Interesting pick up from Ben Smith at Politico...

During yesterday’s Race for the White House program, the panelists discussed Obama & McCain's vulnerabilities, which they saw as their inability to connect on the Economy.

     Neo-conservatism blasted into the American political scene with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  However, its roots wind back through the U.S. political landscape to include Marxist social theory and the teachings of Renaissance philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli.  Many of the individuals whose names have become household words today were introduced on the world-wide political stage during the Reagan/G.H.W. Bush administration: Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, "Scooter" Libby, and others.  This essay bares the core of neoconservative belief, contrasts those beliefs to statements written by this nation’s founders, and highlights the political spin neocons use when quoting documents from America’s past.            

"The Surge is Working"

I want to address the "The Surge is Working" meme from a political point of view, and make suggestions for coping with it.

Before I go into those details, let me just get this out of the way:  "The Surge is Working" is a big lie.  It is a big lie that has been repeated and repeated.  The general public has bought into it.  I even know some democrats who support Obama who said to me that if the surge didn't work, then why is violence in Iraq down?  All main stream media reporters and pundits have bought into it.  It has become a fabricated reality.  It is important to discuss because John McCain is making a major issue out of it.

A number of diaries in the past have mentioned political historian Allan Lichtman (American University) and his analyses of election trends and predictions. I just read a short extract on the New Scientist Website which lists his 13 yes/no questions based on the past 2 years (Midterm elections onwards) which can very accurately predict national election outcomes.

You can go to the NS website article "How to get the presidential keys" and read the 13 questions and decide for yourself how many yeses and nos you come up with.

Wrote a short poem to my local newspaper in reply to a editorial of theirs concerning the upcoming election. I used to write a diary here about every day (in support of Senator Obama called Daily Dose of Obama Vids) but haven't gotten by as much lately but would like to share this brief ode to George with you.

If you have a few more lines you'd like to add to it please do so. I look forward to reading them.

-- cross posted at SteveEverettRandomThoughts.com and Clarksville Leaf Chronicle

Sometimes, it behooves us to take a moment unto ourselves for quiet reflection and contemplation, where we can behold once again the beauty and wonder of a world teeming with brilliant life in the cold, empty void of space.  Individually and collectively, it is easy to lose oneself in the day-to-day chaos that envelops us as social beings: the demands of one's life, complicated by the demands of living and participating in a community of social beings who each have their own individual desires and who, together, form organizational structures that run the gamut from basic family, friends and neighborhoods to cities, states and nations -- all competing for a varied, yet limited set of resources.

We develop patterns and follow them; if they were set to music, the beat and harmony would shift and change to reflect the ups and downs, ins and outs of life, and we would be the dancers -- our lives set to the music, trying to move in sync with it. Sometimes, those harmonies skip and stutter. Other times, they become harsh and repetitive, playing the tune over and over and faster and faster until the dancer, exhausted, can do nothing more than run in place or die, unable to break free.

Last night, I watched Obama making his speech in Berlin where the infamous wall once stood, "the walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand," he said. I imagined him delivering the same speech with the separation wall Israel has created in the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis, in the background...but it was only a fleeting fantasy.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


click to enlarge

I have in recent diaries at times explored the possibility of leaving teaching, in part because the context I need in order to teach effectively may be changing, becoming more restrictive.  Also, I teach government, and I am not completely sure what our government is.  And, as I told a few people in Austin, something had come up which had the possibility of my moving to the world of politics and government.  People have encouraged me to try to stay in teaching, and those with whom I spoke at NN08 asked me to keep them informed.

This diary is in response to those requests, and in the context which I have just laid out.  And by my standards it will be a relatively short diary.

I haven't been reading diaries about The Speech today, so I don't know if I'm being redundant, or just sawing off my own personal limb, but I am filled with such an all consuming anger as to be more than a bit irrational.

I heard a masterful presentation address a renewal of American foreign policy by one of the most sophisticated minds on the international stage.

I also heard the run up.  Mincing, prissy words by small minds, herded together to throw stones at the "other" who refuses to conform to their limited, and limiting, world view.

Then I watched interviews with "regular guys", who clearly had no idea what they had seen or heard at the Tiergarten, yet felt no hesitation in parading their fear and ignorance across the stage with inartful comment.  

I'll attempt to set aside my own political bias here (obviously in favor of Obama) and make an objective prediction about the upcoming election: it will be a comfortable win, if not landslide victory, for Obama and the Democrats in Congress. From whence comes this prognostication? I have four reasons.

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
Jeff Sharlet
Harper Collins
454 pp. $25.95

It’s one thing to say that a particular wing of modern conservatism seems a little fascist; it’s another thing to prove it unequivocally.

Jeff Sharlet’s The Family is about what is undeniably the most powerful and bizarre quasi-religious movement you’ve never heard of.  This is made evident near the beginning of the book, when Sharlet gives us a scene featuring Doug Coe, the group’s leader.  Coe is chatting with (or rather, instructing) Congressman Todd Tiahrt (R, Kansas):

CNN just broke this story on their website:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The International Olympic Committee has banned Iraq from competing in the upcoming Summer Olympics games because of what it says is political interference by the government in sports.

An Iraqi Olympic Committee official said the IOC sent letters in Arabic and English confirming the ban.

http://www.cnn.com/...

George W. Bush whoops it up at a "R": fundraiser, laughing and joking while
Americans suffer in silence. This time, Cenk Uygur,(The Young Turks)is very angry at the Bozo-In-Chief... Watch video and feel his rage, and his sorrow. thinkingblue
See It Here thinkingblue.blogspot.com

[UPDATE: Made the Rec List! Thank You everyone!]

John McCain's campaign is becoming a "target rich environment."

The latest attack levelled by the Three Stooges John McCain's crack campaign staff is that Barack Obama is soft and hypocritical on genocide. [More after the jump]

  In recent weeks there has been much chattering about the political themes of summer blockbusters.  First, there was Iron Man, in which billionaire industrialist Tony Stark dons an iron costume, survives as a hostage in Afghanistan and, uh, fights another guy in a different iron costume.  Then came Wall-E, which portrayed a world lost, quite literally, in garbage, with humanity the passive, gluttonous subjects of a seemingly benevolent corportation.  And most recently, The Dark Knight, which, according to some reviews, paints a picture of a post-9/11 Gotham City. More after the jump...

FINALLY – IT’S ALL OUT IN THE OPEN  !!!  
We can all relax – the pressure’s finally off.  Thank God.

JUST THIS LAST WEEK, all those fears that Americans have been burdened with have been calmed, with the solutions provided.  What a relief!  I for one am totally relieved, and thankful that the government spokesmen have laid it all out.  God, what took them so long ?