DoubleSpeak with Matthew and Peter Slutsky » 2006

Wisconsin House Seat In Play

The Wisconsin 8th is heating up. The House seat is being vacated by Rep. Mark Green (R) and both Democrats and Republicans believe that they can win the seat.

Wisconsin Democrats think the northeastern-based 8th district is so competitive that three credible candidates have emerged to try to put the seat being vacated by Rep. Mark Green (R-Wis.) into the blue column.

Collectively they raised more than $2 million in 2005, bolstering national Democrats’ claims that the area encompassing Green Bay is not solid GOP terrain.

The Republicans have coalesced behind Assembly Speaker John Gard (R), which will give them early fundraising and organizing momentum.

The Democrats have a 3-way primary, which will take place on September 12, 2006. The announced Democratic candidates so far are: Jamie Wall (Businessman), Nancy Nusbaum (former De Pere mayor and Brown County executive) and Steve Kagen (an allergist and immunologist).

On the good side…

Vice President Cheney will be in Green Bay on March 13 to headline a six-figure fundraiser for Gard and the Wisconsin Republican Party, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported earlier this month.

This is a good thing. Cheney is enjoying an 18% approval rating. Send him into any competitive district!

This should be an interesting race and certainly one to keep on the radar. DoubleSpeak will follow this race and will sit down with the Democratic nominee in the fall.

Feb 28, 2006 by Peter Slutsky in
Spread The Word: Digg this! | No Comments »

BushCo Radio Sliding and The Roots

Is it too much to imagine that DoubleSpeak had anything to do with this? Perhaps…

The Arbitrends radio rankings for Los Angeles came out today and things don’t go so well for the BushCo radio minions. Right wing talk radio ratings are down across the board:

Limbaugh drew a 4.1 last month. This month he dropped to a 3.3.
Sean Hannity was at a 2.7 last month. He’s now at a 1.8.
Laura Ingraham: 1.1 to 0.8.
Dennis Prager/Michael Medved: 1.2 to a 0.7.
Hugh Hewitt: 1.3 to 0.7.

Air America managed a 0.5 to 0.9 rise, which apparently is decent considering the poor quality of their transmission signal.

We imagine most of our listeners are of a similar political persuasion and as such, don’t spend much time listening to right wing radio. What we don’t realize is that right wing talk is pervasive on this nation’s AM dials, and with the top-down control of Karl Rove, is monolithic in its message. And the local emphasis of much talk radio makes it particularly intimate and effective. They’ve decided that the warrantless NSA spying is just fine.

Over at Firedoglake among others, they’ve started a Roots Project to use local talk radio and other media outlets such as newspaper editorials in a coordinated way to pressure local Republican lawmakers who are in a delicate spot politically right now. By exerting coordinated local effort combined with the collaborative abilities of the blogosphere, we can push some GOP members who might otherwise toe the Bush line towards accountability. They’re looking for help in Kansas, Pennsylvania, Maine, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Ohio. Jane wrote:

What we’d like to do is organize people from these states who know the media outlets in their areas the best (as well as local blogs, as both Kos and Atrios noted this morning) and work with them to put pressure on these people over specific issues since blogs like FDL, Crooks & Liars, Glenn Greenwald and others can drive traffic and make these efforts more impactful.

…

If you live in any of these states and would like to help organize these efforts, or simply take part in them, please either email me or leave word in the comments section. We’ll start to put together a network of local media that can be quickly and effectively targeted within these markets, putting in place an infrastructure to work with Glenn Greenwald to apply selective pressure on critical Senators as the investigations into the illegal NSA wiretap investigations go forward.

Think you might be interested?

Feb 28, 2006 by Joshua Skaroff in
Spread The Word: Digg this! | No Comments »

Just Send Andrew instead

Sometimes Andrew Sullivan is just downright adorable. Watching him maintain his childlike innocence about war, tax cuts, and plain bigotry while being a gay Catholic conservative is pretty amusing. Today he pondered why Pres. Bush doesn’t just send former Pres. Clinton over to Iraq to fix things up.

So here’s a thought: why not send Bill Clinton? For some reason that eludes my own judgment, Clinton has a great deal of cachet in the Middle East, and could defuse the anti-Bush and thereby anti-American obstacles to success. He was, by all accounts, superb at the Doha/Brookings/Saban summit in 2003. He would bring the Democratic party into a much more constructive role in trying to bring about a serious step forward for Iraq, and help unite the country at home. If Bush were to ask him, it would send a very powerful message of seriousness to the Middle East, put more of America’s prestige and effort behind the Iraq project, at exactly the time some in the country are doubting our fortitude.

Ignoring for the moment that the problems in Iraq are tremendously complex and date back through decades if not centuries of sectarian strife, there’s one simple reason why Bush won’t ask Clinton to help. Because it MIGHT help the Democrats. And in this administration, every decision, no matter how important to our national security and the safety of the world is made with only one factor in mind: politics.

Karl Rove: Keeping you unsafe and afraid since 2001.

Feb 27, 2006 by Joshua Skaroff in
Spread The Word: Digg this! | No Comments »

The Case for Impeachment

March’s Harper’s Magazine is out on the newstands and in the meantime they’ve posted an excerpt of their cover article, The Case For Impeachment by Lewis H. Lapham, on their website. Go check it out as it is a hard hitting article covering the myriad reasons that Bush Must Go.

First, a quote from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) on his late 2005 House resolution calling for an investigation and censure of Bush and Cheney:

“To take away the excuse,” he said, “that we didn’t know.” So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, “Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress?” when the Bush Administration declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity, can say that “somehow it escaped our notice” that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law.

Lapham’s conclusion is probably the best part:

We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country’s good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world’s evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation’s wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous.

Come January of 2007 when the newly elected 210th Congress begins its session, the hopefully Democratic majority will have a tough question to face regarding impeachment. The facts of the case are here…what do you think?

Feb 27, 2006 by Joshua Skaroff in
Spread The Word: Digg this! | 2 Comments »

Monday Sing Along

“Let the eagle soar,
Like she’s never soared before.
From rocky coast to golden shore,
Let the mighty eagle soar.

Soar with healing in her wings,
As the land beneath her sings:

‘Only god, no other kings.’
This country’s far too young to die.
We’ve still got a lot of climbing to do,
And we can make it if we try.

Built by toils and struggles
God has led us through.”

UPDATE: The Smoking Gun has even more of John Ashcroft’s original music. No word yet on when you’ll be able to get his catalog on iTunes.

Feb 27, 2006 by Matthew Slutsky in
Spread The Word: Digg this! | No Comments »

Bush = Not Smart

Details released regarding Bush’s bike accident last year. Turns out that:

HE MAY be the most powerful man in the world, but proof has emerged that President George Bush cannot ride a bike, wave and speak at the same time.

Scotland on Sunday has obtained remarkable details of one of the most memorably bizarre episodes of the Bush presidency: the day he crashed into a Scottish police constable while cycling in the grounds of Gleneagles Hotel.

Read the rest of the article here.

Feb 27, 2006 by Matthew Slutsky in
Spread The Word: Digg this! | 1 Comment »

Governors Races Look Good for Dems

Hope everyone caught the article from the NYTimes outlining the Democrats’ high hopes to win Governor’s races in 2006. Remember, it’s not just about the Congress- we have to win at a local and statewide level. The more seats we win locally, the less Republicans can paint our national leaders as out of touch. If your local school board members are Democrats and do a good job- why not trust John Kerry?

From the NYTimes:

Democrats have a strong chance to pick up a number of seats held by Republicans while keeping seats even in states that President Bush won in 2004, potentially allowing Democrats to put their view of government on display across a bigger swath of the country and strengthening their position for the 2008 presidential race, party officials said.

Among the states that could flip to the Democratic column are Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Ohio, all general election battlegrounds carried by Mr. Bush, as well as New York and perhaps California.

This is good news. Let’s celebrate.

Graphic from the article.