http://news.yahoo.com/...

"If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what's happened in the elections, it would be harmful to the Democratic party," Pelosi said in an interview taped Friday for broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

In her interview, Pelosi also said that even if one candidate winds up with a larger share of the popular vote than the delegate leader, the candidate who has more delegates should prevail.

"It's a delegate race," she said. "The way the system works is that the delegates choose the nominee."

Samantha Power has a powerful new essay in the latest issue of Time in which she projects some light on her vision of foreign policy problems in the future. I am stretching it here, but I'm going to write a diary in order to glean from her article some insight into how she might advise Obama's foreign policy. I realize Obama has other advisers such as Susan Rice. But I'm focusing on Power because I consider her a fascinating figure because of her work for genocide recognition and humanitarian intervention. I last cited her in my multiple diaries on the Armenian Genocide on Daily Kos.

On the flip

William Burroughs always had a wry sense of humor, and he knew how to celebrate a holiday, and he was on the wrong side of the law quite a few times in his life, but I couldn't spend a Thanksgiving Day without him, and what better way to invite Uncle Bill over than to share him with the folks at Daily Kos.

This morning I picked up a book by the French literary critic and thinker Maurice Blanchot, a writer I return to often, and I ran across his essay on Robespierre and the Reign of Terror. My God, we are living that time again, I thought to myself.

I decided to write a diary and share with you a brief clip from Blanchot's essay, "Literature and the Right to Death" (which he wrote about 50 years ago), because I feel it addresses the mentality of the Absolutists on both sides of this Terror War and most of all, it tries to create a space for us that live in the middle of the warring sides.

Forget about the Armenian genocide resolution and its impact on our ally Turkey for one second. Instead, consider the ongoing genocide denial in the United States. In particular, note that NPR, the Nation, the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, and countless others have made the point that the Armenian genocide is under dispute, if it happened at all. Until today, no news organization or political weekly went so far as to actually delve into the history. Most people would just assume do as John Murtha did and say, "Leave it to the historians." But the National Review came out fully today in support of the genocide deniers.

Here is the ugliness:

http://article.nationalreview.com/...

The resolution passing through the US House Foreign Relations committee on the Armenian Genocide is a resolution that needs to be passed now, despite threats from our NATO ally Turkey to curtail logistical support for our military excursion in Iraq. Why now? Because the Armenian Genocide is different. First, it meets the standards of the definition of genocide, which differentiates between massacres, atrocities, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Second, unlike the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda or many other genocides for that matter, the facticity of the Armenian genocide has been contested and denied more than any other.

Below, I summarize the counterarguments to the resolution, those coming from the American political left and right, from NPR to the National Review to the Nation to Investor’s Business Daily to the Washington Post to the Atlantic Monthly, not to mention American politicians, and even foreign analysts from all sides of the political spectrum. These counterarguments need to be addressed.

I wrote a diary on Mr. Belichick after the Patriots' last Super Bowl win. It was received with resounding applause. To my sad dismay, Belichick was yesterday found guilty of an act akin to the infamous attempt to smear a sitting Virginia Senator last year. Our own Democratic tracker cheated when he went after George Allen with a video camera, got audible evidence of Allen's macaca comment, effectively stealing Allen's coded signals to his wink, wink white audience.

Be that as it may, I'll forgive Belichick for behaving as Allen's tracker did. And I'll sing his praises instead with the ole diary.

Our Feds are behind an insidious attempt to muzzle gov't critics that has almost gone unnoticed. They are making an example of a Buffalo artist, and sending a chill through the academic and artistic community. Instead of rising up, academics and artists are self-censoring themselves. According to the artist in question, the Feds have already won.

Background: A few months ago I did a second update on an earlier diary on the Steve Kurtz case in Buffalo.

Here: Strange Culture

I linked to a story outlining the details of the case  (though some objected to the fact that I hadn't given the overall context). This is what happened:

Many of you may be aware of the FBI's prosecution of professor and artist Steve Kurtz for growing biocultures. If not, here's the background story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Steve Kurtz, a Buffalo art professor, discovered on the morning of May 11 that his wife of 20 years, Hope Kurtz, had stopped breathing. He called 911. Police and emergency personnel responded, and what they saw in the Kurtz home has triggered a full-blown probe -- into the vials and bacterial cultures and strange contraptions and laboratory equipment.

More after the flip

I've been against our Iraqi foray from day one, as have most of you. But now I think we're seeing the beginnings of a catastrophic turn of events which would force the US to STAY in Iraq, specifically in the Kurdish north. I'm following the news coming from the Turkish-Iraqi border, and I'm amazed. What's going on is eye-opening: the Turks are amassing troops, and the US doesn't like it.

More on the flip

I've heard a lot of media labels for this man, a monster, a nutball, etc. And each label is further reinforced by the people who knew him who call him "weird," an "oddity," someone with a "mean streak." Each of these labels serves to further distance us from the psyche of the disturbed person, to emphasize how inhuman he seemed to us humans in the first place. I'm cringing now everytime I hear him described in this way.

Drew Pritt wrote an excellent diary on Wes Clark's credentials here: http://www.dailykos.com/...

I agreed with most of what Drew wrote about Clark, and I salute Clark for his fight against the GOP in 2004 and 2006. He really helped a lot; he's an articulate spokesman for our cause.

I've been following Clark's career for a long time, more than a decade. He's grown on me a bit, but not nearly enough to support him in the Democratic primary.

I have specific reasons for not supporting Clark in particular, but more importantly the main reason I'm not supporting him is because he is career military. At the risk of being accused of being myopic, I do think there is such a thing as the military mindset. I think all the top brass is infected with it. Their job is to succeed in militaristic interventions. They have to be good at it. Part of being good at it is being VERY WILLING to flex your muscle when the need arises.

Below Fold

ABC News is now officially inserting itself into the election up here in the Buffalo area.

http://www.buffalonews.com/...

Apparently, ABC News thinks it's part of the GOP propaganda wing. The man occupying ABC's Goebbel's Chair said this morning, in effect, that Jack Davis is a liar.

Never mind that the investigation into this isn't complete. Never mind that Davis may be basing his commercial on Fordham's statement and testimony. Never mind that ABC's Goebbels has clearly inserted himself into a race without having all of the facts.

Yes, Davis' campaign did this too by taking Fordham's word, but Davis doesn't have to apologize until the facts play out and his version is contradicted. What's fascist ABC's excuse?

This diary comes in response to Georgia's excellent piece on the nature of fact and fiction and its place in our culture: http://www.dailykos.com/.... My response here is indirect as it originally appeared on my blog just recently. It's pretty long: my apologies. My basic sentiment is that we're so susceptible to propaganda today precisely because we've deligitimized fiction and the imagination and instead have placed a premium on information and reality, but in such a way that we've actually obstructed our critical capabilities.

This is just a follow-up to the diary yesterday on the USA Today article which cited an increased crime rate due to cuts in social programs.

http://www.buffalonews.com/...

In this article in the Buffalo News, the people in the community can cite precisely the types of programs that have been cut which have diminished opportunities for a host of young people. Not all of these "kids" are resorting to crime and killing, but enough are. This is a three-block area where about 10 people have been randomly shot and killed in the last month. The perpetrators are thought to be between the ages of 10 and 15. Clearly, this isn't only a government breakdown, but a societal breakdown, but nonetheless, society doesn't break down overnight, and three or four years ago, these kids were occupied otherwise.

A professor from the University of Buffalo ran for town supervisor (mayor) of Buffalo's biggest suburb, Amherst, and won, largely by eschewing his political party and adopting a grassroots approach. Here's the story:

Politics is local

One, Katrina Van Den Heuvel of the Nation did an excellent job framing the potential new tilt of the Supreme Court. She said it's not a question of the Court moving to the Right or to the Left, it's a question of the Court moving backward to the days before protection of worker's rights, before civil rights battles of the 60's, before protections of the environment, Voting Rights, and of course of the protection of women's reproduction rights.

I thought this recasting of the Left - Right arguments into the frame of Progress versus moving backwards was a pretty good one.

I also learned...(below the fold)

Sometimes in the middle of the serious news stories I feel battered by these days, I need to step back, turn off the TV, hang out on a chair in my living room (no TV there) and pick up an old book I haven't read in ages. This morning I picked up a book by the French literary critic and thinker Maurice Blanchot, and as I read I saw the narrow context of all these London bombs and Rovian crimes shrink inside a larger context, that of history, of life, of revolution and ideas, but most of all beliefs that we affirm as universal.

I decided to write a diary and share with you a brief clip from Blanchot's essay, "Literature and the Right to Death" (which he wrote about 50 years ago), because I feel it addresses the mentality of the Fundies on both sides of this Terror War and most of all, it tries to create a space for us that live in the middle of the warring sides.