Won't you please help Michael Steele

...and the thousands of other brothers born without soul?

Had enough of Sanctimonious Joe?

Watch the ad.... then send your $5 here.

The Captain & Toast explain it all for you

Corny but heartfelt: Two weeks ago during the Damariscotta Pumpkin Fest, people were asked what they love about the town, and here are their responses set to music. After you’ve noted the Captain & Toast at the 2:32 mark, for excitement you can skip to the end to watch the Great Pumpkin Drop! (Sorry, no footage of the pumpkin races here.)

She's everywhere!

And now she's reached the great orange pinnacle:













Congratulations to the wonderful Alna Harridan for being articulate, thoughtful, photogenic, and having a great voice to boot.

See the video here, and while you're at it, sign the petition to get Senator Snowe to focus her attention on the citizens of Maine instead of the insurance lobby.

Health insurance in 51 seconds

This is just excellent, excellent, excellent:



Pass it on.

Extremely important article

If you can grasp conditional probability - and you can - you'll see that health insurance recission is not rare.

Weather forecast

once again...

Fotobama: "Where's Obama?"

This shot by AP photographer Chris Colson just won best in show and first prize in the "professional campaign/election" category, out of an international field of 1,500, in a contest sponsored by the Freedom Forum's Newseum. It shows candidate Obama at the Democratic convention, moments after clinching the nomination.

What a beautiful moment.

Just another day with the grandchildren

Greetings from California! Here are four of the six grandchildren spending quality time together in the usual relaxed, Herz family style. (Note the youngest pounding his brother with the rubber ball at about the 0.44 mark...)

Getting environmentalists out of their silos

I wrote this to help an environmentalist friend of mine persuade others to join him in Accountability Now, the group founded by Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald to keep elected officials responsive to citizens, not lobbyists. Evidently there are still a handful of single-issue activists out there wary of sharing causes and diluting their power.

Here's my advice.

• First, go back and read The Death of Environmentalism by Shellenberger and Nordhaus from 2005. Essential!
• The world has changed, and so should an environmental advocacy approach devised in the early 1970s. What we’re doing now isn't working. Shellenberger:

That approach is failing for two reasons: First, the values, mindsets, frames of reference, and belief systems Americans use to make sense of the world have changed dramatically over the last 12 years, but the strategies of the environmental movement have not. Second, we're faced with a set of massive ecological challenges -- global warming, global habitat destruction, global species destruction, deterioration of the world's oceans, the ozone hole -- that are fundamentally different from the kind of problems the environmental movement was constructed 30 years ago to address. On every one of these emerging issues, our national environmental movement has been strikingly ineffectual.

• Environmentalists, of all people, should see that the world is interconnected – as a “system in which global economic trends, corruption, ideology and values, political participation, etc. are all related to the fundamental goal of a just and sustainable society.” Complex problems resist small-bore strategies. American Prospect:

“The Death of Environmentalism” was less a condemnation of the environmental movement than a call to all progressives to think more like environmentalists -- and for professional environmentalists to think less like Washington lobbyists. The essay's greatest gift was its critique of “policy literalism,” the process by which activists identify a distinct problem, define it as an “environmental” one, seek the proximate cause, propose a solution, and then mobilize their experts, their lobbyists, and their public-relations machines around that solution.

In the most provocative section of their essay, [Shellenberger and Nordhaus] proposed that rather than defining the problem of global warming as “too much carbon in the atmosphere,” the problem should be redefined as:

• the radical right's control of all three branches of the U.S. government;
• trade policies that undermine environmental protections;
• our failure to articulate an inspiring and positive vision;
  
• overpopulation;
• the influence of money in American politics;
• our inability to craft legislative proposals that shape the debate around core American values;
• poverty; and
• old assumptions about what the problem is and what it isn't

• Single-issue groups are inherently weaker than coalitions and can be deeply harmful to fundamental change.

When each single-issue silo zealously guards their small piece of power and tries to call to action only for that specific piece, several things happen. First of all, the counterpoint is easily cast as "special interests clinging to power." Second, there is absolutely no continuity of message across the groups, and in fact their messages can conflict with one another.

• Single-issue groups don’t persuade the unconvinced. They tend to focus on issues and policies (a bad Democratic habit) over discussions of broader values, and they are better at lobbying than messaging. Matt Stoller:

Markos and Jerome continue with an overview of the party itself, which to them is a series of atomized constituencies epitomized by the single-issue groups. The critique of the progressive single-issue group infrastructure is specific, and conceptually it's not difficult to grasp. Progressive organizations were built during a time of a natural Democratic majority; therefore their main task was lobbying Congress. These groups are almost completely unequipped to do mass persuasion and organizing in a divided America that is not entirely convinced of basic assumptions, like that government can competently build infrastructure or that civil rights are important. My favorite piece of this section is when Markos and Jerome describe a gathering of progressive leaders doing lame trust-building exercises and demanding fealty to their pet issue. Sure it's a liberal stereotype, but it's also a nice metaphor for the culture of liberal middle management.

• Single-issue groups can be short-sighted, as when NARAL endorsed Lincoln Chafee over Sheldon Whitehouse in the Rhode Island senate race, citing his excellent pro-choice record. Chafee went on to vote for Bill Frist as Senate Majority Leader and to confirm “reactionary anti-privacy, anti-choice judges” like Janice Brown and the Supreme Court nominees Roberts and Alito. Says Markos:

Until NARAL (and the rest of the single-issue groups) understand that building a movement is more beneficial to their causes than singular devotion to their pet causes, I can't take them seriously. Divided those groups are being picked off, one by one. Trial lawyers, you're next up. United, the Republicans stand. The groups I take seriously? MoveOn, Democracy for America, National Political Hip Hop Conference, the bloggers -- groups that are working to build an effective progressive movement, not a single issue. Because when Democrats regain power, choice, the environment, worker's rights -- the whole gamut -- will be protected.

Kenneth the Page responds

Uncanny:

Minnesota humor

In honor of Mr. Alna Dem, of Excelsior, MN:

Two Minnesotans, Sven & Ole, walk into a pet shop near Brainerd. They head to the bird section and Sven says to Ole, "Dat's dem."

The owner comes over and asks if he can help them.

"Yah sure, ve'll take four of dem der little budgies in dat cage up dere," says Sven.

The owner puts the budgies in a paper bag. Ole and Sven pay for the birds, leave the shop, get into Sven's pick-up and drive to the top of some big cliffs near Brainerd Lake.

At the cliffs, Sven looks down at the 1000 foot drop and says, "Dis looks like a grand place."

He takes two birds out of the bag, puts them on his shoulders and jumps off the cliff. Ole watches as Sven falls all the way to the bottom, killing himself dead.

Looking down at the remains of his best pal, Ole shakes his head and says: "By yumpin' yiminy, dis budgie yumping is too dangerous for me."

VAIT!!! Der's MOR!

Moments later Knute arrives up at the cliffs.

He's been to the pet shop, too, and walks up to the edge of the cliff carrying another paper bag in one hand and a shotgun in the other.

"Hey, Ole. Vatch dis," Knute says. He takes a parrot from the bag and throws himself over the edge of the cliff.

Ole watches as half way down, Knute takes the gun and shoots the parrot. Knute continues to plummet down and down until he hits the bottom and breaks every bone in his body.

Ole shakes his head and says, "And I'm never trying dat parrotshooting either."

BUT VAIT!!! Der's MORE , you betcha!!

Ole is just getting over the shock of losing two friends when Lars appears.

He's also been to the pet shop and is carrying a paper bag, out of which he pulls a chicken.

Lars grasps the chicken by the legs, holds it over his head, hurls himself off the cliff and disappears down and down until he hits a rock and breaks his spine.

Once more Ole shakes his head. "First der was Sven with his budgie yumping, den Knute parrotshooting, and now Lars, hengliding ..."

Sorry, I had to.

Robin Williams on golf

This is a classic, even if you don't like Robin Williams OR golf.

The duplicity of George Will

...is laid out here. It's quite a record. I've always thought of Will as an insufferable, self-regarding toad without quite knowing why. I didn't know about the lies and ethical lapses. Guess my instincts are good.

Boil that cabbage down

For no reason at all, other than it's a sweet Sunday afternoon, I present the Smothers Brothers singing their hilarious version of "Boil That Cabbage Down." And yes, this is the one with the pumas in the crevasses!