Jesse Taylor Back At Pandagon

And boy is he laying the smacketh down:

All I want is a nominee who’ll pick smart fights. Clinton hasn’t shown herself to be that candidate...

Experience is only worth something if you learn from it. From what I’ve been able to tell, the main lesson Clinton’s learned thus far is that you always hold the line, no matter how ridiculously out of touch with reality it may be...

Of all the bad decisions the Clinton campaign made, deciding that Obama was more The Enemy than John McCain was likely the worst...

For all the snide talk of “Obamabots” and the alleged cult-like behavior of Obama supporters (which was almost entirely overplayed), the increasing legitimacy of the Bible of Clinton (with the Gospels of Michigan and Florida and the Acts of the Superdelegates I and II) is far more disturbing than any reports of fainting at rallies or the overexuberance of young supporters...

Hillary Clinton is going to lose. She will likely lose Wednesday. Everything that I’ve talked about, everything that has happened during this race, makes me very wary about her ability to bring her supporters back into the fold - a responsibility, incidentally, that does fall largely on her. And if they do wander away, if they do vote for John McCain over Barack Obama, it will be her greatest failure as a candidate and as a leader...

Damn, that's some good shit.

Fair and Balanced

While I won't do the dis-service of linking to them, I will point out that the Washington Post graced us with TWO snarling, anti-Scott McClellan op-eds this morning, plus a Howie Kurtz column in Style that basically adopts Karl Rove's talking points on McClellan's book.

Your liberal media at work.

What Will Krugman Say?

I wonder what Paul Krugman, who's been dishing it out to Obama supporters this primary season, will say about this? And this? And this? And this?

More on Kornblut

Returning to a previous subject, this exchange between a Wash Post reporter and the public deserves further attention:

------

Potomac, MD: McClellan needs to get over himself. The nerve of blaming the media for their failures in the run-up to the War. Elisabeth Bumiller so eloquently explained how things work the night before the Iraq War started, 4,000 dead American soldiers ago: "it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.".

Anne E. Kornblut: That's a good point. (I'm a huge Bumiller fan). To that I would add that most reporters, or at least this reporter, looked continuously for cracks in the facade internally, and the assistance of an aide such as McClellan in helping us understand the flaws is essential. I would urge all future White House aides to remember that sometimes the press can be a friend when things inside start going wrong.

(snip)

Re. Potomac, MD: Wait a minute, Bumiller was advocating stenography. Methinks if her relative (or yours) was about to head over to Iraq, she might have done more than wait for "cracks in the facade". That's just whistling by the graveyard. Obviously, none of YOUR children, nephews or nieces will ever enlist in our Armed Forces, but you might want to develop some empathy for the countless people in flyover country who actually lose loved ones when we go to war. Not because you're a journalist, but because you're a, you know, human being.

Anne E. Kornblut: As one with a parent and two grandparents buried at Arlington Cemetery, I can tell you that this has nothing to do with taking war lightly. If anything, I think we all felt a great sense of deference toward the presidency, as an institution, and wanted to be respectful on the eve of war, trusting that any president would only take such an important step in good faith. That isn't to say we shouldn't have been more skeptical and pressed harder in print -- and I have no doubt we all will next time, if there is a next time -- but it wasn't out of cluelessness that we did not do more.
_______________________

Vienna, Va.: I don't understand this comment: "The assistance of an aide such as McClellan in helping us understand the flaws is essential." Did you expect him to publicly say "I don't agree with this but here's our rationale for the invasion?" Do you even expect him to say that off-the-record? Why would he openly share disapproval or disagreement with policy decisions with you?

Anne E. Kornblut: Some of the greatest scandals of all time (Watergate?) have been exposed by administration insiders who felt a patriotic duty to get the real story out. We as reporters use them all the time to help get to the bottom of things. Almost always in private. And in my experience (in my smaller incidents than Watergate) aides do so because they want the public to know what is going on, and they can be an essential part of making that happen. As reporters, we can only deal in information that we are given -- and we can't actually force a White House to give us information if it doesn't want to.
_______________________

You must be kidding!: Just a comment: You think it's the job of people employed by the White House to be straightforward? Uh, no--it's the job of the media to hold the government responsible. If the people in the White House were straightforward, Americans would not need the media to intercede as our surrogates in ensuring that truth is separated from B.S.

Anne E. Kornblut: I know, I know, a dream land -- but I do actually know some rare public officials who are straightforward, and I would happily pursue another line of work if everyone else followed their examples. But I'm not really worried about unemployment (not for that reason, anyway).

-------

There you have it. Unless the administration spills the beans on itself, unless every public issue has its own private Deep Throat, unless it reveals the "cracks" in its "facade", to properly "respectful" stenographers, the public are destined to be flim-flammed because our "liberal" media will be without any means at all to seek out and assess what the hell is really going on.

Nomination Process Broken?

This brief post by David Kurtz at TPM, which links to a larger post by Greg Sargent, which in turn links to an article in the New Yorker by Hendrik Hertzberg, is a disappointment.

If the system is malfunctioning or broken, why?

Until this year, I'd always been disappointed at how short the nomination processes of the two parties were. To this disappointment was added an academic as well as political junky-ish perplexity stemming from a recognition that nothing in the nomination process required that it be over after Iowa.

In the past, money, the front-loading of the primary/caucus calendar, as well as the media's intent on assigning the all important "momentum", or Big Mo, to one of the party's leading candidates, served to quickly winnow the fields.

In particular, the front-loading of the calendar, although driven partly by the initiatives of individual states, helped serve the national party's seeming desire to produce unamity and harmony as early and as painlessly as possible.

Obviously, to the extent quickness and unity are important goals, the process has failed terribly this year.

But competitive, elongated campaigns that increase political participation, by voting, contributing money, or other activities, particularly in states that aren't normally a focus of either party, and that ensure substantial vetting of the candidates aren't necessarily bad.

So what would you do? What changes do you think should be made, if any, for the next election cycle?

Over Her Head

I'm guessing Anne Kornblutt missed the sarcasm here: (h/t Atrios)

Potomac, MD: McClellan needs to get over himself. The nerve of blaming the media for their failures in the run-up to the War. Elisabeth Bumiller so eloquently explained how things work the night before the Iraq War started, 4,000 dead American soldiers ago: "it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.".

Anne E. Kornblut: That's a good point. (I'm a huge Bumiller fan).....

----

While McClellan's book and revelations are sure to come in for their share of "Now he tells us", along with a share of "disgruntled staffer" taunts from the dead-enders, I actually find it rather surprising that McClellan would be this upfront about what he and the administration engaged in. And it's pretty hard to be surprised by anything at this point.

A Ludicrous Failure, Part XXVII

From Robert Borosage at the Huff Post:

The embargo has helped, no doubt, to impoverish the Cuban people. It has also helped to make Castro a nationalist hero throughout Latin America and much of the world. It has done nothing for nearly five decades to advance democracy, civil liberties or capitalism in Cuba. Even its economic effects have diminished over time. It once cribbed tourism, and, once the Soviet Union went belly up, put a squeeze on oil. Now the Europeans and Canadians populate the Cuban beaches. And Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is happy to provide Cuba with the oil it needs.

Cuba is a small island, 90 miles off our shores. Its people are proud and nationalistic. They also get island fever. Their relatives across the straits let them know what they've been missing economically. There is little doubt that had the US normalized relations with Cuba, opened up trade, encouraged travel and exchanges, Cuba would have been transformed long ago. The détente that worked its magic on the Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe would have been much more powerful in Cuba.

So why does McCain extol this tribute to folly? It's a good pander to the older generation of Cubans, still pining to see Castro's overthrow and to have a shot at taking back their old properties. But straight talking John McCain wouldn't adopt a goofy failed foreign policy just for political purposes, would he?

McCain's spokesperson, Nancy Pfotenhauer, tried to explain on Fox News:We can't talk with Castro or lift the embargo until democracy descends on the island, she stated, because "the worst thing we can do is prematurely capitulate (emphasis added) and give them what they want the most without anything in return, and what they want the most is legitimacy, which, by the way, all that does is completely erode the confidence and the hopes of the people in Cuba who want freedom."

Can't "prematurely capitulate" after nearly five decades of a failed policy. We can't dash the "confidence and hopes" of the "people in Cuba who want freedom" who, no doubt, are biting their finger nails, hoping against hope that, after five decades, more of the same will somehow convince Castro to install a democracy.

The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

I know this has been distilled and rehashed in other places, but I thought Harold Meyerson's summation in this morning's Post was particularly on target:

On Saturday, when the Rules Committee of the Democratic National Committee meets to determine the fate of Florida and Michigan's delegations to this summer's convention, it will have some company. A group of Hillary Clinton supporters has announced it will demonstrate outside.

That Clinton has impassioned supporters, many of whom link her candidacy to the feminist cause, hardly qualifies as news. And it's certainly true that along the campaign trail Clinton has encountered some outrageously sexist treatment, just as Barack Obama has been on the receiving end of bigoted treatment. (Obama has even been subjected to anti-Muslim bigotry despite the fact that he's not Muslim.) But somehow, a number of Clinton supporters have come to identify the seating of Michigan and Florida not merely with Clinton's prospects but with the causes of democracy and feminism -- an equation that makes a mockery of democracy and feminism.

Clinton herself is largely responsible for this absurdity. Over the past couple of weeks, she has equated the seating of the two delegations with African Americans' struggle for suffrage in the Jim Crow South, and with the efforts of the democratic forces in Zimbabwe to get a fair count of the votes in their presidential election.

(snip)

Not a single Clinton campaign official or DNC Rules Committee member, much less the candidate herself, said at the time that the sanctions imposed on Florida or Michigan were in any way a patriarchal plot or an affront to democratic values. The threat that these rules posed to our fundamental beliefs was discovered only ex post facto -- the facto in question being Clinton's current need to seat the delegations whose seatings she had opposed when she thought she'd cruise to the nomination.

Clinton's supporters have every right to demonstrate on Saturday, of course. But their larger cause is neither democracy nor feminism; it's situational ethics. To insist otherwise is to degrade democracy and turn feminism into the last refuge of scoundrels.

"A Ludicrous Failure"

Yglesias gets shrill:

Washington Post correctly says that John McCain is "distorting history" as he criticized Barack Obama's pro-negotiations position. The United States really only has two experiences with a sustained effort at the Bush/McCain approach to diplomacy. One would be our effort to deny recognition to Communist China during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. This, it's generally acknowledged, was a strategic fiasco that denied us the opportunity to gain leverage vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Indeed, it was a fiasco of such enormous proportions that Richard Nixon's role in undoing it actually manages to stack up in a non-trivial way against his otherwise terrible record in office.

The other is our fifty year effort to starve the people of Cuba into rebelling against Fidel Castro. McCain actually defends continuing this policy, but everyone with a functioning brain understands that it's been a ludicrous failure.

Indeed. It's baffling how head-in-the-sand American establishment thinking has been on this subject.

It ought to be enough to point out, as Yglesias does, that American policy towards Cuba has been a study in ludicrous failure. But that probably won't be enough to generate rationale debate on the subject.

Instead, I'd like to see Obama frame the debate in terms of how it has restricted the freedom of regular old Americans. For example, most Americans, if not all, cannot travel directly to Cuba. And that's our policy, not Havana's. And it's obviously ridiculous and an affront to Liberty. Why should the American government limit where Americans can travel?

Fresh thinking is desperately needed in the area of foreign policy generally, and in our Cuba policy particularly. If Obama can help provide that, he will have accomplished much.

$31.9 Mill

Obama raised $31.9 million in April. Good news, right? Yeah, but here's the thing: $31.3 mill was for the primaries, $600k for the general. Meanwhile, the primaries are about over, and Obama essentially passed on two of the May primaries--WV and Kentucky--that the $31.3 mill would presumably have been spent on. So, the $31.3 mill is virtually useless.

Am I reading this right?

Update: After musing over this a while, I suspect it's actually the case that funds raised during the primaries are available for the general election. I'm not sure how that squares with the intent of the campaign finance law. But in this case, money Obama has collected from individuals who have not yet reached their $2,300 contribution maximum is assumed to be primary funds. Donations from those who have reached the $2,300 maximum are kept aside for the general. By law, individuals can donate $2,300 per election cycle; $2,300 for the primary election and $2,300 for the general. So individuals can give $4,600 in all.

Nixonland

One of the advantageous of working among the elite in Wash DC is getting the opportunity to participate in the very elite culture the area has to offer, including being able to attend very elitist type book-readings where very elite authors, most of them liberal elitists, hold forth on their latest publications and afterward, agree to affix their elitist signature to the books.

Last night was such an occasion, as I went to hear the great Rick Perlstein read and discuss his latest, Nixonland. Seven years in the making, the book is a follow up to the much acclaimed Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus.

I imagine I'll have more to say on the book as I get through it, although I confess to being in the middle of reading a lot of other material as well, so my remarks on Nixonland will probably come along later.

But I enjoyed Perstein's reading of a passage taken from 1967 and the discussion afterwards. And yes, I got him to sign a copy I had just purchased.

I was a little worried that Nixonland might be a type of "stream of consciousness" book, full of rambling anecdotes and loosely drawn inferences, but the book appears to be well organized, by election cycle. As Perlstein took great pains to point out, Nixon himself was a rather complex character. One questioner in the audience asked Perlstein if he thought Nixon was a demagogue. "No", the author responded. While conceding Nixon's brutal style of politics (not particular to Nixon), Perlstein said Nixon was more subtle than that. George Wallace was a demagogue, but not Nixon. I considered asking Perlstein what he thought of Nixon's campaign charges of Helen Douglass being pink down to her..., but I thought better of it.

For anyone interested in reading historic epics and fascinated by the changes wrought by and during the 1960's will I'm sure greatly appreciate Rick Perlstein's Nixonland.

One point that occurs to me of the period that came to be associated with what is sometimes thought of as the Conservative Ascendacy is that, while the conservative movement that rose from the ashes of the 1964 Goldwater landslide loss was effective in mobilizing a broad coalition of disaffected reactionaries and high-brow financiers in the decades beginning with and after Nixon, the conservative movement's actual achievements seem rather meager to me. That is to say, while the country's political rhetoric, campaign styles and partisan balances have gotten more conservative, the underlying structure of government and the wider culture remain to a large degree, liberal, and increasingly so.

Nevertheless, we appear to be entering upon another period of partisan and cultural upheaval, and Perlstein's Nixonland should remind us that things may not necessarily be what they seem. That is, if we think we are witnessing a conservative meltdown over Iraq and other calamities and changes, we could be in for a comeuppance. On the other hand, one of the points Perlstein stresses is that, the establishment media, Johnson administration, and Democratic Congress failed to perceive the resentments, changes and dynamics forming in response to the war, racial upheaval and other developments, and found themselves disgraced or swept away by the changing tide. The Establishment didn't get it, in other words. A similar thing could be said today of the Bush II administration, the war in Iraq and the seemingly dramatic changes taking place in the economy, high gas prices, mortgage problems, household debt, etc, which the government and media seem only partially responsive to. Whether liberals or conservatives end up addressing or successfully responding to these changes and upheavals may prove to be the subject of a future book and a much debated historical epic when America as we knew it dramatically changed forever.

Fly-Paper Theory on Steroids

Many, many years ago, among the many, many alternative and conflicting rationales offered for why America must-had to absolutely bomb, invade and occupy Iraq NOW, right this very minute yesterday, was so that America and Americans could fight the terrorists on their own soil over there, rather than having to face them on our soil over here.

Well. If you listen very carefully, now, to the "debate" as to why the mullahs in that other Islamic country Iran--who we were so sure would be suitably intimidated by our shock and awe and democracy and love for the world over Iraq that they would faint in fear before our might weapons and goodness and rightness--have reached the lofty status our former Iraqi enemies once occupied in posing the most absolutely deadliest threat ever to the United States, is that, having now invaded and occupied Iraq, a country that hadn't attacked us and didn't pose a threat to us, are attacking us in Iraq. Consequently, it is common conservative nonsense that we must therefore bomb, invade and occupy Iran NOW yesterday.

Following this logic, one can imagine it will be advisable to some day bomb, invade and occupy the old Soviet Union because Russian separatists, Islamic minorities in the break-a-way countries, and other sponsors of "terrorism" in the region are sending "terrorists" and bomb materials into Iran, killing our soldiers and military contractors, and otherwise aiding and abetting our enemies among the mullahs who we're endeavoring to liberate.

Make sense?

No Military Industrial Complex in Oregon

I hadn't realized this:

Oregon, with no major defense industries or a major military facility, has expressed strong opposition to the war in Iraq. Multnomah County, which includes Portland, is particularly antiwar.

Return to the Freak Show

The announcement late yesterday afternoon of the Edwards endorsement inspired me to flick on the cable teevee "news" stations when I got home last night for coverage.

Well. The first question I have is for the suits at CNN. How much longer can the Lou Dobbs hate-on-Hispanic-and-Mexican-immigrants continue in prime time or any time? I realize his rantings were useful for driving up ratings at some point, but, have you no shame? Whatever genuine economic or other views this man has or had, it has been obvious for some time now that he eats, breathes and sleeps a fear and hatred of brown people. CNN, the once proud network of Bernard Shaw, at last, Have You No Shame?

As for MSNBC, I'd complain about the equally insane and offensive rantings of Pat Buchanan if I could actually make sense of all the competing voices shouting over one-another.

As bad as Crossfire came to be, it was hardly any worse than what's been showing regularly the past decade or so on the major cable stations. I know Fox is hopeless, but here's hoping that saner minds will someday prevail at CNN or MSNBC. They're hurting America. Seriously.

What Else Hurt Clinton

While this Karen Tumulty column about Hillary's 5 mistakes has made the rounds, there are a couple additional factors, largely beyond the former First Lady's control, that ended up being highly significant as well.

1. John Edwards -- Many, many years ago, when Edwards was still a 2008 candidate, I recall the puzzlement expressed by those political pundits who noted the seeming contrast between Edwards' rather liberal populist campaign and the largely white, more conservative slice of the demographic pie he was pulling in the early contests. Edwards' vote base didn't really seem connected to the candidate's message. Demographics seemed more important than policy.

And while Edwards didn't stay in the race long, he placed a narrow second place in Iowa, ahead of Clinton. The story of the night ended up being Obama's rather comfortably sized--but still only a plurality--margin of victory. Had Edwards not opted for the race--and from the night of the 2004 election it was obvious he would run again--it is fairly easy to see Hillary winning a large portion of Edwards' vote, given how the last several contests have turned out. The presence of another, viable White candidate in the race hurt Hillary at this early stage, possibly dividing the White demographic and giving another strong candidate, Obama, an opening he desperately needed.

2. Michigan/Florida -- While the focus on these states has tended to be that of how to seat their delegates given the fact that they broke the national Democratic party rules and held their contests too early, and the fact that as a result Obama was not even on the Michigan ballot, it is still and ironically the case that had these states stuck to the regular schedule they would have ended up playing a much more significant role while giving Clinton two large and relatively early, momentum-generating victories. Had this occured, Obama's victories on Super Tuesday would have no doubt been viewed differently, and the nature of the contest reshaped.

But Having George W. Bush as President Changed Everything

This Glenn Greenwald column posted at antiwar.com is a gem.

Throughout the 1990s, conservatism was defined by its fear of expansive powers seized by the federal government – particularly domestic law-enforcement and surveillance powers. Conservatives vigorously opposed every proposal to expand the government’s investigative and surveillance authority on the grounds that such powers posed intolerable threats to our liberties. More than specific policies, the right-wing ideology was grounded in warnings against the dangers of unchecked government power.

Illustrating this ideology was the speech delivered by Ronald Reagan in accepting his party’s nomination at the 1980 GOP Convention:

"Trust me" government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs – in the people.

Following this path, conservatives have endlessly claimed that they stand for limitations on government intrusion into the lives of Americans. One article in 2000 on the right-wing web-site Free Republic actually decried the dangerous loss of liberty and privacy as a result of what it alarmingly described as the Clinton administration’s use of a "secret court" (something called the "FISA court") that actually enables the federal government to eavesdrop on American citizens! Worse, warned the article, the judicial approval that the government obtains for this eavesdropping is in secret, so we don’t even know who is being eavesdropped on!

The conservative commenters at Free Republic – having been fed a steady diet of anti-government rhetoric for decades – predictably reacted to news of expanded eavesdropping powers under FISA with such liberty-minded sentiments as "This is beyond frightening"; "This does not bode well for continued freedom"; "Franz Kafka would have judged this too wild to fictionalize. But for us – it’s real." One worried right-wing commentator wondered: "Any chance of Bush rolling some of this back? It sounds amazing on its face." Another pointed out – quite rationally – the severe dangers of allowing the government to exercise power in secret and with little oversight:

This is one of those ideas that has a valid purpose behind it, but is wide open to terrible abuse. And there’s no way to check to see if it is abused.

Like all things that don’t have the light of day shining on them, you can be sure that it is being twisted to suit the purposes of those who hold the power.

Just makes you feel on warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

Read it all.

Maybe If She Asks Really, Really Nicely

"Will Obama Supporters Help Pay Down Clinton's $20 Billion Debt?"

Or, maybe, these White, Regular, Really Hard Working People will pony up?

In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.

(snip)

Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"

In Our Country

The Post has a rather disturbing--if not entirely surprising--story today about how Obama volunteers and the Obama campaign at the grassroots have had to endure the violence of racial animosity.

Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.

The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."

Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.

On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.

I can kind of understand why the Obama campaign is choosing to downplay these episodes. But these stories nevertheless reveal the darkness and ugliness that continue to bloom in certain corners of American life among Regular, Hard Working, White Americans.

They also suggest that many White Americans haven't bothered to become acquainted with much of their country's history. And while these stories are certainly disturbing and discouraging, there's another trend, albeit in the Elitist Literary World Where People Read Books, in which the country's terrible racial past is being unearthed and revealed in the light. Specifically, at least four books just in the past several months have come out documenting the domestic White terrorism spawned after the Civil War in the South. One of these episodes, the Colfax Massacre, is the main subject of two new books, and provides the opening for another. A fourth text details the violence in South Carolina and Mississippi, in addition to Louisiana. Today, the Colfax Massacre, in which scores of African Americans were killed, continues to be celebrated and highlighted by the State of Louisiana in the form of a marker that laments the few Whites killed during the attack, fought as it is now claimed, to redeem the state from "unjust, corrupt, carpetbagger rule." The bodies of the African Americans killed were hastily buried. Their bones have been routinely and inadvertantly dug up and uncovered as various construction projects have occured in the area. But the public and state-sanctioned misinformation about the attack continue to this day.

Fortunately, these books are helping to shine the light on these past episodes, if not to right the wrongs themselves. Maybe some of the people in Kokomo will give one or more of these books a read.

A Biblical Plague

According to Robert Novak:

Some U.S. Christians are not reconciled to McCain's candidacy but instead regard the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as "God's candidate" for president in 2012. Whether they can be written off as merely a troublesome fringe group depends on Huckabee's course...

(snip)

According to this activist, at the heart of the let-Obama-win movement is longtime Virginia conservative leader Michael Farris -- the nation's leading home-school advocate, who is now chancellor of Patrick Henry College (in Purcellville, Va.) for home-schooled students. Best known politically as the losing Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1993, Farris is regarded as one of the hardest-edged Christian politicians. He is reported in evangelical circles to promote the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency.

What sort of world do you have to inhabit to think like this? I don't know. Maybe one like this:

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this — once you've gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

By the end of that weekend, Phil Fortenberry could have told us that John Kerry was a demon with clawed feet, and not one person would have so much as blinked. Because none of that politics stuff matters anyway, once you've gotten this far. All that matters is being full of the Lord and empty of demons. And since everything that is not of God is demonic, asking these people to be objective about anything else is just absurd. There is no "anything else." All alternative points of view are nonstarters. There is this "our thing," a sort of Cosa Nostra of the soul, and then there are the fires of Hell. And that's all.

Freaks and Geeks

The Party of "losers" is set to gain.

Charles Pierce on Cynicism, Obama, and America

A compelling vision of caution.

Via Atrios.

The other night, though, I heard Obama say words to the effect of "we can change America".

That's a little different than claiming he or we can change the government of American and its policies.

In fact, beyond providing yet another item on the list of politically incorrect things to say or do if you really, really, truly, super duper, double triple true dat luv America more than anybody else, I'm not sure anyone can really change America. It's a rather diverse country, after all, and becoming more diverse all the time. Even Reagan in the age of Reagan didn't change America all that much.

Invasion-Occupation of Iraq and the Price of Gas

I'm not trying to say there's any kind of connection at all, cuz, nobody would have thought that an invasion, destruction and five+ year occupation of a Middle Eastern country that didn't pose an immediate threat to anyone in the region or beyond would have led to an exponential increase in the price of oil/gas.

It wasn't too long ago--2002 in fact--when oil was $25/barrel:

In the wake of the attack crude oil prices plummeted. Spot prices for the U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate were down 35 percent by the middle of November. Under normal circumstances a drop in price of this magnitude would have resulted an another round of quota reductions but given the political climate OPEC delayed additional cuts until January 2002. It then reduced its quota by 1.5 million barrels per day and was joined by several non-OPEC producers including Russia who promised combined production cuts of an additional 462,500 barrels. This had the desired effect with oil prices moving into the $25 range by March, 2002. By mid-year the non-OPEC members were restoring their production cuts but prices continued to rise and U.S. inventories reached a 20-year low later in the year.

But no one could have been expected to have foreseen this.

Nothing to lose

Tuesday night I referenced a post from John Cole that compared HRC's continued campaign, scorched earth or otherwise, to that of a bank-robber holding it's employees and customers (the Democratic Party) as hostages, hoping against hope that, at a minimum, by threats and stalling she might at least make a getaway.

But I'm not sure that's quite right. The bank-robber still has something to lose.

I don't think that's the case with HRC. I know there has been some talk of her moving into the Senate majority leader role. And the Supreme Court would also be a possibility. But I gather neither she nor Bill care much for these lesser offerings. In any event, the longer she stays in the longer she risks burning her bridges to the goodwill necessary for achieving these posts, not to mention ruining any sort of "legacy" she or Bill might still hope to lay claim to.

VP's

It's getting to be that time.

There are probably at least three candidate typologies for the number 2 floating around out there.

One, is the "reinforcement" candidate. In contrast to the "balancing" theory of VP selections, where #1 looks for a #2 from a different region, age, gender, ethnic group, division of government, or ideological end of the party, the reinforcement idea holds that the #1 is best served by someone who mirrors or reinforces the top of the ticket. Bill Clinton's selection of Al Gore probably typifies this idea.

Two is the aforementioned balance pick. The balance pick could embrace some balancing characteristics while including a number of reinforcing aspects.

Three is a "unify the party" pick, which in this case, would most likely bear strong resemblance to the idea of balance.

While I've given the second and third typologies some thought, the reinforcement idea makes the most sense to me. But below I've included some examples of candidates that might fit into each type. Undoubtedly, these typologies are not necessarily mutually exclusive. As they say, everything's relative.

Reinforcement
Amy Klobuchar -- freshman U.S. Senator from Minnesota. She's young and attractive. And female. Would be a gutsy choice.

Kathleen Sebelius -- governor from Kansas in her second and last term. Has seemingly rebuilt the Democratic Party in a very conservative state. Modest speaking skills. Female.

Russ Feingold -- third term U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. Relatively young. Reliably progressive. Not terribly dynamic and has is divorced.

Bill Bradley -- former U.S. Senator from NJ, and former basketball star. Older, so would provide balance there. Has endorsed Obama and would embody Obama's different kind of politics. Despite his star credentials, Bradley is also charismatically challenged, and is also known for being wonkish and distant.

Balance
Bill Richardson -- former everything, congressman, diplomat, energy secretary, current governor of small but swing state of the SW, NM. Hispanic. Foreign policy cred. Also seen as somewhat eccentric.

Tom Daschle -- former U.S. Senator and Democratic leader from SD. Serious, older and experienced. Presided over the Democratic loss of the Senate in 2002 and managed to lose his own seat two years later--and deepen the Democratic Senate deficit in the process. Not particularly riveting as a speaker.

Joe Biden -- U.S. Senator from Delaware. Vetted. Decent speaker. Foreign policy cred. Outspoken, got chased from the '88 field for a verbal plagiarism gaffe that didn't get much notice in his '08 run.

Chris Dodd -- The Democratic, U.S. Senator from Connecticut. Opposed telecom immunity. Former head of the Democratic national party. OK speaker, used to debates.

Party Unity
HRC -- probably brings more negative than positive. But here's an alternative view.

Evan Bayh -- former governor and current U.S. Senator from Indiana. Former head of the DLC. Looks like a president. Not a stemwinder on the stump. Basically conservative and has supported the war.

Wild cards
Tim Kaine -- Virginia governor. Young, thought to be principled. Still in his first term from a conservative state.

James Webb -- first term U.S. Senator from Virginia. Former official in Reagan admin. Blunt and outspoken. Can dish it out.

Gary Hart -- former U.S. Senator from Colorado and two-time former Democratic presidential candidate. Got caught misbehavin' outside of marriage in '87. Has re-invented himself as an elder statesman-scholar.

Bob Casey, Jr. -- first term U.S. Senator from Pennsylania. Like his late but more famous father, is anti-abortion. Wiped out former Senator Rick Santorum in '06. Came out for Obama during primary season.

Some People Say...

John Cole:

This race now is no longer a race, but a hostage crisis. Hillary is surrounded, and she can see the super-delegates through the windows of the bank lobby and she knows they are armed to the teeth, wearing their kevlar vests, weapons sighted, aimed, and with the safeties off. In her heart of hearts she knows it is over, but still she keeps the pistol cocked at the head of the party. Maybe, just maybe, something will happen and she can make it to the fueled plane she demanded be taken to the airport and then she can go away to her big payday. She has come this far, she can’t quit now. Miracles happen. But it won’t happen. It never does. Not even in the movies, at least not the good ones. The only thing left to be resolved is how many hostages she kills.

---------

Easily the best analogy I've seen so far. I really can't add anything to this.

NYT and Washington Post Coverage of the Food Crisis

Amid an avalanche of shallow, despicable media coverage of Miley Cyrus, Rev. Wright, and Senator Obama's bowling scores and flag pin, it is also necessary to applaud the very good reporting being done in the NYT and the Washington Post regarding the mounting food crisis.

Both papers have been running their own series on the topic, and I heartedly encourage any and all to give both a careful read. The papers deserve a lot of credit for providing some very important and informative work, especially in light of the media meltdown occuring around them.

Wanker of the Day: Brian Williams

NBC Nightly "News" Anchor and blogger.

It's hard to know where to start. He disses Elizabeth Edwards and her more than valid complaint about the media, particularly its television and cable "news" wing, but without once referring to the substance of her op-ed. Instead, Williams does a little bait and switch by pivoting quickly away from Edwards' article to an ignorant, mocking critique of two puff pieces in the NYT's Styles and Travel sections. Williams, seemingly ignorant of his own profession's momentous slide in viewership, also snidely flips off the NYT for its modestly declining readership, in yet another shallow attempt to play hide the salami.

As if this wasn't bizarre enough, Williams then launches a glowing tribute to one Peggy Noonan, former speech writer and propagandist for Ronald Reagan, appraising as a "sparkling piece of journalism" another in a long list of trite, vapid whines about culture, "patriotism", flag pins, the candidates, and airports, and how Obama should shed tears of praise and adoration in response to the exploits of the infamous Nazi sympathizer Henry Ford.

Meanwhile, absent in any of this is a reference, comment, analysis, or explanation of his network's (along with CBS and ABC) use of Pentagon approved and orchestrated ex-retired-super-double-secret-probation military generals to propagandize the war effort leading up to and after the invasion of Iraq, reported on two weeks ago by the NYT, the same paper Williams was attempting to defame.

Finally, Williams deigns to return to his blog and the hundreds of blistering reader posts holding him accountable and arrogantly defends himself and the generals as not possibly having the gaul to do the very ignorant and deceitful things that bad old NYT reported they had.

But the Greenwald piece is at least a jewel.

Lord help us if there were actually issues at stake in this election

Then things would really get ugly.

Sullivan:

Isn't it a relief, by the way, for the MSM to have a presidential campaign in which no issues are actually discussed? This Wright-stuff is amazing to me. It's all the MSM seems to care about. Even coverage of McCain is now about his attitude toward an unhinged black pastor from Chicago. Hey: it beats discussing war, debt, the economy, torture, and terrorism. Because it enables America to return to the classic boomer racial-cultural wars that are all the MSM truly knows how to cover. There's nothing to be done right now but to duck and cover. And emerge when actual questions of actual salience emerge.

I was thinking about this sort of thing when I started to thumb through Bad Money. In the book's Preface, Philips takes note of the varying economic crises and "bubbles" that have surfaced in the last few years and plaintatively calls for the 2008 candidates to at least address these things. Barring rioting in the streets, and maybe not even then, this isn't likely to happen.

For one, the freak show coverage of campaigns by the television and cable "news" stations necessitates against addressing such substance. Second, the candidates themselves are too risk averse to chance the fall-out inherent in saying anything remotely controversial that could alienate this or that key interest group, or provide campaign fodder for the opposition. Third, I seriously doubt whether any the candidates really understand the basics of the issues at stake, much less what might be reasonable policy solutions to them.

Meanwhile, as Rev. Wright returns to the center of attention today, the price of oil has reached $120/gallon.

Wankers of the Day

The Washington Post editorial page:

IN THE PAST few weeks, Cuban President Raúl Castro has introduced a handful of micro-reforms to the oppressive and bankrupt regime left behind by his brother. Cubans are now officially allowed to buy cellphones, computers and microwave ovens; state workers may get deeds to apartments they have been renting for decades; and farmers may be able to sell part of what they grow at market prices. The measures won't have much impact (though they have evidently annoyed the officially retired Fidel Castro): The vast majority of Cubans can't afford to buy electronic goods, and the agricultural reforms fall short of steps taken years ago by North Korea.

The new leader's moves have nevertheless touched off a flurry of excitement and speculation among Cuba-watchers in the United States and Europe, some of whom have taken to comparing the 76-year-old Raúl Castro to Mikhail Gorbachev. European apologists for the Castro dictatorship, led by the Spanish government, are clamoring for the European Union to restore normal diplomatic ties with Havana; Democrats such as Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) have renewed their calls for a lifting of the U.S. trade embargo, even as they campaign against free trade with democratic Colombia.

The Post opinion-shapers are trying to equate the restoration of normal diplomatic ties with Cuba with opposition to a free trade deal with a "democratic" Columbia. Obviously this is a ridiculous non-sequitur and the Post's editorialists think we're all idiots. It's another shining day in our nation's capital.

Elite Anxiety

Headlines of the day:

Democrats Registering In Record Numbers

and

Supreme Court upholds photo ID law for voters in Indiana

Anybody see a connection between these two developments?

I can't wait for the return of the Poll Tax and the Literacy Test.

But, remember, it's the Democrats, who generally oppose voting restrictions such as "Photo ID laws", and the Liberals, who universally oppose these restrictions, who are the "elitists".

Bad Campaigns, Bad Media--What Must Be Done?

One of the most discouraging aspects of this year's campaign is the more or less direct and inverse relationship between its length and the rapidly escalating depravity of its content. As the race goes on, it becomes less substantive, vapid and personality based. The last ABC debate was only one unshining example of the quick-sand dragging the campaign and American democracy into the gutter.

And seemingly like every presidential contest, the leading Democrat is being tarred with the fatal "elitist" brush; he's unmanly, unpatriotic, high-fallutin, and not someone you want to have a beer with. And even though Democrats are notorious for their supposed moral relativism, the leading Democrat is paradoxically said to be a "scold", moral or otherwise, for...well I don't know. But I guess the media Republicans know it when they see it.

The NYT, which has supported Hillary Clinton, has an op-ed today, already a subject of some notable comment, laying much of the blame for the tragic state of affairs on the NY Senator and the negative campaign she has waged.

While there is obviously some truth to this complaint, as well as to the many well documented media transgressions this particular cycle, let me suggest that much of the reason why the campaign's substance, media driven and otherwise, has plumeted to such levels, stems from the many structural inhibitions against candidate policy innovation. The barriers, real and imagined, to candidates getting traction while stating unpopular truths or challenging sacred constituencies and ideas almost inherently ensures that the leading political candidates will not be able to offer much in the way of specifics and that, consequently, campaigns will rapidly degenerate into frivolous, insipid commentary about the candidate's preacher (if the candidate is a Democrat) or flagpin or whatever. The length of the campaign, the forces designed to ensure comformity, and the media saturation of the campaign and of television's particular obsession with candidate personalities all strongly press for just such a spectacle.

So how does a candidate rise above this stuff?

By being policy-controversial. By being policy-risky. By not playing it safe. By challenging some bit of conventional wisdom and taking what may at first glance, and may in fact truly be, the minority view point on some rarely discussed topic that everyone in the media holds to be a matter of political concensus unworthy of contestation.

Obama made a positive step in this direction with his speech on race (and religion). But even this was laced with a good deal of abstract rhetoric that attempted to placate all participants.

But how about giving a speech on the fallacies of the nation's fifty year Cuba policy, and the irrational and disproportionate effect the influence of Cuban exiles in Florida have played in the process? Specifically, how about giving a speech calling for an absolute end to the embargo?

Or how about giving a speech calling the War on Drugs a failure and promising to reduce federal sentences for drug possession, eliminating the position of national Drug Czar, and asserting the primacy of privacy rights over those over law enforcement budgets and prison construction entrepreners?

It might be argued that both of these policies have sufficient political consensus requiring that they not be disturbed, or that not enough people care about them or consider them priorities, or that such controversies simply aren't worth the trouble and would divert a campaign from otherwise positive policy contributions should it win (which stirring up these controversies could seriously undermine).

These concerns may be valid. But given the fact that the candidate's policy positions are only marginally different from one another in many other policy domains, the failure to take greater policy risks, to challenge bad policies means that campaigns and media coverage will continue to focus on the shallow and insipid. If one is going to be subject to attacks from the opposition, why not make the attacks over issues that matter and would in fact highlight stark policy differences with opponents?

Elitist Popery

Michael Gerson has a gushing, incredulous, and elitist-enraptured op-ed today about Pope Benedict.

After noting the sex-abuse scandal of recent years, Gerson goes on to say:

But members of a church older than any nation tend to take the long view. In the 10th century, Pope Sergius III grabbed the keys to the kingdom in an armed coup and promptly had two of his imprisoned predecessors strangled. His son, by his 15-year-old mistress, Marozia, eventually became Pope John XI. Marozia's grandson, Pope John XII, stood accused of great crimes as well. According to one account, he "mutilated a priest . . . violated virgins and widows high and low, lived with his father's mistress, [and]converted the pontifical palace into a brothel." Those were the days to be a reporter covering the Vatican.

Gerson lets fly a little Freudian slip here, referring to the Roman Catholic Church as a "kingdom". When the disciples of Jesus were bickering among themselves as to "who was the greatest", the humble Carpenter from Nazareth rebuked them. The Kingdom Christ came to establish was not to be on the order of those kingdoms of the earth whose monarchs dwelled in palaces and feasted off the labor of others. I guess we can see which view of "kingdom" the popes came to exemplify.

Catholics generally regard the survival and success of such a flawed institution as evidence of divine favor. The church has managed to outlive all of its scandals -- and all of its critics.

Thinking people might reason that a history of atrocities such as these by a notoriously self-exalting and dictatorial institution are reasons to be skeptical of the whole shamefully extravagant enterprise. But maybe that's just me.

But it gets worse. Reason, it turns out, is not for us secular mortals. According to Gerson (and many, many other apologists for Papal authoritarianism), a history of Papal murder, mayhem and sexual shenanigans (the long years of the torturing and burning fires of the Inquisition of unbelievers and "heretics" go unmentioned by Gerson) is a minor blip in what is a glorious reign of church "reason":

[D]espite charges of dogmatism, the church is the main defender of reason in the modern world. [The church] teaches the possibility that moral truth can be known through reflection and argument.

No, it doesn't. The church teaches that moral truth is the special province of the Church Magisterium (i.e. the Pope and his Bishops) and that those of us among the peasantry must concede to the church all responsibility for thinking in these areas and must consent to be bullied and told what to do by an institution with a history of retarding moral development on a collosal scale.

It criticizes what Pope Benedict XVI has called the "dictatorship of relativism" -- a belief "that does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires." "Being an adult," says Benedict, "means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties."

Having faith means, instead, that we should surrender our will and thoughts to Holy Mother Church.

Secularism has traditionally taught that human beings will eventually outgrow religious conviction and moral absolutism -- that skepticism is evidence of maturity. Benedict contends that modern men and women, unguided by reasoned moral beliefs, turn toward adolescent self-involvement. Their intellectual growth is stunted. In a world where all moral claims are seen as equally true and equally false -- the world, for example, of the modern university -- human conscience is reduced to biology or prejudice. Moral behavior may continue to ride in grooves of socialization or genetics, but moral assertions are fundamentally arbitrary -- always trumped by a two-word response: "Says you."

By asserting that the human mind can grasp moral truth, Catholicism also defends the reliability of reason against the superstitions of our time.

The "superstitions of our time" is a very interesting phrase. I wonder if Gerson is referring to the rather silly belief by secularists that the earth revolves around the sun. Or the church belief that a priest-officiated ceremony transforms mere bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ. But I digress.

And this is important for a very practical reason: because a belief in human rights is also a moral conviction. Catholicism teaches that relativism and a purely material view of man have disturbing social consequences. "The criterion of personal dignity," wrote Pope John Paul II, "which demands respect, generosity and service -- is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness: others are considered not for what they 'are,' but for what they 'have, do and produce.' This is the supremacy of the strong over the weak."

The point here is simple and radical: As the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton argued, men and women are either created in "the image of God" or they are "a disease of the dust." If human beings are merely the sum of their physical attributes -- the meat and bones of materiality -- they are easier to treat as objects of exploitation.

And the belief in the fires of Purgatory and eternal Hell fire are reasonable and humane?

So Catholicism offers a second contribution: It is the main defender of human dignity against a utilitarian view of human worth. And the church has applied this high view of man with remarkable consistency -- to the unborn and the elderly, the immigrant and the disabled.

Is the church a defender of the right to not believe in the church?

Individual views on issues of life and death vary widely, even within the Catholic Church. But it is a good thing to have at least one global institution firmly dedicated to the proposition that every growing child, every person living in squalor or in prison, every man or woman approaching death or contemplating suicide or trapped in profound mental disability, every apparently worthless life is not really worthless at all.

Again, does anyone besides me think's its awfully presumptious for an institution with hundreds of years of religious wars and murderous inquisitions under its belt to be lecturing anyone on morality and human worth?

An institution accused of superstition is now the world's most steadfast defender of rationality and human rights. It has not always lived up to its own standards, but where would those standards come from without it?

The world's most steadfast defender of rationality and human rights? Me thinketh the man doeth protest too much.

Put simply, the Papacy is the most glaring example of irrational elitism in the history of the world. The Pope and his loyal followers believe that the church has the right to tell us what is right and what to do. How much more elitist can you get?

Consider, in addition to the horrors of the inquisition, which among other things bequeathed to the interrogator the idea of water-boarding, the declarations and demands of another, infallible predecessor to Pope Joe. I give you the infamous Papal "syllabus of errors", which condemned, among other things, democracy, religious freedom, and the separation of church and state.

Some rationality, reason and human rights, there. Thanks, but we'll reserve the right to govern ourselves, thank you very much.

"That's More Like It"

Andrew Sullivan hits the nail on the head:

"I will tell you it does not get more fun than these debates. They are inspiring debates. I think last night we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people.

It took us 45 minutes — 45 minutes before we heard about health care, 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard about jobs, 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices.

Now, I don’t blame Washington for this because that’s just how Washington is. They like stirring up controversies and getting us to play gotcha games and getting us to attack each other. And I’ve got to say Sen. Clinton looked in her element," - Barack Obama, in Raleigh, today.

That's more like it. Lemons to Lemonade. In some ways, Obama now has a chance to make one of the most important points about his candidacy.

Obama and Democrats Are Elitist

Meanwhile, CNN's infamous Man of the People says to give the tax breaks to those who need and deserve it--the corporations.

But, it really is John Edwards with his hair cut and Obama with his orange juice preference that are the true threats to the aspirations of Real Americans.

The Prison Industrial Complex

A much-needed op-ed in today's Post.

Also impressed Webb held a hearing on this. If our teevee media could get off of haircuts, orange juice, and stirring the ignorant flames of the culture war, maybe we could get around to having a national "conversation" about this.

What About The Green Zone?

Based on a Charlie Rose interview with John Burns and Dexter Filkins, reporters with the New York Times, Josh has good words to say about the reduction of violence from the "surge". Some readers disagree with him, on how credibly Burns and Filkins should be regarded.

I didn't watch the Rose interview. But here's what I want to know. Is there still a Green Zone behind which most Americans and the Iraqi government congregate behind, and from which most of the American and Iraqi elite can't venture beyond without a parade of humvees and military convoys? And can the U.S. President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and Members of Congress, make ANNOUNCED visits to Iraq and to Baghdad?

Until then, anything said about violence in Iraq, or political reconciliation, or elections, is rather beside the point.

Running Away From The L Word

Here we go again.

This Post article today is about as discouraging as it could be.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has also started slapping the L-word on Obama, warning that his appeal among moderate voters will diminish as they become more aware of liberal positions he took in the past, such as calling for single-payer health care and an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba...

...the criticism from the McCain and Clinton operations draws a quick rebuttal from Obama's campaign. His strategists recognize that Democratic voters and the superdelegates who may end up deciding the hotly contested nomination are concerned about the electability of a candidate tagged with the "liberal" label that has fatally wounded nominees such as John F. Kerry, Michael S. Dukakis and Walter F. Mondale...

..."He's really not an old-fashioned liberal at all," Sunstein said. "He's a market-oriented Democrat from the University of Chicago with strong religious convictions."

...Supporters also argue that the liberal tag will not stick to Obama partly because the public climate has shifted toward him amid widespread disillusionment with Republican policies, scrambling traditional notions of right and left. "There's growing dismay about the war in Iraq as it enters year six, and a sense that we've neglected some real basic necessities in this country," said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), one of Obama's key red-state backers. "He's not out of step with what I hear people being worried about..."

...[Obama] mocked the emerging GOP criticism in a speech last month in Austin. "Oh, he's liberal. He's liberal," he said. "Let me tell you something. There's nothing liberal about wanting to reduce money in politics. It's common sense. . . . There's nothing liberal about wanting to make sure that everybody has health care. We are spending more on health care in this country than any other advanced country. We got more uninsured. There's nothing liberal about saying that doesn't make sense, and we should do something smarter with our health-care system. Don't let them run that okey-doke on you..."

This kind of talk is very frustrating. It's defensive and evokes a fearful, loser mentality.

If it's true, as the article states, that--

In most major areas, Obama has taken positions that would seem to conform to the Republican stereotype of a liberal. Like Clinton, he favors expanding the government's role in delivering health care, and would pay for that by ending President Bush's tax cuts for the rich. He would go a step further than Clinton by lifting the limit on income taxed for Social Security, now $100,000, to set that program on firm footing.

He strongly supports abortion rights and spoke out against a Supreme Court ruling last year that upheld a ban on the procedure that some call "partial-birth" abortion. He favors allowing illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses (after some hesitation, Clinton came out against that). He is outspoken on civil rights, and he has opposed Bush's judicial picks, staying out of a bipartisan effort to approve some nominees. While he supports the death penalty for the most "heinous" crimes, as a Senate candidate in 2004 he expressed support for strict gun control, de-criminalizing marijuana and ending federal mandatory minimum prison sentences, issues he now rarely raises on the trail.

And that--

...liberal positions [Obama] took in the past, such as calling for single-payer health care and an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba...

And on top of all that, that--

Supporters also argue that the liberal tag will not stick to Obama partly because the public climate has shifted toward him amid widespread disillusionment with Republican policies, scrambling traditional notions of right and left. "There's growing dismay about the war in Iraq as it enters year six, and a sense that we've neglected some real basic necessities in this country," said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), one of Obama's key red-state backers. "He's not out of step with what I hear people being worried about."

This would seem an opportune time, perhaps a better time has never existed in American history, to point out that the fact that (and while we're on the subject, what about the government's response, under conservative Republicans in the Executive branch and in Congress, to Katrina?) conservatism theology and conservative results warrants criticism, and maybe, just maybe, liberal and liberalism is worth turning to?