’ve seen him quoted before.

MAPlight helps you 'follow the money'

Years ago B and I dreamed about something called the “Senator From” project, based on the idea that, for example, Scoop Jackson used to be known as “the Senator from Boeing.” We’d take the public info available and identify the largest contributors to candidate and officeholder. Great idea, but we didn’t know how to execute on it given mid-90s technology and our limited knowhow at the time.

Now, TakeBackCA.org, a nonprofit dedicated to campaign finance reform, has remade itself as the MAPlight project to expose “connection between money and votes in California politics”:

Startling Findings Available at www.MAPLight.org

Berkeley, CA. October 17, 2006 – Today MAPLight.org unveiled a pioneering database that lays bare the connection between money and votes in California politics.

“Information that used to take days to dig up and connect is now available at the click of a mouse,” says Dan Newman, Executive Director of MAPLight.org. “How often did each legislator vote with the special interests that financed their election campaigns? MAPLight.org now provides the answers.”

The MAPLight.org website combines information from the Official California Legislative Information website, which contains the official text of each bill and how each legislator voted, and the Institute on Money in State Politics, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased documentation and research on campaign finance.

MAPLight.org allows journalists and citizens to answer questions such as:

• How did a legislator vote on a particular bill, and who are the top contributors to that legislator?
• How often did legislators vote to support bills their top contributors supported?
• How often did special interests (such as insurance companies or drug companies) succeed in blocking bills that did not serve their interests?

“MAPLight.org is extremely flexible and easy to use,” said Newman. “You can approach your research in the way that is most interesting to you. You can browse through legislation either by the subject area or bill number that concerns you. Or you can start by looking at the special interests, or at the voting records. Soon we will have ‘real time’ XML feeds and widgets for blogs and desktops.”

About MAPLight.org

MAPLight.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Berkeley, California, illuminates the connection between money and politics. MAPLight.org shines a light on campaign contributions and related legislative outcomes, which leads to a more informed public and election reform.

Contact: Dan Newman, Executive Director, 510-868-0894 (office), 510-868-3304 (cell), info@takebackca.org

Pretty cool, huh?

Full disclosure: I’m on the advisory board for MAPlight.

Take election day off

The Democratic Party is asking people to take election day off to do last minute get out the vote work - The Democratic Party | Take a Day Off for Democracy - an area where the Republicans traditionally beat us.

I’m in.

Bush insider: Bush administration used and mocked Christian right

MSNBC reports that a new book called Tempting Faith, by former administration official David Kuo, gives an inside look at the Bush administration that’s bound to give some of the Christian Right pause on election day.

He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.” “National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’: Kuo writes. More seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races.

Tempting Faith will be out October 16th. It’s going for $16.50 on Amazon, where’s it’s currently ranked #35 among all books. Olbermann ran a piece on it Thursday night and word on DailyKos is that 60 Minutes will be covering it this Sunday.

John Murtha's not mincing words

Here’s an amazing snippet a friend just emailed me. This is from a new MoveOn.org exhortation written by Congressman John Murtha:

A year ago when I presented my plan for Iraq, I did it to provide leadership and protect our troops. The Republicans have spent their time name-calling while the situation for our troops in Iraq gets worse. They’ve tried to smear me, other veterans, Democrats, you and anybody who stands up to them. Well, let me say one thing right now: screw them. Those gravestones at Arlington cemetery don’t say Democrat or Republican on them. We are all patriots.

The Democrats Will Have to Be Detained

I’ve put together a couple of things President Bush has revealed recently about the Democrats in Congress; it is awfully sobering, but very clear, what he is going to have to do.

(My italics.)

Bush: [I]f somebody from al Qaeda is calling into the United States…we need to know…what they’re planning …. 177 Democrats voted against listening in on terrorist communications…[they] said, you know, we don’t think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists. Speech.

DKo: My God, these Democrats are recklessly naive!

Bush: [T]he best way to deal with this enemy is to bring them to justice before they hurt the American people again….If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democrat Party, it sounds like…they think the best way to protect the American people is, wait until we’re attacked again. Speech.

DKo: Wait! Not damn well likely. Are they rooting for Al Qaeda? Al Qaeda couldn’t pay for such weakening of American defenses. It supports their hostilities very materially. Yet, the Democrats went ahead and purposefully voted against these measures.

So, let’s see—the Democrats have purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.

But that means…

Whoa! Nearly half the US Congress are unlawful enemy combatants!

(Bush quotes cited in the Washington Post.)

Though the President will take no pleasure in it, he has no choice but to round them up instantly. As US citizens, they will be highly privileged over the other unlawful enemy combatants. They may have the right to habeas corpus, even possibly a trial. The Senators, at least, could be out well before the War on Terror is finally won.

I hope they appreciate the blessings of citizenship.

The real mistake in the first moon words was ruthlessly suppressed.

I first reported years ago the real mistake in the first moon words, and that mistake’s potentially staggering costs to our nation.

When I give you the details, the words Why didn’t the biggest newspapers in America grab this story and run with it as front page news? will leap to your lips!

This is the mistake post-mission re-analysis actually uncovered::

When Neil Armstrong stepped down and uttered, “One Giant Step for mankind,” he completely forget to say, “Mother, May I.”

The entire Moon Mission would have to be done over!

We still get fun diversionary stories like this in WashPost, because they weren’t about to let that out. This is serious money. Hence, the ruthless suppression of my report. I have suffered chronic stiff-necks over the years, just from watching my back. But (as you know) I cannot keep silent.

—David