We all knew this was going to happen.
The hatred spewed by the democratic party during the campaign was bound to turn in on itself. If they can't stand by their President during a time of war then I certainly don't expect their loyalties to extend to anyone but themselves.
MoveOn to Democratic Party: 'We Own It' Thu Dec 9, 6:37 PM ET By SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Liberal powerhouse MoveOn has a message for the "professional election losers" who run the Democratic Party: "We bought it, we own it, we're going to take it back."
A scathing e-mail from the head of MoveOn's political action committee to the group's supporters on Thursday targets outgoing Democratic National Committee (news - web sites) chairman Terry McAuliffe as a tool of corporate donors who alienated both traditional and progressive Democrats.
"For years, the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base," said the e-mail from MoveOn PAC's Eli Pariser. "But we can't afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional election losers."
Under McAuliffe's leadership, the message said, the party coddled the same corporate donors that fund Republicans to bring in money at the expense of vision and integrity.
"In the last year, grass-roots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the party doesn't need corporate cash to be competitive," the message continued. "Now it's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."
Pariser urged MoveOn supporters to help support a DNC chair with a bold vision to represent Democrats outside Washington. Democrats will vote at their February meeting in Washington on a successor to McAuliffe.
DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera declined to engage in a tit-for-tat with MoveOn, but praised McAuliffe's efforts.
"Call me crazy, but I think the fact that for the first time in party history we outraised the Republicans, and did so primarily through grass-roots fund raising is something to be proud of," Cabrera said.
Among those vying for the party chairmanship is former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (news - web sites), an early darling of MoveOn's cybernetwork of activists when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Way to stand together guys in your time of need.
For those of you who are after a good laugh to cheer up your monday morning:
Republicans Outbreed Us, Democrats Fret
Democrats' endless and often clueless stewing over the GOP's latest election triumphs just keeps getting funnier. Now they’re worried, with some justification, that fertile young conservatives are replacing dried-up old liberals.
Have you heard of "natalists"? They’re the left's new boogeyman. These curious Middle American creatures, it seems, care more about having a family than a summer home in the Hamptons. They tend to have conservative moral values. And ... they're reproducing!
Now the media elites are examining this phenomenon of flyover country as if it's some sort of exotic species that must be dissected, though perhaps not exterminated.
David Brooks, one of the few voices of sanity at the New York Times, writes: "They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling."
Oh, the agony of missing Hollywood's "sophisticated movies." Heavens, could there be people who'd rather raise their children than catch a double bill of "Kinsey" and "Saw"?
"People on the Great Plains and in the Southwest are much more fertile than people in New England or on the Pacific coast," Brooks says.
"You can see surprising political correlations. As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates."
Look Who's 'Proudly Provincial'
Somebody named Ginan Rauf, "a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University" and "an Arab-American worried about the direction of her country," lashes out at Brooks' analysis on a Web site called Muslim Wakeup.
"The natalist enclave is proudly provincial in its wholesome rejection of all things foreign with the possible exception of consumer products like Chinese toys, German SUV’s, Japanese cameras, and of course Arab oil so that all those self-sacrificing moms can keep driving their precious kids to more soccer—oops, football--games. Gotta protect them from all that 'bad influence' as Brooks tells us people with money are wont to do," she fumes.
"And since when has there been a direct correlation between the number of children a family has and its moral values? ... Perhaps we must all submit to the fertility God instead? Or does that only apply to the red states where white fertility rates are higher? How easily the natalist slips into the nativist rejection of all things foreign and a celeberation of, dare I say it, 'racial purity.'"
Yet the liberal New Republic frets: "Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales [such as] San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."
USA Today notes that President Bush won 474 of the nation's 573 fast-growing micropolitan areas (places too urban to be rural but too small to be metropolitan).
Brooks offers his latte-sipping readers a bit of reassurance: "Natalists are associated with red America, but they're not launching a jihad."
Wow. Someone at the New York Times admits that heartland America is not identical with Islamic terrorists. At least the paper has one progressive. Now if only Maureen Dowd would second him.
"If we can't get them out, we'll breed them out!".
And to round up the madness - news flash! The Right Wing media is destroying journalism!
NEW YORK (AP) - "I was just in the editing room, working on the last piece," Bill Moyers says. "I thought: 'I've done this so many times, and each one is as difficult as the last one.' Maybe finally I've broken the habit."It hasn't been so much a habit for Moyers as a truth-telling mission during his three decades as a TV journalist. But come next week, he will sign off from "Now," the weekly PBS newsmagazine he began in 2002, as, at age 70, he retires from television.
"I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee," says Moyers. "We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."
For that, his absence after the Dec. 17 "Now" will be all the more keenly felt: Moyers' interest has always been the American people.
A humanist who's at home with subjects ranging from the power of myth to media consolidation, from drug addiction to modern dance, from religion to environmental abuse, Moyers has produced hundreds of hours of diverse programming on issues that others shortchange, sidestep or simply fail to notice. And through it all, he has looked upon his audience not as targeted consumers, or as voters split along a Red State-Blue State divide, but as his fellow citizens.
He's a citizen-journalist with a robust background, this Texas native who, early on, earned a divinity degree (he's an ordained Baptist minister) then served as special assistant to President Johnson, and for several years was publisher of the Long Island newspaper Newsday.
In 1971, he came to public television as host of "This Week" and "Bill Moyers' Journal," and, next, joined CBS News to do similarly civic-minded programming.
Then in 1986 he and his wife, Judith Davidson Moyers, became their own bosses by forming Public Affairs Television, an independent shop that has not only produced documentaries such as "A Walk Through the 20th Century,""Healing and the Mind" and "A Gathering of Men with Robert Bly," but also paid for them through its own fund-raising efforts.
"Judith and I will take several months to catch our breath," says Moyers during a recent conversation at the soon-to-be-vacated office he rents at Thirteen/WNET's Manhattan headquarters. "Then I will think about the Last Act - capital L, capital A - of my life."
He does have one immediate project: a book he will write about his years with Johnson. But he has no TV ventures in mind.
With his days at "Now" ticking down, Moyers voices pride in that series, which, upon its premiere three years ago, he envisioned as "a flexible format for ideas and conversation, reportage and debate." Now reaching 2.4 million viewers weekly with its breaking-news currency and contemplative pace, "Now" will continue with his worthy co-host, David Brancaccio, taking over. (It airs Fridays at 8:30 p.m. EST; check local listings.)
"It has gained traction," says Moyers - if only by default, in an era where most TV journalism gravitates toward the sensational or trivial. "As the networks have raced to the bottom, it is very easy to stand out if you just do good journalism. We've been trying to do good journalism, and it filled a real void."
One example of typically good journalism on "Now" not long ago: an in-depth look at the record of President Bush's nominee for secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, who in her current post as national security adviser "dreadfully misjudged the terrorist threat leading up to 9/11, and then misled America and the world about the case for invading Iraq," as Moyers concluded.
It was the sort of report unlikely to be found on most newscasts, and even less likely to endear a reporter to the powers-that-be, on whose good graces the media has grown all too reliant. But Moyers believes that challenging those in power is a journalist's duty - and, consequently, his.
"What they're really objecting to is not my ideology," he says in his thoughtful, almost pastoral manner. "I'd be doing this if the Democrats were in power. It's not that I'm a liberal, it really isn't. It's the fact that I'm doing journalism that isn't determined by the establishment.
"You don't get rewarded in commercial broadcasting for trying to tell the truth about the institutions of power in this country," he goes on. "I think my peers in commercial television are talented and devoted journalists, but they've chosen to work in a corporate mainstream that trims their talent to fit the corporate nature of American life. And you do not get rewarded for telling the hard truths about America in a profit-seeking environment."
Through his own devices, Moyers has been the journalist he wanted to be, while honored for it with more than 30 Emmys and 10 Peabody awards.
"I've just been doing the kind of journalism that ought to be done, IF you had the opportunity to do it," he insists. "The fight has been to create that opportunity and that independence."
It's been a fight he fought well. But where will tomorrow's Bill Moyers come from?
"We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns in reply, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia."
So now they're blaming Condi for 9/11. No mention at all of the fact that Bill Clinton let Al Qaeda run rampant during the 90's with his strategy of appeasement after Somalia, or the fact the during this time the CIA had become a rogue agency too scared to use human assets but rather rely on whiz bang technology.
Let's not forget the use of cruise missiles to 'effectively' deal with Al Qaeda rather than Delta Force, which had been specially trained to do such a task.
But no, the biggest story of our time is apparently the ideological right wing media that is getting republicans elected.
Incase you're wondering, I did not get these articles of the onion. They are for real. Scarey huh?
