We have a Bush Dog Congressman from Georga, John Barrow, who is facing a primary challenge from Regina Thomas, a State Senator. Barrow was endorsed by Obama the same day that the House voted for the passage of FISA. Barrow joined with the Republicans on this issue.

We have a choice of a better alternative in Thomas who is actually closer on the issues to Obama. So you can donate to her and take out your anger on Barack. By doing that you can do something constructive while at the same time not hurting our chances for a Democratic White House. I am all for a unified party in the fall, but this is our chance where we can get rid of someone who does not represent their constituents.

It's a clever idea to raise some more money right? The primary is a week from Tuesday and any bit you can give will help her in a primary where 70% of the voters could be African Americans and she definitely has a shot.

Donate here

Thanks

The Progressive Electorate

I've had a weird thought whose practical value I'm not too sure about. So let me know what you think.

OK, here goes. I forgot how these events are called, but the environmentalists have them every now and then. "Turn off your electricity for today." Or something like that. You know what I have in mind, right? A short campaign followed by an event.

So how about this campaign: "Don't enlist for a year!" I mean if Congress won't do anything to stop the war and Obama shows signs of "refining" his strategy, maybe another way to get at this would be to "turn off" enlistment through voluntary lack of participation.

Would such a campaign even be legal? Because, obviously, a perfectly persuasive moral argument can be advanced to support it. Would it be practical, i.e. at least somewhat effective? What do you think?

I have been hearing the story of the Palestinian who went on a rampage with a "bulldozer".  Tonight I saw the video on the BBC's This Week.  Imagine my surprise when I saw that he was not driving a buldozer.  He was driving a front end loader.  Does no news room in the world have a fact checker?  Am I asking to much to expect them to get the simple facts straight?

If you are like the journalists and do not know the difference I have posted a picture of each peice of equiptment with the video so you can compare the one that was involved in the incident with the pieces of equiptment.  Check it out at The Working Class Heretic.

Reading all the posts here and in other blogs about accusations of shifting to the centre, sellouts or principled pragmatism, one recent one even citing Kantism, I was fascinated then to read an article in the British Globe and Mail entitled `Why Barack Obama May be Lonely in 2009` and musing that  `When Barack Obama lands in Europe for his first big international tour
this month, the Democratic presidential candidate may be shocked to
find himself standing in the middle of a vast, blood-soaked plain
littered with the bodies of his political allies.  He will see left-wing parties that have reached their lowest popularity
levels in a generation and in most cases have all but slid into
non-existence. And it's getting worse. If he becomes president, by the
end of 2009 Mr. Obama almost certainly will be the only left-wing
leader remaining among the Group of Eight nations and one of only two
or three left-leaning heads of state in the Western world. Once again,
America will be going it alone.`

But there's much more to it.  Whilst the article documents the demise of the left across the continent,  reading on I was intrigued to find that European politics is now dominated by right wing leaders adopting left wing policies!  More market regulation, more social welfare.   Go figure...

Check it out: it's really interesting stuff.  in fact it's quite extraordinary.

We're in the living room again, and the wine is flowing.  I've got my feet tucked up underneath me on the couch, facing a few who have joined me there.  There's soft music in the background.  Some of you are leaning, quietly listening.  Some are on the floor, crosslegged with a couple of pillows and fully engaged.  Lights are low, munchies on the coffee table.  The dog is sleeping on her bed in the corner, snoring just a little bit.  There's a soft rain falling outside, we can hear the grumblings of thunder far in the distance.

It's been yet another long and active day.  Let's talk, relax and maybe laugh for awhile.  We deserve it.

Here I am, with these thoughts of calm friendship.  Just kinda feel like talkin to 'ya.  What's on your mind?

Thanks for the thought, Aunt Sam.

I ask this in all sincerity.

If I were a Repub big-wig, which I obviously am not, I would be looking for a way to replace the current presumptive nominee with someone else---almost ANYONE else.

Could this scenario become reality?

MyBlog: http://ProteanPerspectives.blogspot.com

In a disappointing sequence NPR’s Scott Simon first attacked Obama by changing an Obama quote to make it attackable and then replied to his critics with a poorly reasoned letter which would fail a high school logic class.

 

Here we are barely into the general election campaign and one of the candidates has already imploded.

On a personal, human, level, it's kind of sad, disquieting actually, to watch a man wither away in the most public of venues possible: the glare of full-bore media coverage in a presidential election.

While Obama has had some stumbles himself over the last fortnight or so, they have generally been policy focused, not personal. He's still composed, still intelligent, still in command. Not so, John McCain.

He's no longer the shoot-from-the-hip, swaggering ex-Navy pilot; he's a guy who can't deliver a pre-written speech without stumbling over his words; he's a guy who makes off-the-cuff remarks that tend to indicate he's not quite aware of who's who or what's what in the game he's playing. He comes across on that all important medium of television as a cross between Capt. Queeg and the stoic Capt. of the Titanic. Either way, it's obvious his ship is taking on water.

He's now on his THIRD campaign management team; Barack remains with his original crew virtually intact and adds to it with stars from HRC's professional army, while McCain is forced almost back to square one.

In sports, there are those guys that are unquestioned Superstars in the Minor leagues or College who, when they make it to the Big Leagues, fold like a house of cards.

It would seem that the Republicans are stuck with running one of the all time great Minor Leaguers in the biggest league of them all:  the contest for the Presidency of the United States.

One question for those more acquainted with the Rules: Can the Repubs nominate anyone other than McCain at their convention, or are they completely locked in to him?

MyBlog: http://ProteanPerspectives.blogspot.com

Mary Beth Buchanan is a US Attorney, formerly the director of the Executive Office of US Attorneys.

Buchanan asserted she directed FBI agents to conduct "hom interviews" of Wech Jury Members.

Yet, we have a different picture when it comes to the firing of US Attorneys, and FBI agents at Guantanamo. FBI agents were told not to retain war crimes records.

When Buchanan was asked about her involvement with the US Attorney firings, her attorney and GOP said she "wasn't involved".

War crimes have been documented on FBI agent 302. Those forms are missing. Addington and CIA General Counsel Rizzo visited Guantanamo to review the POW interrogation. MajGen Teguba asserts this Administration did direct an effort to commit war crimes.

War crimes are offenses against civilians, unarmed combatants, and people who are protected under the Geneva Conventions.

The public should find out what role Buchanan had in reviewing the war crimes evidence from Guantanamo. She may not have been involved with the US Attorney firings, but she should have been in a position to hear something. She was connnected, indirectly, with Attorney General Ashroft who asked that discussions about war crimes be kept out of the White House.

Buchanan had led a prosecution against someone for obscenity. The public should ask Buchanan how her views of the Guantanamo inerrogation might change if the President had detained young children, or abuse women in Iraq.

Oh, wait. The President did detain young children, and US combat forces have sexually assaulted women and children in combat zones and in non-combat zones.

Buchanan's role as a prosecutor isn;t merely to narrowly look at her jurisidication. It is to provide leadership, where it is absent, for the Department of Justice. The public has a right to know what role Buchanan had in reviewing detailed descriptions of POW interrogations.

It is one thing to enforce the laws of war, quite another to do something when reading in emails detailed descriptions of those horrific abuses during interrogations. Buchanan should shed light on what information she has about POW abuse, her connections with the CIA General counsel, and what information she as Director EOUSA had access related to POW abuse, prisoner logs, and FBI descriptions of abuses committed against POWs.

Buchanan's made a name for herself for providing lega insight on FISA issues and conduting high profile litigation. Buchanan should disclose what information she has about the obscene war crimes her President directed, and what information she and others were reading in the JCON database related to prisoner abuse.

It's one thing to get upset when someone writes about obscenity. It's quite another to do something about obscene war crimes. The questoin is whether Buchanan did what she should have done; or, as with the US Attorney firings, she "had no role" in taking action to ensure US personnel did not engage in any obscene abuses of the Geneva Conventions.

When Buchanan cooperates in disclosing what information she had access to during obscene, repulsive prisoner interrogations, the public might take seriously her efforts to confront obscenity at home.

For the past few weeks, as Barack Obama has moved to solidify his nomination among the party faithful while, at the same time, reaching out to the most crucial voting bloc of 2008--Independents and disgruntled Republicans--I've watched the Democratic Party begin to split upon its usual ideological lines, much as it did, say, in 2000 and in 2004.

At first, I tried to find one word to sum up what Obama is trying to do, as well as one word to describe the thousands of angry Democrats who have risen up in righteous indignation at what they consider to be an ideological betrayal over such issues as the recent FISA bill.

So I went to the dictionary and looked up:  PRAGMATIC.

It said, "concerned with the practical consequences of actions or beliefs."

Practical consequences.  Of actions or beliefs.

But I wanted one word to sum up what that meant, so I went to the Thesaurus online, which provided its own definition of the term:  "having or indicating an awareness of things as they really are."

THINGS AS THEY REALLY ARE.

Hmmm.  Interesting.  The Thesaurus listed such synonyms as:  "down-to-earth, hardheaded, matter-of-fact, practical, tough-minded, unromantic."

Yes, that makes sense.  A pragmatic person takes an unromantic outlook on life and deals with things as they really are.  That is not to say that a pragmatic person does not dream of things as they can be, but he or she knows that, in order to bring about change, it will have to be done incrementally.  Baby-steps, if you will.

Pragmatically.

This is because human nature recoils at the idea of dramatic change all at once.  Most people consider dramatic change to be threatening to the social order upon which they depend.  When dramatic change is threatened--as we saw in the '60s--most rank and file people react by doing such things as electing Richard Nixon president, if for no other reason than he promises to keep things as they are.

Yeah.  That about sums it up.

So then, I wanted to find a word that would describe IDEOLOGICAL.

Because it seemed to me that the opposite of pragmatic is ideological--when one puts his or her ideals above pragmatism, standing on principle, as it were, to the expense of all else, in order to make a grand point or gesture.

So I asked my online Thesaurus to provide synonyms for "ideological."

And it was stumped.

It said, "Do you mean...ILLOGICAL?"

In other words, to an online provider of synonyms for most words in the English language, the best it could do to come up with a word that meant the same thing as "ideological" was "illogical."

And this is perfect, actually, because right now, we have what may go down as the MOST ideological administration in this country's history, and there is none, believe me, that has ever been more illogical.

(Even Richard Nixon's.)

But I kept digging because hey, words are my life.  I found a word that seemed close enough to "ideological," so I decided to see what kinds of synonyms were listed for IDEALISTIC.

Yes, someone who is ideological is, by definition, idealistic.  It was, after all, highly idealistic for George W. Bush to actually think that if he basically forced democratic elections on violent third-world countries that somehow they would come up with Thomas Jefferson for a president or prime minister.  Instead, in Palestine and in Iran, to name a couple, they elected the most violent extremist candidate on the roster.

Oops!

So I looked up the definition of "Idealistic," and came up with this:  "not compatible with reality."

In other words, if you are highly idealistic in your politics, your views are most likely not compatible with reality.  Synonyms include:  "quixotic, romantic, starry-eyed, unrealistic."

Which brings me to Ralph Nader.

Ohhhhh, how soon we forget, eh?

That's the problem with revisionist history. 

Although I am not disputing that George W. Bush stole elections from both Al Gore in 2000 (Florida) and John Kerry in 2004 (Ohio), the truth is that--especially in 2000--the vote-count was razor-thin close.  Ridiculously close.  Close enough that the only way for him to really win was to steal it.

But you see, it didn't HAVE to be that close now...did it?

Because as I recall, especially in 2000, what I heard was many many disgruntled Democrats such as Michael Moore and legions of others, claim that they didn't like Al Gore's middle-of-the-roadness as they saw it.  They thought he was betraying liberal ideals.  They thought he might even be TRIANGULATING.  And they were pissed, really pissed.

So they decided to teach the Democratic party a lesson.

Yeah, I know you think the Hillary supporters came up with that one all on their own, but sorry.  We've seen it before.

Everybody knew--I mean EVERYBODY--that there was no way Ralph Nader and his "Green" party could possibly win the elections of 2000 and 2004.  Even he set as his highest goal, 5% of the total vote.

But he kept yammering on and on about how there really was no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties...Remember that?

Or are you too young?  Because if you are, please allow me to enlighten you.

His main premise was that major party politics was so corrupted by big corporations and so much alike in their basic platforms (uh-huh) that the only way to REALLY change politics was to elect a third-party candidate, a true Independent, which is what he presented himself as being.

And all these disgusted, disgruntled liberals decided hell with it...I'm tired of seeing the Democrats tack to the center.  They can't count on my vote, the corporate hacks.  I'm voting for Nader.

That'll show 'em, you said. 

I heard you.  Don't deny it.

So you taught the "centrist" Democrats a real lesson there didn't you?

Nader received almost three million votes in the 2000 election.  Estimates are that 40% of those votes would have gone to Gore.  I think that is a low-ball estimate, but to be fair, I'll go with it.

In Florida, the key state, Nader received 97,488 votes.  If only 40% of those went to Gore, that would still be 38,995 votes, which would have been enough to give Gore the state, since the final count, conducted by a nonpartisan newspaper after the Supreme Court decision, gave Bush Florida by only 537 votes.  So Gore still would have won by well over 38,000 votes in Florida--and that's not even counting the rest of the 1,160,000 votes nation-wide that represent the modest 40% of Nader's votes that would have gone to Gore had he not run. 

(More, if you think 40% is low, and I do.)

And if THAT had happened...Well, Bush couldn't have stolen the election then, because he'd've had to own the secretaries of state in a whole helluva lot more states than just Ohio and Florida...wouldn't he?

So...I've got a question for all you idealistic Nader-voters and the younger 2008 counterparts:

HOW'S THAT WORKIN' OUT FOR YA?

You made your ideological point.  You protested by voting for a man you knew could not be elected.  And we got George W. Bush, who has proceeded to destroy everything you and I ever believed in--law by law, war by war, preserved wilderness by preserved wilderness, hurricane by hurricane, Supreme Court justice by Supreme Court justice.

People who complain that they will protest-vote for McCain because their candidate didn't get the nomination, or who complain that they will no longer support Obama because he voted for or against something that, earlier, he had voted against or for, are highly idealistic--make that--illogical, because of two reasons.

ONE:  He won't be able to do ANYTHING except vote on bills in the Senate if he is not elected, period. 

And in this election, he can't get elected without the Independent vote.  McCain is the only Republican candidate with a tinker's chance in hell of getting Independent voters, and he is already Roving himself up to snatch those folks into the Republican fold.

In 2004, Bush took a 50-plus-1 majority and used it as a MANDATE to do as he pleased after four years of, well, doing as he pleased.

The results have been horrific for our country.

Already they are painting Obama as a flaming liberal so far to the left he's practically a socialist, because they know that Independents are moderates by nature...CENTRISTS, if you will.  Independents and disgruntled or moderate Republicans fear extremists on either side, and as Bush/Rove have proven time and again...as an electorate...they are easily fooled.

And TWO:  So many of our electorate is too young to know what it means to have a functioning Congress that actually works together to get things done.  There was a time when congresspeople and senators would argue bitterly on the House or Senate floor, then get together afterward and go out for drinks, where they would hammer out compromise on legislation before the body.  There were many close friendships between political rivals.

THIS is how we got landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act.  Don't assume that because we had a Democratic president then and a Democratic congress that it was all some sort of kubaya cakewalk, because it was not.  Conservative Dems and Republicans lined up against liberals all the time.

But what was understood was that, without compromise, THERE IS NO GOVERNMENT.

There HAS to be pragmatism in politics in order to get anything done.

And when you have pragmatism...then you have a situation where conservatives and liberals will not be happy because the bill that results is not exactly what either of them wants.

But it will be a bill.

When Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay and their cronies came in with their so-called "Contract With America," they threw out all that.  It was idealism all the way down, with ideologues controlling the agenda AND the media message.

Over the course of the years, moderates of both parties were forced out, and we were left with GRIDLOCK.  Opponents on either side of the aisle screaming at each other and MONTHS going by with nothing getting done on ANYTHING.  Literally calling one another names on the floor.  Regarding rivals not as opponents, but as ENEMIES.

This is what happens when ideologues rule.  Rigidity.  Inflexibility.  Inability to compromise.

I've even invented a little word for it:  NADERISM.

Obama has stated repeatedly that the bills he has agreed to vote for now are not the same bills he opposed earlier.  Many of the details he did not like have been removed.  And no, he's not happy with them as they stand.  But he knows that if he takes one ideological stance after another during this campaign--lining himself up solidly with idealistic liberals hungry for their shot--he will alienate millions of voters who will worry that an Obama administration would come in and sweep away the American way of life in a dramatic change they're not comfortable with.

He promises change.  And he will deliver change.

But he can't do that if his own party drags him down.

If you prefer Naderism to pragmatism, you are being, well, unrealistic.  It is unrealistic, first of all, to expect him to even get elected in the first place, and it is highly unrealistic to assume that even with a Democratic congress and senate that he will get everything he asks for if he does so along ideological lines.

Not all Democrats are the same as every other Democrat, and plenty of them come from Red states where they're hanging on for their political lives.  They will compromise when asked--as they did on the new G.I. Bill--but when rammed up against the wall, they will bow their necks and stiff out their arms as surely as the worst conservative out there.

Baby-steps, boys and girls.  Baby-steps.

I've read so many blogposts and op-eds calling into question Obama's principles and moral stamina, accusing him of triangulating and calculating and betraying all we hold dear in order to get elected.

"We thought he was different!" they whine.

He is different.  But he is not stupid.

Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold, for example, are fine senators, and they can afford, politically, to stand on principle when it comes to the FISA bill, among other things. 

After all, they aren't running for president. 

Dodd WAS running the last time he filibustered FISA, but he's not running now, why?  He couldn't get the votes.  It is no reflection on the man; I am a big fan of his--BUT, in the pragmatic world of politics, you HAVE to do some calculations on occasion if you truly want to get elected.

You have to make some sacrifices.  You have to back down once in a while.  You have to be willing to compromise at some point.  This is the real world of politics.

Am I saying that you should never show political courage?  Of course not.  But you have to pick your battles.  You have to weigh, in your own soul, which battles mean the most to you and which you would be willing to fight even if it cost you the presidency.

Recently, political enemies have accused Obama of compromising on his promise to end the war.  He is not and he has not.  He is making a realistic assessment of the situation as it exists, but he will not back down on bringing the war to an end, period.

He will back down--for now--on FISA.  He believes that there are safeguards in the new bill to strengthen it.  Critics say they are not strong enough.  Maybe not.  But if he is elected president, then those safeguards will at least be ENFORCED.

This is the real world of politics.  There is always room for idealism and ideals, of course.  But at some point along the line, we've got to GOVERN.

Half of the country does not agree with the liberal point of view.  If we want to get anything done in this government other than curses hurled across the aisle, that has got to be taken into consideration.  THEY are going to have to compromise.  WE are going to have to compromise.  Some on both sides will never be happy, no matter what.

But the vast majority of people in this country WILL. 

And that, my friends, is a democracy.

So grow up.  Forget about protest-votes or withdrawing your support from our candidate. 

Put your real-world glasses on, and vote for the man who really will bring about change, but only if he gets elected first...and then, he'll do it bit by bit.

Pragmatically.

But he WILL do it eventually, and that is what we all want in the long run...isn't it?

Each week I've been doing Monte Carlo simulations of the general election based on data from the Votemaster's www.electoral-vote.com. In addition to a simulation using a 4% margin of error for the polls, for the past few weeks I've been using a wider margin of error,  this week about 12.5%, taken from a regression of 2004 polling data errors compared to the final results. For each margin of error, I've run 10,000 simulated elections. This week's results:
4% Margin of Error
Obama wins 99.5%, averages 308.4 EV
McCain wins 0.5%, averages 229.6 EV
No electoral ties

12.5% Margin of Error
Obama wins 93.4%, averages 307.3 EV
McCain wins 6.2%, averages 230.7 EV
Electoral tie 0.4%

McCain is doing a little better than in the last two weeks because he leads by 7 in the most recent Florida poll, a Rasmussen poll from June 26th. It's not clear that this poll represents a genuine shift - the previous Rasmussen poll actually gave McCain a larger lead (by 8), whereas Obama led in the latest Florida polls from ARG and Quinnipiac. The Votemaster's algorithm (which I use) averages the latest poll with any other polls from other pollsters within 7 days of that most recent poll. Since the ARG and Quinnipiac polls were a little older than that, they're ignored in my analysis, which makes Florida swing from a toss-up to quite likely McCain. If McCain is taking a large lead in Florida, it's certainly good news for him.

Obama's good news for the week is taking a 5 point lead in Montana. Sure, it's only 3 electoral votes, but it's yet another formerly solid red state where Obama may well be competitive. This is the advantage of the 50-state strategy: the more states Obama might be able to pick up, the less dependent he is on winning previously key swing states like Florida, Ohio, or Pennsylvania.

Pollsters may well differ on Georgia: Insider Advantage gives McCain just a 2 point lead this week, and their prior poll in mid-June had McCain up 1. By contrast Rasmussen's last poll gives McCain a 10 point lead, the same lead he had in their poll in early June. I suspect that they're differing in how they weight the samples, and that the race is probably more like a 4-7 point difference that has remained rather stable, rather than swinging between a 10-point McCain lead and a virtual dead-heat. Georgia (and Montana) should be solid McCain country if he's going to win; that he's perhaps in trouble in both is certainly good news for Obama.

Louisiana may be in the same situation, but with different pollsters: here Rasmussen's two last polls were showing McCain up 9 and 11, wheras Opinion Research shows a 16 point McCain lead in their last two polls. Unlike Georgia, no pollster shows this a close race, so these fluctuations don't affect the simulations at all.

Most of the other changes this week favored Obama, although none had a
significant effect on the simulations. Obama increased already large
leads in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. And while McCain still leads in Alabama, the last poll shows a 15 point lead, down from 20-30 point leads in earlier polls.

I'll add the usual caveats: we're still four months away from the elections, and much can and will change. McCain's chances of winning are probably more like 30% than 5% or less, but the current polling certainly still favors Obama. Despite currently losing Florida, he still projects to win by about 80 EVs.

McCain is shaking up his campaign staff, giving more responsibility to Karl Rove protege Steve Schmidt. Current polling data suggest some sort of change is needed.

Greetings friends in Christ.  Throughout my years in the ministry I've had to deal with thousands of old people in my congregation and my community.  

As you might expect - dealing with them is a massive challenge.  They are obstinent, rude, hard of hearing, set in their ways, and - well - I'm just going to come out and say it - they smell funny.  I think it goes without saying that it’s much easier to just ignore them and allow them to burden society with their mere presence than to waste a whole afternoon listening to their mind numbingly boring stories about playing Kanasta or comparing the differences in denture cleaners.  Forgive me for saying it - but I think I’d rather spend eternity in hell than spend an afternoon listening to grandma wax nostalgic about the social structure of Shady Pines nursing home.   I don’t spend good money (out of my inheritance) on that overcrowded disease ridden facility to have to actually participate in her life.  Thank Jesus for that one.   

But friends, the elderly have finally banded together for something other than casino gambling or bingo night at the Elks lodge.  Yes - they have embraced racism with all their hearts (as shriveled up and disease ridden as those hearts may be).  They used to live in an era where you could be proud of whites only drinking fountains and didn’t have to look both ways before dropping the “N” word in public.   Those my friends were what you call the “Good ol’ days”.  No - now we live in an era of political correctness where pussy concepts like tolerance and understanding have turned us into a nation of namby pamby’s.  No wonder there are so many kids choosing the gay lifestyle - they’re indoctrinated with homo ideas like compassion for the struggle of the negro from the time they enter the Godless public education system.  But thanks to the idiot Democrat party nominating a black man for President - good old fashioned racism is making a major comeback.  And not a moment too soon if you ask me!

Now - we all know that the uneducated probably inbred (hey - inbreeding is in the bible so if it’s OK with God, it’s OK with me - how else could we get 6 billion people on earth from Adam and Eve) populations of States like West Virginia, Kentucky, and Texas are highly racist.  I mean - your self esteem has to come from somewhere - and when you live in a trailer, sport one hell of a mullet, and drive a beat up el camino, well, picking on the non racially pure in our society is just something you grow up doing.   But we expect racism from these folks.  We’d be very surprised and appalled if they didn’t burn a cross on their front lawn once in a while.

But the elderly did surprise us this time.   No longer are they just a burden to us - sitting around picking the hair that mysteriously sprouts from every orafice on their withered aged bodies.  No - with Fox News telling them that it’s OK to be racist again - they are a segment of the voting public that can no longer be ignored.  Just because we ignore them at every family holiday and church function for years - we now realize that we need their blind racial hated at the voting booth.  We need their blind racial hated at the bingo halls and the church socials and the emergency rooms, etc.  You see - our society looks down on the inbred hillbilly with a thick southern drawl who uses the word Jigaboo in public.  But if Grandpa calls a black person a watermelon eating pickaninny - we all just let him off with an “aaawww gramps - you racist ol’ coot”  But it’s the letting them off the hook that makes racism seem just a bit more socially acceptable.

And to make it even better - the Republican candidate isn’t just “the non black guy” - he’s an old asian hating racist himself.  Any man who will openly call his wife a cunt, call asians “gooks” and twice vote against giving Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday is someone that the elderly can really get behind.  He hates gays, uses profanity on the senate floor - and is so senile that he changes positions more than he changes his depends undergarments.  In short - a perfect Republican President!  Praise Jesus! 

Here's an open line to positivity guys.  Let's go back to the beginning.  What was the moment you knew, (If you ever did) that Barack was the candidate who you'd vote for?

Mr. Rove lavished praise on his party’s presumptive nominee on Friday.
He spoke glowingly of Mr. McCain and his wife’s decision to adopt a
child from an orphanage in Bangladesh.

Awwww! How sweet. Of course, it t'was not always thus.

We continue to mourn the passing of one of the most ardent supporters of progressive ideas and values in Jesse Helms. Anyways, we really remember Jesse Helms for the most part for his race baiting, opposition to funding for the Arts, opposition to funding for AIDS and his challenges in the 1990's by Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gannt.

This is one of my earliest rememberances of electoral politics and the nastiness in political ads. I also remember being betrayed when world basketball superstar and businessman Michael Jordan failed to endorse the liberal Progressive Black Mayor of Charlotte over the icon of Republican Rural Values and Antagonistic Ideas in Jesse Helms. He simply said , "Republicans Wear Sneakers Too."

I was real interested to find out if anyone replayed this comment or if Jordan every issued an apology, etc. I found this article this morning regarding Jordan learning of the passing of Helms. click here to read

Jordan said,  

"What I said was true - Republicans buy sneakers. And usually full retail. But I've since realized that there are more important things than money, or market share or the Jordan brand."

Jordan was brought back on track when asked if he'd ever met the five-term Senator.

"A number of years back, I was in Raleigh at some function and I was introduced to the Senator. 'Hello Senator Helms, nice to meet you,' I say, offering my hand. He looks up at me, sizes up my hand, and smiles like he's addressing the help back at the plantation: 'Nice to meet you too, Fred.' I'm like, Fred, huh? No, it's Michael, Michael Jordan, the basketball player. He just goes, 'Nice to meet you Fred.' That's one crazy mother (muffled)."

Someone later told Jordan that Helms had a "humorous habit" of calling all black people "Fred."

"Yeah, humorous. Hilarious. It was then that I realized I made a mistake, I should have come out to support the brother. Let him know, if he runs again, give my office a call, we'll hit the campaign up with all the Air Jordans and Jordan brand apparel they need. On the house. It would be my honor to be the official sponsor - along with Gatorade and Hanes -- of Harvey Gantt's next campaign."

About a decade or two late. I reflect upon what might have been had Jordan supported Gannt. Would he have finally ended the career of this homophobic, racist bastion of the Republican Party in the South.

Just my reflections on the Jesse Helms/ Harvey Gannt election that may or may not have changed politics in this country.

Interesting to note that in 2008 we have several celebrities and sports personalities that get involved in the Presidential election.

While the media stir up a dust cloud chasing the tail of the next president’s Iraq strategy story it strikes me that for any candidate to commit to a strategy would be premature if not foolhardy for several reasons. In the first place January 2009 is a long way away, and any strategic plan would have to be loosely arranged to accomodate the changing situation in Iraq for implementation somewhere around March at the very earliest (giving six weeks for the new president to digest unvarnished information and roll out a plan). 

But far more importantly, are not both Senators McCain and Obama working with the same historically thin and stilted information the Bush administration has controlled and released at its whim since before the invasion? Whether it's cherry-picked NIE's, unaccounted-for billions invested in secret bases around the country (how smart will it look to leave those behind now that we've spent all that money on them?), or simply the Bush administration's ongoing efforts to classify and control all information to maximize political gain, why would anyone trust the available Bush-filtered information as a basis for sound policy? Trying to construct good strategy from bad information is foolish. 

Finally, as the Bush administration began to tip its hand last year showing its Stay-in-Iraq-Forever plan, clearly this is a political strategy where Bush's successor will be "stuck carrying Bush's turd", as a TPM commenter so succinctly put it. Given Bush's propensity for controlling information, it would be naive to think that Bush isn't trying to make things look as rosy as possible through the end of his term, hoping to make all blame for failure to achieve VICTORY fall on his successor. A wise policymaker would leave lots of room for adjustment (“recalibration”) for any strategy that hoped to deal with Bush’s stinking legacy in Iraq.

All this talk about strategy pisses me off. Devising an effective strategy in Iraq begins the day Bush leaves office. Wouldn't Obama be better off emphasizing his general principle that the American occupation in Iraq is the problem not the solution? There could be no clearer distinction between him and McCain than that. And rather than be suckered into devising a strategic plan based on Bush's lies and subject himself to the slings and arrows of a thousand armchair patriots, Obama could draw attention to Bush's malfeasance (and McCain's ostensible continuation of such) and pledge that his administration would use of intelligence and information to make good policy, not good politics.

 

Ted Bucklin

 

In the history of America, the concept of an honest politician has seemed somewhat more concept than reality. However, two of our most revered presidents were at least historically remembered for their integrity - George "I cannot tell a lie" Washington and Honest Abe Lincoln.

Our current White House resident can make no such claims - understatement of the year - but his erstwhile successor likes to be known as John "Straight Talk" McCain, with a little "maverick" thrown in. Now, I won't debate Obama's honesty quotient at the moment, other than to say that I believe it soars far above that of Mr. Straight Talk.

There are numerous examples of McCain's duplicity and lack of candor, but one that stands out for me, mostly because it means that you and I will have to suffer through yet another election cycle marred by base, incomprehensibly nasty lies, distortions and smears. So here McCain's promise of a clean, honest campaign, while it was never really believable, was something I really would have liked to have seen.

But it's clear from the recent changes in McCain's campaign leadership, his absolute lack of follow-through on his promise to reign in the 527 groups, and his own campaign's recent response to Gen. Wesley Clark's statements that the McCain strategy is going to be more of the Rovian McSame.

On the issue of Wesley Clark's statements, I think we see a real example that casts shame on McCain. The willful distortion, misrepresentation and vindictive attacks on Clark are incomprehensible coming from a fellow Vietnam veteran and, at least by his own account, loyal soldier such as McCain. To disagree is one thing. To villify and demean a 4-star general, ex-commander of all NATO forces, and a war hero in his own right is a violation of all that McCain claims to stand for.

Clearly, McCain is scared that if Clark's statements - the real ones - were to be believed, it would cut the legs out of his biggest claim of superiority over Obama - namely, that he has the better claim over our security and military matters by virtue of his military service. So it's not too surprising that, like a cornered animal, McCain struck out at Clark with such vehemence. But what is suprising is that this so-called patriot would reduce himself to lie and misrepresent another military officer who has simply stated the truth as he sees it.

Let's face it, despite what the MSM and McCain camp say, Clark is a very credible source, and he has been martyred to McCain's ambition. And I, for one, think McCain should be thoroughly ashamed of having treated someone of Clark's accomplishments in this way. He should apologize immediately if he wants to continue to have any moral stand. But, alas, morality is no longer McCain's strategy, if it ever was, and we're in for a very ugly campaign.

Get out your barf bags.It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Much of what we see on the news mirrors what we see
everywhere on television. They're
playing procedural police dramas, home improvement shows and
"reality-based" contests all day on their network.
We will, too.

They're reporting that Obama is a lying, weaselly flip-flopper on their network. We will, too.

And this mirrors American culture in general- a world filled with WalMarts, fast-food and really loud movies with lots of explosions and/or fart jokes.

Ecologist Gordian Orians coined the term "Homogecene" to describe the human-driven trend toward monoculture, toward a landscape where everything looks exactly the same. He was talking about the loss of biological diversity, but we humans have a general lack of tolerance for any kind of real diversity, biological or cultural. Change sucks.

Change is scary. Scary sells, but only if framed as scary. McCain does not represent change. There’s no story there. You and I may see McCain as scary, but that’s scary in the future, like Global Warming. Obama is scary now like Cubans drilling for our oil off Key West.

The Media reports on the race between Obama and McCain as if it were WWF Smack-down because that model fits what they believe their main demographic is (18-35 males). But they also over-report the Obama negatives, because like West Nile virus and a Bird Flu they can play up scary. Scary gets us into a different demographic ballpark. Top this off with a generous helping of Rupert Murdock and Sun Myung Moon who are genuinely trying to drive opinion is a specific direction.

We can’t fight the “McCain as scrappy, maverick underdog” sport metaphors in the press as long as he remains behind in the polls. The press loved him in 2000, because he was a scrappy loser and they’ve been given no immediate reasons to re-frame the mythos.

The only real tack left to us is to make McCain look scarier in the now than Obama and we are obliged to do it in the non-corporate press loudly enough that appears to be homogenous opinion, because the press only reports on that which appears to be monocultural.

Corporate media will not pick up a story just because it’s news. It has to be old news.

Amy Goodman: It's not the man, it's the movement

Amy Goodman  —  7/03/2008 5:37 am

I was on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado this week when Newsweek's Jonathan Alter asked me, "Is Obama a sellout?" The question isn't whether he is a sellout or not -- it's about what demands are made by grass-roots social movements of those who would represent them.

The question is, Who are these candidates responding to, answering to? Richard Nixon's campaign strategy was to run in the primaries to the right, then move to the center in the general election. Bill Clinton's strategy was called "triangulation," navigating to a political "third way" to please moderates and undecided voters. This past week, Barack Obama has made some signal policy changes that suggest he might be doing something similar. Will it work for him?

Take the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, for example. A Dec. 17, 2007, press release from Obama's Senate office read: "Senator Obama unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies and has cosponsored Senator Dodd's efforts to remove that provision from the FISA bill. Granting such immunity undermines the constitutional protections Americans trust the Congress to protect. Senator Obama supports a filibuster of this bill, and strongly urges others to do the same." Six months later, he supports immunity for the companies that spied on Americans.

I asked Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., about Obama's position on the FISA bill. He told me: "Wrong vote. Regrettable. Many Democrats will do this. We should be standing up for the Constitution. When Senator Obama is president, he will, I'm sure, work to fix some of this, but it's going to be a lot easier to prevent it now than to try to fix it later."

Feingold and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., are planning on filibustering the bill. It will take 60 senators to overcome their filibuster. It looks like Obama will be one of them. Disappointment with Obama's FISA position is not limited to his senatorial colleagues. On Obama's own campaign Web site, bloggers are voicing strident opposition to Obama's FISA position. At the time of this writing, an online group on Obama's site had more than 10,000 members and was growing fast. The group's profile reads: "Senator Obama -- we are a proud group of your supporters who believe in your call for hope and a new kind of politics. Please reject the politics of fear on national security, vote against this bill and lead other Democrats to do the same!"

Then there were the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on gun control and the death penalty. Obama supported the court in overturning the 32-year-old ban on handguns in the nation's violence-ridden capital. It's the court's most significant ruling on the Second Amendment in nearly 70 years. And in a blow to death-penalty opponents, Obama disagreed with the high court's prohibiting execution of those who were found guilty of raping children.

In a Jan. 21, 2008, primary debate, Obama called the North American Free Trade Agreement "a mistake" and "an enormous problem." He recently told Fortune magazine, "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified ... my core position has never changed ... I've always been a proponent of free trade." This, after the primary-campaign scandal of the alleged meeting between Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee and a member of the Canadian consulate. A Canadian memo describing the meeting suggested Obama was generally satisfied with NAFTA. Goolsbee described the accounts as inaccurate. Now people are beginning to question Obama's genuine opposition to NAFTA and "free trade."

Then there is the floating of potential vice-presidential candidates. Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post was on the Aspen panel and noted that he has been receiving e-mails from gay men who angrily oppose former Sen. Sam Nunn as an Obama running mate. They can't forget Nunn's key role in shaping "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which prohibited gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military. The e-mails trickled up, prompting the writing of an influential Capehart column, "Don't Ask Nunn."

It may be the strategy of the Obama campaign to run to the middle, to attract the independents, the undecided. But he should look carefully at the lessons of the 2004 Kerry campaign. John Kerry made similar calculations, not wanting to appear weak on the war in Iraq. Uninspired, people stayed home. There are millions who care about the issues from which Obama is distancing himself, from FISA to gun control to gay rights to free trade to the death penalty. Rather than staying home, they should recall the words of Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without a demand."

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations, including WYOU cable access TV and WORT radio here. You can read her podcast at captimes.com.

There was a show on TV for many years called "To Tell the Truth." Contestants with fascinating personal stories appeared with two impostors. A panel of celebrities questioned the three people to guess who was the real contestant. The show always concluded with host prompting "Will the real (NAME HERE) please stand up."

And so it is, these days, with Sen. Obama. I am a staunch supporter of his, but I admit to the same unease that other TPM posters have expressed about Obama's moves to a centrist position.

For what it's worth, here's my take:

I like the Barack Obama who was daring and willing to lead by refreshing candor and foresight. I like the candidate who spoke of lofty goals and shared sacrifices and uncompromising principles.

The centrist Obama doesn't inspire me so much. He's moved out of political expediency to positions that aren't so daring, lofty or uncompromising. And he's bogged down in the minutiae, so his speeches don't soar as often as they used to.

No, telecom immunity doesn't make me happy. It probably doesn't sit well for any of us here, though we might understand the box he's in. But on other issues that don't polarize us as much, Obama has also demonstrated a willingness to soften his position more than I would like to see. It's not that I even necessarily disagree with the refinements of his positions. It's just that I sense him moving too much — fairly or unfairly, he's gaining a reputation as a flip-flopper.

From backing off an "undivided Jerusalem" to his new willingness to approve capital punishment to numerous lesser issues, Obama is abandoning the moral high ground in favor of the broad field of battle.

On the other hand, the press has been remarkably dense in its inability to distinguish between a flip-flop and, for instance, Obama "refining" his plans for Iraq. To refine is to enhance, to smooth out, to perfect. No flip-flop there.

But putting aside the reasons for or against any perceptible shift in policy positions, whether those shifts are real or trumped up by a voracious press, there is something less enthralling about the Obama campaigning today. I don't feel as energized as I once did.

Others feel that way, too. So while moving to the center may be necessary now, there has to be a point where it stops and Obama's positions become immutable. Not to say that he should become doctrinaire or absolutist, but that he should propel his positions, not retreat from them.

I like the Obama that stood for change we can believe in. And I would ask that Obama to please stand up again.

We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude (but not money) to BMW Direct. Any organization that dedicates itself to bilking right-wing idiots with loose checkbooks is performing a major patriotic service and should be lauded.
What they've done is not much different from what's done by other so-called conservative fundraisers, but they've accomplished it without adding to the campaign clamor.

This short essay can be viewed as a codicil to Chronospark's excellent reflection on the role of absolutist thinking on the two fringes of the political spectrum.

Our candidate has come under a lot of criticism from disappointed civil libertarians for his stance on the revised FISA legislation as well as other so-called "moves to the center".

There is a charge floating about that his candidacy is buoyed by a species of irrational enthusiasm--a political counterpart to religious messianism, and that these "centrists" positions that Obama has adopted, put the lie to the hyper-idealist image that many of his supporters have of him.

Both the charges and the images are misleading and actually damage the national celebration of this remarkable candidacy.

The German idealists of the nineteenth century made the remarkable equation: Enthusiasm is Beauty.  There was, they believed, a fundamental virtue in the very quality of enthusiasm.  In a sense, they would have rejected the idea that irrationality was a pejorative when applied to enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm was by its very nature, pre-rational, a direct sensing of, and reaction to, Nature.

Barack Obama generates a tremendous outpouring of this enthusiasm.  But it is not because, he himself, is somehow a revolutionary or a zealot or a fanatic or what would be slightingly called an enthusiast,

No it is because he is both principled and practical, an almost perfect balance of idealism and realism, that he so stirs people's approval, generates such fervor in his supporters.

And he has always been thus and his recent positions should surprise no one.

We are enthusiastic about this candidacy in many ways, but not irrationally.  It is a consequence of  the candidate's strengths of principle, pragmatism, ideals, and compromise that stir us even if we don't articulate to ourselves exactly why we are so stirred.

Practical political action without ideals is amoral, but ideals without practical political actualization are idle theories to refashion Kant's phrase.

Principled pragmatism as practiced by our candidate is the realization of the truth of the Kantean dictum: ideals must be grounded in practical political expression and in a democracy as opposed to an autocracy such an expression must of necessity be a compromise of the good and the possible.

And to those absolutists who despise the very thought of compromise and bring up the pejorative descriptor compromising-- we have just gone through 8 years of uncompromising leadership and see what a pass that brought us to.

The discourse of absolutism that Chronospark so ably dissected, leads to an impasse; to exclusion of the political other. Red states and Blue states

The open horizon is in the path of dialogue and inclusion.

Barack Obama is the candidate of the open horizon and yes we are very enthusiastic about his rise to the highest office.

Take another look at Obama's past,  connect it with the present and see what we can look forward to. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/03/obama-weakened-nuclear-sa_n_84651.html

Bob Herbert writing in today's New York Times...

"David
Boren, a former U.S. senator who is now president of the University of
Oklahoma, has written a short book that he called, “A Letter to
America.”

"His sense of alarm
in the opening paragraph could not have been clearer. “The country we
love is in trouble,” he said. “In truth, we are in grave danger of
declining as a nation. If we do not act quickly, that decline will
become dramatic."

"I
couldn't agree more. The symbols of patriotism — bumper stickers and
those flags the size of baseball fields — have taken the place of the
hard work and sacrifice required to keep a great nation great.”

"As
Al Gore reminds us, this is the first time in American history that
“the executive branch of the government has not only condoned but
actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly
involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by Gen.
George Washington during the Revolutionary War.”

"There
are signs galore of the nation’s turn for the worse. We are fighting a
debilitating war in Iraq without any idea of how to pay for it — or how
to end it. No one has any real idea about how to cope with the
devastating energy crisis, or how to turn the economy around."

"We
can build spectacular new stadiums for football and baseball teams (the
Yanks, the Mets, the Giants and the Jets are all getting ready to move
into staggeringly expensive new homes) but we can’t rebuild New Orleans
or reconstruct the World Trade Center site destroyed almost seven years
ago."

"Patriotism has its place. But waving a flag is never a good substitute for serious thought and rolling up one’s sleeves."

Herbert
has really hit the nail on the head. The centerpiece of Bush &
Co.'s master plan to strip away the rights and freedoms that we
Americans have enjoyed since the Constitution became the law of the
land has been the use of distraction, misdirection, fear-mongering, and
the occasional sop like $600 "incentive checks".

And
with the news this week that many of Karl Rove's chief acolytes have
signed on with the McCain campaign, it means that those policies will
remain in force in a McCain administration.

While
thousands of young men and women were being killed or physically and
mentally maimed for life, while the economy was being driven into the
ground, while gas prices and the cost of food were soaring, while the
Constitution was being slowly negated, while the powers of the imperial
presidency were growing exponentially, we allowed ourselves to be
bamboozled and flimflammed by these masters of deceit.

And
just how effective have these ploys been? The news story last week that
the major American oil companies have been awarded no-bid oil contracts
in Iraq thereby confirming the long-held belief by most Americans that
it was always about the oil could not muster the faintest flicker of
outrage.

And McCain is able to draw upon the dual forces that make these deceptions possible.

The
first is the lingering images of 9/11/2001 which have been seared into
our collective memory. The real "shock and awe" of that day coupled
with Karl Rove's extremely effective co-opting of that catastrophe as a
political tool keeps the fear of another attack and terrorism in
general alive and well even today.This allows McCain to continue to
insert that lingering fear into his political bio and create the
illusion of being the only one who can keep the fight alive until
"victory" is achieved. As I have noted in previous posts, his entire
rhetorical bag of tricks always includes reference to his military and
war experience. (And he never
lets us forget the POW part.) This is one reason why he seems to
continue to poll so closely to Obama. And more importantly, this allows
him to continue his forceful support for an extremely unpopular war and
the delusional quest for ultimate victory. He runs contrary to every
issue noted above. But yet there he is.

And it is the second
factor which is what makes the first one work. And that is the tone of
reverence and respect with which the so-called mainstream media treats
McCain. They have bought into his self-manufactured image of the
"maverick", the guy who can't be bought, the guy who has the guts to go
against his own party, the anti-politician politician. But the fact is
that the mainstream media are as gullible as the Vegas audience at a
David Copperfield performance. They ooh and aah over every thing he
does forgetting all the while that the reality is that it's just smoke
and mirrors.

And along with the smoke and mirrors, he has rolled
out the promise of more bread and circuses which Bush & Co. have
used so effectively.

We cannot allow them to win again.

So yesterday, I go to the mailbox. Nothing inside. Nothing but a folded flier on white paper, badly reproduced, that somebody -- not the mailman -- had stuffed inside.

The flier is entitled "The Holocaust Controversy, The Case for Open Debate," and strikes a tone of reasonable discussion and sincere academic inquiry. It provides links to three websites, which I will not republish here. But of course, the weasel who stuffed it into my mailbox didn't include his name.

I hate Nazis. I hate neo-Nazis. I hate Nazis posing as scholars. I hate the KKK. And I won't weep over Jesse Helms.

Desi. 
Where are you? What are you doing? Are you making a new movie/pic? It's lonely here without you. Can you show yourself--as chimp. or id, or fragmented particles?

Posters: If you miss Des, rec this piece. You don't even have to comment. If you really miss him, ask him to come home.
Come on chimpo. It's a zoo here without you.
Cypher

The greatest scam ever perpetrated against the American taxpayer
(bigger even than the global warming hoax) is the idea that there is an
energy shortage in this country. We have enough coal to meet our
demands for at least a thousand years, enough uranium to meet all of
our electrical needs for even longer, and enough oil in the gulf,
offshore, in ANWR,
and in oil shale to eliminate any need for middle eastern oil imports
for many decades. We have abundant supplies of energy. Unfortunately,
we also have an abundant supply of idiots, and many of them are in
Congress. The Democratic party (where most of the idiots congregate) is
completely subservient to the environmental extremist lobby. So, they
prevent us from drilling for oil. They block the construction of
refineries. They prohibit the use of coal, and oppose building nuclear
plants. They even oppose hydroelectric power, the cleanest energy
source possible. The only sources of energy they support are those that
don't exist, aren't cost effective, and can't meet out needs. Which is
really the point, they don't want to meet our needs. They want us to do
with less, to live like the third world. There is no shortage of energy
in this country, just a shortage of intelligence.

There has been a lot of talk about how the Press loves McCain and as evidence we all often site the latest example of how they simply parrot McCain's talking points about Obama to prove their love for him.  I'm not sure that this is actually the root cause and if I'm right the real reason us much uglier for the health of our little democracy here.

As soon as some of the polls starting showing a decent lead for Obama the press in general knew that if this road continues the general election is going to be hard to cover since it is going to be a blowout.  So they start doing what they did for a period of time during the Dem Primary race and that's give the candidate that is down a free pass and a huge microphone.   They are giving McCain's camp a chance to lead the news of the day nearly every day and then not holding them account for the loose use of facts they are using in their spin.

The media doesn't just like a horser ace, but rather they need one for their own financial gains.  The ratings during the Dem Primary season were huge for the political news shows and since then there has been a fall off of engagement that they are desparate to get back.  So they will fill the news with "is Barack in trouble" stories knowing full well that there is little to nothing of importance in the story they are spending this time covering.

05 Apr 2007

Dear Diary,

Today I became a Rovian troll. Yes, I who have voted for every Dem presidential candidate since Hubert Humphrey, including the DLC's Bill Clinton and the "radical" George McGovern, have decided that I cannot vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton. She's just too willing to support horrible policies for political gain, too likely to lurch to the right if she thinks it'll get her elected. Since she is sure to become the Dem candidate, there is no choice for me but to vote for someone I actually consider honest and progressive, and that's not Hillary.

Everyone at TPM says this makes me a selfish, stubborn traitor. What can I do? I want them to like me, but I just CAN'T vote for her.

Tankard

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

06 Feb 2008

Dear Diary,

I may not have to become a complete Republican after all! Yesterday's Super Tuesday primaries show that Sen. Clinton may not be as "inevitable" as the MSM would have us think.

Sen. Obama looks like a capable, sincere politician, and best of all, it seems he is even slightly left of center! He's definitely opposed to the war! He has said that he would invade Pakistan without Congressional approval and I can't see this policy as anything but unconstitutional, but I'm thinking he'll back off that misguided statement, so I think I will support him.

Does this make me a flip-flopper? The TPMers say that I was a Dem, then a Rep, now a Dem again, after all. Well, I guess being a flip-flopper is better than being a traitor, and I do want those people to like me.

Tankard

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

22 Apr 2008

Dear Diary,

I'm depressed. Now, a lot of people at TPM say that I've been hypnotised and have become an Obamabot, a Kool-Aid drinker, a stubborn, mindless zombie. Honestly, I can't think what I can do to make them like me.

I also can't see how I could be a flip-flopper and a stubborn ideologue at the same time, but those people at TPM are very smart so I guess there's a lot about politics I just don't understand.

How to make myself likable, dear Diary, and get out of this emotional funk?????

Tankard

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

1 Jul 2008

Dear Diary,

This is really confusing. Let me tell you what's happening. It seems that Sen. Obama is not as eager to support the Constitution as I thought. In addition to the Pakistan thing and supporting a FISA bill that is designed to cover-up criminal behavior and make it easier for the Feds to intrude on our privacy, the Senator is now backing Bush's unconstitutional support of religion -- wants to expand it even!

Here's my question, dear Diary: I've been a ideologue, a flip-flopper, then an ideologue again. Do I dare become a flip-flopper again by withdrawing my support for Sen. Obama?

Will the TPMers like me if I change, or if I stay? I just don't know what to do!

Tankard

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

5 Jul 2008

Dear Diary,

I am such a political dope and so terribly, terribly dumb! Those really astute people at TPM tell me that now I'm an ideologue again! How can this be, diary? Every few days, I change from being way too wishy-washy -- a traitor, even -- to being way too rigid and stubborn! How can I just be consistent about whether I have no backbone or too much?

It's going to be really, really hard to do this but I just HAVE to find a way to fix my inconsisency so that all those nice, smart people at TPM will like me. This is a terrible character flaw I have, but I know I can fix it. I know I can! I have to so that they'll like me!

Tankard

 

I want to see more posts start, "I s