Please bear with me, the point I am trying to make is both subtle, yet far-reaching. The basic premise is that right now, today, here, at this point in our nation's history, we should be grateful that President Bush has been president for 8 yrs. It could have been far, far worse.

Let's take a good look at this man. Inelegant,  inartful, clumsy with words, proud, spoiled, vane, arrogant,  vindictive, spiteful, uncurious, unread, intellectually lazy, and stubborn. And not necessarily in that order.

The very things that set our teeth on edge, still excite and unify his base base of 21%, over half of which are religious nuts, and the rest, neoconMen, the true believers in PNAC, endless war, and the destruction of the American federal government.

Actually, I still suspect that those numbers are artificially inflated, and his real base is smaller. It remains mainly a collection of hugely supportive, highly disturbed and irrational people to whom facts are inconvenient things.

Still, we cannot discount the President's effectiveness, nor his talents.

Now that even the MSM seems to have finally got it through it's collective skull that Hillary is not going to win the Democratic nomination, I think that it's a good time to turn our thoughts to what we would like to see happen in an Obama presidency.

Of course, there is still the small matter of beating John McCain, but I'm not too worried about that because we will have John McCain's help in achieving that goal every step of the way. What respect I have for McCain is based on the courage, loyalty to his fellow prisoners, and steadfastness that he displayed while a prisoner in North Vietnam. Unfortunately, surviving imprisonment, no matter how bravely, does not necessarily qualify you to be president, particularly if the net sum of your life-changing experience is that you advocate policies that are only minimally different from Bush/Cheney and Co.

While all the community was wringing its collective hands about Dr. Wright and his betrayal of Barack Obama, we have lost sight of the things that matter. Back in the real world:

Obama draws 2,500 to Hickory, NC. This includes a man who was laid off and who lost his health insurance when the plant that he worked for closed.

China jails 30 Tibetians for riots:

A Chinese court in Tibet sentenced 30 people to prison terms ranging from three years to life on Tuesday for what the authorities said were their roles in the deadly rioting last month, the state news media reported.

I copied the article below from a website that permits you to copy their stuff.  Please read it and let me know what you think.

The website's address is: http://www.rightwingexposed.com

By Mandy Simon, ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Today’s a big week for National Security Letters, the secret government subpoenas issued to gain access to personal or business records without court approval. There’s a hearing tomorrow in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and another hearing Wednesday in front of the full Senate Judiciary Committee. Tomorrow’s hearing features not only the ACLU but the DOJ Inspector General himself, Mr. Glenn Fine, and FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni. The government panelists will go first but we’ll be there, ever watchful, until it’s our turn to step up to the mic.

Where is the leadership? Where are our leaders? Why aren't there any leaders?

How many times have you heard those questions being asked in your life...especially around here.

I've heard "leadership" being thrown around a lot. In a matter of fifteen minutes, I've heard different people make contridictory arguments as to what constitutes leadership;

1.) Someone who stands up for what the people want
2.) Someone who stands up for what's right even when the people are against it.

Well, aren't those contriictions?

I'm beginning to think what Americans want isn't leadership, they want people who think the way they think and do what they want to do, prioritized the way they want them to be. Can we really have leaders if what we're looking for is 300 million different types of leadership. Can Americans really be "led?"

Frankly I don't think the Clinton's had malicious motive in their latest "untruth" if you wish to call it that.

Here's the larger issue, and it really does matter:  We need ALL of our politicians to read the stuff they agree to.  Like the Patriot Act.

More over the jump

The cynical and counter-democratic nature of marketing has done a great disservice to the Republic in this election cycle, as it always seems to. "Change" versus "Experience" has become Coke versus Pepsi, just with particular consumers of each sniping at other in the blogosphere over which tastes better, becoming conditioned to a myopia where no other ideas, much less beverages, exist outside this dialectic.

Coke and Pepsi pretty much taste the same, yet if Coke's formula contained the cure for cancer, you would think they might incorporate that into their millions of dollars worth of brand communications.

The shit of it is, somebody damn well should be promising the cure for cancer, at least figuratively, insofar as its figurative Bushian cells and their money-driven cronyist orthodoxy have infested the country and too much of the globe.

Anyone remember this last November....an Op-Ed piece in the LA Times?

Judge Mukasey has my vote
LA Tiimes Nov. 3, 2007

Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales. In our confirmation hearings (and subsequently, in writing), Judge Mukasey's answers to hundreds of questions were crisp and to the point, and reflected an independent mind. That's why I intend to vote to confirm him to be our next attorney general. I truly believe he will be a strong advocate for the American people.
….

The bottom line is this: I hope that Judge Mukasey will fairly and evenhandedly represent the American people and direct the Justice Department wherever the facts and the law lead, not where the White House dictates.

Our nation needs a strong and independent attorney general, and I believe that Judge Mukasey will rise to the challenge.

Recently, the Administration’s central argument supporting our post Sept 11th anti-terrorism programs has been reported more frequently and vociferously by the mass media.  It asserts that as a direct result of the Patriot Act, Protect America Act, and similar initiatives by the current Administration our nation has been successfully protected against terrorist attacks. The adverse effect on civil liberties and for the unfavorable impact on America’s image abroad which have accompanied these programs is excused as the necessary price to keep us safe.
But this logic of this argument is dubious. The Administration’s claim that the absence since Sept 11 of any new domestic terrorist attacks proves that these programs are working is false. The Administration states that it has prevented terrorist acts - - but that it cannot tell us anything more about these mysterious episodes because of “national security” requirements.

When did it become acceptable for Americans to allow

Torture?

When we all learned about the secret movement of "yet to be charged" prisoners to secret torture prisons in foreign countries, referred to as

Rendition; Where was the outrage?

When we all learned about the Secret prisons, where we took people to be tortured and that our President and Vice President had approved them; Why was our President not impeached?

There is a wide-spread belief fueled by a lazy media that Obama and Hillary are so close on so many issues that policy-wise it really doesn't matter which one gets elected.  But there ARE significant policy differences between them and they DO matter.   For example
In an op-ed that ran in  Sunday's New York Times Author and Law Professor Jeffery Rosen recounts a moment in 2005 when they stood Poles apart on restoring our lost civil liberties.  Obama was for it and Hillary, inexplicably was agin' it

In the Senate, Mr. Obama distinguished himself by making civil liberties one of his legislative priorities. He co-sponsored a bipartisan reform bill that would have cured the worst excesses of the Patriot Act by meaningfully tightening the standards for warrantless surveillance. Once again, he helped encourage a coalition of civil-libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives. The effort failed when Hillary Clinton joined 13 other Democrats in supporting a Republican motion to cut off debate on amendments to the Patriot Act.

Forget the nonsense about Obama being a secret Muslim. We already have a Manchurian Candidate who is destroying the country.

The Basic History

H.R. 3162, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism" Act, was introduced, in its final form, to the U.S. House on October 23, 2001. It passed the House on October 24 by a vote of 357 to 66; on the 25th it greased through the Senate, 98 to 1. President George W. Bush signed it into law on October 26.

The basic point of the bill was to make it easier for U.S. Intelligence and Law Enforcement agencies to gather and share information, with emphasis on international investigations.

Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World
by Maureen Webb.  San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2007.
306 pp.  $16.95 paper.  ISBN 978-0-87286-476-4.

Maureen Webb is Co-Chair of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, a member of Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada and a founder of the Campaign Against Mass Surveillance.  Her first book, Illusions of Security, begins with the story of Ottawa residents, and Canadian citizens, Maher and Monia Arar.  On the basis of a casual friendship between Maher and Abdullah Amalki, the brother of a coworker, Maher was renditioned from the United States, where he had been to waiting for a connecting flight to Montreal, to a Syrian prison.  He remained in the prison for a year during which he was frequently tortured.

Amalki himself had been detained while passing through Syria and placed in a prison there for 19 months.  He, too, was repeatedly tortured.  His crime was...

I am a South Dakotan born and bred.

I was born in Mitchell, South Dakota.

I grew up on a farm near Artesian, South Dakota.

My mom had George McGovern as a Poli Sci prof at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell.

I myself went to DWU for two years.

Last night, my wife and I got into a discussion of who to vote for in this primary. She loves Hillary, much of that due to a sense of loyalty to her, both as a woman and because of the hard work Senator Clinton did for upstate New York. My wife is inspired by Obama, but is unwilling to pull the lever to vote for him.

My strategy in attempting to persuade her was to point out that Clinton does not represent her policy positions, notably Clinton's vote to authorize war in Iraq, and my belief that she conceives of the inherent power of the presidency much like President Bush. I also reminded her of her previous statements of concern about the tacts Clinton has used over the past few weeks. In any event, my attempts to persuade her had seemingly no effect. She accused me of buying into Obama's belief that judgment matters hook, line, and sinker. She then suggested that Clinton's vote on Iraq was not a mistake, but justified because Clinton needed to look strong on national defense to the public because women candidate running for office face a skeptical public about women holding the position of commander in chief.

See all the Democratic Candidates. Don't let CNN filter for you.

Mike's going to put the CNN feed on a screen, stand in front with a pause button, and interject his answers and commentary. He'll catch up  during the commercials. Alternative debate live stream 8PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific.

When they voted to renew the PATRIOT Act, both Clinton and Obama, saying most of PATRIOT was fine, promised, as Senators to return and "fix it."

Early in the spring, I called on them to fulfill that pledge. Neither has, as Senators. They've failed, so I'm voting for Mike.