In “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation”, Dr. Drew Westen presents a compelling case that Democrats would be far more effective if they were passionate advocates of progressive principles.  Every Democrat would benefit from reading Weston’s book, because most of them are oblivious to the negative impact their rigid and dispassionate over-reliance on tedious fact-based arguments has on millions of Americans.  Instead of engaging them and inspiring them with passionate advocacy, Democrats bore them and render them vulnerable to the emotion-based rhetoric of Republicans. 

Weston’s appeal for passionate political advocacy should be heeded by the Netroots as well, and by all progressives, because the emotional reactions of Americans to candidates and issues influence them far more than they admit.  Average voters are inclined to react on an emotional level to a political message, and consequently tend to “think” about a candidate or issues in emotional terms, not in terms of their actual position on policies and issues.  Republicans have understood this for years and have ruthlessly exploited it.  Most of their messaging reeks of emotion-based manipulation, and Democrats have not had a clue how to respond effectively.  The Netroots hasn’t been much better.

The consequences have been brutal.

According to multiple sources of mine at the White House, RNC, Capitol Hill, and several Georgetown bars, a consensus seems to be forming among White House and GOP strategists on a bold new political strategy that can be spun as an Iraq withdrawal plan and as a much needed cost cutting measure to reduce Operation Iraqi Freedom expenditures.  When this efficient new strategy is implemented, millions of taxpayer dollars will be saved on Army transport, supply, and logistics costs; and troop levels in Iraq will be systematically reduced on a timeline, in accordance with the wishes of the American people. 

Advocates of this developing GOP strategy for Iraq, not to be unveiled until the propaganda is sufficiently catapulted, are impressed with its cost-effectiveness elements and the bottom line business rationale behind it.  According to this rationale, there’s no way to prevent at least 1,000 American soldiers from being killed over the coming year, in a prohibitively expensive occupation that needs some cost cutting, so why even deploy them to Iraq? 

Just blow them up here.

Once a month, Joe Lieberman can pick 100 soldiers at random from our stateside combat brigades training for their next deployment to Iraq, fly them to Washington, stand them in formation on the White House lawn.  The Commander Guy could swagger out to a podium, give a speech about the great job they’re doing defending freedom, etc, etc, and then a patriotic defense contractor could blow them up. 

It’s time to bring our soldiers home.  It’s long past time.  They are not George W. Bush’s soldiers.  They are not Dick Cheney’s soldiers.   They are our sons and daughters.  They are our brothers and sisters.  They didn’t enlist to be hired guns for war profiteers.  They volunteered in good faith to serve their country, but they have been betrayed by their own government.  We have all been betrayed.  They have suffered for too long, their families have suffered for too long, America has suffered for too long. 

Iraq Moratorium Day.
Stand up.
Speak out.
Bring America’s sons and daughters home.

They have the White House, they have the Supreme Court, they have Congress locked up in a Filibuster Cell and have thrown away the key.  They have the DOJ and FBI and DHS and CIA and NSA.  They have 24/7 control over the corporate media, they have an endless supply of K-Street cash, they have police with itchy taser trigger fingers and Blackwater thugs with licenses to kill.  They have all the political and economic power that deceit, subversion, coercion, blackmail, and blood money can buy.

But they’re crashing and burning anyway.

Republicans are crashing and burning nationwide.  They’re crashing and burning in places they’ve never crashed and burned before, even when Herbert W. Hoover was The Decider. They’re crashing and burning in Kentucky, they’re crashing and burning in Missouri, they’re even crashing and burning in Utah.

I love the smell of Karma in the morning.  It smells like . . . victory.

In the summer of 1970 an English singer/songwriter by the name of Steven Demetre Georgiou wrote a song about peace. 

The world needed to hear one.  Two million men, women, and children had been killed in Vietnam.  50,000 young American soldiers were also dead.  Despite Pentagon reports of progress; years of bombing villages, shelling villages, and burning villages from the Mekong Delta to the DMZ had somehow failed to win the hearts and minds of the traumatized survivors.  Concerned that America’s honor and resolve had not been sufficiently displayed yet, Richard Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia, and the consequences were horrific as two million more human beings died in the killing fields of the Khymer Rouge.