It’s getting crazy trying to keep up with the spam attacks lately. Today spam comments quadrupled over yesterday. I’d like to check in with our tech guy to see if we can automate a solution more than our current spam filter, Akismet. But that takes more cash, which we’re still shy of.

Please, consider a donation ASAP. We’re just a couple of weeks away from hosting and domain name renewal.

Thank you.

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It’s heartening to see a major publication tackle the silly gas holiday plan. It’s equally heartening to see the major newspaper in a key remaining primary state attack the plan as well.

And as simply as can be explained: Clinton needs a straight sweep of the remaining primary contests. She still will be behind Obama in delegates, but with a straight sdweep, she has a stronger case to make to superdelegates. And even though Obama will get most of the current superdelegates, the DNC is stacked with Clinton supporters and there’s more than 125 superdelegates yet to be chosen. So when it gets down to the last 200 unpledged delegates, that’s where the Clinton reserve will be.

The polls clearly demonstrate that Obama’s taken a hit from all the shameless hoopla about his pastor. SUSA polls, typically within 3 points of correct, now show a Clinton lead in Indiana, and a once big gap down to 5% behind in North Carolina. It’s a foregone conclusion that she’ll win by huge margins in KY and WV. Most analysts say NC is a lock for Obama. It is…. but only if he stops the bleeding. And the gas tax holiday is designed to keep him bleeding in NC and IN. You’d better believe Clinton’s enjoying the internal polling lately.

A loss in NC will certainly cause some supers to reconsider, even though the pledged delegate count will never favor Clinton. If she pulls off that upset, the path is almost clear. Oregon is still favoring Obama and some still think Puerto Rico might be close.

I live in Oregon. I’ve been seeing a ton of Bill lately canvassing this state. And little from Obama, though I know that’ll change after Tuesday. Demographically, one would normally define Oregon as slightly favoring Clinton. But there’s still a lot of racism out there in them hills. In fact, north of the Mason Dixon line, the two northern states that had the most active KKKs for many decades were Oregon and Indiana. That’s not the case now, but there’s plenty of ‘em lingering about still.

The Oregonian was instrumental in the decline of the KKK here and it has done well in combating the Aryan Brotherhood influence that was spilling over from Idaho and some other conservative regions of Oregon and Washington. Yet even today, in liberal Eugene, a number of black professionals have moved away in recent years, complaining about hostile attitudes towards their race.

So don’t discount the possibility of a Clinton sweep. That gas tax holiday, and other tricks that may still be up Team Clinton’s sleeve, may seem silly today, but they could create havoc in the primaries, the party and ultimately, the country.

If Obama’s got game, he better show more than “the gas tax holiday won’t work.”

Fine. Show us what will. Or are you gonna let the Atlanta Hawks overcome the favorite?

Because his cronies and the Saudis need to max out their oil profits while they still can.

They say it’s about Iranian aggression, but it is and always has been about control of the oil and maxing out oil profits. And until more Americans learn the first rule of politics - follow the money - they’ll get sold on the repeated lies about new boogermen we have to kill.

The guys who attacked us on 9-11 are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iraq did not support Al Qaida. Iran didn’t either. Their financial and manpower support came from Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Arab nations. Their training and logistical support came from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

What Bush and Cheney are after is puppet governments in the two giant oil countries of Iraq and Iran, who’ll take their orders from Exxon. That’s an oversimplification of course, but it’s closer to the truth than all the shit being shoveled by the Bush White House and the Republican nominee.

My Iranian friends tell me the only thing that will be accomplished by US aggression against Iran is it will give the ayatollahs an excuse to kill students, professors and other political reformers. It will kill off precisely the people who are in the best position to kick out the hardliners and bring a real democracy to Iran.

But spilled blood and logic have never stopped the GOP money scam yet. So turn off your cars, stock up on rice and flour while you still can afford it and try and save some money for when your layoff notice comes. And if you didn’t listen to the truthtellers before the Iraq War began, maybe this time you’ll stand up to the Bush White House and promise to impeach them if they launch another economic disaster scam that kills so many innocents.

We all know that Iran’s government is full of crooks and bastards. But ours have been just as crooked, just as bastardly, and much deadlier if you’ll just stop and count the bodies.

Look, I’ve been yelling about the need to crack down on Big Oil in the last two elections. Prices will drop considerably - despite what many claim - just as they did after the first Gulf War under Big Daddy Warbucks Bush. But when even Clinton’s supporters say her idea to suspend gas prices for the summer is a joke, well, it is. Only it’s more of a magic trick, and there is something up her sleeve. (For an excellent overview, read Steve Benen .)

Over the course of the summer, an average American would save $30 under the Clinton and McCain plans. But as they’d likely drive more, they’d lose that tiny gain. If you really want to save that thirty bucks, try this:

1) Don’t buy Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco gas. Stick with Arco and others that offer it cheaper. In my city, that will save more than the 18.4 cents per gallon that Clinton and McCain are offerring.

2) Drive less. Lowering demand will lower prices. And over a longer period.

3) Buy less things made of plastic and less chemical fertilizers. Most use petroleum products in their manufacture. So more lowered demand.

4) Walk a steady 30 minutes at least every other day. That’s about a mile and a half. More lowered demand, and better health, both saving you money and making you feel better, too.

5) End the Iraq War. Look at the ‘All Data’ time length option on the OIl Index chart. Note that the big upward push began precisely when the Iraq War was launched. It shows up on the Oil Service Sector Index, too, only a few months after the war began. And both charts are displaying the beginnings of the near vertical rise that comes from a ‘bubble’ forming. I was anticipating that speculative bubble and subsequent collapse to begin six to nine months before a Democratic president gets elected. Because that’s how speculators minds would work if they thought the war’s end was near.

But it would be nearly February before a new president could order a troop withdrawal to begin. So speculators could hang on till mid July. Or maybe, knowing such withdrawals will be paced over many months, they might sustain their speculation even longer. Either way, near the end of the bubble, look for fast-increasing prices. $4? No, closer to $5. And you’ll see 18 cents per gallon disappear in a week when it really gets ugly.

Of course, if it looks like McCain will win, that final bubble would not occur for years.

However, everyone’s mad at Big Oil and some people will bite on this silly idea as ‘better than nothing.’ Which is all Clinton’s after. Just convince 5% of the public and that could make the difference between winning or losing primaries in NC, IN and OR.

I’m not sure what McCain’s after, as his plan offers him no advantage that will be remembered by November. Per usual, the man still knows nothing about economics and little about winning national elections (except: be sure your opponents are bigger dolts, which is how he got this far).

Now, how can Obama gain back that tiny percentage of voters before next Tuesday? He needs an ad fast, and a better plan. It should include a vow to introduce legislation BEFORE the summer recess that will:

a) require oil company executives to be put under oath for Congressional hearings to investigate price manipulation charges.
b) seek the minutes of the secret energy committee meetings that the Vice President conducted before 9-11 to determine if discussion of Iraq’s oil fields was under consideration even then.
c) review tax breaks currently given to farmers providing corn and soy for ethanol production, as that has driven up food prices further at a time when hunger is growing nationally and abroad.
d) consider a targeted tax rebate to truckers and trucking firms to ease their costs and to lower the costs of food transport especially.
e) provide more fuel assistance subsidies to lower income families to offset heating and cooling costs for their homes.

Additionally, announce that, as President, within 30 days of taking office, he’ll appoint a Blue Ribbon Commmission that will include people from alternative energy industries, energy conservation programs, economists, home builders, automakers, and developers of alternative energy vehicles. And they’ll be tasked with the development of a National Energy Strategy that is both effective and cost efficient, with the goal of breaking our dependence on Middle East oil. And further, since states heavily invested in producing oil and coal supplies could face a negative impact from such changes, the plan would offer major tax incentives to new technology energy suppliers to locate their businesses in states like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and others, so they’d have new jobs to offset the old.

I’m sure there’s more that can be defined, but some short term relief coupled with smart longterm strategies is clearly the way to go. Such a plan does not have to set every specific in stone immediately. But it should define the specifics that he’ll ask the new commission to consider.

All the candidates have offered too little and tarried too long on energy policy. Now is the time for bold, aggressive moves. The sooner speculators see that serious change and reform is coming, the sooner prices will start coming down. It would be nice to see some real leadership emerge again to overcome shameless panhandling for votes without real reform.

How does the the Bush Administration define victory?

I guess the whole point of the last eight years was to enrich their friends, wreck the economy, create corporate fiefdoms, enact the PNAC plans, pack the courts, eviscerate Congress, upend the electoral system, gut federal agencies, privatize everything and shun accountability.

Mission Accomplished!

Update: Obama’s got the majority of the remaining superdelegates, although there’s more than 125 who haven’t been chosen yet.

It may make the difference in Indiana.

And it demonstrates that dementia is already limiting his capacities.

This should be the debate question he is asked repeatedly: do you truly believe your plan will help the 40 million plus Americans who have no coverage today, or were you just goofing on us?

Seriously, setting aside all partisanship, it is unbelievably stunning in its deficiencies. It might serve a million or two but would keep affordable healthcare out of reach for the vast majority. The man has no concept how most of America lives.

Oh I recall what I was told. Your dangerous drug was worse than heroin, would cause me to have deformed babies, was a threat to my sanity and to society. I’m pleased to learn what a long, full and satisfying life you had, because you certainly deserved it.

What a long, strange trip it was, eh, Albert?

My life experiences would be a mere miniature without the addition your ‘problem child’ provided. For Cary Grant, me and millions of others, an understanding of the vastness of our minds was made possible by you. All the priests, ministers, clerics and sacred texts combined never came close to the spirituality your refinement provided.

Thank you, Dr. Hoffman. May you rest in peace, and happiness. You done very much good.

Hey kids! I bet you heard all about the controversy (dont’cha love the way British people say that word? That and laboratory. But never mind that now.) about Miley Cyrus (whoever the hell she is) and some pictures that Vanity Fair is going to run of her. The pictures are supposedly a bit risque, and all the talking heads on the teevee are going nuts over it. As I understand it, the scandalous photo shows her naked……back! Pffffft, ya call that scandalous? Obviously, the idiots don’t remember really scandalous magazine photos of the past. Worse than just photos, they actually showed up on the covers!!! Luckily, I was able to dig some of them up so you can see what I am talking about. Seems that the Miley (whoever the hell she is) photo is not the first time Vanity Fair has stirred up a $hit$torm (yeah, it really is all about the $$$$$). Do you remember this one, kids?

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re like me, few things make you angrier than a bunch of haughty liberals looking down their noses at the rest of us. These know-it-alls congregate in coastal enclaves like San Francisco and Ann Arbor, where they make all sorts of snooty pronouncements about what Americans need or don’t need. Do you enjoy spraying wildlife with hollow-tipped bullets from an automatic weapons, and other patriotic pursuits? Not according to these effete latté sippers. They’d rather you go to the ballet, or have nationalized health insurance. Know what else they’re trying to keep out of your hands? Formaldehyde (emphasis mine):

Formaldehyde is found in everything from home building materials to furniture to those infamous trailers that made thousands of Katrina victims ill.

For more than a decade the EPA has tried, and failed, to regulate formaldehyde.

The same is true for hundreds of other toxic chemicals, including some that have contaminated drinking-water supplies across the nation.

A new government report by the investigative arm of Congress concludes that the process for analyzing health effects of toxic chemicals “is at serious risk of becoming obsolete” because of endless delays and secrecy, CBS News correspondent Chip Reid reports.

Behind it all, critics say, is the White House.

“We’re witnessing a scandal of major proportions, in my opinion,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. “And, yes, politics has taken over the whole thing … and the scientists are being thrown to the rear.”

An EPA scientist with extensive experience in this area, who refused to go on camera due to fear of retribution, told CBS News: “these chemicals have effects ranging from learning disabilities to cancer. And EPA scientists can’t protect the public because of white house interference.”

Is there any end to their nanny-state elitism? If “learning disabilities” keep just one child from turning into another liberal egghead calling for our exit from Iraq because it’s the “smart” thing to do, then Our President’s valiant struggle to keep formaldehyde free will have been worth it. Praise Him!

I swear, ever since we granted them voting rights, some of them have actually tried to vote. We can’t have that, can we? How would we explain it in polite company?

While their eyes were watching God, it seems someone’s been stealing a primary from Obama.

Unequivocally. It is very easy to have a longterm friendship with someone who has motivated you and earned your respect. And when such a friend as Wright starts defining himself as the one true voice for all Black people of faith, while adding controversial opinions not even close to universally shared, he misstates what the core critique was. The attacks were not on him, nor the Black church, but were mostly political attacks on Obama.

He weathered that with one of the finer speeches in the past century and refused to reject Wright, while stating objections to a few things he said. And what did Wright do in return?

He mounted an offensive, repeated some unsustainable claims and implied that Obama spoke from a political sense instead of from personal conviction. And indicated the Black church was under attack, as if all Blacks were united behind his church and his faith and his definings (his own self-definition).

Obama had to weigh friendship, his ties to his church and the insult to many Blacks whose views differed broadly from Wright’s. Obama, from the outset, defined himself as a champion at ending division and today he had a choice between two existing divisions. One was dividing a personal community. One divided a far greater public one.

Obama chose to end the greater rift while admitting the closer, personal one could not be closed.
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Back in 1960, JFK had to convince a skeptical public that he’d put their interests first, ahead of the directives of the Catholic pope. Today, Obama said he’d bring the same commitment to his public service as a Senator and would-be President. It had to be harder to do, but he did the right thing. And among other things he’s said in his long campaign, this is as noteworthy as his opposition to the Iraq War before Bush sold it to Congress. Many politicians avoid risks but Obama has made it clear he’ll step forward with new approaches to seek more effective results. Now he’s demonstrated he will stand on the principle of serving the greater good, even when personally painful to do so.

It won’t silence Wright and won’t make him go away. Obama’s political foes will attack him just as fiercely as before. But he met a test well, first with a great defining speech, and again, today, when events compelled him to make a stand and he stood for the larger community of America.

Update: Glenn Greenwald is glad that there’s not important problems to deal with.

It was a line in the MC5’s American Ruse:

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And this is specifically dedicated to Hillary Stephanopolous and William Jefferson Gibson, from John Prine:
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In the latest poll from Rove/Colson, John McCain is losing to YouGottaBeKiddingMe 53%-28%. If the Democratic nominee were John McCain, he’d lose by a wider margin.

According to the internals, 93% support his plan to Stay in Iraq Forever, if he’ll send the troops home and promise not to build any WMDs.

22% support his economic plan of retiring to Arizona to oversee a cotton plantation where everybody in the country on food stamps can work for a small fee.

84% of the forgotten Americans he visited want to know if Arizona Senators taste better boiled or half-baked.

And by a margin of 84% - 11% - 73% voters say they trust pollsters to tell them who they have to vote for as long as it’s not John McCain.

If you’ve never seen an old news organ naked before, be sure to bring your anti-nausea meds. It’s like the world’s biggest booty only it sags so close to the gutter that it almost reaches its integrity.

After weighing how bored I am with political campaigns and how it’s become difficult to build traffic, no matter how many hours I spend readin’ & writin’, I’ve seriously considered pulling the plug, and doing something useful, like working at WalMart. Sure, it’s not as rewarding as volunteer hours at the Food Bank, but I note they still hire people in their dotage and provide a paycheck on time that won’t bounce.

Sounds like my kind of employer, bein’ as I’m too dumb to do much else but drone on tepidly on this here blog. I mean, without a college degree, I’m just Nobody In Particular in the popularity scale. I don’t even wish for ponies for fear I’d make ‘em wish they were mere poodles. My voice, like my vote, is easily disregarded as nothing more than an echo.

So if I can’t get paid, I might as well get laid. I still think I can rememberhow to ride that bicycle. With clothespinned bicycle cards in the spokes, right?

So after you finish this post, don’t read any other till you decide whether you’ll drop trou or cough up cash for the privilege of embraceable moi.

Midway through week four of fundraising, it’s gonna take more than $155 to make me put my clothes back on. (And thanks, Norm, for giving that unreal sum of $5,000 a steady go. That’d be more than I’ve earned since July of last year. There’s just no jobs in the 43 professions I’m qualified to do and my blogging feels drier than Cheney’s pacemaker.)

I guess it’s just another sign of the failing economy and my content feels lifeless and drained. Obama? blech. Clinton? yuck. What the fuck does it really matter who gets elected? None comes close enough to fix what’s broke for me.

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The logical conclusion can be summed up in an old folk saying: GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!

And the Cheney cabal still hasn’t repudiated their minister of the last 20 years, Beelzebub.

Actually, it’s our tit, it seems. Hey, hey, ho, ho, how many American deaths did Georgie sow?

Almost all his Middle East handholding palsie-walsies abandoned their promises to keep oil prices in check, at $40 and $50 and $60 a barrel. They didn’t even bother lying after that. Isn’t it amazing how quickly ideology and diplomacy can get abandoned in favor of unchecked greed? Yet they still tell the lie that a bunch of hiding terrorists represent the quote-unquote greatest threat to our country.

They are the greatest threat to holding a security blanket that keeps us safe from the boogerman when we sleep. But the odds of death by terror attack ranks down their with death by infected toenails. And living forever should rank a little lower than being able to obtain some pleasures and comforts while we’re living.

Some disagree. If you can’t work 80 hours a week, sacrifice every pleasure, endure every kind of abuse and insult for 50 years, well then, you really don’t deserve anything at all, especially socialized air to breathe. You weren’t born in the right place or to the right family? Then it sure must suck to be you.

Bush was warned what would happen if Saddam was toppled and the blend of existing ideologies festered in a quagmire of economic neglect and mismanagement. Secular strongman dictatorships can be undeniably brutal and worthy of opposition, but the extremes of all out war are not the only way to topple tyrants. And democracies don’t magically grow everywhere like Jack’s beanstalk beans did.

Iraq is a complete Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Axis of Stupid clusterfuck. And even at that, let’s look at things through a lens of reason and see if there’s better ways forward. Consider, from that article:

“To understand it (the Quds Force) as just a terrorist group, as the U.S. does, is not helpful,” said Rasool Nafisi, a Washington-based Middle East analyst. “It is a very important, almost second tier of Iranian international diplomacy.”

The Iranians’ longstanding goals include pushing United States forces out of Iraq, perhaps encouraging a broader American retreat from the Middle East and securing a Shiite-dominated Iraqi regime that’s friendly to Tehran and can’t threaten a repeat of Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion of Iran, which started a devastating eight-year war.

Hmmmm… Iran would prefer to have a friendly neighbor on its border. How extreme! And it doesn’t like the US involvement that previously armed Saddam for the purpose of waging war with Iran…. how can they not trust our government today? So Iran’s interest is to reduce and eliminate threats to its security. And that’s supposed to be considered radical and dangerous? All they want is a Canada next door. If we really want to effectively oppose that, we could have told them about the risks of hockey and spared a lot of dying and expense.

Look, as adults, we can perfectly well understand that it’s not exactly that simple. But Iran is surrounded by a lot of nations hostile to its interests. Some are Arabs opposed to Persians. Some exploit the Sunni vs. Shia schism. Israel exploits that, too, preferring to keep Muslims divided to lessen the dangers of Muslims uniting to eliminate Israel. And just as Israel’s interests in doing so are understandable, so are Iran’s interests understandable. And the whole freaking globe wants control of Iran’s oil and are willing to exploit everyone involved to gain it.

War is hardly the best or only answer to work through competing interests to gain a calm coexistence for all. In the Middle East, war has proven repeatedly to simply provoke more war.

And in the meantime, national treasuries are drained, profiteers on all sides enrich themselves while impoverishing the majorities in every country, including ours.

It is greed that’s the most threatening ideology in the mix. Saudi, Iranian, Iraqi and American greed is doing in the majority in every country, and let’s not forget that China, Russia, India, Japan and Europe are also competing for control over the oil and each has its share of greedy bastards willing to sacrifice the best interests of the many for the excessive enrichment of the few.

So long as this prevails and people are persuaded to defend themselves against boogermen at any cost, the greedy bastards will prevail, to our mutual detriment.

Face up to the fact that limited resources can only be stretched and enhanced so far via scientific achievement, to accomodate the growing global population. And if we don’t start grasping that and seeking reasonable ways to share, the ultimate course we chart is a diminished quality of life for succeeding generations or a few powerful nations offering some small gains for their people in return for a number of those people willing to engage in perpetual war. Which is every bit as brutal as Saddam and any other tyrant, ethically.

Civilization either can or cannot be, and the perpetual war strategies of the Axis of Stupid is a surrender to the notion that civilization is a mythical concoction composed of blood and misery that grants temporary lulls and maintains the delusion that we’re wiser than an ant swarm overrunning a dung beetle.

We might have wisdom capability, but Iraq and our current economy remain the clearest demonstrations of how poorly we’ve been utilizing that. And let’s not dwell on that because LOOK OVER THERE AT ANOTHER BOOGERMAN! And the guys doing the pointing usually carries the sharpest daggers, their own unquenchable greed.

Try to remember that every time the megamillionaire corporate toady John McCain points at the TERRIBLE DANGER of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And realize, too, there are some adults around that were right about Iraq who still are displaying a preference for a wiser way.

From Jeff Zeleny at The Caucus (the NY Times blog)”

“I think certainly what the last three days indicate is that we’re not coordinating with him, right?” Mr. Obama said. “He’s obviously free to speak his mind, but I just want to emphasize that this is my former pastor. Many of the statements that he has made both to trigger this initial controversy and that he’s made over the last several days are not statements that I’ve heard him make previously. They don’t represent my views and they don’t represent what this campaign is about.”

At a hastily called news conference on the tarmac of the airport here, with the engines of his campaign plane buzzing in the background, Mr. Obama briefly responded to questions for the first time about Mr. Wright’s speech today to the National Press Club.

Mr. Obama declined to say whether he felt betrayed over the comments from his longtime former pastor. He also declined to assess the political fallout from the remarks, which comes as he is working to win the primaries next week in North Carolina and Indiana and to convince Democrats that he would be the party’s strongest candidate in the fall.

“People will understand that I am not perfect and there are going to be folks in my past – like Reverend Wright – that may cause them concern,” Mr. Obama said. “But, ultimately, my 20 years of service and the values that I’ve written about, spoken about and promoted are their values and what they are concerned about. That’s what this campaign has been about. And will continue to be about.”

Though Wright will remain a fixture in GOP campaign ads, expect the Republicans to use him only in the districts where people are afraid of Christian ministers who are black. I understand how easy it is to succumb to unreasonable cowardice as I’m constantly afraid Gary Coleman’s going to hide in my sock drawer and get Cheetos crumbs on my argyles. Makes me wake up in cold sweats, it does.

“Everybody else is tied to dirty money, except for me. Because t6hrough the miracle of modern loopholes, I can appear to be a middle class guy not even tied financially to my wife.”

(Statement I’d like to see McCain release while in flight on his wife’s private jet, accompanied by scads of lobbyists.)

As for the media avoiding this story, hell, they’re too busy doing in-flight tequila shots from McCain’s navel.

Black Liberation Theology may not be universally representative of the ‘Black church’ but it is sufficiently large to be mainstream. And while some may wish Reverend Wright shuts up and goes away, that’s not going to happen and it’s too late anyway. So the remaining alternative is to broaden the discussion and not grant the racists like Michelle Malkin frame the discussion. Or we can change the subject repeatedly, watch the GOP turn him into Willie Horton and watch the Big Tent Democratic Party get torn by a Katrina-like foul racial wind that permanently destroys it. Hyperbole? Not.

Via the NY Times, here’s Wright at the National Press Club today:

“The black church’s role in the fight for equality and justice from the 1700s to 2008 has always had as its core the non-negotiable doctrine of reconciliation, children of God repenting for past sins against each other,” he said.

As a result of this background and the unfamiliarity of many white people with black preaching, he said, some might find his sermons unsettling. He also noted that the widely circulated clips of his remarks were only short snippets lifted out of the context of much longer, closely reasoned arguments.

“We root out any teaching of superiority, inferiority, hatred or prejudice,” he said. “And we recognize that for the first time in modern history, in the West, that the other who stands before us with a different color of skin, a different texture of hair, different music, different preaching styles and different dance moves; that other is one of God’s children just as we are, no better, no worse, prone to error and in need of forgiveness just as we are.”

Asked about remarks that some critics have called unpatriotic, Rev. Wright noted that men and women from his Chicago congregation had fought in all the country’s recent wars, “while those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service.”

Yesterday, at the NAACP dinner, Wright was lighthearted, and spoke in more of his ministerial style. His immediate audience got his central point: just because Black church evangelism styles are different to the ears of much of white America doesn’t mean it’s bad, threatening, or negative. But as political opponents of Obama and Democrats are predictably going to do, they seized on fragments again and ignored the spirit of conciliation and friendly co-existence at its core.

By comparison, he was more succinct and delivered a message in a different way to his different audience at the press club and the MSM got his point clearly, which could help as they are often the filter through which many Americans get their information. But it falls well short of what is needed next.

Other ministers, priests, rabbis, and clerics should chime in. So should other politicians. The risks are far greater in maintaining silence than they are in pointing out that most of Wright’s points are completely defensible. He may not (if you’re a white voter like me) sound ‘just like us’, but that difference doesn’t make him dangerous or a threat to anyone. One can refute 2 or 3 points he’s made over a long career and remind voters that many of us have superstitions, have made wrong assumptions and drawn wrong conclusions over the course of our lives. Consider, for example, how many concluded that George W. Bush would make a fine president, how manny thought Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggart or their local parish priest were fine fellows only to discover their sexual predilections or criminal perversities got in the way.

It is not such a stretch to imagine that medical experiments caused the AIDS epidemic after the history of government funded tests of venereal diseases that utilized Blacks as guinea pigs without their informed consent. It’s no different than surmising conspiracies existed that resulted in the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK. Speaking of different right/left brain learning styles is no nuttier than saying Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, which was a bestseller in its day.

Of course, most of the ire directed at Wright continues to be his controversial “God damn America” snippet which was not a request but an interpretation that God would condemn some of the things American leaders have done. He did not say “America deserved to be attacked on 9-11″. He was indicating that it was understandable that America had enemies and that some enemies are created by bad government policies that have damaged other people.

In a soundbite media culture, meaning is distorted and in the political cultural, it’s a deliberate distortion, often dishonestly so. Barack Obama did not make any of the more controversial claims, there’s nothing to indicate he heard them earlier than the rest of us did and it’s perfectly understandable that, in weighing the good Reverend Wright has accomplished in his ministry against the statements that many find upsetting, Obama would defend the man while rejecting some of his opinions.

I have some friends and family members capable of uttering opinions I completely disagree with, yet I love them and would defend them from any who’d conclude they are evil people to be shunned. And it’s certainly time that more people speak up in defense of Reverend Wright. His words exist in response to problems that exist in our world. He is not the creator of those problems, nor does he promote the continuation of the problems he’s noted.

It would be nice if some spoke out of the moral urgency to do so, rather than the social and political expediency of doing so, but either way, silence is the least acceptable. That way is cowardice.

Wright deserves our defense. Obama quite obviously cannot be held liable for sentiments he shuns, and deserves defense as well. And for the adamant fencesitters, silence is consent to the destruction of the Democratic Party. That may seem theoretically acceptable but at this crucial point in our nation’s history, that occurence would amount to a death sentence for far too many: our troops and the Iraqi people especially. Plus all the other economic miseries that would afflict many Americans from the continuation of current Republican economic policies.

The reality is staring us in the face. Grasp it and make a better reality for tomorrow. Sometimes our battles choose us.
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Perspectives from others: Steve Benen, Peterr at Firedoglake, Scarecrow at the same, and Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings.

Barack Obama and me (Todd Spivak, Houston Press) — Spivak covered Obama in Chicago before you knew about him. This is by no means devastating material (or you’d have heard about it before now). But it does take Obama off a pedestal if that’s where you’ve had him. Interesting if only for background on the videotape confessions bill Obama’s (justly, and to his credit) associated with.

Jeremiah Wright on Bill Moyers Journal (pastordan, “Street Prophets”/Daily Kos) — Like pastordan, I found the actual Jeremiah Wright a good deal more interesting and nuanced than the sound bite version.

A Million People Sentenced to Madness (David Luban, “Balkinization”) — Luban notes the implications of a Pentagon “defense” of what’s going on at Guantanamo: it’s the tip of the US prison system iceberg.

Lost over Iran (Eric Umansky, CJR) — Maybe Hillary Clinton should read this — and re-read the Iran NIE from last fall.

Don’t You Know I Got the Bully Boys Out . . . (Jim Henley, “Unqualified Offerings”) — Considers the “diplomacy only works when backed up by force” notion — arguably the number one unexamined assumption of Washington foreign policy.

Euphemism and American Violence (David Bromwich, New York Review of Books) — Considers Rice’s “growing pains” and other verbal atrocities. Bromwich:

Euphemism has been the leading quality of American discussions of the war in Iraq. This was plain in the run-up to the war, with the talk of “regime change”—a phrase welcomed by reporters and politicians as if they had heard it all their lives. Regime change seemed to pass at a jump beyond the predictable either/or of “forced abdication” and “international war of aggression.” Regime change also managed to imply, without saying, that governments do, as a matter of fact, often change by external demand without much trouble to anyone. The talk (before and just after the war) of “taking out” Saddam Hussein was equally new. It combined the reflex of the skilled gunman and the image of a surgical procedure so routine that it could be trusted not to jeopardize the life of the patient. It had its roots in gangland argot, where taking out means knocking off, but its reception was none the worse for that.

Also:

Americans born between the 1930s and the 1950s have a much harder time getting over the shock of learning that our country practices torture than do Americans born in the 1970s or 1980s. The memory of the Gestapo and the GPU, the depiction of torture in a film like Open City, are not apt to press on younger minds. But the different responses are also a consequence of the different imaginings to which people may fall prey. Many who fear that their children might be killed by a terrorist bomb cannot imagine anyone they know ever suffering injustice at the hands of the national security state. This complacency suggests a new innocence—the correlative in moral psychology of euphemism in the realm of language. And if you take stock of how little general discussion there has been of the advisability of pursuing the global war on terrorism, you realize that this country has scarcely begun to take stock of the United States as an ambiguous actor on the world stage.

Thank you (eRobin, “fact-esque”) — to bloggers applauding the continued Democratic primary season:

And the more time they’re out there forced to compete for the votes of the people who want to hear about the candidates’ schemes to reverse the damage of the BushCo years, the better off the Democrats are for November.

Assuming that’s what the candidates talk about, as opposed to obliterating Iran for a hypothetical nuclear attack. But eRobin and those she cites have a point, too.

The Boy Who Cried “Nucular Threat!” (Mick Arran, “fact-esque”) — Arran usually unearths fresh evidence of the class war you and I are losing, but this one is about the Syrian business. It’s always worth being reminded that just about everything these people say is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

Just before the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama answered Philadelphia journalist/blogger Will Bunch about whether an Obama Justice Department would “aggressively go after and investigate whether crimes have been committed.” Obama was forthright about not looking forward to the prospect (and as disappointing as ever on his attitude about impeachment). He even seems to think there’s the possibility that Abu Ghraib, over a hundred dead after interrogation, etc. were perhaps just the result of “really bad policies,” and not “genuine crimes.”

But he doesn’t rule out investigation and prosecution altogether. And note what he’s looking for (emphasis added):

Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law — and I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.

That case can be made, and the legal term of art involved is “consciousness of guilt.” Obama supporters must insist he understands that, and sees to it. More at “newsrack”: “Practice to deceive.”

They say one lie leads to another and it certainly seems true with White House insiders. Now it’s alleged Karl Rove tried to get US attorney Patrick Fitzgerald fired. He was the attorney who jailed Scooter Libby and gave Rove a narrow pass during the investigation into the treasonous outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. And where did this come out? In Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Chicago developer and political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Now House Judiciary committee chair John Conyers has launched an investigation and it’s clear Congressional Democrats smell blood. So far, it’s based on hearsay evidence but now we can see why McCain hasn’t been playing the Rezko card. Because the joker might be Bush’s halfwit.

Rasha Madkour at Associated Press:

CORAL GABLES, Fla. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Sunday called Democratic rival Barack Obama insensitive to poor people and out of touch on economic issues.

The GOP nominee-in-waiting rapped his Democratic rival for opposing his idea to suspend the tax on fuel during the summer, a proposal that McCain believes will particularly help low-income people who usually have older cars that guzzle more gas.

“I noticed again today that Sen. Obama repeated his opposition to giving low-income Americans a tax break, a little bit of relief so they can travel a little further and a little longer, and maybe have a little bit of money left over to enjoy some other things in their lives,” McCain said. “Obviously Sen. Obama does not understand that this would be a nice thing for Americans, and the special interests should not be dictating this policy.”

As you can see, John McCain has now become Robin Hood championing the cause of his newfound poor. Want to really help the poor? Have the government pay off their credit debts. Most of them didn’t intend to default, to get laid off, divorced or ill. A fresh start, like Bear Stearns got for making professional mistakes.

McCain, like most faux-reformers, is making it sound like his offer of spare change is something we should kneel and kiss his ring for.

As a poor man, I’m insulted when politicians like McCain behave this way. Throughout his life, he’s never stood for the poor. And Obama has as a community organizer. What’s that? You say McCain has a temper when his honor’s offended? Good. Then he’ll fully understand why I’d like to slap his face. Both of them.

It’s likely too late to be of use with the PA primary past, but Colbert King explores who’s been more connected to Louis Farrakhan. What remains vital is his discussion of racial attitudes.

(h/t to Earl Dunovant for the link, and for adding some further vital points of his own).

From where I sit, there has been, from the moment Bill Clinton arrived as the first Boomer president, a serious fixation on the turbulent 1960s by Republicans. They cast those confusing years in overly simplistic terms: the Vietnam War was right. Every US troop who fought there was honorable and brave (except John Kerry and Max Cleland). Every opponent of the the war was an angry dirty hippie, quasi-Communist and potential bomber who hates America and would coddle terrorists.

Which is why Obama is a bit of a quandary for them to tackle. They can make no direct connection to sit-ins, protests, Che posters, love-ins, fist-raised Black Power, race riots, flashbacks, draftcard burners, New Age spaciness, nothing. Which only leaves them the task of saying anyone who has taught him, endorsed him, shared a task or social setting with him must also be free of that patchouli and teargas smell or it means Obama is guilty of getting along with all of them, including Charles Manson because he hasn’t rejected Manson specifically.

When will Obama point out that the Republicans are so fixated on re-fighting the battles of 40 years ago that they never seem to grasp the needs of the people today? It’s okay for Paul McCartney to ‘believe in yesterday’ but we need leadership that’s grounded in today.

Frank Rich writes.

You read.

No excerpt can do it justice. It’s all good.

It makes putting up with the insipidly shallow Maureen Dowd in her quest for yet another tiresome metaphor describing the primaries almost tolerable — almost.

Broadcasting Frank Rich across the intertubeZ is enough to justify releasing Dowd from behind the old NYTimes paywall, but if you want to read the best take on the primary process, be thankful that the Times also printed an Op/Ed by Elizabeth Edwards today that reminds both Rich and Dowd that not everyone can really inform themselves about the important issues this election hopes to resolve by surfing the web. Most people rely on the media to tell them more than just who can bowl better.

Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know Barack Obama’s bowling score. We are choosing a president, the next leader of the free world. We are not buying soap, and we are not choosing a court clerk with primarily administrative duties.

Edwards’ critique of the vapidity of media control of the election process is profound, and startling that the Times would give it such a broad platform. Unfortunately the media has learned nothing from it’s cheerleading the war as it uncritically regurgitated White House talking points that proved fictitious, to it’s current fixation on flag pins — the spawn of in-depth analysis of what John Kerry put on his cheesesteak and Al Gore’s preference for earth-tones that so tickled Dowd’s fancy.

Yep, sandwiched in between a spot-on, issues-driven election analysis by Rich, and a searing indictment of what the media does so wrong and so irresponsibly in covering these things by Edwards, is MoDo’s dissection of Hillary and Barack’s eating habits on the campaign trail, carrying on a tradition of dumbing down America — a bright signpost that reads: Vacant.

Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog nails the zeitgeist at the Times today:

In the print Times, this op-ed appears on the same page as Maureen Dowd’s latest column — and in a just world, the very presence of the Edwards column would make Dowd’s column crawl off the page in shame. But that’s not to be. Dowd is the proud embodiment of everything Elizabeth Edwards quite rightly despises:

Now guess which one of these three was invited, along with Broderella, to the Sunday bobble-head shows this morning.

David Broder donned his anthropological pith helmet and embarked on an excursion to the wilds of Mississippi, where he unsurprisingly found confirmation of his astonishingly myopic point of view.

And what did he find in the deepest part of the poverty stricken South? That if Republicans are to prevent their own extinction, they better stop acting like typical Republicans. They better start giving a damn about the economic train wreck 40 years of right and center-right supply-side social Darwinism has wrought.

Broder’s discovery that poor people vote inspires trollish concern that financial devastation in traditional GOP strongholds trumps allegations of slick Democratic bamboozlement and isn’t working like it used to. According to Broder a “fair fight” is to counter John McCain’s “free-market ideas for creating more jobs, improved schools and better health care,” with an attack on his stupidity 30 years ago opposing MLK Day.

There is no mention that McCain and the GOP’s financial plans are hollow empty promises that are being debunked (finally) effectively the by the left on their (lack of) merits, that the Republicans own the recession just like they own the war in Iraq, and that the Democrats need not attack McCain’s character and lack of sensitivity when his ideas are more of the same — and lousy.

No David, a “fair fight” is going directly after McCain’s lack of economic prowess, the out-of-touch, irresponsible exploitation that is the foundation of Republican philosophy which is what Obama (at least) has been doing. It’s fairER and very effective.

Ceiling Cat Sez:

U gotz board in ur eye!

Taek teh board out of ur eye furst dumass.

Naturally, the last thing Broder wants to do is really show us what a fair fight looks like. That would only serve to highlight McCain’s (and Broder’s) complete ignorance of what it is to try and eek out a living beyond the pampered halls of Versailles on the Potomac.

No. Much better to imply that the GOP “get’s it,” just saying it wrong or emphasizing the wrong issues and should offer a more populist message — ignoring the complete lack of substance in their proposals and utter flim-flamery as they dress up like heroes of the masses for the day. They simply cannot credibly preach the Gospel of economic justice while standing in a ghetto, proving they understand distress because they sign up for the guided tours of Selma, Youngstown, the Ninth Ward and the other “forgotten places” they really don’t give a damn about except how a showing of compassion — exploiting the areas once again — might prove they aren’t beneath contempt for their part in laying waste to the people who don’t have lobbyists driving his bus and fighting for their cause.

Che McRove
In his call for the GOP to remove their blinders, Broder offers shiny objects to distract, not address the very real problems this nation faces, chief among them is that governing in a way that only preserves the prerogatives of the pampered is one of the root causes of the disgraceful neighborhoods McCain and Mr. Broder toured in the richest and most powerful nation on earth.

It’s so obvious that we’re in one that even the Republican presidential nominee is providing his Eugene Debs impression in his latest stand-up comedy routine. The lag time provided before the government declares one usually means we’re past one before it gets officially declared, but most Americans don’t need a tardy weatherman to know the wind’s blowing down their doors.

Such recessions have become a regular feature of Republican administrations. Record homelessness was the legacy of the elder Bush’s administration. And Reagan presided over the worst recession since the Great Depression. With the US dollars sunk now to record lows, more than a few economists are signaling that this one could surpass the depth and misery of that Reagan recession.

And the clearest first step to ending it is to end the Iraq War which remains the chief instigator of the excessive speculation driving up oil prices. The claim that it’s driven by irreversible global demand exceeds all logical reasoning and amounts to nothing more than a convenient and lame excuse.

An intolerable amount of misogyny has been evident in some of the electorate and in the media coverage of the Clinton campaign. Yet the most egregious example of women-hating was just institutionalized as a new legacy of the Roberts’ Court, and it gained the subsequent approval of John McCain.

You’d think he’d show more gratitude, considering all that women have done and continue to do for him. But he’s unlikely to see his wife and daughters stand up to his recent choice to endorse unequal pay for the majority of the nation, as it’s unlikely to have any impact on silver-spoon heiresses.

This fits a longstanding pattern of McCain on matters of human rights. It took him seventeen years to recognize his error voting against honoring Martin Luther King, and many years to admit his error in opposing sanctions that helped end South African apartheid. He’s now talking up how he would have spared New Orleans from the ignorance-based governmental response to Hurricane Katrina though in the past three years, he’s voted against several relief measures for its victims.

Just as the controversial Reverend Wright was commended for his military service, McCain deserves recognition for being a one-time hero. It’s become clear since that he’s quick to defend his own honor with a hairtrigger fuse, but he lacks the capacity to defend the honor of women subjected to economic discrimination. He’s effectively signalled to every employer in the country that they’re free to exploit women with lower pay for equal work, should a McCain administration result from next November’s election.

The largest demographic majority in this country are women and all 155+ million of them should remember the cowardly way he abandoned them last week, before they punch their ballots. Even though he’ll likely reverse his stance when he runs for Senate re-election, at the moment, he should be heralded as the one time hero who has continually fallen short of real leadership above his own paygrade of 35 years ago.

FDA Finds Hazardous Levels of Selenium in Samples of “Total Body Formula” and”Total Body Mega Formula”
Dietary supplement products linked to adverse reactions

Federal Authorities Seize More Than $100,000 of Unapproved Drugs Marketed as “Natural Supplements”
Products contain active ingredients in prescription erectile dysfunction drugs

Salmonella Illnesses in Multiple States may be Linked to Recently Recalled Cereal

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced that at least 21 people in 13 states have been diagnosed with salmonellosis that was caused by the same strain of Salmonella that was found in the recently recalled unsweetened Puffed Rice and unsweetened Puffed Wheat Cereals produced by Malt-O-Meal.

April 23, 2008

Allergy Alert on Undeclared Dairy in 11-Ounce Single Serve Silk Soymilk Chocolate Flavor in Plastic Bottles

April 23, 2008

DPH Issues Consumer Warning for Chang Farm Soy Sprouts Because of Bacteria Contamination

April 18, 2008

KFC Issues a Nationwide Allergy Alert, Recalls Unlabeled Double Chocolate Chip Cakes

April 17, 2008

California Department of Public Health Warns Consumers Not to Eat Chaca Chaca Chacatrozo Candy Imported from Mexico

April 16, 2008

Grand Carnival L.L.C Issues Allergy Alert on Undeclared Milk in its “S’morestick Kit”

Pulmuone Wildwood, Inc. Issues Allergy Alert on Undeclared Eggs in Leek and Oriental Noodle Fried Dumplings

How many of you watch the consumer warnings? The information is always available if you have the time and resources to investigate. Lifting the rug covering consumer product failures takes a lot of effort. Marketers are unwilling to allow bad publicity to threaten their paycheck. By the time product failure is exposed, marketers have a positive spin already prepared. By the time consumers are alerted in mainstream media, damage has already piled up. Who determines the number of casualties before consumers are alerted? The current system is filtered by corporate protectionism. This is a dangerous condition that laws have not been effective in preventing. Money drives this condition. Accountability is a thing of the past. The next American administration holds the reins to turn this problem around. Hopefully protecting people will override protecting corporate profit. The focus should be, protecting the consumer is protecting profit.

Maybe we could gain healthier legislation and a whole lot less pompousity.

And the legislative whips could control the passage of legislation via careful climate control over the Capitol Building’s HVAC systems.

Elizabeth Edwards returns to the spotlight with a scathing critique of political journalism in a NY Times editorial:

FOR the last month, news media attention was focused on Pennsylvania and its Democratic primary. Given the gargantuan effort, what did we learn?

Well, the rancor of the campaign was covered. The amount of money spent was covered. But in Pennsylvania, as in the rest of the country this political season, the information about the candidates’ priorities, policies and principles — information that voters will need to choose the next president — too often did not make the cut. After having spent more than a year on the campaign trail with my husband, John Edwards, I’m not surprised.

Why? Here’s my guess: The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country’s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments.

But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture.

It is not a new phenomenon. In 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings — an important if painful part of our history — were televised, but by only one network, ABC. NBC and CBS covered a few minutes, snippets on the evening news, but continued to broadcast soap operas in order, I suspect, not to invite complaints from those whose days centered on the drama of “The Guiding Light.”

She gives a nod to the difficulty other candidates had getting any coverage at all, before being squeezed out of the race:

Who is responsible for the veil of silence over Senator Biden? Or Senator Dodd? Or Gov. Tom Vilsack? Or Senator Sam Brownback on the Republican side?

The decision was probably made by the same people who decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate. Articles purporting to be news spent thousands upon thousands of words contemplating whether he would enter the race, to the point that before he even entered, he was running second in the national polls for the Republican nomination. Second place! And he had not done or said anything that would allow anyone to conclude he was a serious candidate. A major weekly news magazine put Mr. Thompson on its cover, asking — honestly! — whether the absence of a serious campaign and commitment to raising money or getting his policies out was itself a strategy.

I’m not the only one who noticed this shallow news coverage. A report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy found that during the early months of the 2008 presidential campaign, 63 percent of the campaign stories focused on political strategy while only 15 percent discussed the candidates’ ideas and proposals.

That’s 6 out of 7 stories that failed to provide info about policy proposals.

Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.

News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve.

And she advises that we demand more of our news media.

If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. Not by screaming out our windows as in the movie “Network” but by talking calmly, repeatedly, constantly in the ears of those in whom we have entrusted this enormous responsibility. Do your job, so we can — as voters — do ours.

No matter who gets elected, I’m going to miss the chance to vote for her. She would have been a national treasure as our First Lady.