….look at this – one glove is off:

LINKED HERE

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez: “‘My assessment is that we have a crisis in national political leadership. When will America recognize the danger we face? When will the corrosive partisanship of American politics end and allow for a bipartisan solution to arguably the most dangerous threat our nation has faced in over 60 years?’

After his speech, Sanchez wouldn’t name names, but told the AP he was referring to ‘the most senior leadership in our nation.’”

Sanchez, who spent a tumultuous year as the top U.S. commander in Iraq, made the remarks at a veterans summit sponsored by U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, a Corpus Christi Democrat.

About 200 veterans and their families attended the event. They gave Sanchez a standing ovation and mobbed him afterward for autographs.

Today, upon seeing the new Survey USA poll in New Mexico, I had no choice but to let out a “Once again!” that was so loud that my dog started barking.

I hope Survey USA keeps putting out a poll a day. Their earlier polls included the Northwest (where Edwards is strongest by far), the upper Midwest (where Edwards is very strong and Clinton and Obama are very vulnerable), and Texas (a state we have all coveted for some time now).

I would like to thank Ward Curtin, who sent me a link to the Survey USA series. Being a political junkie, seeing a new series of Survey USA polls is like Christmas. Ward is the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Senate Democrats. In other words, Democrats everywhere owe him a huge debt of gratitude for doing very important work under very difficult circumstances. Sometimes I get frustrated with local politicians (Damn you, Dave Reichert and Gordon Smith!) and really anxious for their possible Democratic replacements to ( Darcy Burner and Jeff Merkely), but I can’t even imagine what Oklahoma Democrats have to deal with.

So, here’s to Ward Curtin, and “red state” Democrats everywhere.

My point in all of this is to remind people of the importance of making sure that our presidential candidate helps, not hurts, down – ticket candidates. Really moving a progressive agenda is impossible without increased congressional majorities. Darcy Burner described best what we need to do when, in the wake of the FISA debacle, she called for us to focus on electing “more and better Democrats”.

This is a very exciting time, as we have some great opportunities to do this if we make sure that John Edwards is our party’s nominee. Here are a few quick examples of races that are much more likely to go our way if Edwards is at the top of the ticket.

Oklahoma – A notorious wingnut, Senator Jim Inhofe, faces a great candidate in Andrew Rice.
IMO, candidates like Rice in Oklahoma and Rick Noriega in neighboringTexas are the future of our party.

Kentucky – Results from the recent Survey USA Kentucky poll are included below.

This state tops my wish list along with Texas, Georgia, and Ohio. Along with Virginia, Kentucky appears to be heading the right direction.

We are fast approaching Governor Ernie Fletcher having his ass handed to him by a great ticket of Beshear / Mongiardo.

Attorney General Greg Stumbo is getting to ready to run against the shame of Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell has this strange, rare disease called Hackititus. One symptom is that he becomes a critic of the war, and hints that he will probably soon vote to end it while his in Kentucky, but then leads the charge to keep it going once he returns to DC. There’s something about Greg Stumbo that I really like. He is the kind of populist Democrat I think can win, and do it while standing up for the American people like all Democrats should. With John Edwards as our presidential nominee, and then our president, we can help make Kentucky solidly blue by 2010.

In a few weeks we’ll take the Governor’s mansion. Beshear has around a 20% lead in all the polls.
In 2008 we take their 8 electoral votes, and return an eye for an eye for South Dakota in 2004 by helping Stumbo give McConnell the boot.

Quick note: I think Democrats from the Badlands will join me in telling Steve Jarding, a southern and rural strategist who has advised John Edwards, … “run Steve run”

Then in 2010 it is Sentaor Jim Bunning’s turn to be sent to into early retirement. There are two Kentucky Democrats who are very capable of taking out Bunning, if he is stupid enough to seek re-election.

Daniel Mongiardo, who will be elected Lieutenant Governor in a few weeks, nearly beat Bunning in 2004. In a non – Bush / Rove “terror terror fear fear terror” election Bunning, and for that matter any Kentucky Republican will be beatable. If Mongiardo wants to focus on a future as Governor (it’s always good to think about the long term) then there is always…

Congressman Ben Chandler. He has been a dream statewide candidate for many Democrats for quite some time. I have no doubt that he will be heavily lobbied to run in 2010.

It’s important that we remember that quality Democrats can win in states like Kentucky. If you don’t believe that is true, just take a look at Congressman John Yarmouth.

And of course…

New Mexico – The subject of the Survey USA poll. Senator Pete Domenici is a perfect example of an out of touch Wingnut that needs to go. He is about as entrenched as it gets, so there is a chance that we could be looking at the Olympia Snowe effect, where a Republican Senator in a moderate state survives re-election in a Democratic wave simply because they are so entrenched. If he decides to run for re-election this will be a tough race. If Governor Bill Richardson, who would have time to file for the Senate if he abandons his presidential run after February 5th, gets in the race then this race would look very good for us, but that seems like a long shot. We could be looking at Richardson vs. a Republican other than Domenici, a race that would lean heavily Democratic, or we could be looking at a Democrat other than Richardson vs. Domenici, in which case it could be difficult. And this is not just about the Senate races. We are going to need a presidential candidate with coat tails to beat candidates like Domenici in places like New Mexico.

I think it is very important that we remind fellow Democrats what is at stake in this election. This is not just about the presidential race (which is as important as it gets). This is also about down-ticket candidates across the country and the future of the party, and the progressive movement.

(Numbers below)

Everybody take care,
Michael

Survey USA
http://www.surveyusa.com/electionpolls.aspx

Updated General Election Polling Review
http://esrc08.blogspot.com/

Survey USA – September 24, 2007

New Mexico

vs. Mitt Romney

Clinton – 54%
Romney – 39%

Obama – 55%
Romney – 36%

Edwards – 54%
Romney – 34%
Clinton leads by 15%, Obama leads by 19%, Edwards leads by 20%

vs. Fred Thompson

Clinton – 53%
Thompson – 42%

Obama – 52%
Thompson – 41%

Edwards – 52%
Thompson – 37%
Clinton leads by 11%, Obama leads by 11%, Edwards leads by 15%

Clinton – 51%
Giuliani – 43

Obama – 46
Giuliani – 46

Edwards – 48
Giuliani – 44

Clinton leads by 8%, Obama is tied, Edwards leads by 4%

Averages

Clinton leads the Republicans by an average of 11.33%
Obama leads the Republicans by an average of 10.00%
Edwards leads the Republicans by an average of 13.00%

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SnarKassandra @ 187

Should we learn Chinese in school?

Stick with Spanish for now, Missie! Mandarin is a extremely hard language to learn for a westerner…!!!

No, no, no! Au contraire! Yes, Chinese is tough (I started college intending to major in it – chickened out and went with Russian.*g*)
But the younger you are, the easier it is to learn a new language. The farther you get past about twelve years old, the more the “window of opportunity” to be truly fluent and speak without an accent closes. So, I say, if Chinese classes turn up in your vicinity, sign up, instantly!

Blub @ 186

… and, given Edwards’ little stumbles in the past two weeks and barring some unforeseen piece of good news, she’s also the person I might just have to swallow my pride and work to help get elected

That would be a painful swallow, because she is a corporate stooge of the highest order. She has no compassion that I can detect and her
health care plan is an outright gift to the insurance industry. She will continue to keep troops in Iraq and has no problem with bombing Iran. All in all, not much different from shrub on foreign policy and marginally better on social policy.

there was quite the group hug over Hillary here earlier.

Pragmatic, win at all costs centrists (D)’s should be concerned about a Hillary nomination, her negatives are asymptotic at both ends of the political spectrum, and she is defeatable.

Get Tough @ 220

It’s not being obtuse. Japanese has three alphabets, the main alphabet, Kanji, are literally Chinese characters adopted by the Japanese around 600 AD, along with Buddhism, to provide a writing system for their langauge, which the Japanese spoke without a written system for more than 2500 years. As such, when the Japanese adopted the Chinese chararcters, they used their own pronounciations of words with the characters, though there are two, and often times sevaral, pronounciations for every Chinese character. Japanese also two more alphabets that are phonetic, which are derived from the Chinese characters they adopted. There are some differences between modern Chinese characters and the Japanese version of them. However, I read Japanese, and when I visited Hong Kong, I could understand the signs, but could not pronounce the words.

The Koreans also use the chinese script, modified slightly, Hangol is not too hard to decipher…

CT, Korean is interesting to me, too. It takes me a few seconds to determine whether someone on the street is speaking Korean or Japanese, and Korean sounds alot like Manderin, too. Same kind of hard sylables and the like. Linguistics professor would have been a great career–it’s the most interesting way to learn about cultures and history, and how close we all are, despite the MSM and the Bushies/Lieberman attempts otherwise.

Elliot! You took the same Spanish classes that I did!

Vas ahora mismo?

(I hope that’s right)

Get Tough @ 220

It’s not being obtuse. Japanese has three alphabets, the main alphabet, Kanji, are literally Chinese characters adopted by the Japanese around 600 AD, along with Buddhism, to provide a writing system for their langauge, which the Japanese spoke without a written system for more than 2500 years.

Now wait a bonzai-pickin minute here. How could they have been speaking a language when god almighty hadn’t even created them yet?!? Answer that one mr. smartypants!

My bad…”stay with the flock, stay with the flock”