Howard Dean's YKos Keynote, Part 3

Howard Dean: Now, the Republicans are making a "good faith effort" to convince the Americans that this is a do-nothing Congress, that we haven't done anything. First of all, they're filibustering everything we can do. If we get it by the filibuster, then the president threatens to veto it, or he does veto it. So, let me tell you what we've done in spite of the president. In the last six months we have accomplished more than they did in six years: increasing the minimum wage, make college more affordable, healthcare for kids is going to pass, and if the president vetos it, the Republicans are going to have to atone for that on election day. Passing the 9-11 recommendations to make our communities safer--they talk about being strong, we actually do it--passing real ethics reform. The United States Senate is going to pass it today--let's see if the president will sign that. Passing a balanced budget requirement with pay-go requirements so there will be no tax cuts or new programs without saying how we're going to pay for them. We'll put an end to the notion that we're going to borrow money from our grandchildren in order to pay for what we want today. I think that's a pretty good accomplishment for six months. (Applause.) Now, on the matter that's at the front of most of your minds--Iraq. The fact is, we started out with 49 votes in the Senate on Iraq, because Joe Lieberman doesn't vote with us on Iraq (booing) and Tim Johnson is out sick. So, 49 votes. I know how tough this is going to be, but we need to make it clear to the American people who it is that's obstructing their will on Iraq. (Applause.) It was the Republicans that kept us up all night because they wouldn't let us pass a bill a few weeks ago. And we're going to keep voting on Iraq, and voting and voting and voting and voting again. And if George Bush wants to veto the will of the American people, and if the Republicans want to obstruct what the American people want, then we'll give Susan Collins an opportunity to vote on that. We'll give John Sununu an opportunity to vote on that again. We'll give Norm Coleman and Gordon Smith an opportunity to vote again and again and again until our troops come home from Iraq! (Applause and cheers.) It is not an accident that every single one of the Democrats running for president of the United States has a plan and has clearly said that they will get our troops home with a reasonable timetable. It is not an accident that every single one of the Republican candidates, with the exception of the Libertarian, want our troops to stay in Iraq as long as George Bush does. It is not an accident that every single Republican thought it was a great idear to commute the sentence of Scooter Libby and every single Democrat did not think that was a great idear. We are committed to ending the Republican culture of corruption that they brought to Washington, and we are committed to ending the culture of corruption in the United States Department of Justice, which fired Republican lawyers for trying to prosecute Republican congressmen. We will do better than that! (Applause and cheers.) Our men and women in uniform have bravely done their duty. We need to support our troops and bring them home! And the American people are with us.

Howard Dean on Ring of Fire

Thanks to floridagal for the heads-up that Howard Dean was going to be on Ring of Fire this afternoon. Below is a transcript of most of the segment. David Bender: When you were out there doing the 50-state strategy, how important was it that there was a balance, particularly of radio, in the world? Howard Dean: Well, as you know, right wing radio is, as I call it, "hate radio", and it takes advantage of the very worst that people have to offer. They're always appealing to people's bigotries and people's prejudices and racism and all that other stuff. So, what I like to think of Air America as, is a place for optimism and idears. And I think that's really by and large, what it's been. We need a place where Americans can tune in and listen to things that are going to be good about America. Different ways of doing things, and not the kind of fearmongering and hatemongering that goes on on the right. David Bender: Speaking of which, last week we saw the passing of Jerry Falwell, and Republicans were jumping all over themselves to eulogize him. What do you think his legacy is to the political process. Howard Dean: I think he has been an incredibly divisive person in terms of American history. He did appeal to sometimes the very worst in people--the anti-gay stuff, the racism that was going on at Liberty University with White folks not being able to date Black folks and stuff like that. So, you know, it's a mixed bag. He certainly was a potent political force in the Republican party, but in some ways he represented the worst of the Republican party. David Bender: And we saw, what was so interesting, in the debate a few weeks ago, three Republican candidates raising their hands saying they didn't believe in the theory of evolution. Isn't this part and parcel of appealing to the Falwells and the Pat Robertsons of the Republican party? Howard Dean: Those folks are a passing generation. The Democrats are actually starting to reach out to Evangelicals. Young Evangelicals would rather hear what we're going to do about Darfur, poverty and global warming than they would beat up on their gay neighbor. And you know, in some ways, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts and these people are dinosaurs. They're people who represent the anger part of Christianity, and there really is no justifiable anger part of Christianity--they're showmen, they make money off it. But the new generation are people that are emphasizing what was really in Jesus' message, which had to do with reaching out to people, taking care of the least among us. It's a much more American message, and the young, smart Evangelical preachers are creating *huge* congregations with that kind of a message of hope. And that's something the Democrats can work with, and I'm looking forward to that. David Bender: Well, you have been reaching out to them. We've talked about that in the past. And that's a perfect opportunity to talk about the fact that you have not written off any state in the union. I want us to tick this off...in two years as chairman, the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, took control of the Senate, won a majority of the nation's governorships, and added ten new chambers in state legislatures. And then, James Carville said you should step down the next day, because, of course, that makes sense... Howard Dean: The generations are passing in every institution, including ours. (Laughter). Look, I didn't do all that stuff by myself, without Chuck Schumer we don't win the Senate, and without Rahm Emanuel we don't win the House. It was a team effort. But, what we did do is go into new territory. Territory like Kansas and Minnesota and upstate New York--territories that hadn't been aggressively attacked. And of course we're delighted that we won the majority in the House and the Senate, but the really exciting thing is that we forced the president and the vice president to be campaigning in Idaho and Nebraska the last two weekends of that campaign. David Bender: You put them on defense. Howard Dean: You gotta be playing offense all the time. When you start playing defense, which we've been doing for thirty years, then you're not winning. And now we're winning, and we're winning because we're asking everybody for their vote. There's not a vote that I'm afraid to ask for, and we do not have to give up our principles to ask people that don't agree with us for their votes. People will respect you if you respect them, and that's something we've learned by watching the terrible mistakes of the president. The president has not just been incompetent because of his policy mistakes. He's been incompetent because he set out from the beginning of his presidency to only be the president of half the people. And we want to be the president of ALL the people, including those that don't vote for us. David Bender: And you took the words right out of my mouth, because, in fact, not giving up our principles involves being able to stand strong in opposing this war. And we saw candidates in unlikely places, people like Jim Webb in Virginia, John Tester in Montana, who, in red states, ran against this war and won majorities. Howard Dean: That's right. I think that people understand now that when you don't tell the truth about why you're going to war, the war effort's not likely to be successful. And the president and his folks simply didn't tell America the truth. David Bender: I've asked you this before, Governor--what does it feel like to have been essentially four years ahead of your time? (Laughter) You were a lonely voice--within the Democratic party, I might point out, calling for an end to this war. How did it feel to you watching people come around? Howard Dean: You were part of that campaign, and I think you remember the day that I said capturing Saddam Hussein would not make us any safer, which created a huge uproar. Unfortunately, "I told you so" is not a good campaign slogan. So, I'm happy doing what I'm doing. We have a *great* field of people running for president. It's a great time to be chairman of the DNC, and I'm really looking forward to seeing our presidential candidate win.

Firedoglake's Christy Hardin Smith on The Thom Hartman Program

Christy Hardin Smith was a guest on the Thom Hartmann Radio show earlier this afternoon. The following is one of those "rush transcripts", but hopefully I've corrected any major typos... Thom Hartmann: Christy, welcome to the Thom Hartmann Program. Christy Hardin Smith: Thanks Thom, great to be here. Thom: A recovering attorney? Christy: Yeah, I'm no longer practicing. Thom: I see. Christy: I'm blogging now. Thom: And it's great that you're doing that, and bringing the perspective of somebody who understands the legal system to this. A whole lot of things happened in this Kyle Sampson testimony. I have some specific points and questions that I'd like to toss out and get your response to. But first, I'm curious as to what your take is on what really happened here yesterday? Christy: Well, you know, it was funny. One of the commenters on my site today said that in looking at all of this, it was amazing that we'd gotten back to the point where the word fealty had been reintroduced into the political system in the United States. That essentially what the Bush administration was asking was that the U. S. attorneys either be loyal to them and, in effect, swear fealty to what they considered were important political positions or they would be removed from their office. Whether or not those positions were sustainable in terms of looking at the rule of law, whether the law was whatever the Bush administration said they wanted them to do. And that, I think is really troubling. Thom: Yeah, fealty is such an anachronistic word. Probably most people don't even know the origins of it in feudal society. You want to just give us a 10 second definition? Christy: Sure. In feudal society, you'd have someone who was the lord of a certain area of land, and those people who lived on that land had to swear to be loyal to the person who owned that particular plot. And they had to give part of their grain, and they had to fight for them when they were asked to. Everything was for that person--it wasn't for the good of the community, it was only for the good of the person who owned that particular plot of land. Thom: Right, and that person even had, in many European communities, the "right of the first night". It just got very bizarre--absolute power. Christy: Right. Which is not what we're supposed to have here--we fought a revolution in 1776 for a reason. Thom: Yes. And so we're back to fealty--it's incredible! So, you were saying... Christy: We were talking about this quite a bit actually, today we were going over a sort of review in one of my posts of what we had learned yesterday, and additional information that's come out today. The former head of the civil rights division at the Department of Justice wrote an op-ed in the L.A. Times today talking about the problems with civil rights enforcement, and how, instead of being enforced for the benefit of minority groups or women's groups or religious minority groups who may have had issues of oppression, that the civil cights division had been converted to prosecuting voter fraud cases which were *very* questionable. And would be brought up essentially as a suppression issue in areas where they were expecting high Democratic voter turnout-- Thom: Among minorities. Christy: Right. So they saw that in Florida, and there were other areas of the country, in Ohio, where cases were brought. And that's just one more drop in the bucket of what's been done. Thom: And they've been able to get away with talking about this in public because the average American doesn't understand the difference between voter fraud and election fraud. That the Republican party is engaged in *widespread* election fraud over the years, in fact for over 25 years they've been operating under a restraining order to stop them from doing some of the things that they did in the 2000 election. Caging, for example. Whereas voter fraud is where an individual who doesn't have the right to vote tries to vote. And those cases are so rare--I think there's been one successful prosecution for voter fraud in the last couple years? Christy: There haven't been many. And a lot of them have been brought and then have been found to have implemented basically by political opponents who were trying to pull an election result out long enough to be able to get the vote reversed votes thrown out so that their side would win. There are political tactics involved a lot of the time. And when you have a true voter case, a lot of times you don't have to take it to court, because you have enough ability to show that there's a problem. Say, if you have a political pundit who votes in the wrong district in Florida--something like that. Thom: You mean like Ann Coulter. Christy: Yeah. Thom: That's voter fraud. Christy: Yes, that would be voter fraud, and that *should* be prosecuted. If you are truly commiting voter fraud, then it should be prosecuted. But if you're using it to politicize something, then the question comes, are you doing this because it's the right thing to do for justice, or are you doing this in order to pervert the way that Americans elect their representatives. And if it's the second aspect of it, then you're politicizing the rule of law, and that's wrong. Thom: And the way this works is that one person, say, a felon who shouldn't be voting in Florida, gets prosecuted for that, and it makes all the headlines. And then one of these groups sends out a flyer, a pamphlet, to everyone in the African American community, as happened in Ohio in the 2004 election, and it happened in Florida as well, that says if you or any member of your family has parking tickets or has ever committed a crime, and you show up to vote, you will be arrested. Now, this is not true, but unknown groups were distributing tens of thousands of flyers that said this, or letters to registered Democratic voters in African American communities. And it was apparently effective in suppressing a certain percentage of the Black vote. Christy: There were actually allegations of that occuring in Connecticut too, during the primary, when Ned Lamont and Joe Lieberman were running against each other for the Senate primary, in a lot of the areas in Hartford and a lot of the other urban areas in Connecticut that was also happening. Which, it's unusual for it to happen in primary races, but that one was a very tight one, and clearly there was a lot of Republican interest in keeping Joe Lieberman in the Senate. Thom: We just have about two minutes left here. We're talking to Christy Hardin Smith, who blogs over at Firedoglake.com who sat through the Kyle Sampson hearings and blogged through the whole thing, and an attorney. Christy, 122 times, Sampson says "I don't know". This is starting to sound like a mafia prosecution. Christy: One of my long time readers termed it "Rove-nesia"-- (Thom laughs.) That folks who are connected with Karl Rove seem to be having this problem of Rove-nesia every time they're held to account for some problem that they've caused. You know, one of the issues that I think keeps coming up again and again and again, especially if you look at the prosecutors who were fired, almost all of them were from states where the voting was close in the 2004 presidential election, or where voting was also close in terms of congressional or senate races in the 2006 elections, where there are likely to be battlegrounds in 2008, except for the attorneys in California. But all of the attorneys, the U. S. Attorneys in California, have been replaced at this point--every single one of them. And if you can get someone in that state who's willing to politicize election issues and election fraud issues, then you have the potential in looking at the 56 electoral votes that California brings with it, to ensure presidential victory--if you can control those 56 votes.

Bill Maher on "Sacrifice"

Video via Crooks and Liars here. And finally, new rule: liberals must stop saying President Bush hasn't asked Americans to sacrifice for the War on Terror. On the contrary, he's asked us to sacrifice something enormous: our civil rights. Now, when I heard George Bush was reading my e-mails, I probably had the same reaction you did--George Bush can read?! (Laughter.) Yes he can, and this administration has read your phone records, credit card statements, mail, internet logs... I can't tell if their fighting the War on Terror or producing the next season of Cheater. (Laughter.) I mail myself a copy of the Consitution every morning, just on the hope they'll open it and see what it says! (Laughter and applause). So when it comes to sacrifice, don't kid yourself--you *have* given up a lot! You've given up faith in your government's honesty, the good will of people overseas, and 6/10 of the Bill of Rights. Here's what you've sacrificed: search and seizure, warrents, self incrimination, trial by jury, cruel and unusual punishment. Here's what you have left: handguns, religion, and they can't make you quarter a British soldier. If Prince Harry invades the inland empire, he has to bring a tent. (Laughter). You know, in previous wars, Americans on the homefront made a very different kind of sacrifice. During World War II, we endured rationing, payed higher taxes, bought war bonds, and in the interest of national unity, people even pretended Bob Hope was funny. (Laughter.) Right--like you laughed at him! Women donated their silk undergarments so they could be sewn into parachutes. Can you imagine nowadays a Britney Spears or a Lindsay Lohan going without underwear? (Laughter.) Bad example, but look, George Bush has never been too bright about understanding "furriners", but he does know Americans. He asked *this* generation to sacrifice the things he knew we would not miss--our privacy and our morality. He let us keep the money. But he made a cynical bet, that we wouldn't much care if we became a Big Brother country that has now tortured a lot of random people. And yet no one asks the tough questions, like "Is torture necessary?", "Who will watch the watchers?" and "When does Jack Bauer go to the bathroom?" (Laughter.) I mean, it's been five years--is he wearing one of those astronaut diapers? In conclusion, after September 11, President Bush told us Osama bin Laden "could run but he can't hide". But he ran and hid. (Laughter.) So Bush went to Plan B: pissing on the Constitution and torturing random people. Conservatives always say the great thing Reagan did was make us feel good about America again. Well, do you feel good about America now? I'll give you my answer. And to get it out of me, you don't even need to hold my head under water and have a snarling guard dog rip my nuts off. (Laughter). No, I don't feel very good about that. They say evil happens when good men do nothing. Well, the Democrats proved it also happens when mediocre people do nothing. If you don't get HBO, Bill Maher's "New Rules" is available via iTunes: I, by the way, *don't* get that particular premium channel, so I am not positive how this works--it is my impression that "New Rules" is a segment of Real Time with Bill Maher, but I don't know that for sure. Anyway, this is supposed to be the "Real Time" link below.