I just got done reading Keith Olbermann's tortured excuse for not calling out Barack Obama on his FISA cave, and frankly, it's as lame as it can get.  Sorry, Keith, but you've sold out to the far right without even realizing it.  Here's why.

Throughout this campaign, you've been doing little or nothing but bash Hillary Clinton for all the wrong reasons.  While the senator supposedly representing New York has undoubtedly made plenty of verbal gaffes and has a poor record of defending the Constitution against the shrub and his gargoyle, you focused your rage exclusively upon her, and for all the wrong things.  One example is her suggestion that the bigot bloc might not vote for Obama, which is true: no matter how much he panders to the far right, no matter how often he bashes blacks to their faces, the bigots in this country simply are not going to vote for a black man for president; they'd sooner cast their ballots for a white woman.  You, however, joined in with those who relentlessly attacked her for pointing out this fundamental truth.

The selling of your soul to the Obamasiah isn't apparent only in your relentless attacks on Clinton; you've failed time and again to jump on your candidate of choice for things you would never have let others get away with.  In a piece by Counterpunch's Gregory Kafoury, the writer reminds us that the senator supposedly representing Illinois has committed a slew of misdeeds on the campaign trail that include:

- Obama announced a new financial team of supply-side economists led by Jason Furman, famous for declaring that it would be "damaging to working people" if Wal-Mart were to raise its wages and benefits.  Obama had recently criticized Clinton for serving on the Wal-Mart board, declaring, "I won't shop there."  In the Audacity of Hope, he sympathized with "Wal-Mart associates who hold their breath every single month in the hope they'll have enough money to support their children."

-When questioned in a Fortune interview about his promise to renegotiate NAFTA to protect workers and the environment, Obama replied, "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."

• In a close congressional primary race in Georgia, Obama endorsed a troglodyte incumbent - a "Bush enabler" - over an exemplary progressive insurgent.

• In a speech to the Israeli lobby, he moved to the right of Israel's government by ruling out negotiations with Hamas.  A day earlier, Obama had told Cuban exile groups that he would only sit down with Raul Castro if the exiles had a seat at the table, a precondition that Cuba will never agree to.

• Obama refused to criticize recent Israeli war maneuvers and accompanying threats to launch massive air attacks on Iran.  He failed to even urge restraint.

• Just as a move was growing in the Senate to strip the House-passed Telecom bill of its immunity provisions, Obama declared his support for the House version.  Obama's opposition to immunity had been our best hope to learn whose phones and emails had been wiretapped by the Bush administration, and to punish those Telecom companies that assisted this massive criminal enterprise.

This last is especially relevant, because while you dismiss Glenn Greenwald's critique of you, the fact remains that you would have ripped into any other prominent politician for caving in to the shrub on FISA and telecomm immunity.  That it happens to be Obama selling out to the far right in exchange for power changes nothing; it's still a craven capitulation to the shrub, no matter how one tries to spin it.

You've lost your impartiality, Keith, and for that you must apologize.  Not only that, you must recognize that it is more important to tell the Truth than to get another corporate whore of a Democrat elected to office.  You're an intelligent man, Keith.  You know as well as anyone else that if Obama will not stand up and defend the Constitution and the rule of law as a senator running for president, he certainly won't do it as president.  I expect to see you on the air from now on, ripping into Obama with all the passion and fury you reserved for the shrub and Hillary Clinton.  The enemy is not confined to the ranks of the Republican Party: it is the entirety of the power structure, and this includes Obama.

You owe it to us, your viewers, to return to the standard you helped set by going after all the powerful, not just those you dislike.

I haven't been disappeared into a CIA torture chamber, if those of you concerned for my wellbeing have been wondering.  I started college again late last month, and it's taken up a lot of my free time.  I'll probably be doing my updates primarily on the weekends for a while.  Anyway, on to business.

Leave it to Paul Krugman to state what should have been obvious from the start:

Maybe I'm wrong, but my sense is that Jason Furman has become a proxy target for some Obama supporters who, now that the Great Satanness has been defeated, are suddenly starting to have the queasy feeling that their hero might be a bit of a .... centrist. I'm tempted to say I told you so; in fact, I guess I just did.

Although Krugman actually likes Furman, I think his remarks are -- as usual -- spot on.  The Obamamaniacs got the presidential candidate they wanted, but now that they've begun to realize they put their hopes in a fraud they're getting nervous.  I would be too, if I suddenly realized I'd thrown my support behind another DLCer and in so doing, helped Democrats lose the White House again.

I have an idea for a health insurance company, one that is sure to work really well. Here's the pitch:

You pay me a fee every month--say, between $500 and $1,000--and I pocket the money. In return, in the event you need someone to cover your medical expenses, I'll tell you in so many words to go fuck yourself, you're on your own. I'll use any excuse to deny your claim, and if one of my employees does the unthinkable and puts me in a position of having to shell out money to pay for your freeloading, I'll send that imbecile to join you on the unemployment line.

I might feel the occasional bout of generosity; I might deign to throw you the occasional bone, just to keep you complacent, and cover some minor thing. But don't expect me to pay for your heart operation. What were you doing wearing it out by making it beat so much, anyway? Don't you know that's a sure-fire way to end up needing surgery at some point? Especially if you don't take care of yourself by eating right and exercising regularly? And you can forget about that cancer treatment. Drugs and radiation treatments cost money. Pay for it yourself. I'm busy counting.

By the way, you can forget about complaining. Even if you manage to get through the array of computers set up to discourage you from lodging a complaint, any human employee is going to give you the runaround, too. Raise too much of a ruckus, and I'll just cancel your policy. That'll show you, you ingrate.

And I won't stop there. Just in case some uppity customer decides this isn't legal, or shouldn't be, I'll use some of the money you pay me every month to bribe politicians in the form of campaign contributions to pass legislation protecting my right to bilk you for those monthly fees. Oh, sure, you might complain. You might even try to vote out corrupt politicians who accept my bribes, but by the time you get off your lazy ass I'll have bought pretty much everyone in D.C. and the fifty states who might be capable or inclined to resist. Let's face it: with campaigns costing more and more money each cycle, politicians listen to those who can fork over a hell of a lot more than that measly ten or twenty dollars you can afford to part with. You're screwed.

Great idea, right? Well, not for you, but we're talking about me. You don't factor into the equation, except as an ever-opening wallet. What's that? You don't think it's so hot a concept? You're right, it isn't. But that's exactly what you buy into whenever you sign up for insurance from companies ranging from Humana to Kaiser Permanente. The only difference between what I pitched to you, and what the health insurance industry tells you, is that I'm being up front about my intentions.

The health insurance industry is the among the biggest and most successful scam operations in the history of the United States. It is set up to get you to pay money in return for almost nothing. And because what little public health care exists is severely underfunded, and qualifications limited only to certain cross-sections of the poor and elderly, this means your options for alternatives are extremely limited. In fact, nearly fifty million Americans have no recourse but to go without insurance, because they cannot afford the premiums (I'm one of them, by the way).

How did all this get started? As Michael Moore pointed out in his excellent documentary, SiCKO (which I blogged about last year), the scam was created when the CEO of Kaiser Permanente at the time had his flunkies meet with then-president Richard Nixon to discuss how the insurance industry could kill three birds with one stone: dismantle what public health care system existed, ensure that it could never return, and become obscenely wealthy in the process. It wasn't long afterward that Nixon pushed through Congress legislation that would fundamentally alter the health care system of the United States--for the worse.

What Nixon and Kaiser rammed through Congress resulted in the creation of the HMO system we suffer today. It's the scam outfit that separates you from your money, while denying you coverage for your medical expenses. And you allow it to go on. Why is this? I could write a dissertation about it, but essentially it all boils down to fear and the dominance of the right in the media on issues such as health care. Professor George Lakoff of Berkley University described in 2005 how conservatives have come to shape and control the national discussion, and get Americans to vote against their own interests. The fear element involves scaring you with horror stories of socialism and the loss of freedom, never mind that you've already given up your freedom.

The problem is compounded not only by the failure of the Democratic Party to oppose this sort of swindle, but in its embrace of the status quo as a matter of policy. While Barack Obama builds up his illusion of progressivism, his actual history suggests he is not prepared to challenge the status quo at all, but merely is all too willing to continue it. Hillary Clinton joins him in being among the top recipients of bribe money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. The two Democratic rivals for the presidency have even taken millions of dollars in bribe money from so-called health professionals. And we all know where Republican John McCain stands on the issue of health care: more of the same.

This is the scam you pay for with your tax dollars, and the money you pay out of pocket. In my next entry, I'll tell you how you can do something about it.

Last night, as I sat at my computer, an unholy stench came into the house and offended my olfactory nerves.  It smelt of sewage, and something worse, but it seemed to come from outside.  We have skunks in the neighborhood, and raccoons, so I assumed one of them had died or otherwise made some kind of mess.  As it turns out. it was something far worse, and profoundly sad.

A few minutes ago I learned that Ernie, the crazy hermit who lived across the street, died some time between Wednesday and yesterday.  I'm betting Wednesday or Thursday, judging by the odor.  The coroner had to be called in after a neighbor called the police to check up on him.  Ernie had been a shut-in, one of those mental cases that collects shit, unopened mail, and assorted garbage over the decades.  It was likely Ernie's corpse I smelled last night as the process of decay took hold--though according to my mother it was more likely the stench of Ernie's collected feces.  Funny thing is, the coroner didn't arrive until after midnight, and by then I was asleep.  I tend to be woken up by sirens and flashing lights, but I guess the sleep of ages had taken hold of me because I dozed right through it.  They all must have come right around the time I turned in for the night, which was after eleven.

I imagine this shall make the newspaper: "Crazy old guy dies in his own filth on Cleveland's West Side."  What a depressing train of thought.  This man, who probably should have been institutionalized decades ago, instead lived in the same house he lived in with his mother and became that most awful of social outcasts, the sort that just becomes the harmless yet deranged individual that maybe a neighbor treats with compassion and sympathy, but everyone else ignores.

How low have we sunk as a society to let this go on?  How many Ernies shall die, undiscovered for days, weeks, months--perhaps even years, having spent their entire lives in squalor and the hell of mental illness?  How long will the Ignored be forced to go without the care they need, before we wake up and start providing it?  They are the Outcast, the Ignored, the Least Among Us.  They are the people Jesus implored us to look after, for we are judged by how we treat them.  Jesus...what would He say to us if He were to return today?  This country, which lies to itself that it is a Christian nation, what would Christ Himself say of us?

But we're not supposed to ask ourselves these questions.  We're not supposed to acknowledge just how cruel, unforgiving, depraved, greedy, selfish, without compassion, apathetic, materialistic, and oblivious we are.  Because if we do, then we accept that at some point we must take responsibility for our crimes, and for those who cannot take care of themselves.

In the meantime, Ernie--and all those like him--go on, needing help but not getting it.  We let them die; we let them expire alone, unloved, uncared for.  We are all guilty of this form of societal murder.

Here's something you'll never hear from any pundit, news reporter, or politician this Memorial Day: an apology.

To all the soldiers who have been maimed and killed in the wars of the Bush-Cheney regime:

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I didn't do more to voice my opposition when it mattered.

I'm sorry I have kept paying for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan with my tax dollars, without doing more to ensure that you had all the equipment and training you needed to stay alive.  I'm sorry I didn't do more to prevent all the money spent so far from being written in the form of blank checks to Halliburton and other war profiteers.

I'm sorry for all the pain, suffering, and death you've had to endure.

I'm sorry you were sent in without a clear mission, without an objective, and without constraints on your behavior so you could avoid being put in the position of committing war crimes on the orders of your inferiors in Washington.

I'm sorry some of you were allowed to be in the military, when your recruiters and training instructors knew you had little or no moral compass, when they knew you might gladly mistreat prisoners at places such as Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.  The actions carried out by these disgraces to their uniforms have tarnished the reputation of the military as a whole.

I'm sorry many of you who were maimed -- mentally, physically, or both -- were tricked out of your health care benefits by a Pentagon so greedy for money that it decided it could get away with fraudulently listing your conditions as pre-existing.

I'm sorry I didn't make a bigger, louder, and more effective effort to call for the impeachment, prosecution, and conviction of those whose lies sent you into the hell of Iraq and Afghanistan with no way out.

To the people of Iraq:

I'm sorry for everything you've had to endure.

It seems everyone is in uproar over Hillary Clinton's remarks about her staying in the race for the Democratic nomination to run for president through the month of June, and her ill-chosen example of Bobby Kennedy--the senator and brother of John F. Kennedy who, like his presidential sibling, was assassinated. The remarks were, of course, in the poorest of taste and they have received all the scorn they deserve. But are the commotions raised by those remarks, the sheer outrage and disgust, for the right reasons?

Clinton could just as easily been talking about herself, and the potential threat of assassination to her own person, as about her rival for the nomination, Barack Obama. That few, if any, seem to realize this is yet another attack on her for all the wrong reasons. Yes, it was insensitive and divisive, hurtful and potentially dangerous, for Clinton to invoke the trauma of Bobby Kennedy's murder in 1968 in making the case that she must remain in contention for the nomination to run for president.

A while back I had made a big stink about the primaries dragging on, because of the damage being done to the Democratic Party by having two massive egos battling it out until August.  But after doing some reading and looking at the last couple of big wins for Hillary Clinton, the latest apparently being in Kentucky, I've come to the conclusion that the former First Lady should stay in this race as long as she thinks she can get the nomination to run for president.  A large part of this has to do with the corporate media having participated in the drive to push her out of this campaign, "for the 'good' of the party and the nation."

The pressure being applied to Clinton to get out of the race is both unprecedented and unjustified,  a solid case made by Eric Boehlert at Smirking Chimp.

Looking back at history, it's hard to find evidence of the same media response to Ronald Reagan's failed 1976 presidential campaign. Taking on President Gerald Ford, Reagan lost more primaries than he won, and Ford won a plurality of the popular vote, but neither man had enough delegates to secure the nomination. So the campaign went to the GOP convention, where Ford prevailed. The bitter battle did nothing to damage Reagan's reputation (in fact, it did quite the opposite), in part because the media did not collectively suggest the candidate was acting selfishly or irrationally. Instead, Reagan walked away with a reputation as a resilient fighter who stood up for his conservative values.

And what about Sen. Ted Kennedy's doomed run in 1980? He trailed President Jimmy Carter by more than 750 delegates at the end of the primary season and insisted on fighting all the way to the convention, where he tried to get committed Carter delegates to switch their allegiance. The press did not spend months during the primary season ridiculing Kennedy, in a deeply personal tone, for remaining in the race.

And what about Gary Hart in 1984? He and Walter Mondale split the season's primaries and caucuses evenly, and neither had the 2,023 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Superdelegates eventually determined the winner. (Sound familiar?) Mondale had many of them locked up even before the campaign season began, so after the final primary between Mondale and Hart was complete, it was obvious that Mondale was going to be the nominee because Hart could not persuade enough superdelegates to change their mind and support him.

When Hart took his crusade all the way to the convention, the media did not form a posse and decide it was their job to get Hart to quit for the good of the party. (And the press certainly didn't form a posse in March to start pushing Hart out of the race.) Nor did the press collectively suggest that Hart had an oversized ego that had turned him into a political monster.

That new media standard has been created exclusively for Hillary Clinton.

It's very difficult to argue with this line of reasoning.  Granted, there is a legitimate case to be made for pressuring Clinton to drop out; her threat to use nuclear weapons against Iran marks her as dangerously unstable, like John McCain.  For that reason alone, she should have done the honorable thing and announced the end of her campaign.  That she hasn't is indicative of her inherent selfishness trumping any and all sense of decency.

But leaving that aside, and doing the delegate math, there are few if any legitimate reasons to expect her to leave the race when all indicators are that she may yet pull off a win at the Democratic National Convention in August.  The ongoing bloodbath between Clinton and Barack Obama is still likely to result in a battered and financially broken nominee losing to Republican John McCain in November.  But that was going to happen anyway, regardless of which Democrat ultimately gets the nod, because of the insistence by both candidates on running to the political right instead of embracing the progressive base.

The only reason left, therefore, is hatred of Clinton that goes beyond all reason.  Not that she hasn't brought a lot of that upon herself, mind you, but still, there's no justification for it.  (As Paul Krugman pointed out in a February New York Times column, Clinton Rules are certainly in full effect.)  And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it all.  Whatever the source of this hatred, it is that more than anything else which drives the agenda to push her out before convention time.

Could it be genuine fear that she might actually manage to get the nomination?  More than that, could it be absolute terror at the prospect that she could actually win against McCain in November with a large enough margin that the outcome wouldn't be in doubt (thus preventing the GOP's electoral fraud machine from claiming a "victory" that can be spun in the media as credible)?  I don't see why, seeing as how even if she becomes president there is no reason to expect she would do any better or worse than Obama -- or, for that matter, McCain.

The answer is right in front of me.  I'm just not able to see it.

The boy just can't seem to stop making an ass of himself, can he?  John McCain, who can't even tell Iraqi resistance fighters from Iranians, can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Iran -- because as far as he's concerned, they're all the same -- is criticizing Barack Obama for perceived foreign policy inexperience because the senator supposedly representing Illinois doesn't see Iran as a threat on the same level as the Soviet Union in its day.

CHICAGO - Republican John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama of inexperience and reckless judgment for saying Iran does not pose the same serious threat to the United States as the Soviet Union did in its day.

McCain made the attack Monday in Chicago, Obama's home turf.

"Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama's inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess," McCain said in an appearance at the restaurant industry's annual meeting.

He was referring to comments Obama made Sunday in Pendleton, Ore.: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela -- these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, `We're going to wipe you off the planet.'"

Let's get something straight here, boy: you can't even tell one Arab group or nation apart from another.  Where the hell do you get off chastising Obama?  And what, may I ask, leads you to think Iran is as big a threat as the old Soviet Union was?  Come on, I know you're a liar, but you're not stupid.  You know as well as anyone else what the National Intelligence Estimate last year declared: that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons; that it abandoned any such attempts in 2003; and that its nuclear ambitions now seem to be geared more toward energy production than weapons.

An honest man might, in attacking his potential opponent over foreign policy naïvety, might have at least taken care to mention the NIE, why he disagreed with it -- based on available evidence, and pointed out any rhetorical flubs that might indicate said potential opponent might engage in talks incompetently.  But John McCain is neither honest, or a man.  He is a liar, a subhuman beast trying to pander his way into the White House by terrorizing the American public.

McCain needs to admit he was lying, apologize for having done so, and drop out of the race for the presidency.  These are the only honorable things he can do.  Anything less is unacceptable.

If the electoral disaster of 2004 should have taught us anything, it's that our votes are wasted when cast for those candidates who represent the status quo and refuse to fight it.  How many of you regret throwing your ballots away on John Kerry?  How many of you did so, knowing in your hearts that you would much rather have voted for someone else, because you felt it was more important to try to oust the shrub than to vote your beliefs?

I did the same thing.  I had voted for Dennis Kucinich in the primary, and I knew Kerry didn't have the stones to win in spite of the inevitable vote fraud the Bush-Cheney campaign was pulling off, but I cast my November ballot for John Kerry anyway.  I admit, I screwed up that year.  I had voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, a protest vote, because I believed then as I do now, that the only fundamental difference between the two major political parties today is one of competence.  The GOP is inept at, well, everything except committing crimes and getting away with them.  The Democrats are surprisingly effective at everything except committing crimes and getting away with them.  That's all.

I watched, growing up, as the party of the New Deal abandoned all pretense of remaining true to its principles to join the corporate-conservative DLC in embracing Republican policies.  By 2000 I had had enough.  I would no longer vote along party lines.  Although a registered Democrat, if I thought a Green or a non-aligned progressive could do the job, I voted for that person.  So, full of defiance, I cast my ballot for Ralph Nader in 2000.

And yet I "repented" that action a mere four years later.  Not because I had ceased to believe in what the man stands for, but because I had partaken of the 'Anybody But Bush' wafer.  Not all of it, mind you.  Just a tiny nibble, after the primary season was over.  I suppressed the urge to vomit, poked the hole in the punch card, and hoped I hadn't made a huge mistake.

Except I had made a mistake, the same one so many Democrats continue to do even after nearly three decades of unbroken conservative misrule in government.  I had compromised my principles, thrown away my vote.  I watched in disgust and horror as CBS interviewed Black voters, who told us how they had watched their Kerry votes flipped over to the shrub and his gargoyle before their very eyes, on those unholy Diebold election-rigging machines.  I watched and shook my head at the party for Kerry in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, as the results went from a solid victory for the Democrats to a bare margin of fraudulent triumph for the shrub.  Another election had been stolen, I knew.  My last and only hope was that Kerry would fight it.  The next day, that hope was dashed.  The Democratic granny candidate had capitulated.  Again.

Needless to say, I've learned my lesson since then.  No more will I hand my vote to someone who never has and never will earn it.  Oh, sure, you might ask; aren't I just throwing my vote away?  I've done that, but not in the way you might think.

My vote for Kerry was wasted because of one, unalterable truth: the only wasted votes are those not cast, or those cast for candidates who don't represent our interests.

Those who say we cannot vote our beliefs because our preferred candidates "can't win" subscribe to the notion that voting our beliefs doesn't win elections.  But as the 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and soon the 2008 elections have shown, this is nonsense.  We lose when we compromise our principles, and win when we embrace them.  The so-called experts have it all backwards, and deliberately so.

Former member of British Parliament Tony Benn said, in Michael Moore excellent documentary SiCKO, that if people in America and Great Britain were to turn out and vote in large numbers it would be a truly democratic revolution.  And he's right.  If voter turnout were anything like what it is in European states such as France, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian states, and so forth, can you imagine how the political landscape would be altered?  Can you imagine what would happen in elections if, during the primary season, voters cast their ballots based on choosing the candidates of their preference instead of who we're told to vote for?

The powerful can, and do, which is why they work so tirelessly to suppress the vote, to discourage us from casting our ballots the way we want.  The powerful would lose the only thing that really matters to them: power.  It's why men and women of principle, such as Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Cynthia McKinney, Cindy Sheehan, and Ralph Nader are marginalized and excluded from presidential debates -- shoved aside in favor of corporate whores who beat the drums of war on the orders of their sponsors.  It's why Diebold rigs its machines to favor certain political parties, state secretaries purge legally registered voters from the polls, and state legislatures pass laws designed to prevent certain types of people from voting.

All of it is set up to prevent true socioeconomic reform from ever again coming to pass.  It wasn't enough for movement conservatives to dismantle the New Deal; they had to make sure it could never happen again.  That's why your vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is such a waste.  Neither of them is ever going to rock the boat, try to change the status quo.    They're both from the DLC, the Trojan Horse whose sole purpose is to cripple the progressive movement from within the Democratic Party.  No matter which of the major political party candidates you vote for this year, you're voting to keep things as they are.  You're doing as you're told, which is exactly what the powerful want you to do.  The message you send when you do that is that you are content with the status quo, even if you're not.

Your vote for Ralph Nader, or Mike Gravel, or the Green Party candidate, your ballot for Dennis Kucinich as a Democratic write-in, that is the only real power you have.  The purpose of it is not to win in spite of a system rigged to favor the establishment every single time, though with hard work and unwavering dedication we may one day see that happen.  The purpose of your protest vote and mine is to send a message of defiance: "You do not own our votes.  We give them to those who do.  If you want them, you'll have to earn them or just keep on taking them.  But we shall never just give our votes to you."

How many of you, dear readers, have read Orwell's 1984?  How many of you read the Party's lessons about power?  Do you recognize what true power is?  It's not in keeping a boot on the face of humanity, grinding us into the dirt forever; it's in Defiance.  When you cast your ballot for the candidate of your genuine choice, you are choosing to defy a system that was set up to crush you, to keep you buried in the mud, groveling for what scraps the powerful deign to throw you.

Why do you think hatred of Ralph Nader runs so strong?  It's not because he is perceived as having stolen votes that belonged to Al Gore in 2000, or John Kerry in 2004.  We who are wise know that no political party owns our votes.  The hatred burns so brightly because when we cast our ballots for him we are denying the powerful something they want but cannot steal.  Oh, sure, they can prevent us from voting, or reduce our options so that we can only make the choices they want us to.  But it's not the same as us giving them our votes of our own free will.  They want, no, they need you to accept them, their way of thinking.  The powerful cannot be powerful unless you hand your power to them willingly  That's what motivates the Party described by George Orwell in 1984: the irrational need to be loved and accepted no matter what.  When we vote for third party candidates, we reject everything the establishment represents.  And rejection is the worst thing any of us can inflict upon the powerful.

Defiance.  That is real power.  Use it or lose it.

The Politico gives us the transcript of the dictator's latest interview (if, by "interview", you mean yet another tedious exercise in reportorial fellatio).

The shrub lies about what his regime has done about the environment, acknowledges Global Warming, says others have to do the work on fixing it before the U.S. can even get involved, and lies again about why he's done nothing.

Q: I wonder if in your eight years in office what the changes have been, in your view, of climate change?

THE SHRUB: I think it's been more clearly defined as a problem. But what hasn't changed is the realistic notion that new technologies are going to be the solution, and the fundamental question is how do you grow the economy at the same time, and at the same time encourage new technologies. And my administration has done more for the new technologies necessary to change our lifestyles without sacrificing wealth than any other administration.

Q: For the record, is global warming real?

THE SHRUB: Yes, it is real, sure is. But the solutions -- having said that, the solutions have got to be measured and realistic -- you can't have a solution to global warming unless China and India are part of any international pact. It's one of the reasons I didn't accept what's called the Kyoto Protocol, and therefore was labeled as anti-environment. I'm a realistic guy. If the major emitters of greenhouse gases are not a part of a solution, then those who are part of a solution are acting in a way that's simply not going to -- it will affect their own economies, but it won't affect the overall global warming issue.

So, yes, I put forth a very realistic, straightforward program that makes sense.

Q: Acknowledging those constraints, you're an oil man -- some people say that climate change, global warming could have been your Nixon-to-China. Do you wish you'd done more?

THE SHRUB: I did what I think is necessary to actually work, Michael. I mean, I could have signed a -- I could have supported a lousy treaty and everybody would have went, "Oh, man, what a wonderful sounding fellow he is." But it just wouldn't have worked. I don't think you want your president trying to be the cool guy and not end up with policies that actually make a difference.

So the policies I've outlined are policies that will actually make a difference: nuclear power for generating electricity; battery driven cars; ethanol. There's a variety of initiatives -- clean coal technology -- all of which will help us sustain our economic vitality and at the same time be better stewards of the environment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24588813

Volunteering on Frank Jackson's campaign for mayor of Cleveland in 2005, I was not surprised to hear a very unpleasant and vulgar word beginning with the letter 'n' used two different times. Still irritated, to be sure, but not surprised. Cleveland is a prime example of a town where racism still flourishes. This is why Obama's tossing of his former pastor under the proverbial bus did absolutely no good, and may have even hurt his campaign in the long run. Obama cannot separate himself from his African roots no matter how hard he tries, no matter how white and nonthreatening he tries to make himself to white people. Obama was never going to get the bigot vote. Yet he thought he could simply by making a few speeches.

It saddens, but doesn't surprise me that some of his followers are shocked to see racism alive and well on the campaign trail. No, their candidate cannot work miracles, cannot simply talk his way past hatred or heal racial divides by dissing his own as angry old relics. But why are these folk shocked? The other night I was having a political argument with my friend and mentor about Jeremiah Wright. He thinks Wright is a racist because the preacher believes AIDS may have been an invention of the white man to use against Blacks. While I disagree, and don't think that is the case (no one would be crazy enough to create a virus that destroys the human immune system and think it wouldn't affect everyone instead of just one group), I can see -- given our history of experimentation with contagions and upon humans -- why Wright and others like him might not think it such a far-fetched theory. And that appears to be the only thing my friend thinks makes Wright a racist. Never mind that false preachers such as Hagee, Falwell, and Robertson have actually blamed America for things such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and other major disasters -- all for imagined crimes of immorality.

The point is that just because Barack Obama waves his oratorical magic wand and declares an end to racism in politics doesn't mean his snake oil pitch has worked, and no one should be expressing any surprise over this.

Assuming Barack Obama actually gets the nomination (we cannot rule out Clinton somehow nabbing it at the brokered convention), I think there are perhaps three politicians who could possibly add to his ticket going into the general election:

John Edwards - His populist talk and devotion to working class issues, combined with his skills as an attorney, make him an ideal vice presidential candidate.  He managed to sell himself as one in 2004, and although he didn't get enough footing to remain in contention for the nomination this year he still has a base of supporters who could help bridge the divide between Obama's followers and Clinton's.  But this is unlikely, because Edwards is an economic populist, and corporate Democrat Obama blew it big time when he tried to finagle an endorsement only to end up angering Donna Edwards by attacking her husband's health care plan.

Christopher Dodd - Dodd has the stones to go toe to toe with adversaries on the campaign trail, and he has shown leadership in the Senate by shaming Obama and Clinton into voting against one of the appropriations bills for the occupation of Iraq.  I see no reason why he couldn't make a strong ally on the campaign trail.

Bill Richardson - Although I don't think he'll add much to an Obama ticket going into November, his executive experience is desperately needed in the White House.  He could be seen to help the senator make a case that he can bring in people who know the ins and outs of governing (as opposed to legislating).

Assuming Hillary Clinton manages somehow to get the nomination at convention, I see only two potential candidates who could possibly help her win in November:

Ted Strickland - Although he has only been governor of Ohio for roughly a year and a half, he has shown he can get things done.  He has also demonstrated an ability to get the GOP in the Buckeye State's legislature to play ball on things like the budget.

John Edwards - This is a somewhat unlikely pick considering the former senator from North Carolina is an economic populist and Clinton is an economic conservative whose support of NAFTA is likely to continue should she win the White House.  But the two of them are closer on important issue such as health care than either of them are to Obama, and while Edwards did go after her on the campaign trail he didn't make it personal like the Illinois senator has.

Regardless of which Prima Donna ultimately gets the Democratic nomination, the only way to add to the ticket is to pick a populist vice presidential candidate, or one with executive experience.

Thanks to Sarah Lane at EENR for supplying the links in this entry.

When the Supreme (Kangaroo) Court upheld an unconstitutional poll tax last week that was passed in the form of a voter suppression law in Indiana, some people (like Injustice Antonin Scalia) were quick to dismiss the horrendous effects. But as that state held its primary yesterday, reports about voters being turned away because they did not have the poll tax began coming out.

Twelve elderly nuns--NUNS, for crying out loud--were told they could not vote because they didn't have the required state or federal ID card. They are all in their eighties and nineties. Vietnam and Gulf War I veteran Russell Baughman was denied his right to vote, because his identification wasn't considered good enough.

People unable to obtain the draconian Indiana poll tax ID--nuns, veterans, the disabled, students, and poor folk--are being denied their right to vote. Denied because they cannot meet the requirements to obtain state-issued identification. Bradblog reports that in order to obtain the necessary items to get a state-issued identification card (a state-issued copy of one's birth certificate), a state-issued identification card is needed. It's a vicious and ultimately dangerous catch-22, making it impossible for the disenfranchised to meet the poll tax requirement. Bradblog also reports that at least 43,000 Indiana residents have been prevented from exercising their right to vote in this fashion.

This is what the Supremes upheld, ladies and gentlemen. Twenty states, including Ohio, have mandatory ID laws designed to suppress the votes of minorities, the elderly, students, veterans, and the poor (an economic situation that affects all the other categories of disenfranchised to one degree or another). Although the Buckeye State was able to counter this in part by allowing fewer restrictions on absentee voting, others--including Indiana--enjoy no such protections. This is what America has come to: another banana republic, another dictatorship, that suppresses the rights of its citizens and engages in sham elections.

I've been trying, in my humble way, to help jump-start a renewed Progressive Party presence.  But a question that is often asked of me is why not just join the Green Party.  I could go into a long and detailed explanation, but the short of it is that I don't think they're very organized and some of their campaigning methods rub me the wrong way.  (For the record, the reason I don't say much about the Libertarian and Socialist Parties is because I don't know enough about their organizational structure or their methods of campaigning to make an informed assessment.)

First, my distaste for the Green Party's methods in campaigning.  As reported by CBS News, they accepted money and assistance in 2006 from then-senator Rick Santorum of the Republican Party in order to get on the ballot.  The state's high court threw candidate Carl Romanelli off the ballot citing insufficient signatures, but the story exposed an even deeper rot within the Greens' political machine in Pennsylvania: the willingness to be compromised just to try to stick it to the Democrats, whom Greens consider little or no better than the GOP.

There is, of course, a valid argument to be made in claiming there is difference between the two major political parties.  One need only look at the voting records of the two Prima Donna Democrats competing for their party's nomination to run for president, and the complicit cowardice by most Congressional members in either chamber, to see the truth in this point of view.  But for the Greens to accept help from a GOPer so vile as to have had post-anal sex discharge named after him reveals both a lack of integrity and a sickening display of hypocrisy.  Such actions add otherwise undeserved legitimacy to charges by Democrats that greens are somehow bent on "stealing" votes they feel belong to their party.

Then there is the organization of their campaigns for national office.  Or, rather, the lack of organization.  As I have pointed out in my recent three-part series on Progressives, Liberals, Movements and Political Parties, trying to run presidential candidates before having secured enough state-level offices (especially state secretary, judicial, and legislative positions) waste resources that are better spent building up presences in the various states so as to achieve the ability to gain traction at the national level.  What good does it do to run candidates for president when the Green Party hasn't even made headway winning state legislative and executive offices first?

That's why I think it's better to rally the Progressive Movement through its own namesake political party.  I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't work with Greens; since their platform so closely matches that of the overall Progressive Movement, they make natural political allies and might even be tempted to switch over.  But I think as long as some elements in the party are willing to help Republicans, and as long as the party leadership insists on trying to build the party in a more top-down manner, their effectiveness as a political party is severely limited.