The names have changed, but the corporate connections still exist, for example after the break-up of Standard Oil, Esso of NJ,
is now Exxon Mobile. The war in Iraq is a War to secure oil reserves for Western Oil interests. It has been this way since the end of WWII, and the fraudulent Iraq war is a “Business Plot,” to maintain the oil sluts positive cash flow, while paying lip service to alternatives and under the radar screen, snuffing competition ie “ethanol” distribution.

The analogy the Americans people will understand it that they are being fleeced by the same corporate interests which created the discord in Iraq and lessen our liberty in America by picking from our pursuits of happiness, our jobs and money. Our leaders have done a wonderful job of meshing their business interests with with our national security. For their benefit and continue billion dollar profits, while Americans die and pay. This is like selling cigarettes. Just ignore deleterious consequenses of actions because you are told not to believe, the obvious!!!

One fundamental that the netroots hasn’t addressed is the structural advantage that the Republicans have on message discipline. Everyone is yelling for overworked Representatives to come up with a message. The Republicans don’t do that. They hire professionals to make the message that the Congressional and other people then can follow. It’s time for us to create a real “message group” whose professional job it is to create the message and to disseminate it. Yes, that means think tanks, that means listening to public relations people, that means training in how to talk to people in a way they really understand. Level One, Level Two, Level Three is for the people who need to understand the mechanics behind the perception. Instead, the message needs to be:

Simple. Evoke a Story or Analogy. Positive and Assertive. Relate to the listener’s needs. Rinse and Repeat.

“The 1933 Business Plot.” Realized! Today

keep America addicted to “petroleum” at all costs. Doesn’t matter if it’s cigarettes, beer or gasoline or east idia tea!!!!

With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war. For the benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve; for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a bigger role in the destiny of the world. The result is that, even in those countries where the business of declaring war is theoretically in the hands of representatives of the people, no legislature has ever been known to decline the request of an Executive, which has conducted all foreign affairs in utter privacy and irresponsibility, that it order the nation into battle. Good democrats are wont to feel the crucial difference between a State in which the popular Parliament or Congress declares war, and the State in which an absolute monarch or ruling class declares war. But, put to the stern pragmatic test, the difference is not striking. In the freest of republics as well as in the most tyrannical of empires, all foreign policy, the diplomatic negotiations which produce or forestall war, are equally the private property of the Executive part of the Government, and are equally exposed to no check whatever from popular bodies, or the people voting as a mass themselves.

There are lessons to be learned from this that could become part of the Democratic narrative, methinks.

hackworth @ 15

I think that John Kerry did a good job describing the things Bush did wrong and the things that a Kerry presidency would do to correct them and improve lives of Average Americans. …

And that lukewarm VP candidate who Darth chewed up and spit out.

Have you ever argued with someone who was so willing and able to argue with lies? It isn’t easy. I suspect he was completely shocked to face that in a publicly televised debate.

We do that by changing the conversation and taking bold stands (a la Dodd) on Constitutional issues.

Naomi Wolf’s “Ten classic steps that would-be dictators take when they wish to close down an open society” and the agendas put forward by the “American Freedom Campaign” and “American Freedom Agenda” make excellent talking points. I think Democrats should start HAMMERING the Administration with these on a DAILY basis!

The first Law of Politics:

Whoever has the simplest salient soundbite — wins.

John Edwards — Leadership!

The Corrolary to the First Law:

If your opponent has the best soundbite, steal it and turn it against them.

The Republicans are weak on Defense!

…
It’s your money — and Bush wants to give it away to millionaires and billionaires!!!

It’s your money — don’t let Bush waste it on Iraq!

Simple. Evoke a Story or Analogy. Positive and Assertive. Relate to the listener’s needs. Rinse and Repeat.

It seems to me that without dealing directly (and in a legal context) with the start-up of the war, Dems cannot deal constructively with any other part of it (like Blackwater, the current Iraqi government, etc.) And I believe that what the polls tell us about the country’s opinion on Iraq doesn’t just mean, bring the troops home. I think that there has to be an element of “we screwed up” that needs to be addressed, in these polls – people are against the war who voted for Bush and may vote for another Reep. What does that mean? It means that there is some atonement in store, and in my opinion it should be visible, public, and have a bright light shining on it. That’s what most people want – and then, only then, to move on.

-GSD