I know I'm not a famous blogger here at Daily Kos and my comments tend to garner only a smattering of recommends.  This diary is probably going to come across as whiney and I know that many readers DO give money to progressive candidates so I am not intentionally criticizing those people nor do I mean to criticize those who don't have money to spare but who dedicate themselves to electing Democrats thru activism.

I have been reading and posting here since about 2005.  I am not a wealthy person & the past year has been difficult for me.  but when the Front pagers & other posters here at Kos put out a call for contributions to their candidates, I try to help out.  Sometimes the amounts are small, but I do what I can because we need more progressives in Congress.

Yesterday, I decided to put out my own request for contributions for a progressive US Senate candidate, Jeff Merkley (OR-Sen), in what is considered one of the top Senate races in the country.  I offered & am offering to match contributions totalling up to $1,000 to people who contribute thru my Actblue page:  http://www.actblue.com/... .  Guess how many people stepped up to the plate?

Are you interested in putting more *progressives* in the US Senate in the upcoming election?  Would you like to double your impact thru a matching contribution?  If so, read on!

For the past 12 years, Oregonians have been cursed with a do-nothing Republican Senator who currently polls at under 50% approval.  His name is Gordon Smith and his list of legislative accomplishments in the US Senate is as meager as his committment to George bush is great.

Following the Democratic landslide of '06, Smith furiously tried to create the appearance of distance between himself and the Bush administration without actually distancing himself in a meaningful way.  He's a pretend 'independent' Republican Senator who 'independently' votes with George Bush approx. 90% of the time.  He's sort of like a dumber, more inactive and almost-as-insulting-to-your-intelligence version of Norm Coleman.

I'm an Oregonian who lives in Japan.  I'm flying to NN tomorrow and will arrive in Austin Wednesday night.

One of the reasons I'm looking forward to going to NN is that I'm interested in hooking up with fellow Oregonians and plotting the victory of Democratic US Senate candidate Jeff Merkley & the absolute destruction of our anonymous, crap, 'maverick' Senator, Gordon Smith (R-bush 'Yes Man').

I think NN will be very productive if people get in touch with others from their own states and plan to help candidates in their states over the next few months.  In that spirit, it would be great if there was a way for people to get in touch with people from their state.  Unfortunately, I've seen scant information about how to hook up with such people while in Austin.

Over at MSNBC, there's a neat article up about an upcoming trip to the US - Salt Lake City, no less - by the 2007 FIBA Asia Champion, Iran.  I'm sure that wingnuts and other paranoid ninnies will view this as the opening phase of the long awaited 'Islamo-fascist' invasion of the 'Homeland', but I think this is great news and I hope that someone (Hello, NBA?) either broadcasts the games or films them and posts them somewhere.

We need more of this citizen diplomacy, not less.  As a two time exchange student to Japan & the Philippines (thank you Rotary!), I can attest to the effectiveness of citizen diplomacy at improving relations between people, even if their respective governments suck.

What I found even more heartening were the comments posted in response to the story (go over and check them out!)   There are probably 40 comments at the time I'm writing this and they are overwhelmingly positive.  I counted 1 negative (some dumbass compared it to playing against the Nazis before WWII), 1 incoherent response, 1 cautious response and 1 asshole.  Among the positive comments, there were even some comments from Iranians, one of whom pointed out there are at least 12 Americans who play professionally in Iran.

I subscribe to a mailing list called 'Mega Vote' that is run by, of all people, the American Public Health Association.  They send out one mail per week detailing my representative's votes in Congress.  It's an excellent way to find out how your Senators & Congressperson vote and I enthusiastically recommend it to everyone.

As I was looking thru it today, I noticed that my useless Senator, the pretend 'independent' Republican, Gordon Smith (R-OR) voted Yes on a Cloture Motion regarding the Medicare Improvements for Patients & Providers Act of 2008, which would have cancelled a scheduled cut in Medicare physician reimbursements.  As we've come to expect from the Obstructionist Republicans, the Vote to overcome the Republican filibuster was rejected 58-40 with 2 not voting.  

And wouldn't you know it, John McCain was one of two Senators who failed to vote.  The other was Ted Kennedy, who, unless I'm mistaken, is still recovering from his surgery.

I realize that DKos is not exactly the best forum in which to post announcements.  If any of the developers are reading, it sure would be nice to have a calendar on which Kossaks could post event information :-)

Progressives in Japan have a couple of events coming up that are open to anyone who happens to be in the Tokyo area.

1.  Drinking Liberally Tokyo, tomorrow!  Please feel free to drop by the Clubhouse sports bar in Shinjuku for our monthly Drinking Liberally event.  It's a fun group of people and I can help you request your ballot for the '08 election, if you haven't already requested it (you can request it at the link in my signature).

Crossposted at VetVoice

I am not a veteran and I'm generally not a fan of either our sprawling empire of military bases around the world or of America's ever-growing defense budget.

I do have an interest in veterans issues though and I enjoy reading VetVoice and listening to Paul Rieckhoff's fairly regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio.

I recently had an opportunity to do a podcast interview with Congresswoman Susan Davis (CA-53, San Diego).  Congresswoman Davis sits on the House Armed Services Committee and is actually the chair of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel.  

The Iranian President visited Iraq yesterday and didn't even bother sneaking in unannounced like our own former cheerleader President. I guess this is just yet one more example of the 'success' that the right wing is always boasting about.

This news report said the following about Ahmadinejad's trip:

The trip by Ahmadinejad, who once fought Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime as a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, was a dramatic illustration of one of the unintended consequences of the 2003 U.S. invasion - the replacement of Saddam with Shiite forces closely allied to the cleric-led Islamic republic next door.

Democrats Abroad is having their Global Primary from 2/5~2/12 and I just came from the Tokyo voting center.  There was about 12 Japanese media people covering the event and there were even a few voters besides me casting their ballots.

If anyone is curious, the Japanese media seems to take their cues from big media in the US.  Several of them asked me questions as I was leaving including:

- Who did I vote for?  (Obama primarily because Edwards dropped out and broke my heart)

- Can Hillary win when she's so disliked?  (I said I like her and yes, she can win, if for no other reason than the Republican candidates are incredibly lame and offer no substantive difference from Too-Stupid-to-be-President).

- Why didn't you vote for Hillary?

- Etc., etc., etc.

Attention Democrats Abroad and friends of Democrats Abroad!

Democrats Abroad Japan has a number of events coming up and would like to invite Americans (and, depending on the event, non-Americans) to join us.  On our calendar between now and mid-December, we have:

- DAJ Movie Night in Kansai (Osaka):  The War Tapes (Nov. 19)

- The DAJ Annual Thanksgiving Dinner at Fujimama's in Tokyo (Nov. 21)

- The DAJ Tokai Chapter Meeting (Dec. 2)

- DAJ Movie Night in Tokyo:  No End in Sight (Dec. 4)

First things first.  While I intend to be snarky with this diary (look below the fold), I would first like to make a serious point.  The 30 second campaign ad format is played out.  It is almost impossible for a candidate to get a substantive message out in 30 seconds because of the razzle-dazzle and soundbites that are required to capture the voters attention in that short timespan.

Remember when Ross Perot mounted his independent bid for the Presidency in 1992?  He did something very interesting, and I think useful:  he bought 30 minute blocks of airtime and had campaign informercials in which he treated his audience like responsible adults and set forth his ideas with a decent amount of specificity.  Wikipedia says this about Perot's ads:

these ads garnered more viewership than many sitcoms, with one Friday night program in October attracting 10.5 million viewers.

I’m an American living overseas, in Japan.  I have been living here now for about 12 years.  For Americans who are interested in improving America’s monstrous health care system, you should know that you are blessed with a huge, largely untapped resource:  6 million Americans living overseas.

Amongst those of us living in other industrialized countries, many of us have been participating in national health care schemes for years and have the ability to see beyond the America-is-better-at-everything attitude that often characterizes the internal health care debate in the US.  We can actually compare US healthcare to what we have in our host countries.

I’d like to share with you all what we have in Japan.  I am not a health care expert and in fact only recently looked up the meaning of Single Payer Health Care, which seems to be what we have in Japan.  If someone who is more expert on the macro-workings of the system in Japan cares to comment or write their own, better, diary, we all stand to gain.  I'm interested in giving U.S. based readers an idea what such a system looks like on the ground.

Cross-posted to http://breakingdimbulbs.blogspot.com/

Interesting news about NY suing diplomatic missions for property taxes, unpaid parking tickets, etc. Embassies and their staff are often exempt from taxes, have legal immunity, etc.. The UN could be sued, too.

I suppose this would bring a tear of joy to the eyes of anti-UN types. NY alone stands to gain $100,000,000+ in property taxes and penalties from the foreigners.

I take occasional trips into the hyper-macho world of so-called "conservative" blogs.  For those of you unfamiliar with them (know thy enemy - go look around!), they are full of violent metaphors and militarism.  The authoritarian leanings of "conservative" bloggers are apparent to everyone but the "conservative" bloggers themselves.

I should point out here that the "conservative" blogs I'm referring to are the less trafficked blogs that probably reside somewhere between Red State and White Supremacist garbage.  Two-bit Little Green Footballs, if you will.  The comment sections are generally the typewritten equivalent of grunts of approval along with various threats against "libtards".

The reason I'm writing this particular rant is the because there is a knee-jerk tendency in the "conservative" blogosphere to call for the nuking of Americas enemies.  Once and for all, I'm calling out these idiots.

While I don't mean to take you away from the important work of removing corrupt corporate-jet conservatives from office, one of these days, hopefully soon, one of us will find ourselves in a situation where we can put these crooks on the spot in a public forum.  It could be at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, at a press event or maybe even when they're at a small gathering.

I was originally going to ask for questions that could be asked to President Bush, but then decided, why limit it?  Some questions could be asked to any Republican and maybe some lucky soul out there will actually be able to record it for us all to enjoy.  Preferably before the election.  Ideally, someone from the media would ask them, but they generally seem to be cursed with the spine of Wolf Blitzer.

Last week I posted a request for ideas for the future George W. Bush Presidential Library (URL below) and got some good suggestions so I decided to ask everyone, if you had just one question that you could ask President Bush or any of his accomplices, what would it be?

A couple years ago, back when I thought Bush might actually lose in '04, I got to wondering what sort of Presidential Library the Saudis would buy for George W. Bush.  I made passing reference to the GW Bush Presidential Library in a comment the other day but no one replied so I'll give it one more stab.  It seems like Kos readers might have some interesting contributions.

According to Wikipedia, Presidential Libraries contain documents, artifacts, and displays that relate to the former president's career.  The libraries contain a museum and provide an active series of public programs.

So what do you think the future George W. Bush Presidential Library will contain?  My ideas & thoughts can be seen below.  Please add your own in the comments!

I was watching CNN American Morning yesterday and one of the lead stories was about the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, challenging George Bush to a globally televised debate where they would apparently discuss, world issues and air out their differences.

I didn't hear anything after that though and the Wall Street Journal just mentioned it in passing.

I did get to thinking though, if the President is going to ask our all-volunteer military to go over to some god-forsaken desert and ask them to fight the "war on terror", is it not fair to ask the President to step up to the plate and to debate Mr. Ahmadinejad?  Bush "volunteered" for the position of President, and to our horror, actually "won" the election.