I'm just curious.  I was an undecided voter that eventually went for Hillary in the primary (only to see her trounced in my state).  And I used to read dKos for awhile, but eventually got fed up when it became dObama.  So now I'm a lurker.

But my real question is...

Every day we hear about the problems of global warming, and every day we wonder what we can do to help address this global problem.  Well, here's an opportunity to make a small change that has a huge impact.  Earth Hour is a global event asking individuals, businesses and organizations to turn off their lights for one hour of one day: 8pm to 9pm on March 29th.  Tonight.

I know this has been mentioned in the C&J section, but I think it needs greater visibility.  Tonight and tomorrow on PBS, Frontline will be featuring an in-depth analysis of the Iraq war, and why it is labeled "Bush's War".

Herein lies one of my major problems with the Obama people here.  There are many that have said that Hillary should drop out of the race because she has lost already.  But in reality she has not lost already.  Because the concept that she has lost is predicated on a single major issue: disenfranchisement of voters.

Like many Americans, I watched with great interest the speech that Barack Obama made on race.  The speech will likely go down in history as one of the great speeches of our time, not only because of Obama's eloquence, but also because of the way he personalizes the experience of race, racism, and the challenges that we have as a nation.  The speech affected me in other ways, not because I am black, but because I feel the same discrimination.  And I'd like to challenge President Obama to address the other discrimination issues of our day in the same frank, emotional way that he faces racial discrimination.

A few minutes ago, Chris Matthews said on Hardball that Obama will be joining Keith on Countdown tonight.  The issue that Chris raised was whether or not Obama can separate himself from the "fiery sermons" of his pastor.  The pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, has been making many statements recently that have been getting a lot of press attention.

Obama did make a statement today on the issue, addressing the audience on the Huffington Post.  

Barack Obama statement on faith and his church

Among other things, Obama says:

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

Lets see how Keith frames it on his show, and how Obama responds.

Supporters of Ralph Nader, like those progressives that say they will not vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election should she be nominated, seem to be living in the same bubble as George Bush.  All through the Iraq war, smart progressives have been pushing the public to see reality.  And the reality of the current electoral system is that we have a two-party government.

This is just a short diary, but I would like to express my sincere thanks to Hillary Clinton.  She had done an incredible job of preparing Barack Obama for the general election.  Before tonight, I was wavering between Hillary and Barack, as I have said before on here I believe they are both strong candidates.  But Barack made a breakthrough tonight that should not go unnoticed.  

Bush and the GOP is arguing that passing the FISA bill with Telecom immunity is critical to the safety of the nation and essential to provide us intelligence on the activities of terrorists.  Many on the left argue that the existing FISA law is sufficient and that we must protect our civil liberties over making more intrusive laws.

But I believe that the argument on the left is really missing the point entirely.  This is not about weighing civil liberties versus security.  That debate is a red herring against the real issue.  The FISA bill is about the role of oversight and judicial review of the Executive branch.  Nothing more.

Note to CNN: do not allow your interviews to be filmed unedited if you want to avoid exposing your hit pieces.  

Thats exactly what happened to the CNN John Cena interview.  Cena sat down with an interviewer and had a lengthy discussion about steroid use.  In the interview, Cena explicitly denied ever using steroids, and went on to describe how steroid use is ruining the credibility of natural athletes.  Unfortunately, CNN chose to edit the interview in such a way as to make it seem like Cena was being evasive about the question. Unfortunately for CNN,  WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) had an unedited version of that interview.

Every day I ask myself, why is this world so messed up?  Why does my life seem to be crumbling apart?  We are in the middle of a constitutional crisis, a war is going on, my take home pay is going down, my friends are all abandoning me, and things seem at their lowest point.

But then I realized why....

During the debates, we have seen three consistent themes emerge regarding Iraq.  Most of the Republicans take the neo-con position of "withdrawal is defeat" and "fight them over there so we don't fight them here".  Many Democrats (including a large percentage that participate here) believe we should remove most or all of our forces as quickly as possible.  And another set of Democrats believe we should scale down our presence but leave a residual force (of up to 50,000 troops) to maintain stability.  But I have yet to see real proposals as to how to resolve the Iraq conflict (apart from the Joe Biden proposal of breaking up the country into three parts).  Are there alternatives?

On April 30th, 2004, Ted Koppel did something so unusual and radical that several stations refused to broadcast his show, Nightline.  Instead of the normal format of a hard-hitting late night news program, Koppel dedicated the entire show to the fallen soldiers in the Iraq war.  He read the name of each of the 721 soldiers killed, while displaying a picture and information about each soldier.  The show had to be extended from its usual thirty-minute time slot to 40 minutes in order to fit the names of all of the soldiers in the broadcast, for an average of 18 names per minute.

The Devilstower post about the Second Hundred Hours started me thinking about what the priorities of this Congress should be.  The first hundred hours can be considered going after the low-hanging fruit: easy wins that have been disrupted by Republicans but that are vastly popular with the public.  But the reality is that after these first hundred hours, we really need to prioritize and focus on the things that are most important.  Although one can argue that there are plenty of things that need to be fixed, there are four in my mind that have the potential to destroy our country.  The four crises of our times are:

1.  Constitutional

2.  Geopolitical

3.  Health Care

4.  Environmental

This is not a story about what happened to me, but rather what happened to another US Citizen as he was attempting to board a plane.  First, a bit of background...

For many frequent flyers such as myself, the benefits of obtaining elite level status with an airline are numerous: priority standbys, upgrades, etc.  These benefits come with flying a certain number of miles per year on an airline: 25k, 50k and 100k being the usual increments.  In some cases, by the end of the year, we fall a bit short of the required miles to achieve the next level.  Some travellers choose to purchase a "Mileage Run", or MR, to make up the difference.  For example, if I had 90,000 miles in the year, I could spend $400 on a multipoint, round trip ticket just to rack up an additional 10,000 miles, thus gaining all the benefits of the 100k elite level.  This would more than pay for itself.

Today Bush signed into law the Port Security Bill, designed to protect the American people against terrorist threats.  It seems the main threat that this bill is focused on is Poker players, as the key act in the bill is the "Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act".  Basically, this act makes it illegal for credit card companies to process payments to online gambling sites.

http://biz.yahoo.com/...

For once, the right wing bloggers are actually saying the right thing.  The NY Post article on the Keith Olbermann anthrax scare was appalling, no question.  But so far, the reaction to the article from the right wing blogosphere has been overwhelmingly negative.  Some examples:

http://rightwingnuthouse.com/...

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/...

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/...

http://darrencopeland.wordpress.com/...

I was watching the rebroadcast of the Today Show this morning on MSNBC when I noticed something that I had not heard before, and somewhat surprised me.  Having been at an early morning meeting the morning of September 11th, I had missed the early newscasts and I wanted to experience what it was like learning about it as it happened.

During the rebroadcast, NBC was talking with a terrorism expert, who said that this was not the first time that the US had been afraid of a hijacked plane crashing into buildings in New York City.  Apparently, in 1993, a hijacked plane landed at JFK, and the biggest concern that the law enforcement had at the time was that the terrorist would crash into the World Trade Center or Empire State Building!