Firstly, I feel obliged to publicize destor23's recent (but perhaps long-awaited?) switch to Obama. (Reader genghis has the requisite commentary.)

In non-TPMCafe news, Paul George takes the brave and novel step of attempting to transform the discussion of Mark Penn's latest bit of short-sighted silliness into attention to some of the pressing concerns currently straining U.S.-Latin American relations.

According to reader satya, wearing an Obama t-shirt in Nairobi elicits quite a bit of excitement, and reactions bode well for America's reputation on the continent.

Big Blue mourns the the decline of empiricism. The question of empiricism in politics is an interesting and inestimably important one, and one about which I am ambivalent. While I think that it's problematic that American liberals tend to rely all too exclusively on so-called empiricism, it can't be denied that, in Big Blue's words, "Facts, in the new Conservative philosophy, have no place in the discussion if they prove inconvenient to the ideology."

Finally, Elisabeth Baumann explains the importance of distinguishing between a war and an occupation.