Kibbitz

I listened to Air America today in the car...it was great! I'd highly suggest listening to it on the internet if need be. Number one reason that I loved it is because its unapologetically left!

Don't forget, tonight at 10:30 pm EST John Kerry will be on MTV choose or lose.

is it just me or do only democratic candidates go on these forums?

White House Said to Agree to Let Rice Testify Publicly

Wow, they're actually gonna let one of the Bushwomen talk! My favorite part about the article and the White House statements is that they are afraid its gonna haunt them down the road if they let Condi testify in public and under oath. Well 1) what are you afraid of if you did everything to prevent terrorism before the attacks. 2) Maybe you should have listened to your terrorism expert. 3) Stop attacking like you're guarenteed a second term, election is in November and this is NOT making you look good!

Thought I'd throw up Thomas E. Patterson's Policy recommendations to increase voter turnout from the Vanishing Voter found on page 182 of the paperback edition (don't wanna get in trouble for copy right). What do you guys think?

For the Political Parties
Change the nominating process in a way that will:
-shorthen the overall length of the campaign;
-increase the competitive period so voters learn more about the candidates;
-give voters of every state a meaningful vote; and
-shorten the period between the end of the nominating races and the party conventions.
For Each Broadcast Network
Increase the coverage to include:
-a prime-time Republican and a prime-time Democratic primary debate;
-a total of eight prime-time hours for each of theparty conventions; and
-a one-hour prime-time inteview program with the candidates during the general elections.
For Public Officials
Provide for full and equitable voter participation by:
-eliminating the electoral college;
-adopting Election Day registration;
-instituting later poll-closing hours; and
-making Election Day a holiday.

Sorry about the length...good book, a bit repetitive but good none the less

So I'm currently in Ohio right now, spending the night because I have no patience for driving. Its really quite obvious that this a swing state and here's how. Since I started watching the 11 o'clock news on NBC, I have seen two Bush-Cheney commercials and two Media Fund commercials. No Kerry camp but he was in the state of Ohio today to campaign. You can also tell that this is the Rust Belt based on the fact that both commercials were about the job loss in the area. For some reason Bush seems to think that he can run on economy record which is astounding because as the Media Fund and all the Dem hopefuls pointed out, he's lost 3 million jobs in this country, just check out the labor department and the treasury department websites.

One last thing that I found which is related to the Vanishing Voter, the book I'm reading, about voter registration in Florida. Interesting article, good book, though a little long and dry at times.

Last night's Democratic Unity dinner provided some interesting moments to say the least. A personal favorite of mine was when Gore went on and on about how no one endorsed Kerry in the primary including himself but he won so now we all have to support him. Other favorite moments are all the dems that are missing from the stage, like Lieberman, Clark and Gephardt. Guess they won't be getting the prized cabinet positions.

Also, what do you guys think about Kerry's send in $25 idea? It's pretty much the same as Dean's $100 revolution, he's just going for a different amount. I'm just wondering if you guys think it'll work or not.

Its been a long time since we talked about this but...Kerry Is Sticking With Plan to Raise Auto Fuel Efficiency. I'm glad that its in the news again because fuel efficiency (especially in Michigan) is one of those things that national discouse should have been focusing on when we went to war with Iraq. But we love to ignore our real problems like dependency on fossil fuels and our passion for monster size cars that for some reason don't need to meet fuel efficiency standards. OK, this goes into lots of Suburbia fun, so let's discuss!

Just some articles that I found this morning...

Let's start with what the 9/11 comission has found so far according to CNN. My personal favorite about all this the part where they say the civilian population wouldn't have supported full scale attacks on Afghanistan before 9/11. Really maybe because there was no just cause? Another big conclusion is that diplomacy failed, these commissioners are just way to smart for me, I mean no one knew this stuff before they figured it out.

Just for you Maggie...Supreme Court to hear Pledge of Allegiance Case...and this one too, I'm not sure with what his not marrying the child's mother has anything to do with the case, but for the most part it's good because he admits that Nedow is right.

More Reasons Not to vote for Bush

My friend Clay is running Jeff Smith's campaign downn in St. Louis, so I just wanted to do a quick plug for Clay and to tell you guys to check out the website, there is a link in the side bar to the campaign site. He's apparently the Lassiter of Washington University, except that he teaches poli sci and he's running for Dick Gephardt's old seat.

1) I think since you guys accepted the invitation you can now post on the website, but you have to create an account at blogger.com and if you want to post just sign in at blogger.com, otherwise you can always feel free to comment.
2) If you guys want I will give you adminstrative power over the blog which means that you can mess around with html codes and such which also means that you can add links and the books that you guys are reading.

Onto the politics now...I've been watching some stuff about the 9/11 commission today, not really sure what is going on. did the hearings start yesterday or did they just start being public yesterday? I loved some of the gems out of rumsfeld's mouth today, where he mentioned things like if we knew about it we have prevented the attacks, well gee you think so? I have some more rantings written elsewhere, but I'll get to those later. Oh and Dean is officially endorsing Kerry on thursday, gee took him long enough especially when it doesn't really matter now except that Dean probably wants a position in the Cabinet, maybe Surgeon General? Either that or he wants to be the Chairman of the Democratic National Committe, him and Terry McAulife (sp?) never did agree on anything. In fact the whole campaign seemed like an attach on the Democratic leadership. Ok, I need some sleep

If anyone out there can think of some more websites that we definetly need links to, holla at me and I'll add them, I know that I am just way to tired to think of everything right now...on a random note, the Family Guy has James Carville on TV, its whack. Oh and if people know where I should go to public policy school, let me know!

Ok, so I'm thinking that this is going to be a blog where us crazy ice cream gals can bullshit about politics all that we want without everything haveing to e-mail it all the time, plus now we'll be able to keep better track of everything that we've been talking about! Ok and we can paste all our links to articles on this bad boy too! Let me know what you guys think!