Look at the article a front pager links to to express his outrage over "Clinton" tactics. Never mind (as we nearly always never?! do) the attribution of one "insider's" opinion as the last word on campaign policy.

The Wisconsin primary is next week, and it's time to come to a decision. For the most part, I've defended Clinton here, likely because I have a weakness for underdogs. And she was always the underdog.

I love an early morning challenge. Here goes:

I don't watch much opinion laden television these days, but, one aspect of my self-improvement meander is to get to bed at a decent time, and so I found myself having been awake for two hours at 6:00 am and resorting to some semblance of entertainment that doesn't involve the eye strain of another sudoku marathon. Hence the Imus show, and the unpleasantness of an interview with John McCain, heir apparent to the Imperial Throne. That's he, on his high horse. When he gets a little crazy, it's pretty hard to tell him from Bush the Lesser, isn't it?

There was an explosion. The glass walls of buildings were blown into flesh tearing shards that raked across the industrial space first in one direction, and then, with compounding cruelty, swept in reverse by blasts of deadly debris-laden air inrushing to fill the vacuum created of what had been a day like any other day.

The Elkhorn Independent reports in today's edition that a James Hartwick, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has won the 2006 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Religion and Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.

That's a Lot of Engraving, right there.

Has there ever been a war where the battle for the hearts and minds of America has been so enthusiastically waged on the the New York Times bestsellers list? There's no shortage of Monday morning quarterbacking going on, that's for sure.

I've just finished FIASCO--The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks, another in a long series of the-senior-military-and-civilian-leaders-just-aren't-the-kind-of-intellectual-warrior-to-pull-this-k ind-of-thing-off books. Ricks has been a military correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post for about 25 years. He's a career war guy as much as any lifer, and I've heard him before on Wisconsin Public Radio, so I didn't go in thinking this was going to be about pacifism.

And it's not.

We all remember when Clinton was being accused of wagging the dog because his attacks on Al Qaeda targets coincided with the Lewinski testimony etc.? Well now, looky what we have here. Those Molson's swilling, standing in line at the clinic Canadians/Canadiens have gone and arrested more real terrorists in one day than we have in the entire War That Will End When Hell Freezes Over. $41 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and Dudley Do-Right is getting all the bacon!

And so I imagine this phone call:

My son is twenty-five now, a law intern in a distant city. Our relationship has endured such distances for almost twenty years, but shines on. We made do. Perhaps the relationship has flourished all the more in the necessity that it drive deeper roots for it's nourishment.

But I wasn't always this confident.

I sell stuff. To do this one has to be charming, for about a half an hour. Kilgore Trout was incapable of this, and so he installed aluminum windows. Kilgore Trout is a recurring character in Kurt Vonnegut's books, a sort of alter ego to the author. I like Vonnegut a lot. He has a way of making a point, as so:

It's often not the things people say that tell you most about their mindsets, but the way they say them.

Previously I posted how it seems to be conservatives who are always telling you, "What you need to remember is", "What's important for Americans to know is", etc. Here's another one. I've noticed a trend that Democrats refer to Republicans as Republicans, while Republicans refer to Democrats as "the Democrats". Conservatives are called conservatives. Liberals are "the liberals". I ask you, does one seem less inclusive than the other? Whenever I hear Sean Hannity say "the Democrats", a little twinge of fear creeps in. I wonder just how ancillary these people consider us.

This gas price thing is stirring up a whole lot of debate. Worst in my book is the free market nonsense that such crunches can be best addressed by giving free reign to the monopolists, in the assumption that the value of their product will naturally lead them to search out new sources of oil. "Calm down, everyone, it's not like we haven't had these prices before, adjusted for inflation."

And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
                                                      John Lennon

Listened to Markos et al on On Point. He makes the point that it will be a long time before we have the infrastructure to win the ideological batttle with the right, and I agree. But in the meantime ...

There are occasional dead spots in the course of my rounds when appointments cancel or run short, available tasks are too complex to spread across the front seat of a Subaru, and time is a bit too short to chase down a remote workplace. Sometimes, if the weather is calm and cool enough, I'll stop by a playground and shoot some hoops. Sometimes I'm able to hunt down some necessity or accessory on the list. Most times though, the ideal pastime for these interludes is a chapter or two from a good book (currently The Assassins' Gate, by George Packer).

But, luxuriously for one whose country can constantly be at war without actually being in one, the subject today is not war.

It's important for our citizens to understand that we have got to deal with this issue diplomatically now.

He's done it again!

Out of the blue and into the light Russ Feingold has taken it upon himself to introduce a measure in the Senate to censure Bush the Lesser for alleged lawbreaking in running the domestic spying dohickey.

Oh man, watch a bunch of Foghorn Leghorn blowhards clam up while looking to get out of the way of this one! Hillary's sneaking out the back door of the cafeteria while Barack Obama is claiming he hasn't read the resolution some two days later. Blah, blah, blah.

O, how merrily we skip down the road to damnation.

(note to the humorless and legalistic: the following is SATIRE)