In the latest blog game, bold the states you’ve been to, underline the states you’ve lived in and italicize the state you’re in now…

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

I’m definitely a purple kind of guy…

As of 1:45 PM Pacific time, here are the topics on the democrats.org site; the official site of the Democratic National Committee:

The Bush Budget Disaster

Take Action to Protect Social Security

DNC Launches New Radio Ads to Air During Bush Social Security Tour

Listen to the ads…
Read more about “Heartland”…
Read more about “Cuts”…
Read more about “Familias”…

Today on the Blog

Your interview with Gov. Dean: The answers: Governor Dean has answered your questions.

The fight to protect ANWR continues: For the last four years, Democrats have stood up and protected the wildlife reserve from President Bush and his cronies in the energy industry.

Your interview with Gov. Dean: Governor Howard Dean is going to give a high profile interview — and it’s with you. Submit your question today by clicking here and then return on Friday, March 11 to read his answers to this online interview with our grassroots supporters.

DNC Headlines

Mar 10, 2005: The DNC Launches Radio Ad Against Bush

Mar 10, 2005: Bush Wants to Shore Up His Base…of Republicans in Congress

Mar 10, 2005: Republican vs. Republican Part II

Mar 9, 2005: Governor Dean Statement on the Election of Doris Matsui

I know what I’d like to be asking Gov. Dean.

Why doesn’t the word “bankruptcy” appear anywhere on this page?

And how the hell could you have laid down and rolled over for the bankruptcy bill? If there was ever a bully pulpit to stand behind and use to point out the corporatist flaws of the GOP, this was it.

Note that I’m not opposed to government actions that help corporations; sometimes what’s good for G.M. is actually good for America.

But this was such a clear-cut case of taking from the weak and giving to the rich with no public purpose except giving more to those that have that my head is swimming.

And the missed opportunity for the Democrats to define themselves – by challenging irresponsable and rapacious lending as much as they are challenging irresponsable borrowing – boggles my mind.

Even if their side was doomed to go down to defeat, this was a place to make a public stand, and the failure to make that stand is more than a little puzzing to me.

…if you’ve sent email to me at the ‘armed’ address in the last month. Somehow the mail server and spam filter interacted in such a way that about 10% of the mail go through, and 90% didn’t.

The servers responsible have been flogged. I’ll catch up on the 800 mail messages over the next few days, and then have myself flogged for not paying better attention.

I’m normally not a fan of hyperpartisan Atrios (who is sadly part of the marching-over-the-cliff wing of the Democratic Party), but he’s got a great roundup of Senators to contact and how to contact them if you’re unhappy (as you should be) with the bankruptcy bill.

Click over and make some phone calls. (Calls are better than emails, by the way…)

Commenter John Thacker points me to a London Times article showing Bush doing a smart and moral thing.

Henry Farrell had suggested, and I approved of, the notion of Bush disinviting the Sinn Fein to the St. Patrick’s day celebration at the White House. He’s done that and more:

The sisters and the fiancée of a Catholic man said to have been murdered by the IRA will be fêted by President Bush in the White House on St Patrick’s Day as part of a strategy calculated by Washington to isolate Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader.

Paula McCartney and her four sisters, as well as Bridgeen Hagans, who was to marry Robert McCartney this summer, will fly to Washington on March 15 to highlight their campaign to bring his killers to justice.

Good for him.

Josh Marshall has spun off an excellent temporary blog on the travesty of the new bankruptcy bill.

I’m strongly opposed to this, but resigned to it’s passage. The venal residents of Democratic SkyBoxland are too busy tongue-kissing the bought-and-paid for residents of the Grand Owned Party on this issue. Here’s a case where there are real issues – the casual washing away of debt – that need to be addressed, but not by indenturing whole classes of people to finance companies that are as culpable for bad underwriting as the borrowers are for irresponsibility.A bill that stood on three legs:

* Borrower responsibility, shared by borrowers of all economic classes;
* Lender responsibility, in limiting the fines and penalties on distressed borrowers, and in tightening underwriting requirements and marketing regulations to make it harder for lenders to push credit on people, and raise the rates to usurious levels if a payment is missed.
* Realistic provisions for health and other genuine personal disasters

…would be a good bill.

And the reality is that this is a disaster for the Democratic Party. Why??

Because instead of standing for something – the powerless against the powerful – they regularly sell out. See my old post about Kos’ client, Rep. Jim Moran, who took a personal loan of $447,000 from MBNA four days before he signed on as a lead sponsor of the bill.

This kind of thing makes it damn hard to stand up and point fingers where and when they should be pointed.

But hey, as long as the contibutions and consulting contracts keep coming in, that’s OK, right?

I’m actually thinking about canceling my subscription to the L.A. Times this morning.

Why?

Because, as the straw the broke the camel’s back, this morning there’s a Ted Rall comic in the Opinion section. Rall is a litigious hypocrite, who never met a better human being he couldn’t sue or slander.

I’ll give myself a couple hours to think about it, and then probably give them a call and drop an email. I know it’ll deprive me of a key source of blog material, but that just means I’ll have to work harder on things.

TG is holding Hearns, our 18-year old cat, who has been dying all day.

Actually, she’s been dying for a week, refusing food and barely able to take water; we’ve been giving her IV fluids for most of a year, and we stopped yesterday. She doesn’t seem to be in any discomfort, but hasn’t had the strength to move for a day or so now.

Littlest Guy and I dug a small grave for her in the yard this morning, and talked about what it meant to have responsibility for another living thing.

I haven’t managed to get anyone mad at me this week, so let me toss some fuel out there and let’s see what burns. I’m following with some interest the FEC “What do we do about the political Internet” set of issues.

So let me ask a dumb-a**s question.

If bloggers (or other website owners) are acting as auxiliaries to campaigns, or are heavily involved in raising significant funds for campaigns, why shouldn’t there be some requirements for disclosure, and why shouldn’t the funds raised fit under the same rules as any other money raised for a campaign?In some ways, this strikes me as a kind of Skype issue; on one hand we have a genuinely interesting technology -in this case mixture of social and technical engineering. It has genuine value, which should be preserved. On the other we have a regulatory arbitrage based on new technology and the simple fact that no one who wrote the old regulations knew enough to map the existing regulations to the technical means to evade them.

I’ll go in the kitchen and look for some matches now…

Franz Liebkind: Not many people know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer.

Franz Liebkind: Hitler… there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in ONE afternoon! TWO coats!

Max Bialystock: That’s exactly why we want to produce this play. To show the world the true Hitler, the Hitler you loved, the Hitler you knew, the Hitler with a song in his heart.

On the front page of the L.A. Times today:

N. Korea, Without the Rancor
– A businessman speaks his mind about the U.S., the ‘nuclear club’ and human rights issues.

Now one thing to note is this:

This North Korean, an affable man in his late 50s who spent much of his career as a diplomat in Europe, has been assigned to help his communist country attract foreign investment. With the U.S. and other countries complaining about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and its human rights record, it’s a difficult task, he admitted.

So “businessman” might be the wrong word to use? “Government functionary?” “Diplomat?” There’s a kind of complete lack of understanding of how a Stalinist government operates here that’s breathtaking. You know who gets to be diplomats? You know who gets to enter into foreign trade? Hint: they aren’t representatives of the private business sector.

But wait, it gets better!

“There’s never been a positive article about North Korea, not one,” he said. “We’re portrayed as monsters, inhuman, Dracula … with horns on our heads.”

So, in an effort to clear up misunderstandings, he expounded on the North Korean view of the world in an informal conversation that began one night this week over beer as North Korean waitresses sang Celine Dion in the karaoke restaurant, and resumed the next day over coffee.

See Mel Brooks quotes, above.

bq. The North Korean, dressed in a cranberry-colored flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, described himself as a businessman with close ties to the government. He said he did not want to be quoted by name because his perspective was personal, not official. Because North Koreans seldom talk to U.S. media organizations, his comments offered rare insight into the view from the other side of the geopolitical divide.

And if I described myself as the king of the Space Unicorns, would the Times cite me in a headline as “your Majesty?”

You’ve got to read the whole farcical thing…