Author: floridagal

Well, thank you very much, Marshall Wittmann, for that slap in the face to a very good Democrat named Ned Lamont. And for a big slap in the face to CT Democrats who voted for him and supported him.  

I must assume since Bullmoose is one of the official DLC bloggers that this is not a position that group objects to Wittmann having and presenting so loudly on his blog today.  

 
Welcome Back

The Moose argues that there is only one real Democrat in the Connecticut Senate race.

Yesterday, Joe Lieberman was welcomed with open arms by his fellow Democratic Senators.

….”Indeed, it is appropriate that his fellow Democrats warmly embrace Joe – he is the only genuine Democrat in the race who represents the great tradition of that party in the Senate – that of Truman, JFK, LBJ, HHH and Scoop. And what is striking is that many, many Democrats in Connecticut are sticking with Joe even though he did not receive the blessing of a segment of the party’s left.

One of the great moments of the Moose’s summer was when he and his family attended the Hartford Lieberman rally on the night of the primary. Although Joe did not prevail that night, it was clear that he had a message that would win in November.

Joe’s theme is one of progress rather than polarization. He dares to sail against the polluted partisan polarizing wind to advance a politics that puts the country’s interest first. And Joe’s message is resonating in Connecticut among the general electorate.

It will be a great, hopeful development for the Democratic Party if Joe prevails in November. A Lieberman victory will tell those Americans who have been estranged from their party in recent years that there remains a place for them. Progressive hawks will continue to have a champion in the party.

Not bad enough?  He then says this and links to an ad by some vet group supporting Lieberman:

Lieberman, the real Democrat.

The Moose urges all Mooseketeers to check out this marvelous ad by Vets for Freedom – here.

I did not link to the ad itself.

This angers me. Marshall Wittmann, aka Bullmoose, claims to not even be a Democrat.  I call upon the real Democrats in the DLC to stand up for our Democratic process….that they tell Bullmoose that Ned Lamont is the Democrat in the CT race.  

Inverting the pyramid.

Sometimes an article or statement just clicks, and things fall into focus. I was reading this link at DFA and followed it through to the article.  I thought yes! this is what we have to do, it is what we have been doing throughout the 50 states.  

Turning the party on its head

J. Scott Christianson of the Columbia Daily Tribune has an analysis of how local DFA groups fit into the inverted pyramid of the Democratic Party structure.
..According to Scott, our success depends, literally, in turning the Democratic Party on its head

Here is an amazing critique of the structural integrity of the two parties and the change that Howard Dean at the DNC and the progressive groups like DFA want to bring.
Democratic Allies Helping to Rebuild the Party
By J. SCOTT CHRISTIANSON
Published Tuesday, August 22, 2006

In a 2005 New York Times editorial, Bill Bradley compared the structure of the Republican and Democratic parties to pyramids. The Republican Party’s pyramid starts with a broad, solid base built of organizations and think tanks that generate funding, ideas, policies and talking points. Conservative commentators and networks that spread the message of the party form the next level.

“At the very top of the pyramid, you’ll find the president,” Bradley wrote. “Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it, and it works fine.”

And Bradley points out the same thing Howard Dean mentioned in his interview with Matt Bai in a Sunday with the Times interview.  First, Bradley’s statement from the link above:

Bradley continued: “To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate. Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on.“

And Howard Dean referred to this same problem in his interview with Matt Bai. No link, it was audio and no transcript.  

He says the Demcratic party has essentially been “non-functional as party” for about 30 years.

The functions of the party have been taken over by the campaigns. He says he thinks Kerry’s GOTV effort was terrific, but that was “John Kerry’s GOTV effort” and the DNC played a secondary role.

He says the Democratic “party” has not really been driving things, but that it is true on the Republican side.

The author of the Columbia Tribune article listed above then points to the role of groups like DFA in helping to build the party’s structure from the ground up.

Taking a cue from the Republicans, the Democrats are reaching beyond the party itself and the “usual suspects” of Democratic activists to build the pyramid. Several new organizations have sprung up in Mid-Missouri that are aligned with the party but are not part of the party.

Democracy for Missouri – www.democracyformo.com – is one good example. A local chapter of the national Democracy for America, DFM recently held its statewide convention in Columbia. While some Democrats view organizations such as DFM as competing with the party proper, they are really more complementary than competitive.

Groups such as DFA can do things the local party organization can’t or won’t do, such as endorsing a primary challenger instead of the incumbent. Such things need to be done from time to time so that the candidate with the best chance of winning in the general election emerges.

….Into the Blue – www.intotheblue.org – is a Columbia-based organization whose sole purpose is to build progressive and democratic infrastructure in Missouri. Rather than focusing on candidates or particular issues, the emphasis is on creating a solid foundation.

A big advantage of this stronger party on the ground is the local connectivity. It will give a year-round ground game every year. It should allow us to stop being so dependent on consultants and TV ads, connect with the voters…one of the goals of the Dean brothers as stated below. In a way it is a form of campaign finance reform.  Howard Dean once said if the congress won’t fix campaign finance reform, we can do it for them.

From a recent training in New Jersey by DFA leaders:

Calculating Victory, a DFA training

“What separates Joe and Ned is the ground game,” Democracy for America chair Jim Dean told the crowd, emphasizing that victory can only come from organizing. “Being consultant-heavy and trying to televise our way to victory is the reason we lost for fifteen years.”

And from a recent meeting with Delaware Dems, Howard Dean had this to say.

Person to person beats big media

Person-to-person politics beats big media campaigns when it comes to winning over voters.

“You can’t win a campaign with just expensive TV ads,” Dean said. “You’ve got to go out and make yourself known … You have to go to people who didn’t vote the way you voted and convince them of your position.”

And that’s why Dean has pressed through criticism to follow through on a “50-state” strategy for building stronger Democratic voting in all states, whether they are currently Red or Blue on the political map.

If you are interested, I transcribed more of the Matt Bai interview with Dean not long ago. He is pretty candid about his goals for the party and clear they will not be done overnight.  

Sunday with the Times interview, Matt Bai and Howard Dean

Almost two years ago in October 2004 Rheta Grimsley Johnson, a favorite columnist, wrote this about George W. Bush.  It was scathing in its simplicity, and it was absolutely brilliant in its ability to define this mean little man.  

The article needs to be brushed off every now and then and reread and appreciated all over again.  

Thanks, Rheta, for this column way back then.  It was not very popular to say such things then….much thanks.  

People like Bush. He doesn’t use big words. He’s one of us.

10/9/2004 10:30:51 AM
Daily Journal

I read an article. The article said people like George Bush. They like Bush because he speaks in short sentences. They can relate.

It makes sense. Who wants a wordy president? Bush sounds decisive. He sounds sure. He sounds sm–. Never mind. He is on our level.

The article called Bushspeak “austere.” Bush wouldn’t say “austere.” That’s a fancy word. Bush hates fancy words.

She nails his character, or lack of, in almost every paragraph.  I could feel her anger combining with mine as I read it.  

He also uses body language. His body uses short sentences, too. His body says: “I am tough. Don’t mess with Texas. I don’t windsurf.”

Bush smiles a lot, too. He really smirks. Bush doesn’t say “smirks.” That’s a fancy word.

Bush loves Laura. She is a good little woman. Laura doesn’t meddle. Laura is quiet. Bush likes that.

And a little dig about the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

There were no WMDs. So what? Not his fault. Might have been weapons. Could have been. Should have been.

The U.N. is wimpy. France is wimpy. The world is wimpy. Except for us. And Great Britain.

Short, but powerful.  Be sure to read it all.  Thanks, Rheta.

Rheta’s bio

It is quite shameful what we have done to our truth speakers in this country, and even by our own party. The Bush administration used so many glittering generalities, so many talking points that pandered to the least among us intellectually.  We did not hear the truth at all.  Everyone was trying to be more patriotic than all the others, and they fell into the pattern of not even recognizing truth when it was told.  

Two things lately have been sticking in my mind about things that Howard Dean said that were perfectly obvious. He was roundly attacked for saying them, though we all knew they were true. Just simple everyday sensible truth was attacked.  There was so much of that, even from his fellow Democrats.  When they attacked Dean as they did, it made others think twice before speaking up.  Very unfortunate.

The first one that comes to mind was was his remark about being no safer with Saddam captured. He was giving a speech on foreign policy, December 15, 2003 to the Pacific Council.  You would have thought the world as we knew it ended that day.
Saddam’s capture has not made America safer

WASHINGTON – In a major foreign policy address Monday, Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean hailed the capture of Saddam Hussein as “good news for the Iraqi people and for the world,” but also claimed that his capture “could have taken place six months ago.”

“The capture of Saddam has not made America safer,” Dean also said in the speech.”

Lieberman: Dean in ‘his own spider hole’
That remark drew a caustic reply from one of Dean’s rivals for the Democratic nomination, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.

“Howard Dean has climbed into his own spider hole of denial if he believes that the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer,” Lieberman said. “Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, brutal dictator, supporter of terrorism, and enemy of the United States, and there should be no doubt that America and the world are safer with him captured.”

Also John Kerry asserted a few days later:

On December 16, at Drake University in Iowa, Kerry asserted that “those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president.”

More critical words

Well, Dean was right, we are most certainly not any safer at all.

Another incident.  

In March, 2004, on Meet the Press, he raised eyebrows again.  He called Saddam what he was, a pathetic old man whom we had under control.  

DEAN: If they had simply said Saddam Hussein is a bad man and we should go take him out, the American people would have said no, we don’t think that’s worth the war.  Now, there have been a lot of justifications for attacking Iraq.  Most of them have turned out not to be true.  The argument is:  Did the capture of Saddam Hussein and the attack on Iraq make us safer?  I said no during the campaign.  I think it’s very clear that the answer is no.  We’ve spent 566 American lives and $160 billion when we should have been going after Osama bin Laden.  And that is why I think this president is weak on terrorism, not strong.

MR. RUSSERT:  Dr. Rice said that Saddam Hussein was the most dangerous regime in the world.

DR. DEAN:  “That was ridiculous.  This is a pathetic old man who we’d been containing for 12 years by overflights.  We had sanctions on him that were paralyzing him.  It turned out that there were no weapons of mass destruction, as the administration–although the administration said otherwise.  It turned out that there was no relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda or the killing of the 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center, even though the administration tried to lead us in an opposite direction.  The administration simply did not tell the truth about Iraq.  The debate is not about whether we should fight terrorism.  I supported the war in Afghanistan because I think we did the right thing in Afghanistan, although I think the conduct of the war is not being very well-managed, after the fact.  But fighting Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism.”

MTP transcript from March 14, 2004

This was a low point in our history, a time when talking points ruled supreme.  A time when our side became so afraid of their side that we pandered and tried to be like them.  

Somedays now I feel like we are coming out from those dark times.  I hope so.  We got there because there was no one standing up and saying what needed to be said.  Unfortunately our side was almost as guilty in putting down voices of truth in that dark period.  

We are no safer at all with Saddam on trial.  We all knew it back when.  I am glad someone said it, the obvious…though many are still publicly in denial.

I found this today at the Rutland Herald.  It lifted my spirits.  I notice that Harriette Draper who made the video about the end of the Dean campaign called “Take it Back” posted in the comments there.  I ordered the video finally, maybe enough time has passed that I have things in better perspective.  Be sure to read her comments.

From the Rutland Herald:

Dean was right after all.

By JOHN FAIRBANKS

Watching the unfolding disaster the United States has helped create in the Middle East, I look back and think of Howard Dean.

Three years ago, Dean was running for president, and his campaign was stunning people with its ability to organize support and raise money over the Internet and to tap into the deep disillusionment over the Bush administration’s decision to abandon the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and start a war in Iraq. By late summer in 2003, he was in the top tier of candidates. A month later, he was the front-runner.

Dean was repeatedly attacked by a group of self-appointed spokespeople from the self-defined “center” of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Leadership Council. On May 15, 2003, DLC founder and CEO Al From and DLC president Bruce Reed wrote a memo entitled, “The Real Soul of the Democratic Party,” the first public strike against Dean. It drew a distinction between “real Democrats” and “activist elites,” a distinction Republicans were happy to pick up and run with. It warned that Dean — known up here as a moderate, even a conservative — was, by his persistent criticism of the Iraq war, leading the party to a November 2004 disaster:

“What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration: the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined primarily by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home. That’s the wing that lost 49 states in two elections, and transformed Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one.”

And my heart smiled when I read this statement from the op ed.

Howard Dean, scorned as naïve, wacky, out-of-step, was right, and his critics were wrong. We have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives, and the situation in Iraq is more dangerous than ever. American troops, sent to that country under false pretenses and without adequate equipment or planning, are now being hoarded around Baghdad to confront a civil war. Twenty-five hundred Marines are being called up for duty because the Pentagon couldn’t find enough volunteers. The awful situation in Lebanon and Gaza is, in part, a product of the administration’s decision to abandon America’s previous role as broker in the area and tilt heavily towards Israel.

Our mentality here is changing, but not that much.  The original link is dead, but Atrios preserved it for us.  It was real.  The fear and the aura of that time in this area of Florida are sad to look back upon.  It’s better, but not much.  I found the link at Eschaton, and I hate to admit that I know of some people who actually signed up for it.  Well, I did not know them well, and if I did I wouldn’t admit to it.  

Call them Grannies against Osama

Polk Seniors Target Local Terrorists

This would be funny if it wasn’t true. (sent in by E.M.).

LAKELAND — Call them the Grannies against Osama.

With the help of $81,772 in federal money, 150 senior volunteers will patrol three lower-income areas in Polk County.

TO LEARN MORE

The patrols will gear up with training beginning Oct. 1. Anyone 55 or older interested may call 648-1500.

They’ll be on the lookout for terrorists, who local officials say may find it easy to blend into neighborhoods where people frequently move in and out.

Targeted for patrols beginning later this year are the Bradley community south of Mulberry and the Combee Road and Wabash Avenue neighborhoods in Lakeland.

Some churches were making calls to get people to sign up. I never heard anymore about it.  Maybe another time in the future we can look back without feeling so embarrassed, but I can’t yet.  We are not far enough removed from that shameful event.  I think the reading of it hit me harder now than it did then because of where this country has gone.  

Of course today in New Orleans it was photo opportunity for the DNC, and may I say the Good Governor made good use of it.  There are photo ops, and then there are photo ops. This was one which called attention to the horrible neglect by the Bush administration of the city.

I read this by Nagourney two or three times.  I tried to pretend the snide remarks were not there.  

He appears to me to be comparing Bush’s use of 9/11 to manipulate our fears with the DNC’s spring meeting and clean-up session in New Orleans to day.  He seems not to see the difference in the two events.  He does not appear to understand that Katrina was the symbol of the failure of our country to take care of each other.
And Donna Brazile should have her hand spanked for saying that Democrats would have used 9/11 like Bush did. No, I think we are better than that. More intelligent than that.

From the article:

Ms. Brazile said she never agreed with Democrats who criticized Republicans for using Sept. 11.

“Oh no,” she said. “We should have used it, too.”

This paragraph stunned me with the simplistic grasp he has on the devastation that was Katrina, and the tragedy of New Orleans.  Shame on you, Adam.

Here is the article by Nagourney.  

Democrats Try to Use Katrina as G.O.P. Used 9/11

At first it sounds like he gets the full import of Katrina, that Bush has allowed our emergency preparedness to suffer so badly.

NEW ORLEANS, April 21 –Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, toured a house on Friday that the Hurricane Katrina floods wrecked, picking up debris, lamenting the federal response and leaving little doubt of the powerful symbolism his party sees in the ruined neighborhoods here.

As Mr. Dean’s well-covered hurricane-cleanup mission suggested, New Orleans may well become for Democrats in 2006 and 2008 what New York was for Republicans after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, an evocative metaphor rooted in tragedy that can potentially be turned to electoral advantage.

Where Republicans looked to the imagery of a battered but resilient New York to project a tough president standing up to the dangerous world, Democrats are looking to this city as the symbol of an administration that is at once incompetent and heartless.

But then he slips in this paragraph.  He does not understand that Katrina is far worse in many ways than 9/11…it indicates the rot at the core of this administration.It totally revealed the heartless nature of those in control.

Still, the parallels that Democrats are looking for may extend this week just so far. For one factor, Sept. 11 put the entire nation on edge about the threat of terrorism. By contrast, the hurricane catastrophe was confined to one region. As a symbol, it may be powerful, but perhaps not as enduringly powerful as what occurred in New York and at the Pentagon.

He shows so little understanding for the scope of the tragedy there.  He seems more concerned about making Democrats look bad than about the tragedy in New Orleans.  

Crossposted at Kos and HEP blog

Governor Dean addressed Prof. Roy Neel’s class at Vanderbilt University,  Nashville, Tennessee in March of 2005.  Sally Jenkins was impressed by what he said, and she wrote about it in the Return of the Angry Man in the Washington Post last July.  

Has it been that long since that great article came out?   It was in the magazine section with a cover picture of Dean, and the words “Can you hear me now?”

One of his main concerns about the way the Democrats were picking and choosing so few states to concentrate on every 4 years…is that we are not building our future leaders.  He addressed that in this event shortly after he became chairman.  

Return of the Angry Man

“One of his stops was at Vanderbilt University, where he faced a standing-room-only class. For the next 45 minutes, Dean lectured, bantered and spoke like a candidate. (“I do not believe that you can run enormous deficits year after year after year and not have consequences. I do not believe you can run a foreign policy based on petulance.”) But Dean was almost as critical of Democrats. The class evolved into his first lengthy public explication of his view of the party, and his “idears” for fixing it, as he pronounces the word. “It is socially unacceptable in some parts of the country to be a Democrat,” he observed. “The first thing we have to do is show up in 50 states and compete in 50 states. Second thing we’re going to do is talk in a way that is not condescending.”

“The number one thing you can do is run for office.”

[Class giggles]

“I’m absolutely serious. I am not kidding.”

The class grew quiet.  Here was Dean as a Johnny Appleseed, sowing civics in the young.  While Democrats have conceded parts of the country considered hostile, Republicans have left no office untested, he pointed out. The result is that Dems have no farm system, no ability to find young political talent in red states and groom it.

Run, he urged the students. Run for county road commissioner. Run for city council. “If you don’t have people running for offices like county commissioner, who do you think is going to run for Congress a generation from now?”

Dean has often referred to this policy of his as building the farm team.  I have really noticed it here in our area.  We have no one to run because no one has run for years.   There is a dearth of possible candidates because no one dared.  We did have one that dared, we gathered petitions, worked for him…DFA and DEC together.  But the old guard Democrats stepped in with a candidate who was just like the GOP incumbent,  had no stances no issues…and he lost.   We can’t have our candidate run again, as he moved from the area.  Now there is no farm team.  So I know what he means about having no young political talent.  For the first time in years many of us feel we could make gains in our area, and there are few to turn to.  

I guess we knew this was going to become commonplace.   I realize these were areas that were not exactly thriving, but some of these people had lived in those homes their whole lives.   Many have been bought out and properties demolished.    The people involved in this situation on the side of the city are not the same people they used to be. The greed that has overtaken this country in the wake of the Republican control has infected them.  Let’s just say I knew some of them when they were of a kinder, gentler nature.  

Eminent domain proceedings started

Lakeland’s Downtown Community Redevelopment Agency has moved closer to taking private property for a plan that eventually could put 400 townhouses and condominiums on blighted land.

On behalf of the CRA, Lakeland lawyer Mark Miller on Thursday filed to begin the eminent domain process in circuit court in Bartow.  The move marks the beginning of legal steps against five property owners who haven’t negotiated a deal with the CRA to sell their properties.

And it pays to be rich and in control and have the power of eminent domain.   These are the companies seeking profit.  

Companies seeking to benefit

Lakeland Downtown Development Authority board members have received five responses from builders to develop nearly 400 middle- and upper-income condominiums and townhomes in a 14.6acre neighborhood north of the city’s police station. LDDA officials sent out requests for qualification packets to nearly 300 developers for their ideas on the property in October. The developers include PDC Development, from St. Petersburg; La Cite Development, from New York; Lakeland Enterprise Development Group; Carlisle Development Group, from Miami; and Hyde Park Builders, from Tampa. The 10-member selection committee will rank its top choices in a meeting Nov. 29.

I did a previous diary at Booman about how they are using the definition of “blight” to allow developers to get whatever land they want.   Read this definition.

“Illinois state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, a Republican who is considering a run for governor, said the state’s blight laws need to be more restrictive.

“The statutory definition of blight in Illinois is broader than the Mississippi River at its mouth,” he said. “They have taken everything from underdeveloped lakefront property to open green-grass farmfields as being defined as blighted.”

I hate that I quoted a Republican on this, but he is right.  Senator Bill Nelson is trying for a bill to limit its use as well.  But it still all comes down to the definition of “blight.”  That is going to be the catch.

The best definition I found of “blighted” is this:
“Affected by blight–anything that mars, or prevents growth or prosperity”

The only question is “whose” prosperity.

I found this website from Fernandino Beach, Florida.  It is a presentation of their attempt to define blight, and there are many pictures there of what is considered such.   Some do not look like blight to me. This is a very interesting website from Florida which has added some pages since my last visit.   They are also featuring a post about fraudulent proclaiming blight.

Website questioning blighted areas

From a link at the site,  around in circles.   Other cities are driving people from their homes.

Florida City Plans to Drive 6,000 Citizens from Their Homes

Author: Matt Warner
Published: The Heartland Institute 02/01/2006

“It can’t happen here” was the prevailing initial response of Florida’s public officials after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June 2005 in Kelo v. City of New London. The state’s attorney general even issued a statement evidently intended to calm Floridians’ fears that their local governments suddenly had carte blanche authority to seize private property.

…”Critics Cite Bogus Blight

Homeowner Martha Babson was among those alarmed by the city’s 2001 study declaring her neighborhood blighted. It’s a designation that–under Florida law–gives local government the authority to use eminent domain. So Babson decided to conduct her own study. Walking the entire 400-acre area that is marked for redevelopment, she found numerous inconsistencies between the study’s findings and the reality on the ground.

What alarms me is that the people doing this here in our area are people I have known for a a while.  I don’t know them now at all…they have changed so much from the kind of people they used to be.  Now their bottom line is the almighty dollar, where once they had other priorities.  

Will they succeed in their quest to make us a “Global Cavalry”

In a way, I guess, we have it already; so it might be a moot question. I guess when I first read this article from the America Enterprise Institute in 2003,  I knew we had bases all over the world.  However, I just never put it altogether into a single unit of thought.   The words, Global Calvary, painted a stark picture for me.  

From the American Enterprise Institute in 2003:

Defense transformation is turning out to be a far larger project than the Bush administration envisioned when it first embraced the concept during the 2000 presidential campaign. Far from being a “cheap hawk’s” answer to America’s post-Cold War defense needs or a justification for new weaponry, transformation involves a world’s worth of new missions for the U.S. military, which is fast becoming the “global cavalry” of the twenty-first century. Among the most vital components of this transformation is the radical overhaul of America’s overseas force structure, which seeks to create a worldwide network of frontier forts.

The arrogance I see in this article and the sense of entitlement to do as we like with the world has stayed with me since I read it.   There is no way to do it justice when only four paragraphs are allowed.  It just lays out a plan to move around the world doing as we please.   I would like to think that the failure in Iraq will stop these fools, but I doubt it.  

I will have to just post a few snips to give a sense.   The authors first speak of 9/11 as transforming things.

Toward a Global Cavalry  

Overseas Rebasing and Defense Transformation

Toward a Global Calvary

….what has been transformed is the geopolitical and strategic context in which American military power is exercised. With essentially the same force structure as fifty years ago, the United States has been called upon to fight a new series of campaigns in a new kind of war–a war that has only just begun.

…”As the leader and guarantor of the current liberal international order, it falls to the United States to organize and sustain the defense of the Pax Americana against this threat, to inspire and institutionalize the tools of power needed for a large, diffuse, and potentially long struggle. This is the purpose of military transformation: not simply to contain the enemy–who is, in fact, quite weak, if dispersed–but to close with him, disrupt his plans, preempt his attacks, and destroy him. As Vice President Cheney remarked in the wake of al Qaeda’s suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia last May: “There’s . . . no policy of containment or deterrence that works to deal with this threat. We have to go find the terrorists. . . . The only way to ensure stability . . . is to go eliminate [them] before they can launch any more attacks.”[2] To accomplish this, our military must transform itself not only in a tactical and operational sense, but strategically as well–beginning with the reform of the U.S. global force posture.

This article makes so much more of an impact than it did on first reading.   It really is chilling.  We have seen that the ones with this mission of the Global Calvary are capable of anything, and then perfectly capable of lying about doing it.  

‘Everything Is Moving Everywhere’

Today’s U.S. global force posture is an anachronistic, but entrenched, inheritance of the Cold War. More than 80 percent of U.S. soldiers in Europe are stationed in Germany, waiting for a Soviet invasion that will never happen. In the Pacific, over 75 percent of U.S. troops are bottled up in South Korea and Japan. The Bush administration has recognized that the status quo is no longer acceptable; that the preeminent mission of the U.S. military is no longer the containment of the Soviet Union, but the preemption of terrorism. This is the strategic reality that is driving the realignment of the network of American bases and installations overseas. “Everything is moving everywhere,” said Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy. “There is not going to be a place in the world where it’s going to be the same as it used to be. We’re going to rationalize our posture everywhere.

The article goes on to present the plans for Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.  It concludes with these quotes…

Like the cavalry of the Old West, their job is one part warrior and one part policeman–both of which are entirely within the tradition of the American military.

……….”Although countless questions about transformation remain unanswered, one lesson is already clear: American power is on the move.

I have seen many AEI conferences on C-Span this week.  They have almost dominated that network lately.   As a group they seem not to have diminished in influence, if you judge by presence on the media.   I suppose the PNAC, the Pax Americana movement have, or will get, their Global Calvary despite the failure in Iraq.  

This is alarming to me, that this many seniors already had drug coverage through Medicaid or through employers or retiree programs.  The article from the New England Journal of Medicine further states that only 12% got coverage they did not already have.  

This was obviously not to benefit seniors, since 20 million of the 25 million already had previous drug coverage.  I see a lot of propagandizing of this issue right now, and I would love to see some Democrats talking about it out loud.  

The article from the NEJM below.
Part “D” for “Defective” — The Medicare Drug-Benefit Chaos

True, the program provides drug benefits for some Americans who previously had none. But because of its strange design, enrollment is falling far short of expectations. Officials in the Bush administration boasted that 25 million people are receiving benefits through Medicare Part D. But the government’s data reveal that about 20 million of them already had adequate drug coverage through Medicaid, their employers or unions, or health maintenance organizations; as of late February, the new benefit was providing only 12 percent of the elderly with coverage they did not already have.

In many cases, the program worsened patients’ situations, with a particularly heavy burden falling on indigent Medicaid enrollees. Before the new entitlement, most had virtually all their medications covered fully by the states. But on January 1, 6.2 million of these vulnerable elderly were reassigned to one of the private insurance companies designated by Medicare to run its program. Word of these arrangements didn’t always reach the patients, insurers, or pharmacies accurately, and tens of thousands of indigent patients were told to get prior authorization, pay a large initial deductible, or make substantial copayments for regularly used medicines they previously received at no cost. Thousands discovered that the drugs they had been taking for years were not covered by their new insurers. Clinical crises ensued, and 37 states had to provide emergency payments for frail citizens.

And it takes the power from the hands of doctors to prescribe what they consider proper medicine.  The author calls this a stinging indictment of his profession, to allow this.  

In Medicare Part D, decisions about which drug in a class to use are made by each insurance company, often requiring prescriptions to be rewritten. The concept abandons the expectation that a doctor will choose the most appropriate and cost-effective drug and reassigns that decision to an insurance company that has its own agenda. The current infatuation with this solution is a stinging indictment of our profession; the encroachment on our prerogatives flows from our failure to address these responsibilities ourselves.

And this paragraph addresses the dreaded doughnut hole part of the plan.  It points out that many seniors will be approaching or in that hole by November.  

Medicare Part D lives on, responding semiappropriately to noxious stimuli by flailing its limbs as best it can. It even shows some limited capacity for learning, and one important learning opportunity is just seven months away. Elderly citizens vote in droves, and many of them will have hit their “doughnut hole” by early November. At that point, they will let their legislators know how they feel about the program.

Someone needs to be speaking out on this issue. Even those who were able to retain their present plans for now realize that it was only because some incentive was given for their former employers to do this.  And they wait for the next shoe to drop, after it is too late to sign up for coverage and drug prices are higher than ever.