Call It A Comeback
back to the grind. And by the way–donate to Obama–to the right. While I might have a new advertiser in the next couple days there are three slots open and another about to open up. From here on out I’ll be rotating the slots daily so they go from top to bottom moving one slot every day. The exception will be the current Obama ad which-as the first advertiser gets the original deal as long as it stays up.
My inbox is getting worse and worse, so if you send me something that needs a response, feel free to send me a follow-up. Link requests take a while so don’t worry about those, but any content might be lost.
Today was busy–as you can tell, but there is a reason. I’m heading out of town and will only be able to post a limited amount until Monday evening. I’m sure I’ll post some, but just not much.
On that note, I’ll also be out of town the next two weekends–I’ll be in Chicago the weekend after this one.
The blogroll has been updated and there is a second page of links with lots of Illinois bloggers and other fun stuff! And MyDD is back!
If I missed you, drop me a note and I’ll get you next week.
Remember my rant about the sad state of the Illinois Democratic Party’s on-line outreach?
Tom Cross continues the Republican efforts with a new blog and website. Overall a pretty good effort. The e-mail announcing it effectively covered three issues that are good issues for Republicans:
1. True Medical Malpractice Reform. Recently Leader Cross and the House Republicans announced their Med Mal Package called “Code Blue”. With it’s passage, Illinois will be able to retain more doctors in State and drive medical costs down.
2. Restore balance to Springfield. With Chicago Democrats controlling everything in Springfield, the rest of the state has been pushed aside. We need to resore some balance back in the Statehouse and get the rest of the State it’s fair share!
3. The House Republicans have not picked up a seat in the Statehouse since 1994. Leader Cross, Deputy Leader Hassert, and HRO are excited about the changes they have made and how they will have a positive impact on our message. We have many real good opportunities this year. Let’s pick up a seat!
I think the important thing about these messages are that the draw distinctions between without demagoguing on issues that divide Republicans themselves.
The blog is interesting in it gives a real personal voice to the Cross’ people which is very inviting.
My only criticism is the front page pic isn’t the most flattering. Cross isn’t a bad looking guy, but he still has that high school wrestler haircut.
Now, no one suggests that Mike Madigan should be blogging or that he even needs to be bothered with the details, but c’mon already!
I’m not sure if I was added because I’m on other Republican lists or not, but if not, smart marketing by the Cross people too.
I generally avoid inside baseball on blogs, but Markos deserves an exception. The other day he wrote a post that was over the line by saying “Screw Them” in relation to the “civilian” employees in Fallujah.
The comment was offensive to me, I think the loss of any human life is nothing to dismiss. That said, we all say offensive things. I say offensive things in relation to human life on a fairly frequent basis, but I consider those sins. And I ask for forgiveness of those sins when I pray. Others, including Markos, don’t have the same faith and I am guessing he has his own way of dealing with saying something he regrets. I’ll leave that to him and his faith or lack of faith.
I take his explanation for the statement to heart. Inherent in his anger are two issues. One, these men were not soldiers, yet they received more attention than our soldiers in their deaths. Part of this was because they were considered civilians when in reality they are mercenaries. They were combatants just as soldiers are except they were fighting as part of the nation’s armed forces. They were a part of a company that like many companies that do this kind of work, provide shadow services, in shadowy situations, under shadowy legal situations in shadowy moral situations. Were these individuals taking part in some sort of illegal activity or were they a part of legitimate force protection in an undermanned military force? We don’t know, but we do know that special forces noncomms don’t join these organizations without understanding their past uses and make no mistake about it, those past uses include some very shady operations around the world.
Second, Markos originally grew up in El Salvador where these sorts of characters were not unknown. Between American advisors who were privately paid to death squad goons, mercenaries played especially ugly roles in the civil war there and elsewhere throughout Latin America.
If one simply buys the label ‘civilian’, for these types of workers, then Kos’ comments seem far beyond what any normal human would say. If one understands the role of these kind of contractors or more accurately, mercenaries, in US foreign policy, Kos’ comments are still unacceptable, but a hell of a lot more understandable when one considers it was a reaction that wasn’t thought out.
He retracted that statement. It should be done. What is most disturbing to me is that the person who led part of the effort to get his advertisers to discontinue their ads has this to say about Rachel Corrie:
Personally, I would not have gloated the way some people did – it is still sad that a young woman died in a pretty nasty way – but I can’t work up any righteous indignation about the gloating.
Rachel Corrie was stupid and naive, but she also was doing nothing more than a peaceful act of nonviolent resistance. She was not a combatant, though she certainly chose to put herself in harm’s way. But here, we see, a person who doesn’t think those who gloated over her death as bad as even Kos. Now say some of those retracted as Kos did, I could forgive that pretty easily, but this clown doesn’t even think that such gloating is all that bad. To be clear, to this clown, it isn’t about the loss of humanity in either case, it is about which side one is on–as if there are only two in the world.
To make it even worse, this guy seems to think that Little Green Footballs is some sort of sane site, when its sole purpose appears to be denigrating Islam and its adherents, Arabs, and anyone who doesn’t agree that Islam is the root of all problems. Sort of like taking Christian Reconstructionists and claiming they are representative of all Americans or all Christians–just hatred run amock.
Even better, he compares Kos to the Council of Conservative Citizens. You know, the clowns who grew out of an organization built on white supremacy compared to a guy who said one dumb thing. Oh, and one of the CofCC guys sent me this. Yeah, just the same.
To a larger point, military service is noble and it is noble because it is done in the context of duty to your country and in service of a cause greater than oneself. More important it is in context of following the rules of war and US law governing our soldiers to ensure that decisions made by members of the military are consistent with our morality. Contractor mercenaries are not bound by the sames rules, they are not fighting the same fight, and they don’t have the same checks on their behavior. Jan Schakowsky has led efforts to end the funding of these sorts of contractors. For that effort she deserves to be rewarded with campaign contributions. But don’t. Why not? She has no opposition, but Barack Obama does–click on the Obama pic at the right and donate! Or go down and give her more colleages through the DCCC.
As for my blog? I’m going to open up my ads to anyone. I used to have reservations about who might advertise and place restrictions on racists or others. No more. In fact, if the CofCC wants to place an ad on my site–fantastic! I can then use it to highlight their history of racism. As for individual candidates, I am pretty confident that my blog won’t be too out there for anyone. The only exceptions are when I post on strong separation of church and state and marriage, but frankly, Steve Chapman of the Trib and Slate argues the same things. If you won’t advertise in the Trib, don’t advertise here.
Just to let you know, the blog roll is in flux as I finish the expanded blogroll which won’t be on the front page in the interest of a clean look and quick download time. How do you make the front page? My whim. Really it is a combination of who I think updates regularly in their category and who people will most enjoy. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t great blogs on the expanded page, just that there is limited space.
Not only do I pontificate here, but I have a couple other venues. The most common of those is a local St. Louis paper where I write on educational reform in the Saint Louis Public Schools. This week I have an article on the current fiscal condition of the District and the options available. There is another article I’d recommend as well on homeless shelters in urban areas by Rachelle L’Ecuyer.
So make this an open thread!
Things to do until I make it back full strength—
Visit the DCCC blog on the adstrip at the right and learn about how much trouble Tom DeLay is in.
Visit the Rain Storm blog at the right and see what new goodies the Richard Clarke testimony has brought us.
Visit Obama and give him some cash also to the right.
And of course, discuss the Rosemont deal and the increasing frankness of public officials to call Don Stephens “connected”.
Should be back sometime Thursday, but a stomach virus is making its way through the family.
Make sure to visit my three sponsors on the right side of your screen—
Barack Obama
Rain Storm which should be on fire with the Clarke revelations
and
NEW–the DCCC–go sign up for their activist alerts. They also have some juicy stuff up on their blog about DeLay. Let’s make him the minority by giving to both the DCCC and Melissa Bean.
First, new advertiser–another Blog entitled Rain Storm–take a look, they focus on neo-con misadventures–from what I saw yesterday, it looks promising.
Second, don’t forget to give Obama a little love to the right!
Third, sorry I wasn’t around yesterday, but allergy season hit here in St. Louis.
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