From Iran Nuclear Watch:

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) told one member of Congress just before the 4th of July recess that he does not want to mark up H.Con.Res. 362, but he feels his hands are tied because of pressure from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Both the House and Senate committees are holding meetings this Wednesday. If you haven't already contacted your congresscritters, please do so immediately.  Here's some background.

While Howie Berman twists in the wind, at least one guy has done the right thing. Barney Frank's taken his name off the list of co-sponsors. Read on for a letter he sent to a constituent...

A confession: I supported the war.  Rabidly.  I spent hours fuming about French perfidy on warblogs.  I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.

But as such, I have a very clear memory of the runup to war.  And I can with utmost certitude say that the standard media line – "oh, how misled we were about the case for war" – is a LIE.

The WMD argument was a latecomer to the table.  If you paid any attention to the drumbeat for war you could see that.  The early case, made by various neocons in leaks and op-eds, was all about "draining the swamps".

And now – oh, big surprise!  Turns out WMDs were a figleaf all along?  Who knew it was all about Wilsonian coercion from the start?  Who knew?  Answer: any non-retarded observer who was paying attention.

Ever wonder who Obama will pick for veep? Sure, we all do.

Well wonder no more: this surefire numbers system proves beyond a shadow of a doubt who his top pick will be. I'm speaking, of course, about Gov. Tim Kaine. Surprised the shit out of me too.

Join me below for full details, rankings and the ones who almost made it. You'll be surprised who is (and isn't) on the list. The results even surprised me!

Runners up: Tim Roemer, Claire McCaskill, Al Gore (if he'd take it.)
Almost-rans: Kathleen Sebelius, Ted Strickland, Bill Richardson, Phil Bredesen, Mark Warner, Jim Doyle.

Beyond Barack's stunning victory:

Congressman Walter B. Jones, one of the only antiwar Republicans in the House, one of the only Republicans to hold Miers and Bolten in contempt, has survived a primary challenge.

Now, before you work yourselves up into an anti-Paultard lather against me, let me explain why this is a good thing.

By now you've been inundated with breathless media reports and bien-pensant petitions about the "cultural genocide" in Tibet.  That's why the Tibetans are rioting, right? Because they're uniquely put-upon by the Han Chinese, because they're stirred by millennia-old attachment to the lamaist hierocracy - that's why, right?

Wrong.

There's unrest in Tibet for the same reason there's unrest all over rural China.

And that can be summed up in three words: chicken-flavored cardboard.

That's right folks, times are so bad for ordinary Chinese they're eating cardboard flavored to taste like chicken. Join me below the fold if you have the stomach.

I am a radical black nationalist. I think Republicans had all the best ideas. I am too white. I use right-wing talking points. And I represent the George McGovern wing of the Democratic party. I have the least progressive healthcare plan.

I am a reactionary wahhabi muslim who wants to enslave the West.
Moreover I go to a left-wing church that preaches liberation theology.

Want to find out more?

That's the response Obama has to make to this MinisterGate nonsense.

You can't explain the comments away. Apologizing, disagreeing, denouncing and rejecting only feeds into the frame that something's wrong here that people should be alarmed about.

You've got to change the frame. Change it from an embarrasment to an asset.

Make it a Jesus contest.

PA is a tough state for Obama. He's a Congregationalist from Hawaii with heavy black support and a flair for Big Ideas. PA is Rust Belt, largely Catholic, and interested in bread and butter issues.

Compare Jack Kemp's race for Congress in Erie County, New York. A district that looked a lot like Pennsylvania. Democratic-leaning, largely white, blue-collar, Catholic and interested in bread and butter issues. Jack Kemp was a Presbyterian Republican from California who talked constantly about helping black people and had a taste for Big Ideas. And he won big.

How'd he do it? Being a star quarterback for the local football team helped a lot. But his Hope, Growth and Opportunity message is what put it over the top. And that's a message Barack would do well to look closely at.

Join me over the fold...

From the latest SurveyUSA poll.

Okay, first the bad news. 77% of voters say they've made up their mind. If those opinions hold, he loses. But I'm not sure how much that statistic means so many weeks out.

Now, onto the "good" news. Demographics that Obama has potential in have not yet moved his way. While this could mean he's doomed to be locked out, it also means his numbers have serious potential for expansion.

Join me beneath the fold.

"It's 3 AM and a black man is watching your children"

Admit it.  No matter how liberal you are, your heart skipped a beat.  If you are white or hispanic and have an ounce of parental instinct, your first thought was "ZOMGZ CALL THE POLEECEE!!!!!" before your prog self-censorship kicked in.

That's right, liberals.  You thought it.

When you boil it right down, that's what the 3 AM ad was about. Not about national security credentials or how many years of experience. Everything in the voiceover besides "3 AM" was completely irrelevant.

Ironically, Barack's response worsened the situation rather than helping it by repeating those same images and voiceover over again, sowing those same sumbliminal doubts.

Questions for Senator Clinton:

1. Why is your husband carrying water for dirty deals in Kazakhstan, Dubai ports, and Ron Burkle?  Is this how you financed your $5 million loan?

2. What is the nature of your relationship with Huma Abedin?  I'm not saying it's romantic - as far as I know.  Also, is she a Muslim?

3. What is the nature of Bill's relationship with Belinda Stronach?

4. As a board member, what part did you play in Wal-Mart's anti-worker union-busting policies?  Did you play an active role or just observe from the sidelines?

Talking about Obama's choices for veep, there's an overwhelming sense in some quarters that he needs to pick a guy with massive military/foreign policy credentials.  Wes Clark or some other four-star primadonna.  I don't buy that at all.  If Barack can't win the Iraq debate on his own, he can't win it.  Picking a security guy just puts the debate on McCain's turf.

A veep choice should let Obama go where McCain can't and won't go.  We all know John McCain doesn't give a flying frick about domestic issues.  The veep choice should put Katrina, infrastructure and rural poverty - issues which McCain won't know whether to sh!t or go blind on - at the forefront.  The veep should sweep through the boxed-out area of this map, which happen to be hit hard by poverty and crumbling infrastructure and also key swing areas.

There've been a couple of diaries about realignment lately.  There is one happening.  And it is going to be bigger and stranger than any of us can envision right now.

Dig it:

In Iowa, both party primaries were won by the most dovish and anti-establishment of the viable candidates.  
In NH, both party primaries were won by the most hawkish and establishment of the viable candidates.  

Deep rumblings are taking place in the Heartland that we on the coasts can only begin to guess at.

What's shaking up is not the mere realignment of a few purple states into the blue column.  It will result, as it unfolds, in a redrawing of our electoral and ideological map.  (more below the fold).

The rules: Assume I'm a skeptic on mandates.  Assume I'm in favor of affordable decent healthcare being more widely available.  But also assume that I'm not going to be swayed by appeal to Core Democratic Principles of Universal Coverage or the like.

Okay, so a mandate takes care of the adverse selection problem.  Young healthy people are less likely to by health insurance while old sick people are more likely to buy it.  Risky people are more expensive to insure.  If the whole pool of insured is older and sicker, thus riskier, premiums are higher.  Therefore a mandate, even one spottily enforced, would make premiums go down.  I get that.

BUT: adverse selection is a structural problem of every single insurance market.  If it were the big problem behind the healthcare crisis...(more)

I know this isn't the first diary on the Kos, nor even the first diary today, to talk about how plans don't matter.

But I want to go beyond that and talk about what is important: the exercise of executive power.  President Bush has shown us how - even in the absence of significant domestic legislative accomplishment - executive branch power by itself is enough to move the country in a radically different direction.

Oh, and this is a candidate diary (pro-Barack).

There's been an upsurge lately in "feminist" pro-Hillary anti-Barack diaries.

I put "feminist" in scare quotes because they rest on the questionable assumption that a victory for Senator Clinton is a victory for women generally.  And not, for example, a victory for a particular woman using her privileged-but-still-subaltern position within the patriarchal class structure to take power.  And to take power, it must be said, by running on the most anti-woman policies imaginable - endless war in the Middle East and subsidies for the insurance industry financed by regressive taxation (AKA healthcare mandates).

But what I want to take especial issue with is the often-repeated assertion that it's okay to gender-bait but not race-bait - and therefore Senator Clinton is at a disadvantage.  Proof to the contrary lies within your own diaries and the supportive comments thereto.  As a black man, I see them as containing a whole heck of a lot of coded race baiting.