DAY TWO OF THE TAKE BACK AMERICA CONFERENCE

All presidential candidate speeches are up on the ourfuture.org website.

8:30 AM

There were snickers and some boos when Ralph Nader took the stage at the Take Back America conference to introduce Mike Gravel, the gutsy Senator who challenged the Vienam War and backed the Publication of the Pentagon Papers and who now is the longest shot presidential candidate of the group.

“Mike Gravel is conveying wisdom,” he said. Ralph was being Ralph, earnest as ever, intellectually serious, quoting Cicero, attacking corporate power, ad closing with the chant of Powere to The People.

And then Gravel spoke expressing concern with the lack of performance of the Congress. It is appalling. You have to be tough he says. He offers a legislative idea to place criminal penalties in a bill and then pass it, and allow for veto.

Next came New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson introduced by three brothers who served in Vietnam. I am optimistic about our country, and we will put a Democrat in America (cheers).. First step is taking back the Congress and then the White House. He claims that New Mexico is leading the way with energy- and he cites a list of achievements

“Maybe Bush doesn’t follow the Kyoto Agreement, our state does. Mr. President, if you don’t sign it, I will.” His speech is very self-assured, confident. He makes comparisons between his stance calling for NO US troops left in Iraq with other candidate who want an ongoing committment of troops.

He has latched on a laundry list of plans for energy change. This is the program he is cultivating. He has made no reference to his earlier endorsement of nuclear power or his alignment with the big electricity companies…

Report on TomPaine.com

Campaign for America’s Future co-director Robert L. Borosage debated staunch Iraq war defender Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., on the MSNBC news talk show “Hardball with Chris Matthews.”

Borosage offered a realistic assessment of the reality of the war and the truth about how the majority of the public wants their elected representatives to respond. Gingrey, more articulate than President Bush in presenting the White House talking points but equally mindless, presented an argument that amounted to the United States continuing to slam its head against a brick wall.
Matthews asked both Borosage and Gingrey about whether the Bush administration should be held to statements made at the beginning of the so-called troop surge that it would be clear by September whether the injection of additional troops into the civil war would quell the violence. Administration officials have backed away from that timeline, and Gen. David Petraeus, the chief U.S. commander in Iraq, has said that the U.S. is now looking at a years-long commitment of U.S. troops, not unlike the commitment of U.S. troops in South Korea.

Gingrey, endorsing the strategy of endless war, took the opportunity to put a twist on the old “defeatocrat” label Republicans love to brandish. “I will listen to Mr. Petraeus before listening to Mr. Betray-us, those Democratic politicians who are more interested in in making political hay out of this than solving the problem.”

TIME TO GO AS EDWARDS CAME

I was walking out as John Edwards was walking in, or should I say floating in, surrounded on all sides with young energetic supporters with EDWARDS signs. (Were they his kids?) He had a permanent smile on his well coiffed face. He and most of the “major” candidates have come to the TAKE BACK AMERICA conference to pledge allegiance to the hard core activists and most of the issues they raise.

As Edwards & entourage descended, Barrack ”rock star” Obama was on stage already stirring them up with his realization that Americans want something “new,” presumably him. And he is new, and young, and black and multi-everything, articulate. Personable, Engaging and on and on. I would like it all to be true. Is it?

It was hard not to join the big WOW because we are all here looking for someone. Someone to believe in again. Someone to lead. Someone who cares. And Barrack knows how to play to those desires (He had an assist from former Attorney General and journalist/author Roget Wilkins who introed him with two assurances—he’s got the “Stuff,” and he’s black enough—each aimed at different audiences.

I am old enough—here he goes again—to remember the young Senator from Massachusetts, John Kennedy from Brookline Mass, who pulled the White House rabbit out of the hat decades back with that same appeal laced with charisma and controversy—back then, the punditocracy was fixated on whether America would elect a Catholic just as today the question is can a Mormon or Man of Color win the big one.

Obama blew the pronunciation of Conference organizer Bob Borasage’s name but that slight was quickly forgotten as he pranced across the stage, with that smile adding inches to this thin frame, saying “its our turn” in so many words.

Clearly the Dems have recognized that activist groups like MoveOn are big big money raisers and political mood setters. You may not be able to win with them alone but you can’t win without them.

There was only one media panel I could attend led by Julie Bergman Sender, an old friend and Hollywood producer. The focus was on how storytelling techniques have to become central to political ads. In a country which has dumbed it down for years and even depoliticized politics, the idea is that ads have to be emotional, and even personal.

Sure, everyone concedes, issues matter but a candidate’s story these days matters more. Political consultants do research about how to project good character traits and special qualities, like listening, being brave, and often doing the unexpected. The selling of politicians today focus more on how they stand than what they stand for. They want the audience to get a good feeling about them—their sincerity, achievements, family, courage, etc.

What’s the vibe seems to matter more with some audiences than what’s the beef.

In many ways this Take Back America conference is about rebuilding the Democratic Party and taking that back even if America appears more elusive and even if they never owned it before. MoevOn aspires to be the new party and in era where politics is changing dramatically, and as the traditional power base of the party—the unions and blacks—shrink in infuence, there is a vacuum. Who will fill it? Can it even be filled? Stay tuned. …

I missed Edwards but here’s David Swanson’s report:

Kate Michelman introduced John Edwards and he began with the topic of Iraq, saying he was wrong to vote for it. A tough start, and a tough slot - following Obama on the stage. But Edwards said some of the right things and was applauded for it.

This Congress had a mandate, he said. Congress sumbitted a bill with a deadline, and Bush vetoed it. That was the time for Congress to stand strong, Edwards said, and the crowd tended to agree. Edwards insisted that we need to end the occupation of Iraq now, and earned loud applause. But by now, it wasn’t completely clear that Edwards didn’t mean in 2009. He didn’t get into much detail on Iraq. He said we need universal health care “now” and that he’ll do it. He said that on his first day in office he will close Guantanamo.

Edwards said he favors an America in which the president follows the law. What penalty, though, does he favor for presidents who violate the law?

The world, Edwards said, believes that all America cares about is expanding its power and that we are at war with the Muslim world. That has to change. [Loud applause.]

Edwards denounced our lack of action in Darfur and on AIDS.

FROM GENEVA

Mark Stenzler interviews Political singer Ray Heffernan:

MEDIA NEWS: ABC’s Geoff Morrell is the latest media insider to join the Pentagon propagada division. He was a White House correspondent. Another sign of the “convergence” Between the media and the military.

More to come. I take off for Philly later in the day to screen IN DEBT WE TRUST.

INDEPENDENDENT JOURNALIST Michael Yon reports on a new and largely UNREPORTED US offensive in Iraq:

houghts flow on the eve of a great battle. By the time these words are released, we will be in combat. Few ears have heard even rumors of this battle, and fewer still are the eyes that will see its full scope. Even now—the battle has already begun for some—practically no news about it is flowing home. I’ve known of the secret plans for about a month, but have remained silent.

This campaign is actually a series of carefully orchestrated battalion and brigade sized battles. Collectively, it is probably the largest battle since “major hostilities” ended more than four years ago. Even the media here on the ground do not seem to have sensed its scale.

Al Qaeda and associates had little or no presence in Iraq before the current war. But we made huge mistakes early on and are pumping blood and gold into the region to pay for those blunders. When we failed to secure the streets and to restore the stability needed to get Iraq on its feet, we sowed doubt and mistrust. When we disbanded the government and the army, and tolerated corruption and ineptitude in reconstruction, we created a vacuum and filled the ranks of an insurgency-hydra with mostly local talent. But when we flattened parts of Fallujah not once, but twice, primarily in response to the murders of four of our people, we helped create a spectacle of injustice and chaos, the very conditions in which Al Qaeda thrives.

There is no particular spark, no single bolt of lightning, errant campfire or careless cigarette flicked out a window that caused this conflagration. We walked into a dry, cracked land, where the two arteries of Mesopotamia have long pulsed water and blood through scorched lands into the sea. In a place where everything that is not already desert is tinder, sparks tend to catch fire.

When we eviscerated Fallujah, Al Qaeda, who had not been here before, swarmed in and grew like a tumor. There were many insurgent groups already infecting Iraq with many conflicting ideologies and goals, and just as many opportunistic thugs, and some that only needed the band aids and aspirin of open markets and electricity and a feeling of normality. But Al Qaeda has been trying to start a civil war here for several years; chaos speeds the decay they feed on.

During about the first three months of 2005, when I was in Diyala Province (whose capital is Baquba) I first wrote that Iraq was in Civil War. I felt the backlash from that throughout 2005-2006, and worse, we all watched the sad unfolding of greater and greater lies until now, in 2007, when the civil war is systemically toxic….

Joe Dunphy, our military affairs analyst is underwhelmed by this report:

This is extremely thin on useful content for a battlefield dispatch. He asserts that
al Queida is involved in this area, without offering evidence to support it. Other analysts have stated previously that there are probably no more than 2,000 AQ in Iraq, which in theory could be dispatched in pitched battle by 6,000 to 10,000, which is one division, or about 10 percent, or 6.25 percent of the forces reported to be in Iraq presently.

The thrust of the report is to trust Gen. Petraeus, and that tactics that appeared to work in one province on a previous tour will work for the country, scaled up, (which does not allow for adaptibility of the opponent). The lack of real reporting is especially glaring when compared with, say, Ernest Hemingway’s June 11, 1941 reporting on rubber supplies in Dutch East India, which outlined what could happen if Japan seized supplies there.

If one had read Hemingway’s reporting then, and acted on it, it would have correctly indicated the “Strike South” strategy, disguised as carefully as possible, and described in Japan’s Imperial
Conspiracy, by historian David Bergamini. The main differnce between the wars seems to be that the US codebreakers did have the Japanese Code, and knew much about impending plans, whereas in Iraq the US seems to have difficulty even in developing sufficient translators. Which makes the burden on accurate battlefield reporting even more critical. In sum, Yon is nowhere near the standards set by Hemingway, and for America that is a great loss.

BACK IN NYC

I made a stop in Philly to screen IN DEBT WE TRUST to the NACAA convention, an organization of people who work in agencies enforcing consumer protection laws….They seemed to really like it and mny promised to help us disribute the DVD (InDebtWeTrust.Com)

Back in NYC, I picked up the NY TIMES to discover that the famous Chelsea Hotel up the street from me is now under new management and is unlikely to be the haven for artists that it has been over the decades..Another great NY institution may be going. I also saw this story about another sleazier NY institution which is long gone. This is from Newsday:

Rudy missing in action for Iraq panel
Giuliani’s campaign fundraising kept him from commitment to panel studying Iraq.

BY CRAIG GORDON
craig.gordon@newsday.com

June 18, 2007, 11:41 PM EDT

WASHINGTON — Rudolph Giuliani’s membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel’s top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said.

Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war.

He cited “previous time commitments” in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why — the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani’s lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.

Giuliani failed to show up for a pair of two-day sessions that occurred during his tenure, the sources said — and both times, they conflicted with paid public appearances shown on his recent financial disclosure. Giuliani quit the group during his busiest stretch in 2006, when he gave 20 speeches in a single month that brought in $1.7 million.

On one day the panel gathered in Washington — May 18, 2006 — Giuliani delivered a $100,000 speech on leadership at an Atlanta business awards breakfast. Later that day, he attended a $100-a-ticket Atlanta political fundraiser for conservative ally Ralph Reed, whom Giuliani hoped would provide a major boost to his presidential campaign.

The month before, Giuliani skipped the session to give the April 12 keynote speech at an economic conference in South Korea for $200,000, his financial disclosure shows.

And if that is not dismaying enough cor you, try this on — a story about how Israel is trying to “upgrade its image.” (PM Olmert was in DC today meeting with Bush which probably means he was seeking “permission” from the Commander in Chief of the World to escalate military action against Hamas. Prediction: I feel re-invasion of Gaza coming on.)

Now check this out:

The nation of Israel is re-branding to become more appealing to young men. What’s the best way to do this? With a steamy Maxim.com photo-shoot with the sexiest female members of the Israeli Defence Force!

Check out the girls and guns at Maxim.com:

So this is what it has come to–from Exodus to T & A. What a Shonda!

Happy Juneteenth–the day the slaves were freed.

comments to dissector@mediachannel.org