I've read many comments on the blogs by people saying that there's been too much eulogizing of Tim Russert and too much coverage of his death in the media.  My Dad died of pancreatic cancer on Christmas Eve, 2006.  Believe it or not, no one in my family finds that depressing.  Of course, there wasn't any media coverage.  Dad lived a life full of goodness; but, he was a college professor, not a celebrity.  He was a WWII vet, modest about himself like Big Russ, hard-working, crazy about my Mom, providing all of us with the basic necessities but nothing luxurious. Dad didn't publish a lot of research or make a big name for himself in academia; but, he helped a lot of graduate students complete their doctorates by helping them with research design, statistics, and writing skills.  Many of these students were from places like China and Iran.  Dad paid cash for the cars he bought.  He never had a balance on a credit card past the due date; he seldom used them at all except when traveling.  He brought us up in Athens, Georgia in the 50's and 60's to be Democrats and not to be prejudiced about blacks. I used to get into yelling matches with him about the Vietnam War. The only time he ever voted GOP was Nixon's second term (against McGovern) and he vowed never to make that mistake again.  I never knew Dad to tell a lie. He felt that society should accept gay people (and none of his 3 kids are gay).  He was an agnostic most of his life. In his final 10 years or so, he started going to church with my Mom, a lifelong Methodist.  I’m not sure if he actually believed what Christians are supposed to believe; but, I know it made Mom happy.

One major difference between Dad and a guy like Tim Russert is that Russert was rich and famous. Russert worked as a Beltway reporter, so he had to be an insider there to get access to the newsmakers.  He turned Meet the Press into a $50M profit maker and his salary was $5M annually.  I'd say he earned it. Russert was an old-fashioned, All-American fellow.  Some of us probably think that's corny, uncool.  Some feel that he didn’t do enough to call Bush and Cheney on their phony run-up to the invasion of Iraq.  He had lots of conservatives on Meet The Press; and, he was eulogized today by Hannity on "Faux News." But he liked Chuck Berry.  He not only advocated good values such as caring about ones family and working hard to achieve excellence, he lived by them. It's a free country and it’s OK for people to express their distaste for him or to point out his failures as a journalist.  His life was no more valuable than that of an Iraqi or anyone else’s.  But in the humble opinion of this writer, Tim Russert’s life is worth examining.  Some of us find the heavy coverage helpful and interesting.  I know a lot more about Russert, good and bad but mostly good, than I did three days ago.  We can't examine the lives of every person who lives and dies; but, I'm in favor of examining the lives of well-known people who die so that we may learn something from them, good or bad.  If you could examine the life of my Dad, you would learn a lot.

The journalism community and all of us who consume healthy news are saddened by the loss of one of the great television reporters of our era. Barack Obama said it beautifully, "I am grief-stricken at the loss and my thoughts and prayers go out to his family. Many of us will remember how Tim called the Democratic primary race for Obama after Keith Olbermann asked him, "Did it just end tonight?" and Tim answered, "We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be and no one's going to dispute it, Keith." I was watching with Yohance and we both laughed, threw back out beers, and bumped fists. Watching the general election coverage with Tim missing will be sad, even as we celebrate a landmark victory and turn the page on the Bush years. Tim will be sorely missed as a family man, a passionate political junkie, and a journalist of the old school who analyzed with minimal spin and called it as he saw it. A link to Russert calling the race is here.

Earlier today, I posted a poll on Daily Kos asking supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton how her concession speech on Saturday has affected their voting intentions for the Fall general election for POTUS. The number of responses was disappointingly low, perhaps because supporters of Sen. Clinton are still wary of Daily Kos, perhaps because I posted in on Sunday afternoon. If you would like to add your vote, here's the link. The poll is accompanied by a salute to Sen. Clinton from the standpoint of an Obama supporter who came to respect her more as the race to become the nominee ended and she accepted the outcome. Thanks for your interest and best wishes to Sen. Clinton and her loyal friends.

Cross-posted on Daily Kos.

WARNING:  IF YOU ARE TIRED OF UNITY TICKET DIARIES, AVOID SELF-SCRUTINY AND/OR HATE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS, YOU MAY WISH TO SKIP THIS ONE, the fourth and last in a <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/29/8275/68312/82/524684">series</a> of diaries exploring attitudes of voters supporting one of the Democratic primary candidates, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/30/133358/118/872/524927">Barack Obama</a> or <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/31/101313/607/1015/525793">Hillary Clinton</a>, toward a “unity ticket” of Obama for POTUS and Clinton for VP.  Unscientific polls of DKos readers were taken at a time of maximum discord between camps, just ahead of Saturday’s meeting of the RBC.

The results show similarities between Obama and Clinton supporters on the issue of a unity ticket.  Additionally, the intense emotional reactions of many commenters to these diaries provide a window into the dark side of idealistic movements.

The author is a 56 yr old, lifelong Democratic voter and involved supporter of Obama who has been quite disgusted with Clinton's campaign.  He is a clinical psychologist by day, writer and Strat Cat by night.

Statistical results of polls.  Voters included 589 DKos readers who prefer Obama and 176 DKos readers supporting Clinton for President.  Summarizing the major results:

  Clinton         Obama
  supporters     supporters

   75%                82%  overall would vote for the unity ticket
   46              69    overall would vote unity reluctantly   
   29              13    overall would vote unity happily     
     7             3.4    would vote third party          
     5             1.6    would vote for McCain        
   13              13    would boycott the election                   

Of only those voting for the unity ticket

   61%    vs       84    would do so with reluctance
                                
   39     vs       16    would do so enthusiastically


Similar percentages of Clinton (75) and Obama voters (82) currently would vote for the unity ticket.  However, the percentages of enthusiastic vs reluctant supporters differs- 39% of the Clinton voters who support the ticket were enthusiastic vs only 16 % of Obama unity voters. Equal percentages of both camps (13%) would boycott the election rather than vote unity.  However, the percentage of Clinton supporters (7%) who would vote third party was twice as high as for Obama defectors (3.4%); and, the percentage among Clintonistas who would vote for McCain (5%) was 3 times as high as Obama GOP defectors (1.6%).

The results (while unscientific) are fairly positive as far as the beneficial effects of a unity ticket on GE votes for Obama.  If only 18% of Obama partisans (Kossacks) would abandon the ticket with Clinton added, and 75% of Clintonistas would vote for it in the GE, the net result would be beneficial.  I believe the Obama results are valid because DKos readers are informed and very partisan: A scientific sample taken in the general population would probably be no more negative toward HRC.  However, the Clinton sample is questionable in that it's hard to say who the Clinton people that read DKos these days are.  They are probably informed, well educated, "elite" progressives with few working class, white, Appalachian men.  Comments from Clinton supporters on this issue would be appreciated. 

Finally, the diaries were written with clear understanding of the Obama partisan perspective but in a manner that challenged Barack loyalists to consider their own behavior and attitudes.  Followers of idealistic movements are prone to project negatives onto those they perceive as against them and use this to justify actions much like those of their objects of scorn ("But when you want money for people with minds that hate/All I can tell you is brother you have to wait" John Lennon). In this regard, I was variously informed by some readers that I am a troll, a Clinton supporter, self-righteous, a meddler, ridiculous, afraid to fight, and that I should consider joining the GOP because I seem to like telling others how to live and that's what Republicans do. I may be self-righteous, meddling, and ridiculous, but...

Yesterday afternoon, a number of us on Daily Kos had <a href="fun'>http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/8/135556/3349/729/511849">fun goofing off and avoiding productive activities by free associating titles and lyrics</a> of songs that reflected our current mental status.  For those who missed out on the fun or would like to keep it going, like that beach ball that bounces around the crowd at an arena concert, here's a new riff for you:

What title or lyrics are most appropriate for the political stars of the day, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, W, Dick, Condy or whomever?

For example, Chelsea might be singing the old Cheap Trick hit,  <a href="Surrenderhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD8ymBR2Ufo"><em><strong>Surrender</strong></em></a>
to Bill and Hillary.

<blockquote>Mommy's all right
Daddy's all right
They just seem a little weird
Surrender, surrender,
But don't give yourself away...</blockquote>

I'm sure you can come up with something more creative than that one.  Or can you?

Cross-posted at Daily Kos

Just before 10PM last night I was standing in a crowd of people at the Women’s Club in downtown Baton Rouge, Don Cazayoux’s election headquarters, anxiously watching election returns from the Louisiana Secretary of State’s web site being projected onto a screen.  The print was hard to read but a friend standing next to me confirmed that arch-conservative Woody Jenkins was holding on to a slim lead with only 25 of 314 precincts in East Baton Rouge Parish left to report.  On a day where turnout was an anemic 23%, Jenkins had built his lead early on the strength of hardcore support in his base in rural Livingston Parish and held on even as results from Baton Rouge slowly came in. 

My friend, Frank, a school psychologist in Point Coupee Parish where Don’s wife Cherie Cazayoux is a teacher and director of individual plans for special students, had informed me earlier that the race would be called in time for the 10PM news.  At 9:51 new numbers flashed up and the crowd roared:  with only 5 precincts left to report Don was up by 2,000 votes!  Cazayoux had led a centrist coalition of moderate working class Democrats, educated progressives, and urban black voters to a victory that pried our district out of the cold dead hands of the GOP after 35 years of right wing dominance.  My daughter, Jenny, and wife, Mary Lou, who had worked the phones as Cazayoux volunteers, were elated.

What are the implications of the win?  The special election was to fill the few remaining months of a seat vacated by Republican Richard Baker who quite early to take a job as a hedge fund lobbyist.  Congressman Cazayoux will have to do it all over again in the Fall against another set of contenders including a black liberal and another GOP ideologue on the extreme right.  For the time being, the Louisiana Congressional delegation has a reduced GOP majority (4-3 instead of 5-2).  But the greatest impact of the Democratic victory is on the current presidential race.  A withering volley of attack ads funded by Freedom’s Watch and their regressive ilk attempted to paint the socially conservative Cazayoux, a former prosecutor and Catholic family man, as a tax-and-spend liberal, a stand-in for Barack Obama who would sell his soul to Nancy Pelosi.  On election day, mysterious robocalls went out to black voters encouraging them to teach the white Democrat a lesson by staying home and waiting to vote for their homie in the Fall.  And still, Don won.  The coalition that elected Kip Holden as Baton Rouge’s first African-American mayor held up.   Invoking Obama and Pelosi and using every nasty tactic in Karl Rove’s playbook failed and a solid member of the American mainstream is the newest US Congressman.  This result bodes ill for those hoping to hang on to their fading power by trashing decent people in swing states and districts.  Today, David Axelrod is smiling.

On May 3, voters in Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District can help America awaken from eight nightmarish years of Republican lunacy posing as leadership.  Down here in the parishes along the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge, Democrat Don Cazayoux is in a runoff against ultra-rightwing Republican Woody Jenkins, a quintessential George W. Bush clone, for a seat that has been held by Republican Richard Baker for 21 years (1987-2008).

Don and his wife of 21 years, Cherie, are great people.  My wife, Mary Lou Kelley, and I have known Don since he was a grad student in Psychology at LSU where Mary Lou is a professor.  After earning a Masters degree, Don enrolled in Georgetown University Law School.  Upon graduation, he joined a law firm in Baton Rouge and later became a prosecutor in his hometown of New Roads, LA (Pointe Coupee Parish).  He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1999.  Don has established himself as a strong advocate for children with a signature issue being protection from Internet sexual predators.  Because of his outstanding personal qualities, moderate politics, his background in criminal prosecution, and his strong advocacy for children and families, Don is a very strong candidate in a diverse but right-leaning district.  His election to Congress would be a great victory for the Democratic Party and would help the next President, whether it’s Barack Obama or  Hillary Clinton, build on the Democratic majority in Congress. 

To give you an idea of the importance of this race, twice last night on local television I saw an attack ad against Don from Freedom’s Watch, a neocon 501c4 lobbying group whose core issue is supporting the disastrous US invasion and occupation of Iraq.  It is widely argued that Freedom's Watch has the  ultimate goal of a US invasion of Iran!  Evidence quickly surfaced suggesting that this ad was illegally coordinated by the NRCC,

All Democrats and progressive independents in a position to help Don Cazayoux win this runoff should do so.  As a supporter of Barack Obama, I believe it would give a strong boost to Sen. Obama if those of us in the Louisiana Obama network work to mobilize our friends to get out and vote for Don Cazayoux on May 3. However, supporters of Sen. Clinton have the same opportunity to help their candidate now and in the event that she wins the Presidency.  This is a great opportunity for all of us to work toward a common goal of the greatest import.  I would also like to mention that the Cazayoux campaign is looking for college students to be paid part-time campaign workers. This could be a good opportunity for some of you. You may email Don's campaign through his web portal (see above).  Feel free to contact me to discuss ways to coordinate our efforts.

All the best,

Owen

Cynicism and the Modern Art of Politics:
Viewing the 2008 Presidential race through
the lens of La Rochefoucauld

Owen Scott, Ph.D.

With this post, I launch a series devoted to discussing Rochefoucauld’s famous maxims in the context of the current race for the Presidency of the USA. What does a thin book by a seventeenth century French nobleman have to teach us about presidential politics? Possibly quite a lot.

In a letter to liberal theologian Dr. Richard Price arguing for a system of government with built in checks and balances against abuses of power, John Adams quoted one of Rochefoucauld’s assertions:

The ambitious deceive themselves, when they propose an end to their ambition; for that end, when attained, becomes a means.

From his own time to the present, Rochefoucauld has been controversial, some believing his insights provide invaluable training in the hidden realities of power and ambition, others claiming that by denigrating much of what we put forward as virtue, he has done humanity a disservice.  Clearly John Adams found them meritorious enough during his time, some 100 years after they first appeared, to offer them in support for his arguments about government.

Such a concise work, just 504 maxims in the 1871 translation by Bund and Friswell, most of them bite-sized and easily digested, how could we, the denizens of a world constructed of sound bites and talking points, fail to find the maxims well-suited to our purposes? If Rochefoucauld’s arrows of wisdom are on target, they should still hit the mark today.  But was Rochefoucauld right? Do his maxims contain wisdom that can reach across time to make sense of the relentless back and forth volleys of spin, plays and talking points?

Answering this requires knowledge, not of his life, times, and circumstances, but of our own.  To facilitate a debate on the truth and universality of Rochefoucauld’s assertions, each installment will present one or two maxims along with a significant and widely-reported event from the current race, something the blog reader will certainly know about.  The exploration will be done through posing questions, suggesting some answers, and inviting interested readers to fight it out in their comments.  Of course, using suitable aphorisms by your favorite writers to argue your position is strongly encouraged here. Ready to give it a try?  

Here are the first two maxims:

1.--What we term virtue is often but a mass of various actions and divers interests, which fortune, or our own industry, manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste.”

2.--Self-love is the greatest of flatterers.”

Immediately upon reading just the first two maxims, a central question arises.  Is Rochefoucauld too cynical?  Of course, politics is a land populated by notorious cynics.  No politician can do anything without someone else, often someone with an elected office, a campaign, or a byline, saying the motivation was corrupt.  Cynical followers follow on the blogs with endless repetition of the cynical take.

Virtue is what we see but what is behind the appearance of virtue?  In maxim 1 Rochefoucauld gives us a sign that he is not an absolute cynic; what appears to be virtue “is not always” the result of the true virtue.

Application 1.  Obama’s speech on race: Virtue or necessity?

On March 18, 2008 Barack Obama delivered a speech that addressed his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the context of issues of race in America.  The impetus for the speech clearly was the controversy that had sprung up in the previous days regarding statements made by his former pastor in sermons delivered at Obama’s home church.  Sen. Obama needed to do something to quiet this storm that threatened his run at the Democratic nomination and the speech he gave accomplished that purpose, at least for the time being.  But, did we see true virtue in Barack Obama?

Janny Scott wrote “the speech was… hopeful, patriotic, quintessentially American — delivered against a blue backdrop and a phalanx of stars and stripes. Mr. Obama invoked the fundamental values of equality of opportunity, fairness, social justice. He confronted race head-on, then reached beyond it to talk sympathetically about the experiences of the white working class and the plight of workers stripped of jobs and pensions.”

If not virtue, what?   Clay Waters’ view typifies the cynical response.

“Barack Obama's Philadelphia speech Tuesday was a transparent attempt to quell the controversy over his ties to fiery anti-American minister Jeremiah Wright. But the New York Times, along with the rest of the media, portrayed the speech just the way the Obama camp would have wanted -- as a transcendent address on race in America, past, present and future, with Obama's long connection to Wright a secondary matter.”

And what is the truth here?  How can we tell whether Obama spoke from virtue or just clever expediency?  Does the lens of Rochefoucauld help us see the problem more clearly?

 Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld and Prince de Marcillac (1613-1680), is considered France’s greatest and perhaps history’s best writer of maxims. Human beings by necessity over-simplify a complex reality; and, some have argued that the corpus of writing left by Rochefoucauld is merely a one-note song whose essence boils down to this: Everything we do is driven by self-love. Although Rochefoucauld’s notoriety rests upon his ability to capture key elements of human life in sharply focused words, reducing his message to one idea is as unsatisfactory as reducing Hillary Clinton to “the mother of all liars,“ Barack Obama to “an empty suit,” or John McCain to “a cranky old man.” Certainly when Rochefoucauld looked for the roots of some branch of human behavior, often he found it to stem from self-love; but, his brilliantly distilled observations of human social psychology are more justly characterized as studies in the tension between the grand and fateful arena of outward actions and appearances and those internal realities of thought and feeling known, if at all, only to the actors in the game. Moreover, considering only one or a few maxims in isolation fails to show the interrelatedness of the strands in Rochefoucauld’s tapestry. His collected Maxims form a body.

Reading Maxims is like opening a box in the attic and finding it full of diamonds, each articulated from a lump of coal.  Every sentence is the expression of a brilliant mind honed by a lifetime of carefully watching himself and others on the turbulent political stage of the seventeenth century French royal court, noting remarkable patterns, and transforming his observations into striking aphorisms. Rochefoucauld’s Maxims anticipates by two centuries modern concepts of defense mechanisms, self-awareness and unconscious behavior, as well as the critical role of appearances and manipulation. He shows us that in our folly, we are both intelligible and predictable.

Rochefoucauld saw, listened to, and plotted with and against such giants of his time as Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIII, Anne of Austria, and Marie d’Medici. Though known as a brave and honorable man, Rochefoucauld suffered from maddening twists of fate, losing more often than not in both love and war. But his genius was to be a perennial student, diligently learning valuable lessons regardless of the fickle lurches of Fortuna’s wheel. He sought after truth and found consolation in the love of wisdom. For this reason, applying the Duc’s analysis to the contemporary sport of politics is not only a propos, it is a study whose lessons may be applied profitably by those hoping to find something lasting in the disillusioning transience of the political game.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" -Shelley (1818)

Discussions of how the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will play out, the relative effects of black skin and female gender, whether particular messages and talking points each side employs will prove effective, what the Clintons will try after throwing the kitchen sink and making Tonya Harding their role model, whether Obama will escape from the taint of his discredited former pastor, and so on make for entertaining television and blogging.  A fight is going on and it does pit candidates whose obvious differences and similarities are being analyzed to death.  Whether you watch Fox, CNN or MSNBC and whether you read and comment on HuffPo, the Caucus, or the WSJ, smart and knowledgeable pundits are filling the screens and pages with their clever observations and bold predictions; for, isn’t that how they make their names (if not the big bucks)?  However, to frame the Democratic presidential primary race as a fight between two ambitious political leaders with contrasting personalities, demographics, and ethics is to miss the real story.  

The real story is about what those leaders are leading.  We could use the language of Thomas Kuhn and say that what we are seeing is a paradigm shift; but, the real story is more than just that.   We are not only observing but taking part in a critical transition in the evolution of our political culture, the ongoing experiment in living democracy set in motion by such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Ben Franklin and still unfolding as each of us plays our small part.  While we write and talk and blog away, suffering such leaders as Dick, W, and Condy, an old system of political power that has outlived its usefulness is dying; and, a new dynamic structure is in the process of supplanting it.  The demise of the old model is certain regardless of the last ditch, fight-to-the-death by the old-timers of the Clinton campaign, a mortal effort to win one last time for the traditional political game.  The Old Guard senses that this is their last stand and they might as well have the pipes play Garryowen and die with their boots on.  

http://www.us7thcavalry.com/legend.htm

Consider Ozymandias, the historic Pharaoh Ramesses II the Great, who won battle after battle, war after war, living for 90 years until his demise in 1213 BCE.  No matter how many armies the Pharaoh defeated, how many people he subjugated, how many monuments he caused to be built, how many chariots and goats and bolts of purple cloth he amassed, his death was inevitable and no one could stop it from happening.

Hillary Clinton is merely the last of the Pharaohs, the post-Vietnam Democrats, a breed of deal makers funded by wealthy fat cat liberals, of amoral manipulaters and spin doctors who got people to vote for them or against the opponent by creating illusions and activating irrational psychological states, of ear-mark grubbing scavengers who traded favors for votes.  As they die off, they are being replaced by leaders who will surf in on a wave of wired in decision-makers, millions of whom can be mobilized in minutes to contribute large and small sums of money and to fire off emails and to assault the blogs to let their elected representatives know what laws they want enacted and what policies they want to see scuttled.  These are people who think for themelves, who perform their own due diligence, who don't need to reduce a complex reality to narrow categories such as "liberals" and "conservatives," who are loyal to reason and principle, not to fallible individuals.

The great Democrats of our time are placing their bets and lining up with their horse:  Bill Nelson, Barbara Boxer, Walter Mondale, and John Murtha cuing up behind the Clintons; Ted Kennedy, John Kerrey, Chris Dodd, and Bill Richardson taking Obama’s back.  In a great irony, it happens that Hillary Clinton is a woman and Barack Obama has an African father, dark skin, an Arabic name, and an eccentric former pastor.  These incidentals distract us from the truth:  that Sen. Obama is only the first in a line of new leaders who will assume office as the memories of the old politics take their place in the history books, the public squares, and the museums that future archaeologists, scholars, and tourists will ponder and admire.  His skin-tone and gender are anything but the real story.

Note:  A previous version was posted on Daily Kos (Sundiata's diary)

An article in the Seattle PI online edition (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/356579_delegates27.html?source=mypi)
discusses the uncertain commitment of Washington (state) superdelegates to Hillary Clinton.

"Clinton superdelegate, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, said this week that she hopes the issue is settled without the intervention of the superdelegates -- a scenario that might require Clinton or Obama to withdraw from the race. But Cantwell told the Vancouver newspaper The Columbian that she wants the nominee determined in June in any case.

The candidate with the most pledged delegates from the primaries and caucuses can make the best case for the nomination, Cantwell said, while also mentioning most states won and highest popular vote total as secondary factors. Obama leads in all three categories, and it's considered unlikely that Clinton will overtake him -- but neither Obama nor Clinton, at this point, can win the majority of delegates needed for nomination solely through the primaries and caucuses."

It has been known for weeks that Sen. Clinton will not catch Sen. Obama in any category unless Obama's campaign implodes. With the success of "the speech," addressing Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the issue of race in America, it is clear that Sen. Obama will come out ahead when the convention rolls around. Why does the leadership of the Democratic Party allow the situation to hang suspended as Sen. Clinton forces Sen. Obama into an ongoing spitting match? Now Sen. Clinton is attacking Nancy Pelosi and wealthy Clinton backers are threatening to pull their money from the Democrats if they don't get their way and have Clinton as the nominee. Where are the leaders, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Howard Dean? Do they want to remain the old-time party of big money liberals, dishonest tactics, allowing the GOP to have its way with them, taking minorities for granted, and treating voters as if they're stupid? Or do they want to be part of the future, of empowered cyber-roots activitists, creative and compassionate self-starters, of bottom up power and accountability of elected representatives for their votes? What are they waiting for?

Clinton: Wright "Would Not Have Been My Pastor" If I were Hillary Clinton, I would be a Martian. Is anyone tired of the "if x were z" scenarios that get bandied about to make lame arguments? Examples- "If Obama were white, he wouldn't be doing this well in the primaries," "If Hillary were a man, she'd get more respect," "If 6 turned out to be 9, all of the hippies would cut off all their hair." Did you know that when you put a counterfactual at the beginning of a conditional statement anything you put at the end is true (see e. g., http://tinyurl.com/2xmtn3). So, when I say these arguments are lame, I mean they are invalid for drawing any useful conclusions about reality. That being the case, why don"t we just stop making them?. Jimi spoke out against talking points and repetive empty phrases thusly:  "I've got my own world to live through and I ain't gonna copy you."  posted 03/25/2008 at 18:56:34

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-karel-bouley/get-over-it_b_92855.html 

The following is my comment in response to a blog entitled “Get over it.”

People do get over it by a process called grief.  It doesn't happen all at once and at the end of it one is not in denial but acceptance.   If someone has wronged you in the past it entails forgiveness.  If the wrong is still going on, you keep working to come to terms with it and find ways to channel your sadness and rage into a constructive course of action.  I'm visiting my 91-year old mother for Easter.  We lost my Dad on Christmas Eve of 2006 to cancer and Mom had her own bout with the disease a year prior to Dad's death.  She was brought up in the Methodist Church but for many years has found the affirming theology of Unity Church helpful.  This morning I had just finished the sentence about forgiveness when I put it down to have breakfast with Mom.  As is her protocol, she reads a passage from the Daily Word aloud before saying grace.  The word for Saturday March 22 was entitled “forgive.” 

“As I forgive I am renewed by the peaceful, life-giving energy of God.  My heartfelt desire is to always live in an environment of peace.  I know that forgiveness is vital to establishing and maintaining this peaceful, live-giving atmosphere.  So if I feel that someone has offended me or somehow disappointed me, I release the resentment I have been harboring and feel the relief that I desire.”  The reading ended with a Psalm:  “Make me to know your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.  Lead me in your truth and teach me.”  Ps. 25:4-5.   Mom finished reading and commented, “It’s good when you can.”  Amen.

OBAMA BREAK DANCES!

Outrageous assertions about terrorist attempts to influence our elections one way or another are just another example of pundits and politicians talking to voters as if they are stupid. Intelligent people who have read up on the issues can tell when something is being spun or just downright fabricated. One of the main reasons Sen. Barack Obama resonates with voters is that he assumes the listener has a brain and can think for her or himself. I'm an older (age 55), white, male, Democratic voter who finds the respect Sen. Obama shows to his audience refreshing; but, I wonder if many of my age peers are so used to being on the receiving end of spin that they are numb to it. How intelligent people can maintain self-respect when posting talking points is a mystery. The current example that comes to mind is the repeated characterizations of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity UCC as "hate mongers" and "racists." Just a little research quickly proves that neither is truly racist. I know, I had to check it out for myself when the clips of Rev. Jeremiah Wright making inflammatory statements in his sermons emerged. Discerning voters take a critical look at themselves and their candidates. They don't accept everything their side says without doing their own fact checks.  And what does it mean that Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks up for Sen. Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright and presenting his articulate and thoughtful views on MSNBC's Morning Joe?  Imagine a presidential race between two candidates who present a clear choice but address the voter as a rational being who is capable of independent thinking?