(Bumped — Holy crap! Great first post by nequals1. This about sums it up. Glad you’re inspired, nequals1, we need all hands on deck if we want to turn the Titanic around! - btp)

Yeah, I’m angry. I’m part of the angry left. I resent it that this administration took all of the worldwide love and good will for this country after 9/11, and turned it into fear, anger and even hatred towards us. I’m upset that we went from a surplus to record deficits (see also this). And I’ve read that the debt is almost entirely due to the Iraq war and the tax cuts for the rich. And these tax cuts for the rich will not even help the economy much, even under the most generous of assumptions. The war in Iraq has put us a greater risk for future terrorist attacks, according to most experts, and has cost us trillions of dollars and many lives. It’s too bad we didn’t elect a President that would only go to war in the following circumstances:

Well, if it’s in our vital national interest, and that means whether our territory is threatened or people could be harmed, whether or not the alliances are — our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force. Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear. Whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be. Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win. Whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped. And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy. I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don’t think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we’ve got to be very careful when we commit our troops. … I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders.

That seems like a somewhat sensible strategy. Too bad we didn’t elect that guy. Oh wait, we did. Yeah, people were duped in 2000. They should have known better, but they were tricked. I forgive them for that. But to vote for him in 2004, after what this administration did to the country? That’s hard to forgive. They’ve put all our future at risk. They’ve made the world a more dangerous place, both in terms of the nuclear and environmental threats.

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So, I want to be able to trust my congresspeople. I want to have at least a decent feeling that they’re more about the people they represent than their careers. And I don’t want to have to read between the lines all the time to figure out where they stand on issues, especially if they talk a good game but vote differently. I definitely don’t want to have to spend time looking up their voting records– I’d rather be spending more time with my beautiful family.

But when I read the Elmira Star-Gazette article that Exile found, about Kuhl’s trip to Iraq, a couple things jumped out at me:

1) Bob Van Wicklin, Kuhl’s spokesman, said:

“The only way to get a true feel for what’s going on there is to get out there and put his boots on the ground.”

Now this is a funny thing to say about a man who has never wore the uniform and had a 9 year draft deferment during Vietnam. Kuhl voted against all bills to do with military retirees and vets up until the last couple months, probably because he realized he’s in the run of his life against “Fighting Dem” Eric Massa. Even with that, the DAV (Disabled American Vets) gives him an anemic 25% rating. I’m sorry, but you gotta do better than taking taxpayer’s money for a political junket to Iraq to prove you “support the troops”.

2) Van Wicklin went on to say:

When he returns, Kuhl will set up a series of meetings with the news media to report on his impressions

So, why a “series” of meetings? Wouldn’t one be enough to report back on what he found out? So, let me see if I got this right– Kuhl wants to have only one (1) debate, and make it only 1/2 hour long, on a small radio station in the Southern Tier. But he wants to hold “a series” of meetings to announce, what? “Iraq is doing great, don’t mind the mess, vote for me?”

I’d be interested in finding out who the other congresscritters are on this junket and how endangered THEY are, since this smells an awful lot more like politics than anything else.

To me, though, this little nugget made my day. Again, from Van Wicklin:

“As a congressman, oversight is one of the most important parts of the job”

HAHAHAHA! You’re kidding me, right? This, about the most RubberStamping-est congress in history, about one of the most RubberStamp-happy congresscritters in DC? He voted according to the current administration’s wishes 93% of the time, is working with others in the Republican leadership to make the administration’s illegal wiretapping LEGAL, and OVERSIGHT is “one of the most important parts of the job”?

Buddy, come on, how dumb do you think we are?

Some of you may know about Non-Violent Communication. I’m in a workshop with a handful of folks where we’re learning and applying it. An example of it just happened to a friend of mine, and inspired me to write this.  Folks that are tired of waiting for a Department Of Peace to be created are using it to work, person-to-person, to spread peace throughout the world. Yes! magazine (the best magazine in the friggin’ world) put its use in “Active Non-Violence” as #1 on it’s 10 most hopeful trends of the last 10 years:

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Kuhl spokesman Bob Van Wicklin on Randy Kuhl’s trip to Iraq :

“He’s been trying to arrange this ever since he got into Congress.”

I know freshman House members don’t have a lot of clout, but it took him two years to arrange this? And we’re supposed to believe it’s a coincidence that this comes on the heels of his debate “challenge”, website unveiling, letter-writing campaign, etc.?

Does he really think the voters of the the 29th are that gullible? The editors at the Corning Leader may believe it, but they may be the only ones. Nice of the Leader to ignore the Massa camp’s reaction, which was (via the Star-Gazette):

Massa called it “a waste of money” for Kuhl to travel to Iraq.

“I hope he learns there is no strategy to bring our troops home. But I don’t think you need to travel to Baghdad to learn that. Every working family I’ve met knows that,” Massa said.

How have your raises been in the last six years? Have you been getting the 19% and 29% yearly increases that the CEOs of large companies? I’ve gotten one 2% raise in three years and my job is going overseas. That’s not official but it will happen. We have “redeployments” quarterly. I just haven’t been hit yet.

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Joe Specter has a new piece in the D&C this morning on all the local incumbent Republicans in Congress. It’s pretty thorough. Here’s a paragraph that summarizes much of it:

Especially in moderate places like upstate New York, Republicans recognize the need to be more proactive this year than in the past, experts said. National polls have shown that voters favor a Democratic takeover of the House and Senate.

Exactly: if Upstate voters wanted right-wing extremists for legislators, they’d move to Alabama, or at least to Peter King’s district on Long Island.

Here’s something I didn’t know: “James Kuhl [is] the congressman’s campaign manager and son…” I think there’s an old saying: a son who runs his father’s campaign has a fool for a candidate.

The media is very fond of talking about a character it calls “Joe Sixpack.” Joe is completely ignorant of all policy detail (”Joe Sixpack doesn’t do nuance”, a pundit might say) but he knows what he likes — God, guns, tax cuts — and what he doesn’t — gays, Muslims, compound sentences, anything French. Joe is a bit of a pardox: on the one hand he is intensely Puritanical, on the other, his last name is Sixpack, so he must enjoy drinking. Joe is a big fan of the so-called War on Terrorc: “Joe may be able to find Iraq on a map, but he knows he don’t like A-rab terrorists” is a line that has probably appeared (mutatis mutandis) in both Time and Newsweek. Note that the mere thought of Joe can cause a reporter to lapse into a weak imitation of Huck Finn.

And the media, as well as a political operative I spoke with earlier today, would have us believe that Joe Sixpack is happy to be making an extra 2 bucks an hour in minimum wage, even if for every extra dollar he makes, Paris Hilton is making an extra 20 million.

Joe’s a colorful character, a man for all seasons, ready to apply his homespun wisdom to defend tax cuts for the rich, unnecessary wars, the abridgement of the right to privacy and so on and so on. There’s only one problem with Joe: he doesn’t exist. Journalists have created him so that they have a strawman — an imaginary one — whose ignorance exceeds even their own.

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The Corning Star-Gazette is reporting that Randy Kuhl is going on a fact-finding misison to Iraq. Here’s what Kuhl is saying about the trip:

Kuhl said in a press release that he wants to “get a better feel for what our troops are doing on a day-to-day basis, how our tax dollars are being spent and how the new Iraqi government is functioning.”

It’s hard to know what to make of this. Is Kuhl simply going there to look for the “good news”, the bake sales being held at Baghdad Central Junior High, to push the Bush admministration’s beloved Tinkerbell strategy (clap louder and everything will be fine), or is he going there to take a serious look at the debacle that the Bush-Rumsfeld “stuff happens”, “stay the course” idiocy has produced? I’m betting on the latter but hoping for the former. We’ll see….

I just finished perusing the transcript of Eric Massa’s session with the folks at FireDogLake and, honestly, I thought it was terrific. I liked Massa’s honest, from-the-hip answers to the questions he was posed and, even more than that, I saw that “live blogging”, or whatever you call this interview medium, is a great way for people to connect with their candidates. Since the interviewee is not on the clock the way he or she is in a conventional interview, it lacks the gotcha quality that town hall meetings and the like can have — the candidate can’t be asked “Quick! Who are the four largest employers in Ontario county?”.

Although I haven’t met Randy Kuhl, from what I have heard he is uncomfortable in a one-on-one setting. Maybe this would be a good way for him to give connect with voters as well. It would be nice to see him try “live blogging” out, too, so that the public could get a better idea of some of his positions in a setting in which he is comfortable.

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Like any sensible person, I spend as little time as possible reading the New York Times, which has become a tired, narcsistic dispenser of shop-worn cichés, at least as far as politics is concerned. Perhaps they can’t be blamed for this: two days ago (on a day when violence was raging in the Middle East and Congress was considering raising the minimum wage that milions or Americans work for), the most emailed aritlce in the Times was titled Communal Yoga Mats: Beware of Germs.

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Eric Massa did some live blogging at FireDogLake earlier today. He took a lot of questions and we’ll be mining his answers to find out more details about his positions on various issues. More on that later today.

Eric Massa and Randy Kuhl both have websites up now. And both have pretty reasonable summaries of their positions on the issues. Here’s a quick run down of how their issue summaries differ. I’ll start with a few superficial details, and then I’ll go into more details in a later post when I have more time:

• Massa’s has much more detail. For example, he lists a four step plan for energy independence, whereas Kuhl simply says he voted for the Enrich Exxon Energy Policy Act.
• Kuhl has (or seems to have — more on this in the next bullet point) a few more topics than Massa does. For example, he explicitly talks about the small farms in the Finger Lakes region. This is favorite topic of mine and something I’ll be posting about a lot in the future. Good for Kuhl for mentiong it. And I hope Massa addresses it at some point.
• But, going to back to the previous bullet oints, the Kuhl website doesn’t have anything written on about a third of the issues they purport to address. I find it a bit telling that the links to Social Security, War on Terror (spare me), Medicare, Trade, and Veterans’ Affairs are all dead links. Medicare, Trade, and Social Security are all tricky issues (and Massa doesn’t have much about them up yet either), but Veterans’ Affairs is likely to be one of Massa’s key issues (as a Navy vet). Why don’t they put something up there ASAP?

Ok, I really need to get something off my chest. Writing that last post really got me tweaked. I kept having to restrain myself from just going on a massive rant. A voice in my head kept saying, “You know what, simmer down now, you’ll prove the right-wing talking point that you’re part of ‘The Angry Left’”.

Well, screw that. You know what, you’re damn right I’m angry. My local reps (excepting Louise Slaughter) just voted against Stem Cell research funding that could help my little boy walk someday (he has CP). They’re also voting for massive tax cuts for the wealthy that trickle down into pressure on towns and counties to cut services, including therapy services that will help my little guy become a productive, taxpaying citizen someday. They’re not stopping the robbing of our middle class by corporations and outsourcing, they’re holding the frigging door, saying “Can we help you carry anything?”

So yeah, I’m angry at my kids’ future being sold for their short-term, short-sighted profit.

Calling us “The Angry Left” is like driving on the sidewalk and being shocked when pedestrians yell at you.

Yeesh.

My friend Matt really knows how to piss me off. Knowing what a sustainable energy buff I am, he sent me this article about a new type of windmill that’s been developed:

…the world’s first permanent magnetic levitation wind power generator [was unveiled] at the Wind Power Asia Exhibition 2006 in Beijing. The device is called a MagLev generator, and is being regarded as a key breakthrough in the evolution of global wind power technology.

Ok, sounds nifty. But what’s so special about it?

According to the chief scientist behind the technology, the generator can dramatically lower operational expenses of wind farms — by as much as 50 per cent. This, he claims, would drive the cost of wind power to below 5 cents (U.S.) per kilowatt-hour.

The MaglLev is able to utilize winds with starting speeds as low as 1.5 meters per second (m/s), and cut-in speeds of 3 m/s…

the technology is expected to create new opportunities in low-wind-speed areas worldwide such as mountain regions, islands, observatories, and television transfer stations. In addition, the Maglev generator will be able to provide roadside lighting along highways by utilizing the airflow generated from vehicles passing by.

Wow– 50% increase in power? 5 cents per kWh when I’m paying something around 10 cents/kWh? AND we can make them smaller and less visible? That’s great! What’s there to be upset about?

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Are you better off since Randy “Rubber Stamp” Kuhl has been in office? According to this Monday’s NYTimes business section, the pharmaceutical industry is.

“…second-quarter profits yesterday that were well ahead of analysts’ expectations. Medicare Part D, which offers prescription coverage for people over 65, is fueling the profits …Eventually, Part D could fuel a political reaction if prices
continue to rise, but analysts expect the industry’s influence in Washington will delay any changes for years.”

Randy “Rubber-Stamp” Kuhl voted for the bill which “prevents the reimportation of less expensive drugs from Canada and other countries, prohibits the government from negotiating drug prices with manufacturers.” His website falsely claims that this bill will save money. Don’t believe it. See RubberStampRepublicans, CodeBlueNow, and TheRuralPatriot for more detailed facts.

My husband and I have 20+ years til retirement and I can tell you that the rising cost of healthcare is a big issue for us. Every year our premiums get higher, the co-pays get higher, the deductables get higher, the cost of prescriptions gets higher. Right now our (personal) copays for prescription medications average around $200 per month. The average annual cost for healthcare for a family of 4 is now around $13,000 and rising by double digits annually.

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