FL-25: A "Democratic beachhead "-- Let's go, Joe Garcia!

Pop over to the Huffington Post and read the 10-point rule for how Democrats can remain on top of the political world even in this difficult year of mid-term elections.

Part of author Robert Creamer's Rule #1 (which concentrates on keeping control of both houses of Congress) says we have to "take beachheads for Democratic power." It specifically mentions only two examples in this huge country, and one of them is our own US House District 25, which former Miami-Dade Democratic Chairman Joe Garcia has on his plate for a run.

Yes, we won Florida for Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and just as big a mission awaits Miami-Dade Democrats in 2010. FL-25 is an open seat with the Diaz-Balart brothers both quitting their seats (Lincoln leaving FL-21 for retirement, and Mario quitting FL-25 to try for FL-21). Your blogger is ready to work for Joe Garcia, when he decides to run, and I hear many enthusiastic voices in agreement.

As the HuffPo piece points out, a victory in FL-25 would help Democrats "continue to woo young Cuban Americans away from their traditional Republican roost."

This is a goal we can all agree on, for the long run, as well as for this tremendously important mid-term election.

Meanwhile, don't forget to sign up on Facebook to Draft Joe Garcia for 2010.

Help! How to understand the mortgage crisis? Read this

Thanks to Huffington Post for publishing this instructive piece on where the mortgage crisis and the subsequent global financial crisis came from: willful fraud by lenders.

And did it ring a bell with you when the author reports that the FBI was warning of an epidemic of mortgage fraud already in 2004? Sounded familiar to me.

Read down into the comments and see how the dittoheads chime in trying to blame the problem on the Democrats and the CRA. It's heartening to see the reality-based crowd rise and pound back with facts, logic and history. I've been against too much prison-building in this country, but I may have to revise that position if we're to mete out proper punishment to all who led us into this pickle.

They keep your content more or less indefinitely

Happened to stumble upon (hint?) news that Facebook's guru had sort of explained a revision of their terms of service. Since many of us blog-readers also prowl Facebook, I thought you'd like to read about it here. Click away.

A day later, an UPDATE: This turned out to be pretty controversial, and now there's talk of rescinding Facebook's new terms of service. A link to the Huffington Post writeup.

HuffPo author writes up enthusiasm for voting in Miami

Check out this Huffington Post story on the visit of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to Miami and the enthusiasm for early voting in the Miami Gardens suburb.

Tuesday progressive panels in Big Tent at Denver

There’s a tremendous amount of progressive stuff going on around the convention in Denver and much is pointed at the bloggers. The Big Tent, where the bloggers are concentrated, has an upstairs hall where panels lay plans and speculate hopefully about the new world around the corner in an Obama administration.

Here are some notes from Tuesday afternoon’s panels under the rubric of Take Back America (check out ourfuture.org).

U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, beat the drum hard for universal health care, pointing out it was the main complaint she heard canvassing voters in the ultimately successful drive to put a Democrat in the Illinois seat held by former Speaker Dennis Hastert. The result, she said disproved the old nostrum that politicians didn’t care about the issue because “no politician ever has lost for being against universal health care.”

“Sixty people a day die for lack of health insurance,” she said.

Barack Obama must be backed by a movement of people demanding universal health care to make it happen, she said.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California said the modest progress in Congress on the Iraq war issue is entirely due to relentless pressure from the progressive community, which must strive to become the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn, outlined three main tasks for MoveOn, which was well represented in the audience:

• Keep telling the story of the Iraq war, how it started and why it may be ending, never giving up on the judgment that it was “fundamentally wrong.”
• Elect Obama.
• After victory in November, keep pushing.
  
• In a Q-A session afterward, I had the first question, asking him to explain why he hadn’t mentioned Afghanistan in the context of this country’s foreign problems. Pariser said Afghanistan simply didn’t have a broad mandate from MoveOn members, and it was something to keep under consideration.
  
  Asked about media reform, Pariser said this was a huge concern among MoveOn members, who object to the increasing concentration of media ownership and are passionate about net neutrality.
  
  Former U.S. Rep. David Bonior made a strong plea for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which makes it easier to form unions.
  
  Arianna Huffington, co-founder of Huffington Post, declared that the American public is shifting in its political views. “This is a progressive country now,” she said.
  
  Talking about building progressive infrastructure, she said new media had several important tasks, among them:
• “Define the new center.”
• “Build communities around it.”
• Media should have a light side as well as serious analysis and comment, to attract those who want to follow celebrities and to help people live without stress.
  
  Her big mission: “Relentlessly pursue the truth about John McCain.”