Pro-life Groups, Boehner Hail Victory of Louisiana Pro-lifer to Congress - Today in Politics
The first Vietnamese-American elected to the U.S. House will replace scandal-plagued New Orleans congressman William Jefferson.
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GOP Getting All “Hope And Change” On Us - Democratic Source
by Chris Bodenner
Republicans heart the new congressman from New Orleans:
Boehner touted Cao as a symbol of the party’s future in a memo Sunday night. In a release titled “The Future is Cao,” Boehner wrote that “the Cao victory is a symbol of what can be achieved when we think big, present a positive alternative and win the trust of the American people.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday that Cao’s electionrepresented a victory for a different kind of GOP politics…. “You now have the first Vietnamese-American occupying a seat thatnobody would have thought he could win. This is the opposite ofred-vs.-blue, base-mobilization politics.”
And this last bit is priceless:
After Hurricane Katrina, Cao’s rebuilt law office became a hub for community organizing and assistance to hurricane victims.
Someone should look into that.
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Fun With Google - Today in Politics
by Chris Bodenner
RedState’s Streiff, yesterday:
What the AP, and the press in general, fails to note is that Shinseki was essentially fired … for being a disloyal **** and actively lobbying to preserve a weapons system the OSD did not want. … Having said that, I am cheered by the selection of General Shinseki as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs rather than a politcal [sic] hack like Max Cleland who has made a career of riding his admittedly serious injuries.
Streiff, Sept. 1:
As we discovered during the 2004 election, John Kerry is a man virtually devoid of honor. … Now, four years later, Kerry returns the favor not by defending John McCain against calumny but by joining the voices spreading it. There is a whispering campaign underway working on two levels. The first level, the more respectable of the two if such a distinction is possible, is that John McCain hides behind his POW experience to deflect criticism and uses it to his advantage relentlessly. For instance in USA Today:
Former president Jimmy Carter called Republican presidential candidate John McCain a “distinguished naval officer,” but he said the Arizona senator has been “milking every possible drop of advantage” from his time served as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
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Trading One War for Another - Today in Politics
So you think the new President will end our involvement in foreign wars? I never did, I just thought he'd trade one war for another, Iraq for Afghanistan.
It seems like this will be the case. The AP reports our Marines will be moving from Iraq to Afghanistan:
The top U.S. Marine general says there is a growing consensus among defense leaders to send a substantial contingent of Marines to Afghanistan, probably beginning next spring, while dramatically reducing their deployments to western Iraq.
Get ready for the narco-terror war. When they don't capture terrorists in Afghanistan, they'll bust the drug wholesalers and transporters and say they got terrorists.
No change here, other than one of geography. Whatever happened to “Bring the Troops Home?” Guess that went out of fashion after Vietnam.
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William Jefferson Defeated In LA-02 — Who’s Next - Democratic Source?
Joseph Cao will be the first Vietnamese member of the House, after his defeat of "embarrassing Democratic crook" William Jefferson.
Congratulations to Ahn Cao, the newly elected representative from the Second District of Louisiana and the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress. Cao ousted William Jefferson, so the Republicans will have a harder time playing the false equivalancy game every time one of their scumbag sitting congressmen is indicted. Cao sounds like a winger for the most part, and was a McCain supporter, but apparently he’s not Vitter/Jindal clone. He’s quoted in this article as saying, "Politics and religious life don’t mix." He’s got degrees in physics, philosophy and law, so he’s evidently brighter than the rest of the droolers in his party, he can’t run for President, and the Dems will get the seat back in two years, so he’s the ideal Republican.
As Howie notes, the district is one of the most solidly blue in the country with an African American majority and has a PVI of D+28, so Cao will never be reelected. The DCCC is no doubt already recruiting, and on my teevee yesterday names like James Carville being bandied about.
Sounds like a job for Accountability Now.
There’s no reason that a progressive can’t be elected in that district, we don’t have to swallow some Blue Dog corporate whore "for the sake of the majority." Nor should it be some patronage gift from a political machine.
We’ll be reaching out to local bloggers and community leaders soon. But if you know anyone in the district who is a great progressive leader who should be running, let us know.
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Rewriting history: the Bush legacy - Democratic Source
Maine Owl points another example of the attempt by supporters of the Bush administration to rewrite history, this time Condi Rice. Yesterday Rice said:
“Across the world, people believed Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction,” she said. “While it’s fair to go back and say, ‘What might we have done differently?’ the truth of the matter is we don’t have that luxury.”
I’ll remind Ms. Rice of what much of the rest of the world said at the time:
24 September 2002, London: 400,000 protest against the invasion;
9 November 2002, Florence, Italy: 1,000,000 protesters;
15 February 2003, 800 cities around the world. From the BBC:
Between six and 10 million people are thought to have marched in up to 60 countries over the weekend - the largest demonstrations of their kind since the Vietnam War.Some of the largest turnouts were seen in countries whose governments have offered the staunchest support for US President George W Bush’s tough stance against Iraq, threatening military action to force it to comply with UN disarmament rules.
15 March 2003, Barcelona: 300,000 protest against the invasion;
15 March 2003, Milan: 400,000 protest against the invasion.
These are just the largest of them - at the time, hundreds and thousands gathered in cities and towns around the globe.
And I didn’t mention the protests against the invasion that took place here in the U.S.
So Ms. Rice, I respectfully want to tell you to go fuck yourself. You are lying. I know that. You know that. The spineless members of the media that allow you to do so without challenge know that.
Please, go away, and prepare for the ignominy that you have so deservedly earned.
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No Christianist Here - Political News
by Chris Bodenner
Adam Nagourney reports:
Mr. Cao was a refugee from Vietnam at age 8, a former Jesuit seminarian, a philosophy student with a penchant for Camus and Dostoyevsky…. Mr. Cao said that while he was studying to be a priest in the1990s, he had “the great opportunity to work with the poor inconditions of extreme poverty” in Mexico and in Vietnamese refugeecamps in Hong Kong — children playing in the slums, children behind bars. He wanted to be a missionary.
“From there, the desire to bring social reforms, or to promote certainsocial change,” Mr. Cao said in an interview Sunday at an outdoor cafein the Uptown neighborhood here. But, he added, “Politics and religiouslife don’t mix.” … “I don’t want to conform to any ideology, to be put into a little corner,” Mr. Cao said.
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The GOP Ushers In Some Change Of Its Own - Today in Politics
by Chris Bodenner
Two years after electing Bobby Jindal, the country’s first Indian-American governor, Louisiana elects Joe Cao, the country’s first Vietnamese-American congressman. In a heavily Democratic, black district that encompasses nearly all of New Orleans, Cao upset Rep. Bill Jefferson (D), the 9-term congressman currently under indictment for bribery.
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1st Vietnamese-American elected to Congress - Democratic Source
The first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress took advantage of dissatisfaction with an incumbent dogged by corruption allegations and reflects the changing nature of New Orleans politics since Hurricane Katrina.
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The Bush Legacy - Cited by Sharpy News
I visited a Big Eastern City several times over the last week, which is and of itself not a big deal. As I walked down the street I saw something that brought home the real meaning of George Bush’s America to me. Homeless Americans by the score. Sleeping on sidewalks and subway grates for warmth on cold late-November/early-December nights. The National Coalition for the Homeless estimates that approximately 3.5 million homeless Americans, 1.35 million of them children (kids, for fucks sake… what did they do to deserve it?). As the economy craters, those statistics are likely to not just increase, but increase exponentially with foreclosures and bailouts of financiers but not the financed. Indeed, new numbers are not available yet and hopefully by the time we know what the numbers for 2008 and 2009 are, perhaps a coherent public policy will be in place to provide a social safety net for the least fortunate among us… but I’m not holding my breath…
The homeless, and most vulnerable members of our country are left to fend for themselves as cuts in already-thin social-services programs get thinner. The military-industrial welfare state of the last eight years has literally taken the food from the mouths of Americans and roofs from over their heads as the Republicans gutted social programs (welfare queens, anyone?). Organizations are springing up behaving as 21st Century "Robin Hoods" placing homeless Americans in homes abandoned by families fleeing foreclosure as mortgages have exploded and the economy fails. Some fleeing homeowners are even paying homeless Americans to live in their abandoned properties as a security measure.
Additionally, buried somewhere in that already too-large number of homeless Americans is another number: an estimated 200,000 Americans who also happen to be veterans. Men and women literally left behind after serving our country, also victims of the military-industrial complex in a more acute way… used and now abused by everyone whose path they cross.
The U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) says the nation’s homeless veterans are mostly males (4 % are females). The vast majority are single, most come from poor, disadvantaged communities, 45% suffer from mental illness, and half have substance abuse problems. America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. Forty-seven percent of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era. More than 67% served our country for at least three years and 33% were stationed in a war zone.
Although accurate numbers are impossible to come by — no one keeps national records on homeless veterans — the VA estimates that nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. And nearly 400,000 experience homelessness over the course of a year. Conservatively, one out of every three homeless men who is sleeping in a doorway, alley or box in our cities and rural communities has put on a uniform and served this country.
The greatest thing about our country has always been it’s commitment to the weakest members of our society, sometimes it took a bit of a push (not always in a good way) and sometimes it took real courage and political leadership to bring change about for the common good (They always hated FDR you know) but Americans have always tried to do the "right thing" when asked. Until the advent of George Bush and the "I’ve got mine America", a movement that began in Philadelphia, Mississippi with Ronald Reagan’s campaign speech and continued on with the takeover of American politics by Republicans whose mantra was "I’ve got mine". Now many folks have nothing… will the new administration make an effort to help them? I hope so. Expect the Republicans and Blue Dogs to fight any sort of social safety net on "fiscal" grounds, while pumping billions into wasted efforts in the War on Drugs, Terror, pork-barrel projects and their fave defense contractors.
It would be nice to believe that the woman in the picture might have a roof over her head someday, but I’m not holding my breath for it to happen in the current economic climate. I guess the best we can do is to not look away, and keep our words as progressives to remember those who have no voice, and to try and speak for them in the new administration.
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