Kossack, do not give up.  Our fight has only begun.  Barack cannot do this by himself, as much as we wish he could.  The Junior Senator from Illinois is just that:  A junior Senator who gets pretty good press.

I have a modest proposal for dealing with Party idiots and apostates:

Eat their babies.  

No, just kidding.  This isn't a Jonathan Swift-style recommendation.  It's too late for that: the children have grown to adulthood and now stand at the gates of the "fourth estate" spouting the talking-points of the opposition.

Ye gads!  What to do?

If you're thinking of picking up the 'phone and chewing off their ear, or dashing off a fevered email of righteous indignations, allow me to offer this suggestions:  

Don't.

Call the HammerHand.

Let me get this out of the way first:  I am a backer of Obama for President.  I don't think he's the second coming (of Bill thank goodness), or the next JFK (better than that, I hope).  His candidacy is historic, his policy positions are sound (if fairly pedestrian in most cases).  He's highly charismatic.  I'm not inclined to praise his every move, however.

That said, one of the first things he did after securing the Democratic nomination made my heart leap.  He extended his campaign's ban on money from political action committees (PACs) and lobbyists to the Democratic National Committee.

This is a thought experiment I want you all to try with me.

I just finished reading LauraD's wonderful diary I was the "crazy screaming woman," and it is full of heartfelt gratitude for Dr. Howard Dean.  Let me share a few comments with you:

Introductory rambling:  So much to write about these days, what with the rules committee hearing going on in DC (moot in any case), the war, the Democratic Convention in Augusta, the Celtics, international disasters--it's all been on my mind to comment, disparage or celebrate.  Instead, I'm going to write about Memorial Day.

I've been thinking about this since I went to Portland's parade on Monday, and links sent by a friend have kept it in the front of my mind.  Last night I had pizza and beer with my city councilor and we chatted about it as well.  Time to write.

Portland's Memorial Day Parade was pathetic.  Embarrassing, actually, on several levels.  It was thinly attended.  The delegations were small.  The community was not represented.  The American Legion and VFW were predictably bitter.  I was pissed.  

I shot off a text message to the three city councilors who I know, and they all had the same general response.  It is the VFW and the American Legion who organize the parade, and they only talk to each other.  I don't mind beefing with those guys--you have to involve the community.  Here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "Rarely do we find men who engage in hard, solid thinking.  There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions.  Nothing pains some people more than having to think."

Moyers has always been both willing to think and unwilling to simplify, which I suppose is why he wound up in public broadcasting.  But the reason he finds such a follower in me has more to do with his message than his mode.

Follow me below for more:

I slapped this together today, in the aftermath of Tuesday's good work. Tips for the sentiment, flames for failing to make seamless the transition between pagemaker and photobucket.  Obama fans will recognize the fine art produced for the campaign and stolen shamelessly.

Hope you like it.

I saw this comment on a diary today:

Progressives are just as adamant about the morality of their cause.  They just don't believe in a deity, so they don't invoke it.

I responded:

What in the world makes you think [that lack of faith] applies to "progressives" as a group?

My interlocutor suggested that I take a poll.  So I am.

[PS: sorry about the spelling errors.  Too quick with the mouse.]

As many of you know already, Trinity Church in Chicago, the church of Dr. Wright and Barak Obama, is affiliated with the United Church of Christ (UCC).

The UCC is one of the Protestant "Mainline" churches--a name which refers to their theology and their lineage, not their popularity.  Although I'm not religious, I was raised in a small UCC congregation and I still have deep familial ties to the wider church.  It's a group of folks, by and large, who subscribe to the "know them by their works" school of faith.

What does that mean?

For your consideration, from Gorillas Guides.  I offer this without comment.    And because I am not there.  And because if I was, I'd probably be in uniform, with Kevlar on my head and a gun in my hand.  And because no matter how you feel about the "surge," it's your surge and mine.  Not just the Bush.

That's just the way it is.

No I do not care about your feelings. I am interested in what if anything you have done to stop your country from murdering yet more of my people. That is all I am interested in. When I want to decide about someone I look at what they do not at what they say.

Enjoy your surge and have a nice day America. I do not think you will enjoy the countersurge but that is your problem not mine. I for my part will be cheering on the Iraki resistance. Irak is for the Irakis. This is my home, these are my people. Leave.

cross-posted at Borrowed Suits

Wages of War:  No one can predict the long-term consequences of the Iraq War, but we note that only last summer did the U.S. stop collecting a 3 percent tax on long-distance telephone calls that was begun in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War--a war that only lasted several months.

Christian Century, January 9, 2007

Let that one sink in for a minute.

Did you know you were paying a 3% tax on your long distance phone calls from the day you were born until the end of 2006 to pay for the SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR?

I don't really know what to say about that.

It feels so good to finally pay off those debts, doesn't it?  Looks like we're all going to need to pick up a few extra hours.  For the next 2 thousand years or so.

crossposted at Borrowed Suits

We’ve been down this road before.  That Bush et al have steadfastly refused to learn their history is axiomatic.  But I can’t help but wish that someone at PNAC or the American Enterprise Institute or the Federalist Society (ideally several someones at all three) had read T.E. Lawrence before they stooped to whisper in Bush’s ear.

Cross-posted at Booman Tribune and Borrowed Suits

Just in case you've stumbled upon this post with no idea of what's been going on for the past six years, let me start by saying this:

Holy shit, guy! Where have you been?  

But let me continue.  The foundation of western government, from the moment the Magna Carta was wrung out of King John, has been the Rule of Law.  That document was practically useless to the English common man, and if we fail to act more forthrightly and sternly than we seem about to, our Constitution will become equally useless to us.  I'm writing this only in the hope that a few more paragraphs can help: if America can return to grace, impeachment is the only sure way.

These two ladies will never switch parties.  Stop thinking about it, wishing for it, or engaging in conjecture of any kind that ends with Snowe or Collins riding in to save the day if Lieberman declares for the Republicans or some such event occurs.  It isn't going to happen.  Please stop imagining that it might.

This has as much to do with the kind of state Maine is as it does with who these two women are politically.  Follow me below for a quick run-down on the Great State of Maine.

Withdrawal from Iraq is wrong.  Morally wrong, politically wrong.  Bad for Iraq.  Bad for us.  

Withdrawal, under various guises, is gaining in popularity as the "war" in Iraq becomes less popular.  It is popular here at DKos to believe that this is because people are becoming more aware of the fraudulent reasons given for the war itself, but IMO its much simpler than that: sucess there hasn't come, cheap oil has most assuredly not come, and more of our soldiers die every day.  The thing is being handled disgracefully.  thereisnospoon's impassioned diary on the topic amounts to, basically, "OUCH! This really sucks! Let's leave."

I agree that the GoP and W are probably incapable of getting it right.  But a withdrawal from Iraq, whether immediate and complete or phased and limited or something in the middle, would become the opening paragraphs of the last sad chapter for a once great nation (that's us, by the way).  An abdication of our responsibility on so great a scale at so critical a moment and in so essential a place on the globe would become a stain impossible to remove.

"The alien was to be protected, not because he was a member of one's family, clan, religious community or people; but because he was a human being.

"In the alien, therefore, man discovered the idea of humanity."

--Hermann Cohen, as quoted by David Cole

"Immigrants are the canary in the coal mine."

--Beth Stickney, co-founder and Exec. Dir. of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, Inc.

I know this isn't diary material, strictly speaking. I need some help, so I'm coming to the largest collection of highly informed folks I can tap.  I did post this on an open thread, but I wanted the exposure floating a diary might get me.  Sorry for the protocol breach.  Knock it down if you must.

For those of you with strong ligaments of sardonic humor holding your funny bone together, I humbly offer the following: