Sunday, March 21, 2004
Water Their Way With Tears
TomPaine.Com has a great analysis of the progressive grassroots and how they operate, as symbolized by Howard Dean's new Democracy for America movement and the kindred spirits in MoveOn.Org. Not everybody is as positive about the new Dean operation--and let's keep in mind that Joe Trippi, Dean's ousted campaign manager, is planning his own progressive organization. But the fact remains, as TomPaine.Com notes, the last time either party saw an insurgency the likes of this was 1964, when conservatives under Goldwater took over the Republican Party. They lost big then--but won even bigger later.
The distortion game is afoot already, as Bush follows up his reviled ground-zero campaign ad with one claiming that John Kerry wants to raise taxes and keep us from catching terrorists. In Slate, Will Saletan analyzes the ground upon which these accusations rest--and finds it both nonexistent, and a lot like the ground Bush the Elder ran on in 1988.
Because this is the first Sunday after the first anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, lots of people in lots of churches are praying for the troops, the president, the country. As the most religious country in the world (Islamic states got nothin' on us), we've always prayed in wartime. During the war in the Phillippines that followed the Spanish-American War, Mark Twain heard the fevered prayers of his fellow citizens for the troops, the president, and the country, and then sat down and composed his own prayer. He never published it in his lifetime--it didn't appear until 1923. It's kicked around the Internet in many forms since 2001, but today, it's worth reading again. Because if we're praying that the foe be vanquished--and many of us are--we'd better understand exactly what that means.
And finally, here's another reason why we love the Memory Hole: Russ Kick is on the story of the censored symbols in a Microsoft Office font.
TomPaine.Com has a great analysis of the progressive grassroots and how they operate, as symbolized by Howard Dean's new Democracy for America movement and the kindred spirits in MoveOn.Org. Not everybody is as positive about the new Dean operation--and let's keep in mind that Joe Trippi, Dean's ousted campaign manager, is planning his own progressive organization. But the fact remains, as TomPaine.Com notes, the last time either party saw an insurgency the likes of this was 1964, when conservatives under Goldwater took over the Republican Party. They lost big then--but won even bigger later.
The distortion game is afoot already, as Bush follows up his reviled ground-zero campaign ad with one claiming that John Kerry wants to raise taxes and keep us from catching terrorists. In Slate, Will Saletan analyzes the ground upon which these accusations rest--and finds it both nonexistent, and a lot like the ground Bush the Elder ran on in 1988.
Because this is the first Sunday after the first anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, lots of people in lots of churches are praying for the troops, the president, the country. As the most religious country in the world (Islamic states got nothin' on us), we've always prayed in wartime. During the war in the Phillippines that followed the Spanish-American War, Mark Twain heard the fevered prayers of his fellow citizens for the troops, the president, and the country, and then sat down and composed his own prayer. He never published it in his lifetime--it didn't appear until 1923. It's kicked around the Internet in many forms since 2001, but today, it's worth reading again. Because if we're praying that the foe be vanquished--and many of us are--we'd better understand exactly what that means.
And finally, here's another reason why we love the Memory Hole: Russ Kick is on the story of the censored symbols in a Microsoft Office font.
