Mr. President, I'm sure you know "appeasement" when you see it.  You've been the East Coast distributor of "appeasement" for nearly 8 years now.

Allow me to channel my best KO and give you my best "Special Comment" for the day, Mr. President.

Appeasement, in the way you used it, Mr. President, is defined as the following:

to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conciliatory effort, sometimes at the expense of justice or other principles.

Under that definition, you are the King of Appeasement.

I normally love RenaRF's stuff, but...

You would think we'd be smarter than this. You would think.

You would think we'd know how to spin things better. You would think.

You would think that instead of contemplating more division, we'd be thinking about unifying.  You would think.

Let's settle this here and now.  No need to feed the conspiracy theories, or worry about any shifting winds.  Obama is going to be our nominee.  There won't be any "stealing" of the nomination. It's going to happen.

So no need to threaten that which needs not be threatened.

Over a year and a half ago, I made a bold prediction to some political friends of mine: Hillary Clinton would not be our nominee for President.  Mind you, I didn't know WHO would be at that point, but I knew that someone was going to capture something in a bottle to overtake her.  Could be Obama, Edwards, or Richardson, I mused.  But Clinton was not going to be our nominee.

Part of it was a gut feeling, and part of it was seeing how her campaign was run.  The aura of inevitability is never a good theme to run a campaign on in a multifaceted race.  I remember the DNC national meeting in Washington in February 2007, when staffers were passing out buttons of Sen. Clinton with the phrase "I'M IN IT TO WIN!" emblazoned on it.  The picture of Clinton was hideous.  She was giving a big thumbs up, and had a smile that was actually an overbite.  The lighting on the photo made her look pasty and showed off every wrinkle.  It was a damn unfortunate button for her, and yet...some staffer had approved that message.

At that moment, I knew for sure she wouldn't win.

Look, I want to see this primary fight end just like the next guy or gal, and I want Obama to be the nominee.  But for the ever living ghost of Harry Truman, we need to get a grip around here.

At the top of the Rec List right now is a YouTube clip of Mickey Kantor, former Clinton adviser, uttering nasty stuff about Hoosiers.  It's even got the "BREAKING" banner an everything.

One problem: this vid has been in the public domain for approximately 15 years.  It's from the Oscar nominated film The War Room.

OK, I'm blowing my one diary a day for a public service announcement, only because I've seen this pop up in numerous diaries, and it needs to be clarified.

PLEASE NOTE: Maryland's Add On Delegates Will NOT Be Selected Today.

I'm a State Central Committee member in MD who sits on the Rules Committee.  Yes, the delegate selection plan says they will be selected today.

However....

"If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." -- President Harry S. Truman

"I've always said that in politics, your enemies can't hurt you, but your friends will kill you." -- Governor Ann Richards

There is something unseemly, something awkwardly painful, in watching the Rev. Wright/Barack Obama drama play out.  After Wright's media blitz, Obama counters today with a strong denunciation of Wright's commentary of the past few days.  But there is a profound saddness in many ways to watch it, not because who said what about whom or what, but because in a very public way, a friendship of 20 years is coming to an end.

No, I didn't say that. He did.

In yet another Clintonian moment, the former President went off on a public radio host this morning when asked about his comments the morning of the South Carolina primary.  In a vigorous defense of his comments in which he accused Barack Obama's campaign of playing the race card against him, he concluded by saying, when he thought he was off mike:

I don’t think I can take any shit from anybody on that, do you?

Wow...

Unreal. While the media worries about flag pins, the march against our freedoms continues.  Lo and behold, on the front page of my local paper today, I found this story:

Annapolis Students Arrested for Sit-In

Yes, that's right.  Three students, fed up with the Iraq War, exercised their First Amendment Rights and staged a 15 minute sit-in in front of the administrative offices at Annapolis High School when Anne Arundel County police moved in and ARRESTED them.

After yet another ABC fiasco in last night's debate, I was again reminded of the ridiculous job this network has done in any respect as a journalistic enterprise since the time Disney took over the operation.

About a year and a half ago, when Mickey and Gang decided to run "The Path to 9-11" as a psedo-documentary quasi-journalistic melodrama, I posted this diary, with my own personal experiences with ABC.

So, I do something I have never done.  I'm reposting it for all the new crowd out there here on DKos that might not have seen it before.  I think it serves as a very important reminder that the REAL Powers-that-be that dominate our so-called maintream media coverage are the corporate puppet masters pulling the strings.  Have fun taking a gander below the fold...

Let me get this out of the way out front: by every measure, people are free to consider me part of the "elite." My wife and I make substantial income, live in a nice house, buying an even nicer one, drive nice cars, hold good jobs with pensions and health care paid for, are overeducated, hold positions of respect and power within our communities, etc., etc.  Hell, we even live near Washington, D.C., home field for the elite.

But you damn sure better never call me an "elitist."

Elitism, as defined by the American Heritage Dictionary, is the following:

The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.

That ain't me.  And neither is it Barack Obama.

Everyday, there is a new story that makes me pine for the end of the Bush Administration.  Sometimes, it's not even the big stories, like the one on top of the Rec List, you know, the one where we find out that discussions of approving torture occurred in the White House.

No, sometimes it is the small outrages that get me.  Like today, this story from BBC News (fat chance finding in OUR press...):

"US Shamed by Mandela Terror Link"

The hits just keep on coming...

When I was sixteen, I was involved at a project at my school.  Our jazz studies teacher had composed a piece called "Down the Road," which was a tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was about a 20 minute set of jazz, choral, and spoken word.  The spoken word consisted excerpts of speeches by Dr. King, and I was tapped to give one.

I got to choose the speech I would like to give.  And I chose "I've Been to the Mountaintop."

I'm not entirely sure why I chose that speech at the time, because the clear religious overtones were not exactly in line with my world view.  But there is some power in words, and these words were powerful to me:

That's what the Clintons want everyone to believe about Obama.  Hell, they are running commericials on it, saying it outloud, and even telling Bill Richardson he's nuts for endorsing the man.  "He can't win" in the general against McCain, Hillary allegedly told Richardson when Richardson gave her the courtsey of a phone call to inform her of his decision.

What's that mean, exactly? Obama can't win? I wonder...

President Bill Clinton, March 8, 1994:

If the Republicans are finally being honest that they want to make political hay out of this and that that's their real concern, I think the American people have noticed that a long time ago.  I think it is obvious to them, and I think That it's not for me to give them political advice, but I do not believe that the politics of personal destruction is what the American people are interested in.  

The most galling thing about Sen. Clinton's foray into the Rev. Wright mess is how she finally decided to answer it. Let's not kid ourselves. When asked how she would have handled the situation, she could have said, "I would have spoken to Rev. Wright privately," or "Really, I'm not going to get into that...that is a private situation for Sen. Obama to handle." Something along those lines.

But what she did say demonstrates something very disturbing about her character.  Because, in saying that "he wouldn't be my pastor anymore" because "you can't choose your family, but you can choose your church," she explicitly passed judgement on Sen. Obama's choice on how to worship, one of the most personal decisions one can make.

To this I say to Sen. Clinton: Judge not lest ye be judged.

Like many of you, I was struck with a little bit of disgust at the somewhat petulent attitude of the Clinton camp on Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama.  He was labelled "Judas" by Carville. The attitude was that the Clintons were owed the loyalty of someone who served in Bill Clinton's administration, as if the Clintons somehow "made" Richardson's political career.

Loyalty can be a great thing in politics.  But to expect loyalty is a dangerous thing.  Carville knows it, and so do the Clintons.  And frankly, in the case of Bill Clinton, anybody who basically threw his own advisers under the bus in 1996 in favor of triangulatin' Dick Morris shouldn't be whining about loyalty.

CNN and MSNBC are carrying the breaking news banner.

No other details, other than Condi telling Clinton that it was breached.

I have nothing else to say...

The one thing I haven't heard anybody, honestly, truly say in the MSM is of the three candidates left, which one of them looks and sounds "presidential."

Is there any doubt now? After Obama's speech today?

As Richard Jemmings, the James Carville knock-off character said in the movie "Primary Colors":

You see any other presidents up on that stage? We're it, man.