Chaim's blog

As you all know, the closing of the GE side-by-side refirgerator plant here in Bloomington was the topic of a fantastic discussion led by Greg Travis. Greg had published a column in the Bloomington Alternative about a very creative response to this issue.

What you may not know is that this issue is hardly a new one, and that it has actually received national attention. Back in January of 2001 The Nation published an article to which I'm providing a link.

"GE Brings Bad Things to Life"

OH MY! The good folks over at Brave New Films are merciless! :-)

Check out this video.

Just a few days ago a friend passed along to me the plans for the George W. Bush Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. They look really interesting!

• The Alberto Gonzales Room - You won't be able to remember any of its exhibits.
• The Hurricane Katrina Room - It will still be under construction
• The Texas Air National Guard Room - You won't have to show up at this room.
• The Walter Reed Hospital Room - They won't let you in this room.
• The Guantanamo Bay Room - CAUTION! They won't let out out of this one.
  

I'm sure you've all seen the article in today's Herald Times about a group called Democrats for Sabbagh. As I read it, I noted that, except for a complaint about the slow pace with which the B-Line is being developed (more on that below), there is a conspicuous absence of policy differences with Mayor Kruzan. The problems they had with him were all personality-based, and some were downright silly.

The following is an excerpt from an excellent editorial in The New York Times written by seven soldiers at the end of their fifteen-month deployment.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict

This is a fantastic blog post by Garret Graff on the Personal Democracy Forum. Graff was deputy national press secretary for Howard Dean's presidential campaign.

I’m in Chicago for the second annual YearlyKos convention and since yesterday afternoon I’ve keep coming back to the same conclusion: I think, nearly three-and-a-half years after Dean for America collapsed in the wake of the Iowa caucus loss, that Howard Dean might have won the campaign.

Click here to read the rest.

In a unanimous decision on Tuesday, the Monroe County Board of Elections restored paper ballots (officially called ballot cards that are used in optical scanners) to early voting in Monroe County. I would like to think that the hundreds of signatures that we gathered in favor of a paper trail were the deciding factors, but I think it was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps they realized that the decision to use the Microvote Infinity Machines exclusively in last May's Primary Election was an unpopular decision. It doesn't matter.

Our "illustrious" corporate newspaper, The Herald Times, has been giving Mayor Mark Kruzan some grief about Finelight's departure from downtown Bloomington for the Westside. They say that the mayor displayed a woeful lack of leadership because he wouldn't commit to building the parking structure that the medical marketing firm wanted for its employees.

HOGWASH!!

WHAT AN INCREDIBLE WEEKEND!! All the time. All the stress. All the sweat. All of it culminated in a fantastic learning experience for about 60 progressive Democrats from Indiana and beyond at the Indiana Memorial Union. I'm full of so many new ideas and information I can't wait to put them all to use in my efforts to help Democrats win our municipal election and beyond.

I am very sad to report that Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam was killed in a car crash in Menlo Park, CA (just south of San Francisco). Mr. Halberstam visited Bloomington only last month to give a very moving lecture at the Buskirk/Chumley Theater about the tragedy of the war in Iraq.

A full story about Halberstam can go read in an article in the Los Angeles Times (free subscription required).