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sillyTopic: Lib Loser Stories
'Deaniacs' cheer defiant Democratic Party chief
Republicans label fundraiser address 'lies and hate speech'
Last year, Iowa.
This year, Denver.
If Howard Dean is there, Joel Weierman wants to help.
The Boulder resident, 32 and a self-confessed "die-hard Deaniac," shelled out $100 Thursday to hear the former presidential candidate spell out his vision for leading the Democratic National Committee.
Dean got big laughs and lots of applause at the Oxford Hotel as he ribbed President Bush and the three Rs: Republicans, Rove and Rush:
• "Focus on the Family? What focus on the family? If you want to focus on the family, how about raising minimum wage?"
• "No Child Left Behind ought to be kicked in the behind."
• "I'm not going to be lectured about moral values by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and James Dobson - not going to happen."
"Thank you," Arapahoe County resident Laure Levin told Dean afterward. "I'm ready to hit the streets again."
"He was great," said Weierman, who admitted he was crushed last year when Dean lost the Iowa primary to John Kerry.
Dean came to Colorado on Thursday for a fundraiser that attracted more than 300 people.
"If we are willing to stand up for what we believe in, if we set aside this idea that we ought to be like the Republicans in order to win . . . then I promise you we will take this country back," Dean said.
The state Republican Party issued a statement saying Dean came to "spew lies and hate speech."
Outside the Oxford, protesters held signs of aborted fetuses.
Inside the Denver landmark, Dean stressed that he doesn't know anybody who is pro-abortion, but he knows plenty of people who believe women should get to "make up their own minds."
Dean talked about the party's strategy for turning Colorado from "purple to blue."
"All by yourself, you turned it from red to purple last time around," he said, referring to the Democrats' stunning victories, winning a U.S. Senate seat and taking back the legislature for the first time since 1960.
He charged that Republicans have prospered by stirring up fears about quotas and gays, and he predicted the next hot-button issue for the GOP would be immigration.
Rocky Mountain News ~ Lynn Bartels ** 'Deaniacs' cheer defiant Democratic Party chief
Related Story...Denver Post ~ Robert Sanchez ** Dean tells Dems to get ready for a fight
'NY Times' Sunday Preview: Profile of Linguist Who Is Framing Issues for the Democrats
NEW YORK - The cover story by Matt Bai in the upcoming Sunday issue of The New York Times Magazine profiles the man some liberals allegedly consider a possible new "messiah" for the Democratic party, George Lakoff. An adviser to the party on "framing" issues, he wrote "Don't Think of an Elephant"-- a book about politics and language based on his own linguistic theories.
"Framing" is the process of choosing the best words to describe individual issues and characterize a debate. Bai hails Lakoff as the father of the concept. His ideas seemed to gain some success recently in putting the Bush social security proposals in peril. Next they will be severely tested in the upcoming fight over Supreme Court nominees.
Lakoff preaches that to understand language on the whole, one must first study how an individual would comprehend that language in terms of personal experience and thought processes. He also says that metaphors allow people to process abstract ideas.
And nobody better used this philosophy before, says Lakoff, than the Republicans. In the 2004 election, George W. Bush labeled John Kerry as a "flip flopper," and repeated this throughout the duration of the campaign. He even put out an ad that featured Kerry windsurfing, back and forth, which hammered home this idea in a visual manner.
Democrats, on the other hand, tried to pin too many criticisms on Bush, none of which stuck. Thus, as Bai writes, "Bush was attacked. Kerry was framed."
In the article, Lakoff says that Republicans are also skilled at using loaded language and repetition to create lasting concepts in our unconscious. This is largely in part to the work of Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster renowned for creating euphemism for conservative issues.
Lakoff explains, "The frames in our brains can be 'activated' by the right combination of words and imagery, and only then, once the brain has been unlocked, can we process the facts thrown at us."
Basically, he says, Republicans re-program the way people think about things. Therefore, Lakoff has taught Democrats in Congress how to combat this through their own framing of Republican ideas. For example, in the recent debate over filibusters, Democrats explained that the GOP was changing a 200-year tradition and doing so on a whim. Lakoff compared it to Bush rolling the dice.
With the debate over social security, Democrats explained that Bush was going to privatize it, which frightened the public. To represent this idea, Democrats portrayed the president as "an old-fashioned traveling salesman, with a cart full of magic elixirs and cure-all tonics."
"[The approval rating] is down to, like, 29 percent or something," Representative Nancy Pelosi, minority leader in the House, tells Bai about Bush's social security plan. "At the beginning of the debate, voters were saying that the president was a president who had new ideas. Now he's a guy who wants to cut my benefits."
But Luntz tells Bai that the problem with Lakoff's ideology is that if an idea is bad, no language can make it sellable.
"He's one of the very few guys who understands the limits of liberal language," Luntz says . "What he doesn't understand is that there are also limits on liberal philosophy. They think that if they change all the words, it'll make a difference. Won't happen."
Other Republicans simply see Lakoff as a deeply desired messiah for the left.
Some liberals ridicule Lakoff as what Bai called a "new progressive icon." In the April issue of The Atlantic, contributing editor Marc Cooper wrote that Lakoff sees the American people as, "Red-neck, chain-smoking, baby-slapping Christers desperately in need of some gender-free nurturing and political counseling by organic-gardening enthusiasts from Berkeley."
And even Lakoff himself worries that his complex ideas are often misrepresented as overly simplistic.
Nevertheless, he has been spending his time doing speaking engagements and writing his next book (about how Republicans have redefined the word "freedom") due in 2006.
But the biggest trial of Lakoff's framing theory will be how Democrats deal with the selection of new Supreme Court justices. Will they be successful in achieving their end goals, as they were with the debates over filibusters and social security? Or, will they lose, as they did with the GOP's crippling of John Kerry?
Bai concludes: "The right words can frame an argument, but they will never stand in its place."
loud
New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer — who says White House adviser Karl Rove may have committed a crime when he identified Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA agent — voted against the law he says Rove may have violated. In 1982, Schumer, then in the House, was one of only 32 congressmen, all Democrats, to oppose the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which made it a crime to out covert U.S. intelligence agents.
What's more, seven years later, Schumer criticized a new Justice Department policy to prosecute federal employees who leak certain kinds of information, telling the Los Angeles Times at the time, "I am worried that this policy is so broad it could easily be abused."
Poll Results
A new 
d'oh
Years Have Done Little to Help Local Blacks
♠ Serious inequities still exist in healthcare, justice and housing, a new report finds.
Forty years after the Watts riots exposed the dismal social conditions afflicting many African American communities, blacks continue to trail other ethnic groups in housing, healthcare and criminal justice, a report issued Wednesday concludes.
Blacks in Los Angeles County are twice as likely as other groups to be victims of violent crimes, their death rates from homicide and HIV/AIDS are more than three times higher than for other racial groups, more blacks receive public assistance and more black children live in poverty.
The findings are included in "The State of Black Los Angeles," a report by the Los Angeles Urban League and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles presented at a USC conference attended by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, police Chief William J. Bratton and other civic leaders. The report, compiled with U.S. Census, state and county data, includes recommendations for creating jobs, developing affordable housing, expanding parks and establishing prison programs geared to reentry into society.
Particularly disturbing are crime data showing that blacks — adults and juveniles — have arrest rates far higher than other groups. In addition, black and Latino drivers are searched by the LAPD four times more often than whites or Asians, yet only 38% of blacks are found to be carrying illegal items compared with 55% of whites, 65% of Latinos and 54% of Asians.
Villaraigosa said the racial inequalities revealed in the report "should put a chill in our spine." He called the findings a call to action and said new housing, jobs and education initiatives should be targeted first at poor South Los Angeles neighborhoods.
"This is a challenge not just to the mayor, not just to city leaders but to everyone," he said. "A great city can't be a shining example with so many left behind."
Villaraigosa and other speakers noted that the report comes only a few months after the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and shortly before congressional debate on reauthorization of some of its key provisions, and a month before the 40th anniversary of the Watts riots, which caused 34 deaths and widespread damage. The McCone Commission at the time identified lack of jobs and inferior housing, schools and medical care as reasons for the violence.
Although progress has been made, the report notes that many of the most egregious disparities are virtually unchanged. Among other key findings, in L.A. County:
♠ Blacks have the lowest median household income, $31,905, when compared with Latinos at $33,820, Asians at $47,631 and whites at $53,978.
♠ Although just 10% of the population, blacks are estimated to make up 30% or more of the homeless population.
♠ Blacks are the target of 56% of hate crimes.
♠ 44% of black high school students fail to graduate with their class in four years.
♠ Blacks receive only 5% of all home loans, half as many as their share of the population, while whites — 31% of the population — receive 72% of all such loans.
♠ The premature death rate among blacks of 40.6 (per 100,000 population) far outstrips that of Latinos at 11, whites at 4.5 and Asians at 3.8. The teen death rate at 131.4 is far higher for blacks and is fueled by gang-related homicides.
The report includes some brighter news: L.A. County has more high-income black households than the national average, a high rate of black children — 94% — have health insurance, and 63% of black 3- and 4-year-olds attend preschool, which research has shown can make a difference in future school achievement and job attainment.
In addition, African Americans have increased representation among the county's top elected offices from 1% in 1960 to 14% in 2004. Indeed, according to the report, blacks rank highest of all groups in civic engagement, including voting, military service, union membership and citizenship.
The report used a compilation of data on economics, housing, health, education, criminal justice and civic engagement to come up with an "equality index" score to compare conditions among ethnic groups. Blacks scored the lowest at 69, Latinos scored 71, Asians 98. Whites are used as the baseline group with a constant score of 100.
Panelist Constance L. Rice, a civil rights attorney, called the education findings a "smoke alarm" warning that schools are in crisis, and she argued that the black middle class is losing ground. Bishop Charles E. Blake, of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, said that blacks must reassert moral values in their communities.
"We have to teach the reading and the mathematics, but we also have to tell our children why it's right to do right and wrong to do wrong," he said.
Data on racial disparities in criminal justice were compiled by UCLA and UC Berkeley researchers and make up a special section of the report. The findings document that a historically tense relationship with law enforcement continues. For example, according to Los Angeles Police Department consent decree data for 2004, 19.8% of black drivers are stopped by police, compared with 12.6% for whites, 11.2% for Latinos and 10.1% for Asians. The national rate for blacks is 12.3%.
"There is a dual justice system," said John W. Mack, immediate past president of the Los Angeles Urban League. "This is something Chief Bratton and I have had many discussions about. Crime is real, violence is real and out of control in many parts of our community. But (enforcement) must be done in such a way that the sheriff's and the Police Department are not an occupying force and that not all young men are viewed as gang bangers."
Law enforcement officials have denied that they engage in racial profiling.
Bratton insisted Wednesday that laws will be enforced fairly and consistently in every community.
"We will do it constitutionally," he said. "We will not allow officers to break the law to enforce the law."
He mentioned one of the findings he found "chilling": An estimated 32% of black men born in Los Angeles in 2001 are likely to go to prison in their lifetime, compared with 17% of Latino men and 6% of white men, the report states.
"That statistic is horrifying, frightening. We cannot accept that, that should not be the future," Bratton said.
Some speakers referred to the familiarity of the issues and suggested that the prescriptions of the past had failed, foundered on a lack of public and political will. But Mack and others said past shortfalls should not be an excuse for inaction, and they argued for more innovative solutions, such as targeting with intensive services neighborhoods that are considered hot spots.
"This report is about the truth … but it's not just gloom and doom either, it's not just about wringing our hands," he said. "I'm optimistic we're going to come to grips with these serious challenges."
The report was sponsored by several public and private organizations, including the California Endowment, Bank of America, the James Irvine Foundation, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Kaiser Permanente, the Los Angeles Times, Southern California Edison, Verizon, Washington Mutual, Citibank and the California Wellness Foundation.
* (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
cheeky
Karl Rove, President Bush's chief adviser, leaves Air Force One upon arrival from Indianapolis, Ind., at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Thursday, July 14, 2005. Rove's allege involvement in a news leak that exposed a CIA officer's identity has made him a political liability for President Bush, who has not yet talked about Rove's future in the administration, or his actual role in the leak. >>>>>
Source: Rove Got CIA Agent ID From Media
WASHINGTON - Presidential confidant Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he learned the identity of a CIA operative originally from journalists, then informally discussed the information with a Time magazine reporter days before the story broke, according to a person briefed on the testimony.
The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.
Rove testified that Novak originally called him the Tuesday before Plame's identity was revealed in July 2003 to discuss another story. The conversation eventually turned to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was strongly criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq war policy and the intelligence it used to justify the war, the source said.
The person said Rove testified that Novak told him he had learned and planned to report in a weekend column that Wilson's wife, Plame, had worked for the CIA, and the circumstances on how her husband traveled to Africa to check bogus claims of alleged nuclear material sales to Iraq.
Novak's column, citing two Bush administration officials, appeared six days later, touching off a political firestorm and leading to a federal criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's undercover identity. That probe has ensnared presidential aides and reporters in a two-year legal battle.
Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson's wife from another reporter but had no recollection of which reporter had told him about it first, the source said.
When Novak inquired about Wilson's wife working for the CIA, Rove indicated he had heard something like that, according to the source's recounting of the grand jury testimony.
Rove told the grand jury that four days later, he had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and - in an effort to discredit some of Wilson's allegations - told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, though he never used her name.
An e-mail Cooper recently provided the grand jury shows Cooper reported to his magazine bosses that Rove had described Wilson's wife in a confidential conversation as someone who "apparently works" at the CIA.
Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, said Thursday his client truthfully testified to the grand jury and expected to be exonerated.
"Karl provided all pertinent information to prosecutors a long time ago," Luskin said. "And prosecutors confirmed when he testified most recently in October 2004 that he is not a target of the investigation."
Rove's conversation with Cooper took place five days after Wilson suggested in a New York Times opinion piece that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. Novak's column identifying Wilson's wife as a CIA employee and Cooper's magazine piece came out a few days later.
Pressed to explain its statements of two years ago that Rove wasn't involved in the leak, the White House refused to do so this week.
"If I were to get into discussing this, I would be getting into discussing an investigation that continues and could be prejudging the outcome of the investigation," McClellan said.
spacey
>>>>>
Each article, posted within a day, has an English translation and a link to the original, for those fluent in foreign tongues.
Robin Koerner, cofounder of the site, sees its value as one of opening minds.
"If I want to conduct any kind of relationship, even a personal relationship, I need to know how what I say and do affects the person on the receiving end," he explains. To emphasize the point, he quotes the English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill: "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."
Extend the relationship analogy to international affairs, Mr. Koerner says, and you find that knowing how the people you interact with feel about the things you do to them enables you to make better choices. "I think what we're doing is giving Americans a bit of the road map ahead."
The view from abroad is largely unflattering. Koerner estimates that roughly 5 percent of the news is positive, which doesn't mean 95 percent is overtly negative. About half is simply neutral, he says.
"There certainly isn't any American flag-waving going on [on the site]," agrees Al Tompkins, a journalism teacher at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. He says it's important for citizens to stay informed and to listen to many points of view, even if they don't like them or agree with them.
While the Internet has made access to foreign media only a click away, what makes WatchingAmerica.com especially powerful is its translations of foreign-language news into English. (The Middle East Media Research Institute - 
The translations are all done using software and then smoothed out by Koerner and volunteers - often native speakers of the relevant languages. As the site's profile rises, Koerner says, more such volunteers are offering their assistance.
To become self-supporting through advertising, however, the site would need 100,000 hits a day. Right now it gets about 6,000, Koerner says. That small number represents an interesting "intellectual elite" from think tanks and mainstream media, as well as regular check-ins from the US State Department and CIA, "because we're doing some of their work for them," Koerner says dryly.
To reach a broader audience is the goal. But are Americans ready for a site like this? Mr. Tompkins of the Poynter Institute thinks not. "Americans are not incredibly open-minded about others who says critical things about America." Koerner, however, thinks that since 9/11, more Americans are ready for introspection.
What they may not recognize yet, he adds, is that people outside the US are often more affected by American policy than Americans themselves.
Last January, when WatchingAmerica.com started to link to foreign articles and translate them, the founders had no idea how the foreign media would react. But all the news organizations that have been in touch about their content appearing on the site have been "totally delighted," Koerner says, and have begun alerting him to other stories in their publications.
You've got to give some understanding to get some, he suggests. "You are breaking down the final barrier among people from around the world - the language barrier."
chatty
Mayoral hopeful seeks to conceal donors
A socialist candidate for mayor of Seattle is asking the city Ethics and Elections Commission to conceal the names of his campaign donors from public disclosure.
Chris Hoeppner, a member of the Socialist Workers Party, wants an exemption similar to one granted earlier this year to Linda Averill, another socialist candidate running for City Council.
City rules normally require candidates to disclose the names of donors who give more than $25. If donors give more than $100, their employers also must be disclosed.
But the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that exemptions to contributor disclosure laws are justified in cases where fear of harassment or threats of violence against unpopular viewpoints creates a chilling effect on the willingness of people to associate with a political party or ideology.
Hoeppner is hoping for such an exemption at a special meeting of the ethics commission today.
The ethics commission granted Averill, a member of the Freedom Socialist Party, such an exemption after she won a federal lawsuit against the city in 2003.
Averill is running this year against City Council President Jan Drago. She has raised more than $9,300 so far and her contributors are identified only by code in her campaign filings. For example, her biggest donors are listed merely as "C12" and "C5," who both work for "E4."
Hoeppner said his attorney will present evidence to the commission that his donors, too, would legitimately fear harassment if identified by name. He pointed to past instances of socialists receiving threats and to the bombing of a socialist party headquarters in Pennsylvania last year.
Hoeppner, 55, is a laid-off meat packer who advocates strengthening unions and the withdrawal of "imperialist" U.S. military forces from nations including Iraq, Cuba and South Korea.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is running for a second four-year term. With a couple weeks until the July 29 filing deadline, he faces little in the way of organized opposition.
Besides Hoeppner, Nickels is being challenged by Christal Wood, who ran unsuccessfully for City Council two years ago, and Richard Lee, who hosts a public-access cable television show devoted to conspiracy theories about the death of rock star Kurt Cobain.
crushed out
Jenna Bush, right, daughter of U.S. President George W. Bush, hands out postcards of her pets to dancing children during a visit to the Equal Opportunity for All Trust Fund with her mother, U.S. first lady Laura Bush, not pictured, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Wednesday, July 13, 2005. >>>>>
Bush Daughters Edge Back Into Spotlight
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania - In front of the television cameras, Jenna Bush listens silently to Tanzanian orphans who have been left by 
The press-shy Bush twins campaigned cross-country last year for their father's re-election, even putting on a nationally televised joint comedy schtick at the Republican National Convention. But afterward, the girls perhaps best known for their party-hopping, fashion-forward ways went back under wraps where they have mostly been — aside from some legal run-ins over underage drinking and occasion gossip-column accounts — since their father took office in 2001.
So it was no surprise that Jenna, accompanying her parents to a summit of world leaders, kept a low profile in Scotland. Or that the twins, united in Africa when Jenna and Mrs. Bush met up with Barbara for a private weekend safari, made every effort to avoid notice.
Jenna and Barbara hustled up the plane's back stairs to dodge official tarmac ceremonies and skipped all their mother's public appearances in Cape Town — even though a primary focus of the first lady's trip is the AIDS crisis that had drawn Barbara to South Africa. Instead, they hung out around the city and went out for private dinners with their mom.
Even on a chance encounter with reporters in the hotel where Mrs. Bush's entourage was staying, Barbara strode through the lobby with her hand shielding her face.
Jenna, however, offered a cautious "Hello." Then the next day, the same girl who once on a European trip with her mother insisted on being shielded from the cameras by a garment bag, took her place in Mrs. Bush's official delegation.
chillin'
From China, Some Relief on Oil Demand
A speech by Sen. Clinton in January in Albany, N.Y., led to a flurry of speculation that she was shifting slightly to the right. In that speech, she called abortion a "sad, even tragic choice" and said her husband's administration had done a great deal to reduce the number of abortions in the United States.
Conservatives and abortion-rights foes portrayed the speech as a sign that she was edging toward the middle with an eye toward the 2008 presidential campaign. Her supporters, however, said she was simply repeating positions she had stated since her 2000 campaign for the Senate.
On the Net: Sen.