Jolie Rouge

Lawmaker's Son Charged in Election Day Tire-Slashing
By GRETCHEN EHLKE

MILWAUKEE (AP) - The sons of a first-term congresswoman and Milwaukee's former acting mayor were among five Democratic activists charged Monday with slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans to drive voters and monitors to the polls on Election Day.

Sowande Omokunde, son of Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., and Michael Pratt, the son of former Milwaukee acting mayor Marvin Pratt, were among those charged with criminal damage to property, a felony that carries a maximum punishment of 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The activists are accused of flattening the tires on 25 vehicles rented by the state Republican Party to get out the vote and deliver poll watchers Nov. 2. Also charged were Lewis Caldwell and Lavelle Mohammad, both from Milwaukee, and Justin Howell of Racine.

The GOP rented more than 100 vehicles that were parked in a lot adjacent to a Bush campaign office. The party planned to drive poll watchers to polling places by 7 a.m. and deliver any voters who didn't have a ride. A criminal complaint said the defendants originally planned to put up Democratic yard signs, placards and bumper stickers at the Republican office in a scheme they called ``Operation Elephant Takeover.'' But the plan was dropped when they learned a security guard was posted at the GOP office, the complaint said.

One witness told investigators the five defendants, dressed in ``Mission Impossible'' type gear, black outfits and knit caps, left the Democratic Party headquarters at about 3 a.m. on Nov. 2, and returned about 20 minutes later, extremely excited and talking about how they had slashed the tires.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Seth Boffeli said the five were paid employees of John Kerry's presidential campaign, but were not acting on behalf of the campaign or party. ``This is not something we engage in, or encourage. We had to make it clear that this is something these individuals were doing on their own,'' Boffeli said.

Some Republican officials have criticized Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann, a Democrat, for taking more than two months to bring charges. McCann said FBI agents were involved in interviewing witnesses in four states: Georgia, Virginia, Maryland and New York. ``We asked the FBI knowing that this probably wouldn't be their first priority,'' he said.


Rick Wiley, state GOP executive director, discovered the vandalism on the morning of Election Day. ``It was unbelievable that people could stoop this low in a political campaign,'' he said. ``I figured it had to be someone from the opposition. But I didn't think someone on the paid Kerry campaign would do this.''


Wiley didn't say whether the vandalism prevented anyone from voting, but said poll watchers were about two hours late.


Moore did not immediately return a call seeking comment.



01/24/05 14:40

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/st...830.htm&sc=1110
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__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

The Ruthless Party
Mon Jan 31, 2005


Washington (The Weekly Standard) Vol. 010, Issue 20 - 2/7/2005
- ON THE EVE of the election in Iraq, Democratic senator Edward Kennedy called President Bush's Iraq policy "a catastrophic failure." He demanded that American troops immediately begin to withdraw. "We have no choice," he declared, "but to make the best we can of the disaster we have created in Iraq." Kennedy said the retreat of American forces should be completed "as early as possible in 2006," and suggested that, in Iraq, American troops are a bigger problem than terrorists.


Though appalling, Kennedy's statement was not out of character for Democrats these days. "I don't like to impugn anyone's integrity," said Democratic senator Mark Dayton, before impugning the integrity of Condoleezza Rice. "But I really don't like being lied to, repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally. It is wrong, it is undemocratic, it is un-American, and it is dangerous."

After Rice took exception to being called untruthful by Democratic senator Barbara Boxer, Boxer complained on TV: "She turned and attacked me."

This is madness, but there is method in it. The talk among congressional Democrats is about the tactics Newt Gingrich used as House minority whip in 1993 and 1994. As they remember it, Gingrich opposed, blocked, attacked, zinged, or at least criticized everything President Clinton and Democratic leaders proposed. It was a scorched-earth approach, Democrats believe. And it worked, crippling Clinton and resulting in the 1994 election that gave Republicans control--lasting control, it turned out--of the House and Senate. Now Democrats, after losing three straight elections, hope brutal tactics will work for them.

So they ganged up on Rice, accusing her of lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though they had relied on the same faulty intelligence about WMD. They blamed Alberto Gonzales, as chief White House counsel, of fostering the torture of captured terrorists. All he had done, however, was render a legal opinion on the status of terrorists under the Geneva Convention. As most experts agree, terrorists aren't covered. Kennedy threw the word "quagmire" around like confetti. And so on. What was the initial response of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to the president's idea of reforming Social Security ? Bush wants to "destroy" the system, Reid insisted.

Yet Democrats act as if they're taking the moral high ground. Listen to Howard Dean, who's favored to become the next Democratic national chairman. Asked in an un-aired interview with Fox News to list his supporters for chairman, Dean said: "It's not likely I'm gonna make an announcement like that on Fox . . . because Fox is the propaganda outlet of the Republican party . . . . I have to weigh the legitimacy that it gives you."

Dean is delusional. He and other Democrats cannot confer or deny legitimacy. Nor do they really understand the lessons of the Gingrich era. True, Newt used rough tactics to tear down Democratic proposals and challenge Democratic leaders. He was relentless. But he was also an idea factory of conservative concepts and initiatives. His goal was to attract conservative voters who weren't Republicans. And he succeeded.

The 1994 breakthrough "was the culmination of a long process in which voters' ideology finally got in line with their partisanship," columnist David Brooks explained recently in the New York Times. "The Democrats today . . . have all the liberals. What they lack is support from middle-class white families in fast-growing suburbs. But by copying the Gingrich tactics--or what they think of as Gingrich tactics--of hyperpartisanship and ruthless oppositionalism, they will only alienate those voters even more."

Brooks is correct. Democrats misunderstand their situation. Their view is that Republicans have been mean and bruising while they've been too nice and forgiving. That's right. They think former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who was plainly obsessed with obstructing Bush at every turn, was too kindly. The lesson of the 2004 election for Democrats, then, is that they need to play rough. The real lesson, of course, is that blatant obstructionism is a failed strategy. It's what caused Daschle to lose his seat.

The media tolerate or even encourage Democratic rage. But the White House can't afford to. Senate Democrats have enough votes to block major Bush initiatives like Social Security reform and to reject Bush appointees, including Supreme Court nominees. They may be suicidal, but they could undermine the president's entire second term agenda. At his news conference last week, Bush reacted calmly to their vitriolic attacks, suggesting only a few Democrats are involved. Stronger countermeasures will be needed, including an unequivocal White House response to obstructionism, curbs on filibusters, and a clear delineation of what's permissible and what's out of bounds in dissent on Iraq. Too much is at stake to wait for another Democratic defeat in 2006.

--Fred Barnes, for the Editors



http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...eruthlessparty

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

IT'S OUR PARTY, YOU CAN CRY IF YOU WANT TO
Wed Jan 19, 2005
By Ann Coulter

In what The New York Times called Angola's "worst crisis" in "nearly 30 years" in December 1992, the country erupted into civil war. By January 1993, the streets were piled with thousands of dead bodies. In the prior year, hundreds of thousands had died of starvation in Somalia. Millions more were still at risk.

Also in 1993, January floods left dozens dead and thousands homeless in Tijuana, Mexico. Russia was, according to a New York Times editorial, on the brink of disaster, facing economic circumstances like those "that helped bring forth Hitler." Nine people were killed in a volcano in Colombia in mid-January, including American scientists. In Bosnia, according to the Times, hundreds had died of starvation and exposure in a matter of days.


"It has all been so much fun," Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd gushed in The New York Times in January 1993. It was Bill Clinton's one-week inaugural celebration. "Is it too much to ask that it go on forever?" (For those who loved America, the next eight years would only seem to go on forever.)

Rich and Dowd quoted Hollywood agent Karen Russell, saying: "I'm in this fantasy world. I haven't slept. I'm punch drunk. ... I just feel like I'm in this place called Clinton-land" -- which, if it were a theme park, could bill itself as "the sleaziest place on Earth!" Russell, they said, "spoke for everyone."


While dead bodies rotted in the streets of Angola and Somalia, the only "dead soldiers" in evidence in Clinton-land were the empty Cristal bottles lining the parade route. The most massive relief efforts that week took place at the rows of portable toilets circling each site of drunken Clintonista revelry.


Instead of having the usual Inauguration Day in 1993, Clinton had an "Inauguration Week," with high-tech pageantry, large-screen TVs on the mall, Hollywood direction and, indeed, half of Hollywood. The amount of money that would have been saved just by holding the inauguration in Brentwood could have averted the Rwandan tragedy Clinton ignored just a few years later.

The spokesman for Clinton's 1993 Inaugural Committee said the inaugural events would cost about $25 million -- largesse exceeded only by the $50 million Ken Starr was forced to spend when "Clintonland" turned out to be populated with felons. Think of all the starving children in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia and elsewhere that $25 million could have fed! And don't even get me started on Michael Moore's "on location" food budget!


I wouldn't mention it, except for the Times' recent editorial snippily remarking that the amount of foreign aid to tsunami victims offered by the United States within the first few days of the disaster was "less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities." By that logic, why hold the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, or spend money on restaurants and theater productions praised in The New York Times? That money could go to tsunami victims!

A letter writer to the Times redoubled the Times' bile, claiming to be "embarrassed for our country" on account of the government's "pathetic initial offer of aid" to the tsunami victims. Yet he was still willing to throw away 37 cents on a postage stamp to send his letter -- money that could have been spent on the relief effort! (One strongly suspects the letter writer was embarrassed for his country long before the tsunami hit and will remain so long after.)

Another letter writer suggested the first lady wear a used dress to the inauguration to "honor the young people who are dying in her husband's misbegotten war." (To honor John Kerry's position on Iraq, Mrs. Bush would have to order an expensive gown and then, after it was delivered, decide she didn't want to pay for it.)


Hollywood liberals could not be reached for comment on the cost of the inauguration because they were being fitted for gowns and jewelry worth millions of dollars in anticipation of Oscar night.


Speaking of which, I just remembered: George Soros is worth $7 billion! Couldn't he get by on, say, $1 billion and donate the rest to the tsunami victims? If gun owners have to explain why they "need" a so-called "assault rifle," shouldn't Soros have to explain why he "needs" $7 billion? Last year, Soros announced that the central focus of his life would be removing Bush from office. Would that Soros could refocus that energy on alleviating the suffering of tsunami victims.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...cryifyouwantto

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

packrat9940

Sounds like Jolie Rouge just might be on Bush's payroll IMO

Jolie Rouge

A cultural disconnect in Dixie
Mon Feb 7, 2005
By Dan Gilgoff

DURHAM, N.C.--The hundred or so Democratic activists gathered in an auditorium at North Carolina Central University on a January weeknight to meet with state party bigwigs have each been given two paper flags--one green, one red. When someone says something they agree with, attendees are supposed to wave green flags; if they disagree, they wave the red. Plenty of the proposals elicit green flags, like withdrawing from Iraq. Then a member of the state party's executive committee suggests reaching out to NASCAR dads. "We have churches and values," she says, "and we have to make that clear." A wave of red flags ripples across the room. Grumbles activist Don Esterling, 62: "We don't need to be Republican light."

Or maybe they do. In the American South, the ranks of Democratic senators have shrunk from 20 to four since 1980, and the party's presidential ticket has lost every state for the second time in a row. "This is the worst it's been for Democrats here . . . since Reconstruction," says Emory University Prof. Merle Black. And yet a handful of "red" state governors, including North Carolina's Mike Easley, Tennessee's Phil Bredesen, and Virginia's Mark Warner, have proved Democrats can win in the South, partly by irking party activists with NRA endorsements and support for capital punishment. "I'm a former prosecutor, a hunter, love to drive race cars, have very strong religious beliefs," says Easley. "That's everything you'd think of as conservative." But while it's possible for Easley to distance himself from the national party, it's a tougher gambit for presidential hopefuls.


Democrats lost their iron grip on Dixie after spearheading the civil rights bills of the 1960s. The New South's economic boom attracted fiscally conservative northerners, while the political realignment of the region's evangelical Christians hastened the GOP ascendancy. The last few years have seen, for the first time, more southern voters identifying as Republicans than as Democrats or independents. That helps explain why, last fall, five Senate seats vacated by retiring Democrats fell into GOP hands.


Values. But the South's successful Democrats have compensated for liberal stances on social issues like abortion by convincing voters of their personal values. Easley, for example, is pro-choice but talks openly about his faith. "If people see the candidate as a strong believer," says Easley adviser Mac McCorkle, "issues take care of themselves." Former four-term North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, a Democrat, says he framed educational initiatives as what God wants : "Too many of our candidates are reluctant to mention God. [Voters] think if you don't talk about it, you must not have those feelings."


Kerry discussed his faith on the campaign trail reluctantly and was perceived in the South as culturally foreign, "a windsurfer and snowboarder," says University of North Carolina Prof. Ferrel Guillory. While Tennessee's Bredesen is, like Kerry, a northeasterner--raised in New York State--he stressed his rural upbringing and trap-shooting prowess on the stump. "They will vote for a Democrat here, but they have to feel good about the person," says Tennessee Democratic Chairman Randy Button.


Even if Democratic Senate and presidential hopefuls learn to connect personally with southern voters, it's unclear if the winning strategies of southern Democratic state officeholders can hold up in national races. Virginia's Warner, for instance, has reined ina spiraling budget deficit and instituted popular education reforms but has been able to duck divisive national issues like the Iraq war. Southern voters want button-down governors who "keep schools open and roads paved," says Guillory, "but see federal officeholders much more ideologically." Which means, in North Carolina, many voters split ballots between Easley and Bush. "[Easley has] done right by education and attracted employers," says Ann Barnhill, 50, a Greenville lawyer who voted for Easley but backed Bush to show wartime military support and because she detects a softening national morality.


Can Democrats produce a nominee in '08 who wins over southerners without bringing on "Republican light" charges from party activists? Easley says recent history isn't reassuring. "Too often, we're cheering the candidate at the convention," he says, "while looking around at one another saying, 'Hmmm . . . he's not gonna do well at home.' "




http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...connectindixie

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Democratic Party starting to look for survival strategy
-- Joe Scarborough

The Democratic Party continues sinking slowly in the waters of public opinion, but at least some of its leaders are beginning to understand that ignoring the rising conservative tide is no longer an option.

For the past four years, too many Democratic leaders and their allies in the mainstream press have convinced themselves that the problems confronting Democrats were external— a lying president, a corrupt Supreme Court, a rigged election.

After the 2004 election, Democrats and their allies stopped blaming Katherine Harris and Justice Scalia and instead aimed their wrath toward Jesus and God. Manhattan and Georgetown editorialists groused that an electorate stoned on the fumes of high octane religion had gone crazy and had taken America with them.

The New York Times ran post-election columns by historian Gary Wills, who suggested that the United States had more in common with al Qaeda than France because the majority of Americans believed in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

Times columnist Maureen Down bleakly reported that with the election of George W. Bush, evangelicals were marching America toward a new dark age.

Two months later, Democrats in and out of the media stopped suggesting that the president and his party were Jesus freaks and began ridiculing Reagan’s party by suggesting Republicans were utopian dreamers whose vision for the Middle East was dangerously in conflict with the cold realities of the region.

January was filled with exceedingly grim predictions for the Iraq election from the likes of Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore.

After the remarkable election turnout, the Democratic Party fell into yet another period of chaos and confusion.

Party leaders like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry whined through the epic events unfolding in the Middle East while Jimmy Carter and his ilk opted to keep their mouths shut rather than praise democracy’s flowering in the most oppressed region on earth.

Fear and loathing has continued to grip Democrats since the January 30 elections, but fortunately for the two-party system, a few intellectual forces within the party are offering constructive suggestions for a party no longer relevant to national politics.

Recently, James Carville and Stan Greenberg offered the radical suggestion that the Democratic Party stand for something other than obstruction.

"So, we ask progressives to consider, why have the Republicans not crashed and burned? Why has the public not taken out their anger on the Congressional Republicans and the president? We think the answer lies with voters' deeper feelings about the Democrats who appear to lack direction, conviction, values, advocacy or a larger public purpose.”

The liberal founder of the Washington Monthly admitted that too many of his ideological brothers and sisters were disappointed by the good news coming out of Iraq. Charles Peters reminded his fellow Democrats that they must reconcile themselves to the fact that they must support the troops and stop wishing them failure on a daily basis.

The same sentiment was expressed in this month’s New York Magazine. Kurt Andersen wrote of how good news out of Iraq felt like very bad news to Manhattan elites.

Andersen said he and his fellow liberals faced their toughest ideological and moral test since Ronald Reagan took down the Soviet Empire with policies mocked daily in the newsrooms and publishing houses of Midtown Manhattan. Andersen concluded that liberals had a Hobbesian choice to make: Support George W. Bush’s efforts in Iraq or support the terrorists. The author suggested that for too long, the Left has been in a de facto alliance with those killing U.S. troops and innocent Iraqis.

That American opinion leaders may have been siding with Arab terrorists may seem like startling news to many in Middle America, but nothing new to those of us who have been studying the way the press and the Democratic Party has been operating over the past three years.

Maybe a few intellectual leaders on the left are finally realizing that they can no longer make their livings attacking the commander-in-chief’s war on terror any more than they could continue quietly cheering for the Soviet Union during the early days of the Cold War.

We Middle Americans may believe in Jesus, but we ain’t stupid.

After a while, even we can figure out whose side politicians and reporters are on. And over the past few years, it has been clear that while most Democrats are not openly cheering for the terrorists killing our troops, neither were they in America’s corner.

For the survival of the Democratic Party, that has to change.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

The Democrats' solution
-- Joe Scarborough

Yesterday I told you the Democrats' problem. Today, I provide the solution.

It's not a cure most Democratic activists and party leaders will want to hear. But then again that may explain why they've only elected one candidate to the White House in 25 years.

The Dean Democrats are veering wildly left in part because that is the way they are being pulled by grassroots forces.

The Washington Post's Dan Balz explained that groups like moveon.org, who almost nominated Howard Dean as their presidential candidate, remain convinced that John Kerry lost in 2004 not because he was too liberal, but because he was not liberal enough.

If you are a Democratic activist or leader who believes Kerry should have been more liberal, don't bother reading the rest of this blog. You are Karl Rove's best friend and delusional when it comes to the political realities facing your party.

For those with ears to hear, here it goes:

The Democrats' first target should be winning back the Senate in 2006. There are a number of "red state" Senate seats up for grabs next year and only a certain type of Democrat can win them.

Republicans have feasted for years on "moderate" Democrats running in these areas. Most Senate Democratic candidates who go up in flames in Middle America usually are almost pro-life, almost pro-gun, almost pro-public prayer, and almost pro-defense. But because of the radical nutbars running their party, these mid-American Democrats can't sync up with the sensibilities of the states they want to represent.

So national Democrats are faced with two options: (1) Continue feeling good about themselves by supporting candidates whose views are closer to those shared by voters in Manhattan, New York (not Manhattan, Kansas); or, (2) drop the litmus test and start playing to win.

Maybe a pro-life, pro-gun, pro-God will never win the Democratic nomination for president.

But there is no reason the party of Bill Clinton can't retake the Senate by winning in places like Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Arizona, and Wyoming.

To win the seats required to seize control of Capitol Hill committees, D.C. Dems are going to have to swallow hard.

Speaking of taking bitter medicine, I know it will hurt party activists, but Hillary Clinton must be avoided at all costs. She remains one of the most divisive figures in American politics. And while she may drive up voters in her base, that base is outnumbered by millions of Americans who consider her to be one of the most liberal forces in American politics.

She will be "borked" by her words, her actions, and her scandals while serving as our First Lady.

Instead, the Democrats must find a governor or senator from Middle America who canhold the base and bring a few states over to the Democratic camp.

The margin of error is so close on the national level that a Red State Democratic ticket— whose president and vice-president pick up their home states— is all that's required to put Democrats back in the oval office.

After winning the Senate in 2006 and the White House in 2008, the party can then turn its attention to redistricting in the House to make that process competitive.

You may be asking yourself why a former Republican Congressman would be telling Democrats that they can gain power through the power of moderation.

It's because I know their national leaders will be too stupid to take it.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?