After announcing the nomination of longtime UN critic, Richard Bolton, for UN ambassador, the president quickly announced a few more nominations that were not as prominently featured in the press.

I think we need a real response to "YOUR money"-speak.

The Luntz manual uses "YOUR money"-speak to energize people to vote against their own interests. He paints a dichotomy of domination with words and emotions. In the Luntz dichotomy, there are:

"good" guys.

• America
  
• Hard-working Americans
  
• "job creators"
  
• Republicans

vs.

"bad" guys

• Washington
  
• Hollywood
  
• Liberal tax-spenders
  
• America haters
  
• Democrats

the people's choice awards have nominated him for best picture. go vote. make bill o'reilly mad.

http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml

Why can't the Sierra Club and the New Jersey game counsel get along? They should stick to protecting the environment and saving species from extinction. Campaigning to stop bear population control is counter-productive.

The Sierra Club NJ Prez had this to say:

 "This is a victory for good government but it's also a victory for the bears," said Jeff Tittel, head of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club. "It's the best Christmas gift they could have this year."

Since when do animals celebrate Christmas? but anyways...

The AP feed also mentions that the alternative to a bear hunting season is contraception. Do we want to be the people denying these hunters a gaming season in order to somehow equip hundreds of bears with condoms? maybe a pregnancy pill laced salt lick? Its impossible to maintain any of the environmental conscious middle, when our interest groups are going after human enjoyment of the wilderness for hunting.

A anthropocentric perspective on many environmental issues is the only way to go in my opinion. Let's stop global warming to save us. Let's prevent deforestation to save us. Let's keep species around to protect biodiversity to save us.  Let's keep our wilderness pristine, because we find it beautiful, and we like to hunt, fish, hike, climb, mountain bike, snowmobile (gasp), and camp there.

Hunting isn't something i will ever try, and its not something that most of us in do. Think of it like abortion. If you don't like hunting, don't hunt.

But for god sakes, when the Republicans put the environment on the chopping block for 6 more gallons of oil per year, we're gonna need everyone that appreciates the earth on our side. If we let these squabbles over hunting divide us, we will be run over by the Bush backed forces of resource extraction. We can't have outdoorsmen community leaders saying:

 "You've taken 50 years of very successful wildlife management and turned it upside down, subjected it to the whims of one political appointee," said Game Council Chairman Scott Ellis. "It's obvious that this commissioner is beholden to the whacko animal rights crowd."

We can't be the whacko animal rights crowd. We have to become the friendly earth stewardship crowd. We might even be bumped back into the White House because of it.

Here's the article.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041203/ap_on_re_us/bear_hunt

   John Edwards has a bittersweet poltical appeal. He has all the political charm and charisma in the world. He however will be shot full of holes by the GOP, and he will be subjected to a persuasive character assination that will ultimately lose him the election. I think John Edwards would make a great president, but I don't think he'll get there.

It seems like a consensus has developed at MyDD through most of the posts on how to retain most of our most important values and still put together a winning coalition.

They break down into a few main points:

1) Get the outdoorsman vote. Conservationism + guns.

2) Progressive religious alternative to conservative religious politics

3) Reframe the debate

and one less discussed that we too often ignore:

4) Trounce the GOP in the latino vote.

all below

   While the internet has shown to be an enormous organizing tool, its potential as a campaign tool is still being underutilized. The internet presents a much different medium than television. The users of a particular website are far more demographically uniform than television audiences. In the presidential debates, candidates must have the most inclusive and non-controversial presentation of the issues. In front of a particular demographic, one can take a much more principled position on a specific topic important to that group.

Compared to television viewers, website visitors are pretty uniform group. Not many environmentalist spend time perusing hunting forums, and very few grumpy old war hawks spend time perusing The Onion. We need targeted advertisments that direct visitors to websites that put the candidate in a positive light for their particular demographic.

   Hunting/fishing/outdoorsmen websites would have ads directing visitors to a website like "Outdoorsmen for Kerry"... While an ad in The Onion would send the user to a positive description about Kerry's experience in the Vietnam War and then his political activism in the protest movement. The targeting websites would excoriate the opponents record on the issue being discussed.

   It would not be written by the campaign and be a seperate entity. No quote could be attributed to the candidate, but the visitors would see a message designed to appeal to them. The Republicans have used this method repeatedly to make a point to an intended audience, and then shrug off attacks from the unintended audience.

I really think that part of the key to competing everywhere is being something to everyone. The vast majority of Americans base their votes on much less than a complete picture of both candidates. Furthermore they most likely agree with each candidate on some of the issues. Let's make people see the issues we agree with them on as much as possible. By targeting voters more, we can fill in only the parts of that voters electoral perspective that favors us. If a voter is has a vague idea of where the candidates stand on issue that they disagree with us on, but have a crystallized idea of how our candidate agrees with them on a different issue, we will get the vote.

Tony Dungy has explained why he feels that the skit had racial undertones. He says that it is stereotypical of both athletes and black men. I can imagine every white conservative saying how they can't uderstand why Dungy is so under-sensitive. People will also imply that if you see it is a racist depiction, you are actually racist. Somehow implying that if you aren't colorblind, you are the real biggot. Here's what'd i'd say, if anyone has anything they would say differently, i'd be interested to hear.

 what if had been brett farve/a black woman?

    It wasn't farve, it was Terell Owens, and he is black. There is a shared belief among many people that black men are willing to slack off from their resposiblity and are overly sexual active. The fact that it is a white women buys into white-supremacist beliefs that white women are more desirable than women of color.

so why'd that so bad anyway?

    When people see these scenes, of course they don't consciously think about their stereotypes. Stereotypes are created through this type of passive reaffirmation. Once you see scenes like this over and over in the media, our natural pattern recognition kicks in and a stereotype is born.

well if he wasn't so sensitive it wouldn't even be an issue.

  He's not sensitive, he's an NFL coach for god's sake. He's courageously making a point that most people are too scared to make. He's talking from a point of view that white people haven't experience, so it's almost impossible to understand.

i hope this helps someone at "the water cooler"

http://espnradio.espn.go.com/espnradio/story?storyId=1925750