It worries me that there is already so much anti-Obama hate out there. It's going to make his presidency challenging from the start, when so many are out wishing for him to fail.

There's the usual suspects, of course, the rabid Republicans who race-bait, red-bait, and even gender-bait. Then there's these faux "Democrats" who would rather see John McCain elected. There's a one-word term for these "Reagan Democrats" or "McCain Democrats": isn't it about time that we start calling them "Republicans"?

Now the extreme left-wing of the party is angry at Obama for supporting the FISA bill compromise, and are acting the way whiny cry-baby Democrats always do when they don't get their own way: snipe at each other and threaten to withhold their support. No wonder the Dems always seem to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Republicans never seem to do this: they're always lock-step with the Party, because they put power ahead of principle. They realize that you can have the noblest, purest principles in the world, but it isn't worth jack-shit if you're sitting in opposition. So even though they aren't crazy about their candidate, they fall in line becausethey know they can accomplish more with their guy in the Oval Office.

But not the lefty purists, oh no. They don't want compromise. they want orthodoxy. To hell with them. I'm not happy with the FISA bill giving retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that spied on Americans either. I'm not sure that this FISA bill gives enough judicial and congressional oversight, either. But I expect Obama to use the presidential powers more responsibly than McCain or any other Republican. After the abuses of power of the last 7.5 years, how could he not?

So yeah, Obama once again shows his centrist, middle-of-the-road, conservative credentials. I'm not disappointed: I never expected him to be a total ultra-liberal. All that matters at this point is that he's going to be better than McCain.

How can anyone call themselves a "progressive" and not support Obama in this election? Do they want McCain appointing ultra-right judges to lifetime seats on the Supreme Court? Do they want the U.S. to bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb Iran under flimsy pretexts?

Yes, Obama isn't perfect. Yes, Obama is far from being an ideal liberal. Yes, Obama is going to make mistakes and screw up. Yes, Obama isn't going to adhere to every sacred cow of the liberal left. Yes, Obama is going to make compromises to govern with a broad base of support.

At least he'll be better than McCain. More intelligent, more articulate, more visionary, more compassionate. He'll be more decisive, but also base those decisions on facts rather than fantasies and gut-feelings.

I hope left-wing Democrats get their act together and stop bitching about every issue they "lose". They should keep their eyes on the prize, and not be distracted by every stumble along the way.

Here's a link to a column by Frank Rich, that punches a hole in the theory that angry female Clinton voters are going to rally to McCain:


He makes the usual solid points, backed with solid evidence and statistics. Why should any woman vote for a guy who dumped his first wife, calls his present wife a c*nt in public, makes crude sexist remarks about a teenager, and opposes Roe v. Wade?

But I really wanted to point to the article because it has a great link to something I missed:

Back in January, USA Today interviewed John McCain's 96-year-old mom.

Steve Scully: "This is a political question in terms of how he gets the nomination, but just from what you have seen, how much support do you think he has among the base of the Republican Party?"

Roberta McCain: "I don't think he has any. I don't know what the base of the Repub -- maybe I don't know enough about it, but I've not seen any help whatsoever."

Scully: "So can he then go on and become the nominee of this party?"

McCain: "Yes, I think holding their nose they're going to have to take him."

Scully: "Can you explain?"

McCain: "Well, everything they've done and said. ... Now I'm really popping off, but he worked like a dog to get Bush re-elected. ... He's backed Bush in everything except Rumsfeld. Have you heard other senators and congressmen backing Bush over eight years? Find me it -- give me a name. I've not seen any public recognition of the work that he's done for the Republican party."

(Emphasis mine)

When your own mother says that you have no support in the party, and that they will have to hold their noses to vote for you, you know you're in trouble.

It doesn't help when she argues that McCain's support for B*sh is his strong point. He needs to distance himself from the most unpopular "president" in modern history.

Roberta McCain will be a loose cannon. I'm sure the campaign will have to "manage" her somehow. I just hope it doesn't involve duct tape.

I've seen a few bitter Hillary supporters who have said that they are so angry about Obama's victory that they plan to vote for John McCain. These were mostly women, mostly middle-aged feminists.

I think an article like
this should give them pause.

It's in a British newspaper, but it's all over the blogs and the MSM is bound to pick it up.

Normally, I'm not a big fan of delving into politicians' private lives. I'm more interested in policy. I think these personal matters are complicated and should remain private.

But the Republicans, as we're all too aware, have insisted for years that "character matters". They have shown no decency, no restraint. They've mercilessly sniffed everything in President Clinton's underwear drawer. If the subject of McCain's callous treatment of his first wife becomes a matter of public discussion, they will have no one but themselves to blame.

On the positive side, McCain agreed to pay her medical bills for life as part of the divorce settlement. Maybe that's why he accepts $58,000 in disability payments even though he has no lack of money.

And if the Re-thugs go after Michelle Obama, there's tons of dirt on McCain's trophy wife Cindy, from her drug abuse to her reluctance to release the tax information on her multi-million dollar fortune. Of course the corporate media is practically silent on this, despite the howling they made four years ago to see Teresa Heinz Kerry's tax returns.

The Republicans had better hold off the attacks on Michelle. They can dish it out, but can they take it?

And women who are so disappointed in Hillary's loss that they plan to vote for McCain should get a clue. It goes beyond just packing the courts with anti-Roe v. Wade judges and justices.

I've heard people say, "I don't believe in political parties. I don't believe in political ideologies."

Unfortunately, political ideologies believe in YOU.

It's all very well and good to be an independent. In fact, being independent-minded is an admirable thing. But we must not fool ourselves: there's a pernicious. destructive ideology at work in America today, and it must be opposed if we want to preserve liberty, democracy, and American values.

It's an ideology that seeks to impose its religious values on everyone. They want to teach creationism in the schools. They want to dictate what women do with their own wombs. They want to prevent people from marrying each other just because they don't approve of the gender of the partners. One of their number, a man named John McCain, declared that America is a Christian country, to the exclusion of other religions.

It's an ideology that seeks to impose its imperial will on the rest of the world. It invades countries on flimsy pretexts, based on the "one-percent doctrine". It commits US troops to fight and die for corporate interests. It refuses to attack terrorists who have killed Americans, because there are "no good targets" where the terrorists are based. One of their number, a man named John McCain, sees no problem with maintaining an occupying force in a hostile country for a hundred years.

It's an ideology that shows no respect for the rule of law and the Constitution. They have undermined free and fair elections. They have arbitrarily broken treaties. They have fabricated loopholes to allow them to detain suspects (and innocent people who don't even deserve the title of "suspect") indefinitely without trial. They have approved torture against these detainees, even holding little re-enactment parties of torture sessions in the White House. They have lied and fabricated reasons to go to war, often based on unreliable testimony and forged documents.

It's an ideology that places profit at the center of their moral compass. The rights of workers, the safety of mines, the health of the environment, even the survival of the planet itself are secondary to short-term profits. They have increased the gap between the rich and the poor. They have given enormous tax breaks to the wealthy, while forcing future generations to shoulder a crushing debt load. They have no respect for competent management of the common good, placing unqualified political cronies in sensitive positions in the government, probably in an effort to sabotage the institution that they wish to destroy.

This radical ideology is called, bizarrely, "conservatism", and it must be opposed.

You may not believe in ideologies, but we need a coherent competing ideology to fight this menace. You may not believe in political parties, but the people must organize to fight this well-funded religious-military-industrial complex.

And you don't have to give up your independence to do it. You can still decide your position on every issue on a case-by-case basis. All we need to do is work so that these so-called "conservatives" have less and less influence to foist their destructive agenda on everybody else.

Another political fiction being spun about the Iraqi government's attack on the Shi'a militia in Basra is that it's an action by a legitimate government against a criminal or terrorist organization.

In reality, it's a battle between two Shi'a factions: the Maliki puppet regime vs. Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army. It was an attempt by Maliki to destroy his main Shi'ite rival and unify his base of support. And it failed miserably.

Just like Dubya, Maliki enderestimated the enemy. When al-Sadr called for a cease-fire, the right-wing pinheads in America thought that they had him on the run, but it was only a further demonstration of his power: he can turn the violence on and off at will.

I have long suspected that the success of the "surge" depended more on cash being spent to bribe tribal leaders, than actual military operations on the ground. The tribal leaders were content to keep a lid on their simmering civil war, as long as the American taxpayer was lining their pockets.

Now that Maliki foolishly thought he could walk into Basra and be greeted as a liberator, the whole house of cards that Petraeus painstakingly built is going to come crashing down.

Of course, the neo-cons will blame Iran. Iran is involved, and they have about as much right to interfere in Iraq's internal affairs as the Americans do. When the U.S. invaded Iraq, they lost any moral standing to complain if anyone else wished to do so, whether it's Turkey in the north, or the Islamic Republic.

The neo-cons are on their knees praying every day for a war against Iran. They believe it's their last desperate gamble to retain power. They know that when the bombs started dropping, the approval for the Iraq War and their boy Dubya reached new heights. They're hoping for another political benefit from brown people's death and misery. An attack on Iran, they reason, will release a wave of patriotism among some of the stupidest voters and carry John McCain to the
White House.

It might backfire, because not that many Americans are THAT stupid. Sure, they will get some of the America-right-or-wrong morons to shriek their bloodlust, but far many more Americans are sick and tired of the neo-cons' naked imperialist ambitions. They want security for their homes and their jobs. They won't be fooled with the false "security" arguments for another bloody, murderous war in the Middle-East.

The so-called Wright "controversy" is still being dredged up and distorted by FOX"News" and other right-wing propaganda outlets. I think most people don't care, and won't listen to that garbage. Only those who are looking for a reason to hate Obama are still ranting about this trivial, diversionary tactic.

Be that as it may, some FOX"News" pipsqueak tries to engage in a debate against a white Catholic priest and gets his ass handed to him. The priest brings up some very good points, from a reality-based point of view.


It's appalling to see the gall of the haters at FOX"News" accusing anyone else of being haters.

Of course, FOX"News" only used a few seconds of that interview, and twisted it to its own purposes. The Brad Blog has the details.

One of my favourite bloggers, Garance Franke-Ruta, is back at it! I haven't figured out how to create a blogroll yet on this blog template, but at least i can post a link here.

I first became aware of "THE" Garance when she handled the freak-out by the clearly deranged Ann Althouse with so much poise over the Jessica Valenti "profile" "controversy".



I tried to find video of that famous confrontation, mais je suis bredouille. Oh well. It's late, and the coffee's worn off. Good night.

The recent outcry over Barack Obama's "bitter" comment is yet another example of how the media will distort something a Democrat says, in a way that fits the narrative that they want to build.

Meanwhile, McCain makes some truly egregious gaffes, and what do we get from the press corpse... I mean, corps? Crickets. No wonder that McCain considers the Beltway journalists to be "his base".

We even have a "president" who admits that they turned the White House into some kinky S & M torture chamber, with high-level officials including the "vice-president" and the National Security Advisor discussing torture in detail, complete with re-enactments, and the reaction from the media? Ho-hum. They're Republicans. Of course they're going to behave like sadistic, immoral brutes. Whaddaya expect? This is not news.

But if a Democrat were to do that, if Clinton had little torture games in the Oval Office, how do you think they would have covered it? Screaming bloody murder, that's how.

This is not "whining" about biased coverage. "Whining" is what the Republicans do, blaming the media for being "liberal" just because they expose the facts about their corruption and stupidity.

There's a real bias against Democrats, and there are several reasons for that: the media is owned by large corporations, and they consciously or uncounsciously skew their reports to please their corporate masters. Also, decades of conservative whining about the "liberal" media has made them more timid about reporting negative news about conservatives, and more aggressive in reporting negative news about Democrats.

There's also the issue of expectations. Wrongdoing by right-wing scumbags is a "dog bites man" story, whereas a Democrat who gets caught with his pants down or his hand in the cookie jar represents a betrayal of liberal values, and therefore a more serious offense than if a Republican did the exact same thing. Republicans are expected to be crooks and liars, and so when they misbehave hardly anyone notices.

Obama vs. Clinton: I'm getting concerned about the nasty tone of the campaign, but I don't think any irreparable damage has been done… yet. I think a lot of the "infighting" is actually blown out of proportion by the distorted lens of the media. Acrimony and catfights are exciting, and it's in the networks' interest to make it look as if Clinton and Obama are at each other's throats. It helps ratings.

That said, it doesn't really matter if Clinton and Obama are *really* attacking each other, or if they only *seem* to be. The medium is the message. If they *seem* to be fighting, then for all intents and purposes, they *are*. It doesn't matter what the reality is; the media's focus determines what becomes the reality.

That means that the candidates should try to be more careful not to provide raw material for the media to construct its own narrative. They should both be talking about how they would be better than McCain, and only speak of their primary opponent with admiration and respect.

No matter what, the corporate media is going to distort the perspective. Look at the ridiculous amount of attention that was focused on the way Hillary laughs. Or how they criticized Obama for ordering orange juice instead of coffee at a diner, fer Chrissakes.

The election will be, once again, the Democrats vs. the Republican-controlled media. Al Gore was sunk by media-fueled "memes" such as, "He said he invented the internet!", and Kerry imploded because the media gave credence to the Swift Boat liars. This time, the media goes to McCain's barbecues, and they swallow his bullshit the way they swallow his T-bones. They won't analyze his total confusion about the Middle-East, but they'll spend hours of coverage to discuss whether Hillary teared up for real in a New Hampshire bagel shop.

The Democratic nominee needs to imitate the winning 1992 Clinton campaign. They need to set up a War Room to immediately debunk the Right-wing lies and smears, not let them fester the way Gore and Kerry did. They need to run on issues that people care about, like Iraq and the economy, and not let the media set the agenda with frivolous tripe.

When the B*sh regime is finally consigned to the dustbin of history, its "principals" are going to have to tread carefully during retirement. You see, many countries have laws that compel its police forces to arrest suspected war criminals and try them in their courts, or ship them off to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. For most of these countries, war criminals can be prosecuted no matter where their crimes were committed, even if it falls outside the country's jurisdiction, and even if no citizens of that country were involved as victims or perpetrators.

These laws were enacted in response to the Nazi war atrocities. Governments and courts have decided that some crimes are so vicious, so heinous, that they offend the principles of international justice, and those responsible need to be answerable to humanity itself, not just to the countries that were directly affected.

When the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, we were assured that this was the work of a "few bad apples". Since then we've seen that torture was not only encouraged by higher-ups in the military, but condoned at the highest level of the civilian leadership. The John Yoo torture memo gave the justification.

That's why Dubya, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and company are going to have to check their travel plans. We just learned that the "principals" had a fun little meeting a few years back, where they discussed torture - who could torture, when, who would be the people subjected to torture, how much torture they would inflict, etc. They even went so far as do little play-acting, re-enacting torture scenarios. In the White House.

People complained that Clinton turned the White House into a brothel. The Bushies turned it into an S & M torture den.

So if Dubya wants to travel to Saudi Arabia to confer with Prince Bandar, or if Cheney wants to oversee his financial interests in the Middle East, or if Rice wants to go to Dubai for the Carlyle Group, they have to watch out that they don't get arrested in Europe during a stop-over or a flight connection. The local authorities would have no choice but to follow their laws and arrest them for war crimes.

I wonder how this would play out politically. Of course, conservatives would be enraged that American politicians would be held up to the same standard as any other war criminal. But even moderates and liberals buy into the myth of American exceptionalism, and will try to argue that war crimes aren't really war crimes when they're committed by Americans.

I hope that the prosecutors of these criminals will not be cowed by the hue and cry in the United States, and try, convict, and punish these warmongers and torturers. This is not only to serve as a deterrent for future governments who contemplate aggressive war (not just American governments, but any other). It's in order to serve the interests of justice.

Maybe someday dozens of people will read this.