The folks — excuse me, the public relations executives — over at Unity08 sure do have a thing about control. After becoming disillusioned by Unity08, a delegate by the nickname of Kacz sent a message to the staff asking to be removed from the delegate rolls and to have his account purged. At first, Unity08 simply failed to respond. Then, when Kacz repeated the request, he received a one-sentence response.

John,
It was your choice to post on the site. It is not our burden to tidy up after you.

Steve

In other words, no. They wouldn’t delete him from their woefully small delegate rolls. So Kacz did the only thing he could do: begin replacing the text of his posts with the following text:

Upon requesting that I be removed from Unity08’s delegate rolls and have my commentary removed so as tofully remove my support for this organization I received the following email from the Moderator. That it is impossible to remove oneself from this organization is a significant breach of internet etiquette which, sadly I cannot allow to continue.

Because they refused to delete his delegate account, Unity08 will now have to delete his messages one by one (something they’ve shown willingness to do before), or they’ll have to deal with the baggage of comments that clearly show unresolved discontent. This operation makes the Ross Perot campaign of 1992 look professional.

Oh, what sillies. I’m beginning to think of the Unity08 leadership as cute political plush toys. Or maybe it’s more like they’re Chia Politicians: just water them on your bookshelf and the grassroots will grow out of their own terra cotta heads.

I’m now more amused by Unity08 than anything else. How will it all finally end? What will they say? That the powers that be conspired against them? That their failure shows the system is rigged? Baloney! I mean, the system is rigged, but that’s not why Unity08 is going to fail, big time. It is going to fail because, although you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the time the people are not fooled. There’s a probability per instance of stupid crap pulled that people will notice and react. That means if an outfit like Unity08 pulls stupid, elitist crap enough times, it doesn’t matter how many times they use the words “unity” and “take our country back,” and it doesn’t matter how high Sam Waterston wiggles his eyebrows. Sooner or later, it will stop working and people will start laughing or shouting.

Oh, dear. What will we tell the children?

Pro-war right wingers say that we Americans don’t pay enough attention to their successes in Iraq. Well, okay, I’m game. Let’s look at what the right wingers call success in Iraq.

When the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction took a look at a sample of reconstruction projects in Iraq that the pro-war American government said were successfully completed, they found that seven of the eight projects they examined were, in fact, failures. These projects were no longer successfully operating, even though they had all been officially declared successful, some as few as just six months ago.

The right wing pro-war crowd has proven so inept that even their successes are failures. Could there be any better reason than to work to elect a true alternative, a progressive President in 2008?

(Source: New York Times, April 29, 2007)

It’s bad enough that right wing politicians in government try to force abstinence-only sex education on our kids, restricting information in public school classrooms to only the ideas that religious right wing zealots believe in. It’s even worse that abstinence-only education has been demonstrated not to work, and that right wing politicians keep on pushing it anyway.

How could it get worse than that? Try this on for size: It seems that right wing politicians don’t even believe in the abstinence-only morality they use government power to force on everyone else.

Randall Tobias, the head of the US Agency for International Development and former coordinator for AIDS to foreign countries, has admitted that he hired the services of a woman working for Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s erotic escort agency. Tobias made it his job in those positions to discourage prostitution, promote sexual abstinence before marriage, and encourage married couples to avoid sexual infidelity. The work Tobias did was part of the Bush White House’s plan to promote a right wing religious sexual agenda through domestic funding and international aid programs run by the federal government.

Tobias who is married himself, doesn’t seem to have been able to abstain from stepping out on his own wife, even while he pushed foreign nations to amend their educational and family planning programs to insist upon such abstinence. It doesn’t appear that Tobias actually believed in the need for sexual abstainence, marital fidelity, or avoidance of prostitution - except when it came to other people.

In all fairness, Randall Tobias claims that he didn’t pay for actual sex with the escort from Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s agency. He says he just paid hundreds of dollars for an erotic-themed backrub. Hundreds of dollars for a backrub, huh?

I’ll let you be the judge of whether that statement can be believed. But, even if Randall Tobias is telling the truth, and he didn’t have sex with the erotic escort he hired, what does even that statement say about the consistency of the right wing Bush Administration doctrine of sex education and family planning? Are the Republicans in government now proposing that people around the world pay escort services for erotic massages instead of having extramarital affairs or teaching kids how to have sex without transmitting diseases like AIDS?

If they were to be morally coherent, that would be the position of Randall Tobias and others like him. Of course, these right wing politicians are not morally consistent. That’s why we can’t support another right wing presidency. In 2008, we need to vote for a progressive alternative.

(Source: 365Gay News, April 29, 2007)

On the website of Unity08, which insists on calling itself a “grassroots” “people’s movement”, visitors — the little blades of grass that they are, the “people” in the “people’s movement” — have been asking Unity08 to get its act together and form an agenda:

When are we going to start building our actual platform? Given the tone of the posts I’ve seen on this site, there are a lot of issues that we need to hash out and come to an agreement on. And the way the race is moving now, we need to start building our platform now, so that we can get a candidate moving as soon as possible. When are you guys going to get on that?

Ok, I saw the Sam Waterson thing on CSPAN, signed up on the website, and…? WTF is the problem here people? I’m wandering around the website and what most stands out is… I have no idea what this Unity08 group is for or against, or even what the hell it is, a party or waste of time website? You are not going to attract and keep any people in anything unless it is clearly defined, understood, accepted and agreed to, and some action on the person’s part will result in something they desire. Put another way, without some sort of offering how do you expect anyone to decide “yeah or nay” and to then follow up that choice with actions? People need purpose and plan in order to act. A vague suggestion that things are screwed up is neither a purpose nor a plan.

I don’t have a clue what Unity08 is or what a Unity08 delegate is? Who’s running this thing? We’ve been arguing about this same old stuff on blogs for years. What are we doing here? MoveOn has 3.5 million loyal members. MoveOn makes it clear what they are doing and why.

The aphorism “Eat your own dogfood” is used when someone has advice or holds a position that they do not themselves live up to. So, after reading through the discussion with Steve and some of the members here, I want to know something:

Premise:

1. Unity08 contends that it is a “People’s Movement to Take Back Our Country”.

2. Its “people” appear to be overwhelmingly in support of getting off the dime on issues and actions.

3. Unity08 continues to reject this approach and in effect reject the will of its “people”.

Question:

Exactly what does “A people’s movement” mean when the leaders refuse the will of the people they would lead?

The recourse offered in our Republic is to select new leaders or simply tune out. Results (slow growth in delegates, and poor retention) seems to indicate that folks are taking this recourse seriously. From my perspective, we either need new leadership at Unity08 or I need to find something better to do with my time.

You can delete as many posts as you like Steve, but you haven’t answered the basic questions posed in this discussion nor those I posed in the deleted post:

What does “people’s movement” mean to Unity08?

How do you really plan to attract 1 million delegates by November of this year given the current dearth of ideas and leaders presented herein?

Again, seeing is how at that point (after the R and D conventions, so around June 2008) we will have no candidate and no platform, what will we have to attract them to us? Ever heard the phrase, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know. If we have nothing to offer but empty promises, we won’t have much of a movement. Especially if we don’t have the resources now to get ballot access by the primaries.

I agree!! Unless this whole Unity thing is just a stalking horse for some other Repub/Demo candidate, we need to have something more on the issues/platform and moderate orgs and potential moderate candidates (not running now in the primaries) to build on. Time to get the Show on the Road!!

This question has been up for almost 3 weeks and yet no Unity 08 founders have attempted to answer it. This non-responsiveness is going to turn off a lot of people who would otherwise be very active. We are going to need a platform soon. Maybe we should draft one on our own.

Me: Come join my new party, Unity 08
Friend: Really, what do you stand for?
Me: Bipartisian cooperation.
Friend: OK. What’s your position on (issue X)?
Me: Well, we believe that both parties should work together to come up with a solution to (issue X).
Friend: Um… that’s not really a position; its more of a method… Are you guys for it or against it?
Me: Well, right now we’re trying to get a candidate; but when we get one, he’ll let us know if we should be for it or not.
Friend: Wow. What conviction. Count me out.

What the few remaining participants in the Unity08 message boards are asking Unity08 to do is exactly what Unity08 itself promised it would have already done by now. In the fall of 2006, Unity08 declared that a new website called American Agenda (at the web address of americanagenda08.com) would be publicly released in December of 2006 or January of 2007 in order to permit the American people to draft a Unity08 platform. On this last day of April 2007, the website and the effort are entirely nonexistent. So the “people” in this so-called “people’s movement” are only asking Unity08 to keep its promises.

What has Unity08’s response been? Staff member “Steve” spent some time trying to convince the little people they were wrong, and when it became clear that he had failed to move them from their position that Unity08 should have an agenda, he started to delete posts on the thread that he decided were not sufficiently “respectful” of Unity08. Then he wrote:

I’m going to close the discussion on this topic since it seems to be going in circles.

You can’t post on the topic now. Discussion closed. Voices censored. Project American Agenda shuttered.

They’ve hit on the right way to end the endless bickering: shut those little bickering fuckers right up when they have the gall to talk back to you.

How very grassroots. What a grand return to people-centered politics.

One of the interesting things about history is that it shows the links between things that appear, at first glance, to be unconnected. The Men Who Stare At Goats, written by British journalist Jon Ronson, is a great example of how historical investigations can reveal such links.

Who would have thought, for example, that George W. Bush’s involvement in the Homeland Security abuses of today can be traced back to similar abuses by the Nazis during World War II? Well, with Jon Ronson’s research, plus one more link that he doesn’t mention in his book, that connection can be made.

Link 1: The Nazis and Allen Dulles

Much has been made of the work of Allen Dulles in the gathering intelligence against the Nazis during World War II. The full story of Allen Dulles and the Nazis is more complex, however. Before World War II, the founders of the Bush political family, George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush, worked to bring American money into Nazi Germany. (See Fortunate Son by J. H. Hatfield, as one of many sources) Some of these financial connections persisted through World War II (New Hampshire Gazette, Vol. 248, No. 3, November 7, 2003). Allen Dulles was a family lawyer for the Bushes (see The Men Who Stare At Goats) and worked to help bring financial backing to the Nazi regime, even helping the Bushes conceal their financial ties to the Nazis.

Of course, we all know about the Nazis, and their hideous treatment of prisoners. But how can that be linked to the current American regime of Homeland Security?

Link 2: Allen Dulles and Project Artichoke

Project Artichoke sounds like joke, but it was far from it. As Jon Ronson shows in The Men Who Stare At Goats, and documented by the Frank Olson Legacy Project, Project Artichoke was engaged in finding new ways to coerce prisoners into giving information that they did not want to give. These tactics included, but were not limited to, the use of drugs like LSD and heroin. The idea was to use not just traditional torture tactics, but also profound mental manipulation, to force prisoners to incriminate themselves.

Allen Dulles was the director of the CIA during Project Artichoke, and oversaw the project himself.

Link 3: Project Artichoke and Homeland Security Tactics

Project Artichoke was exposed and stopped. Its tactics live on, however. In the year 2001, Project Artichoke links back to the Bushes.

Now we have, in Guantanamo Bay, in Abu Ghraib, and in other secret prisons around the world, tactics inspired by the work of Allen Dulles in Project Artichoke being used all over again. The tactics have been developed, enhanced, and expanded, but the idea is the same. Jon Ronson’s book even suggests that psychoactive drugs are being used in the interrogation of prisoners, just as in Project Artichoke.

From Fatherland to Homeland, there’s a common thread that runs from the 1930s through to today: The use of pain to gain power.

General George Casey made the news this weekend with his declaration that the United States Army needs to become much bigger as soon as possible because the Army has been stretched thin. “We live in a difficult period for the Army because the demand for our forces exceeds the supply,” General Casey says. Casey’s solution: Expand the military to meet the demand.

There is another solution to the problem. Instead of stretching American society thin to pay for a bigger military, we could reduce the demand for military adventures around the world. The demand for huge numbers of soldiers is just as easy to manipulate, if not more so, as the supply. The demand is caused, after all, by President George W. Bush’s enthusiasm for war and military occupation of foreign countries. End that enthusiam. End the wars. End the occupations. Then, we will need a smaller Army, not a larger one.

See the more peaceful side of the equation. Vote to elect a progressive President in 2008.

(Source: Associated Press, April 29)

Since November of 2004, we have been tracking the strength of the different potential Democratic nominees for President in 2008 through a simple alternative measure: the number of bumper stickers, campaign buttons, posters and t-shirts that we sell in support for each of the Democratic contenders in the 2008 race. Instead of the weak and changeable indicator of an opinion given over the telephone to a stranger, our own system for tracking candidates measures the kind of support that counts - whether Americans are willing to spend money to show their support for a particular candidate in a public way. That kind of strong commitment turns into donations, and later turns into votes. As the election season has gotten underway, we’ve updated our tracking of jockeying in the presidential horserace once a week. Below are results for two time periods: the week of April 22-28 and the year so far.

April 22 - April 28, 2007: Biden moves up, Edwards moves down

The following is the percent share of sales of our Election 2008 gear in the past week, for each candidate who garnered at least a 1% share of sales:

Barack Obama: 46.8%
Hillary Clinton: 13.6%
Al Gore: 10.4%
Joseph Biden: 8.7%
Bill Richardson: 6.8%
Dennis Kucinich: 4.1%
John Edwards: 2.9%
Mike Gravel: 2.7%
Bill Moyers: 1.5%
Others: 2.4%

Those “others” include Christopher Dodd, who despite being a U.S. Senator, a declared presidential candidate, and a participant in the first Democratic presidential debate last week garnered less than one half than one percent of all election sales — less than a twentieth of the sales of items supporting non-politician, non-candidate and non-participant Al Gore. Senator Dodd, that’s saying something.

Also notable are the good performances, relatively speaking, of Joseph Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. Joseph Biden has averaged a 1.5% share of sales over the year to date, but last week grabbed 8.7% of sales. Dennis Kucinich has also averaged a 1.5% share of sales over the year to date, but last week grabbed 4.1% of sales. And Mike Gravel has averaged just 0.7% of sales so far this year, but last week grabbed 2.7% of sales. Most of the sales for these three candidates occurred from late Thursday night through the end of the week Saturday night — indicating a positive reaction to their debate performance on Thursday night.

Conversely, sales of items supporting John Edwards dropped off from late Thursday night through the end of the week. While pro-Edwards items have accounted for an average of 4.1% of sales over the year so far, last week pro-Edwards items accounted for just 2.9% of the total. What does that say about people’s reaction to his debate performance?

Performance across Time: the Year so Far

Discussion of Biden, Edwards, Gravel and Kucinich ignores the top two performers, who continue to be Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They continue to dominate in percentage terms, although their dominance was chipped away a bit by the increased performance of the second-tier candidates. This is reflected in the graph below by the big jump in the “other” category in the past week:

Surf on over next week for a full week’s worth of post-debate sales statistics. We’ll see if the changes mentioned above are enduring or just an ephemeral blip.

Yesterday, April 28, was National Impeachment Day, or A28, as the activist network has it. There were protests in favor of impeachment in communities across the USA. There’s no word from the organizers how many people participated in how many places.

There is, however, the following media impact to report: 485 stories about the protests published in news sources recognized by the Google News database over the last day. Also, Google recognizes 230 blog articles that have been have written about the protests. That includes a blog article I wrote this morning about one of the impeachment protests.

Less in the blogosphere about the protests than in more established media, huh? Looks like activist bloggers in favor of impeachment need to be a bit more on the ball.

We have pledged to donate 20% of our profits from our CafePress webshops (Irregular Goods, Irregular States, Godless Goods, New White House, Running Mates and Blue Towns among others) to progressive political causes (we’ll donate 20% from the profits of our Skreened shops, too, starting with when we actually make a sale). But we don’t talk much about where the money goes. Each of us here at Irregular Times makes an independent decision about where to send our bit. For the last few months, I’ve been using my 20% to purchase, pack, and ship Bill of Rights posters to people who asked for them, free of charge (this is taking longer than I thought. Shipping posters is surprisingly time-consuming!). But this month, I’ve taken 20% of my share of our profits — about $500 — and sent half of it to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and half of it to the American Civil Liberties Union. Both are organizations that effectively pressure federal, state and local government to live up to the standards of the Constitution when enacting policy.

My son has taken to saying the word “nukyular.”

Curse you, George W. Bush.

There was a pro-impeachment protest in the Senate office buildings this week, and CBS News covered the story, sort of.

The protester chanted “Impeach Bush!”. They opened up two banners, one that held proposed articles of impeachment and another that read, “Your silence is your legacy.”

Yet, what was the headline CBS News chose for their article on the event? “14 Arrested In Senate Anti-War Protest”

Why, I wonder, did CBS News call a protest for impeachment an “anti-war” protest?

Good morning, and good guessing.

Over at Skreened, we have a daily increasing number of designs available on Sweat-Free shirts for women, men, kids and even babies. I thought you might like to see one of our designs on a real-life shirt, on a real-life person.

Here’s what the Peace Roo design looks like by itself:

Here’s what the Skreened shop folks show the design looking like on a slate-colored shirt:

And here’s a picture of a real-life Peace Roo shirt (with dirt of the day and all) on a real-life kid (with dirt of the day and all):

In case you were curious, I hope this gives you a basis for comparison and consideration. Cheers!

There’s been a lot of news lately about Republican Representative Rick Renzi of Arizona, who is being investigated for covert corruption involving legislative action to promote a land deal in which he stood to benefit. But there’s no need to look in locked file drawers and under rugs for evidence of Rick Renzi’s pro-corruption behavior in Congress. Corruption, the use of power for purposes of self-promotion, occurs every day in corporate America, as corporate executives award themselves ever-more-ludicrous pay packages. Corporate executives even give themselves “golden parachutes” of multi-million-dollar financial awards when they are fired for poor performance. That’s the abuse of power. That’s corruption. Legal corruption, maybe, but corruption nonetheless.

A little more than a week ago, members of the House of Representatives cast a roll-call vote on H.R. 1257. If signed into law, H.R. 1257 would simply permit shareholders in a public corporation — a.k.a. the owners — to cast an advisory, non-binding vote approving or disapproving of executive pay packages. H.R. 1257 would also allow shareholders to vote their non-binding approval or disapproval of Golden Parachutes. Who would not support the idea of the owners of a corporation being able to publicly express their position on executive pay and severance packages? Only those who have an interest in keeping executive pay and severance packages hushed up. Only those who want to hide the extent of executive corruption and the extent of shareholder discontent with that corruption.

Rick Renzi voted against this bill when it came up for that roll call vote. Rick Renzi wasn’t alone, either: a number of conservatives in Congress prioritized self-awarded executive perks above voice for corporate shareholders. Why are so many conservative politicians interested in hushing up executive pay and severance packages? Everyone has their rea$on.

Thankfully, there were enough progressive votes to counter the pro-corruption Renzis in Congress and pass the bill. Hopefully, it will pass the Senate as well. But then it will have to pass across the desk of President George W. Bush, who has repeatedly sided with corporate executives and against shareholders, workers, and consumers. All the good work of a progressive Congress on corporate governance can be negated with the stroke of a regressive president’s pen. And that’s another reason we need to make sure we vote for a progressive president in 2008.