There are two questions I have been emailing reporters lately when they write that the violence in Iraq is decreasing. The wordings have varied, but the gist has been as follows.

What are your sources for your claim that the violence in Iraq is decreasing?

Is your claim based exclusively on statements from the Pentagon?

Reporters never reply to these emails. This is especially interesting since reporters usually will email me back when I criticize or ask questions about a story.

Hrmmmmmm.

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance (Described by Gender.org):

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.

Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgendered — that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgendered people.

We live in times more sensitive than ever to hatred based violence, especially since the events of September 11th. Yet even now, the deaths of those based on anti-transgender hatred or prejudice are largely ignored. Over the last decade, more than one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or prejudice, regardless of any other factors in their lives. This trend shows no sign of abating.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance serves several purposes. It raises public awareness of hate crimes against transgendered people, an action that current media doesn’t perform. Day of Remembrance publicly mourns and honors the lives of our brothers and sisters who might otherwise be forgotten. Through the vigil, we express love and respect for our people in the face of national indifference and hatred. Day of Remembrance reminds non-transgendered people that we are their sons, daughters, parents, friends and lovers. Day of Remembrance gives our allies a chance to step forward with us and stand in vigil, memorializing those of us who’ve died by anti-transgender violence.

Today, I can't help but remember the transgender person who most affected me and my views of life and the world, Connie Norman. She was an incredible AIDS and queer activist who died in 1996 of AIDS. Some might not think of an AIDS death as one due to violence, by I disagree with that view. Our society has sabotaged HIV prevention, provided insufficient care, and done far too little research to find a cure. All of these things may seem passive, but they have proved to be as deadly as knives, guns, baseball bats, and other instruments of active violence. Our society's behavior has been motivated by homophobia and racism for sure. But, transphobia also has contributed to the sick sense among too many in America that people with AIDS are expendable.

Nobody is expendable.

Connie's obituary identified her in part as:

Sometimes called "the AIDS Diva," Norman championed reform of federal AIDS funding formulas, routine offering of HIV tests by medical providers, testing newborns for HIV and better treatment of those who have HIV or AIDS.

I remember her as "Momma Connie." She was constantly taking care of young activists at demos, and she always had so much to teach to anyone who wanted to learn.

I learned how to lead chants at demos from her. I learned how to express anger in public settings in ways that make it difficult for people to dismiss or ignore you. Most of all, I learned that no matter how righteous an activist's anger is, that anger is based on love. We can never forget that we are motivated most of all by love for people who aren't treated fairly or humanely in this world.

Thank you Connie!

I miss you!

This is from Democracy Now a while back, but it still is relevant today. Kucinich makes an excellent point about how NAFTA and the WTO create poverty in Mexico which in turn forces many people there to immigrate to the US. It would be nice if the only people migrating to the US from Mexico and other countries were coming here because they wanted to, not due to artificially generated, desperate poverty.



A similar point can be made about Haiti. If "our" government would stop supporting the murderous oligarchs and overthrowing democratically elected governments there, far fewer Haitians would be fleeing political persecution and horrific poverty.

Dennis Kucinich got a chance to express himself at the latest Democratic "debate" in Las Vegas, which he often does not. Here is a great edit of what Kucinich had to say.



Thanks to researchris2 for posting the video. Hat tip to Tennessee Guerilla Women for posting it on that blog.

Those of us who support Kucinich should do everything we can to publicize his views. It is a win-win. It helps his candidacy and provides a soapbox progressive views.

One of the responses to the video is particularly interesting: a personal, hip-hop endorsement of Kucinich.

Protests already are being planned against the Republican National Convention (which some New Yorkers called the "Repugnant Nazi Carnival" when we were stuck with it in 2004).

Find out more at www.protestrnc2008.org

Folks in the Minneapolis area might be interested in the Organizers Conference Feb. 9-10.

Organizers Conference
February 9-10, 2008
@ University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
The Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War invites activists and organizers to join us for a national conference to help organize the September 1 march and discuss other plans for protests at the Republican National Convention. For more Information contact info@protestrnc2008.org.

There have been so many ways in which the Democratic Party "leadership" has betrayed the party's values in addition to supporting the war and pushing through the nominations of Mukasey and other dangerous right-wing extremists.

ENDA
I have blogged extensively on how the Democratic Party "leadership' has sabotaged ENDA by excluding gender identity and through other efforts to water the legislation down. In a year where ENDA faces certain veto, the party power brokers have diluted ENDA so that any bill that will reach a Democratic president in the future will be either incredibly weak or completely worthless.

Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin, acting on behalf of Nancy Pelosi and other heterosexist bigots in the party, have ignored the views of the queer community on what kind of civil rights bill we want. Heterosexual liberals who are vaguely sympathetic to lgbt issues may be fooled by this phony show of support by the Democratic Party insiders, but queers are not. Liberal queers know what was done to us and will remember it in 2008.

Katrina
It is a sad day when liberal Democrats need to lobby Democratic Party bigwigs to actually take action to deal with the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. From Progressive Democrats of America:

Push the Senate Today to Support Katrina Survivors
September 25th, 2007

100,000 displaced. 65,000 families still living in FEMA trailers. This is the Gulf Coast two years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. After years spent dragging its feet, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs is holding hearings today on the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act, the bill that will create a real road home for thousands of renters and owners in New Orleans and throughout the region.

The Gulf Coast Civil Works Project, an even more comprehensive approach to helping people still being screwed over years after Katrina and Rita still languishes in the House with a leadership more interested in supporting Katrina profiteers than Katrina victims.

Trade
House and Senate Democratic ringleaders have been pushing through more corporate trade deals that hurt wages and jobs in the US while promoting abject poverty abroad. How are they going to get union members to turn out and vote Democrat in 2008 when the party is doing everything to destroy their standards of living?

Impeachment
How can anyone talk about the betrayal of liberal Democrats and constitutional responsibilities without mentioning impeachment?

Bush and Cheney don't just have bad policies, they have committed serious crimes including but not limited to:

- Illegally occupying their offices due to stolen elections.
- Fraud in order to get us into the Iraq War.
- Perpetrating a war of aggression and genocide in Iraq, crimes against humanity which carry life imprisonment as penalties
- Torture
- Illegal wiretapping and email monitoring
- Ordering federal employees to engage in campaign activities, while on the clock.
- Blocking and obstructing criminal investigations of themselves and other administration figures.

Every member of Congress, regardless of party, has a constitutional obligation to impeach Cheney and Bush. Yet, Nancy Pelosi and other DINO's have violated their oaths of office by keeping impeachment "off the table."

Impeachment is one of the most important issues to liberal Democrats and to many conservatives and moderates who place the rule of law above ideology. Yet, power brokers in the Democratic Party treat those views with utter contempt.

How Out of Touch Can the Party Apparatus Get?
If you look at the tone of fundraising appeals from the DCCC and DNC, you would think everything is just fine between the power brokers and liberals in the party. It is as if Howard Dean and other Washington insiders have lost complete contact with the party's base. They only seem to talk to the pundits and corporate interests who write the biggest checks.

You can see what party liberals think by looking at Democrats.com's call for a donor strike.

Impact on 2008
Obviously, Democratic candidates face major obstacles to getting liberal support in November 2008. The Democratic Party is in an amazingly weak position during an election where the party should be poised to pick up the presidency and win a few Senate seats.

However, the GOP has enormous problems too. The military defeat in Iraq is helping to divide the party even though they won't admit publicly that Bush has lost the war. The rapture that never came is weakening the resolve and unity of the Christian Taliban, just as the sexual behavior of many Republicans fails to conform to the puritanical idiocy of Christian extremists. GOP economic policies are kicking many out of the middle class while making the lower middle class and poor whites who used to faithfully vote Republican even worse off.

The Republicans face the opposite problem than the Democrats. The GOP's fanatical pursuit of far right policies has left them incredibly vulnerable as those policies are failing miserably for the vast majority of Americans and the country as an entity. The Democrats are in serious trouble because they have shown contempt for liberal positions and policies that can save our country.

The two major parties in this country are at their weakest point since the time of the disintegration of the Whigs in the middle 18th Century.

What Ron Paul Coins Should Look Like

Admittedly, there are plenty of otherwise sensible people who are supporting Ron Paul out of sheer disgust with the Republican presidential candidates and nearly all of the Democratic candidates. However, there also is a cult of Ron Paul worshipers who enter into a frenzied state at the mere mention of his name.

Blog postings criticizing His Holeyness get frenzied responses from Paulians who go to great lengths to try to convince progressives and others they should abandon nearly everything they stand for to join in the Crusade. Many of the comments from the Ronitarians are filled with unintentional humor.

But, the funniest group of Paulian extremists is the one that issued coins in his name. If you want to see the actual coins, the Washington Post article has the pics.

Bernard von NotHaus, NORFED's founder and executive director, said in an interview from his home in Miami Friday night that his employees in Evansville had received the copper dollars late last week and managed to mail out only about 3,500 of them so far. After a six-hour raid, he said, the agents left with the rest of the coins, which weighed about two tons total, as well as smaller amounts of silver Ron Paul dollars, gold Ron Paul dollars that sell for $1,000 and platinum Ron Paul dollars that sell for $2,000. There was a separate raid, NotHaus said, of Sunshine Mint in Coer D'Alene, Idaho, a company that prints the organization's coins, where von NotHaus said agents seized the huge pallets of silver and gold worth more than $1 million that the organization says back the paper certificates issued to its customers.

"They took everything, all of the computers, everything but the desks and chairs," said von NotHaus, who says he served 25 years as the mintmaster for the Royal Hawaiian Mint. "The federal government really is afraid."

The Bush regime would have to beat its own paranoia record to be afraid of this. It sounds more like a prosecutor heard about this because of the Paulipalian frenzy.

I did a fairly comprehensive posting myself on Paul's actual stands on the issues, and I received the requisite flood of comments from the Ronmons. Some of Paul's zealots may be quite funny, but his policies are anything but.

Paul's agenda is, for the most part, frightening.

Like many liberal Democrats, I was stunned When Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein announced that they would vote for Mukasey, despite the fact that Mukasey had lied about the legality of waterboarding in his testimony, condoned torture, and actually claimed that the Bush administration actually has a constitutional right to break the law.

Many of us didn't think even those two "Democrats" could sink so low. There was a protest outside of Schumer's Brooklyn residence. I also joined liberal New York voters who flooded the Schumer offices with calls, emails, etc. demanding that Schumer not give a de facto endorsement of torture by voting for Mukasey.

As usual, Schumer gave liberal, New York Democrats the middle finger.

Thanks to Dusty for collecting information on who voted for Mukasey. Here are the "Democrats" who mocked their oaths of office to uphold and defend the constitution by voting for the Mukasey nomination.

Bayh (D-IN)
Carper (D-DE)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Nelson (D-NE)
Schumer (D-NY)

A look at the full roll call vote gets even more disturbing. 7 not-so-illustrious Senators couldn't even be bothered to vote.

Alexander (R-TN)
Biden (D-DE)
Clinton (D-NY)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Dodd (D-CT)
McCain (R-AZ)
Obama (D-IL)

In other words, none of the Democratic Presidential candidates even voted. It looks like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made a dirty deal to push the vote through, according to Talking Points Memo.

According to sources inside and outside the Democratic leadership, Harry Reid allowed a vote on Mukasey because in exchange the Republican leadership agreed to allow a vote on the big Defense Appropriations Bill, which contains $459 billion in military spending but doesn't fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reid had wanted to get this bill passed before the end of this week, and in fact, the defense bill did come up for a vote late last night and was passed after the Mukasey vote.

Some might want to justify the absence of the Democratic Presidential candidates by saying they did not have adequate notice of the vote. Reid deserves criticism of his repugnant decision, but the line of reasoning fails on two grounds.

1) Moral: Those Senators should have been in Washington, leading the fight against the Mukasey nomination. If they are unable or unwilling to lead the fight against an Attorney General nominee who displayed utter contempt for the rule of law in his confirmation testimony, are they really capable of leading the country?

2) Practical: An irony of this is that if Obama, Clinton, Dodd, or Biden led a filibuster fight against Mukasey, that display of integrity would have helped their campaigns more than glad handing and baby kissing.

The Independents did worse than the Democrats, splitting 50/50. Sanders voted against the nomination while Lieberbush voted for Mukasey. Every GOP Senator who voted chose to betray the country by supporting Mukasey.

Looking at the Mukasey confirmation outside of its broader context would obscure much of the dissatisfaction with the Democrats among liberals in the party. Democrats in the Senate have a history of allowing heinous Bush nominees to go through, including anti-Constitution Supreme Court justices Roberts and Alito.

Pundits like to go on about how the Senate supposedly is very jealous of its powers and determined to protect them. Yet, both parties have abandoned their advise and consent powers and responsibilities since Bush took office.

The Senate Democrats have been playing a sneaky game, arranging things to where most Democrats vote against the most unconscionable of Bush's nominees, but enough Democrats support those nominations to give Bush exactly what he wants. It really is like pro wrestling.

Liberal Democrats are starting to catch on.

I attended the NYC October 27 protest, and many things struck me. One of them involved which Democrat protesters were supporting. There were lots of signs supporting Dennis Kucinich, but I didn't see even one sign during the march supporting another Democratic candidate for president. Obama supporters set up an impromptu table at the peace fair after the march, but they got very little interest, facing a similar circumstance to the late arriving Ron Paul table that was set up by a couple of his devotees.

The Kucinich table in the fair was bustling. The Kucinich campaign took the time and effort to get their table in as part of the official fair, and with good reason. Liberal Democrats are quite open to Democrats who listen and take their constitutional responsibilities seriously.

The majority of the protesters were liberal Democrats. There were the usual handfuls of socialists and communists handing out newspapers. Something different happened than usual, though. A significant plurality of the protesters were actually taking the newspapers, which had been a rare occurrence at previous mass mobilizations I had attended.

It would be silly to think that liberal Democrats are suddenly becoming Marxists. However, the behavior did show a greater openness to political ideas and organizations in the face of unrelenting hostility to liberal ideas and values in the Democratic Party.

The change in attitudes towards the Democratic Party is far from limited to street protests. The blog This Can't Be Happening has organized a petition drive to get people to quit the Democratic Party. So far, over 1300 war opponents have switched to independent.

It is clear that the reason Democrats won control of House and Senate in November 2006 is that they campaigned on a promise to protect civil liberties and to end the war. That promise brought independents in record numbers across to the Democratic side. But Democratic election strategists don't get this. They still harbor the illusion that unaffiliated voters are middle-of-the-road or conservative-leaning people who only care about so-called wedge issues, not the big issues of our day. In fact, my travels across this country have taught me that the unaffiliated voter is usually someone who is cynical about politics, believes that there is little difference between the two parties, and that he or she is being screwed, by corporations, by government, and by his or her own political leaders.

The sad truth is that the current Democratic Party deserves that opinion. They briefly managed to convince these skeptics that they were better than that, but in office, they have reverted to form, and these voters will not be back in '06.

Although I prefer to retain my ability to vote against particularly repugnant "Democrats" in the primaries, and to vote for the handful of real Democrats like Dennis Kucinich in those primaries, I cannot help note that the exit of over 1300 highly involved liberal Democrats is a sign of a larger problem for the party in the 2008 elections and beyond.

The response to the peace movement from Nancy Pelosi has been to unilaterally declare that eliminating funding for the Iraq war is "off the table." Other Democratic Party leaders have used less confrontational language to push the same pro-war agenda.

The only House campaign that is generating much excitement among anti-war liberals this time out is Cindy Sheehan's. An independent candidate running against the "Democratic" House Speaker is doing more to capture the imagination of the anti-war movement than any other House Candidate.

Pelosi's mentality is most strongly expressed in a now infamous quote circulating anti-war blogs:

“I’ve had, for four or five months, people sitting outside my home, going into my garden in San Francisco, angering my neighbors, hanging their clothes from the trees, building all kinds of things-Buddhas, I don’t know what they are-couches, sofas, permanent living facilities on my front sidewalk. You can imagine my neighbors’ reaction to all of this. And if they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering. But because they have 'Impeach Bush' across their chest, it’s the First Amendment, four or five months into that. So I’m well aware of the unhappiness of the base.”

Pelosi managed to get a trifecta in terms of showing her true contempt for war opponents, the homeless, and the poor. Pelosi may be aware of the anger of the Democratic Party's base, but she is far from understanding it or the values behind it.

Democratic politicians should be worried.

I went to a recent meeting of a queer Democratic Club. Two things struck me.

1) The meeting had a presidential candidate endorsement, and it was the most poorly attended meeting I had ever seen of the group.

2) The club endorsed Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that she is the least supportive Democratic candidate on lgbt issues.

I know of few liberal Democrats who are supporting Clinton, queer or otherwise. She is being pushed by Rupert Murdoch and other wealthy Republican donors on a Democratic Party where she and her husband are far from trusted. On the other hand, conservative and centrist Democrats, people with career ambitions in the Party, and those who are uncompromising in their partisanship are strongly supporting Ms. Clinton.

You can guess who made up the majority of attendees at that particular meeting of the club. People with outlooks more along the lines of lgbt activists and liberals didn't even bother to show up in significant numbers.

Regardless of what you think of one endorsement in one lgbt political club, this is a microcosm of a larger trend in the Democratic Party. There is a conservative establishment run by well-funded power brokers which is growing increasingly arrogant and dismissive of liberal Democrats. Liberal Democrats are starting to look outside the Democratic Party for venues of political expression and activism. It also is starting to affect liberal donor behavior.

Traditionally, the power brokers have used understandable fear and anger at the behavior of Republicans to hold the party together around overly conservative candidates. However, the behavior of more Democratic politicians gets more frightening and infuriating to liberals with each passing day.

New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin went way beyond the boundaries of journalistic professionalism in his column demonizing people who are against torture. Goodwin has some choice words for people who are against torture:

• "rabid"


• "the fanatical fringe"


• "blinded by their hatred"


• "ridiculous"

For those of you outside of the New York area, the New York Daily News is a conservative tabloid that is similar to Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, though the Daily News usually is a bit less strident.

Democrats.com has started a boycott against the NY Daily News:

I am joining the boycott against the New York Daily News and its advertisers because columnist Michael Goodwin viciously attacked all progressive New Yorkers in his 11/7/07 column entitled "Chuck bucks the loony left."
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/11/07/2007-11-07_chuck_bucks_th...

I will boycott the New York Daily News and its advertisers until Michael Goodwin apologizes for this outrageous attack on progressive New Yorkers - or is fired.

The overwhelming majority of people in NYC are against torture. Why in the world would the New York Daily News print infantile personal attacks against us? Why should we pay them to print these infantile personal attacks by buying their newspaper?

There is something wrong when the only way a daily newspaper will cover a human rights protest is to demonize and ridicule it. Liberals and progressive need to start fighting back when news outlets print hateful nonsense to try to intimidate us into silence.