how this managed to escape rjones & penquinsong is beyond me.
from huffpost this tasty bit of speechery delivered today at san francisco state university. dude is pissed, he's gone past his "fuckin' jail" for bushco that he famously advocated on bill maher's show.

While I'm not a proponent of the Death Penalty, existing law provides that the likes of Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice, if found guilty, could have hoods thrown over their heads, their hands bound, facing a 12-man rifle corps executing death by firing squad. And our cowardly democratically dominated House and Senate can barely find one voice willing to propose so much as an impeachment. That one voice of a true American. That one voice of Congressman Dennis Kucinich. This is not going to be a sound bite. Not if I can help it. I'm torn. I'm torn between the conventional wisdom of what we all keep being told is electibility and the idealism that perhaps alone can live up to the challenges of our generation.

a bit of self indulgence here. i have my own opinion on where i stand politically as compared to this site's founder, but i have been curious as to if there is, and what, the community's consensus might be.
often (& quite unfairly) markos has been painted by some comment or diary posted here & he has explained that folks here have minds of their own, that he established a forum that is largely self policing, but flourishes primarily because it is (within some bounds) a free thought zone. he rejects the concept of himself as "our leader."
his new position at newsweek puts him a little, (who am i kidding? a lot, like expect his smiling face regularly on your television.) more in the spotlight. this site probably will get extra scrutiny as well.
anyway, with apologies to meta jesus & for my own curiosity & perhaps a few others, this poll:

this isn't going to be a long diary, i'll probably pull it in a bit, but chris matthews is interviewing himself through his wife right now. all to sell his new book. he is sitting in the guest chair batting his lashes & doing an infomercial for himself. this certainly isn't hardball. it feels soft & squishy, like a baggie full of, i don't know, something soft & squishy.
gack! you've been warned.
matthews thinks he is somebody entirely different than the bush/cheney ass suck he has played for the last six years. amazing.
some producer at msnbc thought this was a good idea? incredible.
chris, look - i'll buy the book, just get off of my t.v.. put shuster or gregory on for a month. peddle your crappy book on shows i don't watch, too.

there is fresh speculation, from various right-wing american pundits, that perhaps you've been reading leftist blogs - perhaps even writing on them. this gives me a little different take on the concept of what a "lurker" is. apparently you like to read chomsky, me too. some will use this information to degrade anything mr chomsky has to say. it's an old device, of course. i remember when the communist party endorsed civil rights in the 50s & 60s here in the united states, it was used to tar anyone who fought for equal rights as a communist. i'll let noam speak to you himself.
anyway, if there is a chance that you've been logging on here, let me tell you a thing or two. others here will undoubtedly have a few choice words to pass on.

hey, republicans (especially mitt romney)- you can play too.
a few weeks ago on "now," the david brancaccio half hour show on pbs, the lead in was this statistic:

In America, the top one-tenth of one percent of earners make about the same money per year collectively as the millions of Americans in the bottom fifty percent combined.

in other words, the highest paid 300,000 made as much as the lowest 150,000,000. my question: is this fair? is this a good thing for the nation? if not, what would you do about changing these numbers? i am especially interested in mr romney's answer as he is the most likely candidate to fall into the top .001 & perhaps he thinks the disparity is a good thin, or should be widened.

i read this story in the az daily star today.

One night, a couple of weeks before her date for giving birth, Yang's wife was dragged from her bed in a north China town and taken to a clinic, where, she says, her baby was killed by injection while still inside her.
"Several people held me down, they ripped my clothes aside and the doctor pushed a large syringe into my stomach," says Jin Yani, a shy, petite woman with a long ponytail. "It was very painful. ... It was all very rough."
Some 30 years after China decreed a general limit of one child per family, resentment still brews over the state's regular and sometimes brutal intrusion into intimate family matters. Not only are many second pregnancies aborted, but even to have one's first child requires a license.

what is the "new war?" as in

We can't be fighting the last war. We have to be preparing to fight the new war."

it's been bugging me a little. that & why, as a nation, we are always preparing to fight wars.
anyone ever heard this old chestnut,

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

yeah, yeah, i know, einstein was a pussy, thought we should get rid of all our nuclear weapons & all, weird looking too, totally unelectable was old albert. but i stray...
please do tell me, oh supporters of the super smart & oh so experienced senator, please tell me about "the new war." will it be anything like the one we have now? kinda the same only fought smarter? for myself, i'm tired of this endless succession of wars & war preparations.

next time you are polled, consider saying you are for dennis kucinich. you don't have to mean it, nobody will follow you into the booth & check, i'm not asking anyone to send money. i am interested in how a 15% - 20%, bump in his numbers would affect the dynamics of the race, also how it might affect the dynamics of congressional workings.
a lot of people here seem very upset by the presidential semi pardon, it has apparently pushed some over the impeachment edge. one candidate has actually introduced an impeachment resolution, only one. be nice if he at least got some lip service.
a lot of folks here would like us out of iraq, like yesterday - one candidate not only voted against the authorization, but has actively worked to defund the occupation. yep, congressman ugh.

i don't know if this has been diaried already. if it has i'll take it down, i don't want to bore you all with old stuff. some of you may also think this post is lacking in requisite comment or analysis. i'm thinking that commentary on my part would be gilding the lily, or more accurately, polishing a gem with peanut butter.
i found The New Vision while surfing over at Firedoglake.
ted sorensen, you all probably know, was jfk's speechwriter. the washington monthly

...called Theodore C. Sorensen and asked him to write the speech he would most want the next Democratic nominee to give at the party convention in Denver in August 2008. We requested that he proceed with no candidate in mind and that he give no consideration to expediency or tactics—in other words, that he write the speech of his dreams.

it is a beauty.

some footage, shot early in the invasion of iraq, has bothered me for years.  a crew of cameraman & reporters were embedded with a unit that had set up a road block in an iraqi town. they dutifully recorded a white nissan sedan attempting to run the block. they recorded the soldiers as they "lit up" the pathetic vehicle & it crashed into a wall. they recorded the high fiving & celebratory bravado of the shooters.
"aren't you going to look?" the reporter asks.
"aren't you going to see if some one needs help?"
the soldiers were not interested, so the reporter & cameraman went across the street to check it out. inside the battered & shot up car they found a man & a woman, both dead. in the back seat were they bullet riddled bodies of a couple of girls about 2 & 5 years old.

mitt romney was asked this question a few weeks back & he was all, "gosh. i love america." which is about what you'd expect from this car salesman of a candidate. he couldn't think of anything, "i'm afraid i'm going to be at a loss for words..." of course, life is sweet for multi millionaires in these united states & i suppose if i was a rich white guy with a pound of ky gel on my head, & my head up my ass, i might say the same thing. if you've seen any of his ads, you'll know he really does dislike paying taxes. he wants to increase the size of the military & double guantanamo, & cut taxes.
when i saw that question, however, quite a few things popped into my head. i love this country, but there quite a few things i dislike about it. for instance:

i have seen so many impossible things in my 57 years. if you had asked any "realist" in the 50s & 60s whether this country would ever elect a woman, or a black man president, i'm pretty sure the reply would begin with, "the american people will never accept..." - i've heard this my whole life.
basically, i see folks who flaunt their "pragmatism" as terribly lacking in imagination, but maybe it's imagination of a different kind, traveling at a slower, more evolutionary speed. there were a lot of people with the foresight to predict the fiasco in iraq, they were considered cassandras, not realists. the realists, the smart money, voted to authorize.
<musical interlude with run-dmc>
"don't ask me, because i don't know why,
but it's like that - & that's the way it is"

alison stewart is good enough, smart enough & doggone it, she is smoking hot! please give her tucker carlson's slot. move that whining, shrill squeaker to early mornings where i won't have to listen to him. or give her joe scarborough's spots. that pious hypocrite, who has been after rosie o'donnell's job, but can't figure out why imus can't say the same things on air that 50 cent puts on his records, can take his culture warrior, faux outrage schtick to the mornings. hey & why not make it "scarborough/buchanan country" while you're at it. you might be able to convince tucker or joe that the move to imus' space is a promotion.

I know a lot of folks are concerned about the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons. it's kind of hard for me to worry about that too much knowing that we already have enough nuclear munitions to eliminate everything on the planet but the cockroaches & the guy with his finger on the button is... you know.
Anyway, here's a cyber peace sign to y'all. from 1955, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?

contrary to what the minutemen & lou dobbs might have you believe, from the front page of the az daily star this morning: Study: Immigrants don't raise U.S. crime rate.

WASHINGTON — Immigrants — both legal and illegal — do not raise the rate of crime in the United States, according to a study released Monday.
In every ethnic group, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are less educated, said the study by the Immigration Policy Center, an immigrant-advocacy group in Washington. This holds especially true for Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans, who make up the bulk of the illegal population.

that's right, damn it, i want that pony!
i saw this column in today's az daily star, but this link is from "the union.com" out of western nevada county, california.

"If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from. But for me, the most important thing now is trying to end this war."

Her tough talk to anti-war voters is reminiscent of President Bush's taunt to the Iraqi insurgents: "Bring it on."

People's concerns about Clinton's Iraq War vote is of more than historical interest. History has a frightening way of repeating itself. Drop the "q," add an "n." Iran.

they don't know when to stop. if napolean & hitler had been smart enough to pull out of russia short of their own perception of "victory," what would the map of europe look like today?
it's a trap that the most heavily militarized seem to fall into repeatedly. when has the nation with the biggest army not used it? as einstein said on his famous bumpersticker, "you cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." & apparently god favors, as napolean said, "the side with the heaviest artillery." you can see where this leads.
having watched several hours of congressional debate, it has become clear that there are many republickan legislators with a perverse sense of history. i urge them & anyone here who hasn't yet, to read the march of folly by barbara tuchman.

mr. president,
on everything else, you beg for secrecy & stealth & shiftiness. "can't let our enemies know what we doing" - when it's rendition, or torture, err, that is "interrogation techniques," or surveillance, or whether we'll use a nuclear bomb, deadlines, benchmarks & milestones... shhh.
so many secrets. secrets buried in secrets. our enemies are sneaky, we must be sneakier.
strategically & tactically the adventure in iraq is a bust. yet you worry about keeping up school spirit? if we just cheer louder & all at once, the other side will quit? an absolute failure as a coach, you keep edging toward the stands to shake the pom poms. once a cheerleader, i suppose. you always were superb with a bullhorn.