I just got off the phone with my sister.  She said, I have this sinking feeling that Obama is going to choose Sen. Clinton as V.P.  Oh, no, sez I.  O yes, sez she.  Lookit, sez she.  There is going to be tremendous pressure on him to choose her.  The bottom line calculation is, he wants to win the presidency and ultimately, considering her destructive powers, he will decide, on balance, it is worth the heartbreak and danger and complications of a Clinton on the ticket to make sure he wins.

Convince me I am wrong, she sez, my sister.

I can't sez I, despondent.

But wait, sez I.  What is that motto of Axelrod's?  No Assholes!  By which he means, a winning campaign will have NO backbiting, NO infighting, NO permission for anyone on the team to be petty and self-seeking and territorial and forgetting the greater good.  That HAS to mean, NO CLINTONS on the team.

Obama is my candidate, and has been since he won Iowa, and I started entertaining the possibility of him as president and decided I felt good about it.

Talking in West Virginia yesterday Obama struck a sour note.  I am happy to see him wearing a flag pin, or not.  I am happy to see him trying to connect with conservatives, even if most of them won't vote for him. When he is president, we'll all have to work together.  That is the most appealing idea of his campaign.

But when Obama implies that people opposed to the war in Viet Nam were disrespectful of returning veterans, he is buying into, and keeping alive, a falsehood.  

The American people were the same then, as now.  The American people, when they oppose a war, do not blame it on the young people sent out to risk their lives for the likes of Dick Cheney or Dick Nixon.  There are exceptions, of course, but they are very rare.

OK, my Pennsylvania prediction was off.  I predicted an Obama victory of 8%, with a MOE of 10% (one day I will explain my statistical methodology, but not now), and whoops, it should have been a MOE of 17%.  My calculator misspoke, and was under heavy sniper fire, so who can blame it?

But you’ll see, my prediction of how Obama is going to handle this problem – the media continuing to ask stupid questions, and then noting that Obama can’t put the questions to rest, while Hillary, on the mother of all ego trips, tries to bring down all humankind with her.  Honestly, it is uncanny the way Hillary’s campaign reminds me of that old movie, Primary Colors.  What a coincidence!

On MSNBC now, Mukasey Won't Weigh in on Waterboarding.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

"Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday he will refuse to publicly say whether the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding is illegal, digging in against critics who want the Bush administration to define it as torture."

Gee.  It is so hard for him to decide it is torture, ever.  He could be DOING it and he wouldn't be able to decide.  In fact, these statements are him doing it.  He just doesn't have to get his hands dirty.

On September 16, Blackwater USA guards shot at Iraqi civilians at Nisoor square in Baghdad, killing seventeen. Blackwater claimed their personnel were defending themselves again Iraqis who started shooting at them, including Iraqi police. Now, a report by a group of U.S. soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Mike Tarsa, the first U. S. military to arrive at the scene after the shooting, says that their investigation shows that what happened was a "criminal event," an unprovoked massacre by Blackwater.  See  http://www.washingtonpost.com/... .

Heavy weapons were fired into cars trying to drive away from the scene.

As of 8.20 AM east coast time today, Friday, May 19, MSNBC has an online poll going showing 75% of the people seeming to agree with the Republicans in the Senate about the English language.  The poll is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...    .

The poll is of course garbage.  However, I still would like to see the numbers change.  English is by far the dominant language in the United States.  It is not threatened.  The only reason for taking this "action" is to stir up reactionary sentiment.  It is like flag-burning amendments.

I think conscious people should participate in this garbage poll, and select the best of the answer choices available, even though they are framed so as to reduce awareness rather than increase it, as is the question itself.

Who is Wafa Sultan?

Check out this video:  

http://switch5.castup.net/...

And this transcript:

http://www.memritv.org/...

This is mostly just one side of a debate between Wafa Sultan, a Syrian born American psychologist, and Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli, a Muslim cleric, on Feb. 21 on Al Jazeera.  The edited version I saw has little of Ibrahim Al-Khouli and the moderator.  I came across the video on the net.

Those who control the media are so overwhelmingly right wing, that the caste of characters we see every day in the world of pundits is heavily skewed.   We have a huge collection of mad extremists like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage.  We have people like Scarborough who are just as rabid but more polished in making false shows of occasional moderation.  Then we have the ones the wingnuts call the liberal media -- people like the network anchors, Katie Couric, Dan Rather, Matt Lauer -- people who seem culturally in tune or at least not in opposition to northeast USA bluestateness, but who always reinforce the underlying themes of those in power.  For example, President Bush's poll numbers may be slipping, but still unquestioned is the idea that we are waging a legitimate, desirable war in Iraq.

Why can't the Democratic Party ever represent a true anti-war position?

The base of the party is largely anti-war, and has had strong tendencies that way ever since the Democratic Party emerged as the liberal party in America.  But when it comes time to nominate someone to stand for election, to the House, even more to the Senate, and especially to the White House, a true anti-war candidate has no more chance in the Democratic Party.

Our two party system, that practically makes third parties irrelevant, then, shuts out the possibility of a clean anti-war voice.

I am not sure where to put this, but if I had missed it I would have appreciated someone else posting it.  

After the Woodward revelation, the Washington Post bought into the lie that this shot Fitzgerald's take on Libby.  Supposedly Fitzgerald was resting his case on the belief that Libby was the first to leak to a reporter.  In fact, Fitzgerald just said Libby was the first known leaker (so far).  I guess Fitzgerald pushed the Post on it, because in this article:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/... the dirty dogs admit they misspoke.

Attention dogs:  I apologize for sullying your reputations by associating you with the Washington Post, Mr. Woodward, etc.

Anyway, I wish I could know what process led to this correction:

:

"Correction to This Article
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby had been identified in the special counsel's indictment as the first Bush administration official to disclose the identify of a CIA operative to a journalist. The special counsel described Libby's role at a news conference. "

The Washington Post should not get off lightly for their role in confusing and deceiving the public.  Allowing one of their editors -- Robert Woodward -- to opine that the Fitzgerald investigation is silly and will lead to nothing, while concealing his role in the whole scandal, that's very crooked.

The Washington Post should be tagged with this for forever, or until they get a bit better, whichever happens first.  When the Post reports something, are they reporting what they know, or what they want you to think?

Here is my effort to let them hear about it - a letter to the editor I  just sent the Washinton Post.

Santorum has now come out against teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom.   I found that out, and the link, http://www.timesonline.com/...    on wonkette.

Man of principle, eh?  Amazing how a changing political environment can clear your head.

You can play around with that sort of ID, but if you betray the Flying Spaghetti Monster you will get strangled by a noodly appendage so quick you won't know what hit you.

The administration and their embeds in the press support torture but deny that they do.  Recently I have noticed Tony Snow, Tucker Carlson and others repeatedly hitting that point.  The key is that they think we are so desensitized to the suffering of others that all they have to do is define torture very narrowly - absurdly narrowly.  That enables Scott McClellan to perform as shown here:  http://www.editorandpublisher.com/...

Below is my illustration of where we are headed.

I just saw today's Russert show with Chuck Schumer.  Fine man.  One of the more liberal Democrats.  The panel was discussing the possible upcoming indictments of Rove? Libby? who knows . . .. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison seemed idiotic, trying to distinguish the persecution of the Republicans, vs. the prosecution of Clinton.  She warned that she hoped the prosecutor would be going after 'real' crimes, not some flimsy perjury or obstruction of justice issue.  Russert very gently pursued the contradiction, but in spite of Tim's gentleness, Kay Bailey looked ridiculous.

Will Democrats even now, even in this opportunity born of criminal tragedy, continue with their loser strategy?  Will those Democrats least representative of the heart of the Democratic Party and the conscious spirit of America -- the Bidens, the Clintons, the Liebermans -- continue to represent us?  

What would Republican strategists do in a situation like this?  Would they say "Oh,, the President's nominee is the best we could hope for in these times"???  Would they continue to think of themselves as the minority party?

Some people on dailykos were really happy with the deal that stopped or delayed the nuclear option.  Some of us did not feel so happy about it.  I am one of the latter.  I would be so happy to realize I am wrong, but it is looking worse all the time to me.  It is looking like another great opportunity wasted - sometimes I think that should be the motto of the Democratic Party.  Please read the article in the Washington Post of today, June 3, 2005, entitled "Bush Poised to Nominate Dozens For Judgeships, GOP Insiders Say," http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/02/AR2005060201959.html  , and explain to me why the deal was good.

It would be nice if we did not even have to waste a lot of energy on it, but the hope is vain.  The Clintons love power more than service.

Here are seventeen reasons we should snuff Hillary's hopes out.

1.  For the Democratic Party to get new energy, it needs new direction.  The Clinton direction, while surely better than Lieberman's, is plenty enough in that direction to disqualify her.

2.  She and her husband brought us George Stephanopolous

3.  Election night, 2000, at a party covered by the press, someone says "I want to kill Nader!"  Hillary says "That's not a bad idea!"  Hillary never apologizes.

4.  Hillary on Iraq = Bill on Iraq = "triangulation" = death of innocent people in Iraq, deterioration of security and welfare for Iraqis who are not killed, plus serious degradation of the security and welfare of the people of the United States and the whole world.

In July 1983, after Congress voted to end aid to the Contras, John Negroponte, then embassador to Honduras, sent cables supporting the continuation of the policy ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44944-2005Apr11.html ).  

If you google "Negroponte" and "death squads," read enough links to get the picture, and come out thinking he did not facilitate torture and terror, your sense of evidence and logic works differently from mine.

Under Reagan, the Democratic Party took a decisive step backward from meaning anything.  Reagan sold his tall tales of the contra "Freedom Fighters, "  the Democrats offered no counter-view (Lieberman was a strong contra supporter), and people had nothing to choose between at election times.

Maybe, MAYBE, the Democratic Party is getting a little more backbone.  They did not show much when they did not fight Negroponte's appointment as Embassador of Iraq.  Will it be any different in considering the confirmation of Negroponte as national intelligence director?