Democracy Alliance memo details Dem plan to “educate the idiots” and target minorities

In a confidential internal memorandum obtained by Face The State (PDF), the Colorado Democracy Alliance outlines a roster of “operatives” who worked for Democratic victory in the 2006 general election. The document outlines specific tasks for various members of the state’s liberal infrastructure, including a campaign to “educate the idiots,” assigned to the state’s AFL-CIO union. Among the operation’s intended targets: “minorities, GED’s, drop-outs.”

Individuals named in the document, marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” “for internal use only,” and “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE,” are high-level elected Democrats including House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, former Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, as well as Gov. Bill Ritter‘s press aide and former campaign chief Evan Dreyer. All are specially marked as “off-the-record or covert.”

Mentioned as a “critical contact” was Dominic DelPapa, a partner at Ikon Public Affairs. DelPapa was at the center of recent controversy stemming from the February leak of a confidential memo he authored detailing a multi-million dollar “foot on throat” attack on Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer, among others.

CoDA is one of 18 state-based versions of the nationally focused Democracy Alliance, a self-described “investment partnership of business and philanthropic leaders” funding liberal infrastructure nationwide. For more information about the Democracy Alliance in Colorado, see day one and two of Face The State’s week-long series on the group.

In a podcast released by the DNC Host Committee Tuesday, national Democracy Alliance founder Rob Stein explains the need for large, secretive donor networks. “We do not have the infrastructure that the right has built, yet,” he said. “But there has never in the history of progressivedom (sic) been a clearer, more strategic, more focused, more disciplined, better financed group of institutions operating at the state and national level.”

In the same podcast, Laurie Hirschfeld Zeller, the newly installed executive director of CoDA, explains her organization’s mission. “Our job is to build a long-term progressive infrastructure in Colorado while we’re conceding nothing in the short term in terms of progressive goals at the ballot box.”

Zeller had high praise for the state’s liberal establishment, specifically naming America Votes, New Era Colorado, Progressive Majority, the Latina Initiative, and ProgressNow as partners in CoDA’s coalition building efforts. “CoDA works with all these organizations,” she said.

The Bell Policy Center, a liberal think tank that regularly plays host to CoDA board meetings, was praised for its work fighting to dismantle Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. She characterized Colorado’s constitutional requirement for voter approval of tax increases as “arcane.”

According to Zeller, CoDA operates “in a structure that provides privacy to members.” Under current law, this structure is as a taxable non-profit organization that allows individual donors to give anonymously to shared causes. She described the structure as a “fiscal irrigation system” designed to “provide a harvest later this fall.”

Stein, the DA founder, said state groups like CoDA have fired “a warning shot to conservatives in America.”

“Conservatives have nothing comparable to possibly compete with it, and they better watch out,” he said. Colorado was chosen as a test case for exporting DA’s national model, due in part to the “significant wealth” of liberal donors living here.

“It’s not just individual donors,” Zeller said of CoDA’s financial underwriting. “One of the things that has been crucial in making the work of the Colorado Democracy Alliance effective in Colorado has been our partnership with institutional donors and activist organizations in labor, particularly,” she said. “That’s been a major part of how we get our work done here.”

According to Zeller, CoDA’s giving is concentrated in five general funding categories: leadership development, communications, “research and ideas,” “civic engagement” and “constituency development.”

“We embrace the ‘progressive’ label in our giving and the strategic role we play in Colorado politics,” she said.

Despite sweeping gains for political liberals both in Colorado and nationally, Stein believes his coalition can do a better job of communicating with voters.

“It feels scary, because we don’t have the message down right,” he said. “[But] We’re being more businesslike – we’re being more professional.”

Can you believe these people?  IF the main-stream media would have some balls and report this – man, the shit would fly.

Media’s Palin Derangement Syndrome: Suddenly, Old Media Thinks They are DNA Technicians

(NB) – John McCain’s campaign spokesman is reporting that the media has deluged the campaign with demands that it provide DNA samples to “prove” that baby Trig is the true offspring of vice presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin. Imagine the effrontery of this demand? Imagine the ignorance and outrageousness of this attack that Governor Palin is receiving at the hands of the Old Media? Worse, realize that this storm has been raised by gutter websites like DailyKos and the DemocraticUnderground! The media is not only indulging in the lowest of attacks they are allowing the most extreme, unhinged of the far left to dictate the direction of their coverage. The Old Media are worse than dancing puppets for the hatemongers on the left.

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reported that McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt is being buried under an avalanche of these unseemly demands for Palin’s DNA by the media establishment.

In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels “under siege” by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child’s parentage.

Imagine the temerity of these media scavengers?

Even Kurtz admits that hate sites like DailyKos is leading the media around by the nose.

“The intensity of media inquiries hit a new level after an anonymous blogger on the liberal Web site Daily Kos last weekend charged that McCain’s running mate is actually the grandmother of Trig Palin, the 4-month-old baby born with Down syndrome, and that the real mother is her daughter, 17-year-old Bristol Palin. That led to mainstream media inquiries, which prompted the McCain camp to disclose in a statement Monday that Bristol is five months pregnant and plans to have the baby and marry the teenage father.”

These disgusting allegations were proven completely false on the same day that the ignorati at the DailyKos raised them. Dozens of photos were produced that proved that Palin was pregnant and eyewitness accounts were brought forward cooberating the photos. Yet the mean spiritedness of the press corps pressed onward anyway with these hateful attacks on a mother of a special needs child, a baby with Down Syndrome and a teenaged girl.

And now they have the gall to demand DNA?

It causes me, at least, to ask some salient questions. WHY didn’t the press ramp up their demands for DNA during those fateful days when the Blue Dress filled with Bill Clinton’s DNA was all the topic of the news? Why have they not been demanding DNA evidence to prove or disprove John Edward’s is or isn’t the father of the Rielle Hunter’s baby? They don’t seem all so interested in DNA in those cases, do they?

The Old Media double standard is in full effect here, folks. Any tiny line of smear can be used freely to destroy a Republican and their family members — including children. But when it comes to liberals… why, it’s hands off, it’s all about safeguarding a candidate’s privacy, sex isn’t a topic, and leave the candidate’s kids alone!

To be a journalist is the most shameful profession on earth at this point. And they just keep sinking lower and lower.

Can the media sink any lower?  Perhaps we should be vetting ‘reporters” .  What a bunch of asses.

Perfect Villains, Flawed Tribunal

Last week, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide and crimes against humanity committed in Sudan’s Darfur region. The move sparked criticism that the indictment will reduce chances for peace in Darfur. We have seen this all before: In 1993, at the apex of the Bosnian war, the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was established with roughly the same objective — to bring justice to the victims of a war that the great powers were unable or unwilling to stop.

Let’s check the results.

What ever happened to Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general who ordered the slaughter of about 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995? Or to his political master, Radovan Karadzic, who pounded Sarajevo for more than three years and drove hundreds of thousands of non-Serbs from their homes during the Bosnian war? Both men were indicted by the tribunal in 1995, and both are still at large 13 years later. What’s worse, their prospects of remaining free grow with each passing day, since the tribunal has to complete all its cases by the end of this year and review the appeals by 2010. The arrest warrants will remain in place, but as of next year, there will be no one to try either of those men.

The list of the tribunal’s underachievements doesn’t end there. In the midst of his long-running trial, Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian dictator widely regarded as the chief culprit in the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia, died of heart failure after taking medicine known to counteract other drugs he had been taking for coronary problems. Milosevic’s death deprived his surviving victims of closure and allowed his supporters to continue to claim that he was innocent.

The trial of Jovica Stanisic, the head of Milosevic’s notorious secret police, hasn’t even begun, even though Stanisic was apprehended five years ago and might be released because of health problems. Ramush Haradinaj, the Albanian militia leader in Kosovo indicted for the murders of at least 40 civilians, was acquitted in April due to lack of evidence after key prosecution witnesses were killed or refused to testify.

Meanwhile, Vojislav Seselj, Milosevic’s political ally and, along with Stanisic, the chief organizer of the paramilitary units that wreaked havoc in Croatia and Bosnia, is currently on trial but is likely to be released for lack of evidence. He almost became Serbia’s premier when his ultranationalist party came dangerously close to winning the Serbian parliamentary elections in May, garnering nearly 30 percent of the vote.

So was it all a huge mistake? Fifteen years ago, when the U.N. Security Council established the tribunal, it was met with great enthusiasm both by the war’s victims, who expected justice and closure, and by human rights activists, who saw it as a great leap forward for international law. Western political leaders, who lined up in support of the court, might have had a slightly different agenda: The war in Yugoslavia was still raging, and the public, horrified by footage of mass graves and suffering civilians, wanted something done. Setting up the tribunal seemed like a good way to deflect the pressure to intervene militarily. There were also hopes that the court’s very existence would deter future crimes and speed up reconciliation in the Balkans by individualizing the guilt for wartime atrocities.

In retrospect, these hopes were naive. Some of the worst crimes in the former Yugoslavia, such as the massacres at Srebrenica and the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, occurred well after the tribunal became fully operational — so much for deterrence. As for reconciliation, the tribunal has accomplished even less. In fact, it has done exactly the opposite, because all the nations of the former Yugoslavia see it as a political instrument aimed at demonizing their heroes and sanitizing their enemies’ records.

Resentment of the tribunal is strongest in Serbia, which had to deliver the bulk of the suspects, but other former Yugoslav republics have been far from enthusiastic. Even now, the Croatian coast is dotted with billboards glorifying former Croatian army lieutenant general Ante Gotovina, currently on trial for launching an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Serbs in 1995. As Croatian human rights activist Zarko Puhovski recently noted: “The truth doesn’t necessarily heal and calm — more often it causes hurt, anxiety and anger.”

As for the vaunted international community, the indictments were always the easy part. Actually bringing these thugs to justice would involve real, dangerous work. Mladic and Karadzic, for example, are still at large because no one has ever seriously gone after them. The tribunal doesn’t have its own intelligence and police officers to locate and apprehend the suspects; it has to ask individual countries to lend them these resources.

The tribunal itself is hardly blameless. From the beginning, it has been hampered by all the usual flaws that bedevil any U.N. body: too much red tape, inefficiency and split loyalties. But the real responsibility lies with the great powers — the United States, Britain and France. In her book, former prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann describes in detail how these three nations have blocked the tribunal’s investigations whenever its probes have collided with their perceived national interests, often to prevent certain unsavory liaisons with Balkan warlords from coming to light.

Most often, expediency has trumped justice — something nations trying to bring peace to Darfur will have to deal with now that Bashir has been indicted. In the former Yugoslavia, some of the worst war crimes suspects have retained high positions in the military, police or political structures long after the war. Karadzic and Mladic lived openly in Bosnia for several years after they were indicted in 1995, when Bosnia was essentially occupied by NATO forces. Mladic was even in charge of implementing the military part of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement, working closely with NATO officers. Milosevic, meanwhile, was indicted in 1999 but continued to serve as Serbian president until late 2000. Haradinaj was prime minister of Kosovo when he was indicted in 2005.

One of the biggest problems for the prosecution has been protecting witnesses. I have some first-hand experience in this matter. In 2002, I was the first Serbian journalist to testify against Milosevic. I received threats as a result, and nationalists at home launched a defamation campaign against me. A year ago, a hand grenade blew up outside my bedroom window. It turned out that the prosecutors had placed me on the witness list against former State Security chief Stanisic without telling me. “We forgot,” a member of the prosecutor’s team told me. I told her that they should forget about my appearing in court.

While many of the tribunal’s failures have stemmed from its own inadequacies, it was the 2005 Security Council decision to impose a “conclusion strategy” and severely limit the court’s shelf life that dealt the final blow. From that moment on, the best and the brightest among its staff started looking for new jobs, while those who replaced them have often been underqualified. Many of the judges in the ongoing trials have never spent a single day in a criminal court in their home countries — they come from universities and international law institutes.

Despite everything, the tribunal has done some good work. More than 700 bad guys have been put behind bars. Meanwhile, former Yugoslav countries have set up their own war crimes courts, although these are still too feeble and subject to political pressures to try big cases, such as those of Karadzic or Mladic.

There are two ways to proceed from here. One is to declare the tribunal a failure and refrain from setting up similar courts in the future. The other is to learn from past mistakes.

One key lesson: Countries emerging from conflict need swift justice, not decades of tedious trials aimed at establishing comprehensive historical truth. That task should be left to historians. Instead of casting a wide net and spending years examining every single fish, future tribunals should focus on the worst cases with the strongest evidence — and process them quickly, before politics steps in. And if this raises some eyebrows among legal experts, so be it. Human justice is imperfect, but no justice is much worse.

Google money engine for Democrats only

WASHINGTON — With the Internet’s No. 1 search engine under fire for playing political favorites with content, a search of Google’s political contributions as recorded by the Federal Elections Commission shows a staggering $463,500 went to Democrats in the last three election cycles with a paltry $5,000 going to Republicans.

Of approximately 200 individual Google employee political contributions to political candidates in 2004, 2002 and 2000, all but six went to Democrats, Democratic Party organizations and Democrat-supporting organizations such as MoveOn.org. One $250 contribution went to Ralph Nader, one went to President Bush’s campaign and three went to Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch’s campaigns.

Google Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt was by far the biggest benefactor, giving $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 2000, $25,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2004, as well as maximum $2,000 contributions to 2004 Democratic presidential candidates Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, Gov. Howard Dean and Rep. Richard Gephardt.

Schmidt also gave $11,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2000, according to records of the FEC, as well as tens of thousands more to a variety of other Democratic candidates including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Besides his cash contributions to Kerry in 2004, Schmidt formally endorsed the Democratic candidate for president after he got the party’s nomination.

Google Products Manager Laura A. Debonis was another big giver to the Democratic cause, offering up $25,000 to the DNC in 2004 and another $10,000 to the New Hampshire Democratic State Committee, though she lives in San Francisco.

David Drummond, a Google executive, also gave $23,000 to the DNC in 2004.

But the most striking thing about the list of Google political activists is the one-sided nature of the giving. From programmers to engineers to scientists to business development staff to general managers, there is near unanimity in support of Democrats and Democrat organizations.

Earlier this week, a conservative political action committee charged Google with bias in its advertising policies when an ad criticizing Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was rejected, though it included the same verbiage as an ad previously posted on Google attacking Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Later, Google explained neither ad should have run.

The group RightMarch.com said after placing the ad taking on Pelosi, the Democratic House minority leader, Google informed the group it “does not permit ad text that advocates against an individual, group or organization” and said the ad had been pulled.

“The internet public relies on Google’s objectivity to produce unbiased results from its search engine, including its AdWords,” claimed Larry Ward, CEO of Interactive Political Media, Inc., the top Internet political advertising agency in Washington. “As the leader and most recognized brand on the Internet, Google has an obligation to its users and investors to provide unbiased content, especially when that content is political in nature.”

Ward said, “It is a sad day for the Internet when we must label search engines like Google as a left wing or right wing.”

Mike Mayzel, a spokesman for Google, said both the anti-Pelosi ad and the anti-DeLay ad are gone.
“Both ads were taken down,” he told WND. “Any assertion to the contrary is false. As soon as an ad is reviewed and found to be in violation of our policies, we take it down as soon as possible. Any suggestion we would leave some ads up longer than others for reasons of political bias is false.”

In addition, earlier this week, WorldNetDaily reported Google has announced it is getting ready to begin ranking news searches by “quality rather than simply by their date and relevance to search times,” giving preference to big news agencies such as CNN and the Associated Press – both news organizations that have been criticized for pro-Democrat bias.

Google reported earnings of $1.256 billion for the first quarter of 2005 – up 93 per cent over the equivalent quarter for last year.

A survey of other high-tech companies’ political contributions shows Google is exceptional in its lop-sided contributions to Democrats. Microsoft was the biggest tech donor to political causes and campaigns in 2004 with some $3.1 million political action committee money disbursed – more than half going to Republicans.

Overall, 53 percent of high-tech industry contributions went to Democrats in 2004, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a liberal group that tracks campaign spending and contributions.
Google has in the past declined to discuss employee campaign contributions. Emails to several company executives went unanswered.

I know this is old – but it was news to me.