But if I am not around, I can usually be found having said something over at Talk to Action — most recently a Christmas eve rumination about the anti-Semitic roots of claims that there is a “war on Christmas” and how that bastion of evilly secular liberal media — public radio — has a little remarked upon but remarkable quarter century Christmas broadcast tradition, which in turn has roots in the early days of broadcasting.

Authors and editors, including me, supporting the Occupy movement

Back in 1996, according to a document reprinted by Bussmann, the Ugandan and Sudanese governments knew exactly where Catholic school girls kidnapped by the LRA were being held. The Ugandan army had been tipped that the LRA was going to attack the elite St. Mary’s school, but had done nothing to protect or to rescue the 139 girls abducted. And yet, a brave school administrator, Sister Rachele, almost singlehandedly gained the release of 109 of the children. The LRA kept the rest—except for the one they hacked and tortured to death with machetes. Sister Rachele and the girls’ parents met with world leaders from presidents Museveni and Bashir, to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, to Kofi Annan, and Pope John Paul II.

“None of them got the girls back,” Bussmann observed. “Meanwhile, Kony built his city of children in the desert and shipped in his prize, the highly educated St. Mary’s girls. The girls were raped, impregnated, given syphilis, and watched as babies were smashed against trees.”

In fact, sweeping bipartisan majorities in both house of Congress required the administration to take action against the LRA, and it included the option to use force to remove the LRA and its leaders from the battlefield.

[Crossposted at Dirty Hippies]

“Pointing to his larger-than-expected victory over Republican Charles Baker and independent Timothy Cahill, Patrick said Obama’s team, which overlaps with his own, should derive lessons from the unreconstructed-Democrat approach that Patrick projected. That would be a far cry from the centrist overtures the president has made in the last few months.

I think they’ve learned a lot from us, and we’ve learned from them,” Patrick said. The 2006 campaign that made him Massachusetts’ first African American governor drew from Obama’s successful 2004 Senate bid, Patrick said, a two-year learning cycle that repeated itself when Obama ran for president in 2008 and Patrick for reelection last year.

Patrick said Obama should not turn his back on the ground-up campaign structure that propelled both men to historic wins and helped power Patrick to reelection, a template he believes could sustain Obama next year.

“I believe strongly it’s important not to underestimate the power of the grassroots,” said Patrick, who throughout his first term expressed regrets about not doing a better job of involving his grassroots election supporters in governing.

It is not clear whether Obama has any similar regrets.

For today, I simply want to announce that there is a cool new group blog, Dirty Hippies:  Democracy.  Unwashed. I’ll be contributing from time-to-time.

Unsurprisingly, the manifesto was immediately denounced by Religious Right leader Dr. Albert Mohler, the fundamentalist president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

from Dispatchers from the Religious Left in light of recent political developments.

“One of the premises of this site is that we need not just more, but better Democrats as candidates and office holders. As we look beyond the current policy battles and 2010 elections, we also need to consider how it is we do what we do. To the extent that many of us are frustrated by the way things are, we need to also consider whether if we continue to do things the same way, can we really expect different (and better) outcomes?”

This is a revised and updated version of “Dreaming of Better Dems.”

We are entering a critical political time that is not for the fainthearted. It is easy to second guess what other people do, but it much more difficult to change our own premises about politics, especially if we are professionally invested in the status quo — even the status quo of doing social change. It is time to invite ourselves to rethink our approach to political organizing.

The essays were by Jean Hardisty and Deepak Bhargava, and by Marshall Ganz.  Both involve how to think about organizing for social justice. The first one makes the useful distinction between broad organizing towards a goal, and mobilization towards a specific project, like passing legislation or getting out the vote for a canidate.

I think that the concept of organizing has drifted considerably in political life and is in need of reinvention. If that is so, these essays are an excellent place to start.

 The principle of the Hyde Amendment, which restricted federal funds from paying for abortion, is now seen as an acceptable, “abortion-neutral” position for the pro-choice party. How did the most significant anti-abortion legislation in history become a moderate compromise?

Gloria Feldt responded at Not Under The Bus: 

I’m appalled that the president, Congress, pro-choice organizations, and as a result the media are calling the current Hyde amendment restrictions on abortion coverage an acceptable compromise.

But last year, a proposal for three resort casinos was defeated by a 2-1 margin in the legislature, thanks in part to an anti-casino Speaker of the House. This year there is a new Speaker and the conventional wisdom has it that casinos are all but a done deal. But as is too often the case, the CW may be an oxymoron.

Massachusetts has a long history of beating back the casino industry. And this year may be no different. Opponents in MA and around the country now refer to it as “predatory gambling” because the entire business is designed to find and hook prospective gambling addicts, which are the core of the business. Everything else, an expert I quoted in an article last year, “is bells and whistles.” Both organized gaming and its opponents, have changed.

Continued at Daily Kos…