Takin' names

and kickin' ass.

One nation under two laws

Who rules Iraq? Just ask this detainee.

You heard it here first

And I mean it. I've Googled the news-speculators, and only a few of them even mention his name, and it's way down on their list. But it's clear as a bell to me: Charles Hagel, Republican Senator from Kansas, will be Obama's veep. I won't detail why I know what I know, and why he's the perfect pick despite his ultra-conservative views on many domestic matters. I'll allow the post-facto pundits to do that, but believe me, it's Hagel.

Meanwhile...

back in Iraq.

The foreclosure crisis

must be getting serious when Sprewell can't make the payments.

Funny--but true?

In this galaxy, not far, far away...

Cynicism or truth

Here's a take on Obama's candidacy that you don't see everyday. Makes you (or at least me) wonder.

NYT columnist Bob Herbert

Why doesn't he say what he really means?

A Baghdad burger joint

A poignant story of a small business behind the blast walls. The last lines of the article make me wonder: What responsibility do we have?

Whack-a-mole

An armistice of sorts slows the carnage in Sadr City, while the Iraqi army begins a new campaign in Mosul. War without end.

The party's over...

Iran is shifting its oil-exchange currency to euros and yens. Saddam Hussein was in process of doing so when the US invaded his nation.

Grab your coat, pay the lady in the cloakroom and hale a taxi. Get outa here. To some nation south of here, preferably, but not one that hates the dollar. Mexico, maybe, or Argentina (maybe). But not Europe or Africa or Australia. Perhaps--dare I say it?--Vietnam.

Occupation blues

The Iraqi military: Fired up and ready to go!

Is it just me

or does Hillary Clinton not only act like the Energizer Bunny in this campaign, she's beginning to look like him/her?

It makes sense to me

that conservatives are happier than liberals. Why is this so?, you ask. Because, according to the survey, they're callous, rationalizing assholes.

Good news, bad news

Good news: Obama's gonna do it!

Bad news: Sales of a just-released video game exceeded one-half billion dollars in just a few days. It's called Grand Theft Auto IV, and here's what it's about:

"Grand Theft Auto IV" follows the criminal exploits of protagonist Niko Bellic, an immigrant-turned-gangster who travels from Eastern Europe to Liberty City, the game's fictional locale based on New York City. As Bellic, players can hijack cars, earn cash for criminal activities, shoot innocent bystanders and visit strip clubs.

The madhouse that is Iraq

Nothing new, I suppose, but when "Iraqi soldiers" are arresting "Iraqi policemen" you've got to wonder which lunatics are running the asylum.

I don't know why...

but the prospect of all of us someday using Evernote bothers me, offends me, even. How about you?

You can't make this stuff up

I've long marveled at how truth is not just stranger than fiction, but that it makes fiction pale in comparison. It's true that movies and novels that show our astronauts sailing off to Mars within a single reel of film are still unrealistic, but scenes from Blade Runner and Mad Max aren't far from the present mark we're creating in the world.

And then there's this: Disneyland in Baghdad, surrounded by barbed wire adjacent to the Green Zone. You tell me: Could you sell a screenplay with such an outlandish premise?

I gotta tell ya

I'm beginning to hate Hillary Clinton. I find her marginally more tolerable than McCain to watch on TV (but of course immensely more watchable than Bush--but then, so is Mussolini).

Her latest gimmick--the "summer vacation" from federal gasoline tax, which is but a parody of McCain's, with a politically-expedient announcement of a years-later, after-the-fact "windfall-profits" tax--is merely a capper in a long string of her "say-anything-to-get-elected" ploys that have made a mess of this nation for more than a generation. She's but a chip off Bill's block (the substituting of "bl" for "c" is purposeful): President "Don't-ask-don't-tell"; President "Welfare-reform"; President "Deregulate-media-ownership"; President "Nafta-Cafta-America-afta" (I made that up, BTW.) Clinton's presidency was a disaster, saved only by a dot-com bubble. Without that--and a few saving Executive Orders in his last days, all of which were, by law, reversible (and reversed) by Bush--he wrecked the Democratic Party, turning it into an amorphous mass of yea-sayers to corporate influence.

I won't vote for McCain if Hillary's the nominee of the Democratic Party. But I sure don't know what I'll do. (Do they accept mail-in ballots from Tahiti?)

A matter of judgment

I suppose it won't get much play in the corporate media, but the gas-tax holiday story is important, very important, in demonstrating both that Obama brings a fresh outlook to Washington and possesses judgment superior to the other two candidates for President. First, McCain proposed a suspension of the federal excise tax on gasoline, and he was then quickly followed by Hillary Clinton. Obama opposed such a measure as being merely a political gesture that would have a negative impact on the problem of gasoline consumption, while offering drivers little--and only palliative--relief.

Guess who's right, according to a host of economists, including Bush's own former chief economist.

I wonder

what was the bank's first clue that the check was forged?

Have you done this yet?

Try it, it's fun. And, if you're a believer, it's inspiring.

Brilliant, if sick

First, the North Carolina Republican Party contemplates placing an unsavory TV ad against Obama and local Democratic candidates that features Rev. Wright's "God damn America" rant. Next, McCain speaks out against the ad, saying he condemns such tactics. But, he says, he can't stop the local party from airing it. So that when the ad is evenually shown, (a) it's viewed by more than would normally view it; and (b) McCain looks like a good guy for opposing it. Talk about a two-fer.

Now wait a goddam minute

Outsourcing debt-collection phonecalls to India?

What we eat

You need to see this, and you need to scroll to the bottom.

I've never felt so powerless

I realized, when we marched against the Iraq war in early 2003, that we wouldn't stop it from happening. Once Colin Powell signed on, I realized it was just a matter of time before we invaded. Now, five-plus years later, as the ongoing carnage drifts farther and farther from our national awareness, and all efforts to stop it have come to naught, I truly despair, not just for the dead and injured, but for our nation.

And now this: Our government concealing burials of the dead at Arlington National Cemetary. More outrage--and more teeth-gritting frustration--I cannot feel.

LOL

The other day I spotted a news report that the Baghdad city council (or whatever they call it) was contemplating passing an ordinance requiring automobile drivers and passengers to wear seatbelts. I didn't enter a post about it and can't now find the link, but I gotta admit the item raised a wry, cynical smile. Arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, or something.

But this one's too good to pass.

No mystery there

Any wonder why I moved from Arizona? Recall, this is Goldwater country, one of the few states that voted from him in 1964.

(To be fair, these numbers are driven by the deep-conservative hordes in and around Phoenix, and in the backcountry. The Tucson area, where I'm from, is quite liberal, still.)

I oppose capital punishment

but if I didn't, here are some folks I would hang.

"Unmitigated disaster"

For some reason--could it be because they invented the language?--the British newspapers describe the Iraqi military's effort in Basra with a pithy accuracy that is missing from the US media.

I've checked this out

and I still can't tell if it's a joke.

Letter to the editor

I've had success lately in getting my letters to the SB News-Press published. Here's my latest. I'll let you know if they print it.

Update: It appeared in the newpaper on Friday, April 18.

To the editor:

Consider me a "bitter small-town American." True, I live in blessed Santa Barbara, California, not in Pennsylvania or Ohio or any of the other "rust-belt" states that have lost so many well-paying jobs in the last twenty years, without recourse or redress. But I, like most Americans, have seen my civil liberties vanish, my health-care costs increase, my gasoline and grocery prices skyrocket, my Earth deteriorate, my national debt explode, my nation wage an immoral war and incur the disdain of billions of fellow humans.

To be sure, I don't "cling" to guns or religion as a result, and I don't take my bitterness out on immigrants. But I surely do blame the Bush/Cheney/Clinton line of leaders, as well as the rest of the media and political cabal, that doesn't respond to the needs of ordinary Americans. I want--I yearn for--America to change, fundamentally. I want Americans to run America again.

I therefore support Barack Obama for president, because of the remaining candidates, only he, to his credit, "gets it"; and only he, however inartfully, addresses it.

Uh, oh

Could this be a first flicker of a sellout? (Check out what's on Obama's lapel during this talk in "small town" Pennsylvania.)

I have a dream...

that such a man--not Bryant Gumbel, the other man--is our president. After viewing this video, how can any sentient U.S. male not agree?

Okay, maybe I'm no genius

but am I the only sentient progressive Obama supporter who's thought of starting a movement (triggered and fueled by a website, of course) entitled, "Small-town bitter Americans for Obama"? I'm of course disqualified from doing so because SB is hardly an embittered locale, nor does my comfortably retired status make me (necessarily, financially) embittered, but C'mon guys, get with it! Not only will such a movement defuse by ridicule the Clinton/McCain rhetoric, it might actually catch on as a catch-phrase for reality. I mean, after all, as he did with the race thing, Obama in a few words (perhaps not all well-chosen) captured an American reality, and we ought to be embracing and fostering it, not running from it.

Obama--Oh, really?

Here's a complete, unspun exposition of the supposedly anti-small-town remarks the Obama made to a California fundraising audience. You tell me: Is this truth, or is it denigration?

And here's Obama's reply to Hillary and McCain, who attacked Obama's comments as being condescending to working stiffs, as being outrageous and out of touch with America's mainstream: I'm right. I'm in touch. I speak truth to reality.

I must say, Obama's good. In fact, great.

If I'm Hillary

I'd quit when this happens.

Say it isn't so

CBS News--the revered Columbia Broadcasting System, home of Cronkite, Severeid, Murrow, many others--is considering using CNN's facilities and broadcasters to augment its reporting? As much as I like Anderson Cooper, are we talking Larry King? Ohmigod.

The seeds (literally) of our own destruction

Does capitalism make human overpopulation inevitable?

Leave it to San Francisco

to form a movement worth joining.

Wonderful, wonderful

Here's a multi-faceted presentation: Essay, with links to video and graphics, of Howard Zinn's just-published book about American imperialism. A gem.

Too cool

Can I get a napkin, please?

I don't get it

This essay in Time magazine about the perils of the world's (especially America's) switch to biofuels for power is frightening, but what is most frightening is how late in the game it is for us to have realized this. Anyone with common sense could have predicted this scary outcome, and, for that matter, the inadequacies and repercussions of using land and its foodstuffs for fuel.

A test of Iraq's army?

Bush is applauding the recent assaults by al Malaki's forces on the Shiite militias, claiming that they're evidence that the surge is working by showing how well the Iraqi army can stand up against its adversaries. Well, look again. In Baghdad, the US is augmenting Iraq's forces with both air attacks and armored assault vehicles. In other words, all that the surge has accomplished is to change the color of the faces of the troops wearing boots, reducing our casualties on the ground while we supply fire from above and from behind solid steel barriers.

The next shoe to drop

is the home equity loan crisis.

The audacity of spin

The Pentagon's announcement that the recent increase in violence in Iraq is evidence that Bush's "surge" is working? I'm not making it up.

Anderson Cooper deserves a look

I happen to be a fan of this reporter on CNN, because he does his job well--good delivery, good balance--and now he's done some spadework and commentary on the Rev. Wright thing that really deserves credit. On his blog, he quotes a long segment of Wright's entire sermon in which the "chickens coming home to roost" remark was made, placing it into perspective. Good for AC.

Fickle folks

I get it now, finally. The "surge" was Rove's way of kicking the can down the road, not just to the next president, but as a way to extend, and hence bore the public with, the Iraq war and occupation. He realized that there's no drama in Iraq anymore--no stories of heroism, no torture mess--and that therefore the media would slow down its coverage and the American public would move on to the state of the economy and Spitzer's failings and so on.

And of course Rove was right.

It's comforting to see

that celebrities have their ups and downs too. (Most distressing, to me, is #10 in the slide show: Val Kilmer, an unlikely Batman lately.)

Hmm...Maybe I should rethink

that "organ donor" designation on my driver's license.

Is all lost?

I happened to be watching the recent interview of Barack Obama in which he said something like "My grandmother is a typical white person," the same grandmother of whom Obama had previously said, as part of his landmark speech about race, that she sometimes harbored fears of blacks and spoke in stereotypical terms about them.

My reaction to his "typical white person"comment was immediate. I knew two things: First, that it would add two more days to the news cycle on Obama's race-thingee; and second, that the Right would spin the remark into something damaging to Obama, likely that he was denigrating whites, painting them as racist as a group, and hence displaying his own racism.

Of course I was right on both counts. But my problem isn't with the Right's reaction, but rather with my own, a cringe. I realized that I wanted the racism question to go away, to disappear into the shadows, the same shadows that Obama's speech had shed light on. I was, I realized, part of that culture that would talk about race in private, but was still fearful of addressing it as a matter of public concern, and most fearful of a black person addressing it.

If I cringed--I, an enlightened one--is it likely that others could overcome that reaction? Can we change a culture--or even honestly acknowledge one of its powerful memes--in time to vote a truth-speaking black person into our highest office? Can we even nominate such a person to run for it? I'm beginning to think not.

One solution to the high price of crude oil

It seems to be working, too: Ruin the American economy, so it drags down the global economy, so that demand for oil declines, and the bidding price for future oil deliveries declines.

Is this burning the barn to roast the pig? Your suggested adage?

Must-see video

Baghdad, city of walls. (Four minutes)

It all adds up

Just so you know (although the Corporate Media doesn't tell you): In the thirteen months since "the surge" began, the average daily number of American troop deaths has been 2.34, almost identical to the daily average during the entire five-year war (2.36). At this rate, in about fifty years the number of deaths of US troops in Iraq will equal the number of dead troops in the VietNam war (about 60,000). Fifty years, which is just about when McCain and his buddies will finally withdraw our troops from Iraq, because by then we'll have sucked up all their oil.

An essay on our capitalist culture

to which I can only respond, "Yup."

Horror of horrors

This is most enduring Bush legacy, and it's awful.

Bumpersnickers

I've seen some great ones lately. My favorites:

"The more people I meet, the more I like my dog."

"Where is Bush taking Americans? And why are we in this handbasket?"

And the last one, presumably an observation about McCain's melodic "Bomb, bomb Iran" reference:

"McCain: Putting the laughter back into slaughter."

Okay, I admit it

When it comes to choosing a Democratic "dream ticket" for president and veep, I'm not perfect.

All the news that's fit to surf

You know you're a political junkie when you visit this webpage, displaying the counties of Wyoming and how each of them voted in yesterday's caucuses, which resulted in an Obama victory. You know, further, that your addiction is boundless when you roll your cursor over the counties to learn the tallies of each, including that of Hot Springs county (in the center of the state) where the vote was 31 Obama, 22 Clinton, 11 uncommitted. I had more people than that in my homeroom class at Sam Hughes elementary.

A day in the life

of the so-called "improving" Iraq.

Time to take the gloves off

Okay, now I'm getting pissed. Here's a video spot on Hillary's website showing a blackened, widened image of Obama, and presenting a lying message about his subcommittee, and here's a detailed analysis of the spot, showing why the HRC campaign must be stopped.

Frozen in place

A two-minute video. Too cool.

I missed my calling

I shoulda hired onto The Onion staff, so I could think up stuff like this. What a great gig!

Tough duty

Over last weekend and today, I've been making Obama-support calls into Texas precincts. We have a script (from which we vary alot), essentially asking voters to support Barack in the primary election and to remember to caucus later that same Tuesday to select more delegates. It's a peculiarity of Texas Democratic politics that they have some combination of caucus and election on the same day, with the primary election itself being an "open" primary, i.e., anybody can vote in it: Democrats, unaffiliated voters or Republicans.

Well, I gotta tell ya, it ain't been heartening. From "Go to hell" to "Go elsewhere" it's been a long, hard telephonic slog. And even those folks who've been knowledgeable about the process have avoided committing to Obama. Some of this may be due to his color, some due to the sections of Texas covered by the area codes I was given (southeast Texas--truly backcountry), but some of it may be due to Rush Limbaugh, who's no dummy.

Touche

YouTube, I love you.

Why didn't I think of that?

If John McCain is eligible to be elected president because, having been born on a US Navy base in Panama, he was born on "US soil," then the US Navy base at Guantanamo, Cuba, is US soil too, and the prisons there are subject to the laws and constitution. Thus, the indefinite imprisonment without charge and trial is illegal under the Bill of Rights, as much there as if it were taking place in Santa Barbara, CA.

The fine print

Ya know, sometimes you've gotta read to the bottom of those bland newspaper articles to get the gist. Like this one that talks about the greater intensity and turnout of Democrats in the primary contests throughout the country.

Second from the last graph, as counterpoint to the Democrats' enlistment of new voters, the Republicans offer this effort in Ohio's upcoming primary:

"Maggie Nafziger, the county GOP executive director, says the database used to target such voters includes things like applications for licenses to carry a concealed weapon.
'I can find the answers to those questions on anyone in Ohio,' Nafziger tells CNN. 'Then we go after them.'"

Life's a bitch

Especially if you're hard of hearing, elderly and wearing a bulky jacket in the winter in Baghdad.

Back to the drawing board

Just last week, pundits, echoing Bush and McCain, reported that Iraq had met one of the important political "benchmarks" by adopting a plan for elections of provincial governments. Well, not so fast. Apparently, the triumvirate of something called the "presidential council," consisting of three men, a Kurd, and Sunni and a Shiite, who were required to approve the measure, didn't. And not on some insubstantial ground: there was disagreement about the power of the national government, particularly when it comes to firing the heads of the regional governments. It wasn't certain when or if these differences would be overcome, the measure having been sent back to the Iraqi parliament for further process, and it's likely that the delay will mean that the scheduled provincial elections, set for October 1, won't take place.

The Bush administration's cavalier reaction: "That's democracy." My reaction: Meanwhile our troops and treasure are being wasted.

Worst of both worlds

Now the "s" word--stagflation--has replaced recession as the most worrisome economic prospect. I remember those dog days. The slow economy, coupled with increasing prices, meant that the idea of lowering interest rates to spur the economy would trigger an inflationary spiral, so there was nothing to be done to stop the ongoing quarters of zero economic growth. Are we there yet?

Killing me softly...

So, it turns out that Osama bin Laden was right: We're gonna kill ourselves, with only a little help from our enemies. Indeed, Pogo was right after all.

Oh, damn

It's with sadness that I report that Ralph Nader has decided to run for President again. Sadness because, although I agree with everything he says about the inadequacies of the stated policies of both Clinton and Obama (and a fortiori McCain), the solution is not for him to become a presidential candidate and thereby to weaken his influence, but rather to work with one (or both) of the Democratic candidates toward his ends. Nader is weakening his influence by these repeated candidacies, weakening his image and his legacy as well. Instead of effectively raising his laudable policies into public discourse, he's isolating himself from the electoral process and diminishing them and himself, becoming now a near-ridiculous footnote in history.

In case you forgot

there's still violence aplenty in Iraq. (Scroll to bottom of Dr. Cole's post.)

Update: This year, only 40 Iraqis were suicide-bombed yesterday on their annual pilgrimage to Kerbala, way down from the 150 or so that died last year. Now, that's progress.

Obamamobile

Two weeks ago I fashioned the following bumpersticker for my SUV and pasted it inside the rear window: "This vehicle is a certified Obamamobile." A nice touch, right? And a unique one, too, right? Not so. Today I learned that Ben & Jerry, the ice cream guys, have come up with the same phrase, Obamamobile, and are cruising around in it to drum up votes in Vermont.

So--I'm not crazy. Or all three of us are.

Okay, I admit it

I stole the following observation from one of the commenters (scroll down about two inches below the cited post) in which Bush is quoted as denying that the present imminent recession has anything to do with the massive federal spending on the war in Iraq, but instead attributing it to the housing crunch in the US.

Bush is right about the wrecked economy being attributable to improper housing, namely, having the wrong person in the White House.

We've got a way to go in Iraq

if its citizens can't even agree on the national flag.

MSM no more

Yup, this guy's right. To label the network and most cable news sources the Mainstream Media, MSM, isn't accurate. It's the corporate media, hereinafter CN.

And while I won't go so far as to wipe CNN off the presets on my remote, as has my friend Kyle, I'll watch that channel only for updates of the ongoing, quite suspenseful, Democratic primary race.

In case you're counting

here's a tabulation (an estimate, only, but an informed one) of the Democratic delegate tally, updated automatically every minute by CBS News. BTW, with his victory in yesterday's Maine caucuses, Obama now leads Clinton by three delegates, even including Clinton's lead in endorsement-announced "superdelegates."

He doesn't think about winning the Nobel Prize

and other insights, from an interview of the writer, Philip Roth.

A rarity on the Internet...

A must-see video. (2 minutes)

Not with a bang, but a simper

So this is how the Democratic presidential nominating process will end: in the back rooms of the convention in Denver. One room will be where the credentialing committee (which I understand is made up of three former members of Bill Clinton's administration) will decide whether/how to give voting power to delegates from Florida and Michigan--delegates that Billary received the majority of in primary voting that wasn't supposed to count due to those states' violation of the Democratic National Committee's rules against too-early primaries; and the other room where the hundreds of "super delegates" determine who they're going to cast their votes for.



Some of the latter will likely be swayed by which candidate has won the most delegates in the various primaries and caucuses around the nation. They'll also be swayed by their hunch about which of the two candidates is more likely to beat McCain, and by their sense of which one is more likely to bring more voters to the polls for more local contests. On both these last two items, Obama's the clear winner--and perhaps on the first as well, unless the credentialing committee decides to award to Clinton the bulk of the Michigan and Florida delegates that were chosen in their respective "outlaw" primaries.

Notwithstanding the "reforms" of the 1970's in the delegate-choosing method of the Democrats, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Who's on first?

Remember that report last month about the Iraqi Army (such as it is) cleaning out a "militant Shiite cult" (whatever that is)? Well, maybe all is not as it seems. Surprise, surprise.

What the fuck are we doing in Iraq?

Not black enough?

I think not.

Talk about a grass-roots movement

Check out these signs posted in the windows of Manhattan merchants.

Lest we forget

this date five years ago.

Fun reading, really fun reading

Here's a bullet list of raps against John McCain by a nutzoid arch-conservative. I gotta agree: For the truly insane voter, such as the author of the list, McCain's the devil. If/when he's the Republican nominee, watching the Right devour itself will be great amusement.

McClatchy reports

on an item that's beyond the MSM these days: The spread of insurgent influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's not a pretty picture. It makes one wonder how it can be that John McCain, who has supported every one of Bush/Cheney's failed efforts in the Middle East, can be a viable candidate for President. Could it be that the media--and Republicans--are idiots?

The person who controls admission into Iraq's security forces

is a woman, and a hard-headed one at that. I particularly like the last quotation in the USA Today article.

Reason number ten thousand

to support Barack Obama: Michelle Obama. Princeton grad, Harvard Law, human being.

Look out below!

Here's a quote from the last line of a Forex (foreign exchange) report, which highlighted the first monthly loss of jobs in the US in years, the recent Fed reduction of the prime rate by 1/2 percent and the prospect of more interest-rate decreases to stem the US descent into recession.

"Also worth noting was an announcement from Qatar, which said it was mulling over its currency policy. Qatar’s peg to the dollar has resulted in heavy inflationary pressure given the greenback’s broadbased descent in recent years."

Qatar is our "ally," a major oil-exporting country in the Middle East. If it's thinking about switching from relying on the (petro)dollar as the currency for its oil, and perhaps switching to the euro for its favored indebtedness asset, can other nations be far behind?

Bush's Beach Boy song

You've of course heard John McCain's rendition of "Barbara Ann." Here's Bush's: "Bomb, bomb, bomb. Bomb, bomb, Iraq."

Obama, Oh Yeah!

Here's another reason to vote for Obama in the primaries, a reason that links my antipathy toward Billary with my fear of McCain. And here's another, one that echoes my yearning precisely.

Hey, Ralph Nader

About the Clintons: Why don't you say what you really mean?

A memorandum or a treaty?

This NPR report about Bush's latest tactic with Iraq is scary, and my reaction is, of course, No Fuckin' Way!

Ping pong

Okay, so the press is playing up the spats between Obama's camp and the Clintons' (note the plural). And it looks like Hillary is leaving the South Carolina primary to Obama and jumping ahead to the super Tuesday elections in the big states like California, New York, Florida.

Her idea, of course, is that once she loses South Carolina to Obama (apparently, Edwards is well behind), she can explain the loss as race-based, because of the many black Democratic voters. That, she figures, will scare white Democrats to think in racial terms about Obama--more than they have heretofore--and drive them into her camp.

How to counter this tactic, because we can count on the MSM to exploit it? I dunno, do you?

Just so you know

The billions of dollars spent on the "war on terr'r" are escalating wildly, and are ruining the US economy, just as bin Laden sought.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan

the battle with the Taliban is "just beginning."

Readers of Nineteen Eighty-four will recognize the state of "perpetual war" that bound the citizens to the leader by fear and a seige mentality, just the way Cheney and the Neo-cons want it.

Obama, I hardly know thee...

These remarks about Reagan? WTF?

For those of you who are counting

Here's a list of "superdelegates" to the Democratic convention, both those who have already committed to a particular Democratic candidate for President and a link to those who've so far not committed. Why is this important? Because with all the hoopla about the Democratic caucuses and primaries (which so far have Clinton and Obama about tied for delegates, with Edwards behind), these "superdelegates" aren't the result of those processes. Instead, they're Democratic insiders: elected or formerly-serving Democrats, higher-ups in the Democratic Party, and the like. They make up almost 1/4 of the total delegate voting power at the convention, and when these are counted, Hillary Clinton leads Obama and Edwards by a huge margin. These "superdelegates" were the product of "reform" of the party in the 1970's, which allowed these leaders a lessened amount of votes in exchange for expanding the power of grass-roots caucuses and primaries.

Certainly, the reform was an improvement over the back-room deals the Democrats used before for choosing presidential candidates, but there's still a heavy loading of the voting in favor of traditional power--in this case, the Clinton dynasty.

All the news that's fit to print?

Here are two accounts of Bush's recent "important" speech during his trip to the Middle East. The first account (at the top of the report) is by McClatchy, and it places Bush's words in context, balancing what he says with the political and economic reality of the region; and the second (scroll down) is by the NYT, which merely parrots Bush's words. Recall it was Knight-Ridder (which since has been bought by McClatchy) that questioned the evidence about Iraq's WMD and its connection to al-Qaeda in the months before the March, 2003, invasion, while the NYT was rooting for war.

Just an observation, which, however, might lead my loyal readers to add McClatchy to their list of news sources.