"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Outlandish Josh

How Often Do You Think I Should Post?

On Tue, 2006-09-26 00:45

* Two or three times a week\n* Once a day\n* More than once a day\n* All the friggin' time!\n

Published on Mon, 2006-09-25 14:24

Donation Time

C.R.E.A.M.

Fiscal year 2006 is drawing to a close, and it's election season. It's a big mid-term year here, with a real chance for the Democratic Party to pick up seats in the House, make Bush a lame duck, and start shifting the national focus away from more war and towards a better tomorrow health care, energy independence, and an end to the occupation of Iraq.

I've probably got some expertise volunteering to do at some point, but the most basic action in supporting a campaign is throwing them cash, so as the fundraising quarter runs out, I decided to crack open my wallet.

Here's the list of people I looked at to pick from. You might want to first check and see if there's anything going on in your home district worth getting involved in. NorCal is pretty sleepy as far as the national picture is concerned, so I looked to the NetRoots list for inspiration.

My Contributions:
I split up $100 for four folks: 

Eric Massa (NY-29) 	$25.00
Jerry McNerney (CA-11)  $25.00
Larry Grant (ID-01) 	$25.00
Gary Trauner (WY-01) 	$25.00
ActBlue Tipjar		$5.00

Eric Massa is an ex Navy Officer running in a close race against a weak GOP rubberstamper in upstate NY. I met him at the yearly Kos and he gives a good big-hearted progressive navy guy/catholic speech. I also met the young woman -- Samara Barend -- who ran for this seat in 2004. She lost, but her effort as a 28-year-old 26-year-old (thanks Frank) opened the door here I think, so I feel a little connection to the district.

Jerry McNerney is a PhD in Math and an expert in wind power. He's running in part because after 9/11 his kid joined the Air Force. He's already beat out establishment candidates in the Democratic party primary and is now running against the odious Richard Pombo, a GOP party-line stooge deep in the oil-industry's pockets. 'Nuff said.

My last two picks are a nod to the 50-state-strategy, people who are running deep in GOP territory: my boys Larry and Gary.

Larry Grant is running in Idaho, and seems to have an improbably good chance due to the incumbent's personal abrasiveness and unpopularity even among Republicans.

Gary Trauner is running quite well for the single "at large" congressional seat in Wyoming. He's looking good so far, and if we can win in Wyoming, Montana, and Indiana, that's enough of an edge to run the table in '08.

I also tipped ActBlue 5% because they're doing a bang-up job as honest brokers and red-tape cutters on this stuff.

So these are my horses. I'll follow them down the stretch. Pick some of your own?

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Published on Fri, 2006-09-22 11:31

¡En Fuego!

Chavez en fuego
My dog, callin' Dubya el Diablo, getting laughs from the crowd. It's inflammatory rhetoric, but that's politics. On substance, his critique of Bush's "Freedom is on the March" rhetoric and foreign policy is actually dead-on.

For those of you who are new to this, understand that 95% of what you read about Hugo Chavez in the english-language press is propaganda. He's won solid majorities thrice in internationally certified elections, which is more than I can say for most leaders these days, including our new boy down there in Mexico.

Meistro? A little history, please.

So why the propaganda? Well he's a socialist who uses his country's natural resources to provide infrastructure, medicine and education to the poor, and he's building stronger regional economic ties outside of any of our fancy funds like the IMF or World Bank.

Apparently we're still so afraid of communism that we can't handle this. He's showing us up, so fuck 'em, he's a dictator! Coup d'etat his as, or get someone down there with a poison cigar or something...

Chavez is up for re-election this year, which he does seem likely to win, but it also looks like his opposition won't boycott the political process (as they did in the 2005 parlimentary elections, to ill effect for them). That's good. Instead, they've adopted Chavez's rhetoric of helping the poor, and are critiquing his foreign-aid and military-acquisition programs as unnecessary diversions.

On the downside for them, the Un Nuevo Tiempo (A New Era) party doesn't have much credibility -- still closely tied to the economic elite -- so in spite of the fact that Chavez is vulnerable on just about every issue except education, they probably won't be able to capitalize, this time. But if they keep at it...

The point is, you can hardly call the man a dictator. He may be inheriting Castro's place as the regional champion of socialism, and setting him self up in opposition to US Hegemony, but he's not running a police state or anything, and frankly it's a little embarassing that our media and political elites can only see a Red Menace.

Castro y Chavez

Keep on rockin' in the free world.

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Published on Thu, 2006-09-21 02:36

This is all temporary

I'm still figuring things out. I hope to spend some more hours and really "launch" this weekend. In the mean time I don't see anything wrong with giving y'all a sneak peek.

My goals here:

  • Get my own thing back on track: gonzo blogging of a life less ordinary.
  • Restoring the old-style book-like pages that I started with back in 2001: "Josh's take on such-and-such"
  • The Rebel Unicorn platform: my blogging empire, no tribute required.

Slowly but surely.

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Authentic Experience

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Nerding Out

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