There most definitely is a diplomatic solution to the crisis being manufactured over Iran’s nuclear ambitions--but it goes much further than the current impotent suggestions being offered for jaw-jaw rather than war-war with Iran. The US must honor its own disarmament agreement under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, put a halt to the development of new nuclear weapons, and take up Putin's offer of several years ago to cut our mutual nuclear arsenals of about 10,000 weapons to 1,000. Once the US and Russia get down to reasonable numbers approaching the arsenals of the other nuclear weapons states--China, UK, France and Israel, who have stockpiles in the hundreds, and India, Pakistan, and North Korea who have less than one hundred bombs in their arsenals-- then we can take up China's offer to negotiate a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons and call all the nuclear weapons states to the table. Civil society has already produced a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention drafted by scientists, lawyers, and policy makers in the international Abolition 2000 Network, which was introduced into the UN General Assembly by Costa Rica as a discussion document. It lays out all the steps for dismantlement, verification, guarding, and monitoring the disassembled arsenals to insure that we will all be secure from nuclear break-out.

I know that district 3 should be very flippable. Peter King sticks his foot in it with startling regularity. Yet there seems to be no interest among the "regular" democrats in this district. There are a lot of "habit" Republicans in his district and he IS the ultimate clubhouse kind of guy.

Are there any other people in this district online? Is this a shout into the wilderness?

Hey folks! I'm the new 15th Congressional District point person. For anyone 'just looking' you should know that PDA needs you to help organize progressives to get Clinton and Schumer turned around on Iraq. Mass demonstrations are good - but we also need those primary votes....

Let's be in touch. The first city wide meeting will be Jan. 24th, and the first upper Manhattan meeting will be Sunday, Feb. 5th. Be in touch for more details.

Charles

This is a quote from Howard Dean speaking to Wolf Blitzer about the Abramoff scandal (a.k.a. Casinogate)

“There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff,” Dean answered. “Not one, not one single Democrat. Every person named in this scandal is a Republican. Every person under investigation is a Republican. Every person indicted is a Republican. This is a Republican finance scandal. There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any money.... I know the Republican National Committee would like to get the Democrats involved in this. They’re scared. They should be scared. They haven’t told the truth.”

This is an experimental blog to see how it works. I want to see if it is ever seen or responded to. Thanks, ralph

The Left seems confused as to what we stand for. We need a statement of fundamental beliefs. Something that is dynamic, hopeful and which will grab attention.

At the minimum we have to state general principles

We have to state we support the underdog and oppose the top dogs. We oppose the interests of the rich and powerful and support the interests of the weak and deserving. That is fair because the well off have all of the say now. We support fair play!

We oppose Nationalism and all blind flag waving. We support a world government that represents the people not nation states.