Too amusing to pass up on the Fourth (via Cogitamus): "1776," a satire of "300," among other things.

Not much to synthesize here, though I suppose we could also think about patriotism in a more serious fashion:

- dave//

Blogs are often completely derivative. One person somewhere writes something original, whether in the form of a blog post or an article or editorial that appears on some news site, and then bloggers pick up on it, whether directly or from other bloggers they happen to follow who find it first. Either the derivation will be a simple sentence pointing readers to the original with maybe the addition of a quotation or abstract (the kind of thing Ben Smith seems to like to do almost exclusively), or it will be a "riff" on the original, adding additional color or perspective, or simply providing a contrary opinion.

I myself tend to prefer a synthetic approach, pulling together different things I've read on a topic into a theme, drawing connections or contrasts where I see them, then providing a personal spin on it. No big surprise or mystery there, I suppose; originality isn't really my goal with this medium, but if I can add something to the discussion and offer at least an original synthesis, I feel like I'm being creative and perhaps even useful (though, to be sure, I have no illusions about the breadth of my readership or the influence I might have on those who do stop by from time to time, whose interest in my occasional blog expositions never ceases to amaze me).

Take this, for example: Al Giordano's recent post on McCain's trip to Columbia. What Al does with this piece is a bit of semi-original opinioneering based on a relatively idiosyncratic review of source material, synthesizing an interesting and compelling perspective on the news, one that you don't get just anywhere, least of all in the MSM. I count no fewer than 17 "link citations" in this particular piece, to sources including the IHT, the Huffington Post, MSNBC's First Read, the AP, and Wikipedia, as well as the author's own writings and related posts. This is one thing that makes Giordano so interesting: his eclectic interests and research which he builds on in the creation of original syntheses of material. Whatever you may think of his perspective, you could hardly say he's a lazy blogger, just regurgitating stuff that others have published: he thinks, takes his time, applies an original point of view, and produces something that a lot of people apparently find compelling, judging by his traffic numbers and authority ranking, to say nothing of his active, prolifically commenting readership (just check one of his posts: he gets not dozens of comments, but often even hundreds of them).

Although this isn't quite what I had initially envisaged doing with Al's piece on McCain in Columbia, it does demonstrate the point well enough. It's interesting what you can do with blogging when you put your mind to it.

- dave//

Will wonders never cease? Remember Barr's assholic persecution of Clinton as one of the House's "impeachment managers"? Agree with Noam Scheiber over at The Stump that this Bloggingheads' sequence w/ Bob Barr on Bush and Clinton is rich. Rich, I tell you!

I remember well that period: late '98, early '99, when I had just come back from Switzerland after breaking up w/ my ex-wife for the first time. I was riveted by the whole scene and just livid that the whole thing was happening in the first place. That was when MoveOn.org was born, and that was perhaps one of the key moments in our glorious "politics of personal destruction" of the past 20+ years--the very politics that Obama strives to put in our collective rearview mirror. Seems just insane that Clinton would be impeached for his peccadilloes and lame-ass prevarications, and here we are with a President who's run wholesale roughshod over the Constitution, as if it were a half-crumpled McDonald's bag discarded into the road by a passing motorist.

Ok, the metaphor is a bit overwrought, but what the hell: you get the point.

- dave//

UPDATE: At least we can say this about Barr: there's a certain perverse consistency in his view of the "rule of law"--that hammer that he, Asa Hutchinson, and the other managers used over and over again in their prosecution of Clinton. I just have to wonder, now that he sees what true "crimes and misdemeanors" really look like in the slaughterhouse of the Bush presidency, whether he feels any shame at all about his petty, sanctimonious grandstanding against Clinton back in the '90s? Still, you have to revel in seeing this old cast of characters from that time playing out their internal and external conflicts on the stage of the 2008 elections. Makes for some often very ironic political theater.

Gnawing, always gnawing at unexpected corners and with preternatural vanity: Nader, dismissing Obama as too white/black. Reminds me of a certain Geraldine. Amazing.

And now, look over here: counter-intuitive delusionals looking forward to an Obama presidency. As long as they keep it to themselves in that perverse echo-chamber of theirs.

- dave//

So I'm trying out the new corporate bus system, partly to save on some gas and also to alleviate some of the stress of my commute from Ballard to Redmond and back, which typically hits 50 mins to an hour each way. If I didn't have regular off-campus appointments during the week, I'd have long been a regular rider. In fact, this very post I'm doing on the bus right now, jarring bumps notwithstanding. One of the nice features of the corporate bus line is that they have these things equipped w/ wi-fi; makes either work or casual browsing pretty easy to do in transit.

Anyhow, so I was thinking: the last tank of gas I filled cost me north of $60.00 for the first time. Although I've got a small car, I'm constrained to use premium. If I manage to do the bus a couple times a week, I'm liable to save some 1/3 of my petrol outlay, which begins to be significant, week to week, month to month. And that's fine. I should do more, though. I have this idea that my next car will be the Great Leap Forward in automotive technology--some mass-market incarnation of today's lithium-ion powered prototypes. We'll see if I make it that long; it could be a very long wait before we get there.

Or not. It depends on what kinds of choices we make as we twist and squirm under the squeeze of skyrocketing oil prices. Do we buy the line that somehow we just need to produce more oil by drilling offshore or in ANWR, and maybe, in 5 years time, see a blip in increased domestic oil production that will have already been offset by increased consumption? Do we continue to stick that black needle in our arm and expect somehow that we won't crave more next time? Do we grovel and whine, shake and groan, imploring our dealers to please just give us one more fix to tide us over?

Or do we say, no, enough, it's time to change. Time to stop opting for the easy fix. Time to change the world by changing ourselves first, rather than somehow always, unfailingly expecting that it needs to happen the other way around. Imagine what the world might be like, how different it would be, if we could break the most destructive of our habits...

Ah, I see my bus stop is coming up. Some busses you need to get on and stay on for a while, others, well, you just need to get off, otherwise you'll go around and around and around and never get anywhere.

- dave //

No doubt there will be a lot of noise, hand-wringing, worry-warting, and other acts of carrying on about the race recently enjoined for the General Election. To be sure, there's a lot at stake, at home and abroad, depending on who comes out on top in November. Of course, much work must still be done, voters must still be registered, and votes gotten out between now and then. I don't need to belabor the obvious.

But think, just think: the economy is tanking, W. is the most reviled of presidents in the history of polling, we're still ensconced in a tragic misadventure in Iraq that the American people want only to end, our Constitutional liberties are in dire peril, etc., etc. The odds are EXTREMELY LONG for McCain to prevail in these circumstances; if history teaches us anything this election year, it should be that the party in power is quite likely to be booted from the White House, whether the standard-bearer is an actual or perceived incumbent.

And this doesn't even begin to take into account the glaring weaknesses of the Republican standard-bearer himself, whose mealy-mouthed mish-mash of contradictory policy positions, lobbyist-enamored ethical lapses, and tone-deaf, scratch-your-head-in-disbelief-at-the-utter-ineptitude politicking should put many an anxious Democrat's mind at ease. Green-screen amateur hour, anyone? Here's a, um, somewhat abridged version of that speech courtesy the JedReport:

What's more, it is only by the skin of his teeth that McCain has the support of the Republican conservative establishment; what motivates them is not a positive support for McCain and his policies, but rather a desire only to see that the Democrats don't win. Without an energized base and positive message, they can only get so far this year on fumes of negativity, particularly in the face of an extremely energized, forward-looking Democratic party. And don't believe for a moment this ridiculous narrative that Clintonian dead-enders are flocking to McCain en masse and that the Democrats are hopelessly split after a hard-fought, dare I say, "bitter" primary season.

Simply put, this one's ours to win.

- dave//

Over the past 5 months, I've been following the Democratic--and to a much lesser extent, Republican--nominating process, state by state, statistic by statistic, key talking point by key talking point. According to some who are close to me, I may have been following it a little too closely--perhaps obsessively. It's been hard not to, in my view, given everything at stake this year, and our need for a major realignment of our political culture, values, and policies.

Let me try to spell out as clearly as I can what I mean here.

We simply cannot ignore, ever forget, much less forgive the crimes of these past 7+ years committed against the People and Constitution of the United States by the administration of George Walker Bush--as fate would have it, the boy-king installed illegitimately by a decree of the Supreme Court and sustained in power through a cynical and relentless exploitation of the fear and loathing of the People. Where we fail to today, posterity must assuredly condemn our 43rd president for these offenses among many others too innumerable to recount here:

• The corruption of the solemn meaning, profound obligation, and unique opportunity of 9/11 by a band of ruthless neo-con ideologues operating darkly behind the throne, which succeeded only in squandering the sympathy of the world for all time and hobbling for years to come our moral authority to rally the world to causes of global impact, like trans-national terrorism, climate change, genocide, and world hunger.
• The perversion of intelligence by politics, the deceitful manipulation of public opinion by means of bald-faced lies and propaganda worthy of none other than Joseph Goebbels--and the concomitant acquiescence of reason and morality by those who knew better and failed in their duty to protect and serve and uphold the Constitution--that led to the invasion of Iraq and the bottomless human tragedy ever since.
• The illicit outing of a covert intelligence officer whose husband's inconvenient regard for the truth about WMDs challenged the fundamental premise for war, and the cover-up at the highest levels which to this day, though widely known, has not substantially been called to account as our law affords and our consciences must demand.
• The blatant disregard for the public welfare and the plight of the underprivileged as demonstrated to an appalled nation and world in the wake of Katrina--wrongs still, to this day, not righted, but further compounded by the rapacious profiteering and bureaucratic bungling in the aftermath that have sickened and defeated her long-suffering victims, depriving whole communities in the Gulf of the energy and life needed to move forward, rebuild, and at long last recover.
• The constitutional depredations of a "unitary executive" theory of power, which has, in practice, circumvented the will of the people as expressed by acts of Congress through the application of extra-legal signing statements far more numerous and overreaching than any administration's in history.
• The subversion of Justice from impartial executor of the nation's laws into a political tool for enforcing loyalty to the chief executive and justifying the means for the political ends of the President and his administration, whose disdain for law and the Constitution has nowhere been more evidenced than in the dismemberment of habeas corpus and the embrace of torture as a legitimate weapon in the so-called "war on terror."
• The mismanagement of the federal budget to the outrageous benefit of the rich, powerful, and venal--including profiteering oil companies, no-bid and unaccountable contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater, and the rest of the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned us nearly 50 years ago--which has hamstrung domestic spending programs for decades to come and effectively bankrupted the national treasury, adding trillions of dollars of new debt for future generations to assume.
• The amateurism, cronyism, and thoroughgoing disregard for basic standards of professional conduct that have resulted in a post war management team with no real policy talent, cultural depth, or institutional support to deal with an insurgency as it was taking root, an Iraqi society that was fracturing predictably along ethnic and religious lines, and all the Iraqi and American dead that were accumulating in the streets and markets of Baghdad, day-in and day-out; in the investiture and unquestioning support of high-ranking public officials with no shred of integrity, intelligence, or shame; and in the arrogant, mocking, unapologetic disdain for moral or intellectual consistency and honesty in all matters of policy and public concern, including the integrity of science, the importance of education, the key threats to public health, and the management of the nation's economy.

How many more abuses must we recount to justify our outrage? How many more crimes must be brought to light, substantiated, and added to the list before we should be bold enough to act? Any one of them should be enough for us to take action and vigorously hold accountable those responsible to the full extent of the law. But here, after more than 7 years, the offenses continue to pile up, the next upon the last--and still nothing is done to assure the just redress of our grievances. Are we so numbed to reality or punch-drunk from the battering we've taken that we are no longer capable of acting?

Our founding documents provide the guidance we need for the crises we face even today. Let us recall Thomas Jefferson's exhortation in the Declaration of Independence (emphasis mine):

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

What choice do we have but to advocate and fight for the kind of revolution envisioned by the Founders? (Or, failing that, what then?)

For these reasons, I see the movement to elect Barack Obama president as perhaps the last, best hope we have for effecting the change we so desperately need, for arresting and reversing our precipitous decline before it's too late-- before the American Experiment should fail and the Republic might fall.

- dave//

As she will suspend her campaign on Saturday and endorse Obama as presumptive nominee, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Perhaps that will signal to enough of her hardened supporters in Hillaryland that they can soften and begin the process of reconciliation and acceptance of the new kid in town. And it will also begin to lay to rest this notion that a so-called "unity ticket" is not only desirable but necessary; in any event, there's no way either Hillary or her wayward spouse will submit to the vetting process and muzzling that will be required of them in order for her to be on the ticket.

It's clear enough to anyone paying attention that this is a monumental achievement by almost any count, whether you attempt to include popular votes or not in your analysis (and, for the record, I don't: it's a specious metric). You better believe that millions of us are going to do everything we can in the months ahead to bring fundamental change to our domestic and international politics and policies, starting with the election Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.

We know that the world is watching and waiting. Time to come together.

- dave//

Skies are clearing. Don't pay too much attention to the clouds that linger; they'll soon pass. Via Al:

(Fwiw, I thought that Hillary's speech was obnoxious and ungracious in the extreme, but as my GF said to me more or less, it wasn't much of a surprise--at least she's consistent in that regard. Thing is, you just hope for a hint of grace in defeat so you can get that elusive emotional property referred to as "closure." Guess that would just be too simple and convenient this year, now wouldn't it?)

Anyhow, O's speech made the two that preceded it seem absolutely juvenile and petty by comparison. Admittedly, I'm biased--but, hey, can you blame me? At least, so far this year, I've tried to back up my convictions with the courage of my actions.

While I'm on a bit of a hiatus from political activity this summer, I promise byall that I hold dear that I'll be reengaging in the combat in the fall. And I'll bring reinforcements.

Yes. We. Can.

- dave //

Excellent breakdown of the numbers (via the Jed Report) which prove that Obama can call Clinton's patently ridiculous bluff on MI and FL, and simply have them be seated at full strength. The little known gem spelled out in this diary:

Now, everyone knows that there were 55 uncommitted delegates in Michigan.  But what few seem to realize is that on April 19 in Michigan, the district conventions were held and Obama claimed 31 of the 36 uncommitted district-level delegates.  He already has them.  Here, look at the comments in this Bowers Open Left diary back from April 20th to get specific names.  Or this diary.  It's slightly painstaking, (here are 27 names, here are 3 more, here's where emptywheel cites 31) but they clearly exist.  Plus the 67 Florida Obama delegates mean that there are 98 living, breathing pledged Obama delegates from those two states.

There is no such thing as a scenario where Obama gets 0 delegates in Michigan (and DCW should really do away with Scenario 5 because it is no longer operative).  Chris Bowers has been writing about this for a long time.

Time to take out the trash.

- dave //

Hard not to sit up and take notice of stories like this from the Washington Post (via MSNBC). Given the apparent antipathy of Appalachia and the Rust Belt (see, e.g., DHinMI's post or Al Giordano's before it), which the Clinton campaign hasn't shied away from stirring up--with nods and winks and sometimes even bald-faced race/racial-baiting--I just wonder how much more shrill such voices will become in the months ahead. Hate, especially the insidious and dormant kind, when woken up and cornered, can lash out in unpredictable ways.

Let's all keep an eye on this; it, too, is still very much a part of who we are, Obama's conciliatory eloquence notwithstanding.

- dave //

No wonder Hillary has lately found common cause among anti-intellectuals: people who think have a nasty habit of paying attention to those annoying little things called 'details' and tend to find bald-faced contradiction and hypocrisy anathema. Thanks, Keith, for telling it like it is.

"But, eh, what can you do?" so the argument goes. "All politicians engage in convenient prevarication and hyperbole, no?" Actually, no: not all politicians are made of the same stuff. I reject the argument of equivalence between Obama and Clinton unequivocally.

I've been in a bit of a blogging funk.

Really, I have. It's had something to do with my fatigue with the Democratic primaries. It's had something to do with being busy with work and love.

That's more or less why I've been gone for the past month or so.

Somewhere along the line, as I focused on organizing the 36th district Obama supporters for the district caucuses, I just found myself running out of gas. And, once elected to the congressional district level, as things turned to what leaders around the CD were doing/going to do for the CD caucus coming up on May 19, I got a strange taste in my mouth that no amount of mouthwash could wash away.

What was it? I think it's that I was not having fun with it anymore. Things started to become narrowly competitive as well-meaning folks began to campaign for themselves for those coveted few slots at the national convention. I was suddenly unsure that I wanted to do anything more to organize the get-out-the-caucus effort, along the lines of what had been proven so successful in the 36th. People started to turn aggressively to self-promotion, and I wanted none of it.

So I'm going to do something different, whether or not I decide to put my name forward and make a speech at the CD caucus. I'll let you know what that is as soon as my plans gel, which should be within the next few weeks.

In the meantime, if you're wondering still why this election is so freakin' important, consider what Al has to say. His recent post lays bare the rot in our system--and in our souls, if I may go so far: we are all responsible, ultimately, for continued tolerance of the racist underbelly of this country, which the Clinton campaign has shown little restraint in exploiting (and I can guarantee you, the GOP and the right will show NO restraint in exploiting).

Consider it long; consider it deeply. Things like this are what propel me on.

- dave //

Guess Lorne Michaels wanted to show that he isn't a total Clinton partisan: amusing Tracy Morgan "Weekend Update" commentary sent to me by Jack (thanks, Jack!).

- dave //

Olbermann on Clinton: scathing.

- dave //

This whole business w/ Geraldine Ferraro is utterly stupefying--my brain is so completely scrambled by the relentless, toxic inputs from unexpected quarters that I'm rendered speechless. I'm dismayed to say the least to see what some of our Democratic Party establishment players are really made of when power and privilege are really on the line.

We're seeing that the unseemly underbelly of American politics is fundamentally bipartisan. Many of us are having to come to grips for the first time, really, with the uncomfortable truth that the sickness of our politics isn't just a disease of the Republican right; it belongs also to the Democrats, even among those we're long used to calling our friends. We have met the enemy and (s)he is us.

I won't get into the toxic complicity of the Clinton campaign ... nope, won't even go there right now. I'll leave that to Olbermann's Special Comment tonight, and the incisive satire of this little video:

- dave //

My dad sent me a message yesterday about how things have unfolded this past week for the Democrats and how "the McCain campaign must be very, very pleased." What follows is my take on it all, which comes off as something of a rant, but I hope also brings it around to something a bit more positive.

My sense is--and this may be more wishful thinking than anything--is that the Obama campaign is busy retooling and refocusing, trying to figure out how to thread the needle of, on the one hand, shutting down Clinton's trash-talking prevarications, and on the other, making sure that Obama himself doesn't compromise fundamentally who he is. I'm amazed to see the extent to which the main-stream media is buying into Clinton's various bullshit theses, whether about Obama or about their supposed serious shot at locking up the nomination. It's as if, all at once, they fell out of love w/ Obama, rediscovered their awe of the Clinton "not until the last dog dies" mystique, and threw away their brains and balls to boot.

It's worth bearing in mind that Obama actually won Texas in the math that matters (delegates); but the political spin cycle currently belongs to Clinton, and she can for the moment lay claim to winning Texas based on 2/3 of the equation and conveniently ignoring the other third that doesn't suit her narrative. It's frustrating to say the least that a say-anything, do-anything approach to politics still holds such power that everyone's legs immediately go wobbly when the ugly beast rears its head (as it always does). Can't tell you how irritating it is to see how seriously people are taking this ridiculous meme about just giving it to Clinton so that Obama can be VP and we can all congratulate ourselves on getting the best of both worlds somehow... As if the clear frontrunner would just say, "Ah, hell with it, I'll just settle for 2nd place for the good of the party and become an enabler of everything I hold in contempt, even though this whole notion of 'what's good for the party' is completely concocted by the campaign that's losing by all objective criteria." How the hell Obama can keep his head on straight with all the knee-jerk punditry, facile analysis, and rampant chicken-littlism is beyond me.

And yet, at the end of the day, Obama will still have a majority of the popular vote, a majority of states, and a majority of pledged (and super) delegates. We just have to be patient until the tables and media perceptions turn again. And, finally, on the good side, what doesn't kill him will make him stronger, and the continued campaigning helps broaden Obama's exposure while at the same time serves to build up party infrastructure in every state of the country, which in the end will help make a difference in the fall.

As crappy as this past week has been for Obama, there is indeed a silver lining.

UPDATE: And here, from the man himself, a stinging rebuke of this idiotic Obama-as-VP idea.

- dave //

Expect a split decision on Tuesday, but a delegate win for Obama. Unlikely to be enough to end it, unfortunately.

In the meantime, there's this:

This is the sort of thing that makes this year different. Is it enough? No, not by itself, but it speaks volumes.

- dave.i.am //

When John McCain attempts to inoculate himself against the kinds of things that are besetting him now with his self-serving admissions that he's a "flawed" servant in humble service to his nation, I'm reminded of this notion of the "tragic flaw" in Greek tragedy.

The Greek word of origin is "hamartia," which has come to be (mis-)translated as "tragic flaw," as if to say that tragic figures such as Oedipus or Agamemnon had flaws in their characters that, because of their lack of self-knowledge and their inability to correct their ways, precipitated their doom. These characterological, psycho-analytic notions were actually alien to the Greeks themselves. "Hamartia" really means something more akin to "a missing of the mark"--that is, not seeing things right and as a result making all-too-human errors at critical moments. The idea is that the events of the world present opportunities to make choices, and because of the limited ability of mere mortals to discern what's really at work in the harsh reality of a universe run by capricious and deeply mysterious gods, their own native blindness is what causes them to trip up. The fault is really a generic kind, and has little if anything to do with personal or individual failings.

In the modern age, post Freud, we tend to see things in terms of the inner dramas that punctuate and inform our psyches--thus, the "tragic flaw" meme--leading us to make good choices one moment, and poor choices at another. However you want to look at what's unfolding in the arc of the McCain "hero" story, you can't help but marvel at the inner and outer forces at work that have put him in such a compromised position.

Because of the choices he's made along the way, we can rightly call him to account for his errors in judgment that undermine the self-aggrandizing, sanctimonious narrative he wants us all to buy into. (This is fundamentally why I think this is very much a big deal and is unlikely to go away anytime soon.) We can also take a wider view and recognize that McCain, like many politicians, is also a product of a fundamentally corrupt--dare I say, flawed--system that rewards money and the power it represents with undue influence over our political process.

Do I think that Barack Obama is the anti-McCain who can save us all from ourselves? No, not really. But I do believe that, of anyone I've seen on the national political scene in a long, long time, he stands the best chance to restore some integrity to a broken system, where the power of lobbyists and moneyed interests is so completely intertwined with the business of governing, that even a supposedly reform-minded "maverick" can't tell where the line of propriety is drawn and, with his errant actions, keeps tripping over his mismatched rhetoric. The fact that he has missed the mark repeatedly tells us a lot about who he is, but given the fact that he's still standing and even has a shot at the Presidency, it also tells us something about ourselves and how cynical we've become, that all this somehow seems like "business as usual," that to many should be seen as "no big deal."

I disagree that it's not a big deal. Enough already. It's time to clean house.

- dave //

Hillary has lately been getting plenty of payback for the deals she's done with the devil over the years, with her "inevitability" shattered since February's onset and her campaign now in tatters.

O'Reilly now seems to be self-destructing, as his "lynching" comment just might be the straw that broke the big bigot's back.

And then McCain, whatever you may think about the nature of his relationships with shady characters like Keating and other lobbyists who did business with his committee, may have finally gone a hypocritical bridge too far.

Add to all that a lunar eclipse tonight, and you just have to wonder: What ever could be next on the horizon?

- dave //