Re: Oh, Eek... For the Love of Schmidt

While I am inclined to agree almost entirely with Ché's post, I must submit one important contradiction: Phil Angelides is NOT a true progressive. He is another opportunistic political sleazebag, who at best is probably a lesser evil than Ahnold.

In an effort to paint himself as a "friend of the environment," he falsely positioned his Laguna West development in suburban Sacramento as a "sustainable community." It is described by land-use experts as a "California tragedy," and a contribution to the very sprawl that he said the development was designed to counter. And it is this sort of construction that brings me to my second point.

My own personal experience of Mr. Angelides as a casual observer sealed my complete and utter disdain of the man during his gubernatorial campaign. He and his large enterourage of volunteers and a camera-toting press corp crashed the Hollywood Farmers Market one Sunday. Outlasting any welcome -- if any existed at all -- this obnoxious blob oozed through the market for hours, inconveniencing everyone there merely trying to get their weekly shopping done. And outside of a few predictable platitudes, his anti-Arnold message was largely singular, not progressive. If one is going to take the time to exploit a farmers market for campaigning, he should devote at least some time to talk about preserving our food supply, helping small farmers against big agribusiness, healthy school lunch programs paired with CSAs, etc.

I'm sure Mr. Angelides has progressive moments. But I wouldn't label him a "true" progressive.

Points for chutzpah though. Heh.

Your link is completely irrelevant to this topic.

And exactly what sort of shenanigans do you think the Deomcrats are pulling? What, exactly, do you see amiss in that anecdote?

I'll tell you one thing: any anti-illegal immigrant bill that doesn't not focus on the American employers of undocumented workers is not a serious bill.

The Republicans could stop all undoc. workers tomorrow if they wanted: simply enforce large fines on the employers of undoc. workers.

As long as the Republicans avoid this obvious solution, it is impossible for anyone to take their histironics as anything but cheap political point-scoring, not any sort of solution to the situation at all.

Did KosTV just crash when GG started talking?

yep, it sure did.

You'd think that Kos could afford a professional outfit for this. It does not speak well to actually delivering a product... which at the moment is not being delivered at all, much less badly.

None of the other webcasts I saw had as many viewers.

Try closing & re-opening your browser.

...is Sharter26% still allowed to hijack threads?

Whatever the problem is, I suspect it's likely GG's fault.

Schmidt may have gotten the Gropenator re-elected, but making an actual leader out of him takes a bit more work. It's not just his utter leadership failure on the California budget, but also his positively Bush/Rovian performance on global warming, as I detail in an article I wrote for Random Lengths News, available in a slightly longer form at Calitics:

Promise Like Gore, Deliver Like Bush? (Schwarzenegger On Global Warming)
http://www.calitics.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3382

Meanwhile, just how bad are things for the Bush/Cheney/Rove mothership? Just this morning I stumbled across this, from PIPA (Project on International Policy Alternatives):

Dates of Survey: June 18-25, 2003 Margin of Error: +/- 3% [full sample]
Sample Size: 1051 respondents +/-3.5% [3/4 sample]
[HALF SAMPLE: A,B]

Q1. Overall, how would you rate President Bush’s leadership in dealing with international problems and issues?
Very strong leadership (+2) ........................ 26%
Somewhat strong leadership (+1) .................35
Neither strong nor weak (0) ..........................19
Somewhat weak leadership (-1) ...................10
Very weak leadership (-2).............................10
(No answer)..................................................... -

That 26% has a very familiar ring to it, don't you think? Everyone else seems to have woken up and smelled the coffee. How's that for "awesome"???

"You'd think that Kos could afford a professional outfit for this. It does not speak well to actually delivering a product... which at the moment is not being delivered at all, much less badly."

This from a supporter of Bush's war?

Chutzpah, indeed.

To the party loyalist, the only indicator of quality, worth, or value is the stamp of the Party and it's Leader.

If the video he was trying to watch was all about how rich and democratic and free Bush is making the world, he'd be sniffling and wiping away tears as he lauded the brave, manly network guys as they valiantly tried, against all odds, against (probably!) a joint terrorist/Democrat/Mexican/French DoS attack and the overall general degeneration of our once Proud And Noble Race, to restore the video feed.

There is no doubt that message control can be used for the wrong purposes. But before we condemn, put the shoe on the other foot. Suppose you believed that things were going very well and that the story just wasn't getting out. Others may see your attempts to make the truth known as "propaganda" when in fact you're just trying to make sure your side of the story gets out.

I'm not going to take sides or pretend that I know what is really happening in Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind that you can find areas in Iraq where things aren't going as well as we'd like them to. That is the easiest thing to do in any war-torn country. What concerns me more than the administration's attempts to tell their story is that no one in the media seems to have any interest in telling the WHOLE story; they just seem to want to present one side or, at best, both sides without context. Where is the analysis that puts all of the anecdotal evidence in perspective? Without that, I don't think we can make any kind of informed judgment about our progress or lack thereof.

Why...is Sharter26% still allowed to hijack threads? -- bamage

He isn't. We're simply obliging the "Kick Me Here" sign he's wearing on his groin.

GG is just as erudite live as he is when posting. He's taking Allen and Carney to task about their craven ineptitude.