It could be worse.  He's good, very good, on women's rights issues, better than Sen. Clinton and she's a century ahead of Bayh,  He’s not in the pocket of big oil.  He won‘t be out there trashing educators/teachers.  He may even encourage the construction of more mass transit since he commutes by rail, but I wouldn’t count on that one because that would mean -- cough, cough -- change that a progressive would value.

Problem is that the damn thing is as ugly as it was four and eight years ago.  In-Trade has IA and NM back in the blue column as they were in 2000.  They rank MI, OH and NH equally likely to go for Obama but not as solidly as IA and NM will.  CO leans blue and NV could go blue.

Seem odd to me that MI and OH would be ranked equally likely to be blue in November,  But wouldn't disagree that the probability of OH and NH is about the same.  My question is if there are any potential VP nominees that could move OH, CO or any other combination of '04 red states with eleven EV into the blue column? - Try it here

Off with your tin-foil hats, lefties.  Bush ain’t gonna find sanctuary in Paraguay no more.  It’s his own fault really, because he failed to put freedom and democracy on the march down there.  It’s hard work to be President.  So many wars; so little time.

Given the plethora of Obama VP diaries, I'm sure that I've missed most of them.  And am just as sure that there were a few gems  that rationally considered all the potential VP candidates and the political implications of each to complete the DEM ticket.  Sadly, most of the diaries appear to be nothing more than the diarist attempting to build a case for the politician that she/he just adores.  The only positive change in the past couple of weeks is that the "Edwards is the One" diaries have disappeared.

Rarely have I seen mention of the fact that Obama has said that he wants his running mate to complement him.  Complement NOT complete.  Complement means being on the same page on major policy issues AND being similar to his political style.  And nobody ever mentions that Caroline Kennedy is on Obama's VP search team.  
   

McVeigh, Blair and Lay.

Kaczynski, Rudolph, Yousef

Karadzic, Powell, Tenet.

Skillings, Ebbers, Kozlowski

Which of the above lists doesn't belong with the others?

Today is was the House Judiciary Committee's Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations.  Surprisingly enough, it wasn't dreadful in addressing its official purpose.    The takeaway is that if "impeachment is off the table," a President can do anything she/he wants to do and nobody can stop her/him.  Not that the word "impeachment" was to have been uttered during the hearing, but they cut everybody slack on that as long as they never said "impeachment of George W. Bush."  

to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Too big to fail, the worst is behind us and home values will begin to increase again.  

All of that has so many echoes from the recent past that one would have to be an ostrich not to hear them.  For those with a much longer and/or historical memory, the echoes are terrifying.

Iraq.  Enron.  Abu Ghraib.  Bear Stearns.  Bad apples.  Evil doers.  Too big/too important to fail.

Can you remember back a trillion or so dollars ago when taking down Saddam and Iraq was estimated to cost a mere $20 billion -- or nothing if Iraq’s oil revenues could be appropriated to pay for it?  Did you buy that?  It struck me as ludicrous as Bernanke‘s assertion that Fannie and Freddie will cost the federal government no more than $25 billion..  

What would we have seen on the cover of  The New Yorker?

Would Remnick, who I generally respect, have dared to run and defend the satire of  a cover cartoon that depicted Senator Clinton wearing the uniform of an SS storm trooper, Eva Braun wig and standing in a hallway holding a burning bra in one hand and a leash reminiscent of Lyndie Englund in the other with a nude, except for a top hat, Uncle Sam on the floor at the end of the leash?  With one high heeled boot firmly planted on a Bible.  Add a poster on the wall with a picture of Bill Clinton sporting a Hitler mustache. Wouldn’t such an image be entirely consistent with the messaging of the rightwing about the Clintons?  As completely false and incendiary as the image of the Obamas on the latest issue of The New Yorker?  As filled with irony?

In his opinion piece on "Weekend Edition" of NPR today, Simon took Obama to task for suggesting that McCain’s campaign would play the race card in the general election.  Simon posed the question of when has McCain ever done something like that?  Pointed out that having been the victim of sleazy, race based attack on his family that it would be irrational to even consider that McCain would do anything like that.  (Carefully omitted from his opinion piece was the identification of the source of that attack on McCain.)  Simon concluded with a suggestion that the public should watch for signs of bigotry by both campaigns, but based on what he’d said, the strongest implication was that it would come from Obama.

Having listened to several recent interviews with McClellan, I’ve heard him consistently selling two notions in every one of those interviews that have received scant attention.  First, GWB is a good guy with good intentions.  Second, Scotty is a truth teller and not a liar.

How could anyone that is capable of detailing numerous instances of GWB not acting like a good guy with good intentions continue to hold onto that opinion of GWB?  GWB lied and people died.  Lots of people died.  

Anyone that has concluded that Webb, Clark and/or Clinton is the best choice for the Obama ticket is engaged in character and individual accomplishment analyses.  Identifying what they see as Obama’s shortcomings and seeking to plug that in the cheapest way possible.  Magnifying the strengths of Webb, Clark and Clinton and minimizing their deficits.  However, I could talk until I’m blue in the face about all those character factors used to evaluate Webb, Clark or Clinton and it would all be rejected because once an individual has been idealized, any information that disputes those assumed (projected?) characteristics can’t be heard.  It’s the unfortunate downside of love.

Since the NH primary, I’ve been mostly perplexed by the "Hillary Girls" phenomenon.  There seems to be two components: "Old Guard Feminists" and the so-called low-information blue or pink collar workers, full-time homemakers and older, retired women.  

The "Old Guard Feminists" are the easiest to identify as a group.  However, they are the smaller subset of rabid Hillary supporters and currently sound too much like bat-shit crazy female chauvinists to hold much interest for me.  Even recognizing that many of them are writing and pitching the narrative of Hillary as the feminist standard bearer and that some of their language is trickling down to those "low information voters," they aren’t driving the significant portion of the "Hillary Girls" phenomenon.  They wouldn’t even know that because, like me, they approach most questions from an intellectual perspective and sometimes that doesn’t work.

Heading into the 1968 California June primary, tensions in the Democratic Party were as high as they’ve been for the past two months this year.  Earlier that year, LBJ had won the New Hampshire primary but the little known Senator Eugene McCarthy with his anti-Vietnam War student brigade had finished a strong second.  LBJ dropped out, and his VP Hubert Humphrey and Senator Robert Kennedy dropped in.

Those who had worked hard for McCarthy resented RFK jumping into the race after they had done the heavy lifting.  But RFK easily garnered most of the anti-war Democratic support, at least those who could vote which left McCarthy with the underage student volunteers, plus the larger group of JFK Democrats.  Humphrey inherited the blue collar, pro-war Democrats along with those any others who would have continued to support LBJ against RFK.  The race was extremely close coming into California; the primary that would essentially seal the deal for one of the candidates.

It wasn’t that her campaign was horribly mismanaged.  Because it wasn’t.  The flaw was the initial assumption that if she ran, she would win.  From that she put together a strategic plan that focused on her strengths and did some cosmetic work on her personal weaknesses.  It was not dissimilar to how Bush/Cheney viewed Iraq: if the US invaded, the US would be greeted with flowers, etc..

In her own right, her political resume was thin, both in accomplishments and time in office.  Beyond personal aspirations to be POTUS, neither Clinton has ever exhibited more than a limited and cramped vision for the country.  (On that measure, GWB is superior to the Clintons which is one reason why he has been so successful in changing the direction of the country.)  Thus, the primary reason for her candidacy was "I am Clinton."  A third term for Clinton.  Much like GHB was a third term for Reagan (even if the country didn’t want that in ’88).  And GWB was a second term for Bush and McCain seeks to be a third term for GWB.  

Every freakin' election cycle, voters bemoan the fact that the media focuses on the stupid stuff instead of policy issues.  And yet during primary season, voters quickly suck up declarations that the policy differences between the most viable (a combination of name recognition, charisma and cash) candidates are slim to none which leaves on the the stupid stuff to talk about.  When the general election rolls around, the policy differences are sufficiently blunted that once again, there’s not enough there there to bother with.  Therefore, it’s the stupid stuff  that matters.

How whacky is it to reject all the scientific evidence that confirms biological evolution in favor of an unseen, unheard big guy in the sky that created all life just as it is today?    To believe that the earth is 5,000 years old and the geological record is false?  That Jesus was in favor of torture and capital punishment?  That Saddam had WMD that were going to come and get us?  Or even that Saddam was involved in perpetrating 9/11 when there was no shred of evidence for that?  

A hell of a lot more Americans believe or once believed one or more of the above whacky ideas.  Are they "whackadoodles?"   If I reject all those whacky ideas but have had a relationship with a "whackadoodle," why would that reflect on me?  By that standard, we’re all "whackadoodles."

Vietnam was the historical reference point for Americans who never wanted this country to repeat that shameful and costly "mistake."  Those who really learned the lesson of Vietnam understood from the moment GWB uttered the words "axis of evil" in his ‘02 SOTU that he not only had failed that lesson plan but was determined to have his own splendid quagmire.  What shocked me then and continues to amaze me is how many Americans were as ignorant as GWB.  Even if he didn’t legitimately win either of his elections, GWB was and is an almost perfect microcosm of a majority of Americans.  That was what a founding father like John Adams feared about a full fledged democratic government.

Picking up where I left off in Why Torture? Why?, my attention was limited to questioning the utility for the Bush Admin of the US military functioning as the agent of  torture at Gitmo.  Others may be satisfied with the answer that it's because Bush, Cheney and/or Rumsfeld and their legal right-hands Gonzalez, Addington and Haynes like torture.  One reason why that isn't a satisfactory answer for me is that they could (and did) accomplish the same thing without legally formalizing the  participation of the military.  "Extraordinary rendition" and CIA black sites served that purpose and did so under a far heavier cloak of secrecy than anything that could be done at Gitmo.