Murtha vs. Hoyer

posted by John Nichols on 06/10/2006 @ 5:26pm

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When the House of Representatives voted Thursday on the question of whether to allow old media companies to colonize and control the internet, the two men who would like to be majority leader in a Democrat-controlled Congress split their votes.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who has long been seen as the heir apparent for the majority leader post if Democrats regain power, stuck to his usual pattern: He did as the lobbyists for the largest corporations – and their allies in the Bush administration – asked.

Congressman John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has indicated that he will challenge Hoyer for the No. 2 position in the party caucus if Democrats retake the House in November, did the opposite.

Hoyer voted for the corrupt "Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006, which the telephone and cable companies are using as a vehicle to create a two-tier internet in which the sites of corporations and candidates that pay high fees to broadband providers are easily accessed while the sites of small businesses, community groups and independent thinkers will be difficult – perhaps impossible – to reach. Murtha voted against it.

It wasn't the first time that Hoyer and Murtha have split on fundamental questions.

While Murtha has been an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, Hoyer has steered a cautious course far closer to that of the Bush administration.

Last December, Murtha voted against making the PATRIOT Act permanent. Hoyer voted in favor of the move, and in so doing gave the Bush administration everything it was asking for with regard to the controversial law.

The point here is not to suggest that Murtha's a perfect progressive -- in fact, he's really an old-school New Dealer who breaks with liberals on some social issues -- or that Hoyer is Tom DeLay in Democrat drag. For instance, while Murtha's been a more consistent critic of corporate-sponsored free-trade pacts than Hoyer, both men have lifetime records of voting with the AFL-CIO around 90 percent of the time.

But when Hoyer ran against Nancy Pelosi for the position of House Whip back in 2001, there was no question that Pelosi was the progressive choice while Hoyer erred right. Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch and a key player in Washington debates on trade policy, noted that, "Hoyer has repositioned himself--one can only assume for political purposes--as the DLC, business candidate in this race."

No member of the House leadership has more consistently echoed the talking points of the corporate-sponsored Democratic Leadership Council than Hoyer, who once told a DLC event that Democrats lost control of the House in 1994 because "too many Americans believed that our party had become weak on crime and national defense, incapable of making hard decisions on welfare reform and fiscal policy, and irrevocably wedded to the idea that all of our problems could be solved by government and more spending."

Even now, while Hoyer is often praised by the Bush-friendly DLC, Murtha gets savaged. After Murtha called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq last year, the DLC accused the decorated Vietnam veteran of "offering surrender" -- while Hoyer was quoted as saying Murtha's approach "could lead to disaster."

The DLC has good reason to favor Hoyer. The Democratic whip has worked with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rahm Emanuel, D-Illinois, to thwart the candidacies of anti-war Democrats such as Illinosian Christine Cegelis in primaries this year -- just as the two have worked over the years to help corporate-friendly Democrats beat those who challenge the K Street agenda.

The Hoyer-Murtha race is an abstraction at this point. Unless Democrats develop a coherent message soon, there is no guarantee that they will be a majority in search of a leader come November. But if they do become a majority, and if they want that majority to mean anything, Democrats would be wise to consider the opportunity that Murtha offers to distinguish their party on issues such as the war, the Patriot Act and media monopoly.

Comments (62)

Well, oh duh, since you put it that way-- Murtha, no (real) two ways about it. But I'd contend that dem's are already the majority and have been for a while. What they really need to do is fix the voting system to reflect the will of the people and not that of the tyrants.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_890.shtml

Posted by Bushfools at 06/10/2006 @ 6:02pm
Murtha for majority leader! And Feingold for Prez!! Drag the hopeless democrats out to where their actual supporters have been for ages!!!

Posted by Vic Perry at 06/10/2006 @ 6:04pm
Yes, lets by all means perpetuate the petty shit that the politicians' ops sling at each other so we can totally ignore any issues the candidates bring up and discuss their actual records as substantiation.

Posted by Bushfools at 06/10/2006 @ 6:45pm
The more I read the more I become ashamed of the Democratic Leadership. Democrats like Hoyer, Feinstein, and Lieberman, just to name a few, have so severely crippled the party with their right of center leaning that it is impossible for the Dems to develop a genuine "message" in time for November. That the radical right will retain control is more than just a foregone conclusion. Until the party can rid itself of these and other traitors to the party it will never present a coherent and cohesive voice. It will never speak from a position of strength and courage. It will never shake the stay at home Democrats from their apathy. It will never instill that old feeling of pride that once was the heart of the party.

Disillusioned and Disgusted Democrat.

Posted by pcarter at 06/10/2006 @ 11:00pm
All right, so this is getting nowhere. I think one thing that needs to be considered, though, is the massively distorted portrait of the Sandinistas in the now-closed thread involving Nicaragua. The idea that the Sandinistas were a nice, happy democracy that posed no threat to anyone is absolutely absurd:

First and foremost, they did not actually have a fair democratic process:

In contrast to the Cuban revolution, the Sandinistas initially attempted to portray their government as one that practiced political pluralism. A broad range of new political parties emerged that had not been allowed under Somoza. Following promulgation of a new constitution, Nicaragua held national elections in 1984. Independent electoral observers from around the world, including the UN, found that the elections had been fair. Many groups, including the Nicaraguan political opposition and the Reagan administration, disputed this, objecting to political restrictions placed on the opposition by the government such as censorhip of the press. The FSLN had, in fact, been actively suppressing opposition parties while leaving moderate parties alone with Ortega claiming that moderate political parties "presented no danger and served as a convenient facade to the outside world"

Second, they were hardly innocent of serious human rights violations.

Sandinista troops committed their most controversial activities (as far as human rights are concerned) on the Atlantic Coast, including the forcible relocation of 8,500 Miskitos from their land and the destruction of up to 100 villages, activities which led to charges of genocide at the time. They also killed and imprisoned many indigenous people suspected of Contra collaboration. On two separate occasions in 1981 and 1982, Sandinista troops committed massacres in which approximately (UNHCR Report) 34 Miskito Indians died.

Another tactic used by the Sandinistas was the indiscriminate shelling of towns recently captured by the Contras, an action which was viewed by many as "punishment." This Sandinista practice resulted in the Reagan Administration issuing orders to the Contra to stop further capture of cities and to concentrate on a "wasting" war while the U.S. was outspending the Soviet Union into bankruptcy, effectively curtailing the military support to the Sandinistas.

During the war Amnesty International and other groups alleged that political prisoners in Sandinista prisons, such as in Las Tejas, were beaten, deprived of sleep and tortured with electric shocks. They were denied food and water and kept in dark cubicles that had a surface of less than one square metre, known as chiquitas ("little ones.") These cubicles were too small to sit up in and had no sanitation and almost no ventilation.

In the mid-1980s, under pressure from human rights organizations and widespread international condemnation, the Sandinista government acknowledged violations in its dealings with the Atlantic Coast and successfully negotiated an end to the southern front of the Contra war. In fulfillment of the terms of that negotiation, the National Assembly unanimously passed an Autonomy Law in 1987 that made Nicaragua the first Latin American nation to officially recognise its multiethnic nature, guaranteeing the economic, cultural, linguistic and religious rights demanded by the indigenous groups of the Atlantic Coast.

Yes, they later (at least in word) ceased those rights violations, but the idea that they were the "good guy" against the "barbarous Contras" doesn't really hold water.

As much as people attack the regime that preceded them (and quite fairly), they were a junta themselves:

By 1980, conflicts began to emerge between the Sandinista and non-Sandinista members of the governing junta. Violeta Chamorro and Alfonso Robelo resigned from the governing junta in 1980, and the governing role of the Sandinistas became obvious as Ortega and his allies consolidated power. Allegations spread among critics that the Ortega clique were planning to turn Nicaragua into a Communist state like Cuba. In 1979 and 1980, former Somoza supporters and ex-members of the National Guard formed irregular military forces. Armed opposition to the Sandinista Government eventually organized into two main groups: The Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN), formed in 1981, and the Alianza Revolucionaria Democratica (ARDE), formed in 1982. These guerrilla bands became known as "Contras" (short for "contrarrevolucionarios", or counter-revolutionaries) that conducted attacks on economic, military, and civilian targets. During the Contra war, the Sandinistas arrested suspected Contras and censored La Prensa as well as other publications that they accused of collaborating with the U.S. and the Contras to destabilise the country.

Third, they were not simply a "peaceful regime" that posed no danger to the United States:

The FSLN was formally organised in 1961 by recent KGB recruits Carlos Fonseca Amador, Tomás Borge Martínez and Silvio Mayorga. The word "Sandinista" appeared two years later, when Amador inserted it into the name of the then-nascent movement. It eventually became Marxist-Leninist based, and like many Communist groups began to present its struggle as a "movement for national liberation"; they pointed to the injustices committed by the kleptocratic U.S. imposed Somoza dictatorship and how it was oppressing and exploiting the Nicaraguan people and violating their rights. The Sandinistas took their name from Augusto César Sandino (1895–1934), a leader in the country's nationalist rebellion against the United States military occupation of Nicaragua in the 1920s and early 1930s until his assassination in 1934 by the U.S.-created National Guard (Guardia Nacional) enabled the U.S. supported Anastasio Somoza García to seize control of the country. The Samoza family ruled the country from 1936 until their overthrow by the Sandinistas in 1979.

As part of Aleksandr Shelepin's grand strategy of using national liberation movements as a spearhead of the Soviet Union's foreign policy in the Third World, in 1960 the KGB organized funding and training for twelve individuals that Fonseca handpicked. These individuals were to be the core of the new Sandinista organization. In the following several years, the FSLN tried with little success to organise guerrilla warfare against the government of Luis Somoza Debayle. After several failed attempts to attack government strongholds and little initial support from the local population, the National Guard nearly annihilated the Sandinistas in a series of attacks in 1963. Disappointed with the performance of Shelepin's new Latin American "revolutionary vanguard", the KGB reconstituted its core of the Sandinista leadership into the ISKRA group and used them for other activities in Latin America.

During the following three years the KGB handpicked several dozen Sandinistas for intelligence and sabotage operation in the United States. In 1966, this KGB-controlled Sandinista sabotage and intelligence group was sent to the U.S.-Mexican border. Their primary targets were southern NORAD facilities the oil pipeline running from El Paso, Texas to Costa Mesa, California. A support group, codenamed SATURN, passed as migrant farm workers to conceal themselves and smuggle in arms caches. In 1967, the reconstituted Sandinista forces suffered another major defeat during a major National Guard offensive. One of the original Sandinista founders, Rigoberto Cruz Arguello, was killed in this attack.

So, contrary to arguments that have been made, the Sandinistas were far from an innocent victim of the evil US empire. There was very good reason to see them as a security threat, given their close cooperation with the KGB (particularly their attempts to destabilize El Salvador and launch sabotage missions within the United States.

Source [en.wikipedia.org]

Posted by Thrawn at 06/10/2006 @ 11:15pm
Howzabout an Edwards & Obama ticket! A young, handsome (dare I say) Kennedy-esque southern boy POTUS and a smart and well-liked minority VP

Posted by leftofcenter at 06/11/2006 @ 10:01am
THRAWN or whatever it is called does not know its ass from its elbow and can lay claim to being the apotheosis of the pauperization of US intellectual life when it gets high on right-wing fumes. Unable to even imagine a world in which he thinks for himself, THRAWN obediently furnishes the paint-by-numbers picture to right-wing specifications:

First and foremost, they did not actually have a fair democratic process:

Unvarnished puppyshit.

There were thousands of election observers in both 1984 (when the Sandinistas handily won, almost 70% of the vote and with participation levels unheard of in the US) and 1990 (when they lost to the massive and incoherant right-left UNO coalition).

THRAWN could dip into the trust fund to have someone read William I. Robinson's FUASTIAN BARGAIN to him for a detailed account of the 1990 elections, with original documents and even a stab at a "rebuttal" from Carter-era aplogist Robert Pastor.

Violeta Chamorro and Alfonso Robelo resigned from the governing junta in 1980, and the governing role of the Sandinistas became obvious as Ortega and his allies consolidated power.

Violeta Chamorro ... left? Oh? And?

How about: Whoppeeshit!

Bulletin to THRAWN: People leave parties and governing coalitions all the time (at the very same time, Jeanne Kirkpatrick was, for example, a nominal Demo for most of her tenure in Reagan's admin before --- GAAASSSPP --- switching parties). Violeta was initially on board mainly for symbolic reasons, as her husband's assassination in 1978 that set off the final surge of revolt against Somoza; she split because she was far more bourgeoise than the rest of the original junta.

You may also have Salmon Rushdie's JAGUAR SMILE read to you for evidence on her bourgeoise standing prior/antogonism to the FSLN prior to being elected president in 1990. And, yes, that's the same Rushdie who endured a fatwa from rightwing religionistists.

Also notice: The FSLN abidied by the elction result and stood aside when they lost the lection in 1990 --- even though the outcome was undoubtably influenced (or determined) by GHW Bush's thuggish threat that the contra attacks on civilian infrastructure would continue as long as the Sandinistas held elected office. But that's what genuine parties do when they take the laws as being the boss -- abide by the results --- in contrast with rightwing goons who regard the State as their own private property and patronage system for grisly experiments in classist social engineering with live humans.

And by the way, THRAWN, as you are such a credentialed expert for having surfed into the awesome depths of the (snicker) wikepedia, tell us: Who was Violet's Defense Minister? ... Time's up ... It was: Humberto Ortega, the FSLN incumbent and Daniel's bro'. Violeta retained the FSLN guy in this portfolio, which goes against the grain of your woefully slapped together, shit-for-brains', intellectually bankrupt and lazy incantation of the musty 1980s party line: ¿Porque?

censored La Prensa as well as other publications that they accused of collaborating with the U.S. and the Contras to destabilise the country

Chammorro's paper was indeed being funded by the US while it was simulataneously belligerant against Nicaragua's elected government and its citizens. It is extraordinary that the FSLN was classically liberal enough to permit it to publish as it did, although the contra violence undoubtably wore the coutnry down far more than retarded rightwing hot air on the editorial page.

By the way, I did not bother reading most of the abysmal, maggot-laden shitmess that THRAWN deposited here on the webpage. Skimming over the mess was sufficient to ascertain that THRAWN is (among other lowlife entities) a mewling zombie apologist for the Salvadoran government's unspeakable depravities. Perhaps THRAWN harbors fantasies over raped and murdered Mary Knoll nuns, among El Salvador's many victims of rightwing paroxsyms of gruesome violence ...

Posted by GlennC.Lemon at 06/11/2006 @ 12:46pm
Lt.Bill Hunt ran against what everyone calls Americas Sheriff Carona in the race for Orange County Sheriff on June 6th here in Orange County, California. He then lost to him and in less than 60 seconds of that, the Sheriff was on the phone to his County Paid Staff Lawyer and told them to go to work with our County Money and put Lt. Bill Hunt and anyone who helped on the election either out of work or demoted for running against him. I remember when the Sheriff said at his party on June 6th "let me find the people who have some problems and we can work to fix them". I am out raged by this Sheriff trying to slam a good family man and father because he can! I walked for Lt. Hunt I am a Law enforcement officer's wife and what this Sheriff is doing is a crime and Sheriff Carona should be fired for it! What about these Sheriff crimes? Sheriff Carona did not win by much in a full blown re-election. I was out there and if the people who wanted to vote had the chance this Sheriff would be in a run off. Sheriff Carona thousand dollar plates with Arnold, the man fact that his own rank and file cannot stand him should be a big boot for this Sheriff to come to grips with. I hope Sheriff Carona, the county, and all his staff get sued, and fired for putting a good person in front like this when it should be Carona in the front lines. I cannot wait till I see the truth come out about Carona in the news with the Grand Jury coming up on chief of staff, George Jaramillo, who has since been indicted on several charges, including bribery The County Board of Sups of Orange County gave this Sheriff a Paid Lawyer and now he is using them to do this with. I need your help in stopping them and him from doing this please. Help a law enforcements wife to do a good thing for a change for someone who has never hurt anyone! Thank you http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/RETRIBUTIONS

Posted by crysta9723 at 06/11/2006 @ 2:29pm
Ok, I want to make two things very clear. First, the Somoza regime and its supporters were really really bad. They committed numerous human rights atrocities. However, the idea that the Sandinistas, contrary to the Somoza regime, were a nice, pleasant regime that was undeservedly targeted by the United States is what I'm challenging. Both the Somoza regime and the Sandinistas were bad. Second, it's unclear what the criticism of wikipedia actually amounts to. If the idea is that it has no historical backing, a look at the reference section strongly suggests otherwise.

One thing I found very interesting about the response is that it only attempts to address 2 things: the elections of 1984 and 1990, and the internal political structure of the Sandinistas. That means that a number of crucial things have yet to be contested:

1) They were actively involved with the KGB in destabilizing nearby governments and conducting sabotage operations against the United States

2) They committed massive human rights violations themselves (even if, for example, they didn't censor La Prensa).

Even if he's right about the other two points, these 2 are sufficient on their own to show that the US' opposition to the Sandinistas was unquestionably justified. However, he isn't right on the other two.

First, on the elections, he completely misses the crucial point: there was deliberate suppression of opposition parties going on. There was a quote from Ortega himself making this clear. The fact that Violeta kept Umberto Ortega on doesn't really indicate anything significant. Also, she couldn't have kept him on when the junta began consolidating, because she had left office by that point.

Finally, maybe the reason that the FLSN left office so willingly was because they lacked the kind of support base (ie, Cuba and the USSR) that they possessed prior. This isn't, in and of itself, reason to believe that they were a free regime, and of course their debt to Fidel Castro helps to call their innocence into question.

Posted by Thrawn at 06/11/2006 @ 3:24pm
I think it often gets ignored that the Soviets interfered into Third World politics almost as much as the United States did. And, just so I don't get misinterpreted, I'm not making excuses for the U.S. or anything. Just making an observation.

Posted by Gertrude at 06/11/2006 @ 6:49pm
GLENNC.LEMON: Hey, there is no doubt that the Contras were bastards of the highest degree, and the United States had absolutely no business supporting or aiding them. However, the Sandinistas weren't necessarily a bucket of roses either. Just ask the Miskito Indians.

Posted by Gertrude at 06/11/2006 @ 6:53pm
I'd like to say a few words about what an overrated, lousy rock band U2 is. No one can claim that this is less relevant to a discussion of this article than Nicaragua.

Posted by Vic Perry at 06/11/2006 @ 9:26pm
where the hell is will c.? i can't believe he's really being a quitter. i'm going to miss him.

Posted by loveloki at 06/12/2006 @ 01:06am
"Howzabout an Edwards & Obama ticket! A young, handsome (dare I say) Kennedy-esque southern boy POTUS and a smart and well-liked minority VP

Posted by LEFTOFCENTER 06/11/2006 @ 10:01am |

""Howzabout an Allen & Rice ticket! A young, handsome (dare I say) Reagan-esque southern boy POTUS and a smart and well-liked minority VP..

I agree!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by john maasch at 06/12/2006 @ 01:39am
Same choice as always...

1. "pure progressive" Dems....and Dems lose.

2. "evil, centrist, DLC" Dems.....who actually win national leadership.

Posted by Mask at 06/12/2006 @ 07:08am
THRAWN wtites:

Both the Somoza regime and the Sandinistas were bad.

Drippy, runny, unadulterated rightwing bullshit.

There was no equivalance between the dictitorial Somoza dynasty and the FSLN in either their revolutionary nor their elected party form (i.e, after 1984). Period. The Somoza family is estimated to have sucked in 15% of the country's GNP by the time they were run out on a rail including pocketting international aid after the 1972 Managua earthquake. They were shameless rightwing pigs up until the end. When the Civil Guard murdered an un-armed US TV journalist on the street in cold blood in the summer of 1979, mere weeks before Somoza fled, they did what rightwingers do when they committ murder (figuartive and literal): They blamed someone else, namely the FSLN. Alas for rightwing criminal fantisists, the assassination was on film, putting the lie to the rightwing Somazist death squad thuggery in short order.

The FSLN's governing priorities were schools and health care after decades of neglect of one the regions poorest countries, the size and population of Iowa. And without a fucking airforce either (although by Dumsfeldian logic, this reality would make Sandinist Nicaragua more "dangerous" in trgihtwing fantasies, since the non-exisitent Sandinist airforce would be construed as an unknown unknown).

They were actively involved with the KGB in destabilizing nearby governments and conducting sabotage operations against the United States

Just to demonstrate how fucking retrograde and alienated from the "reality based community" contemporary rightists and their apologists have become: Not even Ronald Fucking Reagan claimed that the FSLN was "conducting sabotage operations against the United States". The only place that you will find such claims is in the shit-streaked underwear that is called John Milius' RED DAWN --- a FICTIONAL rightwing fairy tale, altough that undoubtably would not stop a rightwinger from citing it as "evidence" for a claim. (EXHIBIT "A": This webpage's Dan Quayle Memorial poster, PONTI, has already used a plainly psuedo news item "quoting" Arlen Spector, among others, with seeming indifference to the material firewalls beteen fact and fiction).

As for "de-stabilizing" other nations in the region, this claim was indeed made at the time --- without any evidence furnished, of course. It is sheer rightwing propagandistic bullshit, licked up and vomited back out on cue by zombies who cannot think for themselves for being intellectual and emotional weaklings who only feel "whole" while braying the party line. El Salvador's rightwing death squad government created its own instability by, for example, grass roots violence (massacring entire villages - El Mozote) as well as violence directed against people in positions of influence (Archbishop Romero, publically assassinated in March 1980, the Jesuits slaughtered at the university in November 1989).

Tell us, THRAWN, which Nicaraguan villages and universities in the Sandinist era were on the recieving end of these disgusting crimes, administed by the State or by its recognized death squads?

Posted by GlennC.Lemon at 06/12/2006 @ 09:28am
More from THRAWN ... or is it THANG? THONG? Or THWARTED? Or maybe ... well, whatever the name is:

First, on the elections, he completely misses the crucial point: there was deliberate suppression of opposition parties going on. There was a quote from Ortega himself making this clear. The fact that Violeta kept Umberto Ortega on doesn't really indicate anything significant. Also, she couldn't have kept him on when the junta began consolidating, because she had left office by that point.

Wrong again.

No one was going to beat the highly popular FSLN in 1984 and, as I recall, some rightwingers who knew they would be slapped down boo-hooed out of it claiming "victim" status. Rather like Gary Bauer claiming he was gyped out of the 2000 election when he was not a player.

Robinson's study, referred to ealrier, claims that the US government twisted arms to hold together UNO in the 1990 election to insure that all non-FSLN vvotes were funelled in one direction that represented a large and incoherant "coalition" of at least a dozen parties.

THRAWN also fully minunderstands the point about Humberto Ortega whom I suspect he had never previously heard of. When Violeta Chamorro took office in 1990, she retained Ortega in the Defense portfolio as a concession to the fact that the FSLN had infinitely more street cred' with the public than a bourgoeise widow (and "symbol") without a real party.

Posted by GlennC.Lemon at 06/12/2006 @ 09:39am
Posted by GLENNC.LEMON 06/12/2006 @ 09:39am | ignore this person

GLENN, you forgot to add

"Sure, they weren't perfect"---Walter Duranty

Posted by Mask at 06/12/2006 @ 10:00am
What I admire about human rights organizations is that they criticize fairly and across the board. This ethos is alien to the contempoary auto-brainwashed, unquestioning rightwing slave to ideology: A recent exchange with PONTI illustrates the point with crystalline clarity as he can only fixate on and parse the parts of the Human Rights Watch webpage that criticize Washington's enemies. Criticisms of Washington? They are composed in invisable ink Arameic, where PONTI is concerned. Hence, PONTI, the synecdochal rightwing no-mind, is drawn to the convenient parts of the human rights discourse like the hormone-saturated adolescent chronic masturbator from central casting is drawn to his father's secret stash of girlie magazines in the garage at the exclusion of other texts.

Since THRAWN has attempted to link Sandinist Nicaragua with Cuba, below is a salient text from Labour MP Ian Gibson (that's Tony Blair's party). Citing Anesty International, Gibson claims that Cuba has 72 prisoners of conscience --- and that is 72 too many. He also notes that US-occupied Iraq has 40,000 --- repeat: 40,000 --- prisoners who have not been charged with a recognizable offense. In an occupied country, that had not been in any way beliigerant. So: Let's be ... Fair and balanced.

Cuba does not have a halo around its collective head and it is dumb to assume that it does. On the other hand, Gibson's account gives an idea of why the revolution remains popular despite hardship (and without even getting into how, after Batista, black Cubans were liberated from the servants' quarters and given a stake in Cuba's post-1959 society):

From (London) Guardian, 6 June 2006:

The UN recently announced that Cuba is the only country in Latin America that has no malnutrition. The World Health Organisation reports that the Cuban doctor-patient ratio is 1:170, better than the US average of 1:188. In addition, WHO has commended Cuba for outstanding literacy levels and rates of infant mortality and life expectancy that outstrip Washington DC - despite 45 years of an illegal economic blockade imposed by successive US administrations. Cuba's international activities also deserve recognition. It is operating humanitarian missions in 68 countries and, in 2005 alone, 1,800 doctors from 47 developing countries graduated in Cuba under a free scholarship scheme.

Yet western governments - including our own - offer little acknowledgement of these achievements. The Foreign Office explains it "cannot have normal relations with Cuba" due to human-rights concerns. Amnesty International claims that 72 prisoners of conscience are detained in Cuban jails, an allegation rejected by the Cuban government, which argues that all were tried and found guilty of being in the pay of an enemy power - the US. The International Red Cross has meanwhile reported that up to 40,000 people are detained by coalition forces in Iraq without charge.

Posted by GlennC.Lemon at 06/12/2006 @ 10:03am
The Sandinistas? Are you folks on the right blog?

Posted by Hman23 at 06/12/2006 @ 10:09am
Good morning, MASK!

GLENN, you forgot to add "Sure, they weren't perfect"---Walter Duranty Posted by MASK 06/12/2006 @ 10:00am

Anyone else catch MASK's recent confessional aside in which he stated that (cough, ahem) he "may have" made an error in judgement in voting Bush/Cheney in 2000? That doozie is, self-evidently, a far snugger fit for the Duranty quote than anything that appears above my name! Particularly since the neo-Cons IN REALITY have exceded the most wildly fevered Milius-style confabulations they made about FSLN "atrocities" two decades ago.

Unless, of course, there was an FSLN invasion and internationally condemned occupation of oil-rich Mexico under specious security pretexts --- non-events to which only MASK has top-secret historical access, with strategic Duranty quotes to furnish smokescreen cover ...

Posted by GlennC.Lemon at 06/12/2006 @ 10:27am
Posted by GLENNC.LEMON 06/12/2006 @ 10:27am | ignore this person

GLENN, why don't you explain to the class who Walter Duranty was...and what he did?

BTW, I'll state for the record, that my vote for Bush in 2000 WAS a mistake, hence my reason for my vote for Kerry in 2004. And, barring some wacko on the Left getting the Dem nomination, I'll vote Dem again in 2008 (as I did in 1992, 1996).

Posted by Mask at 06/12/2006 @ 10:50am
How about Edwards/Obama vs. Allen/Rice? That way everyone wins!!:)

Posted by k330k at 06/12/2006 @ 11:07am
K330k,

I am in!!! :)

Posted by john maasch at 06/12/2006 @ 11:30am
Not to drift, but with Sandinistas and all..

Anyone ever notice that the border SOUTH of Nicaragua with Costra Rica, was not hassled by Ortega as was the Northern borders? Anyone wonder why? CR has no army other than the US..

Posted by john maasch at 06/12/2006 @ 11:35am
Posted by JOHN MAASCH 06/12/2006 @ 01:39am

Rice isn't as well-liked as you think.

I think she's a lying shill and a kiss-ass lackey lapdog to her boss. But hey, she plays piano, so she must be smart and just right for a VP job...

Are you serious?

Bring on them mushroom clouds, baby, yeah (not theirs, but ours - I wonder how the nuclear bunker-buster research is coming along...)

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 11:57am
Posted by RIO BRAVO 06/10/2006 @ 6:06pm

Just a little tip here, cuz you seem like such a swell fella, and I'd like to help you out...

This is a left-leaning blog, Rio. When you begin any post here with the altogether childish epithet "Demoncrats", you lose all credibility and I'd bet half the folks here skip right past what you had to say in its entirety.

I know I do. And I'm not even a Democrat.

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 12:02pm
New Dawn,

"Rice isn't as well-liked as you think.

I think she's a lying shill and a kiss-ass lackey lapdog to her boss. But hey, she plays piano, so she must be smart and just right for a VP job...

Are you serious?

Rice is liked on the right..

Shill? Listen to any Hillary speech..sounds like anyones first wife..Obama,

Well, he is black and has 2 whole years in the senate..being black..and what else..oh, yeah, he is liberal, looks good on TV, can speak well, and is black...won his first election on the first try(no oposition) and is black...

I hope the bunker busters are doing fine so we will never have to use anyhting else should the need arise..

Posted by john maasch at 06/12/2006 @ 12:08pm
New Dawn,

"epithet "Demoncrats", you lose all credibility and I'd bet half the folks here skip right past what you had to say in its entirety. "

You mean like "Hamsters'?

Posted by john maasch at 06/12/2006 @ 12:09pm
You mean like "Hamsters'?

Posted by JOHN MAASCH 06/12/2006 @ 12:09am

Yes, exactly, John.

Never used that phrase myself. I prefer "rats" when used in the prejorative sense that Will uses it - though it is a bit of an insult to my pet rat.

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 12:29pm
"Rice isn't as well-liked as you think.

I think she's a lying shill and a kiss-ass lackey lapdog to her boss. But hey, she plays piano, so she must be smart and just right for a VP job..."

---Are you serious?

Yes, I am.

---Rice is liked on the right...

Lots of scum currently in power are liked by the right. So?

---Shill? Listen to any Hillary speech..sounds like anyones first wife...

I don't support Hillary any more than I do Rice, but why do you bring her up? That's like a bank robber saying "Well, other people rob banks, too, so that means what I did isn't so bad..." What's Hillary have to do with Rice?

---Obama, Well, he is black and has 2 whole years in the senate..being black..and what else..oh, yeah, he is liberal, looks good on TV, can speak well, and is black...won his first election on the first try(no oposition) and is black...

Wow, John, I never mentioned him being black (nor do I care - the only thing that should be separated by color is laundry, in my book). Do you have an issue with that? You seem to think it's important...

---I hope the bunker busters are doing fine so we will never have to use anyhting else should the need arise..

Nuclear weaponry shouldn't exist anymore, period. MAD is a terrible thing, last time I checked.

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 12:33pm
New Dawn,

"What's Hillary have to do with Rice? "

Because she is the candidate for the dems in 08..period. shill is going to be the norm.

"Do you have an issue with that? You seem to think it's important... "

No, not for me,,I have no problem with his color and I agree about the laundry..try telling that to ol' Jesse, but it seems to me that, that is all Obama has at present..I use it only to highlight a no record, yet many froth at the potential of his candicy..and I am trying to figure out why..maybe it is because he can hold the black vote, which is threateened the last few years by the GOPers..and the black middle class starting to lean a little right(their wallets, perhaps leaning right)..

"Nuclear weaponry shouldn't exist anymore, period. MAD is a terrible thing, last time I checked.

But they do and if we give up ours I can't think of anyone who would follow suit..world doesn't work that way , never has and never will. The truth is "we can't all get along" and there are people out there who want to kill you...

Posted by john maasch at 06/12/2006 @ 12:48pm
Damn you, John...

There isn't a single thing in your last post I can disagree with.

Stop being so sensible - I never know how to combat that! ;)

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 12:50pm
No, wait, I take that back...

I don't agree about the black vote leaning right at all...

Though I don't want to get into the black/white thing, would you cite me some kind of examples of this that I can research?

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 12:51pm
New Dawn,

I work for (my boss) a black woman and I get her perspective which kinda mirrors my own philosophy. She has an economist for a father and a doctor for a mother. Her sister is a doctor also...anyway, the crowd she runs in is multi racial(NYC) and her viewsw are quite conservative.

She tells me her father says the fastest growing group in America(except for hispanic births) is the black middle class and that with their increased economic power they are trending conservative...if you think about it one can see it makes sense.

many blacks are conservative when it comes to gay marraiage and the church... As their income rises so does their taxes and tax rates, which now ,makes bed fellows of those who feel too much is taken from their efforts with increasing demands for more..

This is my first hand experience, but I have met it in my travels..is it a tidal wave to the right? No.... but I wouldn't be surprised to find economic interests taking over race issues.

The GOP does not have to sway many black votes as a percentage to nullify the lock hold the dems have had for years with the bulk of black voters..who still claim to have nothing to show for their loyalty..

Posted by john maasch at 06/12/2006 @ 1:40pm
Thanks for the clarification, John.

Though it's true that your is only one man's finite personal observation, it was still well reasoned and makes good food for thought.

RE: Finance, I too am a conservative...

But when it comes to church and gay marriage, I think true conservatives can and should mind their own business. These are not political issues, they are religious ones (and yes, almost all of those against gay marriage - in my own personal experience, anyway - could offer no salient reasons against it that did not stem from their own religious indoctrinations or just plain bigotry).

Pleasure yapping with you this morning.

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 1:46pm
your=yours

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 1:46pm
Posted by JOHN MAASCH 06/12/2006 @ 12:48am | ignore this person

Only ray of hope for the anti-Hillary guys, JOHN.....John Edwards won a straw poll over her in Iowa.

But he doesn't have her money and no way Dems run a 1 term Senator/tort lawyer....he was lucky he got Veep under Kerry.

Posted by Mask at 06/12/2006 @ 2:04pm
"Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., has a new ally in his effort to torpedo an environmentally friendly "wind farm" off the coast from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis – the Pentagon."

"The state RNC has its hands full fighting this type of liberal demoncrat demagoguery!"

Yeah, damn those democrats in the Pentagon!

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 2:29pm
Posted by RIO BRAVO 06/12/2006 @ 2:19pm | ignore this person

Watch out, the "Kennedy Defense Force" will muster here shortly, in defense of Teddy and Bobby Jr.!

Posted by Mask at 06/12/2006 @ 2:32pm
Watch out, the useless rabble-rouser will muster here shortly --

Too late!

And yes, Mask, my iggy list is empty again - even added back Rese and Plunger, so you're in good company.

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 2:45pm
Posted by JOHN MAASCH 06/12/2006 @ 1:40pm | ignore this per

I also agree with your post. Unfortunately, alot of people I know don't have doctors and economists for parents, so I don't hear much of that talk. But when I do hear black folks in the upper middle-class and up talk, they have conservative leanings. The gay issue is definitely a no-brainer regarding the black community. Black folks don't tolerate homosexuality too much especially in the south where the mega-churches rule. Also with the Democrats taking the black vote for granted for so long. Loyalties don't exist anymore. I believe if the right can put up appealing candidates, more black people will sway to their side. I, personally, don't care for either party. They both make me vomit. Noone keeps their word. As far as Obama, yeah he's black, well-spoken, but not proven as of yet. He's trying to play both sides at this point. Seems like he doesn't want to ruffle any senior feathers. That's not exactly a good thing. I thought he might be a breath of fresh air. So far, he seems more of the same. I hoped for more, but hey, he's got atleast four more years. So I'll give him some time. As far as Hillary, like I've said before, the woman has no soul.

Posted by k330k at 06/12/2006 @ 2:46pm
Next time I'll use more commas.

Posted by k330k at 06/12/2006 @ 2:47pm
Posted by K330K 06/12/2006 @ 2:47pm

Maybe paragraphs? ;)

Posted by New Dawn at 06/12/2006 @ 2:49pm
MASK,

BTW, I'll state for the record, that my vote for Bush in 2000 WAS a mistake, hence my reason for my vote for Kerry in 2004.

Good for you in '04, in that case, although the '00 characterization is much less equivocal than your previous public meditations on it.

GLENN, why don't you explain to the class who Walter Duranty was...and what he did?

I'll cut to the chase with respect to the topic at hand: Steven Kinzer --- who has done quality journalism from Central America (co-author of BITTER FRUIT on 1950s Guatemala) and who reported from Sandinist Nicaragua for the Rosenthaloid NY Times --- was no friend of the FSLN, notwithstanding MASK's crude efforts to insinuate favorable "commie" coverage into the Times. Coverage from El Salvador at the same time was outright eggregious after Rosenthal's apparent cave-in to Reagan to re-assign Raymond Bonner out of Central America. Times Books did publish Bonner's book, although that is far different from a timely and current, day-to-day storyline in the most influential paper that enables the storyline (ABUSIVE GOVERNMENT) to get legs underneath it.

An aside: Strange how rightwingers are so astonishingly selective in their preceptions of abusive Statism and the "where's the outrage" posturing that follows it.

Anyway, as with other US media at the time, the Times poo-poohed the solid FSLN electoral victory in 1984 and largely ingored the 1990 election until, against all expectation in the western hemisphere, Chamorro-led UNO won.

But, aaaaa, the liberal media: (Chortle, chortle) The "Touchdown Jesus" for ritualistic fondling by the Right. When all else collapes in the rightwing project, there's always that familiar script to anger from, to blame for rightwing failures. In fact, the right's "problem" now is in that the public knows them and their essence too well, knows very clearly what they stand for, knows their methods and obsessions, their weird rituals and taboos; it's only in the darkness of a lack of wide popular knowledge that rightwing ghoulishness gets traction ...

Posted by GlennC.Lemon at 06/12/2006 @ 2:53pm
Different topic: al-Zarqaawi was a rightwing asshole mutant freak, sawing people's heads off and targetting innocent civilians for repeated mass murders, with some kind of rightwing religionist mania as part of the justification.

Also notice The Lesson: Jordanian intelligence led to his having been nabbed. It was not the appalling "yee-haa" heehaw theatrical militarism for the TV networks of sorties and bombs, or invasions, or occupations, that put this creep out of comission. It was painstaking human intelligence on the ground, infiltration in the religionists' own language, that turns the tide for secular humanist ends. Without harm to civilian human beings.

Posted by GlennC.Lemon at 06/12/2006 @ 3:12pm
Since GLENN won't...I will--

Walter Duranty (1884–1957), born in Liverpool, England, won a controversial Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a set of stories he wrote in 1931 as The New York Times' Moscow correspondent, covering Joseph Stalin's Five-Year Plan to industrialize the Soviet Union. Duranty lived in Moscow for twelve years.

www.wikipedia.org

He was the first modern instance (though John Reed could pre-date him) of a phenomenon that became quite popular in the late 50s, into the 60s and beyond...whereby a journalist (or any left-wing author) was able to find a "workers' paradise" in almost every Communist dictatorship, or more often become an apologist for a socialist dictatorship.

Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, Daniel Ortega...they all owe a debt of gratitude to Walter Duranty and his articles on the "glories of Stalin's Five Year Plans".

And what's odd, about GLENN's retro-defense (so popular among the Left in the 80s) of the Sandinistas is....for all their "popularity", they haven't been able to win back power in over a dozen years?!!?!?!

Of course...of course...they're "scared of a resumption of the Contras by the U.S." Must be the reason the Communists can't win in Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, etc.....too scared of a "resumption of the US-inspired Cold War".

(By the way...THIS is the reason I stopped being a liberal in college...Soviet expanisionist apologia. For all the criticism of the Right never criticizing "right wing dictators" in the Third World....atleast they never respected and LOVED them, as the Left did of the left wing dictators!)

Posted by Mask at 06/12/2006 @ 3:31pm
Posted by NEW DAWN 06/12/2006 @ 2:49pm | ignore this person

LOL. I know, I know. I write how I speak. Please excuse me. Didn't have the energy to edit. End of the workday.

Posted by k330k at 06/12/2006 @ 3:49pm
"But when it comes to church and gay marriage, I think true conservatives can and should mind their own business"

I agree, and as such, I am turned off by "ain't we proud we are gay" parades, and special rights crowd.

MASK,

John Edwards is part of the problem..he is a light weight in any measure except lawyers fees...he can't carry his own state and can ANYONE name something from his senate career ? Anything?

Plus, no offense, I saw him in an airport a few months ago, walking around with a cell phone speaking loud...not near his gate...but in the center of the waiting area so we could all see him...and thats the problem...he doesn't look "presidential"...at my 6'2"..I am not a giant...I looked DOWN at him..he is short of staure in many ways...no big deal perhaps, but obviously in politics, perception is crucial.

Posted by john maasch at 06/12/2006 @ 7:47pm
Posted by JOHN MAASCH 06/12/2006 @ 7:47pm

Edwards is about the same height as your beloved Decider. I guess that is why he's not "perceived" appropriately by 70% of the population.

Posted by BlueTexan at 06/13/2006 @ 12:22am
And what's odd, about GLENN's retro-defense (so popular among the Left in the 80s) of the Sandinistas is....for all their "popularity", they haven't been able to win back power in over a dozen years?!!?!?!

(By the way...THIS is the reason I stopped being a liberal in college...Soviet expanisionist apologia. For all the criticism of the Right never criticizing "right wing dictators" in the Third World....atleast they never respected and LOVED them, as the Left did of the left wing dictators!)

Posted by MASK 06/12/2006 @ 3:31pm | ignore this person

Mask,

I have yet to meet another so cool and confident in their perpetual haze of misinformation. Good for you, at least you're comfortable with yourself.

The US has been threatening and meddling in the Nicaraguan democratic process continually since the 1990 elections. In every election the US government, beyond the funding of their Yes-Men candidates, threatens economic punishment if the people choose the wrong party. While the evil Sandinistas were being praised by the World Bank and World Health Organization, for their reforms on public health and education, the nation, following the US-funded Contra-terrorist war (30,000 dead-thanks Reagan), has become the second poorest nation in the hemisphere. As we draw closer to the elections, we will observe more Yankee threats directed at the foolish Nicaraguan people who have been expresing impatience for the years of economic misery delivered by US-endorsed leaders and policies. The people appear ready to damn the consequences of the US cutting off aid (polls are in favor of Ortega--though he is not a beloved figure in that country).

The excerpt below describes the democratically elected National Assembly and the possible impeachement of the president, Bolanos. The sanctions are threatend beyond the impeachment process and linked directly to the potential democratic victory of Ortega. As Glenn C. Lemon posted earlier, the Sandinistas were democratically elected in 1984, and the election , though dismissd by Reagan, and the US media- including the NYTimes, was endorsed as fair by numerous international observers. So piss off with your "dictator" slanders. It is sad to observe so many fabrications by apologists for corrupt US foreign policy.

Duncan Campbell Thursday October 6, 2005 The Guardian

The United States has warned Nicaraguan politicians that millions of dollars of aid will be withheld from the country if any moves are made to oust the president, Enrique Bolaños. In a move that has echoes of US intervention in the country's politics in the 80s, the US deputy secretary of state, Robert Zoellick, is in the capital Managua this week to head off the possibility of the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, returning to power.

Posted by Oustbush at 06/13/2006 @ 02:27am
Blue,

Bush looks taller..Edwards look small...

Posted by john maasch at 06/13/2006 @ 10:37am
Bluetex,

Useing your format...

Is that why Edwards is not percieved by his own state? Those who know him best and would not return him to the senate as THEIR senator after 1 election?

Posted by john maasch at 06/13/2006 @ 10:39am
TEX, Also, he is not my beloved decider, he is not a conservative but is infinatley better than anything to the left of him..

Posted by john maasch at 06/13/2006 @ 10:41am
JOHN MAASCH...

Blah blah blah.

You said Edwards was too small. He is almost the exact same height as Bush. Do you deny?

That's my only point. I guess you have to backtrack with all kinds of crazy stuff now. We are only talking about height here.

Posted by BlueTexan at 06/13/2006 @ 12:08pm
Rio Bravo posts:

"Demoncrats" is just a reflection of the sourse their "works" which generally clearly are not of God!"

Rio,

Whose works since Jesus the Christ have been "works of God"? Your? Don't make me laugh.

Don't know if you know it yet, but political parties shouldn't be based on God.

Because then they would be religions, not political parties.

Posted by New Dawn at 06/13/2006 @ 12:16pm
Maasch, I believe Edwards gave up his Senate seat.

Posted by Hman23 at 06/13/2006 @ 12:31pm
Maasch - we also have a bet on Hillary.

Posted by Hman23 at 06/13/2006 @ 1:12pm
Thanks to OUSTBUSH for already making a detailed response to MASK's latest claims; MASKesque claims that are notable for setting exceptionally low standards for evidence and logic --- and then failing, quite abysmally, to meet them.

Let's proceed in further detail to the particulars of the MASKian view, espoused in this virtual place that could never be mistaken for one of John Conyers' musty basement chambers ...

By the way...THIS is the reason I stopped being a liberal in college...Soviet expanisionist apologia.

I would never have guessed that MASK ... went to college in France during the 1950s when in fact there was apologia on the left for Stalin and the Soviet Union. This retrograde, ethically deranged stance compelled people like Jean Paul Sartre to leave the French Communicst Party. Et tu, Monsieur Mask?. But you will have a difficult task to furnish evidence of such aplogia on, say, a US college campus in the 1980s given that reality goes against your assertion.

Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, Daniel Ortega...they all owe a debt of gratitude to Walter Duranty and his articles on the "glories of Stalin's Five Year Plans".

Logic alert: Since Ortega was elected Presidente 27 years after Duranty died, how does he owe Duranty a "debt of gratitude"? Was it a transaction for a Ouji board?

And, unlike the other cast of characters MASK audaciously cites in a stunning piece of argumentative laziness, Ortega was lawfully elected while his government was unlawfully attacked. (Shades of Allende...)

for all their "popularity", they haven't been able to win back power in over a dozen years?!!?!?!

OUSTBUSH addressed this in part. I also think Oretga should stand down for some new blood.

Of course...of course...they're "scared of a resumption of the Contras by the U.S." Must be the reason the Communists can't win in Poland, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, etc.....too scared of a "resumption of the US-inspired Cold War".

Unsurprisingly and with reason, there is backlash in Eastern Europe against a foriegn power imposing itself on them. All of the places named are also now in the EU, a more center-left entity than the US.

As for your dismaissal of the contras: Repellant, repulsive, revolting. These fiends --- warmed over Somozaist rightwing lowlife thugs with US arms --- were responsible for about 30,000 deaths and about 500,000 refugees in a nation the populatioon of Chicago. Soft targets were the speciality, disruption of social services the objective.

It is heinous to act like it all did not happen or that the elected government was at fault. The case for aggression against Nicaragua was already adjudicated at The Hague in the 1980s with human rights lawyers successfully arguing for Nicaragua's freely elected government.

(For all the criticism of the Right never criticizing "right wing dictators" in the Third World....atleast they never respected and LOVED them, as the Left did of the left wing dictators!)

If you had a shred of evidence that Ortega was a dictator, you could cite it and make some warrant for the claim. But that would be too diffuclt to accomplish --- as well as counter to material reality, a demanding taskmaster.

Anyway, let's speculate about matters of the heart as our newly Frenchified MASK has already done: Did Kissinger love Pinochet? Or did he love Pinochet? Or did Kissinger ... loooove Pinochet, and those manly latino epaulattes? Or was it ... "love"? Puppylove? Was Kissinger trying to make Stroessner or Papa Doc or Anastasio Somoza (or one of the other concurrent rightwing dictatorial goons in the western hemisphere) jealous?

We await answers.

Love is a battlefield, MASK, et c'est la guerre ...

Posted by GlennC.Lemon at 06/13/2006 @ 2:12pm
Well, I was planning on leaving the Nicaragua thread alone, but since it's been brought up...

The first thing I want to note is that there has been no successful indictment of the wikipedia source that I referred to earlier, particularly since whatever crazy source Glenn indicted is not even cited by the site. In other words, other sources of information besides the one he dismisses contend that in the 60s and 70s, sabotage missions were established. Similarly, the fact that my source has never successfully been indicted means that his dismissal of my claims as assertions necessarily fails.

That being said, two things are never disputed.

1) The Sandinistas had close ties with the Soviet Union since their inception, particularly with the KGB (as the Mitrokhin book makes absolutely clear).

2) The Sandinistas had extremely close ties with Cuba, to the point that they were "in their debt."

Both of these two are independent reasons to believe that the Sandinista regime constituted a real very threat to the United States and governments in the region. Their ties to both the USSR and to Cuba provide powerful evidence that they were understood (and understood themselves) to be acting as a beachhead for the kinds of revolutions that the USSR had systematically been encouragin. This alone justified acting against the regime.

As conceded before, the Contras were really really bad. However, two things need to be noted. First, the Sandinistas had some pretty hefty human rights violations themselves. Second, though, if supporting the Contras would have been unjustified, it is unclear what alternative would have been better. Leaving the regime alone would be preposterous, and landing troops in Nicaragua would pose its own problems.

So, in order to accept Glenn's position, you have to accept one of two things. You can either contend that the Sandinista regime was a peaceful government that had no hostile ambitions against the US or its strategic position (which overwhelming evidence exists to contradict), or that the US had a better option in containing the Sandinista threat. Because neither of these options is tenable, the case for opposing the regime remains.

Posted by Thrawn at 06/14/2006 @ 01:44am
"Maasch, I believe Edwards gave up his Senate seat."

Interesting way of saying he couldn't win...:)

Posted by john maasch at 06/14/2006 @ 10:31am
Final word on THIS thread....

Murtha announced yesterday (6/13) that he would NOT be seeking the Majority Leader position.....is Mr Nichols EVER right??!?!?

Posted by Mask at 06/14/2006 @ 12:39pm