Daily Kos is a blog-site of which I've been unaware until just recently, when a brouhaha regarding it was stirred by Bill O'Reilly, honcho of the O'Reilly Factor, a commentator/interviewer offering of the Fox News network. His main point: The blog is filled with obscenity (perhaps hate, too). Its owner is Markos Zuniga, 35, a San Francisco resident and former GI. O'Reilly's latest gripe has to do with the Yearly Kos, an outgrowth of Daily Kos, a convention of sorts held by and for democrats – hard-left-leaning types, in the main – which is being held in Chicago August 2-5, and in which O'R insists reputable people should not participate, thereby not granting credibility to obscenity.
I've taken an admittedly cursory look at both Daily Kos and the program of Yearly Kos. On the Web site, I found two disgusting pictorial representations, one of President Bush in a homosexual act with a goat and the other, Bush-aide Karl Rove doing for Bush what Monica did for Bill Clinton (without the cigar, of course). This kind of stuff has no place on the Internet. Zuniga also has his piano pieces on the site, so I checked them out. He's a gifted pianist, at least with New Age stuff, though NA becomes terribly monotonous after a while.
The Yearly Kos program is interesting, and a lot of high-profile folks (all democrats, of course) don't subscribe to O'R's opinion about support for the grossly disgusting. I noticed that president-wannabes Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson are scheduled speakers, as well as House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid. The opening keynote speakers – DNC chairman Howard Dean and Senator Dick Durbin. I don't know what Durbin said, but perhaps he explained his opinion that American GIs are the same as Nazi storm-troopers, keepers of the gulags, or psychopaths of the killing fields, a la Pol Pot and gang. Dean probably didn't do the SCREAM he made famous in Iowa in 2004 since there might have been small children in the area.
This is an item from the transcript of the ABC program Nightline of 01 August: "You've got people who are responsible for 3,000 American deaths in Pakistan and that continue to raid and attack our soldiers in Afghanistan and make it more difficult to stabilize that country. And that is an unacceptable situation." The maker of that statement was Obama. Obviously, 3,000 Americans have not died in Pakistan, so Obama had no idea what he was talking about (okay, cut him some slack and say his grammar was dysfunctional). Earlier that day, Obama said that, as president, he would not hesitate to order unilateral military action against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan if he had intelligence information that warranted a strike. Perhaps in his YK speech, there's an explanation as to why he should declare war on a nuclear power that is this country's gateway to the fight against the Taliban at a crucial time in the war on terror.
Senator Clinton and Governor Richardson will doubtlessly discuss the war, as will Pelosi and Reid, though the four of them will be light-years apart in their opinions regarding what should be done in/with Iraq. None of them will declare that Congress should un-fund the war, which is the quickest way to get rid of it, but which would require an exercise in Truth and fortitude, which perhaps only prez-wannabe Congressman Kucinich can handle. He can afford that bravery because he knows his chances of making it to the Oval Office are at about minus-1000 on a scale of plus 1 to 10.
The advisory committee for the Yearly Kos clambake has some of the usual suspects on it, for instance, Carter's vice president Walter Mondale, former Senators George McGovern and Gary Hart, and Donna Brazile. Hart invited the press to investigate his private life, probably suspecting a friendly press wouldn't do that, and it cost him dearly. He should have known better, since the press was known to routinely examine Henry Kissinger's garbage. Brazile put Gore into "earth-tones," and the result was an "Inconvenient Truth." McGovern carried one state in 1972, so his advice might be suspect.
There are a plethora of sessions described in the program covering a multitude of subjects. An interesting one is entitled "Rebuilding New Orleans" – interesting because New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, whose incompetence was the worst curse of Katrina, was not a convener, nor was Louisiana Governor Blanco, his partner in crime. Nagin might have explained how not to use 200 buses for evacuation, and Blanco might have orated on the subject of making decisions a day too late.
Ironically, the strategic director for Yearly Kos is Jon Pontificator, also a member of the Organizing Committee. The term pontificate is defined as "to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way." Senator Chuck Schumer, also listed as a speaker in Chicago, is the very personification of that definition. He exhibits his extraordinary talent at every opportunity, especially in Judiciary Committee hearings and in any press conference he can gin up or take over.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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