We have a real strategic opportunity here. Rudy Giuliani has put all his eggs in the 9/11 basket, and, though he has no f'ing clue what he is talking about, he keeps saying you can't be President if you don't "understand" the terrorist threat, suggesting that his "experience" as mayor of NYC on September 11, 2001 makes him uniquely qualified to become president. Leaving aside for the moment that this is akin to saying "I got my ass kicked last week so I have the experience necessary to teach Karate classes" -- he showed a huge achilles heel last night when said he'd never heard anything as "absurd" as the claim that al Qaeda seeks to kill Americans because of our foreign policy toward Muslim nations and the middle east in particular.

We all know that's wrong, but we've never had a great vessel to attack it. The notion that al Qaeda hates us because of our freedom is a frame at the heart of the GWOT/Security State frame, leaning toward the notion that anything which pisses off al Qaeda os further proof of how awesome we are. Further, just as John Edwards (and Jim Webb, and others) have said that the phrase GWOT unites Arabs and Muslims against us, the notion that jihadists hate our freedom makes it seem as if anything we do will engender hatred from Muslims, and so we can never stop fighting them until they establish a global Caliphate, or we kill every last one of them.

Conveniently enough, Osama bin Laden himself wrote his reasons for jihad against the United States in a 1998 fatwah (excerpted in the extended entry), and he cites three principle reasons, all of which are due to our foreign policy regarding Muslim states (and Israel). If we can successfully inform the public debate on this issue, we can severely discredit Rudy Giuliani; we can make a fundamental change in the discourse; we can encourage other presidential candidates to follow in Edwards's footsteps by refusing pervasive GWOT frames; and we can probably even help non-Hillary Democratic candidates in the process. Follow below for the facts.

This is the first in a series of diaries on progressive hip hop. In light of recent discussions, I thought it would be worthwhile to examine some progressive hip hop (not the kind Don Imus learned from) to see just how political it is, in what ways and on what levels political information and opinion are transmitted, and regarding which issues.

"Wishing," by Edo G and Masta Ace, is a remarkably thorough and powerful manifesto on black politics, which displays a great deal of political sophistication to express distrust for institutions of government, lament the poor material conditions of so many black Americans, criticize the maladaptive gang culture which has pervaded hip hop, and make critiques on the status quo, which, if translated into political theory or social science, could fill volumes. The first lines are simple and direct:

I wish the president would stop lyin'
Black babies would stop cryin'
And young brothers would stop dyin'
I wish the police would stop killin'
Politicians would stop stealin' and actin like they not dealin'

In response to the suggestions of many, including Matt.

Ask him to send a two month funding bill to Bush.

No -- send the bill back. How will we be any better off in two months? Another 5% will have gone from "Disapprove" to "Strongly Disapprove"? This President has proven he doesn't care, that he will do what he wants no matter what the public says. Democrats have the political capital to end this war, all they lack is the will.

So send the bill back. Let him veto it again. In the 3 weeks between bills, pass that old stem cell bill he vetoed, pass medicare reform, pass anything you want, as long as it's something everyone wants that he's obstructed before. Let him veto more progress -- do you think he'll have anything left to fight the truth that he's just standing in the way? So far, he has used his despotic myopia as an advantage, pre-empting any discussion of his moral culpability for blocking the funds and prolonging the war, but we can turn it against him.

Send it back a second time, and a third, and a fourth, and when the "running out" date draws near, and Congress has brought the end to this madness fully into view, dangled it in front of the people until they can smell it -- they will begin to know it's possible, and they will demand it. Give them a reason to speak out in the news, on the blogs, in the streets; give Lou Dobbs a reason to get really fired up -- every. single. night. Bush doesn't have to listen to the people -- but at least 33 Senators and 435 Representatives do.

Send the bill back until we deliver the people their override. It's not about politics or power, it's about doing the right thing. The political capital is there, we need only the will to put it on the table.

Recently, MSNBC began running a news ticker through commercial breaks to keep viewers "engaged," even if only for the few moments they forget to keep not-paying-attention during commercials. Ever the competitor, Fox came up with its own plan: 8-second animated segments between commercials featuring an Arab-looking, Arab-sounding, taxi-driving man in NYC who we see talking to himself through the rear-view mirror. Oleg (the character's name, which I learned after a bit of digging online) is learning to speak English like a good little assimilator, so an artificial voice on a tape reads a phrase and then Oleg repeats.

Here were the first words I ever heard Oleg utter. (And as Dave Barry says, I swear to you I am not making this up): "Which detention facility am I going to?" If Fox was trying to get my attention, it worked. A mere 30 seconds later, with Oleg's enemy-combatant status still fresh in my mind, his shifty little eyes reappeared in the rear-view mirror, the same artificial voice finished a phrase, and then Oleg said: "Where is my court-appointed attorney?"

Get it? It's not racism because he's just repeating after the tape! He must have gotten that tape second-hand from some terror-cell rummage-sale -- what an innocent explanation. Oh, and if you take the time to look up the web site, (which I'm sure all Fox viewers will) you'll see that there is no hidden message reifying ubiquitous and readily-available negative stereotypes regarding Arabs (or taxi drivers, or people who don't speak English, or people who frequent detention facilities and mooch off the state for counsel like those welfare moms mooching with school lunch) because Oleg is Greek... technically. I mean, "Greek born," as his bio says. He's probably still one of them on the inside.

More on Fox's newest multi-media racial slur below the fold...

John Warner spoke today at Larry Sabato's Intro to Politics class, and he took a lot of questions. Most everyone in the class now has a working knowledge of the constitution and the political process, and at least a vague idea or what's going on in the country. Most of the questions were the only one on their particular topic, but Senator Warner expressed some surprise at the focus of about half of the questions and the only recurring theme of the discussion: the erosion of our civil liberties.

Among the D.C. punditocracy, there's a lot of pontificating on what young voters do and don't care about, and I suspect most of them would be every bit as surprised as Senator Warner was about the level of concern among young voters with civil liberties. Presumably, America's youth don't vote in large numbers because they are mostly shielded by their parents from the material concerns that motivate most political engagement. So the analysts bore their audiences looking for material issues that young voters are supposed to care about (usually college loans and balanced budgets), but I'd like to suggest an very different approach: academic issues.

I don't mean "education"; I mean the things we read about in civics class and history class, like the constitution, the wars we faught to defend it, the civil rights movement waged to finish the job it started. Usually people call these "abstract" issues, but that's when they're talking about adults who don't care about them anyway (except solidly-Democratic Democrats). But to students, who don't pay for taxes or health insurance, no issue can be concrete or abstract -- even student loans seem a lifetime away.

The division is instead between what adults and politicians and pundits tell us, and what we know, what we can reason and grasp with our own minds. To me, every issue is abstract, but habeus corpus and the fourth amendment are at least self-evident. Politicians appealing to the youth vote, as well as pundits analyzing it, need not fear the abstract -- everything is abstract, but the recent, blatant violations of the constitution, drowning polar bears, and civillian casualties are crystal clear.

Seriously guys, you look like 8-year-olds fighting in the back seat of the car, only with incredibly well-informed ideas on American politics. There's nothing more embarrassing than having two of the (many, many, many) geniuses of the movement go tit for tat on the news feed thread.

First of all, this whole thing started because Sirota used BB to link to his own work on another site. As a general rule, it's not appropriate for anyone to use their BB privileges to link their own writing, unless (I suppose) it is chock full of other BB-worthy news articles (in which case you might as well just post the links to those articles on BB). Either way, there's no reason to use the breaking news feed to pimp your own opinions. Write a fucking diary like the rest of us.

Speaking of which, this is a diary, so you have to follow the link to read the last few paragraphs.

There are issues out there like net neutrality and illegal wiretapping where we know the answer -- preserve net neutrality and enforce FISA compliance. But there are some big issues out there with complicated problems and potential solutions, where the current policy is so old and outdated that a massive overhaul, a complete rethinking of the governing approach could be both politically viable and incredibly helpful.

This diary isn't necessarily the place sort out these issues, but there is potential for sweeping reform -- some wonkier proposals that have been forwarded by others/experts, and some more general possibilities for reform -- just as a way to show how much legislative reform could be approached in the next few years, and hopefully others (more knowledgeable than myself) will carry on the conversation on their own.

The Tax Code
Campaign finance and lobbying reform
Welfare reform reform, health care, social programs
Immigration
No Child Left Behind
NAFTA, CAFTA, Fair Trade, outsourcing
The structure of our national security institutions
Social Security

There are a lot of ways this blog might change in the coming years. It seems we are witnessing the infancy of a new movement, ready for all sorts of shifts in power, shifts in strategy, new niches to fill, projects to tackle, and challenges to overcome. I certainly don't have all the answers, and the answers I do have are far from complete or exhaustive, but in this Diary I'd like to lay out a few of the ways I see this particular blog expanding its role in the progressive movement, bringing its particular personality and skill-set to movement.

In short, I'd like to see the projects sidebar expand into a more permanent medium for sustained discussions and collective idea-building for the MyDD community to:
-Keep researching the blogosphere and the progressive movement.
-Keep telling the party what's wrong with them and what we'd do in their place.
-Identify Democratic committees in need of progressive change.
-Identify more primaries worthy of our involvement.
-Identify state legislatures thirsty for progressive change.

Even if you don't care about my ideas, please come share your own in comments.