good news from iraq…and other interesting stuff

good news out of iraq….

from friday’s edition of the WaPo–
Easy Sailing Along Once-Perilous Road To Baghdad Airport
mudville gazette references this article and adds commentary.

in a related story, clarice feldman at real clear politics weighs in on joe wilson and “plamegate”: The Wilson Gambit.

if you’re not sure how i feel about joe wilson, read this.

our favorite political commentator snoop dogg gives us his own special take on the war in iraq. (from the daily buzz)

also:

because europe has got this whole economic growth thing figured out…let’s spread socialism and an expanded welfare state to this country!

Europe’s Not Working–from the american enterprise online. it has the audacity to suggest that the UK, by following america’s economic policies more closely than than those of their european neighbors, has found that (surprise) those policies are more effective and encourage more growth. blair rips the french and the germans for clinging to their failed economic model. would gordon brown ever do this? who knows.

speaking of blair…Blair attacks Labour’s ‘old left’ . i love this guy. why can’t our president act more like him?

and…from willisms, why george bush doesn’t hate black people.

got enough links yet? read. think. enjoy monday.

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lessons for democrats from tony blair’s labour party

one would assume that british PM tony blair’s policies and his values are reflected by his own labour party. that’s usually how it works here, where a political party usually mirrors the ideology of its leader. not this time. labour has traditionally been a party with a deep socialistic, even marxist belief system. they were at one time the only party representing the working classes and the trade unions. labour was seen as the party caring about the little guy.

labour’s popular support evaporated when their main supporters joined the ownership class. once this happened, suddenly sharing possessions for the common good became less desirable. this socialist idea was ingrained in old labour ideology, such as clause 4. it was not a popular ideology, however, and labour was forced to disguise the roots of this ideology to win elections. it obviously worked.

how did the labour party respond to the shift in public perception of them? they tried appealing to the kook fringe element of their membership. this fell flat. (are you listening, democrats?) as they say, you could look it up.

while you could probably argue that labour still has some elements of the old guard involved in government, they didn’t win until they moved to the center (or centre, if you prefer). it has been suggested that former president clinton’s successful campaign moving him to the center was the inspiration for blair’s centrist campaign for the 1997 election –that, and the american-style spin doctors employed by labour.

there’s evidence to support this claim. labour decided that to gain their support back, they had to change their stripes and appeal to the majority of british voters by shaking up the perception of labour’s ideological base. that’s what the democrats have to do– find a way to appeal to the mainstream by advancing policies that people agree with. this could be hard to do, as the natural bent of the party is to promote unpopular policies and beliefs. so the next logical step is to hire their best spin doctors, because it will take one heck of a sales job to convince the american people that they can identify with democrats on issues important to the voters.

the fight democrats will have to have is with the two warring factions in their party. one side is represented by cindy sheehan, michael moore, moveon, and kos. the other side is represented by those who prefer to be seen as more moderate in their views, hillary for example. pandering to the first group will not win them any elections, and continuing to do it will doom them in ’06.

i’ll be honest. i really don’t want the democrats to figure this out, because it’s much more fun to watch the division and sniping happening with them right now. i am concerned that the republicans don’t seem to have any sense of urgency in getting their conservative base back on their side. they must not become complacent and forget why we sent them to d.c., because that base is the only thing keeping them in office in ’06.

friday’s fun links– coming sometime late afternoon. look for ’em.

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britain’s hard left vs. tony blair

it must be rather difficult to make policy and help to fight a war when loud voices in your own party call you a terrorist. but this is nothing new for UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. former labour mp(member of parliament) and current respect mp george galloway pulled no punches in his remarks to the bbc. here’s what he said.

“It’s not the Muslims who are the terrorists. The biggest terrorists are Bush, and Blair, and Berlusconi, and Aznar, but it is definitely not a clash of civilizations. George Bush doesn’t have any civilization, he doesn’t represent any civilization.”

Here’s the full context of his remarks , taking on more than just the war in Iraq.

mr. galloway’s hands are far from clean, considering his possible link to the UN oil-for-food scandal. future posts will link to some articles relating to this. his remarks are ridiculous by their very premise that accidently killing civilians is the same as targeting civilians and doing it on purpose. tony blair and george w. bush are not terrorists. this kind of rhetoric only hurts his argument against the war in iraq and mideast peace negotiations in general. intelligent people should denounce this kind of heated rhetoric and work toward a resolution to the war in iraq that will allow iraq to be a free and an independent country.

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