In one of the many contentious comment strings in the last few days I wrote:

"Looks like we're going to be dealing with race and gender for the next 10 months.  So good!"

But after further thought I now believe I was wrong.  This has gotten so out of control so easily, so quickly, I'm getting a bad feeling about this.

Our mission is to elect a Democratic president, the best Democrat we can put in the WH, in order to stop digging the hole we've been digging since Reagan.  And start filling it in.  That's everything.  There are no moral victories left, no margin for error whatsoever.  We can't afford the next president of the United States to be a Republican.  The world can't afford it.  

Shocking comeback... for the favorite.  

Talk on TV about the "Bradley Effect."  If the polls were that off in NH it must be because people will tell pollsters they'll vote for a black man but in the privacy of the voting booth they wont.  Thusly, 48 hours ago Obama was an "unstoppable bullet" and now he's just one of three candidates again.

Edwards just can't break through past the rock stars.

Nothing has changed.  Really, after two states we're back to jump street.  Iowa might as well have not happened at all.

It's a Bob Woodward special that just came over the e-mail wire from the WAPO, 6 months later we find out that the CIA's assessment of Iraq was so bleak that in relief it makes Bush and his enablers sound ridiculous:    

Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House.

For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one panel member called a "Churchillian" vision of "victory" in Iraq and defend the country's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. "A constitutional order is emerging," he said.

Later that morning, around the same conference table, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group. Hayden said "the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around," according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

"The government is unable to govern," Hayden concluded. "We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function.

I am pissed.  Just totally pissed!  I don't know how you can watch Michael Moore's new film and not be.  More than Fahrenheit 9/11, more than Bowling with Columbine.  Because there is no reason, not one legitimate reason, that we average Americans have to live lives of unnecessary life-shortening stress over healthcare and daycare and education.  No reason we have to live in a society that puts profits over people.  There's no reason that we couldn't be more human and humane.  I feel cheated.  

Firstly it ruined my 4th of July.  If America was still a British colony we'd have national health care.  Our forefathers sure didn't show much forethought.

Billo and social conservatives are always on about how Europe is going to hell in a handbasket because marriage rates are down (except for gay marriage rates, they're up) and lordy we don't want to be like the Dutch, Swedes and Fins.

Well Unicef did a survey of 21 of the major industrialized nations to see how well we're taking care of our children.  'Cause children are the future don't you know?  Can you guess what perfectly delicious (and shameful for Americans) findings they have published?

The Netherlands, followed by Sweden, Denmark and Finland, finished at the top of the rankings, while the U.S. was 20th and Britain 21st, according to the report released Wednesday by UNICEF in Germany.

Ok, so Dems/Libs/Progressives have been finding their voice and building a megaphone.  We're raging, raging against the lying of the right and finally scoring some points after 30 years of unanswered points scored against us.

But here's the bigger picture challenge that puts them in their place and back on their heels:  Excuse me Mr. Conservative?  Ahem, uh what have conservatives ever done to make the lives of everyday Americans better?  What the fuck initiative would you point to, that conservatives are responsible for, that could be said to have made a positive difference for Americans?

What?  Don't look at your Florsheims.

1.  Sorry Dick, you cannot defuse the bomb by going in front of Brit Hume and taking softball questions.  It ain't over till you go up on the podium with Scotty as your wingman and let the shotguns take aim at you.

2.  The real meme here is about JUDGMENT.  Hey what's Cheney's approval rate?  It's under 30 on a good day!  So the secrecy meme, and the evil motherfucker meme have already gone about as far as they can go.  But what the American public has never really been faced with is the idea that this guy, one electrically enhanced heartbeat away from the presidency,  has really bad judgment.  He is the Britney Spears of politics.
   

Maybe he was just palpitating because he realized how close he had come to meeting his maker when he went hunting with Cheney (although I hear that you never actually meet your maker, you just meet with his/her people), but it's amazing the honesty these people express when they are in their element.  And for completely batshit crazy jurists there's no place more cozy comfy than the Federalist Society (i.e., the John Birch Society with J.D.s).  And I do not use the terms "batshit crazy" or "John Birch Society" as pejoratives here.  That would indicate that they are "living" terms and have meanings other than their original meanings which are "batshit crazy" and "John Birch Society."  These are terms that just mean what they mean.  That is Antonin Scalia is batshit crazy and a fucking racist fuckwad!

Glad I could clear that up.

Krugman is just brilliant almost all the time, indispensible.  Dowd is a great writer even when she's infuriating. But Bob Herbert is the liberal heart of the NY Times, (if there is a liberal heart of the NY Times).  He is like the steady non-flashy player who quietly excels consistently and while the fans don't wear his number, the team all looks to him for leadership.  His voice is a conscience that we ignore too often.

He is not sexy but a must read.

Today's column is Pulitzer worthy.
http://select.nytimes.com/...

No, it hasn't happened.  But It should have!

The only damn way the Dems could have made their case with the American people would have been to be bold and ask the networks (or cable channels) for airtime to go over his decisions, explain what CAP was, etc.  Show the public what we saw in Alito, because the media were certainly only fixated on the horserace of whether we would filibuster, not why we thought he was so heinously unacceptable.  

What Debbie Stabenow said today on the floor of the Senate should have been said two weeks ago.  In prime time if possible.  But somewhere on network or cable.  It would have been an event.  That's how you get attention and get people to listen.  

More over the hill:

So much blah blah blah about Alito's confirmation being a done deal, a slam dunk (yeah, that one again), a cakewalk, a walk in the park, easy cheesy confimeesy!

But hold on!  With less than 60 votes in the Senate the Republicans can't do shit or shinola without the consent of Democrats.  Anybody in the media miss that little detail?

Oh and the Nuclear Option?  Feh! Once it took 2/3 for cloture, now it's 60.  Let it be 51.  I dare the Republicans to give us that power (in the future) by taking it for themselves now.  As scared as they are about 2006.  I think they will not.

GOP spin is saying that VA and NJ elected Dems in 2001 too so no biggie to lose them in 2005.  

BUT - the Right Wing Propaganda Machine was still ascending in 2001 after Bush's dubious victory in 2000.  It hit its apex in 2004 with the turnout of 54,000,000 fools to vote for 4 more years of hell.

The Pat Buchanan isolationists just got a 145 mph wind at their sails by the name of Katrina.  A slew of paleoconservatives and Republican moderates who probably voted for Bush, gave him the benefit of doubt, but never were strong supporters of his Iraq gambit will be dusting off their "we need to take care of people here at home" rationale and joining the already majority anti-war movement.

OMFG - Russert, Harwood, Ifill and Judy Woodward are like doctors sitting around degrading before our eyes completely uncapable of diagnosing their own cancers.

This item was in "The Week"

http://www.theweekmagazine.com/best_view.asp?g_date=6/3/2005

"A particular brew of anti-Americanism is seeping into our national consciousness," said Ferdinand Mount in the London Daily Telegraph. We saw it last week, when fans of the Arsenal soccer team taunted their archenemies, fans of Manchester United, by sneeringly shouting "USA! USA!"...
That "USA" has become "the rudest word in the vast lexicon of football insults" in Britain may have been barely reported in the U.S. But make no mistake: The shouting was "fierce, prolonged, and fortissimo."

Howie Morris died this week at age 86.  You may not know the name but when you see the picture you will remember.  If you could hear the voice you would go "Oh yeah!"  Very likely you will remember him as Ernest T. Bass on "The Andy Griffith Show."  But his was a long varied career creating many many many laughs.

http://nytimes.com/2005/05/25/arts/television/25morris.html

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0606593/

Excuse me for wanting this guy remembered, but Howard Morris was one of those guys not as well known as Mel Brooks or Carl Reiner, but who was behind a lot of entertainment.  And moreover, he was fine being the second banana.  He was fine directing the star.  He understood and accepted and played his role to perfection.  We need more like him, not less.  But they're dying out.

There is so much sadness involved in the Schiavo case.

What the Republicans are doing in federalizing a personal tragedy is a joke.  But to be expected - they're bottom feeders, the equivalent of political ambulance chasers, always on the prowl for a situation to exploit by fomenting outrage in their simple minded followers and spreading doubt about the proven.

That the media is participating in the propaganda campaign isn't surprising but is so sad.  The level of libelous assertions against Michael Schiavo, a man who lost his young wife 15 years ago and has stayed by her side and persistently honorably pushed her agenda and best interests, is horrendously unjust.  To think that there are people out there comparing him to Scott Petersen... you want to smack them.

Boxer, Reid and Pelosi should call for a national day of mourning.  

Saw a nice little blog entry (http://tomwatson.typepad.com/) who makes the observation, after watching the Italian state funeral for Nicola Galipari (the Italian intelligence agent killed by American troops while protecting freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena), that we don't do mourning in America.  We haven't had a national day of mourning for all the souls lost in Bush's middle east follies.  We know it's on purpose.  The Neocon in Chief doesn't want Americans looking at funerals, caskets or memorials.  "Don't pay any attention to the man in the box with the flag over it!"