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Give the People What They Want

2012-01-25T20:25:00.003-05:00

In 2008 Hillary Clinton, one half of the smartest political couple in human history, ran as an pseudo incumbent and inevitable candidate in a climate filled with angry voters who wanted something fresh. She misunderstood the mood of the electorate and couldn’t adapt to become what the electorate wanted. She thought the people wanted sure and steady leadership in the wake of two terms under a hard-partying c-student of life. They didn’t. They wanted a revolutionary and despite the fact that she was a female seeking to shatter the highest glass ceiling on the planet she was never comfortable playing the role voters wanted her to play, the role now-President and then junior-Senator Barack Obama played to relative perfection. That role, ironically, famously became his secret service-bequeathed nickname: renegade. I preface this analysis with that example as a way of saying it happens to the best of us.

As we know Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are not ‘the best of us’. They’re not even the best Republicans (formerly) running (see: Huntsman, John) and they have both made the same critical mistake at least half a dozen times over the course of this circus of a campaign: they both fundamentally misjudged (and continue to misjudge) what the electorate wants and why they’d cast a vote for them.

Romney’s is a problem more or less outside of his control (much like Clinton). His appeal is as the sturdy businessman and successful Governor. This is a guy who wins and he knows how to get America winning again. He’s confident and he’s sharp on his feet and he understands the pain of the 99%ers even if he is most assuredly not a member of that particular country club.

But he can’t elevate his performance to meet that model for the ideal candidate which the Republican, Independent and even some Democratic voters yearn for. He’s naturally arrogant, flip and prone to fits of testiness when the plebeians dare question his record, finances or intentions. He’s been labeled a flip-flopper. It’s a damaging charge because the character voters want is always sure of himself, always right and never changes his mind. Facts bend to his will, not vice-versa. They’re looking for a President with qualities that the current President lacks. On the surface Romney appears to have those in spades but in reality he falls dismally short. He knows what the people want and he tries to deliver but at the end of the day he’s incapable. He may win by default, but by the time November rolls around the people will already know he’s not their guy. It’s not necessarily his fault (though he could try to be a little nicer to those of us making less than $56,000/day).

Newt’s problem, on the other hand, is completely of his own making.

Take the NBC debate this past Monday as exhibit A in the former Speaker of the House just not getting it. From the moment he opened his mouth to sleepily deflect Romney’s aggression it was clear he misunderstood why he won South Carolina. During the debate he tried to play the calm and collected standard bearer of Reagan’s legacy. His usual manic performance art (does it qualify as anything else?) melted away to reveal an actor playing the role of heir to the sure-handed leadership of The Gipper and George H.W. Bush. He didn’t respond to Romney’s vicious attacks in kind (where our expectation was for him to have responded to it disproportionately - a nuclear strike against a small New England town that failed to pay their taxes), instead he tried to to talk Romney off the ledge and played the ‘grownup’ in the room. It had the overall effect of putting his audience (and early in the debate apparently the candidate himself) to sleep.

He fundamentally misunderstood why hundreds of thousands of people voted for him on Saturday. His entire appeal in South Carolina sprang from his whip-fast firecracker debate performances. He was a pittbull attacking a timid and weak Romney and the Republican electorate (at least forty percent of them) all went “that’s the guy I want to see debate Obama!” It wasn’t an abstract character as in Romney’s case - it WAS what Gingrich was delivering. He had aligned for the better part of a week with what the voters wanted and they rewarded him with a mountain of delegates. They had no illusions that Newt was anything but unstable - he was unstable in the 80’s and 90’s and he’s still unstable and still they wanted him.

But Gingrich is a man with a high opinion of himself. He was the Vegas tourist who lucked into a royal flush on the flop and thought he won all those chips in the middle of the table because of his skills as a card player. Nobody in South Carolina liked the player they liked the hand but he didn’t get that. He thought he ‘clicked’ and that people finally got the appeal of an articulate historian and elder statesman. He came out of South Carolina thinking he finally earned some respect and that he, Newton Gingrich the condescending former speaker of the house with enough skeletons in the closet to fill Arlington Cemetery was what the people wanted. He failed to see that what they wanted was what he gave them just a few days prior. I suspect we’ll find his momentum has grinded to a halt in the days following the NBC debate and that his misconceptions about who he is and who the voters want may prove a fatal error when the votes are counted next Tuesday.

But as I said, it happens to the best of us. Why shouldn’t it happen to the worst of us, too?

"An America built to last"

2012-01-24T21:42:00.006-05:00

Barack Obama delivered possibly his last State of the Union address as President of the United States.

It was a failure. It wasn't the State of our Union, it was a hour-long trip through a fantasy where America isn't a crippled superpower in her waning days of power and influence.

(More on that later.)

From a domestic politics perspective, the problem with this speech was that it reinforces the perception that President Obama has a lot of good ideas, is an eloquent speaker who can't do anything about with those ideas. Maybe he'd have a shot if the political machine within which he delivered this speech wasn't a bitterly partisan gauntlet where good ideas go to die. One look at John Boehner's face tells you everything you need to know about the next ten months: "Republicans aren't going to give this President a win no matter what".

So this was really a campaign speech, and President Obama misunderstood the moment. This shouldn't have been a speech about all of the great things we could do this should have been a speech about all of the great things we could do IF CONGRESS GOT OFF THEIR ASSES AND STOPPED PLAYING POLITICS FOR TEN SECONDS. Where was the punch?

If I were an independent voter watching this speech tonight I'd be wondering why this nice guy who the Republicans all swear is a socialist manchurian candidate is trying to grow the government with all of these new agenda items. Consumer Protection sounds nice if you trust government but most people don't.

The theme tonight was "an America built to last".

The problem, Mr. President, is that America isn't built to last. The founders designed it to evolve and grow and it's run by people who reject that idea out of hand. It depends on the people to be active and engaged in policy and legislation and they aren't. It was designed as a secular state where all religions were welcome but none were above any others and certainly didn't drive the course of our Nation and today America is practically a Christian theocracy. Today's America is the United States of Armageddon: where reason is no longer valued and sanity is a political liability.

The President should stop acting like everything is OK. The President should stop acting like we're just a little bit out of tune. There is something fundamentally wrong with this country and feeling that way isn't a symptom of cynicism as the President implies: America is poisoned. America is dying. America is not built to last.

He says anyone who thinks America is in decline doesn't know what they're talking about.

Which leaves me with one final question:

What America is he President of and what's their immigration policy?

NBC Florida Debate Stream of Consciousness

2012-01-23T21:00:00.026-05:00

First thing's first: how come Comcast thinks this debate is the first part of a new two part Fear Factor episode? Is this Comcast's assertion of their first amendment right to distract people from the disaster we're about to watch.

Next. Gingrich looks TIRED. He's working with his "the people don't want somebody managing the decay" line again which is an interesting way to attack the abstract concept of a Romney presidency. He handles the second part of the answer well re: his term as speaker.

Mitt's trotted out the "resigned in disgrace" line again and you can sense Newt's got a counterpunch line just waiting.

Except he didn't really. He's playing the arrogant high ground card that he tried in Iowa. Remember Iowa, Newt? You got whooped. You need to attack back on stage. It's what the people who like you want to see.

I think this could be a good night for Santorum (which is a bad night for Gingrich and a fine night for Romney). Gingrich seems sleepy and Mitt seems Mitt-ish.

Santorum's electability argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny (nobody's does, really), but it's simple enough. His answer to why he's the former Senator was clean and succinct. He did his prep work for tonight.

Grandpa Senility gets his shot to answer the question and turns it into a sharp attack on Newt. I wonder what Romney's promised him...

And then Paul practically endorses Gingrich! Weird!

Onto the tax returns!

"The real question isn't my taxes it's the American people's taxes!" My God did somebody actually prepare him for this question?! "Maybe" didn't sound like smart money anymore? Amazing.

Good on Brian Williams for sticking with the question.

Holy cow did Mitt Romney really just gloat about not having to pay taxes under Newt Gingrich's plan?!

"Weapons on the left" has got to be pavlov's bell for Newt's attack dog instincts. Too bad the follow up question went right to Santorum which created an awkward moment that Santorum needed to dig out of with a question about "destructive" vs. "constructive" capitalism.

And then it devolves into an argument about what Lobbying is.

"I understand your technique and it's not going to work because people see through it."

Here's Mitt's problem with this line of attack: he looks whiny and not Presidential.

Here's Newt's problem with his line of defense: he looks whiny and not Presidential.

Again, this is all good for Santorum which isn't necessarily good news for Newt.

Newt needs a big soundbite moment. He's so lucky Mitt's attack was rambling. He just avoided a big punch to the face.

Santorum takes on the housing crisis. He's thinking that Newt and Mitt are just going to rip each other to ruin over the nomination process and he'll waltz to the podium as the consensus candidate. Tonight's debate is a good illustration of that game plan.

Forgive me while I fall asleep during Ron Paul's wonky response. If a politician could merge his smarts with Clinton's emotion sans the crazy we'd have one hell of a public servant.

Romney's game plan comes into focus: mortally wound Gingrich with his past at Freddie and then hammer away with economy, economy, economy.

Now he shoots himself in the foot with the red blooded conservatives by saying regulation is a good thing. Newt was able to remain pure on that point.

I think Ron Paul has one of his stronger moments in this Democratic debate re: Cuba. Isolationism isn't the answer. Wait a second this is the Republican debate. Terrible answer. No points awarded. Why don't you want to assassinate Castro (all of the Castro's!) in his sleep? Shame on you RINO!

Then we're back to fantasy island starring Rick Santorum. He's been talking about the Cuban threat for as long as he's been thinking about running for President. Take that Ron Paul!

Mitt Romney starts his sabre-rattling re: needing to build fifteen battleships a year for the rest of eternity.

I'll try to keep going but all of this hawkish nonsense makes me want to hurl a Cuban paperweight through my Chinese-made TV that an American President told me to buy in 2006.

Rick Santorum just compared the government of Iran to al Qaeda. Sounds right, the US practically created both.

Smart question about the dangers of drilling for oil offshore (5,000 jobs) to the tourist industry in Florida (1,000,000 jobs). Rick Santorum's answer to the question is just a dodge.

English as an official language comes up and Newt and Mitt both answer the question just fine. Ron Paul has a great constitutionally sound answer to the question (shocking).

Here come the immigration fireworks. This is the campaign in Florida right here.

New supports the Dream Act and defends the portion he agrees with eloquently and then Romney jumps onto his answer. Doesn't look strong there.

Romney's answer to the problem of illegal immigration is "they'll self-deport"?! Are you kidding? Does that sound crazy to anybody else?

COMMERCIAL BREAK: Nothing going on immigration although I think Newt came out looking good (but so did Romney, who must have been thinking "that sounds good to me!" and then basically uttered those words on stage). If that Freddie attack is the big story of this debate, Mitt's won. I would think there would be some fireworks to overshadow that moment but it's been pretty quiet. Gingrich needs to whoop Romney upside the head if he wants to pull this out. The news media needs a better soundbite than the one Romney gave them and he can't afford the blanket advertising Romney specializes in.

A Terri Schiavo question? Welcome to 2005.

Even-keeled answers from Santorum and Gingrich. A totally sane and rational answer from Ron Paul. He thinks it should be a lesson to us all to discuss end-of-life care with our loved ones and barring that it should have been solved at the state level. I'm starting to like this guy.

Let's talk space program. How do billion dollar shuttle launches figure into your budget slashing? Romney basically derides the President while selling Obama's policy toward NASA as his own. Good grief.

I love that these guys say the right things (sort of) about space travel. Let's get to the Moon and get to Mars. Too bad if any of them were elected they would slash our space program to death.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: Boring debate so far. Early fireworks. Mitt and Newt basically traded places. Newt must have thought releasing his Freddie contract was going to end the conversation (admittedly, so did I). He needs an exceptionally strong close if he's hoping to salvage this. As it stands now, he might have just lost Florida.

Romney can't answer the conservatism question with "I've got a family". He's Mormon so that's (wrongly) questioned right off the bat, Santorum has the high-ground there and Newt's proven nobody cares. Then he relies on his business experience and executive experience in Massachusetts.

This was Newt's chance to hit him and he didn't. Instead he goes positive and inserts himself into every meaningful conservative achievement since the mid-1960's and then positions himself as the best opponent for Barack Obama. Did he think this kind of posturing worked for him in Iowa? His campaign ads are hyped soundbites from these debates and that ain't it!

Santorum does the dirty work for and against both: attacking on the affordable care act and linking that to their respective careers.

He then makes a direct appeal to the Tea Party for votes. A great answer all around. This might be Rick Santorum's night after all. A solid performance. Maybe he'll be the frontrunner again. Who knows? This race deserves more insanity.

And like a stillborn baby that Rick Santorum wants to tax and send to Iran, it just dies. I feel like Newt had a fine night except for the first ten minutes. Unfortunately, those ten minutes will be played on news outlets for the next week. He can recover Thursday night on CNN. Mitt had a fine night too. A little whiney and a little small but basically fine. Ron Paul was great but he always is and really deserves better than the Republican electorate (and maybe deserves less than the brainless devotion he inspires in twenty-somethings who don't know just how dangerous some of his proposals really are). Santorum, I think, was the winner. The problem is there may be no wind left to push Santorum above 15% in Florida. No way to know until the votes come in next Tuesday night.

Florida Debate Liveblog

2012-01-23T18:30:00.014-05:00

We've had plenty of debates this election season and ordinarily another one isn't news or necessarily even worth watching. Tonight's MSNBC debate in Tampa is both in the immediate aftermath of Saturday's South Carolina primary. Can Newt last an entire week without imploding? Is Mitt going to be agitated and flip? Is Rick Santorum pretending he has a shot? Is Ron Paul still talking?

South Carolina primary voters have predicted the eventual Republican nominee every time since 1980. Does Mitt have a debate performance in him that will change that trend? Will the Freddie/Fannie attacks against Gingrich prove fruitful for the unemployed businessman from at least five states?

I'll liveblog the debate starting at 9:00 PM EST and let you know that answers to all of these questions provided the TSA allows all of the candidates through security.

The Problem with Tebow

2012-01-14T23:36:00.002-05:00

Tim Tebow. He’s everywhere. SportsCenter has recently become Tebow’s personal Pravda. “News outlets” everywhere are endlessly hyping this young, undeniably talented but fatally flawed NFL quarterback. The establishment media sold tonight’s Broncos-Patriots matchup as one for the ages.

And like most media overreactions, it was much ado about nothing. Final score: 45 - 10 , Patriots. Tom Brady tied an NFL record with six touchdown passes in a postseason game. Tebow was 9/26 for 136 yards (which is pretty dreadful considering he was playing against the 31st ranked defense in the league).

But the problem with Tebow isn’t his inconsistency as a quarterback or his team’s ultimate failure in the playoffs. The problem with Tebow crystalized for me over the span of thirty seconds early in the game.

It happened in the second quarter. A timeout was called and we went to commercial. A commercial about a bible verse. Paid for by Focus on the Family. The verse in question being, of course, John 3:16:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The commercial casts young children reciting parts of the verse directly into the camera. It ends with a little boy (who looks like he could be cast as Young Tim Tebow in a biopic) breathlessly speaking the last word of the verse: life.

And then we’re back to the football game. Deep stuff.

That’s when it clicked. The problem with Tebow. And it has everything to do with that Bible verse.

John 3:16 says that not only does God love you so much that he would send his only son to Earth to die at the hands of men to teach humanity a lesson (about...?) but that if you just do him the kindness of believing then you will live forever.

Tebow takes it a step further. He says that not only does God love you and if you believe in him you’ll live forever but that if you do then you too can live a life of unimaginable wealth and privilege. He doesn’t come right out and say it but he’s definitely saying it. Listen to him talk about how it’s all because of God (‘it’ being his life, his skill, his hard work, his wealth and celebrity and his win-loss record). Listen to him proselytize across the world praising Jesus’ name to children who will live their entire lives in poverty struggling with disease, War and eventual death.

What you won’t hear him say is that all of the talk about divine intervention is utter nonsense and that certainly God has more important things to worry about in a world torn apart by War and injustice everywhere with billions starving to death in this very moment.

Because he actually thinks God is helping him win football games.

He thinks he’s successful because he believes. That’s why he’s got John 3:16 practically tattooed on his face. He’s saying: “message received, I believe and thanks for that $250,000 bonus for three hours of work last week”.

He’s peddling the same 1% mentality that everyone is born with the same opportunities and the same chance at success and by golly just work harder but with a twist: now it’s not just good enough to work hard (which, obviously, he does) but you should also believe in a Christian God. The same Christian God who sent his own Son to Earth to die a stupendously painful death at the hands of men. The same Christian God who given the choice between the starving child in Africa and a good football game picks the football game.

If there is a God, I’d like to think that Tebow’s beat-down at the hands of a serial womanizer who had a son out of wedlock is an example of he/she/it refocusing he/she/it’s priorities.

Payroll Tax -or- A Glimpse into Why the World Will End

2011-12-21T10:28:00.004-05:00

If you’re listening to the House Republicans explain why the two month payroll tax extension is being held hostage you’ll hear House Speaker Boehner plead with Senate Democrats to come back and work with them to ensure a full year of payroll tax relief instead of the two months the senate just negotiated for (at House Republican's behest).

Then the insidious moutherfucker Eric Cantor takes over:

“And if you think about it, you know people are sitting across America scratching their heads wondering what Washington is doing. And, by the very fact that the President sits probably a mile away down Pennsylvania Avenue we’re sitting here people are wondering ‘why can’t they just get together and talk and work this out?’”

I’ll say it in fewer words:

“The Republicans want to defeat Barack Obama on every thing that could be perceived as a victory for his Presidency from now until the election. And if he wins we are going to keep doing it.”

The problem with the world right now is that the entire world, at the same time, is realizing that the economics of life are allocated in a grossly unfair way. Instead of taking a lead on this idea, America has decided it’s still 1995 and Pakistan is just a sex scandal.

The world is falling apart because the rest of the world knows that America doesn’t know what the fuck it is doing.

That is the definitive end to the matter.

Libya - broken down in a way I understood

2011-03-25T23:46:00.003-04:00

There is a lot of confusion about what our mission in Libya is and what the endgame is. Is this another Iraq or Afghanistan? Is this yet another quagmire the American people can ill-afford and not support? President Obama says he wants Gaddafi out while Secretary Gates says he could see an end to the current conflict that didn't result in a shift of power.

Are you confused? Are you frustrated?

That is confusion I shared. That is frustration I shared.

Until I spoke to somebody today about the situation and realized that the Obama Administration's apparent contradiction isn't really anything of the sort.

To simplify the matter (for myself as much as anyone), here's what's happening.

1: There is a mission being carried out by NATO at the behest of the Arab League to create a no-fly zone over Libya. This no-fly zone and the pressure it creates for the Gaddafi government will help foster an atmosphere for the opposition forces in Libya to fight if they so choose.

2: We hope that fight is successful but eliminating Gaddafi is not the mission American forces are carrying out right now. We are leveling the playing field and we are helping to create an environment where change can occur.

America is acting in Libya as part of a multi-national coalition which has been assembled after thoughtful deliberation and a sober assessment of the facts on the ground. The mission is to create a no-fly zone so that the opposition forces have a better chance of defeating Gaddafi. Right now the mission is no more or less expansive than that. We're not invading Libya and we are not targeting Gaddafi. We are helping Arabs control the government and neutralizing the advantage the west has sold Gaddafi over the past quarter century.

Call it rationalization if you'd like but this reframing of what's going on halfway across the world makes me feel a lot better about what's going on.

Let's see if it turns out to be true.

2011-03-24T14:09:00.001-04:00

If an individual acts irrationally in the name of God we call it mental illness. If a Government does the same, we call it foreign policy.

Wait a second, we have a budget crisis?

2011-02-14T16:43:00.001-05:00

The United States Budget is a mess.

Finally. Something Democrats, Republicans, Tea-Partier's, Palin-ties, Olbermannettes and everyone in between can agree on.

What seems clear in the wake of President Obama's budget proposal which was delivered to Congress today, is that nobody really has any clue what to do about it.

The President is proposing a roughly 3% reduction made up almost entirely by cutting discretionary, non-defense (offense?) spending. That piece of the pie is roughly 15% nowadays. The rest of the budget is chewed up by entitlements and defense (offense) spending. Even with the 3% cut in spending there will be nearly a trillion dollars added to the debt this fiscal year. Because, you know, you have to pay for the Wars we're fighting and you have to pay for the stimulus both parties voted for at the height of the financial crisis.

But you also have to pay for Social Security. As a reasonably healthy twenty-eight-year-old, I can sit here and write about how the retirement age should be raised to seventy and benefits should be slashed across the board because that would be easy and it would help save this country a couple of dollars.

But it wouldn't solve the problem.

Because you have to pay for defense (offense) spending. As an non-enlisted citizen with no real teeth in the game I can write all day about what parts of the defense budget should be cut (and the truth is, an awful lot should be). But what I noticed looking at the numbers of what actually has been cut on the defense (offense) side of things is that what little is getting cut isn't ridiculous War spending or fighter jets (just a couple of percentage points or so in those areas over the last few years) but instead housing and medical care for veterans and their families.

Well, I don't think that solves the problem.

Wait a second. Taxes. Let's raise taxes. Good idea except that we really don't know what that will do in this economic climate. Probably, taxing corporations will result in some more revenue while they'll continue to horde their surpluses in anticipation of a flood of deregulation during the Trump-Palin Presidential Administration (God help us). But we also have to concede that it's equally possible that raising taxes will hurt the speed of our economic recovery. Nobody really knows for sure because we haven't been here before.

So maybe that's not going to work.

And you know what else isn't going to work?

Bickering. Demagoguery. Demonizing one side by the other and calling names across the aisle.

What's not going to work is jumping down the President's throat when he introduces his PROPOSAL (after all, the Constitution doesn't allow the President to single-handedly pass any budget he would like). What's not going to work is ending the conversation before it's had a chance to have been had. What's not going to work is try to shave a trillion dollars off the deficit with six hundred billion dollars of non-discretionary, non-defense spending.

This is going to take time and this is going to take smarts so get involved. Tell your Congresspeople and Senators what programs you value and what you could live without. Tell your friends about the sinister movement to cut relatively low-cost, high-impact programs like National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Do all of those things. Just don't assume this is going to be easy.

The Republican Response

2011-01-25T22:42:00.002-05:00

In case you were wondering, the Republican Response (delivered by Kirk Cameron's less charismatic clone Congressman Paul Ryan) basically amounts to:

Limited government and free enterprise unchecked by oversight and regulation will make everything better. After all, the founding fathers (infinite in their wisdom and prophetic in their knowledge of all possible futures that lay ahead for this nation) would never have signed off on President Obama's Healthcare Bill and the economic policies of his socialist political party.

Since you've never read the Federalist Papers or understand the difference between the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, we're just going to be vague (even more than the President) and talk about lowering taxes, defending our borders and cutting spending in the hope you'll think it was something George Washington would have wanted - AS IF THAT EVEN MATTERS.

Enough Talk

2011-01-25T21:37:00.005-05:00

The future of our civilization hinges on energy.

Accept that premise or reject it. It's the truth. President Obama declared this evening that by 2035 he wants 80% of America's energy sources will come from clean, renewable sources.

How?

The Republicans are eternally beholden to oil companies that have a definitive stake in a fuel source that is filthy, expensive and increasingly scarce.

The Democrats have neither the political strength or the public relations savvy to convince the American people that we must move on from fossil fuels.

Tonight's speech was just that - a speech. I'm not a great critic of President Obama and I feel that those who decry him as a suit full of empty rhetoric are fooling themselves, blind to the power that he has to shape narratives and drive momentum on issues he focuses on. Tonight, however, I have to agree with them. The future of our civilization hinges on energy. Everything else is secondary. Truly secondary. What is required of this moment is a movement and President Obama must realize that he cannot be the whole of that movement - only a part. He cannot single-handedly shape the narrative and drive the momentum. He can only - and needs to - spark it. He needs to appeal to the emotions of Americans everywhere He needs to illustrate why it is so imperative that we embrace a future that moves beyond strip mining our planet for a fuel source that consumes and destroys any hope we have of longevity as a species.

This is roughly the same speech he gave last year: "I won't accept second place for America". It is full of a lot of high rhetoric about gaining energy independence and reining in government spending but lacks the necessary illustration of what happens when we fail to achieve success in the energy revolution and fiscal state of our nation. This is the survival of the union we're talking about and it sounds like we're talking passionately about the NCAA Tournament.

It's too much to put on one man's shoulders - invigorate the nation and wake three hundred million people up from their stupor - but it's the job so many of us elected him for. That is why his campaign inspired so many apathetic Americans to get involved and donate their time and hard-earned money to the cause of electing this man President. We sense we are on the brink and require of this dire moment a person to inspire our better angels. It's unfair and it's likely impossible but that is why so many Americans have been disappointed with what we've see over the last two years. Intrinsically, we understand that a paradigm shift must occur in order for us to survive.

President Obama both overestimates and underestimates his role in this drama. He is not the action hero who single handedly defeats the villain, he is the soothsayer warning us of the dangers ahead. Unlike arrogant Caesar, our survival depends on us hearing the message. But it must be delivered sensibly and intelligently. We can ill afford the ravings of a crank or the hedged bets of a gifted politician. We need the truth. This speech, though eloquent and well-delivered and charming, fails to ignite what so desperately needs ignition: our survival instinct. This is politics as usual. Except our situation is not and the response cannot be. And yet, this is politics as usual.

Why Abortion Rights Matter

2011-01-23T16:52:00.002-05:00

Americans may think of “abortion rights” as a quintessentially American political and cultural issue. It’s not. This issue plays out all over the world with multi-national organizations and religious institutions fighting with as much (if not more) vigor in industrialized nations everywhere as well as developing nations in Africa and Latin America.

That’s why it is so important that America, if it is to be a leader in this century, makes the enlightened choice on this issue. Yesterday was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that gave doctors the right to perform abortion procedures should they elect to do so. Importantly – it doesn’t give women the right to get an abortion. That’s an individual freedom that can’t be granted or taken away with a law. Look back at history and you’ll see women taking matters into their own hands and terminating unwanted pregnancies – often with grisly and dangerous results.

What our Supreme Court did was create an environment where this individual freedom could find expression in a safe, controlled way. Roe v. Wade could be overturned tomorrow and women could still terminate pregnancies. They would just have to do it in a way that would put their lives at greater risk.

So the ultimate point is broader than Roe v. Wade. It has to do with that simple phrase: individual freedom. An assault on the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy, which is biologically speaking a function of her body while the fetus is in her body, is an assault on individual freedom. For everyone. America, a country founded on the idea that an individual is as important as the institutions surrounding them, cannot undermine in any way this profound and important idea.

An outright ban of abortion rights would send the message to the entire planet that not only isn’t America concerned with individual freedom but that the price for us turning our backs on this idea is relatively low. Vocal minorities, steeped in a medieval hyper-religious worldview can literally purchase the freedom of their fellow citizens. Don’t delve into their arguments for why abortion should be banned and individual freedom should be infringed upon – it all boils down to this: we are wiser and more enlightened than you are and may possibly be and for that reason we are restricting your freedom.

That is the most dangerous precedent America could set for the world. Abortion rights matter because of the simple idea it stands for: we are free. America used to lead with that notion. We can again.

"Spend our money differently..."

2011-01-20T20:52:00.009-05:00

There was a saying in my house growing up when one of the kids wanted something kind of silly: "we're going to spend our money differently."

Today the Republicans in the House of Representatives revealed to the American public how they want to spend our money differently.

Rarely is our collective short-sightedness and general apathy for the wellbeing of our fellow citizen so clearly articulated.

Some of the cuts:

The National Endowment for the Arts, an easy target of narrow-minded, art-starved bigots, is slated for total elimination. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would lose their Government subsidy, effectively killing it. Like Amtrak? If Republicans have their way there would no longer be a Government subsidy keeping it afloat. Kiss the high-speed rail goodbye. It's OK, though, since China is decades ahead of us in that game anyway.

I could go on and on but you should really review the information yourself and make up your own mind. It's appalling in my opinion and lest you think I'm ignoring our fundamental need to sacrifice for our greater good consider what isn't being cut.

Nearly 20% of our GDP goes toward Defense spending. In this quest to save American taxpayers money, how much of our defense (offense) spending do you think is on the chopping block? Not one cent. Why are we continuing to build aircraft carriers and stealth bombers and fighter jets and uranium shelled bunker busters in record numbers? Because nearly every congressional district in the country has a factory that builds those tools of destruction and the kids that grow up on PBS don't get politicians elected.

If America is to lead in this new century and strike out on a new path for humankind everywhere, we need to start making the smart choices when it comes to what we spend our money on. We have the capabilities to destroy the world a hundred times over but we don't have the tools to educate our children or help artists create new works. The politically easy answer seems to be to spend our money on what we don't need at the expense of what should be fundamental elements of any civilized society.

America can matter in the twenty first century but only if we reject choices like the one offered today by House Republicans.

Why America Matters (Penguin Stock Market in 2011)

2011-01-18T18:21:00.007-05:00

We're a decade into this new Century and America's place in the world seems less sure than at any moment since its founding. Our economy seems to have settled into a perpetual state of peril, swaying in the winds of the European and Asian markets. We seem to be no longer in control of our destiny when it comes to our national security (or the security of our fellow humans slaughtered in genocides and senseless War's across the globe). The thought of a sustained peace is an indulgent fantasy at this point with public and private Wars on fronts to numerous to count. The thought of clean energy that doesn't destroy our planet and undermine our stability is considered a fantasy at best and schizophrenic delusion at worst. The world is a mess and America is leading the way to the bottom.

Except it doesn't have to be that way.

There is a moment here for us to seize. A moment for America to become relevant again and to declare to the entire world why it matters. American was once exceptional. It can be exceptional again.

Consider the challenges facing our planet in this moment: violence rages on every continent, our energy lifeblood is in decline and the human experience seems to be regressing with every technological step forward. The crisis on the horizon is not a uniquely American one - it will challenge our entire species. For us to advance beyond this moment we need leadership. America can offer that leadership.

But it will not be easy if we are to lead the way. It will demand sacrifice. We must lead the way on sustainable living. We need to embrace using what is needed instead of taking what is wanted. We need to embrace a culture that doesn't indulge the mindless pursuit of material wealth for its own sake. We need to lead the way and make it the national priority to replace the overwhelming majority of our energy production with truly clean and renewable sources within the next twenty years. The landscape must change dramatically if we have any hope of survival. In the long run, short-term pain will result in long-term benefit. America must be a leader to the rest of the world in this brand of wisdom.

We need to end Wars of fear and greed. There are justifiable Wars. Troops should be sent to stop Genocide, not protect Lithium and Opium in the hills of Afghanistan. The stars and stripes can no longer afford to be seen as an all-consuming cancer spreading across the map, they should be seen as a beacon of civilization and of justice and of reason.

We need to reform our political system because it is a system designed to serve itself and in the end serves no one well. We must demand more of everyday citizens and become more involved in the day-to-day operation of our government. In its highest form, government should be an honest reflection of the people it serves. That isn't the case today in America and it isn't the case anywhere in the world. This can change.

The list is endless and in nearly every case I believe America is ideally positioned to lead the world through the changes that must be made if we are to survive.

I'm going to develop this theme in the coming year. America doesn't matter as much as it once did but American can matter as it never has. The remainder of this century is the most pivotal 90 years our species has ever encountered. It is the time where we will evolve to heights you and I can only dream of or fall like so many civilizations before ours. For those who think America is a shining example of the best of Humankind, this is the time to put up or shut up.

Potential

2010-12-01T01:12:00.004-05:00

Right here is potentially the biggest announcement in human history. Even if it's microbes on Titan the confirmation of extraterrestrial life would change everything on Earth.

Fingers crossed. See you at 2:00 PM EST on Thursday.

Leaky Plumbing

2010-12-01T00:36:00.005-05:00

This week brought another data dump from WikiLeaks - 251,287 embassy cables from around the world. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks has been placed on Interpol's most wanted list. He's on that list with Osama bin Laden (you know, the guy who masterminded the deaths of 3,000 Americans in a single day and goaded our moron President and Congress into starting World War III). He's on that list, if you can believe it, for crimes of sexual assault. Horrible (if true) but, objectively speaking, hardly deserving of placement alongside mass murderers and terrorists. If you listen to some on the Sunday morning talkshows, this is probably the biggest disaster since Julie Taymor's SPIDER-MAN musical opened to nasty reviews.

All joking aside, what does this episode reveal to us about our government's power and our place in it (or beneath it)?

Simply put, there are secrets. Some audacious but reasonably well-known (Saudi Arabia funds terrorism, yet they continue to be a stalwart ally of the United States, Pakistan is harboring Al Qaeda within their borders and have not granted America the latitude it requires to capture and kill these members of our most feared adversary) while others are just silly (American diplomats call foreign dignitaries funny names and laugh about them behind their back). But at the end of the day these secrets, serious or sophomoric, are protected by a government keen to keep this information from the public ostensibly for our own good.

But I'll ask you: what good does it do us to have our leaders secretly kowtow to enemies of the state in the hopes that eventually they'll get their act together? Maybe the man who masterminded the deaths of 3,000 Americans in a single day and goaded us into starting World War III will wander into Afghanistan by accident so we can wipe him off the Earth with a cruise missile. What good does it do to have our leaders secretly root for the destabilization of a North Korean state instead of having an open and honest debate about steps they could be taking to actively fix the problem. Finally, what good does it do us for our leaders to publicly tell the world - EVERYBODY - that us little people aren't ready for the harsh realities of the twenty-first century? After all, isn't the leader of our country fond of saying he's going to tell us what we need to know and not just what we want to hear? We need, Mr. President, to hear reality. Loud and Clear.

How are we expecting to evolve as a species if we continue to make the fundamental mistake of giving a small minority majority voice and power and capabilities to shape the world to their liking without so much as a peep from the vast majority of us who fuel the engine that drives that world? We need to be engaged and active in as much as each of us is capable. Is it really in the best interest of the world to have it revealed that the Secretary of State of the United States directs diplomats to spy on their opposite numbers? Probably not. But is it in the best interest of the human beings on this planet that a few among us are standing up and making vitally important information available so that we all can begin to make better, smarter choices and (ultimately) become more active in how our world is shaped?

Absolutely.

Palin the ass

2010-11-27T22:04:00.006-05:00

Sarah Palin recently misspoke. It happens too often with this particular celebrity, a deeply unserious public figure who inexplicably continues to be part of discussions far ranging and far over her head.

She said on Glenn Beck's radio show that we must "stand with our North Korean allies". Honest mistake, I'm sure, but since it feeds into a well-established (and wholly deserved) narrative of Palin-as-mental-lightweight, the media jumped on it as yet another example of Mrs. Palin's inadequacy and incompetence.

Instead of simply saying, "my mistake" and moving on, Mrs. Palin took to Facebook (surely THE venue for serious political conversation) to take the media to task for what she characterizes as a lack of consistency. President Obama isn't called out for slips of the tongue and she is. For the record, this is rubbish: the gaffe was replayed by news outlets, with coverage among all of the major news networks and entertainment networks like Fox "News". Mileage varied, to be sure: conservative outlets theorized that the gaffe was due to Obama's secret ambitions to remold America in the image of the 57 Islamic states. To say that the media never lifted a finger is a flat-out lie. The part's of it Sarah Palin likes, in fact, did a great deal of heavy lifting.

But back to her newest offering to the annals of political discourse - her Facebook post - scroll through the comments and you'll notice the Palin-faithful don't seem to realize that fallacy - or care. These sycophants are obviously intellectually incurious and uninformed. I state that for a fact, because I have faith that if any of these people were intellectually curious or remotely informed they would see through the appalling joke that is Mrs. Palin. She is the Paris Hilton of American Politics: famous because she's famous. Talentless and whiny, full of excuses and finger pointing when things don't go her way.

Implicit in her now-famous "Thanksgiving" message is this disquieting glimpse into Mrs. Palin's psyche: she thinks she is a serious political figure worthy of treatment equal to or better than the President of the United States. She's not. She is a quitter whose sense of civic responsibility ended the moment it became clear to her that more money was to be made by selling books and selling snake oil on Fox "News". She is attacking a man who has worked for the public good for his entire adult life and became elected President by a majority of Americans for his gaffes because she's upset about being attacked for her gaffes. The hypocrisy is numbing, isn't it? The argument is so self-aggrandizing it borders on offensive. More importantly, Mrs. Palin seems to be missing the key point that our "free press" is, in this instance, fulfilling its obligation: it is reminding the American people that there is a deeply unserious, dangerously incurious person who wants to be President.

America's whiners and mental lightweights have found their queen in a woman so blindingly unqualified for any public office above dog catcher. I can only hope those of us with brains outnumber them and continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Happy Thanksgiving, Sarah. This year I'm grateful you're not my Vice President.

Damned if they do...

2010-11-22T23:23:00.004-05:00

...damned if they don't.

I'm not interested in fear mongering but consider me disappointed but not very surprised at the recent outrage over TSA pat-downs of airline passengers in the name of security.

First, a little perspective: estimates are that fewer than 3% of passengers are subjected to pat downs. 3%. There is ample evidence that it is not the most effective security measure (that would be good old fashioned racial profiling - seriously). So it may be stupid, but I can't for a second believe that the TSA's motives are sinister. Is there a systematic plan to humiliate and harass passengers so an overworked security screener can get his or her rocks off on respectfully running their hands across another person's body? Of course not. They want to keep us from death at the hands of those who would do us harm.

So, with that in mind, I think we need to take a step back and have this conversation with a bit more civility and intelligence. Emotional appeals that this is a violation of human rights and the government must be stopped before we end up naked at President Obama's feet do absolutely nothing to help advance the conversation. What it does is send the message to our Government that we, once again, do not have the stomach for what we say we want them to do.

Stop Terrorists but don't profile and don't pat down those passengers refusing electronic scanning or who set off alarms at said scanning stations. Reduce the deficit but keep our social programs, military funding and cut our taxes. We say we want a government that can protect us and stop wasting our money but it seems to me what we really want is a government that will pat down the OTHER people in line and raise taxes on the OTHER people in our neighborhood.

When we suffer another catastrophic attack on our soil or the collapse of another major financial institution, perhaps we will look back on this era of mixed signals and false modesty with a nostalgic warmth. These were the days, we'll say, when we were spoiled rotten.

Firing Squad

2010-11-20T14:50:00.005-05:00

The recent suspension of MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is another example of a dangerous trend in our media culture: the illusion of impartiality.

Make no mistake, MSNBC is a left-leaning network with unapologetically liberal hosts and a definite bias in favor of the Democratic party. Fox News is a right-leaning network with unapologetically conservative hosts and contributors with a definite bias in favor of the Republican party. Enlightened consumers of both of these networks can hopefully recognize this fact and file it away under universal truths like gravity and the speed of light.

But the problem - and the ultimate danger - is that most consumers of cable news, websites, newspapers and yes, blogs, are not enlightened. They are hurried, distracted Americans who assume that a news outlet is a news outlet. Everybody is taught that news reporting is supposed to be impartial and unbiased. So when they hear that President Obama is a socialist or that the Republican plan for healthcare is "die quickly", they assume that they're hearing truth. Exaggerated truth, perhaps, but truth. They also accept a certain bias. After all, I do not think anybody expects Fox News contributor Sarah Palin to give Democratic policies even time or consideration as Republican ones.

But what MSNBC is trying to say with these suspensions is that they are not a political organization but rather a hard news outlet. MSNBC is absolutely a liberal majority network although it does seems to give straight news and conservative opinion makers much more of a role in their organization than Fox does with liberals (Juan Williams does not, should not, and will never count in my opinion). So when senior management at MSNBC decides to suspend Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough for making political contributions in their own names they are making a statement they cannot support: that theirs is a network that is fair, balanced and impartial. They're not. Just like Fox News is not.

The strength of this Nation is in the ultimate usefulness of the fourth estate to the American people, that it enriches and enlightens the public so that they can make better decisions. If America is to thrive in this new century, the illusion of journalistic impartiality must be done away with. Don't suspend hosts because they have a political point of view if you pay them for that point of view the other 363 days a year.

This is an area where Government could really affect positive change for our future. What if congress created an independent and impartial agency to regulate news outlets carrying FCC licenses? The agency would insist that new outlets adhere to simple standards of journalistic ethics if they want to continue to be classified as news organizations. Those organizations who cannot or do not wish to meet those standards must be classified as news-entertainment organizations and announce that at the start of every segment every hour of every day.

Do away with the illusion and a better informed, better engaged electorate is sure to follow.

The Case for Disappointment

2010-11-18T23:35:00.007-05:00

Monumental, Earth-shaking, paradigm-shifting change was what most people wanted. The excitement of the 2008 election was not about a man named Obama but about that idea. That idea that it was all finally possible. A blatantly unjust War and an endless (barely justifiable) War would lead us to reconsider the disastrous legacy of the military-industrial complex. The collapse of the financial sector would lead us to deal with the reality that our economy is built on quick sand and fix it. Bankrupt local governments would lead us to reexamine costly union monopolies and corruption at every level of of our society. We would fix - not cover up, not kick the proverbial can down the road but FIX - this mess our civilization has found itself in. Dramatic change is the only thing that could do this and we demanded it.

What we got was parliamentary gymnastics by an overly pragmatic (perhaps even naive) President, a power-hungry obstructionist congress and impotent local governments. A majority of Americans demanded a public option for healthcare. They didn't get it. A majority of Americans wanted us to close Guantanamo Bay, overturn Don't Ask, Don't Tell and withdraw from Afghanistan. We haven't, we won't and we choose to believe the fallacy that we can't. What happened to "Yes We Can?"

We The People demanded change. We don't want to hear that its hard, that it has to come slowly and to hang in there and wait for the supermajority! Setting aside the twenty-five percent of us who think Sarah Palin would make a fine President, I want to think that most Americans are pretty smart. Perhaps inarticulate, but we're smart about the fact that there are serious problems that MUST be addressed if we are going to move forward in this new Century. China and India are not afraid of change. Why are we?

Make no mistake, our Government IS broken. It has been corrupted to the point that it is no longer merely ineffective but inoperable. When the people demand Healthcare and we get the Frankenstein Monster; when the people demand that men and women of any sexual orientation can volunteer to fight and die for their Nation and we get thinly veiled indifference at best, homophobia at worst, from our President and the Congress we begin to wonder what exactly they're doing in Washington and in our statehouses. We begin to feel the soul-crushing disappointment which ultimate leads to us feeling nothing at all. Disappointment leads to indifference and that indifference leads to radical, short-sighted partisans taking over our system. That's where we are now. What we recognized in November of 2008 was that we didn't want that. What we got was more of the same.

That is the definition of disappointment.

Loaded Question Time

2010-03-22T19:05:00.008-04:00

Is Health Care a commodity or a right? That is the essential question facing anybody seriously considering the issues surrounding Health Care reform and the two sides of our political system are fighting over this issue. The irony is that they seem to agree. More on that later.

But, first, what do the sides believe? One side believes that people should work hard and be rewarded justly for that work. With those rewards, they can partake in the best things life has to offer: great house, amazing schools and comprehensive health care coverage. The other side believes that philosophy is an over-simplification of how the world works and wants to level the playing field through social programs that provide for the worst-off members of our society. To be fair, both arguments are not without their problems and while each ideology - Conservative and Liberal - work in a petri dish, their practical applications prove to be problematic for even the most skilled public servant. In practice our government splits the difference: everyone should work hard, but we need a smattering of social programs to help those who truly cannot help themselves. It is a compromise and nowhere is this fundamental compromise more evident than the issue of Health Care reform.

The question facing every citizen - not just the ones in congress - is whether or not Health Care a commodity to be bought, traded and sold or a right owed to all free people who contribute what they can to the system.

At its core, our system is built on the idea that Health Care is a commodity. Built around that core are social programs to help the people who cannot help themselves. The Democrats don't really disagree with the Republicans on this point. As point of fact, their actions strengthen this structure. Arguing for regulation of insurance companies concedes the point that they have the right to exist to begin with. Of course, there are politicians who are pushing for single payer and there are politicians who think Medicare should be eliminated and insurance companies be granted free reign to operate how they see fit but the majority feel like they can live with the idea of Health Care as a commodity. Most people don't think twice about this but every major failing of our health care system is a result of this compromise. Costs balloon because the government entitles a huge number of people with health care without being able to control pricing. Doctors charge more because they get ripped off on reimbursements and government under-regulates because of pressures from the corporate interests who (rightly and legally) are protecting their profit margins. It is a cycle of diminishing returns on both sides that perpetuates itself ad infinitum and it is all because we make the determination as a culture that Health Care is a commodity.

Make no mistake - this bill does nothing - nothing - to change that basic calculus. In fact, it strengthens that structure. Health Care in the United States has been, and continues to be, primarily handled by the private sector. It is bought, sold and traded as a commodity. This bill tosses thirty million new customers into this system without a whole lot of regulation to protect them from price gouging while offering a whole lot of penalties should they fail to buy this product. At its most basic level, it's not unlike forcing thirty million people to buy a new flat screen TV and fining those who are happy watching Dancing with the Stars in HD. The key difference is you and I now don't have to pay for those gluttons of reality-TV show punishment when they go to the ER without insurance.

So what are we left with? What we've always been left with: the extremes of each side of the argument are unhappy with where we've ended up while the rest of us more or less feel like we have a perfectly fine system considering the limitations of inherent to government and free market capitalism. And you know what? That's the best we will ever have as long as we hedge on the question of whether or not everyone in this country deserves to be healed when they're ill regardless of how much money they make.

This bill is progress. It's a Frankenstein-monster but it's progress. It may not be what you want or what I want but it signals that our elected officials are not scared to tackle the big issues facing our country (finally). Hopefully the mindless ideologues on both sides of the aisle were revealed for what they really are and are run out of Washington at the soonest possible time. But it also fails in one crucial way: it doesn't answer the question...

Is Health Care a commodity or a right?

Let's find an answer to that question as a People and construct the system that serves it best.

Fox most trusted News channel?

2010-01-27T23:07:00.003-05:00

Who do you suppose they asked?

"I do not accept second place for the United States of America"

2010-01-27T21:40:00.007-05:00

A bit of stream of consciousness as I watch this, here are my thoughts on President Obama's first (official) state of the union.

I love the opening. Our President is a constitutional history nerd. I repeat: our President is a constitutional history nerd.

"We all hated the bank bailout" struck a weird, sophomoric nerve. MSNBC cutting to a smirking Tim Geithner didn't help. The callback to "doing what's right, not just popular" is good, and he needs to use that line a lot more often.

Would someone please ask Biden and Pelosi to look a little more serious and wipe those smug grins off their faces, please?

Reminding people that you cut taxes: smart.

Calling out Republicans for not applauding: priceless.

A lot of what we did saved the economy from complete collapse. We didn't quite fix it yet and we're going to do more.

I like the 30 billion to community banks (although, that doesn't seem like nearly enough). I wish the rhetoric was a bit stronger.

Infrastructure. Somewhere Rachel Maddow is geeking out.

Lost decade. China. India. "How long should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold?" All good points.

"I know there are some who doubt the overwhelming scientific evidence for climate change." Nice look, great bitchslap, but I can't help but think that it all looks a little childish to independents. Probably not a good idea to make ignorant people defensive. That's how we ended up with George Bush. Twice.

Health care. Man parts of this speech are too lightweight for the subject matter. I get it, but it's a mistake.

Year 2000: Budget Surplus of 2 trillion dollars.

End of 2008: Deficit of 1 trillion dollars and projected deficits...

"All of this was before I walked through the door."

Right. Fucking. On.

Spending freeze. It's smart and ruthlessly political. Average people won't remember it if the economy is doing better in 2011 and if it isn't...well Obama won't be running for re-election so it's a promise he can break.

Some more classy snark:

"That's why it's called 'budgeting'"

"The problem is that's what we did for eight years."

"Let's try common sense."

Can you ever imagine Bush saying, "with deference to separation of powers..."? I sure can't.

"What frustrates Americans is a Washington where every day is election day...you lose, I win."

This is what could be transformational about Obama's Presidency. That line right there. If he can go to the people and seed a more populist, centrist political identity, neither Democratic or Republican, then he can succeed in more profound ways than any President before him. Wishful thinking, maybe, but this man has the opportunity. It is up to him whether or not to fully seize it.

"Just saying no may be good politics, but it's not leadership." Another great line. He is really going after Republicans, but I'm also realizing he's giving them a choice. Work with us or feel my rhetorical wrath come election time.

The War section was awfully brief. Probably a smart move. You could see him trying to shake some sense into the far left: "the War in Iraq is ending!"

Haiti. I suppose it was unavoidable, but he needs his 10 o'clock number here. This speech is LONG.

Repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell, huh?!" Well well well.

"Change you can believe in." This is a GREAT closing. This is a hollywood screenplay, the sort of idealism that got Obama elected. If he truly believes this, and has the smarts to mobilize the people of this country behind these ideas then he can be a truly great President.

"None of us are willing to believe - even slightly - that we will fail."

No surprise that Olbermann immediately distills the speech into "he's daring the Republican's to stop him." He really is just an ultra left wing version of Bill O'Reily...

This was not a speech of "I dare you." This was a speech of wanting, truly wanting to move on. He couldn't quite resist getting his jabs in, unfortunately, but the ultimate point was devoid of anger.

Ultimately, a tremendous speech. Way too light in places but saved nicely by a powerful, articulate closing. A call to action. Now, time for the action.

We have a hostage situation and nobody wants to negotiate

2010-01-25T12:13:00.003-05:00

In case there was a doubt in anyone's mind that We the People are being held hostage by the bankers right now, I direct those gullible souls to this story. Seems fairly innocuous (sort of). The Treasury Secretary is stating a known and accepted fact: if the Federal Reserve Chairman isn't reconfirmed, the markets will react badly. Of course, this is true, and of course, this is a big problem.

I won't go on and on about how Bernanke and Geithner have padded the wallets of all of their Wall Street friends (though, they have). I won't go on and on about how transparent Geithner's threat is. How he is essentially saying, we the bankers have made it clear to that one the President that Bernanke is our guy and he's staying and don't make us angry because you really wouldn't want to see us angry.

No. I'll simply offer example #14,578 of Obama the President not being as smart as Obama the Campaigner. Obama the President plays the long game. Biding his time carefully and picking his spots. Obama the Campaigner knew you needed quick, decisive action at every level of the organization. Staffers didn't work out, they left. Obama the Capaigner would have had Bernanke's head on a plate months ago. Obama the President doesn't want to upset what he's sure is a very delicate situation.

If our President was the man we elected, he would already have both Bernanke's letter of resignation and his successor's resume in the top drawer of his desk ready to go.

Bernanke would give a nice statement in the Roosevelt room about "needing more time with my family", head held up high that "I leave this office on the highest note possible - literally saving civilization from collapse".

Obama the Campaigner would nominate a populist Federal Reserve chairman the Republican's can't reject and put Geithner on notice: "You had your fun. Now I want a consumer protection agency, I want the bailout money back and I want your Treasury Department to help stimulate the economy in a way that produces 2 million new jobs by the end of my first term. If you can't deliver that to me with those non-negotiables (accountability, payback), then get the hell out of Washington."

Of course, I doubt very much any of that will happen.

Though I'd feel a lot better if it did.

Economic Programming Note

2009-10-02T16:51:00.001-04:00

Unemployment is one of the last metrics to change in economic recovery. Stop freaking out. You're only making it worse.

Somewhere in the middle is the truth

2009-09-16T23:14:00.005-04:00

The majority of the legitimate disagreement over the health care reform plan boils down to whether or not you believe Government has a vital role in your everyday life.

The purest liberals think that it does. The purest conservatives think that it does not.

Somewhere in the middle is the truth. Somewhere in the middle is where our President stands, waiting for us to join him in the work that needs to be done. This idea is obvious to those who pay attention to what the man says and does. It is not subtext. This has been part of his platform from day one. He is a centrist. He gave a spirited defense of this principle during his speech to Congress last week:

"You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter – that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves."

I want a single-payer option, you want the free market unmolested by Government regulation. Both desires are, given the political, economic and social realities of the world we live in, radical. President Obama understands that. Again, from his speech:

"There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own."

"I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch. And that is precisely what those of you in Congress have tried to do over the past several months."

There it is, in black and white. Straight from the horses mouth, as they say. President Obama doesn't want to pull the plug on your grandmother. President Obama doesn't want to turn America into Venezuela. He wants to find the best elements and choices left to us and put them together to create something that a majority of American's would approve of. He has shown enormous restraint and patience in letting the elected representatives of the People of the United States of America write a plan that best embodies their constituents. You and me.

Sadly, radicals have hijacked the debate.

Neither side is working in good faith because they want to believe the worst of the other side and because they have, ultimately, radical agendas.

Shouldn't health care be affordable and readily available to all citizens of the greatest Nation on Earth? Set aside whether or not you think it should be an inalienable human right in today's modern world (spoiler alert: it should be). Shouldn't health care be affordable and readily available to all citizens of the greatest Nation on Earth? It should be. Can we agree on that?

Let's start there.

Let's eliminate and make illegal prejudice based on preexisting conditions? Can't we demand that everyone has, at the very least, coverage for catastrophic injury or illness? Can that be something Government helps out with? Can the days of Cancer patients fighting with their insurance provider over coverage become a thing of the past?

Can we agree that health care costs too much in America? We spend more than twice the average of other developed countries around the world and our coverage is not appreciably better. In many areas, it is worse. If we can agree on that, could we agree that the Government should not be able to tax your benefits? Can we agree that a cap should be placed on health care coverage? Why should somebody who had acne as a child pay more for their basic level of coverage than someone who was blessed with clear skin through adolescence? Can we agree that profit and capitalism are important, but that this is an industry where it isn't entirely appropriate? Why should someone be able to make money off of my misfortune or bad luck?

Can we agree that is not fair?

I hope that we can.

I hope that we can agree on the vast majority of this issue and meet somewhere in the middle and create real reform that, on balance, is good for the American People.

The irony is that the President, so vocally and angrily demonized by some fringe elements as a radical leftist is really not radical at all. He's a quintessential centrist. What his election meant and what his Presidency stands for is the idea of seeking common ground with our fellow citizens. He is fond of saying that "we can disagree without being disagreeable." For all of his missteps and failings - and they (like all men's) are considerable - he has always simply and eloquently and, yes, nobly asked us to meet in the middle. To regain our civility and regain something essential about ourselves. The time for teaparties and violence and anger, hate and fear and derision has passed.

This is a time to come together and meet where we can meet and agree when we can agree and heal this Nation.

Somewhere in the middle is the truth.

The amount of ignorance on display here...

2009-09-16T08:58:00.002-04:00

...is simply staggering.

I'll write something about this once I pick my jaw up off the ground.

Substantive Debate Welcome

2009-09-16T00:23:00.002-04:00

Don't mistake my previous post for an outright dismissal of so-called conservative principles. If you aren't a looney-tunes Teabagger, let's talk. But don't run around crying about Obama's secret Kenyan birth and socialist sleeper status and then accuse me of not wanting to have a serious conversation about the (numerous) issues with the proposed health care plans being legislated right now.

Here's the bill. Catch you on the flip-side.

Where were you and your outrage...

2009-09-15T23:51:00.006-04:00

Where were you and your outrage, dear loyal Teabagger, when George W. Bush was racking up the biggest deficits in U.S history?

Where were you and your outrage, dear loyal Teabagger, when George W. Bush invaded Iraq at a cost of - to date - nearly $700,000,000,000?

Where were you and your outrage, dear loyal Teabagger, when George W. Bush passed the highway bill at a cost of $295,000,000,000?

Where were you and your outrage, dear loyal Teabagger, when George W. Bush passed the Medicare prescription drug benefit package which will cost $700,000,000,000 over ten years?

Where were you and your outrage, dear loyal Teabagger, when George W. Bush bailed out the US Banks at a cost of $700,000,000,000?

Where were you and your outrage, dear loyal Teabagger, when discretionary spending (not even accounting for "evil socialist" programs like Medicare or Social Security) increased 5.3% - a full percentage point higher than Liberal Devil LBJ in the sixties and a full four percentage points higher than Reagan (and he was fighting the Russians)?!

You were sitting at home with a shit-eating grin on your face, you Culture-Warrior, you. You were standing by idle as your country went down the drain. You weren't concerned with the Executive Branch then. But now. Now it's different for you. Now that a Democrat is in the office, now that he is trying desperately to save this country, NOW you decide to show up with your outrage. NOW it's OK to show up at rallies with signs of opposition. Heck, you're raising the ante and showing up with loaded assault rifles!

You have nothing against spending and long as the person doing it has a little (R) next to their name. You have nothing but contempt for the Constitution you profess to love but I'm pretty sure you haven't read. You spent the last eight year's watching it get pissed on without batting an eye. You don't hate the game, you hate the player. And it is nothing but that hate - simple, transparent and disgusting - that the rest of the country is seeing now.

We had a referendum on your way of thinking in November. You voted for Sarah Palin, we voted for Barack Obama.

Guess what?

We won.

Now sit down and shut the hell up.

Jimmy Carter gets it right

2009-09-15T20:05:00.004-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Jimmy Carter is on the record as saying that much of the animosity toward President Obama is because of his race - because of the simple fact of his skin color. A former President saying this is a BIG DEAL and this may have just blown the doors off of Obama's tiptoeing around the issue of race.

Lawrence O'Donnell is on Olbermann now (somebody give him a show, please) and makes a smart point: there's a lot of substance in the health care bill that Republicans could take a legitimate stance against. Instead, we have ill-defined anger about socialism and marxism and Muslim sleepers and blah blah blah blah blah... Very true, Lawrence, and I'm glad you pointed it out. I wish somebody would sit one of these Teabag idiots down and ask them what about the substance of the proposals concerns them. If they can answer without any of the before-mentioned buzzwords, I say we elect them to the house of representatives, because that seems to be the only point of distinction between the two.

On the other hand - I think the left is making a critical mistake in making Joe Wilson a poster boy for this festering racism. There are plenty of examples of genuine racism in this debate (just take a look at some of the pictures from the 9/12 teabagger rally). They're going to shoot themselves in the foot if they spend a lot of time trying to cast Joe Wilson as the poster boy for the evil racists threatening our President's life.

Throw these clowns out of out country already. I am sick of acting like it's OK to humor these assholes. They're wrong and they're dangerous and they need to be treated like the racist, xenophobic children that they really are.

Credibility Gap

2009-09-15T17:47:00.001-04:00

At this point, I think Glen Beck is really just engaging in a brilliant piece of performance art.

Inspirational to humorists everywhere...

Outrage! Outrage, I tell you!

2009-09-14T12:09:00.002-04:00

"OHMYGOD did you hear about what Kanye said at the VMA's?!"

And so began the media's senseless faux outrage of the week.

Watching the mash-up clip above (insightful, actually), I was struck with a thought (not-so-insightful, actually):

The mainstream media doesn't want to watch the government fail. They don't want to see rational dialog forfeited to the radicals on both sides of the ideological spectrum. They just want to see the Sunday morning talk show equivalent of Wrestlemania XII because, by God, outrage sells!

There are countless examples of this. The Serena Williams meltdown looked like an early contender to bounce Joe Wilson off of his Outrage poster child-of-the-week pedestal but then Kanye West, duty bound to stir up faux outrage when his country needs it the least, decided to go and make a damn fool of himself in front of millions of people.

And, lest we forget, way back on Saturday there were twenty-five thousand racist, ignorant Neanderthals running around acting as if America is turning into East Germany. You had people so mad they were literally threatening the President's life. On T-Shirts. They lost the election and now they need some kind of epic battle to fulfill themselves. And that's why outrage and pre-canned villainy sells. Casting the cape-wearing, mustache-twirling bad guys (Obama on Health Care or Kanye West on Taylor Swift) is a necessary element of what small people do when they try to feel bigger. They need absolute evil as a foil to their absolute good and they'll find it - with the help of the media - wherever they can.

This outrage is not pointless. In fact, to many it is the most important thing in their lives. How many people do you know display their anger and hate like merit badges? It's part of our culture. What team are you for/what team are you against? For Joe Wilson. Against Kanye West. But it's not terribly valuable. A fair-minded debate about Health Care is literally impossible without one side crying outrage over Socialism and the other crying outrage over morality. Sadly, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the state of things.

You want to stop being sold Outrage? Stop buying it.

Meltdown much?

2009-09-13T13:44:00.001-04:00

I love it

2009-09-10T23:16:00.002-04:00

I can't even tell you how much I love this video. This really is the gift that keeps on giving.

Donate to Joe's opponent HERE

It's almost as good as this:

These folks couldn't be more out of touch with reality if they tried.

(Insert Gushing Statement About Obama's Speech Here)

2009-09-10T15:11:00.003-04:00

FULL DISCLOSURE: I thought the speech was great and I intend to gush a little. Please forgive me that indulgence.

One of the things I'm really excited about as an observer of American Politics is the promise of a kick ass speech every time Obama addresses a joint session of Congress. It is the man in his element, plain and simple. Every element of the format fits his speaking style perfectly.

He's just a master orator. Not even his critics can really dispute that. Count me among his many admirers.

But it was in the substance of the speech last night - not the style - where I was most impressed. It was a speech that dealt succinctly and systematically with the issue at hand. This is why this is important. This is what we should do. These are the lies you're hearing and this is the truth. If you diagrammed the speech in its simplest form, that is what we watched last night.

And in many ways he owes a lot of the success of this speech to gifts from the opposition. Over the August recess, the airwaves have been flooded and the newspapers filled with stories from town hall meetings in support of, but more typically in opposition to, Health Care reform. What the media has done is cast a visible antagonist to Obama in this debate. That antagonist is angry, belligerent and irrational. And in a way, that is a gift. During his Press Conference in August, he didn't have the kind of angry, vocal, visible opposition. Unlike the press conference in August, he had a powerful message to push back against. This gave him the opportunity to frame his positive argument against what is inarguably a negative one. He sees opportunity for the good where others see only bad. Do not underestimate the power of that simple image.

The other gift springs from Obama's goal of consensus-building. He doesn't like casting the Republicans as the bad guys, which is understandable in that context. This irks some of his liberal allies (myself included). But, the beauty of his address last night is that he didn't have to, they did it themselves. Watching Eric Cantor flit around on his blackberry for the whole of the speech, hearing catcalls and boos and Joe Wilson's now-infamous "YOU LIE!", the Republicans quite successfully painted a picture of themselves as oafish children. Contrast that with the image of the unflappably cool President at the center of the storm. Startling, isn't it?

Because what he was doing was calling out the fringe, correcting the misinformation and lies spewed by radicals on the right. Without having to name a name or point a finger, between his words and the images of the petulant legislature we heard this: "The Republicans in this chamber are not here to do the work of the American people. They're here to name call. They're here to stand in the way of real and significant and desperately needed change for the sake of it and nothing else". As bad as the Democrats have been at message discipline these past months, the Republicans proved last night that they are (at present) worse.

But last night, after a very long recess, a master re-entered the ring and reminded us why he is the Chief and we hail him. Kudos to the speechwriters, to the policy wonks (who certainly have a kindred spirit in Obama) and to the childish Republicans without whom this would not have been possible.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Underestimate Obama at your peril. He's here to get something done.

Time to go

2009-09-09T16:38:00.005-04:00

Barack Obama is about to deliver a speech about the future of Health Care. An important speech to be sure. He needs to outline what reform is necessary and why. He needs to outline the emotional, logical and moral imperatives behind the expensive and sweeping reforms being proposed by the Democrats.

Big speech. Big deal.

And completely irrelevant to humankind at large.

There.

Now I've done it. I've taken a huge issue that millions of people care passionately enough about that they'll eat their opponents fingers. Seriously. And here I am telling you...

It doesn't matter.

What's this? An over-priced MRI? Unfortuntely, no. It's an infrared picture of the planet Jupiter being struck by an asteroid or comet the size of the Pacific Ocean. The impact you see in the picture, were it to occur on Earth, would annihilate absolutely everything on our planet. Every piece of art, every great work of literature and, yes, legislation, would be wiped out and literally erased from existence. The only proof that our species, that intelligent life of any sort ever evolved on our planet, would be a few scraps of space junk floating through the cosmos.

Where am I going with this?

There are lots of important debates going on. The loudest at the moment is essentially a referendum on whether or not good, affordable, sustainable health care can be best achieved through the Private sector or Government. A worthy conversation but far from what should be the number one priority of our World's governments and private industry alike.

It's time to go. We are fast approaching, because of our own insatiable desires to blow one another up, through cosmic quirk of wayward asteroid or comet or because of some other as-yet unimaginable global catastrophe, the end of our time on this planet.

I don't want to rain on your parade, and it may not happen for another thousand years.

Or it may happen tomorrow.

But it will happen.

And when it does, unless we have invested significant resources into successfully traveling to and colonizing other planets, our species will be lost forever. Today, we're much like a piece of driftwood fallen off of the Titanic. Slowly rotting in the North Atlantic until one day we're nothing at all.

What we need is to be picked up and placed in a museum. Or rather, we need to pick ourselves up and build our own museum and get ourselves there. We need to aggressively tackle the problem of our civilization's mortality. This a legitimate death panel. This is an international conversation that needs to be had. Acknowledge the fragility of our existence on this planet. Discuss and develop methods of inter-solar and intra-solar travel and colonization like our lives depend on it. Which, they do.

With current technologies, we could travel to Mars and begin colonization. This is not the stuff of science fiction. The proof of concept was executed brilliantly over forty years ago during the Apollo program. If Mars is too far away, we need to look closer. Toward our own Moon. It's not ideal as any catastrophe large enough to wipe out all civilization on Earth would almost certainly effect the Moon, but it's a start. In time, vessels may be built that can traverse Space at speeds exceeding the speed of light. If not, place our trust in Einstein and send a thousand ships carrying a thousand souls toward a thousand Earth-like planets at relativistic speeds. Failing that, be prepared to build vessels capable of carrying enough individuals to maintain genetic diversity and send them at a snails pace through our solar system and toward the distant unknown. With a thousand such vessels, a success rate of just .10% would ensure our civilization's continued existence.

This sounds fanciful. It sounds like a diversion to the real problems on Planet Earth, but it is the biggest and the realest problem we face. All of this. Every generation. Every culture. Every scientific advance. Every inspiration. Every hope. It will all be for nothing if we do not start, in earnest, to tackle this problem. We are hanging on a thread. The truth is we have always been hanging on a thread, but we have the technology to finally do something about it. With a President in office who speaks of hope, who speaks of our best days ahead of us, not behind us, would it not be refreshing to have this become priority?

Think about the issues that are important to you. Health Care. The War(s). Civil Rights.

Now think about them compared to the issue of our continued existence as a species. You may say it's an unlikely scenario I'm laying out there. You may say that it can wait until we solve the problems of this Earth. You may say that and you may be right.

But you may not be.

Is it worth the risk?

Gibbs throws Baucus to K-Street

2009-09-08T14:39:00.003-04:00

During today's press briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs made an offhand remark about how Max Baucus' proposal wasn't in-house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue but is making the rounds on K-Street. A thinly-veiled jab at Max Baucus, a well-known friend of the health care lobby.

Watching a Gibbs' briefing for the first time in a while, I'm reminded just how much I like watching him work. I do wish he could give a straight answer or two from time to time, but that's the job, right? I don't miss Dana Perino one bit.

Some folks don't agree with me.

Full of Thought (and snark)

2009-09-08T11:26:00.005-04:00

Let's start with the obvious:

Sasha and Malia should have reminded their dad that tomorrow is the release of Beatles Rock Band. As his resident Kid Czars, they should have warned him off Wednesday night and gone instead to Thursday ("It was the night before 9/11, and not a creature was stirring...")

So, with that said, it's a good thing that his audience isn't watching on the television. Polls don't matter in this debate. Never have. Never will. I'll explain why I think so in a minute.

But first. A mea culpa (sort of).

Watching the overwhelmingly negative coverage of our President, I'm struck by the realization that occasionally I added to the chorus of negativity surrounding President Bush the younger instead of contributing to a thoughtful dialog about about the issues facing him and our country.

Having said that, our current President has done nothing even approaching the nadir of the invasion of Iraq so the outrage from the "liberal" media over his speech to school children (a certain Pet Goat is livid) and the mishandling of the Health Care bill (seems to boil down to "he should have just written the damn thing himself") is just a little too much to swallow. I'd like to thank you for bearing with me through that mild run-on sentence.

So, where does that leave us? Time to have a thoughtful debate! And, no, I'm not talking about a Town Hall where cancer patients are heckled, no pinky finger is safe and John McCain finds he still has a platform to mug and chuckle like the Evil Emperor from RETURN OF THE JEDI.

Sorry. Positive. Thoughtful. OK, here goes nothing...

Let's examine what people are riled up over with some buzzword analysis:

Socialism. Government Takeover. Public Option. Medicare. Unsustainable. Red Scare II: Electric Boogaloo. Big Government. Evil Government. Second Amendment. George Takei. Death Panel.

OK. Let's take them one by one.

Socialism: The public option is just another liberal trick to dupe us into becoming Socialists because that political ideology is just so 2009.

Goverment Takeover: Obama wants to take over your healthcare like he took over the auto industry. Accepting that this isn't true (which, I think we can), let's then ignore the fact that Obama actually saved the US Auto industry from imploding. He's a terrible manager and hires bad people (we're looking at you, Van Jones), so let's keep him outta this one.

Public Option: Option my ass - the government is going to make me buy their healthcare. Except for US Senators, who may not choose the public option for themselves or their families. It's clearly mandatory. I don't know what the word option means.

Medicare: A disaster. Can you believe they want to create another program like the relatively successful Medicare program, which has helped seniors for decades and has helped raise the life expectancy in this country since it began? What morons.

Unsustainable: OK, so my premiums have doubled in the last ten years, but I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is a program that will be cheaper than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because I needed those Wars. I don't need cheaper, better health care. It's just unsustainable. (like the word "option", I may or may not know the actual definition of the word "unsustainable").

Red Scare II: Electric Boogaloo: See "Socialism" and consider the strength of communism in 2009. I think we'll agree that my level of terror is appropriate.

Big Government: I want government telling me who I can marry, what kind of gun can be carried in my presence, what speed I can drive my car, who I can murder and when, and what kind of drugs I may or may not ingest, but I have to absolutely have to put my foot down when they want to help me take care of myself so I can contribute more fully to society. Can you believe their nerve?

Evil Government: See "Big Government".

Second Amendment: I'm carrying my M-16 at this debate right now. Just cos. No reason in particular.

George Takei: I can't prove it, but the Public Option, I suspect, is a way from them to make me gay like George Takei.

Death Panel: Just like Medicare has been doing since the 60's, if Grandma's health care is government-run, they will kill her. Or George Takei her. I'm not sure what's worse.

So. Let's see. What does this spell?

S-G-T-P-O-M-U-R-S-I-I-B-G-S-A-G-T-D-P

Oligarchy! I don't know if we're in an oligarchy or headed toward an oligarchy, but I sure am scared.

I'm going to put Beatles Rock Band on and put my head in the sand. I'm just too scared to continue.

See, the problem with that Buzzword analysis. The reason it's more sad than funny (other than the fact that I'm not that funny) is that it is really not far from the truth. Some people think that a Public OPTION will lead to socialism. That they'll open their doors the day it passes to see the Ruskies parachuting into town like a Red Dawn reboot. Some people think that even though Grandma and Grandpa have government run healthcare right now, big scary Barack Obama (he's a Muslim, you know) will KILL THEM the second he gets 'his' bill passed.

It's nonsense. And his true audience tomorrow night, the Men and Women of Congress, need to be told that it needs to end. That most of the people in this debate don't want to do anything of the sort. They want to yell and scream and pout and bite fingers off. Liberals and Conservatives alike. It's a sport. It's a game. People like Keith Olbermann or Bill O'Reily get in front of their camera and spout insane venom from one side of their mouth pretending they're somehow more enlightened than the other and that maybe, just maybe something will click, or a blood vessel will pop and this culture war will be at long last over.

This isn't about health care. It never has been. It's been about sport. Can one side beat the other side? Well, the price of this game is a lot steeper than the Redskins season tickets you just foreclosed your house to buy. It's our health. It's our well-being. And it's being threatened by folks who can afford whatever the end result of this game is, folks who can weather whatever idiot half-measure compromise bill gets through to The President's desk.

President Obama needs to come out tomorrow night and say, in effect, "enough is enough". This isn't about you, Max Baucus. This isn't about you, Chuck Grassley. This is about the people going bankrupt when they get sick. This is about the company laying employees off because it can't afford their health care. This is not about the media and political elite who are threatening something of fundamental importance to millions of Americans because they want to play games.

Hopefully, with the start of football season right around the corner, they can get their fix somewhere else.

By all means, stay out of my healthcare!

2009-08-22T12:10:00.002-04:00

I'll get back to posting on a more regular basis, but I wanted to throw up a quick thought.

If I were told by my employers that I was expected to fulfill new responsibilities and answered that I was too incompetent to handle those responsibilities, I would be fired.

That's how the real world works.

Why isn't that how Congress is working right now? The employers - the electorate - told our employees - congress and the President - what we wanted in November. It's been nine months and all we have heard from the majority of them (Democrats and Republicans) is, literally, that they are too incompetent to execute our will.

To hear Republicans talk about how the Government is too inept to offer a Healthcare alternative in the form of the public option is really fascinating. We don't really want these buffoons involved in our day-to-day lives, they say. But (and this isn't complicated), the inept, blundering dunderhead Government they warn us about is made up of...themselves. They're telling us they are incompetent.

"It's nice, Boss, that you want that report by Friday. But you don't really want some incompetent like me writing it for you."

You're fired. You're out. Unemployment is near 10% nationwide and these are the people we've hired?!

But it gets better! When they're not pleading incompetence, they're telling us that we don't really want what we really want.

"Boss, that report you want me to write that I won't because you haven't considered just how inept I am? Well you don't really want it anyway, because even if I wasn't so inept, it would still be a really bad report. I've never tried writing it before, but I'm pretty sure it'll come out all wrong."

When you explain what Obama and the majority of Democrats want, the American people favor it.

When you offer a public option alternative, the VAST majority of Americans favor it.

Why, then, are a majority of Americans silenced, neutered, when our employees tell us they can't - won't - get the job done?

The problem with Washington right now is that the Boss (us) is asleep at the wheel.

Wake up, people, before you get downsized yourselves.

Sykes-Out

2009-05-10T01:55:00.000-04:00

Great stuff at the WH Correspondents Dinner:

Get rid of her

2009-03-11T10:59:00.006-04:00

Granted, this news item comes from FoxNews, but manufactured or not, maybe it can get the oust Pelosi movement going in a substantiative way. She is completely ineffective and clearly revels in being in power more than helping the American people. Her recent photo ops with Brad Pitt and Richard Gere are an embarrassment at a time when American citizens are being forced to live in tent cities!

What do you think of that, Speaker Pelosi?

You don't say!

Madam Speaker, I've got a sneaking suspicion that Brad Pitt, while doing great things, is not the foremost authority on low-income housing and that if you spent a 1/10th as much time with the folks who were, you'd get a hell of a lot more done.

She could not, in all of her power, get a single House Republican to vote for the Stimulus. It was kinda her job to do so. Harry Reid got his scoop of pretend bipartisanship, why couldn't she get hers? Why does someone so incompetent have a job when unemployment is near ten percent?

Get rid of her.

Gingrich in 2012

2009-03-08T20:29:00.004-04:00

I'll write something fuller and more coherent about why I believe this, but it struck me while watching Meet the Press today that Newt is probably the best and only shot the Republicans have of winning the Presidency in 2012. Of course, we're going to have to collapse into a depression for them to win, but that's a minor detail. He'll try to run from the center, he's got experience he can sell and he's smart and articulate. He's a disaster on the family values side of things, but conservatives will get over that (they seemed to turn a blind eye toward McCain dumping his hot first wife when she ended up being, you know, his overweight and crippled first wife). Ah, right wing hypocrisy.

Hammer, meet nail...

2009-03-05T19:59:00.000-05:00

AMEN!

How to Talk To Republican Relatives (or a wall)

2009-03-03T17:45:00.003-05:00

A reply to a Republican mourning the leadership shortcomings of President Obama, A primer for all liberals who have to put up with this kind of nonsense...

Where have you been for the last eight years?

(Follow-up question)

Where have you been 21 of the last 29 years?

You do not get to knock Obama's leadership skills after voting for George Bush twice. Bush turned a budget surplus into the one of the worst deficits ever - did nothing to assuage our National Debt. He went to War in spite of the overwhelming evidence that it was going to cost us dearly in lives and treasure for God knows what reason. He spent more in a month in said quagmire than he ever did for health care or education. Am I to believe the Decider schtick really worked on an intelligent and saavy citizen like you?! Am I really to believe that you want to use the same playbook?! If Bush personified the kind of leadership you are looking for in a President then I am glad - nay - THRILLED, to have a 'do-nothing neophyte' in the oval office.

I'm with you - toss Pelosi out on the street along with Reid and a half dozen of their closest friends. We have really truly horrendous and ineffectual leadership in Congress right now, but don't, please don't, try to pretend like the actions (or, in your opinion, inactions) of our President in the last month and a half is why we're in this mess or even a significant contributing factor? Was the dow supposed to miraculously rise 2,000 points the second he got sworn in?

Instead, he's put together a highly competent cabinet who, every single day, has had to pander and suck up to the Republicans who helped manufacture this crisis (and the braindead dems - I'm looking at you, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barney Frank). Obama's greatest failing so far is that he still thinks the minority party and the idiots in his own party have any idea how to get us out of this nightmare and/or any sort of right AT ALL to be at the table. They had their shot and they blew it. What's he get for all of his efforts and hardwork? No votes from the House Republicans - zero, zilch - Kenneth The Page -er- Bobby Jindal taking 1.3 Billion of the 1.4 Billion Dollar Stimulus for his state and using every waking breath to stab Obama in the back on National TV and pretend to be above it all (How'd that work out?).

Don't turn this into Obama doesn't know how to lead when it was your former leaders who practically designed the mess we're in right now ending in Bush and his gross incompetence and intellectual laziness. Clinton is not without his blame, but our Stock Market was a good 3,000 points higher eight years ago - could you maybe admit there's a correlation there and that just as it took eight years to get to where we are now, it is not going to fixed in a month and a half by a brand new President and an obstructionist congress. If every man, woman and child can pony up $50,000 to pay off our debt, I say we do it. Who's in? Short of that, there is no quick fix to this debt problem. We've been accumulating it for 200 years (most of it during the last 29 - even accounting for inflation, it's shocking).

Having said that, continue to underestimate Obama at your own Peril. He managed an $800,000,000 Presidential campaign pretty successfully, didn't he? He beat Front runner candidate Clinton. He beat McCain and Palin and the RNC. He got his Stimulus Bill passed. He's got a pretty good record of Wins versus Losses so far, so please keep spreading the word that Obama is incompetent and can't get anything done. I beg you.

I'm all for a fair and respectful debate, and I apologize if I'm getting a little steamed. I don't want this to turn into Dem vs. Rep, but I can't sit by while some people try to sell a funky bag of cabbage. If you want to rewrite history books, move to Kansas.

Below is a chart which is a quick and easy-to-understand explanation as to why, when it comes to fiscal responsibility, Republicans have about as many legs to stand on as a drowning quadriplegic.

Reminder to Democrats:

2009-01-31T08:22:00.004-05:00

PAY YOUR TAXES!

Honestly, what is with you people?!

How Obvious Can You Get?

2009-01-31T07:49:00.004-05:00

The RNC has elected their new chairman and it's what they think the people want - a black Democrat!

Let me point out that if Michael Steele is as good with the RNC budget as he and his friend Bob Ehrlich were with Maryland's, then the Dems 2010 fund raising targets just got a whole lot easier to hit. This guy is a bad manager and, ideologically speaking, simply not in step with the people who are REALLY controlling the party. The Limbaugh Party is not the Steele Party and that's going to cause major fractures if Michael Steele is being asked to do anything other than smile for the cameras.

This obvious and sick pander is reminiscent of something that happened to the Republicans way way back in September of 2008. You remember? When they looked at the political landscape and said to themselves*, "Hmmmm, self, seems like a lot of women are none too pleased with Obama. Hey! I know what we'll do! Let's pick up the uterus vote with one of our own! Every woman'll vote for Sarah Palin - she's a woman!!!"

How'd that turn out, Rush?

Of course, Steele isn't really running for anything (yet) but it's telling that the Republicans have elected somebody who represents exactly less than 1 percent of their party to LEAD their party. This is a guy who tried to tell people that he was a Democrat during his Senate run in Maryland. He is not what is at the heart of the Republican belief system and while it's nice to think they're changing their ways you see the Stimulus vote in the House and realize that, no, they truly aren't, they're just willing to stoop to lower and lower levels to make people believe they are. This isn't a chairman that's with the overwhelming majority of the party on principals, this is a chairman that is Black, and the RNC think people like Black. The RNC doesn't get that the people really like good ideas thoughtfully and carefully articulated for them. The RNC doesn't get that because aside from gross imitation, they're out of ideas.

If you need further proof of that, here's a brief history of the last eight years:

George W. Bush instead of George H.W. Bush, Palin instead of Clinton, Steele instead of Obama. Losing elections instead of winning elections.

Whatever you do, don't remind them that it isn't working.

*John McCain picked Sarah Palin with a gun to his head. The books that are being written about that pick and it's Chernobyl-like effect on the Republicans are going to be so much fun to read.

President Obama

2009-01-20T13:06:00.003-05:00

The only thing I'll say (aside from that I do intend to blog a lot more now that we have a President) is that he struck exactly the right tone for those not only at home but abroad as well.

This part of his speech says about everything:

"...know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

If he can deliver on the promise of his Presidency, I think that will be the clip that is played over and over again. This is a man ready to lead.

It's about time.

Here's the rest of his terrific speech.

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

70 hours and counting

2009-01-17T13:31:00.001-05:00

He can't go away quick enough!

Get Over It

2008-12-18T23:47:00.002-05:00

Obama is a Moderate. If you thought you were voting for a radical lefty then you must have cast your ballot for Kucinich because (in caps this time for emphasis) OBAMA IS A MODERATE.

Calm down right wing witch hunters....

2008-12-09T14:21:00.000-05:00

From the complaint...

ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that he is "struggling" financially and does "not want to be Governor for the next two years." ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to "suck it up" for two years and do nothing and give this "motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him." ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will put "[Senate Candidate 4]" in the Senate "before I just give fucking [Senate Candidate 1] a fucking Senate seat and I don't get anything."

Later in the conversation, ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but "they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them."

They're all crooks!

2008-12-09T10:49:00.003-05:00

Even Democrats! The governor of Illinois was apparently trying to SELL Senator Obama's senate seat. Yikes. If Obama really is a different sort of Politician and will be a different kind of President, he needs to make Ethics in Government THE centerpiece of his agenda. But, "wait!" you say - the economy is more important! There's more at stake with the management of the Iraq War!

If there was more transparency and accountability, perhaps we wouldn't have had rampant deregulation in the housing market, sweetheart deals brokered behind closed doors between big oil and automobile manufacturers that keep our cars chugging along at 12 miles to the gallon of sweet middle-eastern oil. Perhaps we'd have had a more honest assessment of the intelligence gathered on Iraq in the run up to the War.

This issue - holding accountable Politicians who have the power to send this Country flying off the rails - is the most crucial and important facing President-elect Obama. EVERYTHING depends on it.

Meet The (flawed and biased) Press

2008-12-07T10:38:00.004-05:00

Obama's on Meet The Press, which in about forty minutes is reportedly going to become the Sunday Kiss-Ass Hour with David Gregory. For now, it's just Tom Brokaw being hostile with Barack Obama (compare this interview to any of those with McCain or last week's with Ted Turner - the difference is night and day).

Obama is, as always, cool as a cucumber and intellectually engaged. Is he a decider?

UPDATE:

It's David Gregory. Ugh. Now, I don't actively dislike him*, I just think it's a boring choice. I wish MTP had gone to look outside team NBC for the next moderator. Instead, they picked someone who has been pretty terrible when given his own show (Race to the White House) and doesn't seem to really know his stuff.

*On the other hand, this is the guy who danced with Karl Rove at the White House Press Correspondence Dinner a couple of years back.

Centered thinking

2008-12-03T17:26:00.005-05:00

Saxby won in Georgia! Take THAT, Democrats. Just goes to show you this is a Center Right Nation and that the campaigning Superpower known only as Palin is truly an unstoppable force. You can smell the Republican takeover in 2012, can't you? The country is reeling from the devastating hell wrought by the election of Barack Obama.

This just in...

Al Franken is winning in Minnesota?!

But wait! That can't be! This is a Center Right Nation. Norm Coleman represents the will of the people! (Reality check)

Reality Check Exhibit B:

The fact that the Democrats won't have a sixty vote SUPERMAJORITY is not news - it's been pretty clear for a few weeks this was unlikely to happen. It also wouldn't have meant much of anything aside from being a symbolic victory. You would have 60 Democratic and Independent Senators caucusing together, but do you truly believe there would be a single issue that ALL sixty would agree on? Not a chance.

The way forward is bipartisanship. This cannot be a center right or center left nation, it's got to be a centered nation. It's got to be a nation that balances the needs of all of our citizens and not just specific interest groups and ideology. So, in that spirit, I am perfect happy to take a Franken to their Chambliss. Split right down the middle, let's work together and get it done.

Blogcation Over/Where the hell have you been?

2008-12-01T13:59:00.002-05:00

I'm back, my batteries recharged after a glorious month basking in the glow of the new utopia we've created. Wait a second, things are still crazy? The economy is still in the toilet? George Bush is still president?

Read THIS.

The conservatives are really steamed about Clinton being nominated (or pre-nominated) to be Secretary of State, aren't they? The above is a blog post on the ever-insightful Restate.com that suggests that Clinton cannot be nominated because the Constitution forbids it. It boils down to, near as I can tell, that since the salary of the Secretary of State has been increased during Clinton's term as a Senator, she cannot be elected. This clause was evidently written to keep folks from being appointed to better paying offices by their friends. You know, cronyism.

Clinton will resign, clearly, and be eligible since her elected term with be over. Granted, a narrow reading of this would allow the congress to not confirm her, which is their perfect right but by Redstate.com's own admission, President's of both parties for many years have not subscribed to such a narrow definition. This is clearly sour grapes and leads me to my last point.

THESE PEOPLE ARE HYPOCRITES. FLAMING HYPOCRITES.

So I suggest a counter offer. Hillary withdraws her nomination and we get to put Cheney and Bush on trial for using the Constitution to wipe their ass for the last eight years. Illegal wire-tapping, suspension of Habeas Corpus, secret prisons, shooting people in the face. If the Conservatives want to cry Constitution and bleed on the flag to keep the stripes red then I only have one question for them:

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!

Have you been paying attention!??! Do you have any idea how badly our Constitution has been treated these last eight years? Any idea at all? And now you're all Article One Section Six Clause 2 on us?

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?

Black Dynamite

2008-11-22T13:40:00.001-05:00

Now this is a movie.

NVES

2008-11-21T17:55:00.003-05:00

I want one!

Obama is a gaffe machine

2008-11-07T22:24:00.003-05:00

Obama made an ill-conceived crack about seances with Nancy Reagan in response to a question about how he's preparing for the Presidency.

He apologized, but proved in his first Press Conference that he is, in fact, human.

Which brings me to the subject of tonight's post.

Obama is a gaffe machine. If that's what you're looking for. He's going to make mistakes and there are going to be bumps. If the far right and far left are looking for something to complain about, they'll find it. Obama promises a fairly moderate agenda and centrist policies. The entire nation needs to recognize this and step up and work with him.

Even Ronald Reagan's Ghost.

Call For Entries

2008-11-06T14:00:00.002-05:00

If you've made a documentary film recently, you should submit it to SILVERDOCS - the leading doc film festival in North America.

Maybe an Election '08 film?

Yes We Did

2008-11-05T22:42:00.003-05:00

(still good)

24 hours later, Barack Obama is still our President-elect and it feels great. I shared a smile with literally every single person I passed on the street today. I spent an hour and a half waiting in line to get a copy of the Washington Post to hold it in my hands and own it.

I hope the Republicans come work with us, I hope Obama really pushes for it. I want everyone to take a piece of this. That was the message at the core of the Obama campaign - it's not about him, it's about us.

WE won yesterday. EVERYBODY is entitled to a piece of it. Let's work together. Let's get this hard work done.

Secretary Rice's reaction

2008-11-05T15:55:00.002-05:00

Compare this reaction to the supposed high-road that John McCain took last night. This is a genuine, heartfelt and sincere reaction by a Republican on the way out. This is the class we need right now from the right, and if we get more of it, there is no way this Country won't stand united over these next eight years.

Bye, Sarah!

2008-11-05T15:51:00.001-05:00

We're eager for you to get back to Alaska, too, Sarah. I like the talk about uniting the country in the wake of this election, though, which is a sliver of class in your otherwise morally bankrupt campaign.

History

2008-11-05T13:50:00.002-05:00

I don't remember this happening in 2000 or 2004.

Make no mistake, we have just won a War.

Class from Fox?

2008-11-05T13:46:00.001-05:00

I don't believe it. Way to go, Fox.

Sometimes I impress even myself

2008-11-05T12:56:00.002-05:00

From my post Monday night:

Predictions:

Obama wins Virginia*, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Election is effectively called by 11:00 PM EST. Concession speech by McCain around Midnight, Obama reminds us that yes, in fact, we CAN around 12:30** and we all wake up on Wednesday with a country to be proud of.

It's great when my optimistic prediction got shaved by thirty-sixty minutes in the right direction. Obama gave his speech around midnight, McCain was conceding around eleven.

It's a new day, boys and girls.

The morning after...

2008-11-05T08:16:00.002-05:00

Barack Obama is going to be our next President. He won 52% of the vote, which hasn't been done in decades.

But we all won last night. This is everyone's, the young and the old, white and black and (truly) Republican and Democrat. And he'll need it. Obama is going to be much more of a centrist than you think.

The Dems picked up five seats in the Senate, much more in the House but far from the magical 60 required to be a filibuster-proof Senate. Republicans have an important job now. The best Presidents had the best Congresses and we need a minority that helps, not hinders. I believe we will. I really believe Obama and his team are going to set a progressive but inclusive agenda that more and more people that are going to get behind it.

There's work to do. The Gay marriage ban in California looks like it may pass, which is sad. Crooks like Ted Stevens look to be holding on to their power. The direction of this country has been changed and we all have to work hard to make sure we live up to this opportunity.

(Food for thought: 2009 is going to be the first year since 1952 that we have not had a Bush or a Dole in office)

The rest of the world loves us - and that's OK

2008-11-05T01:19:00.001-05:00

THIS IS WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

The greatest night of my life

2008-11-05T00:54:00.002-05:00

Hands down. This changes everything. Every nation in the world looks at us differently now and that's a good thing.

OHIO = WIN

2008-11-04T21:41:00.001-05:00

OBAMA IS GOING TO BE OUR NEXT PRESIDENT

Yo Vote´!

2008-11-04T12:21:00.002-05:00

I voted today - the longest line I've ever seen in the four elections I've voted in at this precinct. Going to phonebank a little now and do my small part to help Barack Obama and Joe Biden get elected.

T-Minus 6 hours and thirty five minutes until Polls close in Virginia. If Obama wins Virgina, he will win the White House.

Rest in Peace Madelyn Payne Dunham

2008-11-04T00:45:00.002-05:00

Easy to lose sight of the fact that these people running for President (and Vice President) are actually people. This was driven home today with the news that Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham (Toot, as Barack fondly called her) passed away. She was robbed of watching her child at the center of one of the most pivotal moments in American history, a moment that she made possible with her steady guidance and clearly abundant love for her grandson.

We all deserve to have a person like that in our lives and it's good to know that our next President had her.

Barack likes to point out how unlikely this journey has been, how great the odds. Looking at his foundation, it doesn't seem unlikely at all. "This is what America is all about," he said tonight to a crowd.

I agree.

Tomorrow, you're going to hear a lot about Axelrod and Plouffe and how they did it. But History will remember this remarkable woman and rightly credit her for making everything that happens next possible.

She deserves our gratitude.

Election Morning is here at last

2008-11-04T00:26:00.002-05:00

I'm as nervous as a tin-foil Giant in a lightning storm. All of the polls, most of the pundits (though not, as John is quick to point out, pundints) say that Obama has this in the bag and all is well.

I hope and will work tomorrow to make sure this happens, but I am having flashbacks to Ohio in 2004, Florida in 2000. The Republican party has proven to be exceedingly capable of flat-out stealing elections and I am more than a little paranoid. Are the polls close enough that they could actually get away with flipping enough votes to put McCain over the top? If Obama loses, it won't be for lack of enthusiasm on the Democrats side whereas it's clear that only about 1/5 of the Republicans supporting McCain are as excited by their choice for President. It will be because there is depressed voter turnout, fewer voting machines in poor and urban polling places and scare tactics that have been the hallmark of the Republican election day legacy in this country since 2000.

Whatever the outcome, I think everyone can agree that this isn't something we need to worry about in 2012. I will be writing to my congressman Wednesday, regardless of the outcome of the election, to express my support for voting machines with paper receipts and can be audited transparently at any time by voters and election officials. It is simply astounding to me that in 2008 we are incapable of printing paper receipts so that voters of every party can confirm that they are voting for who they want to vote for.

Simple. Easy. Necessary.

But let's not let this screw us up this year. A ten point margin should comfortably put us outside of the vote flipping margins. Close elections are stolen. Not blowouts. We need a blowout.

Predictions:

Obama wins Virginia*, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Election is effectively called by 11:00 PM EST. Concession speech by McCain around Midnight, Obama reminds us that yes, in fact, we CAN around 12:30** and we all wake up on Wednesday with a country to be proud of.

*Wildcard: Virginia was named one of the five worst states in terms of poll readiness. Polling problems in that state may force the polling places in that state to remain open after 7:00 PM (think back to the Primary, when Virginia kept the polls open for an extra hour). This would benefit McCain, more than likely, since Republicans typically vote later than Democrats.

**Wildercard: two of these three do it for him when you factor in the Western states he's going to pick up. It would mean a longer night but no less a victory. If we don't know who the President is by 2:00 AM it's because of voter irregularities in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania or Virginia and McCain will eventually win. Obama has to do this quick and clean by knocking McCain out early and suppressing the turnout in the Western states.

You sir, are an unprincipled idiot

2008-11-03T15:25:00.004-05:00

This is on CNN.com right now, one of their "iReporters" talking about how he hasn't been able to make up his mind about who to vote for.

Let's see, a registered Democrat who voted for Bush who is weighing "moral issues". I don't want to take too big a leap here, Michael, but are you being honest with yourself? If it's really about anti-choice versus pro-choice, your choice is pretty clear. McSame/Painlin want to overturn Roe V. Wade and make getting an abortion downright impossible in the United States. Barack Obama believes this is a states issue but that the fundamental right of a Woman to make a choice early enough in the Pregnancy as to not cause grievous pain to a living thing is not something Government should interfere in.

So, Kevin, go vote for John McCain. It's an easy choice after all. If your "moral issue" is disguising another, more sinister reason for not wanting to vote one way or the other (be it because of Obama's race or John McCain's temper or Sarah Palin's pronunciation of the word "nuclear"), then I encourage you to stay home.

300 is the new 270

2008-11-02T12:18:00.003-05:00

I've been looking at the numbers and have been struck by two things:

The general consensus is that Obama is going to win, and if he wins he will do so with 300+ electoral votes.

If McCain does pull it out, he will just barely do it, squeaking past 270 with Obama 10 or 15 electoral votes behind.

It's just worth noting for all those undecideds out there that there is only one candidate in this race capable of pulling together a varied electoral victory with Red and Blue states and his name is Barack Obama. The bi-partisan Maverick will only win if he can get the same votes as George Bush and depress the democratic turnout. This isn't spin - it's fact.

Obamamercial for those who missed it

2008-10-29T23:32:00.000-04:00

Here it is in its (near) entirety.

I heart YouTube.

Obamamercial live blogging

2008-10-29T20:06:00.010-04:00

8:30 PM - And it's done. It kicked ass. It was tasteful and elegant and just freaking great. He wasn't scary. That's all he needed. Can't wait to see how many viewers they got. This might have locked this thing down for him.

8:29 PM - The cheering crowd was louder than he was. There's a metaphor there somewhere, I think.

8:27 PM - Speechless.

8:23 PM - A programming note: Davis Guggenheim, the director of the piece, is Charles Guggenheim's son. Charles Guggenheim, in addition to being one of the great documentary filmmakers ever, was the RFK campaign's filmmaker, crafting commercials, short films and, sadly, the eulogy film at the convention. His Son's work tonight is every bit as good.

8:19 PM - Michelle! Harry Potter's been name-dropped before John McCain.

8:18 PM - Health care is a winning issue for him, and he's showing us why. His mother's story is incredible and very clearly painful and real for him.

8:16 PM - I think they're making a mistake by showing clips from his convention speech. A lot of people were turned off by how big it was (a well-liked candidate speaking live to as many people as possible - get outta town!). When they stick to him in a room, they make him more personable.

8:13 PM - Gotta love all the Red State governors singing Obama's praises.

8:10 PM - Notice how we're 1/3 the way through and McCain hasn't been mentioned once? This is real meat and potatoes stuff artfully cut up with touching stories. This is very smart so far.

8:05 PM - I think it started somewhat awkwardly (we didn't really need a choir there, Davis), but it's moving along at a nice pace. I love the intercut stories of regular joe plumber folks.

This is not an infomercial for people like me, people who've had their minds made up for some time. This is for that remaining 6% of undecideds and the 5 or 10 % that could change their minds.

Is it Christmas yet?

2008-10-27T21:44:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted in a couple of days. It isn't for lack of news, really, Palin has seemingly "gone rogue" and GOP Mascot Ted Stevens was found guilty on not one, not two, three or even four, but on SEVEN counts. Corruption in politics? You don't say!

No, my aversion to posting can best be summed up with a single word:

Fatigue.

I am, finally, after two years of following the crazy that has been the 2008 Presidential Election, completely and utterly spent.

I just want it to be over. I want Obama to be the President-elect. I want McCain and Palin off my TV set. I want 60 seats in the the Senate.

McCain has got nothing better than "I'm Joe the Plummer and I don't want to be taxed by the Negro" and Obama is playing it safe.

I'm having dreams nightly about Virginia showing up blue on the big map Election Night. I'm having visions of toasting Obama's victory before they even start counting votes west of the Mississippi. I want nothing more than to pour a glass of good scotch at 10:30 PM EST on election night and toast the fact that America has finally gotten some sense.

I'm canvasing in Virginia this weekend. I'm going to be helping out in the Commonwealth on election day and I'm going to be eating baked Alaska with a bunch of elite east coast liberals next Tuesday and when (not if) Obama wins, I am going to wake up from this Republican Fever Dream of Shit that has been the last eight years in America.

So, like a kid taunted by presents under the tree, I need to take a couple days to stop shaking them. I need to just put on the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack and chill out.

Seven more days to Christmas.

Palin as Prez

2008-10-24T14:30:00.003-04:00

A nominee for my favorite site of the moment. It's nice to kick back and have fun with as much of this craziness as we can.

Click HERE for amusing wonderment.

(be sure to click on the various objects once you've redirected and pay special attention to the computer monitor)

Team MSNBC calls it like they see it

2008-10-23T00:21:00.002-04:00

Couple of issues (shocking, I know).

One, when pressed with defining what a "precondition" is, Sarah Palin is pretty vague and defines it as having a diplomatic strategy. To suggest that Obama, if elected, would just go into negotiations without diplomatic strategy is to suggest he's George Bush, which he isn't. Also, when she calls out Achmedinajad, she mislabels him as a "Dictator", which is nonsense. He's not even in charge of the Government. His role has more in common with the Queen of England than it does the almighty Vice Presidential Supreme Ruler of the US Senate.

Serious, the right-wing talking points are tired. You know what? Your xenophobia and second grade (we've already established Palin is not quite on the level of a third grader) understanding of the world has not resulted in any demonstrable good so let's try something else like, I don't know, meeting with people who don't really like us and find out what we can do to coexist peacefully. Crazy Utopian dreaming here, but let's give it a shot.

I totally agree with Chuck Todd, who should get some kind of award for truly being the smartest and most balanced political analyst on TV. The man is just plain SMART and calls it how it is. There is no chemistry there. McCain picked her out of political expedience and is likely starting to blame her for his misfortune. Maybe that's a bit too much pop-psychology, but it sounds and looks right so I'm inclined to believe it.

He's tired, and I get that...

2008-10-23T00:14:00.001-04:00

But, still...

I feel pretty bad for him after the third time he messes it up. Poor Cindy McCain is just praying and hoping she gets off of that stage without a black eye or being called a c*nt

Temper, temper, John! (part Deux)

2008-10-22T17:51:00.001-04:00

I only assassinate character when they do it first and it's true.

Do we see a trend here yet?

2008-10-22T15:04:00.002-04:00

Bernanke all but endorses Obama for President

Maybe he isn't the best person to have endorse you, but it can't hurt.

What we're seeing is a definite trend toward Obama in endorsements and support from influentials and the cognoscenti. Coupled with a cresting wave of middle class support, this is going to win the election for the Democrats.

(sorry, Joe Sixpack)

Not to count my chickens before they hatch, but I can't help but be downright gleeful that we are likely less than two weeks away from a brilliant, articulate Democratic President-elect and a 60 seat majority in the Senate ruled Palin-Style by Joe Biden.

A ringing endorsement

2008-10-22T10:49:00.001-04:00

I'm not going to, am I? I mean, it's just mean, right?

Oh what the heck.

AL QAEDA ENDORSES MCCAIN

Are we starting to see a pattern? Maybe electing the guy who will keep the world hating America isn't the way to go.

I propose a Constitutional Amendment to make Sarah Palin read

2008-10-22T08:41:00.003-04:00

I missed this last night and honestly hadn't realized that she had kept going with this after that horrible answer during the debate.

I know this is my east-coast elitism talking, but the Constitution is kind of a big deal. I have a copy. I won't pretend that I read it everyday but I have read it and I do occasionally flip through it. The fact that I am apparently exceptional in that regard when compared to the Vice-Presidential Candidate of the Republican Party is astounding.

She could be President. She needs to know the Constitution. Backward and forward. I'm confident Joe Biden and Barack Obama do (the latter being, you know, a Constitutional Law Professor), and I'll even concede that John McCain knows his Constitution. Sarah Palin, clearly, does not. That is not a Muslim-sleeper talking point. That is not an uppity elitist anti-American Negro talking point. That is a plain, old-fashioned, TRUTH.

This is what this election is about

2008-10-21T22:29:00.002-04:00

This election, whether John McCain planned it or not, has become a referendum on the tolerance and fundamental intelligence of the American people. If you are a McCain supporter because you truly support his positions, you should not be lumped in with these poor souls and I feel for you. The images of the (help us) American people below are jaw dropping. Rep. Bachman and Sarah Palin talk about Pro-America and Anti-America.

I have news for you.

This is anti-America:

Wake up, America. This is what the Islamic world (and by the way, there are more of them than there are Christians), see of us. They hear the disgust in the voices of the voters who think a Muslim is trying to hijack our Government and turn us into communist pigs. They see and hear the pathetic, xenophobic paranoia that is spreading across this country like a plague. This is not just what they think McCain supporters look like, it's what they think AMERICANS look like.

For the sake of America, especially if you are not an Obama supporter, all of us need to be vocal and make it clear that this hate and intolerance is inexcusable. That it is not consistent with the best of America and that these people do not speak for us. We need to be an America on the morning of November 5th, 2008 that is once again a shining example for all other countries. This is the wrong path, and I implore you, regardless of who you support, to correct the record. Make it clear to your neighbor that this is not America as you see it and not as it should be seen around the world.

In Lieu of Substantial Posts...

2008-10-21T17:21:00.003-04:00

Watch the whole thing. Trust me, you haven't seen this before.

Powell'n around with Obama

2008-10-19T12:57:00.004-04:00

The short version:

Florida, North Carolina, Virginia.

All states with large military populations. States crucial for Barack Obama in this election.

The slightly longer version:

Colin Powell, a man of principal with one of the strongest, pro-military resumes imaginable has come decided that Barack Obama is the best choice for our troubled nation.

When you set aside whatever personal feelings you may have for the man and simply take his endorsement as one of an intimidatingly intelligent and experienced Republican, the strength of it becomes apparent. The Republican party of Bush and (circa 2006-2008) John McCain is not the Republican party that so many Americans identify with. That a lifelong Republican with a military career and strong national security credentials (not exactly a swing voter) has gotten behind Barack Obama is an incredible statement regardless of whether or not there's a "General" or "Private" before his name.

Military. Republican. Obama Supporter.

Colin Powell knows that when all you have to talk about is thinly veiled innuendo and accusations about Barack Obama's heritage and allegiance to this country you are simply out of ideas. He knows when your senior adviser says - on record - that you need to change the subject from the economy or else you will lose the election that you are not putting Country First. You are out of steam and you are disconnected from what this election is about and what matters to this Country.

This is a well-regarded and respected Republican who knows firsthand the damage done by the politics of 51%. He is saying that what is important is not who is Red or Blue, Black or White, Young or Old. What is important are ideas and ideas are what Barack Obama - and the best of America - has always been about.

I'll let the General speak for himself

2008-10-19T12:53:00.001-04:00

Big News

2008-10-17T22:11:00.002-04:00

The Ohio Supreme Court decision to strike down a lower court's ruling that would effectively disenfranchise low-income Democratic voters is a big victory not just for Obama but democracy. Keep your eyes on this - it may be the story of the election one way or the other.

Anti-American?

2008-10-17T21:39:00.003-04:00

Anti-American? Anti-American? ANTI-AMERICAN?!

I won't draw the comparison that most are drawing, that being McCarthy and witch hunts and ripping America apart with paranoia. I simply will not go there, you know why?

Because Barack Obama is going to win this election.

Because on November 4th, Americans are going to prove to rest of the world that we are fully aware that Rep. Bachman is an idiot.

The politics of fear and 51% are nearly at an end.

Personality Wars

2008-10-17T09:51:00.003-04:00

Barack Obama and John McCain took turns roasting each other last night in New York at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner. The video is proof that John McCain not only has a heart but is really funny. I am not a fan of the man's politics and I think it takes a certain lack of integrity to sell ones soul, as he has, to the Christian right, but he's definitely a guy I'd love to sit down and shoot the shite with. For that matter, and I'll admit it, so too are George Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin. Just because I think they've got bad ideas doesn't mean I think they're bad people*. I just don't want them anywhere near my government. It also doesn't mean I'd much prefer to sit down and talk with President Barack Obama.

With that, here's the "tape":

McCain:

Obama:

The final analysis? McCain was funnier, but seemed to be conceding a whole lot of ground, there. The black man invited to the white house bit was ill-conceived. Obama was much flatter overall, but I think had the best line in, "clearly I got my middle name from someone who never thought I'd run for President."

*don't hold me to that

A picture worth a thousand words

2008-10-16T13:43:00.003-04:00

That pretty much says it, folks. Obama won the debate, McCain lost. I happened to think McCain was killing for the first thirty minutes, Obama was playing it safe and all was lost. Then it became apparent over the next hour who was calm, who was Presidential and who was ready for the challenge at hand. It was not John McCain, who thinks Women's health is a loophole for "pro-abortion" activists. It was not John McCain, who apparently thinks Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Joe Biden. It was not John McCain, who in the areas of temperament and judgment time and again has proven that he should not and can not become our next President.

Be afraid!

2008-10-15T00:16:00.001-04:00

Just a reminder to be afraid, be very afraid of the scaaaary black man who voted twice for non-binding budget resolutions rolling back the Bush tax cuts. Don't worry about pesky details like context or facts. Just look at the scary picture, be afraid he's going to raise your taxes and vote out of nothing but stupefying, paralyzing fear.

Paid for by McSame/Failin

Linkage

2008-10-14T23:59:00.005-04:00

Long day, so I'm going to overwhelm this post with lazy linkage.

McCain campaign palling around with dictators? You don't say!

Obama is trying to steal the election!

...but then why did McCain attend meetings with this very same group?

Keep on slinging that mud, Senator McSame

Finally, tonight's edition of McCain in the Membrane and Keith's special comment:

Well said, Sir.

There's just not a single particle of my being that gets the hate, the lies and the bizarre choices (HERE and HERE) of the most moronic members of this society - and that must be why I'm not voting for John McCain. There are lots of reasons to be FOR Obama, but I am finding, sadly, the closer we get to the election there are just so many more reasons to vote AGAINST McCain.

New Yorker Endorsement

2008-10-14T12:48:00.002-04:00

Here's an endorsement from one of those nasty left wing east coast elitist news magazines.

I read it today and it fleshes out the case for Obama in a really articulate and persuasive fashion. Check it out.

Campaigning is not Governing and Governing is not Campaigning, BUT...

2008-10-13T13:29:00.005-04:00

Barack Obama was called out in September when he was asked what kind of executive leadership qualities he possessed. This was, you'll remember, during the first weeks of Sarah Palin's candidacy for Vice President and double capital E Executive Experience was a big topic. Never mind the fact that Senator John McCain himself has all of exactly zero hours of such experience. He answered that he had experience running his campaign. The right wing erupted in laughter.

How's that silly answer looking now?

This is not a victory dance - that's far too premature and even though the voting machine says "Premiere", I know it's still a Diebold. But let's take a calm, objective look at how the campaigns have been run and see if there's any kind of takeaway there in regards to the potential leadership abilities of Senators McCain and Obama.

Let's start with the obvious and most reliable indication of what kind of White House these two men would run.

Organization.
From the get-go, Obama has been exponentially better organized than McCain. His ground game has been exceptional and was one of the key factors in his victory over Clinton, who had been the presumed winner since Kerry called Ohio. From top-to-bottom, the Obama campaign has been the model of how to run a modern Presidential campaign. They expanded on Howard Dean's internet game and built a network of donors and workers that rival any major corporation and some small Government. They reached out to bloggers and influential members of the new media base months before Clinton even *thought* to try. McCain has evolved gradually to embrace similar tactics, but make no mistake: he cribbed from Obama's playbook all the way. The reason McCain wanted to go the public financing route (beside those convenient loopholes for his lobbyist friends) was that he was not sure it was possible to out-raise Obama. Not because he's more likable, but because he was better ORGANIZED.

Discipline.
The Obama campaign has been the absolute model of message discipline. You almost never hear two surrogates contradict one another (let alone the Presidential and Vice Presidential Nominees). You can watch CNN, MSNBC and (heaven help us) even Fox News, watch three different surrogates who all know their stuff and stay on point. That level of consistency simply doesn't exist in the McCain campaign. To be sure and fair, the Obama campaign has had a slip-up or two (John Lewis, anyone?), but it's nothing on the level of the McCain campaign. The candidate himself can't decide whether or not the economy is in trouble, for goodness sake! He wants to rip Obama apart on Monday, ignore it on Tuesday, and is defending him to an angry mob on Friday. This comes from the top. When you're a surrogate and your candidate is a cool cucumber, it's a lot easier to stay on message in a calm and effective manner (watch Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz - formally of camp Clinton - sometime, she is a reflection of the top of the ticket). When the ticket is erratic you get Rick Davis.

Pudding, meet Proof.
Barack Obama hasn't even finished his first term as a US Senator. He's African-American. His name is Barack Hussein Obama. He should never have made it out of the primaries, and yet here he is, 10 points up in the national polls, up in almost every key battleground state and 22 days away from becoming the President Elect of the greatest nation on Earth. If the philosophical case is as clear cut as the Republicans want to believe. If Democrats really are wrong on every major and substantive issue of our time then please tell me how Barack Obama, with all of the electoral handicaps described above, is beating a Maverick cum War Hero seemingly tailor-fit for the Presidency?

It is because he is an enthusiastic manager who has been given the same test as McCain - a national Presidential election - and is BETTER at it. That is indisputable.

And yet, somehow, I am meant to believe the right wing of this Nation when they say McCain would make a better President? That he would be better organized and more disciplined in office than he has been at the helm of this ramshackle campaign?

I'm not falling for it. And I think if voters really consider the situation, they won't either.

George Bush is _______________

2008-10-11T10:50:00.005-04:00

A) Awesome
B) Unbelievably Delusional
C) Autistic
D) Bi-Curious

While I think there's a case for three of the four, the answer this morning is:

B) Unbelievably Delusional

Evidence:
"IT'S A GOOD THING I'M IN CHARGE"?!

This is the guy who has turned everything he's touched to absolute hell and he's thinks it's a good thing he's in charge. We should be not only comforted but enthusiastic that the same people who brought us Iraq War 2, Mission Accomplished, Endless Iraq Occupation 1, Hurricane Katrina and two Red Sox World Series victories are dealing with this Economic Collapse? George Bush. I think you're probably a likeable enough guy on your own terms, but this whole "being President" thing really wasn't for you and I think it'd be better for America if you just came out in your final months in office and admitted as much.

And started campaigning heavily for John McCain in swing states.

*My evidence for choice D:

Abuse of power! (Surprising, I know)

2008-10-10T20:56:00.002-04:00

The report is out and Sarah Palin's hands are (shockingly) not clean after all.

Read about it here from these fine news sources:

FOX NEWS: 180 words, ends with ""I think there are some problems in this report," Republican state Sen. Gary Stevens. "I would encourage people to be very cautious, to look at this with a jaundiced eye.""

MSNBC: 621 words, ends with "The McCain campaign says the investigation has become "muddied with innuendo, rumor and partisan politics.""

CNN: 633 words, ends with "Palin's office in September released documents it said supported its position. The documents were part of a filing to the state Personnel Board, which Palin's office has asked to conduct a separate investigation. The governor and her allies say the board is the proper legal forum for any complaint, and Palin's lawyer says she and her husband will cooperate with that inquiry."

(Liberal media my arse)

Frank Rich gets it right*

2008-10-10T15:46:00.003-04:00

Entitled "Truthiness stages a comeback", this article succinctly and articulately makes the case as to why McCain really isn't the right person to lead our country right now in the face of a mounting economic crisis.

*not that it should come as a surprise to anyone

fauxrage

2008-10-10T13:22:00.003-04:00

I caught this on Fox News yesterday morning as I was getting ready to go to work (nothing gets me out the door faster than the idiot talking heads on Fox).

The outrage! The betrayal of the American Prisoners by having the audacity to print a picture of Sarah Palin that's been untouched! Oh my heavens! It's all bull, of course and what they're really mad about is that a national publication would print unkind words about the lipstick pitbull disasta from Alaska. But when you've got conservative mouthpieces like David Brooks calling Palin a cancer to her party, an unretouched photo is kinda small potatoes, don't you think?