August 2, 2005

So yesterday's article (see below) depressed the hell out of you. Good. Welcome to the club. Get used to it.

Some of you wanted to know if it meant I had given up.

From Erik:
Now I'm really scared. You sound as though you are hanging up the keyboard. A few months ago you wrote about a political party that could run on a 'ticket' a complete package that would draw together all the fundamental pillars of the Democratic party and give all the fringe issues to the states to hash out...as policy, in writing not rhetoric. A plan with a beginning middle and end, on paper. You detailed that plan, named possible players.

Despite popular demand, I am not hanging up my keyboard. I am an annoying little prick with a computer and a Internet connection and I will not go quietly. They will have to pry my keyboard from my cold dead fingers.

But yes, "The Ticket Plan" would be like a fresh mountain breeze blowing across a muddy feedlot of pigs on a hot August day. The trouble is Democratic Party appartchiks have no interest in it. Instead they want us all to sign on for more of the same.

For example, in July Hillary Clinton scolded those of us who grouse about the sorry state of our party. She chose the Democratic Leadership Council as the forum for her "Can't we all just get along?" speech.

In case you don't know, the Democratic Leadership Council is homebase for Democrat pols who really wanted to be Republicans but didn't have the personality. It's was created by southern Dems trying to staunch the flow of southern voters to the GOP after the passage of the Civil Rights Act during the Johnson administration. The DLC's message; "We may be Democrats but we are still good ole boy crackers at heart."

As the GOP made inroads into blue collar northern constituencies the DLC's "We're not girlie boy liberials" message attracted tranigulating Yankee Dems who now make sure they are photographed wielding shotguns and trying to look enthralled by loud automobiles driving fast in a circle.

And let's be clear, when Hillary asks, "can't we all just get along," what she really meant was can't we all just "go along." Hillary is to the DNC what what John Sweeney is to the AFL/CIO. And like Sweeney she blames us for the vacuous impotence of her party. (The last gambit of losers is always to blame their victims for losing faith in them.)

Yes, The Ticket is the only hope. But who's going to put it together and fund the campaign if not the opposition party? Hillary doesn't want to be part of a Ticket, she wants to be the ticket. And it's clear that sometime in early July someone in the Clinton wing of the DNC pushed the "start" button for Hillary '08. The talking points went out, the positions are positioning, and the candidate herself is triangulating like Bill trying to explain the size-4 panties found under the backseat of his SUV.

The Hillary '08 train has begun chugging down the tracks of inevitability. And, there's no way the cadre of Clinton hangers-on, sycophants and opportunists who have hitched their cars to her train are going to pull the emergency brake in order to back a Ticket. No way Jose. Like a horse that smells the barn, they are White House bound. The blinders are on, and woe be anyone who gets in their way. (There's no creature on earth more needy than a out-of-power Clintonite.)

Folks who live far from the Beltway Bubble find it hard to understand how people who appear to be sane and reasonably intelligent can be so utterly clueless. I don't wonder. I've met them. I've even worked with them. They are a sell-perpetuating cult and trying to tell them something they don't want to hear is like trying to get an Amish girl into a bikini.

No, we are not going to be saved in '08 by a moderate Ticket. Instead Dems will crown a presidential candidate from among their party's shortlist of worthies. Then they will cross their fingers and hope voters hate the GOP so much by then that they would vote for Micheal Jackson if that was the only alternative.

The Ticket is the ticket. And now is the time to start building it and educating the public. But that will not happen until there is no-nonsense, throw-the-bums-out, Stalinist-style purge of the DNC. The folks, like Bob Schrum, Carville, etc, who lost the last three election cycles, need to be shown the door and freed up to pursue other interests. If we're lucky they will go to work for the GOP

Time is short. Howard Dean could lead such a purge -- or he too could add "former DNC official" to his C.V.


Item: Stupefying our Kids
George W. Bush told reporters yesterday that he supports the teaching of so-called "intelligent design" in school science classes -- this from the man whose own persona argues against intelligent design.

But whenever Bush starts dropping news like that it means his fundamentalist minions out there are gearing up for a new assault on our kid's minds.

So, what to do? Well, we know we can't change these folk's minds by showing them the science, they just don't care about facts. I'm not talking here about your harmless, mind-their-own-business Christians. Ideas like this come from the Christian Taliban who unquestionably believe in fantastic things that cannot be seen, measured or proven but have real problems with facts. So, the only way to get through to them is to jump on board when they start rolling with one these fruitcake ideas.

In this case here's my solution. Whenever a group starts pushing for the teaching of "intelligent design" in biology classes, we should agree, with one catch. They also have to allow the teaching of astrology in astronomy class. Because, if we are to treat their creationist theory like science then why not also allow for the possibility that "the stars" can tell the future and steer our personal fate? Intelligent design and astrology – two peas in the same pod.

Of course proponents of intelligent design will shout foul, that astrology is superstition, not science. Yes, that's right. Now this conversation is getting someplace!


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