The purpose of the surge was supposed to be to create opportunities for us to leave Iraq, not to stay there.  Supporters of the surge have conveniently forgotten the political goal of the surge, and focused only on military success.  Naturally, more American soldiers improve the military climate -- our soldiers do good work, but you cannot win an occupation.  Our task in Iraq is political --no political progress has been made, the surge has not succeeded.

Every month we stay in Iraq takes $10 billion out of our treasury and lowers the value of the dollar. The lowered value of the dollar corresponds more with the increase in oil prices than any increase in demand or drop in supply.  Every day we spend in Iraq, with the Iraqis asking us to leave, keeps us from addressing urgent issues at home, pursuing those who actually attacked us from Afghanistan, and drains our economy while hiking our gas prices.

Below the fold, McCain thinks Iran is looking at him funny.

If you like to read, you ought to be familiar with Project Gutenberg, producer of free ebooks, whose goal is to provide etexts of all publications in the public domain.

I could go into a rant here about how, in the new Gilded Age, our Congress is attempting to prevent anything (from Mickey Mouse to vaccine formulations) from ever entering the public domain again, but that's not my purpose today.  My purpose is to get information into Project Gutenberg, while we can. And you can help.

How? One major way is through Distributed Proofreaders.  One page at a time.

Since the French physician and seer Nostradamus [Michel de Nostredame (1503-1566)] is widely believed to have predicted everything ever, I decided to look in his writings for something about the coming historic election, because surely it would be on the mind of a 16th century Frenchman (after all, his modern American interpreters would have us believe he was obsessed with the Kennedy assassination).  

As luck (or fate) would have it, I found not one, but several references to play with. And yes, these are real Nostradamus verses. The first was a simple quatrain, so defiantly (and predictably) obscure that I'm giving you the chance to figure it out for yourself.

The most interesting example is a series of half a dozen verses that takes us from the horror of the Bush 43 administration to Obama's triumphant election.  Or not.

Come along to the past to take a look at the future.

In an exclusive interview with the London Times, George W. Bush expressed regret that his legacy was as a warmonger.

But if you read the article, it turns out he's not sorry he started the war, he's just sorry he sounded all warmongery while he was doing it.

He's also concerned that Obama will screw up everything he's done (?)

The limits of Bush's self-realization, in his own words, coming up

A number of my friends, who are otherwise good candidates to become Barack Obama voters, have expressed doubts about his ability to be President, due to his inexperience.  

Some people will counter this fear by pointing to Abraham Lincoln, another Illinois politician with brief experience at the national level, only to run into the argument that Lincoln was a one-off, an instance that won't be repeated; most inexperienced Presidents, so popular belief runs, are disasters.

Not so. In fact, our best Presidents have all been inexperienced in the sense that Obama's inexperience is defined.  And those who have long experience seem stalemated in their past: "with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action."

You've read this far, why not look at the record?

Now that the 24-hour reality show news networks have cut costs to the point that they're blissfully free of any actual reporting, the dominant media narrative of the 2008 presidential campaign has focused on parsing the words of the candidates and their surrogates. Words, we are frequently reminded, are important.

Words are important to the MSM, of course, not because they convey ideas (that would be incredibly boring) but because they can be used as weapons to beat the candidates over the head. This is way more fun, as can be seen by comparing Grand Theft Auto to The Anatomy of Melancholy. Under these rules, the winner of the race is the one who has the least advanced case of hoof-in-mouth disease, as diagnosed by the punditing class.  

As a public service to help you follow the campaign at home, I offer a scientific (i.e., jargon-filled) method to assess the inevitable damage from talking all the time--the Spooner scale, a sort of verbal Richter scale.

Feel the earth move, after the jump.

The wisdom of our Founding Fathers is not just a right-wing talking point.  They struggled to anticipate the problems of their democratic experiment, with an 18th century intellectual rigor and a soaring rhetoric that our 21st century office-holders could not begin to approach. Science and society have moved in ways beyond our founders' imaginings, yet they were amazingly prescient in their assessment of many of the difficulties their great creation, a democratic republic, would face.  

In June 1789, in the 1st session of the House of Representatives of the 1st Congress, a Massachusetts Federalist, Theodore Sedgwick, during a discussion on the mechanisms for removing a person from office, was seemingly struck with a premonition. Otherwise, how can we explain his uncannily accurate description of the behavior of the George W. Bush administration?

Read his extempore comments on "the tardy, tedious, desultory road" of impeachment after the jump.

John McCain has included three GOP governors on the guest list for Memorial Day weekend at his Sedona, Arizona cabin. This gives his campaign -- lagging in fund-raising and press coverage -- some free media attention, luring the sensation-starved pundit class into mulling over possible vice-presidential credentials by cleverly denying that veep discussions are on the menu at all.

The lucky invitees are Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former Massachusetts governor and ex-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Louisiana's young Indian-American Governor, Bobby Jindal, a new media darling.  McCain's presumed vetting of Jindal for a vice-presidential slot is in line with his media strategy of appearing to be everything he's not:  in touch, identifying with the young, and open to compromise while holding strong convictions.

Let's look at why he can't possibly be serious about Jindal.