The one thing you could say about Newt Gingrich during the Clinton years is he exerted leadership.  When he tried to impeach Clinton, he didn't have the votes either, the same as the Dems don't have the votes to impeach Bush now.  But he hung Clinton around the opposition's neck and the next thing you know they had a majority.  The Lame Democrats saying "we don't have the votes" is like the Red Sox being down 4 points to the Yankees then saying, well, we don't have the points.  Give up.  But the game ain't over till it's over.

And Gingrich did it by putting out an agenda called the Contract for America, better known then as the Contract ON America.  The contract was a nightmare of out-of-control military spending (Gingrich's district in Georgia contains Lockheed-Martin, maker of the F-22 fighter.  Since no one can touch the F-16, this means we're in an arms race with ourselves.)  But the contract also meant the Republicans had their shit together.  They had the message discipline to not, in the middle of a national security debate, go off and start talking about flu shots, like John Kerry did toward the end of the last election in an excruciating display of political incompetence.  I'm still wondering if he really meant to throw the race.  Who wants to be president nowadays?  You'd have to be crazy.  

Here is my New Contract on, er, for America.  We can't keep saying, well, we care about everything, so we have to talk about everything.  This is what Bill Clinton told Kerry to do because he wanted him to lose, so he could get back into the White House under Hillary, all that likker and wimmin and Hillary too busy to care.  YEEHAW!  

I submit this to what I call the Pro-Constitution Party, which opposes the Bush Faction, which is only a small part of the Republican party, the hard-core base that is either stupid or making way too much money with Halliburton to give it up now.  We're talking new millionaires every week.  

And one more thing: Whoever thought of using "We Can Do Better" as the Democratic party slogan should be flogged with wet Rami noodles and trash-can-stuffed on the playground.  IT'S AWFUL!  Better than what?  Better than the lousy job the Bushies are doing?  That's not saying much.

The slogan should be, (and if I win the contest I want 2 free tickets to the inaugural ball)  RESTORING THE AMERICAN DREAM.  DREAM, goddammit!  THEY are AGAINST it! WE are FOR it!  Get a pulse!  Storm that bunker!

The Contract:

-Save American Retirement Security - Time magazine says more and more people who worked twenty or thirty years for the same company are losing their pensions. Recently-passed laws allow corporations to renege on their pension promises.  More than one little old lady in solid middle America is collecting cans to make ends meet.  We're not talking New York bag ladies; we're talking Main Street.  Did this trigger immediate and sustained calls for a congressional investigation from the Democrats?  No, the silence is deafening.  No wonder Democrats are seen as the party of pro-sodomy baby-killers who want to take your guns away.


-Restore college opportunity, by enabling students to go to any college they an get into on a need-blind basis.  Yes, I'll take credit for this idea, which I've been pushing since my first days as a candidate in the early 90s.  College "sticker shock" is a winning middle-class issue, because even parents making good money can't afford Junior's first-choice school.  This is a "bootstrap" program that only leverages hard work already done.  You have to get into the college first, then we help you go.  In other words, this is no welfare hand-out.  This is the first rung on the ladder of the American Dream.

The Clintonites recognized this and, what else, turned it into a press release program that tinkered at the margins but didn't really reverse the problem.  Democrats should think big: If you get into a college, you can go, without mortaging your parents house or starting out life $60,000 in the hole.  This is where all the BILLIONS going to Halliburton should be going instead.

-Distinguish Iraq from Real War on Terror - We are properly at war in Afghanistan and in the mountainous border regions of Pakistan, and Iraq is exactly the quagmire bin Laden wanted.  It draws resources away from the hunt for Al Qaeda and from the critical stablization of Afghanistan.  This is what former head of the CIA's Al Qaeda unit, Michael Scheuer, says.  He calls the invasion of Iraq "the never-to-be-hoped-for gift" bin Laden wanted for Christmas.  Scheuer says al-Zawahari cheered when we invaded Iraq, and gave thanks to God for "appeasing" Al Qaeda with the American invasion (see his book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror.")  Now one foreign policy heavyweight after another is calling for an exit from Iraq.  

The most recent is former Nixon Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, who says ""Our presence is what feeds the insurgency (in Iraq), and our gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency."  Joining him is former National Security Advisor for Bush Senior, Brent Scowcroft, who says "This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism."

George Bush takes extreme pains to conflate the Iraq War with the war on terror.  "Conflate," I looked it up, means mixing up 2 things and talking like they are the same.  But Bush did a "Cheney" on Iraq: he aimed wild and instead of blasting the duck, blasted some poor guy who got in the way.  Iraq.  We must attack Bush on national security and for creating more terrorists while letting the real ones go.The Paki government has been bullshitting us long enough.  We're going in with our own guys and turning shit upside down to find bin Laden.  Redeploy to Afghanistan and the Paki border.  Then we mop up, make peace with the Muslim world (an apology for the Shah of Iran might go over well,) and put the genie back in the bottle.  Get back to the good old days when soldiers fought each other and left civilians mostly out of it.  Hell, some guys just LIKE to fight.  

And when the right-wing attack machine can't argue with facts, which is never, they accuse "traitors" of "undermining our troops."  This time they get an answer, because they are the ones led by 5-time draft-dodgers and chickenshits.  It was George Bush who "appeased" bin Laden with the war in Iraq.  It was the Bush administration which committed treason by betraying Valerie Plame.  Forget this "outting" talk, this is not about Plame's sexual preference.  This is a national security betrayal, pure and simple.  She was a weapons of mass destruction specialist and now if we get hit, it could be thanks to Bush and Karl Rover.

Anytime the Righties can't answer an argument, they hide behind the troops, like sissies.  Another idea: if Sean Hannity is so patriotic, why don't we start a public challenge to him, to enlist and go fight?  We could whip his lard ass into shape and larn him how to heft a rifle.

Bush's grand plan of bombing the Middle East into democracy is shot through with hypocrisy that makes Middle Easterners hate us.  They have been trying to win their freedom from corrupt and dictatorial regimes for years, in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and the Gulf states, only to face armies and police equipped with American weapons.  Our addiction to oil is the cause of our unholy alliances with these governments, says Michael Scheuer.  Sheuer contradicts Bush's assertion that there is an Islamo-fascist ideology bent on taking over the world.   Sheuer says they hate us for "what we do, not who we are."


9/11 should have been no surprise.  It was the culmination of a steady stream of Al Qaeda attacks which included the Khobar Towers, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole.  Each attack was preceeded by demands by Al Qaeda that the US change its policies of permanently stationing troops in the Arabian peninsula, of sending money and arms to Arab dictators, and lopsided support for Israel.  The CIA's Scheuer predicts that without changes in US policy to accompany the military campaign, we are in for "hundred years war drenched with blood on our own soil" and a shredded Constitution.  General Tommy Franks, whose endorsement George Bush accepted in 2004, has already said that the Constitution might not survive another terror attack.  That kind of talk from an officer sworn to defend the Constitution is treason, and senators should be asking Franks, Tommy, just what did you mean by that?  Democrats should be the party which pledges to uphold the Constitution no matter what happens, and not let bin Laden win.

-Environment - A "Marshall Plan" within the first hundred days of a non-Republican majority to start down the path of clean, sustainable energy independence.  This could make a lot of work for a lot of people.  The wind, solar, geothermal, biomass,and conservation technologies necessary to set us free from Middle East oil have existed for years.  All that remains is the political will to fight the corporations which want to cork it.  I believe there should be an on-the-barrel-head tax on oil before it enters the country, to go directly to making us not need oil at all in 10 years.  This would also raise the price on hideous amounts of trash in the form of plastic.  There is no place left to put it, and the earth is literally spitting it back up on the beaches.  

It doesn't matter how much you goo-goo and say you love your grandchildren.  If you are against these kinds of taxes, you don't love them, because you are shoving them into a world you wouldn't want to live in, of global warming, melting glaciers, and pollution.  We ate the steak dinner and stuck our grandchildren with the tab.   Now that's love.

-Be the Pro-Constitution Party.  Again, if Bush can't give us safety without shredding the Constitution, we'll find someone who can.

Back progressive candidates who are pro-gun-rights in red states.  What's right on guns in Manhattan isn't necessarily right for Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Our buddy Paul Hackett (until recently running for Congress) says for a long time he thought "gun control meant being able to hit your target."  

Speak out against fascist impulses.  Bush HATES free speech!  No one ever got kicked out of a Kerry rally last year for wearing a pro-Bush T-shirt, the way Bush's thugs threw people out of Bush rallies for having the wrong bumper sticker on their cars. See "Life in Bush's America: Wear an anti-Bush T-shirt, get arrested, lose your job" by Tara Tuckwiller.

- Speak the language of the fair playing field in a free market, not the language of big government.  Government is a necessary evil, no more.  I've always said if we had a fair economic playing field, we wouldn't need much in the way of social programs.  You could afford the rent, you could afford food, a house, health insurance.  Instead of a fair playing field we have the biggest welfare bums of all, corporate welfare bums, sucking wealth from the middle to the top one percent, who are majority shareholders.  Halliburton, tax-breaks for the rich in time of war, no-bid contracts to Bush cronies after Hurricane Katrina.  

Ralph Nader is the only public figure talking about this.  Cut-off the Fat Cats.  Am I talking class warfare?  IT'S BEEN THAT SINCE RONALD REAGAN, WAR ON THE POOR CONDUCTED BY THE RICH.  We should welcome the "they're waging class warfare" attack.  Let's see who's REALLY getting rich on welfare here.

-Worker training and re-training to smooth job transitions after lay-offs.  We are the only Western industrialized nation without it.  Why?

-Don't Get Bogged Down on Health Insurance.  Sure, progressives are for it, and the Bush Faction is against it, but the details should be kept to, if you are working full-time, you get health insurance, and you start paying for it by recovering the $10-$20 billion wasted on Medicare and Medicaid by over-billing.  Then you start rewarding doctors for preventing as well as curing. You'll see a lot of docs getting their patients into olive oil and alfalfa sprouts.

-Be tough on crime, by locking up the most violent and restoring sanity to the criminal justice system which now locks up little old ladies whose rotten grandsons hid a little pot in the house.  This actually happens.  Politicians make a lot of hay acting "tough on crime", but mostly they are locking up the wrong people.  A nation-wide commission to find out who's rotting in jail innocent, and why, would go a long way toward race justice.  Forget registries for child molesters, they shouldn't even be on the street.  One strike and you're out if you harm a child.  We should also strike down federal laws prohibiting ex-felons from voting.  Once you've done your time, that should be it.  The Florida laws are nothing but a way to keep a lot of black people off the voter rolls.

-IMPORTANT: All of the Above Means NOTHING without a paper voting trail in every American precinct. - a no brainer. Kerry said after the 2004 Ohio vote debacle that the "math wasn't there," but it turns out it WAS there.  We might have been on our way out of Iraq by now.  And safer.  We can just stop talking about any of this other stuff unless the top item on the agenda, RIGHT NOW, is making sure they can't steal the elections in 2006.  Forget the rest, it doesn't matter what we do if for every vote we get, they just tweak the DIEBOLD software to offset it.