Democrats' Operation "Educate The Idiots"

Are you a minority? Do you have a GED? Did you drop-out of school? If you live in Colorado and if you fit into any of these categories then you are an "idiot" - at least according to the Colorado Democracy Alliance, a 527 consisting of high ranking members of the state Democratic Party. You are now being targeted as part of their "Educate The Idiots" program designed to teach you what to think - and that is to vote for Obama.
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The Democratic Party has little but disdain for their base. On one hand, they provide some give-aways to their base while to keep them in line, while on the other hand, at the highest levels, Democrats pursue policies that truly squeeze their base - energy policy being the most blatant example. High energy prices effect the lowest paid by far the most. And if you need any more proof of the disdain in which the base is held, there is this from Face The State on a confidential memo of the Colorado branch of the Democracy Alliance, a Colorado Democratic 527:

In a confidential internal memorandum obtained by Face The State (PDF), the Colorado Democracy Alliance outlines a roster of "operatives" who worked for Democratic victory in the 2006 general election. The document outlines specific tasks for various members of the state's liberal infrastructure, including a campaign to "educate the idiots," assigned to the state's AFL-CIO union. Among the operation's intended targets: "minorities, GED's, drop-outs."

Individuals named in the document, marked "CONFIDENTIAL," "for internal use only," and "DO NOT DISTRIBUTE," are high-level elected Democrats . . . All are specially marked as "off-the-record or covert."

. . . CoDA is one of 18 state-based versions of the nationally focused Democracy Alliance, a self-described "investment partnership of business and philanthropic leaders" funding liberal infrastructure nationwide. For more information about the Democracy Alliance in Colorado, see day one and two of Face The State's week-long series on the group. . . .

Read the entire article. It really amazes me how the "progressive" left is able to gather so much support from the "idiots" among us while putting the screws to said "idiots" at the same time. Or is that the very definition of "idiot," perhaps.

(H/T Drudge)

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The Politics Of Urban Poverty

Detroit, once a thriving metropolis, has now earned the dubious distinction of being the city in America with the highest poverty rate. The other nine cities that are vying for that distinction all have something in common with Detroit. They have all been run by Democratic Party politicians for at least the last the last 25 years. Doug Ross has the whole story. Does anyone detect a pattern here?

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The Democratic Convention Night 2

It was the second night of the Democratic Convention with all eyes on Hillary and all thoughts on party unity. Beyond that, the speakers tonight spent an inordinate amount of time on the reoccuring theme that drilling for oil and exploiting our resources is all just an evil plot. Lastly, the keynote speaker, Gov. Warner, got demoted from his time slot for refusing to attack John McCain.

Whenever I hear Hillary speak in her incredibly grating tones, it effects me just like fingernails down a chalkboard. At any rate, her speech was the big event of the evening. It seemed a very carefully couched monologue with an eye towards 2012.

You can find the text of Ms. Clinton’s speech here. Her speech was as much if not more centered on herself than on Obama. She used her speech to paint herself into the feminist Hall of Fame. Beyond that, she listed her many policy positions, noting that Obama has the same positions.

I was listening for her to endorse Obama as having the experience necessary to be Commander in Chief and the judgment necessary to deal with our foreign policy challenges. Those are the gaping holes in Obama's resume that she so effectively exploited during the final primaries. And there is no question that those are the weaknesses hurting Obama’s campaign at the moment. But I heard none of that from her tonight. Seemingly her only message beyond self promotion was vote for Obama as better than the alternative. She said just enough to innoculate herself from any charges that she undercut Obama.

Even though Hillary mouthed the words "party unity" and stated that she now supports Obama for President, she did Obama no great favors this evening. It is an open question just how much of an impact this will have on the polls and, more particularly, on the PUMA wing of the party. My gut feeling is that it will not have a substantial impact on either.

Various other speakers spent a lot of time talking about energy policy and the futility of drilling for oil. I was amazed that they are still pushing that at this point. I hope the RNC is smart enough to make one night of the Republican convention nothing but a primer on oil and the utter fantasy being spun by the left on both supply and demand and the current cost and viability of alternative energy. We are at crunch time on energy. Failure to start the process to exploit our resources now will have potentially devestating effects on our economy years into the future.

The only other thing of note was the decision to bump Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, out of the prime slot just before the Hillary speech. Indeed, Gov. Warner was named as the Democrat’s "keynote speaker," not simply for his oratory, but because Virginia is a key state in play this campaign. The reason for the bump – apparently Gov. Warner has some ethics. This from the blog at the Weekly Standard:

Bill Kristol calls in from the Pepsi Center. . . . Mark Warner was originally scheduled to speak in the 10 o'clock hour in primetime before Hillary Clinton, but Warner was moved to the less desireable pre-primetime bloc because he apparently refused to turn his speech into an attack on John McCain. . . .

Recall that Warner was given the primetime spot because the Obama campaign expected Virginia to be in play. Now apparently they think attacking McCain is more important. A touch of panic?

Read the entire post.

And so ends Day 2. The real fun is tomorrow when former President Clinton takes the stand. I really hope he loosens up with a few martinis before that one. I really do want to hear him repeat the words "Chicago thug."

Update: According to the Washington Post, many of the PUMA's remain unconvinced:

Hillary Rodham Clinton's most loyal delegates came to the Pepsi Center on Tuesday night looking for direction. They listened, rapt, to a 20-minute speech that many proclaimed the best she had ever delivered, hoping her words could somehow unwind a year of tension in the Democratic Party. But when Clinton stepped off the stage and the standing ovation faded into silence, many of her supporters were left with a sobering realization: Even a tremendous speech couldn't erase their frustrations.

Despite Clinton's plea for Democrats to unite, her delegates remained divided as to how they should proceed.

There was Jerry Straughan, a professor from California, who listened from his seat in the rafters and shook his head at what he considered the speech's predictability. "It's a tactic," he said. "Who knows what she really thinks? With all the missteps that have taken place, this is the only thing she could do. So, yes, I'm still bitter." . . .

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Lieberman's Lament

This from Senator Joe Lieberman writing in the WSJ:

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.

Of course that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged. Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

. . . The [9-11] attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.

In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.

John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately – the difference between America's friends and America's enemies.

There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.

Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.

. . . A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.

Read the entire article.

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