So why haven't you recommended this diary?!?

It's mother's day for chrissake!.

If I were his mother, I'd cry tears of pride everyday.  I'm sure that she is.  So I recommend that you recommend that diary.  Please.  Do it for your mother, and your grandmother, and her mother.

Ok, I have to add more verbiage to this to get it to publish.  So, again, how about recommending this diary?

I promise it'll be good for your soul.

Ok, let's all take a deep breath.  The events of the past week have been unnerving to say the least, and I'm now really worried about the state of the primary race.  To be sure, Obama is still the front-runner, but I'm not going to pretend that Rev. Wright's betrayal didn't hurt him.  Hillary may very well try and use the Wright fallout to wrest the nomination from Obama, but doing so will fatally weaken her in the general election.

Even more worrisome is the state of race relations in this country which were dealt a heavy blow in the Wright fiasco.  I've surveyed the likes of TPM and other places in the blogosphere, and I've come across the same rancor and division everywhere.  

More below.

Ok.  It's late.  Maybe it's that green mango I just had, or maybe it's because I'm a little infused with the film I just finished watching - The Departed.  Maybe.  Because I never fucking watch television.  I can't stand it.  I especially loathe politically-themed programs with television personalities (although Maria Shriver was kind of great tonight on Colbert).  Yuck.  I can't stand Maher or Matthews or Blitzer or, ... whose that concerned one ... Cooper.  I can't stand any of them (except Rachel Maddow who's an absolute hottie).

Anyway, I normally hate all that bullshit.  I and really hate diaries about that bullshit.  You know the ones.  That crap entitled 'Olbermann Smacks Down Cheney', or 'Arianna Bitch-Slaps Hillary'.  

Whatever.  I don't give a fuck.

Obama gave an historic speech on the economy today in which he answered some of the criticisms leveled by one of his most vocal critics: Paul Krugman.  The speech was well attended.  Paul Volker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Democratic and Republican administrations - and an Obama supporter - was in attendance, as was Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson.  Obama was introduced by Mayor Bloomberg.  

Obama, the first Illinois presidential aspirant since Lincoln to speak at Cooper Union, began by citing Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first secretary of the Treasury.  

Human enterprise may be stimulated by prudent aids and encouragements on the part of the government.

Obama then went on to call for regulation of the brokerage firms that have come to constitute a kind of shadow banking industry by saying:

We need to regulate institutions for what they do, not what they are

More below

Ok, I'm officially confused.  

For starters full disclosure:  I voted for Barack in CA, but it was really hard to choose.  I'm officially 'bi-candidate'.  No hissy fits here.  I'll work my ass off for which ever one gains the nomination.

Now, ever since Mardi Superb, I've heard that Barack has the most pledged delegates.  Now, I'm new to primary politics and delegate math, and I assumed it would take a bit to certify the results in all the primaries.  Also, I know the Dems apportion delegates based on a proportion of the vote, blah, blah, blah ...

I think it's fair to say that most in this community and country want the war in Iraq to end yesterday.  Most of us also know that despite the tired 'liberationist' rhetoric from the White House and the Republican Party, Bush carried out this invasion to control the country's vast oil reserves.  

However, as much as I'd like this war to end now, I'd also like it to end honorably.  That's why this letter from Hassan Jum'a Awwad, Head of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions is so troubling to me.

More below ...

While wildfires are all the rage in LA these days, the excessive shows of police force that have come to define the LAPD are perhaps too regrettably predictable to elicit the intensity of international outrage they did in '92.  The blue wall is as expansive as the LA sky.  Or is it?  In the aftermath of the May 1st MacArthur Park clashes between immigrant-rights demonstrators and the police, could there be new signs of life at the LAPD?

According to a recent article in the LA Times (subscription required), LAPD Police Chief Bratton is walking a political "tightrope" because the candor of his reaction to the MacArthur Park clashes has upset some in the LAPD rank and file.  

Officers were particularly incensed with a statement Bratton made last week in which he said: "One thing I know about [police] is you have to control them, because they go out of control faster than any human being in the world."

More on the flip ...

I was just reading a gnostic's thoughtful diary "Gen Odom RIPS George Bush: 'gone AWOL'" (I'll update this with a link to the diary soon). My thoughts on Gen. Odom's and a gnostic's insights are sufficiently lengthy that I'll share them in a diary.

Like many in this community, I keenly dislike Bush.  No, I loathe him.  I believe he lied our nation into an illegal war for profit, and believe this was a treasonous abuse of power.  Indeed, the cancer on the presidency is his malignant narcissism.

But, after reading a gnostic's diary, I began wondering about its last two lines:

No George Jr. isn't in charge.

Dick Cheney and Big Oil are in charge here.

As great as is my displeasure with Bush and the war, I'm under no illusion that Bush is solely responsible for this debacle.  But something occurred to me after reading those two lines:  that the architects of the war had intended that Bush be a lightning rod for anger from the very beginning.

The LA times has an article detailing the reactions of some evangelical leaders to the Haggard revelations.

If you ask me, they're spooked.

According to the article:

The allegations against Haggard could further disillusion voters, depressing turnout, said Paul de Vries, a board member of the National Assn. of Evangelicals.

"If this is true," De Vries said, "it's obviously going to hurt a lot of people."

... more below the fold