Kris Schultz

Scooter Libby gets 5 indictments for doing a bad thing, and people are going to say Democrats are gloating a bit at all the pain and suffering this causes at the White House. Sure, I did for about 5 seconds. And then it dawned on me - THIS IS ONLY BUT A SMIDGE OF THE KARMA THEY'VE EARNED.

This time, it's indictments about outing Valerie Plame Wilson and putting the lives of government assets at risk. But I dream of a day that the Bush Administration finally grasps all the pain they've caused this country, a la Earl from my new favorite show My Name Is Earl.

Earl is a guy who did alot of bad things in his life, but then he won the lottery and was immediately hit by a car and lost his ticket. He was in his hospital bed when he heard Carson Daily say he believed in Karma - that what you send out into the world comes back to you. If you do good things, then good things will come to you.

Finally, Earl got it - he was hit by that car because he had done so many bad things that he didn't deserve the lottery ticket (ahem, no Senator Gregg stories here, please, that is a digression that irks me since I do good things and my blasted powerball ticket is now at the trash heap.) Earl then sets about rather humorously to write a list of all the bad things he's done and try to fix them.

Here's what I'd rather enjoy than having glee at Scooter Libby's indictments today.

Let's help the President out - here is just a start - the first five off the top of my head of the list of things he's done wrong. If he starts to atone for the things he did wrong by trying to right them, perhaps he could just turn things around and good things - like better poll numbers - will come to him again. But he's got alot of work to do, dontcha think? And wouldn't the episodes be just great seeing him trying to undo the wrongs he's done? (with bows to www.televisionwithoutpity.com)

Episode I. Stole the election in Florida ballot fiasco from Al Gore.

recaplet: Found Al Gore in California producing his new TV channel. Said, "Mkay, Al, you did win the popular vote, and my friends and family stole Florida's electoral votes from you... you wanna be President?" Al said, "No thanks. I like spending time with Tipper. But could I at least go sit in the chair for a bit? George, your saying that redeems you - scratch me off the list."

II. Spent Billions of dollars the government didn't really have on a war because of WMDs that didn't exsist at the cost of over 2,000 U.S. soldiers lives, thousands more injured, and a hundred thousand Iraqis, most of whom were innocent civilians.

recaplet: President Bush flies across the country visiting wounded soldiers
and families of those who died apologizing for sending soldiers to war on a lie, then
holds a national bake sale to raise funds to repay the U.S. Treasury for the cost. Then he flies to Iraq where he asks the new government how he can make it up to their newly democratic country - hoping bring in voting machines was enough and he gets a pass.

III. Gave big tax breaks to the rich at the expense of the most vulnerable in our society, like children, the elderly, and disabled.

recaplet: signs a law that retroactively reverses crazy tax breaks for the rich,
and then re-funds programs for the vulnerable which were previously cut. His signing ceremony is performed in a Robin Hood costume.

IV. Put the short term profits of corporations ahead of protecting our air, water, lands, and the wildlife that live on them.

recaplet: became a member of the Sierra Club, got rid the Presidential limo in
lieu of a union-made hybrid vehicle, and started a commitment to getting
back to nature beyond just mountain biking... but does something pro-environment every day from then on. (Reminiscint of how Earl has to constantly pick up litter, since he used to be such a litter-bug.)

V. Ignored at first, and now only partially funds the U.S. commitment to the United Nations' millennium Development Goals containing the best solutions to save needless deaths due to the emergency situations of extreme poverty and preventable disease -mainly in subsaharan Africa - equating to 30 hurricane Katrinas a day.

recaplet:commits to the MDGs at the UN, and then gets congressional approval.
Decided to throw in the bonus safari trip for him and his Dad and see the
suffering himself on the side - but imagine the fish they caught in the
Ngorongoro Crater! But they actually pitch in at an AIDS hospital, and
bring in a ton of drugs from their friends in the pharmaceutical industry.

By Gene Sperling

Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Amid the turmoil swirling around the administration of President George W. Bush, there is one positive Bush legacy Democrats ought to recognize: the increase in bipartisan support for U.S. aid to fight AIDS and global poverty.

For most of the 1990s, the Republican leadership was either cool to foreign assistance or bent on cutting it. After seizing control of Congress in 1994, the Republican majority won a 10 percent reduction in foreign aid. During this period, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms referred to aid as ``money down a rat hole,'' while as late as 2000, former House Majority leader Tom DeLay accused Democrats who voted for aid of ``putting Ghana over Grandma?''

The year 2000 was a turning point. The Reverend Pat Robertson and Republican members of Congress such as Spencer Bachus and John Kasich -- buoyed by the multi-denominational ``Jubilee 2000'' grassroots movement dedicated to canceling the debt of developing nations -- joined with President Bill Clinton and key Democrats to secure congressional support for a G8 plan to provide tens of billions of dollars of debt relief to the world's poorest nations.

Although this was an important victory, the fact that it took a full-court press to overcome intense congressional resistance was discouraging, particularly given how much more the U.S. still needs to contribute to the global war on poverty.

Nixon to China

That is why President Bush's call for a multibillion dollar emergency plan for AIDS relief as well as the so-called Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) to provide assistance to countries deemed to perform well on measures of governance, investing in people and promoting economic freedom, was a Nixon- going-to-China moment in development assistance.

Certainly the administration's record is not beyond criticism. The U.S. is still following too slowly an emerging consensus among richer nations on increased global development assistance.

The Bush administration was seen to have lagged behind the U.K. and European nations in pledging to do its share on global poverty at the recent G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. And there are serious concerns about whether ideology has restrained the effectiveness of how the AIDS money has been spent.

Even with these caveats, President Bush deserves significant credit for winning aid increases that could have never passed a Republican Congress in the 1990s.

Proposing Cuts

Will this bipartisan support hold? In a disturbing sign, the Congressional Republican Study Committee recently released a plan by Representative Mike Pence of Indiana and Jeb Hensarling of Texas proposing dramatic cuts to development assistance, including the complete elimination of the MCA, which is up for reauthorization this year.

Critics on both the left and right -- and even within the administration -- point to the fact that it took three years after President Bush's original announcement and more than 14 months after congressional authorization to agree on the first MCA compact, finalized with Madagascar in April 2005.

Even after signing agreements in recent months with four more nations -- Cape Verde, Georgia, Honduras, and Nicaragua -- the MCA has committed just about $200 million a year through 2010, less than a tenth of the funding originally announced.

These criticisms don't justify eliminating the funds dedicated to the MCA. A better plan would be to broaden the MCA while still keeping its focus on strong country plans, performance and accountability.

Second Tier

One reform proposal would be to create what Tom Hart, a top official at DATA (Debt AIDS Trade for Africa, founded by U2 frontman Bono), and I have called a ``second tier'' for the MCA.

Currently, 90 percent of MCA funds go to the few first-tier nations that score well on a range of positive indicators. Allowing assistance only for this handful of high performers not only has prevented dollars from getting out the door, but also provides little incentive for reform for those nations that are still far from such a record.

A second tier would say to countries: even if you have not shown progress in every area, we will support you if you have an initiative to give children a free, quality education; basic health services; or clean water, and if you can show you are meeting rigorous standards of accountability and transparency.

Focus on Performance

This reform would maintain the MCA's focus on performance and on ensuring that recipient nations feel ownership of their assistance strategies. What would be different is that it would give a nation like Ethiopia or Rwanda an incentive to undertake dramatic reforms in health and education, even if it is years away from reaching first-tier status.

So far, the MCA has done very little in the areas of education and health, in part because it is seen as discouraging such investments in favor of infrastructure and the private sector.
While there is currently in place a scaled-down version of this idea, a strong second tier would enable up to 50 percent of MCA funds to support such significant reforms.

Because such a second tier would help fund other congressional proposals for clean water and education for girls in poor nations, it could also help provide the MCA with sorely needed bipartisan support.

This type of reform makes far more sense than simply rushing to the misguided conclusion that we have no other way to reduce our budget deficit and curtail spending than by cutting assistance for the poorest children, whether here in the U.S. or around the world.

To contact the writer of this column:Gene Sperling in Washington at gsperling@cfr.org.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051019/the_new_war_on_the_poor.php

by Paul Waldman
October 19, 2005

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America. His next book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn From Conservative Success, will be released in the spring by John Wiley & Sons.

Now that President Bush’s plan for partial privatization of Social Security has been spat out of the public’s mouth in disgust and shelved indefinitely, the left has a rare victory it can savor. And one coalition, consisting in part of those who formed Americans United to Protect Social Security, is looking to duplicate that success on a new issue: the conservative attempt to use the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for a new war on the poor. A group of progressive organizations has formed the Emergency Campaign for American Priorities , a “grassroots, grass-tops, public relations and lobbying campaign to convince Congress to stop a plan backed by President Bush and the Republican congressional leadership that would drastically cut programs that primarily benefit the poor and middle class to finance tax cuts that benefit only the wealthiest among us.”

Will they succeed? Can progressives without any institutional power beat back yet another retrograde Republican plan? The answer is a qualified yes, but it will be an uphill battle.

As many have begun to notice, while President Bush was speaking nice words about the effects of racism and poverty on those who became Katrina’s victims, Republicans in the administration and Congress were preparing to use the tragedy as an opportunity to pursue the same agenda they had in mind all along. With an executive order, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that government contractors pay the “prevailing wage” in the area of operation to their workers, thereby enabling contractors to slash the wages of workers helping to rebuild the Gulf Coast. In order to pay for the reconstruction, Republicans in Congress have proposed cutting programs like Medicaid that directly serve the poor. Some have even suggested cutting taxes for the wealthy, because—well, because that seems to be the Republican solution to pretty much any problem.

As Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities told The New York Times: “We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn't actually happening.”

But 11 years into the Republican Revolution, should any of us be surprised?

Even as Katrina recedes from the front pages, the opportunity for progressives to pose to the public the kinds of fundamental questions that define the ideological divide in America has not been lost. What sorts of security do we expect from our government? Who is it that government supposed to serve? What are our moral obligations to the vulnerable amongst us? What does our vision of the good society look like? If progressives can generate discussion on these questions, they will be able to put conservatives back even farther on their heels.

This battle is fundamentally different from the Social Security fight in a number of ways. For starters, there is not a single bill or policy proposal progressives are opposing, but a whole host of moves coming from the executive branch and Congress.

Secondly, the argument progressives were making on Social Security—that Republicans wanted to take away something the public values highly—was both simple and extraordinarily powerful. People are extremely loss-averse, and Social Security may be the single most popular program the federal government administers.
So the argument about what the Republicans are up to needs to be made in a way that links the current issues to the larger ideological divide between progressives and conservatives. The cronyism and corruption that courses through this administration is not simply an accident or the acts of a few “bad apples”—it is the direct consequence of the conservative creed. For decades, conservatives have been telling us that government can’t do anything right, and when they got complete power, they set out to prove themselves right. Of course they installed incompetents like Mike Brown in crucial positions, because they just don’t care whether government serves the people. Of course every event, positive or negative, has been an excuse to cut taxes on the wealthy, because that’s what they believe in above all else. Of course Tom DeLay and Karl Rove are under investigation for abuse of power, because power is what government is all about for them.

It is critical that as ECAP and others make these arguments and beat back Republican efforts to strike at the most vulnerable, they do so in terms that are persuasive to all Americans. “We must help the poor,” for all its moral rightness, is not the most politically effective argument one can make. The sad fact is that among all the things the federal government does, direct aid to the poor (welfare, food stamps, etc.) is among the least popular. That doesn’t mean the public wants to dismantle those programs; their feelings run more toward grudging acceptance than outright hostility. But it does mean that arguments about poverty must flow from larger progressive principles that apply across classes. Cutting Medicaid is wrong because it deprives Americans of security. Pushing for lower wages is wrong because it deprives hardworking people of opportunity.

Progressives need to pick out a small number of the policies the Republicans are pursuing and bring them to the front of the rhetorical line. One perfect candidate is the suspension of Davis-Bacon. People believe that an honest day’s work deserves an honest day’s pay. And it isn’t as though there will be a dearth of contractors willing to come to the Gulf Coast and feed at the enormous federal trough. Changing the rules so that the contractors can charge poverty wages and increase their profits even more, giving the residents of the Gulf Coast who suffered so much another slap in the face? How can that possibly be defended?

The answer is, it can’t, which is why progressives should make the Republicans try. Just as they did on Social Security, progressives will be successful if they force members of Congress to defend something their constituents are against. The turnaround in Republican rhetoric was remarkable: After most every Republican had been advocating some form of Social Security privatization for years, when the issue actually came to the fore and members had to lay their markers down in a public way, Republican after Republican jumped off Bush’s sinking privatization ship.

But Bush’s Social Security scheme depended on public persuasion, something that isn’t true of executive orders and the budget reconciliation process, where much of the new war on the poor will be waged. Progressives need to realize that Republicans are probably going to accomplish at least some of what they’re trying to do. So they must be made to pay a price. Sometimes you can win by losing—although it’s even better to win by winning, which is what happened with Social Security. Not only did the president’s plan fail, but the debate sharpened distinctions between progressives and conservatives, and Democrats, for a change, actually seemed to be standing firm on a fundamental principle. In the case of the post-Katrina debate, since progressives don’t have any institutional levers at their command, they need to tell a story about what the Republicans are up to that advances the larger progressive cause.

The lesson of recent events is that when the American people get a good, long look at the content and consequences of the conservative agenda, they want no part of it. It is only when that agenda can be enacted stealthily that it is able to move forward. So progressives need to highlight on every front just what it is that the Republicans in Congress and the White House are trying to do. If they can do that, they’ll succeed.

Here are talking points from the Center for American Progress about the Pentagon's canceling of the Ed Schultz Show (no relation.) If you haven't signed up for their daily talking points, I urge you to do so, as I promise you that you'll learn something new from this - John Podesta's (former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton) - think tank every day. For example, today's additional talking points speak of the new bankruptcy law, state-by-state coverage, stories you may have missed, and invites to chats and events with key leaders. But the Center details issue or concern facing Americans, providing helpful talking points for those of us who wish to better articulate our views and concerns to others.

Center for American Progress Talking Points: Shafting Schultz

Yesterday, the Pentagon abruptly canceled the debut of The Ed Schultz Show -- the country's most popular progressive radio talk show -- on Armed Forces Network Radio (AFN), a station broadcast to U.S. troops serving outside the United States. AFN currently features an hour of programming from the right-wing Rush Limbaugh show, but no comparable progressive content. That was supposed to change. But early yesterday morning, the producer of the Ed Schultz show, James Holm, received a call from Pentagon communications aide Allison Barber informing him that the show would not be debuting on AFN. Coincidently, Schultz "spent the end of last week chastising Barber for coaching a group of U.S. soldiers in Iraq before a teleconference with President Bush."

EMAIL CONTRADICTS PENTAGON SPIN: The official line from the Pentagon is that there was "no decision made with respect to expanding the programming.” An email sent to Schultz's syndication company from AFR proves otherwise. Manny Levy, radio division chief at AFN, wrote "AFN Radio has squared away everything on our end to begin carrying the first hour of 'The Ed Schultz Show' each day, beginning Monday, October 17, 2005 at noon PT/3 ET." Levy added, "An awful lot of people in the government had (or tried to have) a hand in program selection process that ended with the decision to add 'The Ed Schultz Show.'"

BARBER STRIKES AGAIN: Last week, Barber was caught on tape coaching U.S. troops about what to say during a televised conversation with President Bush. Barber said, "So if there's a question that the president comes up with that we haven't drilled through today, then I'm expecting the microphone to go right back to you, Captain Kennedy." There is evidence that Barber was familiar with the contents of Schultz's show on Friday, where he replayed Barber's comments. Barber told Holm that she was aware that Schultz announced he would begin broadcasting on AFN during Friday's show. Schultz made his views clear: "The fact is, they don't want dissenting voices or any other kind of speech unless it's going to be promotional for them. Obviously, these people are making sure they're not going to have any opinion other than the Rush Limbaughs of the world." Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the perception that Schultz's criticism of Barber had anything to do with the decision to cancel his debut was "an unfortunate misperception."

REGULATIONS REQUIRE ARMED FORCES RADIO TO BE BALANCED: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has worked hard to bring balance to AFN. With his leadership, the Senate passed a resolution "asking, that AFRTS meet its own mandate, as generally articulated in Department of Defense Regulation 5120.20R. That regulation calls for AFRTS political programming that is 'characterized by its fairness and balance,' as well as news programming guided by a 'principle of fairness' that requires reasonable opportunities for the presentation of conflicting views on important controversial public issues.'" At the time, Harkin said he believed "the bias that exists in the social and political commentary portions of this talk radio service is not intentional." Perhaps he was being too generous.

RUSH TRIVIALIZES TORTURE, STAYS ON THE AIR: The Pentagon has retained the services of Rush Limbaugh even after he spent weeks "condoning and trivializing the abuse, torture, rape and possible murder of Iraqi prisoners." For example, on May 6, 2004, Rush Limbaugh said of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison,"This is no different that what happens at the Skull & Bones initiation. ... I'm talking about people having a good time. These people -- you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of needing to blow some steam off?" Two days later, he called torturing prisoners a "brilliant maneuver." A petition signed by nearly 50,000 people demanding Rush be removed from AFN was ignored.

Some of you may know that in 1993 I was in training to work in Western Africa with a group called the Society of African Missions, a Catholic aid organization. Unfortunately, after 5 months of state-side training and a few weeks shy of leaving for a job in Liberia during a raging civil war, I decided to drop out of the group. I didn't fit in - reasons for which warrant another blogging on misogyny and Catholicism, but I digress.

I'd graduated college a year early in 1991, and took some time to figure out what I specifically wanted to do with my life besides the vague notion of SAVING THE WORLD. I knew I wanted to work with political and social justice issues, but didn't have the confidence in my talents and lacked direction. I probably shouldn't have graduated a year early, as I really did need that extra year to build my confidence, figure things out and find my purpose. But financially I couldn't manage another year of studies at American University, had the credits to graduate, and so I did - off into the "real world" I floundered.

Thoughts of Africa have lingered on.

Eventually I found my way to professional politics, spending most of the last ten years on the campaign trail. Yet, I haven't quite shaken the idea that I should be doing something good for Africa too.

I've listened to lots of Afro-Pop music, daydreamed about camping and trekking through the Ngorongoro Crater, walking through the markets of Morocco, or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and learning from Nelson Mandela.

Celebrity involvement in Africa has increased in recent years, as stars use their press coverage for good works, and I've paid attention. It's easy to be inspired by Oprah's Christmas Kindness efforts in South Africa, as she shows what little it takes on the part of westerners to make a difference and care about those suffering from extreme poverty and preventable disease.

It reminds me of all I'd learned years ago. Americans have lots of misperceive of Africa, and my SMA training helped me ditch those. SMA systematically changed my thinking about the continent, the effects of western colonialism, and the broad and diverse cultures that shouldn't be reduced to negative stereotypes of some primitive civilization who can't fix their own problems.

The ONE Campaign seeks to give Americans a voice, to ring church bells and cell
phones, on campuses and in coffee shops, for an historic pact to fight the
global AIDS emergency and end extreme poverty. We believe that allocating an
additional ONE percent of the U.S. budget toward providing basic needs like
health, education, clean water and food, would transform the futures and
hopes of an entire generation of the poorest countries. (http://www.one.org/)

I've been volunteering with the DC One Campaign, signed the declaration, attended Live8, wrote my Senators and Congresswoman, and recently began lobby visits to the offices of Congressmen I know, including Representatives Mike Ross (AR-04) and Ben Chandler (KY-06). I'll post the successes here on the blog as they happen.

I urge you to go to the One Campaign website and sign the pledge.

As I get more involved with the One Campaign and do these lobby visits, I am trying to get up to speed on all the policy lingo and specifics. Here are a few resources I've come across:

• For those in Washington, DC, The National Geographic Live series is hosting a variety of events on Africa, including this interesting lecture called War and innocence in Central Africa Tuesday, October 18 at their 17th and M facility. I am hoping to go, if anyone wants to join me.
• NRP Report: Africa's Hunger Crisis Complicates AIDS Response (10/16/05).
• Yahoo is sponsoring Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone, as he tours the world and reports on various conflicts. Currently he's in Uganda, where hundreds of thousands of refugees are on the move to escape danger. His coverage is tailored to those of us who aren't used to keeping up with Africa and world news. I highly recommend it.
• Jeffrey Sachs' book about the End of Poverty.
• Open CRS is a clearing house for links to the Congressional Research Service reports that Members of Congress use to make laws and learn about the issues, such as Africa, G8 and the Blair Initiative.
• Here's the CRS Intro to Foreign Aid, which is helpful when understanding Senator Mitch McConnell's importance as chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Agencies which dolls out foreign aid.
• The UN's Millennium Development Goals is one of the best websites on the One Campaign goals from a worldwide perspective.
• GW Bush's U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation and Millennium Challenge Account websites.
• The Brookings Institute on the Millennium Challenge Account.

(Read part 1 below before you read this one...)

After I wrote yesterday's post, I had a brief discussion with a colleague who was insistent that women - or anyone - not cry during a campaign. He wouldn't even read what I wrote, just insisted nobody cries, and that's the rule.

And I keep thinking about it.

On the one hand, he's right. During a campaign, you really do need to stuff a lot of emotions and just do the work in front of you. There's too much to do - it's too much of a pressure cooker - and though everyone's at their wits-end you have to keep chugging along - no sleep for the wearily - no breaks for the burned out - and no matter how tired or cranky or emotional you get in this worn down state your candidate(s) needs you to work hard and do your best. Even though the body/mind/spirit isn't built for 16 hour days for four month's straight - you gotta find other ways to unwind than falling apart on a tough day on the campaign trail. Sometimes I think I learned that lesson too late in my career.

But I can tell the ones who'll do well in this business by how well they do in the final days of a campaign by how they respond to the stress.

I've learned to enjoy that stage of the campaign and ride it with adrenaline, caffeine, loud cathartic singing ("Don't Cry for Me, Argentina was my 2004 campaign song), and annoying high-fives and pep talks to the newbys. I wish I could start over with this newfound peace during stress, but it's ironically the reason why I'm retired from that part of politics.

But here are a few questions to think about women and crying in politics:

Is it fair that President Bill Clinton crying at key moments is endearing, but a potential President Hillary Clinton can't follow suit? I think it would make her look cold in comparison, and, I think, less compassionate and real.

What would Pat Schroeder think about women crying in politics now? She cried at a press conference when she dropped out of the Presidential race. Many thought it undid her career as a politician. I think she is a wonderful person who charted new territory, and was fully herself
every step of the way. I deeply admire her.

Was it wrong when Senator Mary Landreiu cried during her flyover of New Orleans with George Stephanopolous for This Week? Honestly, she did the right thing and lived in the moment. She made me cry in empathy and feel her pain.

This New York Times article looks at the phenomenon of women crying on the job. I'd been thinking about that since I heard Martha Stewart threatened to dismiss an apprentice who was upset about a team failure on the show, saying "Cry and you are out of here. Women in business don't cry, my dear."

I am fascinated by the gender differences between women and men in politics and in work, but this quote from the article was my favorite:

Executives like Susan Lyne of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, were models for the president on "Commander in Chief," according to Rod Lurie, the executive producer of the series. And while his fictional president may be unlikely to break down in the
Oval Office, would a real woman as president need to be as stoic?

"Unfortunately," Mr. Lurie said, "she would have to be more stoic than a
man."

When President Bill Clinton got teary-eyed over an injustice or tragedy, I felt comforted. I wish President George W. Bush would have gotten at least a bit teary-eyed during Hurricane Katrina, rather than the same old arrogant jocularity we got during his first on-the-ground press conference in Alabama joking with Senator Trent Lott.

What I say to the future Ms. President is "be yourself, cry away, and I'll send the tissues. Be human and show us your gravitas. " I think there can be more leadership in a moment of true emotion than a distancing coldness of so-called proper and collected behavior.

So, cry away, sisters! And guys, too, for that matter.

Polls show President Bush in continued decline, just as I'd suspected yesterday. NBC/WSJ Poll: Bush approval drops below 40 percent, and only 28 percent believe country headed in right direction.

Perhaps some folks in Ohio are having buyers remorse? I can't help but say, "I TOLD YOU SO!" I wish these were the poll numbers from this time last year. So, to laugh it off: What does the Bush free-fall of poll numbers look like to those with computer graphics experience and too much time on their hands? Something like this, or this.

NOTE: Eventually, such polling news will move to the Bannon Communications Research website.

Public support continues to shift as Republicans become their own worst enemy: Bush's shrinking public support, Frist's HCA imbroglio, DeLay's indictments, and, as a loyal Kentuckian, Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher's ongoing brouhaha. No question "2006 can be a banner year for Democrats" has passed the lips of many a strategist here in Washington.

I can't help but think back to the last Congressional heave-ho built on corruption. The Nation's article by Center for American Progress/Progressive Majority's Robert Borosage thinks back to 1994's Gingrich "revolution", and provides some concrete ideas for 2006 Dems potential 2006 takeover.

Questions to ponder:

• Are Republicans going to get out of this public relations slump, dumping the label "corrupt politicians" in time to recover by November 2006?
• Do you think the Democrats are filling the positive issue vacuum left behind by all this bad Republican press?
• Does it even matter anymore what the NATIONAL campaign themes and messages are in 2006, with no Pres/V.Pres campaign? Or will indivudual local/district/state issues trump anything said about Democrats and Republicans?
• Can we do what I hope we can do and ride this "Republicans-Are-At-Best-Inept-And-At-Worse-Corrupt" pony all the way to the finish line and win big in 2006?

OCT 13th UPDATE: I can't believe I missed this story in the NYTimes. Great minds think alike, I guess. Though I can say the buzz about Dem potential in 2006 is everywhere around town, and I am glad to see my home state of KY mentioned:

Democratic campaign officials are racing to recruit more House candidates in places like Ohio and Kentucky. Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the Democratic whip and a leader in the recruitment effort, said he spent part of last week in Ohio with potential candidates, and his message is simple: "My basic premise is, I think this is the best context for Democrats to be running in for the House of Representatives since 1994."

So I'd written all this great stuff - on the Dove "real beauty" campaign, Oprah's Katrina coverage, and on poverty in general - but without decent internet access while in Kentucky, I was S.O.L! But I am back in DC, getting re-settled, and here we go. Reminder - any feedback you can give about my writing - especially to make it easier to read - is most appreciated. I am practicing here before I launch the work blog - then I'll be writing for two blogs! Yeah! But if you wanna say anything about the Dove "read beauty" campaign, Oprah's Katrina coverage, or poverty, feel free. I may still post those articles later on. The issues of female body image, outrage over Bush, and US avoidance of class are unfortunately issues that will be relevant for months to come.