On December 5 and 6 there were polls put up on CNN and MSNBC

[madfloridian]

not long after Dean's statements in San Antonio. I found a post from about 1:00 am on the 6th which said that the CNN poll was 72% in agreement with what he said. The MSNBC poll was even higher.

Does anyone else remember these? We posted them to go vote in them, and there was hardly any pushing to be done to get them in our favor...it was very overwhelmingly in favor of what he said about the war.

Yet the attacks are getting worse, not just on Dean but on Murtha and Pelosi. I am wondering if we are just dreaming when we post here that we will be leaving there. Internet polls, yes, but easily skewed the other way and they weren't.

I think there will be real battle on this.

[tirechewer]

1. There will be...

The greater majority of people in this country want to see an end to the war in Iraq, but none of that matters. The Bush administration is so committed to this course of action that Congress would have to pull funding to stop them. This Congress will never do that, no matter what the people want.

I know that people are tired of hearing comparisons between Iraq and Viet Nam, but if you look back, even with all of the public protests and the fact that after a time the majority of the voters wanted to leave Viet Nam, it didn't happen until four years after the Democrats who started the war were turned out of office and Nixon was pressured into stopping the war four years after had promised to do so.

There was not supposed to be another Viet Nam. That was why Bush and his cronies lied and forged Intel to convince congress to give him the approval to invade Iraq. There had been a post Viet Nam law passed which prevented the president from committing troops to a war without Congressional approval. It took a Republican Congress and a lot of lying, and forging and arm twisting but Bush got his permission, and we will be there until he is no longer president, I'm afraid and perhaps even beyond. This is his Holy War. He thinks it will be his big legacy and that he will be judged right for doing it in the future. He doesn't care about anything else or anybody but himself.

In that way he has a lot in common with Lyndon Johnson, but at least Johnson had a change of heart when he was out of office and realized he made a mistake. I read in a biography of Johnson that he muscled the Civil Rights bill through behind the scenes to help atone for what he had done in Viet Nam. Bush will never see anything differently.

The only good thing that will come from this is that the Republicans will be blamed for this one the way the Democrats were blamed for Viet Nam. It took a long time before another Democrat was elected after Viet Nam ended. Hopefully after Bush and company are finished it will take a lot longer before another Republican is elected. Especially a conservative Republican.

[madfloridian]

2. Right, it does not matter what we think.

Unfortunately, the ones in control have the ownership of much of the more left-leaning moderate media.

Unfortunately, they consider Dean an interloper and look on us that way as well....us meaning the average people in the party.

It shows when I call my senator. It shows when they go on TV and not say the truth.

I am feeling very uncomfortable about things today.

[tirechewer]

3. I know, me too....

I'm pretty uncomfortable myself right now. I can see the media spinning the Bush side the way they always do, shoving that one poll at us taken by AP/Ipsos which has been carefully manipulated to take away anything that doesn't show Bush rebounding. The other polls that don't show him doing so well are suppressed. It's a typical Bush show. The press highlights his puppet elections in Iraq, and they all trumpet about Iraqi "freedom" and everyone is supposed to buy it and think how much better Bush is doing. Not. They did the same thing during the last election in Iraq and his "rebound" was over in record time.

Another thing that is bothering me really a lot is the subsuming of CNN. Earlier this year supporter of the Bush administration and agenda bought a huge chunk of Time Warner, CNN's parent company. Within days it was like looking at a whole different operation. They slanted stories in favor of the administration. They omitted news that I was seeing elsewhere. They soft pedaled the bad news from Iraq and the post Katrina news. There was little or no coverage of the peace demonstrations, not even the really large one the weekend of September 24. I found film clips and pictures all over the internet and from Reuters which is a UK based wire service, but nothing from CNN. MSNBC is marginally better, but it didn't start until after katrina.

I try to go beyond those mass market sources for news. I dig, and I can usually find the cloud cuckoo land that Bush is trying to spin and see that it's not true.

I don't think they have the hearts and minds of the majority. I don't think many of the Democratic "leaders", except for Dean have a clue. I call my senators and representatives often. I email often. I write letters often. Even if they don't agree they know that there are a lot of us out there who are watching and waiting and listening. In the end it all helps.

One of the most demoralizing things the Conservatives have done is to try and make people with liberal and humanistic views feel inadequate and disenfranchised in our own country. Just remember. It is not their country. It's ours too. We need to stand up, speak loudly and speak the truth. We need to keep calling our elected officials and tell them we need to hear from them, and need them to speak out too. We need to demonstrate, write on the Internet, start peace boards and make ourselves as visible as we can. That is the last thing they want, but it's what they need. Vocal opposition to expose their lies, opposition which will not give up and opposition which will tell the truth and demand that their government do the same.

I also write a lot of letters to Ken Melman (they get to Bush faster than going through the White House. Melman wants Republicans to hold office again some day), Denny Hastert and Bill Frist. The people you disagree with need to hear your views even more than the ones who already agree with you do. Even if they never admit it, they do notice and it helps to let them know we don't believe them and that we hold them accountable for the terrible place we find ourselves in today.