I’m 100% behind Obama, but I want to make a point for backing off the Clinton camp. Are they fighting dirty? Yes. Is it hurting the party? Yes. Are they going to win? No. Especially now after Tuzla. It’s over.

My personal opinion is that we have more to gain by ignoring and marginalizing the Clintons than we do by howling in rage and attacking a solid Senator, a (formerly) popular ex-president, and deep pocketed donors to the Democratic Party. They absolutely deserve our criticism and I agree with the content of almost all the posts here criticizing them. But it doesn’t accomplish much other than widen fissures in the party.

Obama is the nominee. He’s a phenomenon. I’ve never seen anything like it. Let’s get behind him and focus on the only opponent he’s going to have a legitimately hard time beating- McCain. There are plenty of downticket races we can start gearing up for too.

Here are the options as I see them-

It’s clear that Bush/Cheney identify themselves as a dictatorial government, even if they don’t call themselves that. They only thing they lack is a physical force to police the home front. Over the past few years, when things looked really ugly, I could comfort myself by with that thought that at least the military, bound by law and honor to obey the Commander in Chief, was far away from the home front and could not be effectively used to quell domestic discontent, if it came to that. I also had, and still have, grave doubts that the professional military would take action against Americans at home for a bunch of dead end DC flunkies.

I have a few days off around election day and I'm trying to decide where to focus my energy. I've never seen so many competitive and meaningful races in the NYC region, and obviously we've all got to pitch in.

I want readers to read my rationale for volunteering to what I think are the most significant local races, add to or criticize it, and finally vote on where to send me and my friends and family that I'm going to drag with me come november.

Prioritizing like this also begs the obvious question- is it better to control the House or Senate if you had to choose one?

As a resident in ConEd's "footprint," ConEd will deliver your energy and read your meter (and will charge you for it) regardless of who supplies your electricity. But you can choose your supplier, and you can choose a product that is renewable, emission free, and locally produced.

ConEd's average energy mix in NY State is Nuclear 29%, Natural gas 22%, Coal 18%, Hydro 17%, Oil 12%, Other 2%. I don't find that acceptable. I switched to Green Power through ConEd Solutions last year.

My contract for Green Power just expired, so I shopped around for a new renewable energy supplier. I want you to benefit from my time, because this is not easy information to find, and it cannot be found in any one place.

A Case:

A man in his 40's came to the hospital for weakness on one half of his body. In the ER, he vomited several times and fell to the ground unconscious. He never woke up. A CT scan showed an enormous stroke that had swelled, compressing the other half of his brain against the skull and squeezing his brainstem, the site of his most basic respiratory function, to the point of uselessness. His physical exam indicated not just coma, but flat-out brain death. There were several tasks left to do-

1. Confirm it with an "apnea test"- measuring the CO2 content of the arterial blood and waiting until it reached a high enough level that it would induce a breath in any living human. No breath= no life.
   
2. Contact his family
   
3. Contact the organ donation network

I performed the apnea test, the first I had ever done. I punctured the artery in his wrist and sent multiple samples of blood to the lab. He didn't breathe, as expected. Diagnosis made, death pronounced. This is where things got difficult.

dKos has members who have expert knowledge in an astounding array of fields. A brief sampling reveals posters dedicated to law, history, science, and even a few with a working knowledge of politics. I want to provide a medical voice. Not THE medical voice, (doctors are a diverse bunch), just one medical voice. In my first medical diary I went into the details of the standard American death, and went light on the politics. Since this is in fact a political blog, let's kick this series into a more site-appropriate gear.

Death, like everything else in America the Polarized, has become politicized. The intentional causing of death through euthanasia has been a hot-button issue for ages, flaring up again every few years (and in the process of flaring up again). The simple withdrawal of care from the neurologically devastated has traditionally been far less controversial, at least since the days of Karen Ann Quinlan in the mid 70's. It doesn't happen nearly enough (see my previous medical diary), but there has been broad public consensus that it should be allowed, if not outright encouraged.

Until recently.

dKos needs some medicine. I want to provide a medical voice in series form. I'm not a policy wonk, although I'd like to be. I can't claim to speak for doctors as a whole or any group of doctors. I just want to talk about medical issues as I see them as a Neurology resident at Columbia University. I can give you the details on what it's like inside the pupae where doctors develop through their larval stage. I can talk about how policy, ideology, and the individual combine and cause things to go down in the medical trenches. I've got a lot to say.

I'm going to begin with the end. Death. We fear it for a reason, people. Not only does it do incalculable harm to our individual reproductive and evolutionary potentials, but it's usually uncomfortable and undignified, to put it mildly. Our treatment of the elderly in regards to death, especially the incapacitated elderly, and the resulting costs to society is what prompted me to write this diary. I've fucking had it.

We're all disheartened, depressed, despondent, dejected, demoralized, and I'm sure many other words that begin with D would also apply.

But how about murderous?

I must admit, I've felt that way for the past 5 days. (Looking your way, Karl Rove.) Obviously we shouldn't go around killing people. But how about a company? One we have experience and success in attacking? Oh, you know which one I'm talking about. The infrastructure is already in place.

We need to take action, and other than donating to Louisiana Congressional races, there isn't much available to us now. A corporate assassination campaign will energize us, help us feel useful, unite us again, and promote positive social change.

This by itself is not yet proven reliable (it's never been used to predict a future event) but when combined with the data from the polls it is real cause for optimism. This article, excerpted here for background, was published in the New York Times on Spetember 17, 2002.

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(more after the cut, including 2004 analysis)

With 18 days to go and wars against Sinclair and Sproul raging on multiple fronts, we need a little breather around here. In the immortal words of Krusty the Clown "I kid! I kid because I love."

So here's my parody of the Diaries list, read from top to bottom.

Kerry should say this

Some freeper stole my yard sign again

I hate Tweety.

My heartwarming GOTV experience

Kerry should do this

Sinclair responded to my email

My idea for an ad

Sinclair didn't respond to my email

Bush had a stroke

Tweety kicked ass tonight!

MY ONE LINE DIARY WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS
TO MAKE YOU THINK IT'S IMPORTANT!!!!

Ann Coulter hospitalized with laxative overdose

In the 2000 election, immediately after the Supreme Court decision, speculation was rampant as to why the 5 justices violated their own "States' Rights" mantra by stepping in on a case that Florida law could easily have handled independently. Obviously their egregious violation of principle was motivated by a desire for a Bush victory.

The obvious answer at the time was retirements. O'Connor and Rehnquist, especially, were rumored to be near retirement. O'Connor, IIRC, had been overheard commenting before the election that she hoped Bush would win so she could retire with peace of mind, knowing she'd be replaced by a Republican.

So why haven't any of them retired? Have the retirement-eligible justices realized the error of Bush's ways? I don't think Rehnquist is even capable of questioning this administration, But that doesn't explain why hasn't he stepped down to usher in the era of Chief Justice Scalia. O'Connor may have gotten disgusted real early, and resolved to hold on for another 4 years. How else to explain why the independent/paleoconservative who was so looking forward to retiring is still around 4 years later?

Maybe they were never planning on retirement in the first place. If that is the reason, why the flagrant violation of their own precedent in the decision? Why the imperious hijacking of a state's democratic election? What did they have to gain?