India is going to offer free broadband access to all residents by 2009.

I would take these sort of projections with a ton of salt. A large percentage of Indians live in make-shift homes, slums, etc where the meaning of "resident" is nebulous. Unless India is planning to send food through these broadband "pipes", this is mere grandstanding.

Also, a minor point: Internet is spelled with a capital I, as in the Internet. As in the title of this post.

Here is National Journal's explanation of their methodology:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/m ethodology.htm

sorbs, I dug a bit further into this, and here are my findings:

a) The National Journal ranking is based on lifetime voting record. If you look at 2006 alone, Kucinich edges out Obama (need a ref here).

b) Kucinich has a despicable anti-choice record from his past. He has, akin to Gore (and various other Democrats) changed his position, however, and is now pro-choice.

c) The ranking is a percentile ranking. Obama is more liberal in comparison to other Senators than Kucinich is in comparison to other house members. It's arguable, but there is a greater possibility for liberal congresspersons than senators due to the smaller (and more homogenous) voter pool.

What? An Obama supporter complaining about "rhetoric"? Rather stick to it, like "unnecessary and silly", no? ;-)

So potential appearance on Fox (something that Obama turned down after careful consideration post-Edwards) is a metric that comes above, say, a candidate's opinion on Israel/Palestine? Or funding the war? So Wesley Clark, a regular guest (correspondent? expert?) on Fox -- where does he stand, irrespective of all else?

The NY Times page linked to in the comment has a link to the National Journal which puts out the rankings, but unfortunately, its a link to their front page. Here is the link to the rankings themselves:

http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/i ndex.htm

I could not find any way, however, to see what votes Kucinich did to gain the scores they have assigned to him: primarily lower than other liberals on Economic issues.

And there is more to it than just voting record, yes, especially when its not weighted? How about truth, honesty, lack of BS, etc?

Let me ask you a question: why do you support whatever candidate you support? I cannot think of any good set of reasons to support any of the current candidates over Kucinich.

Of course I would support Obama over any Republican, not just out of solidarity but also because he is good enough for that. What bothers me greatly is the seeming confusion of the political with the principled. Kucinich is the closest we have to a principled candidate. The extensive trash-talking against him, in the liberal "blogosphere" is both "silly and unnecessary" as my new friend serge might say.

And why should anybody take Kucinich seriously?

Perhaps a trick question, but I will respond anyway. Because he represents progressive principles and goals better than the other candidates. Because he is the most honest and reliable of the lot (based on his record).

The question really is why are we not taking him seriously? The answer it seems is that we are afraid of what our own principles compel us to do.

Even pragmatically speaking, you can take Kucinich seriously without having to commit yourself solely to his victory in the primaries or the eventual election.

As far as I can tell, all of our candidates except for Richardson and Dodd see no problem in keeping troops in Iraq.

You need to look a bit farther. Kucinich not only voted against the war, in the first place, but has called for withdrawal consistently.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid= -7333556703536657423&q=chomsky&h l=en

We are all aware that right at this moment bodies are being torn to shreds by infernal weapons -- unknown number of people who have already been driven to the edge of survival by decades of murderous sanctions... that may be facing starvation and slow death. Under these circumstances it is not easy to step back and ask why all this is happening, where it is likely to go and what we can do to shape the future, but that's what I want to try to do. About the last question -- what we can do to shape the future -- the answer is straightforward. Quite a lot. In fact there is noone anywhere else who can do as much as we can. We are uniquely privileged. We have unusual freedom that's not a gift from on high; its a legacy that was won by centuries of constant dedicated struggle, and that's really the answer to what we can do. Pay attention to the legacy and carry it forward. Privilege and advantages confer responsibilities. That should be a truism. What comes next is hard though. Personal choices. One choice is to face the responsibility. Not easy, though a lot easier than it is in other countries, other places not as privileged as we are. The other choice is to shirk the responsibility and hand the future over to forces that we can be sure are not benign. Many people in world are desperately hoping that we will make the first choice: face the responsibility; and they view with dread the consequences if we do not; if we do not act to control what they see as a juggernaut that they regard as the greatest threat to peace in the
world and these days threat to peace means literally threat to survival.

That's Noam Chomsky. And he said it all without having to bad-mouth people on his own side. But it's not about "niceness" or "meanness". It's about the truth, honesty and solidarity.

Bush can't admit a mistake, but it looks like we can't either.

Indeed. The first step might be to admit the mistake of ill-conceived derision towards the only progressive candidate (Kucinich).

The elites think what they think and disdain activists, and from our end, we love the horse race so much that we let them lie to us and get mad at each other about trivialities like who is being 'sincere' or 'authentic' when they are openly wrong on matters of policy.

Who is being sincere or authentic is not a triviality. Policy positions should be a natural outcome of valid principles and they will be so only if the person is sincere. The horse race mentality is the problem, as correctly identified.

More shortly...

Since at least the early nineteenth century, the concept of patriotism had been intimately connected to the idea of nationhood, which in a modern concept has largely been interchangeable with the idea that sovereignty and self-rule should being granted to, and delineated along the lines of, discrete, unique and identifiable cultural groups. Many national unification and post-colonial movements were largely based on this idea, whether we are discussing the unification of Italy and Germany in the 1860's (Italians and Germans should not be separated into multiple state governments), the struggle for independence in countries like Ireland and India in the 19th and 20th centuries[.]

This demonstrates a very poor understanding of the Indian freedom struggle, which was not based around any idea of cultural identification and grouping on that basis.

The appropriate response to rhetoric of patriotism is not to adopt it, or attempt to clarify it, but to offer more powerful, more meaningful (and therefore more unifying) notions to overcome it. The Indian struggle was (to a significant extent) such a movement, albeit entirely defeated by the 60s.

Yes, you shall have a right to contempt, just as I have the right to return the compliment ;-) and refuse to work with you in any coalition. But that runs counter to the plea contained in this post, does it not?

Stanley Fish had a very interesting piece a while ago about liberalism and the Muhammad cartoon business. I blogged about it... Here it is:

http://platosbeard.org/archives/36

(My blog post links to the original).

That's one freakish long post so forgive me if what I raise below is dealt with somewhere past line 3215 ;-). Now, onwards:

• Rhetorically arguments might be similar (or not) but we need look also a bit at the analytical side to things. While I am no anti-sophist, I do believe that content matters too. For example, irrespective of its similarities to other arguments, what is the analytical rejoinder to the following: Democrats could not have won 2006 without Bush and his (administration's) bungles. Assuming that is true, what can we (progressive, liberals, leftists) say about our strategy and how, if at all, we are to influence the Democratic party.
• The two rules you offer are worth consideration. They do raise the question of where such strategic civility ends. Many progressive elements on the net (including this blog and other similar ones) seem in no hurry to don the kid gloves when it comes to characterising anyone left of them. Could Rule 1 be read to imply that content-free abuse of Nader, Kucinich or Noam Chomsky should be equally verboten? Or are these otherwise respectable individuals  marginal[ised] by the criteria of rhetoric and power?
• The god thing: the god people feel set upon because they see the continuous and rapid erosion of the relevance of their worldview and epistemology in the explanation and functioning of things. This has mostly to do with the fact that their worldview is outdated, but honesty is not the first instinct at such times. Not especially when gleeful self-appointed spokespersons (on the atheist side, to which I belong) are making headlines.

Me? I am catching up my prescribed dose of Taibbi:

Here's the thing about Obama, the reason they call him a "natural" and a "rare talent." When Hillary Clinton spouts a cliche, it's four words long, she's reading it off a teleprompter, and it hits the ear like the fat part of a wooden oar. Even when Hillary announced she was running for president, she sounded like she was ordering coffee. Obama, on the other hand, can close his eyes and the cliches just pour out of his mouth in huge polysyllabic paragraphs, like Rachmaninoff improvisations. In this sense he's exactly like Bill Clinton, who had the same gift. He is exactly what is meant by the term bullshit artist. My usual instinct when presented with this type of Zelig-esque, Eddie Haskell, non-stick personality is to violently reject it. But over the course of the last few weeks I've found myself increasingly amused by the Obama phenomenon. For one thing, he clearly pisses off Hillary to no end. Same with Biden and all of those other windbag jerk-off assholes in that revolting "national security Democrats" clan in the Senate. There is something subtly racist (in Biden's case, not so subtle) in the way these more entrenched Democrats are riding Obama's lack of credentials and acting like the '08 nomination is their birthright, like he hasn't "waited his turn" or something, paid his dues. As if any of these clowns would wait ten seconds to declare for the White House if they had the same odds that Obama has now.

What in your opinion is the alternative to the "superficial media machine"? I am not sure if that alone (or even significantly) contributes to the death of political discourse.

Isn't this the poll where Kucinich (and Clark?) was (were) removed from the choices midway through the poll? (under the allegation of stuffing). If so, why include Kucinich in the results? I didn't vote in this straw poll since by the time I saw the poll the only candidate worth voting for (Kucinich) was not present in the list.

Of course when I say "worth voting for" I am just using my personal, subjective criteria of honesty, logical positions, lack of BS, support for liberal/progressive/left issues, etc. I realise that other criteria are available, such as slavish centrism, "electability", vapid populist rhetoric, the ability to forego a necktie, and so on. So please don't read me the wrong way ;-).

Re: Stern. True that! ;-) For a corporate type dude, he is OK: I remember a few years ago, when the viability of the WNBA was once again being questioned, Stern spoke strongly in support of the league, and added that it was both a matter of principle and one of practice: he pointed out that men's sports have been losing money for a long time,  but nobody questions them.

Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head by pointing to both the disconnect and the irrationality of the process.

But this is a matter of evolutionary biology, if I may! We (humans at large) are coded to think in certain ways and these mechanisms are not analytical and consistent (our strengths) but instinctive (and these are instincts that span a million years) and holistic.

War for instance is perceived as a tribal clash of groups, demanding loyalty, cohesion and such. Loyalty is related to bonding and bonding in turn to whom you can drink a beer with.

There is quite a bit of validity to the idea of frames but IMHO they are not the entire story, not even a large part of it. Frames, and talk of framing the issues/debate/etc, imply (despite certain denials) that one can lead a horse to the water irrespective of its instincts of thirst (lack of it).

It is a grave error (not one you are attempting) to think that we can win this debate through terminology and tactics. That is the "new DLC" approach (same as the "old DLC" approach) and arguably the "Democratic majority" single-issue approach.

The rightwing setup (as you rightly call it) works well (in these matters) because it coincides (again in these matters) with the mental setup of the public. There are opposing mental instincts and frameworks. Unfortunately, there aren't many candidates to stimulate them.