Who'dathunkit?

She tries to hide it, but it's obvious: Condi's in love.

From Vegas with love

I'm in Las Vegas tonight. I spent a couple of days here during the Kerry campaign, and a couple of days here a month ago for Obama. Now, with the 2008 presidential election looming, I came over yesterday and today did eight hours of canvassing, with tomorrow, election day, being a critical GOTV ("get out the vote") day. We're assembling early on the north side of town (I mistakenly have taken a motel down near the strip, and so have a twenty-minute drive out to the site) where we'll get our marching orders from the incredibly competent, organized young folks who are Obama's ground staff. Today's canvassing consisted of going to various gated communities, spurring Democrats to make sure to vote, hanging door-hangers with election-site information on the homes where there was no one home, and leaving generalized information in the case of the homes of the less-committed. All according to perfected computerized charts and maps given to us by the aforementioned staff. Bottom line: Out of the fifty-plus homes we were told to visit, we perhaps caused two or three people to vote for Obama who might otherwise have slacked off.

My canvass-mate was a sweet, 18-year-old black girl who'd taken the day off from school to do this for Obama, after, she said, having "blown it off so many times before." The irony is that on this day when she'd decided finally to do it, Michelle Obama was attending her high school for a campaign appearance, so this task caused her to miss both that and a day's worth of classes.

Damn...

I wish I'd said this.

A dangerous game

This lengthy WaPo essay details the various steps Bush has taken, and may take, as he slides out the back door of the White House. Most dangerous: his latest expansion of US military power, to include military actions within foreign nations, allied with us and not, to "protect our interests." This is tantamount to a worldwide arms intrusion, casting aside all restraint on American aggression.

It's worse than an "October surprise," it's an eternal, international nightmare.

Can you imagine...

the level of news coverage this event would have raised in the US?

The unreported agony that is Iraq grinds on and on.

Another letter to the editor of the SB NewsPress

It's a shortie, in text and thought, but I couldn't resist. I'll update if it gets published.

To the editor:

Okay, I get it that it's sexist to mention, in the context of Sarah Palin's candidacy for Vice President, anything about "lipstick on a pig." But what I don't get is why, then, the Republican National Committee has deemed it proper to spend $150,000 on her wardrobe? Am I missing something?

Update: It was published in the News-Press, Sunday, October 26, 2008.

Don't ever say I didn't tell you

about this means of escaping the collapse of the American empire: Move to Sweden.

Surprise, surprise

With all the publications tripping over themselves to endorse Barack Obama lately, I've decided to join in: I favor Obama for president in 2008!

For a handy explication of the differences--sometimes more subtle than I'd like--between Obama's and McCain's views on American foreign policy, check out this essay. As to domestic policy, no contest.

I'm no economist

but I did take the course in college, using Samuelson's text; and I majored in Political Science and have followed politics and law all my life. And so, when the Nobel committee selects Paul Krugman for its annual award for economics, I know what it means: The United States government has been out of step with the economics of the civilized world since--when?--since Reagan.

Oh, wouldn't it be loverly...

If the US couldn't find a way to extort a Status of Forces Agreement out of Iraq's government before the expiration of its UN mandate on December 31. The US would then be, without any cover of international law or UN approval, an illegal occupier of a foreign nation. Any killings by US troops thereafter, I believe the law would say, would be murder; and those who ordered the occupation would, one would think, be culpable, just as culpable as Hitler was for the deaths that occured during Gemany's illegal occupations during WWII.

I'd paddle to the Hague to be inside the courtroom to watch the trial of Bush/Cheney on those charges. Hell, I'd even resuscicate my dusty old shingle if there was a one-in-a-hundred chance I could participate in the trial, if only to fill the prosecutor's water cup during final argument.

A new epithet for Bush

Comrade.

It could get ugly

I'm not talking about the tenor of the presidential campaign, which we all knew would get ugly about this time in the cycle. I'm talking about the election result itself. This composite polling site already (as of today, that is) has Obama winning the electoral-college vote, with 296 "solid" or "leaning" states; and of the few tossups, Obama's leading in most of them, too. He could end up with 350 electoral votes or more, losing only the deep south, the bible belt and the redneck west (plus Arizona, McCain's home state). In that process, it might be added, he could bring with him enough Senators and Representatives to hand control of Congress to the Democrats.

How would life feel if this happened? Wait one month and see.

Read it and weep

Can we ever live like this again?

Break out the big lipstick

This is one big pig.

Lipstick on a pig

I gotta tell ya, those add-ons (increased FDIC insurance, some accounting changes for banks, tax credits for environmental energy sources) do nothing to enhance the basic flaw in the bailout package, namely, that it's a top-down Band-Aid of the problem, and it simply hands off to the next Congress and administration the endemic structural problems of our economy, our stock-market system and, last but not least, our political gridlock. Bush has now found a way to bail out on all the problems his reign created. Two wars, economic chaos, terrorism increasing around the globe, the US reputation in the world in the tank, and America in decline.

Thanks, Bush. Thanks, Congress. Fuck you all.

A tipping point?

According to this moment's numbers (because they change each moment) at RealClearPolitics.com, Obama's lead in the national polls is more than five points on average, his electoral college lead is significant and, most tellingly, the betting odds on his winning the election are above 60-40. (Check the figures in the Intrade Market Odds box in the upper right-hand quadrant of the site.) With the upcoming Palin/Biden debate, the "crisis" in the markets, and other messes around the globe, the next few weeks until the election could become ugly for McCain. A debacle like 1964 (Goldwater/LBJ) perhaps? Let's hope so, so that the mean-spirited conservatives are, for at least two decades, once again driven to near-extinction.

A day in the life

of calm and quiet Baghdad.

Not with a bang but a whimper

This is how opposition to America's occupation of Iraq ends.

That bugle you hear...

is the US Army taking over America.

A day in the life

Read it and weep. For all of us.