I think the point I'm trying to make, is that this story is beyond the usual tactical political considerations. No matter who you're supporting for President, or what the implications might be for other tangentially-related issues, it just doesn't look right to remain silent. You rightfully lose more by that, than by whatever other shortfalls might be involved in acknowledging this undeniable victory over very bad people.

Posted at July 4, 2008 3:06 PM in response to Colombia Hostage Rescue - Does it matter?

I don't have an especially strong view on FISA. I honestly have not sat down at this point and really thought my way thru it. I can certainly see the potential "Big Brother" aspects to it, but I can also understand the "Patriotism" bludgeon that the Bush Administration was using so sucessfully against everyone (even the Congress) at the time these transgressions happened. I just don't know,yet.

I HAVE come to a definite conclusion about Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Mathews in particular, and the gamut of cable-TV commentators in general: They are a waste of valuable time that would be better spent on yardwork or preparing gourmet meals. I no longer watch basically ANY of them, and I have no feeling whatever of missing-out on anything constructive or truly informative.

As to Mr. OLbermann's specific case, he is essentially a clown: He can at times be genuinely funny (like any good clown), but somewhere along the way, he's lost even THAT redeeming quality. He has begun to take himself seriously (TOO seriously?) as a political player, and has led himself astray into a complete loss of proportion and much of his appeal, in my opinion.

It has been clear to me for some time that he is 100% in the tank for Sen. Obama. He has "gone native" in a highly unbecoming way, and thereby lost that wryness and sense of detachment that any effective commentator needs in order to remain credible. The less humor he exhibits, the less seriously I take him. How's that for irony?

Posted at June 28, 2008 12:12 PM in response to Keith Olbermann, Glenn Greenwald Feud Over FISA/Obama

I recently saw the movie "Syriana" for the first time. It didn't do a lot to explain oil prices, but it did give a solid insight into the complexities of life in every aspect of the oil business. It is more topical today than when it was released in 2005.

While I cannot claim to any special expertise in that area, I did come away from that movie with the vague conviction that the usual pat, bumper-sticker theories on EVERY side are not sufficient to either explain the problem, or to point us toward a full solution. They all touch only one part of the elephant.

Like all markets, there seem to be independent, simultaneous forces operating there that are beyond the control (or even the complete understanding) of any ONE entity. As much as we would like to find a convenient boogey-man, I'm coming to the conclusion that no such thing exists. The whole world is caught in a cycle that we know to be destructive, but we haven't yet found a way out.

To answer your question, I'm starting to think it's some of each, and many other things besides.

Posted at June 26, 2008 10:59 AM in response to Oil Prices: Speculation or Fundamentals?

I don't know if what you're saying here is true or not. One sees so much external commentary on the strategy of campaigns, that it's hard to distinguish ahead of time what's prescient, from what is eloqently expressed but ultimately wrong. I TEND to think you're closer to right than to wrong, but that is mostly a gut guess.

Two points I'd like to make:

(1)Nobody "wins" this early. To the extent that mantra is allowed to prevail, it's most likely not good news for the front-runner. That monotonous story is not likely to be sustainable for four solid months.

(2)Whatever one might say about the overall effectiveness of Obama's campaign (I'd have to say pretty good. so far), I think the "Presidential Seal" idea was one of the dumber things I've seen. You don't have to be an ace campaign strategist to understand that the public hates PRESUMPTION on the part of any candidate. To the extent that ploy has any lasting effect on the campaign at all, it's hard for me to see it as anything but negative for Sen. Obama.

Posted at June 26, 2008 9:15 AM in response to Can the Obama Campaign Shape the Agenda?

BalRog,

I know this point is sort of a non-sequiter to the main thrust of discussion, and I don't intend to get diverted onto it. However (as an aside), it's interesting that you would use LBJ and Nixon as examples of some of our worst Presidents.

True enough, I suppose, in terms of line 1 in the history books: "Sank us in Vietnam", "Watergate". Big, big mistakes, no doubt. But the paradox is that BOTH of these men also performed worthy, lasting deeds: LBJ with voting rights, civil rights, and Medicare. Nixon with EPA, opening to China, getting us out of Vietnam, and getting us on a more rational and less dangerous relationship with the Soviets.

Both were men of enormous talent and ambition. Each had an equal capacity for both large deeds and great mistakes. I tend to group these 2 with Bill Clinton, in that sense of great possibilites only partly realized - but in each case, their "partly" was greater than the whole of most others. Their reach was so great and the problems they confronted so serious, that they were doomed to fall short - and each had large and even tragic personal flaws that hurt them (and us).

I'm sort of running-on here to theorize a bit on the nature and the difficulty of judging a Presidency. Almost all of our modern Presidents have had at least some agreed successes and some agreed failures, with the jury still out (maybe as much as 50 years after the fact) on many of their larger or more complex endeavors.

I admit to having trouble seeing GW Bush in that generally positive big-picture sense. I do NOT place him in that category of overall success with notable failures. I try to give him as much benefit of the doubt as I can, by saying that whatever positve aspirations he might have had were completely unhinged by 9-11. I cannot completely buy that: He made deliberate choices in that terrible afermath that have come close to unhinging the Constitutional fabric of the country. He made choices that have made us doubt as Americans that we are still the "good guys". I can't excuse that on the 1-line grounds that he "kept the country safe after 9-11", but none of us can know for sure yet what history is going to decide about that.

Posted at June 24, 2008 8:53 AM in response to A Word to the "PUMAs"

I was (and am) a Clinton supporter. I jumped aboard with Sen. Clinton pretty early, primarily because of her important accompanying role in what I regarded as the finest Presidency of our modern times, and the excellent chance that she had the grounding and the skill to carry that good work forward. As time passed, I became more and more impressed with her deep preparation for the task in her OWN right, independent of her husband. It wasn't a hard decision for me on that basis, and it continues to mystify me as to why a clear majority of Democratic Primary voters didn't have the good sense to see it that same way.

Now, I'm back to square one. I certainly LEAN Democratic, but my only sure definition is CLINTONOCRATIC. I just don't KNOW yet about Sen. Obama. I'll give him a fair hearing, and I'll try my best to give him as much benefit of the doubt as I can, but I'm personally a long way from "SOLD" at this point: Too many airy atmospherics and too much contrived stage managment for my taste. Too little of a sense (so far) that he plans to DO something, as opposed to BE something. At least ONE time (about ANYTHING - even basketball), I've got to hear myself saying, "You know, he REALLY DOES know what he's talking about. He knows a LOT more about ---- than I do."

It's early, and there's time. Sen. Obama needs to use that time wisely, if he's going to count on my vote. I've got to be convinced (yet) that he's got the real credentials for the job. When that time comes, I'll know it, without being told or ram-rodded. Until then, neither Hillary Clinton nor anyone else is going to talk me into that commitment prematurely. I can agree with her on many things, without feeling like I have to agree with her on EVERYTHING.

I'll make up my own mind (in my own time) on this one.

Posted at June 23, 2008 9:16 PM in response to A Word to the "PUMAs"

Isn't this precisely the same kind of situational ethics for which Sen. Clinton and all her supporters were so self-righteously criticized by the Obama people? (Answer to the slow: OF COURSE it is - exactly the same. Only the names have changed).

It seems like only yesterday that the Chosen One was at the brink of launching a "new kind of politics". Scales would fall from eyes, and oppressed mankind would arise from its shackles to think and feel anew. (Actually, it WAS only yesterday).

What happened? Are we ALREADY beyond those Arthurian ideals, and back to quoting Vince Lombardi as our patron saint? Are we already accepting crawfishing,backsliding, and straight-out, old-time power and money politics? This is one of those rare times where I was pretty sure I KNEW what was eventually coming, but some vestige of my past younger idealism made me hope against hope that I might be wrong, and that those of you who actually believed in Sen. Obama as someone truly "different" might be proven right, after all. We can already see (What? 3 weeks into the GE?) that it's not to be.

3 weeks in, and it's just a new version of the same old sad, familiar story: Get there any way you can, and Devil take the hindmost. I've always suspected it would end-up there anyhow, but even a Clintonite cynic like me HAS to be suprised (and even a little disillusioned) by the both the speed and the naked blatancy of this transformation. I can only imagine the discomfort welling in the deepest psychic recesses of his true-believer faithful. I truly do feel a little sorry for you.

Posted at June 21, 2008 5:18 PM in response to Stop Nickel and Diming Obama: He Should say Whatever It Takes

I've noticed that since Sen. Clinton's concession, there's just less overall INTEREST in this election. I fully realize that that applies to ME (of course): As a Clinton backer of long standing, it's natural and expected that I would feel that way. What has actually SUPRISED me a little, is the extent to which Obama supporters have fallen victim to that same lack of interest.

I see it in here all the time: People keep TRYING (often obviously and painfully stretching) to work-up a healthy HATE for Sen. McCain, but it just isn't taking. It's strange (and somehow, revealing) that even in defeat, the Clintons remain the "story". As you said, one minor post in here with "...Clinton..." in the title rouses the slumbering populace to almost-forgotten levels of fury and eloquence, torrents of raging comments: "Hurray, we can STILL fight the last war!" Then, back to sleep thru what has become the dullest General Election of our time to date.

Sen. Obama in counterpoint to Clinton seemed mildly INTERESTING. They were genuinely engaged adversaries. "Not her" was one of his best arguments. I don't think even I realized the extent to which that might be his ONLY argument.

He and McCain and their respective minions are out there SOMEWHERE, I suppose. They're saying "candidate" things, hunting-up things to "disagree" over, stick-walking and shadow-boxing thru their paces, etc. There's just no FIRE: Sen. Clinton has taken the oxygen and the fuel out the door with her.

Post-partisan world or not, it STILL seems to take a Clinton or a Bush to put any real MUSTARD into one of these things. I know it's a long time til November (at the current rate of excitment, it's going to seem a LOT LONGER), but if the pace doesn't improve significantly, we're all going to be bored to death by "The most important election of our time (until the next one)" long before the Al Quada get us.

Posted at June 18, 2008 9:45 AM in response to "Stop Talking About Hillary!"

I tend (uneasily, I might add - more later) to agree with the thrust of this discussion. A great deal of what we all somehow intuit is "wrong" with modern journalism, is encapsulated in the career and in the unfortunate and untimely death of Mr. Russert, and the faux death-of-a- statesman aftermath of that event:

We have the journalist as Superstar. We have the journalist as a respected member of the club: One of the inside guys(usually) who get to participate in at least the illusion that they are involved in running things. We have the journalist as a "player" - on stage, and not in the audience where he belongs. We have the journalist who (AT BEST) confuses the issue of whether his loyalties lie with the public, or lie with the inside power-brokers with whom he wants to (MUST?) stay on good terms. We have the journalist as infotainer. We have the journalist as multi-millionare conglomerate.

We definitely HAVE all these things, and I submit that not a single one of these things is good for the healthy practice of journalism.

Honor compells me to sugest that we have one OTHER thing as well. I venture here uneasily, because I'm headed onto terrain often exploited by demagogues and various sorts of kooks, and I fully realize it. Nevertheless, it must be said: We have here a journalism too much informed (in my view) by religious bias, and an accompanying religious clannishness. I have lived 60 years on this earth, and never before felt it either necessary or appropriate to make such an observation (I have been generally indifferent to ANY individual's mainstream religious leanings, previously). I make it now only with the greatest reluctance, because I must unhappily conclude that it has become a REAL detriment to good journalism:

It seems to MATTER now (to an extent I don't recall previously) that a given journalist is Irish-Catholic, or Jewish, or Evangelical. It matters (of course) in forming their basic values, but it ALSO seems to matter more than it should in determining who they talk to, what they talk about, what they think about, who's "in", who's "out", and what the assumed areas of consensus and the prevailing underlying attitudes might be that don't even REQUIRE a thorough discussion. If journalism is properly the province of FACTS, it seems to me that a preoccupation with FAITH (the antithesis of facts) cannot be a good thing for the practice of the journalistic craft.

Posted at June 17, 2008 10:14 AM in response to Going Overboard on Russert

It seems to me it would be possible to perform BOTH functions: Social Insurance, and Investment for growth (Actually, where does one leave-off, and the other begin?). That's essentially why I don't advocate privatization either immediately, or completely. I STILL think it is a mistake not to harness the demonstrated wealth-creating power of the American economy (over the longer term) in the service of public retirement goals.

I think you are both clearly agreed and clearly right on the need that something must be done. The current Social Security system is neither very efficient (debatable, I guess), nor (more importantly, perhaps) sustainable over the longer term in our public demographic trends.

Posted at June 15, 2008 10:34 AM in response to Progressive Arguments in Favor of Partial Social Security Privatization