I just got off the phone with a detective from the Pima County District Attorney's office. He's investigating signature fraud on a petition seeking Green Party recognition here in the county. He said they have a whole bunch of signatures that look exactly the same.

Economists and investors and financial professionals watch all sorts of "leading indicators", statistics that may point the direction the economy is headed. I'd like to talk about a different set of indicators, the ones you see and hear in your own community.

No one ever asked to be born, as many an angry teenager has loudly proclaimed. I was one of those teenagers once. When fighting with my mother and stepfather, I was not above reminding them that being born was not my idea. Looking back now, I know that my deep and relentless anger in those years was largely caused by what my parents had denied me. They failed to give me something every child needs.

They gave me no hope.

Hillary Clinton clearly wants to be president and wants it bad. She shows every sign of fighting to the death for the Democratic nomination. Consider this diary:

Wolfson is a lie: they are going after pledged delegates

And she refuses to offer the traditional congratulations accorded to the winner of each primary contest, indicating that she feels no congratulations are due to Barack Obama. In short, she seems to believe the presidency is her destiny and everything in her way must be rolled over. Including the will of Democratic primary voters.

In at least their first term in the White House, it is unlikely the next president will do much to advance the cause of gay rights, whatever their position on the relevant issues. There's a war to end, an economy to fix, a health care mess to solve, and let's not forget that our planet is warming up. But when it comes to gay rights, the next president's actions may not be as important as the effect their presidency has on the national mood, on the tone of civic action and discourse.

From over at Talking Point Memo:

In a sign that the spin war over the significance of super-delegates is underway in earnest, Harold Ickes told assorted Hillary supporters on a private conference call yesterday that the campaign wants them to start referring to super-delegates as "automatic delegates."

From the NY Times:

"We believe that Hillary Clinton in the long run is better position to take on John McCain," Mr. Penn told reporters. "She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner. Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger."

Whatever does Mr. Penn mean?

When Caroline Kennedy titled her endorsement of Barack Obama "A President Like My Father", she created a small opening for Senator Obama's critics, and of course some seized it. Although Ms. Kennedy was referring to her father's amazing ability to motivate and inspire the American people, Obama's critics linked the youth and "inexperience" of the two men and claimed a President Obama would likely lead us into another fiasco like the Bay of Pigs.

But JFK and Obama are very different men. And Obama will be a very different president.

Senator Clinton's supporters trumpet her "experience" as proving only she has what it takes to change this country and get it back on the right track. But Senators Kennedy and Kerry, among many others elected to public office, tell us that Senator Obama has all the experience he needs and is ready to lead our nation. Apparently the experience of Obama's endorsers--and Senator Kerry's experience and Senator Kennedy's experience both considerably outstrip Senator Clinton's--doesn't count. According to the Clintonians, only Senator Clinton has the right experience to lead--and to decide who is qualified to lead. Apparently not all experience is created equal. Apparently Senator Clinton has Special Experience. Reminds me a bit of a previous candidate's Secret Plan to Win the War.

From today's Washington Post:

Why I'm Backing Obama
By Susan Eisenhower
Saturday, February 2, 2008; Page A15

Forty-seven years ago, my grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower bid farewell to a nation he had served for more than five decades. In his televised address, Ike famously coined the term "military-industrial complex," and he offered advice that is still relevant today. "As we peer into society's future," he said, we "must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."

Don't blame me for this analogy. They're the ones who proclaimed August dead time for new products. So let's compare them to one of the most successful corporations in the world...

Since rumblings of a bombing campaign against Iran continue to emanate from sources close to and within the Bush administration, we need to ask the following questions:

1) What would be their objective in bombing Iran?

2) Why are they waiting?

Over roughly the last quarter century, a once-obscure graduate degree has come to have a wide-reaching, if widely overlooked, influence on our society. The Masters of Business Administration degree, commonly known as an MBA, was once a rare and exclusive shortcut to upper management positions in major corporations. Now the degree is common throughout our economy and is a fixture of mid-level careers. What affect has this had on our nation? As you can guess from the title of this diary, my conclusion is that the rise of MBA culture has contributed greatly to our ongoing series of national fiascos.

We begin our story with a famous pulp writer who salted his works with criticism of American corporations and the culture they fostered...

This diary was inspired by a comment from Dave Neiwert, quoted in ID-01: Sali's Follies by mcjoan. In his otherwise excellent rebuttal of Rep. Bill Sali's radical views, Neiwert allows that our country was founded by "white male Christians." The last word in that assertion—and to the radical right, the most important—is false. The founding fathers were not united in their adherence to a Christian faith—at least not a faith conservative enough to please contemporary fundamentalist activists.