The election isn't over, taking Wisconsin doesn't mean he can win a big northeastern old Democratic state. Last night should be a helpful wakeup call that, logic be damned, Clinton isn't getting out of the race and her supporters are just as fired up as Obama's.  It's time to realize that capitulation isn't going to happen and figure out how to end this primary in a way that paves the road to victory in November.

First of all, we need to stop telling each other what we want to hear.  KOS isn't helping anyone by massaging the numbers until they're purple showing how each Clinton win is another brick in the road to eventual Obama victory.  Yes, Pennsylvania actually helped Barack get closer to his magic number and NO, super delegates are not going to swarm to Hillary but...

IS IT TIME FOR BARACK OBAMA TO PROVE HE IS A UNITER - YES

My wife and I are the political junkies in our families.  The other day I got a call from my niece, who is a communications major:  She is going to interview Chelsea Clinton at her college and she wants me to give her some good questions... WTF, I'm just an uncle, your a REPORTER!

Anyway, everyone knows that I have been a staunch Hillary supporter and living in Pa. I am always involved in our primary campaigns.   So this morning I get an email from my nephew who has been an Obama supporter since Iowa.  He attached a video of Barack Obama's pastor going off on the "rich white man" in general and HRC in particular.  We've all seen it as well as others so I won't give it a link.  Keep in mind this is a poly-sci graduate from a good school a year into working for our local Democratic state rep, so he is prime-time B.O. demographic.  

I was surprised at his concern and this is what I wrote back:

I have been a long-time supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton (AKA Alpha-Babe) but events of this morning have chilled me to the bone.  I can't imagine anything more coldblooded and calculating as the manipulations of the Clinton/Clinton Campaign for World Domination (CCCFWD as we call it at the meetings).   Still I have stood silently as "Ca-Ca-KaFwuddd"(that's how we pronouce it at the meetings) systematically acted to slander MLK, disparage the theme song of "Good Times" and plant actual crack heroin (Opps, we didn't do that one yet) on Mr. Obama (who we all secretly adore but gleefully attack after years of Orwellian mind control torture).

However, this morning I recieved a "memo" involving a sinister plot SOOO heinious that, that I had to make it known to the world.   Here is that "secret memo"...

Per Chuck Todd on this mornings MSNBC Morning Joe, John Edwards will use his mike in New Orleans today to bow out of the race.   This should finally answer the question of who will inherit the very significant and motivated Edwards supporters.

Barack Obama the Great Uniter, the Prime Minister of Hope is finding himself trapped in a race that has become ALL about race.   It is frustrating seeing this outstanding young politician boxed into the one corner he can't fight out of but my empathy is tempered by the fact that this is a snare of his own design.

Obama was on top of the world less than a month ago:  he had taken Iowa from the annointed candidate Clinton.   He pulled this off by energizing thousands of younger dems, younger women and independents.   He did it with white voters...he had no choice in one of the whitest states in the Union.

Then he went to New Hampshire, palms thrown at his feet.   But for the first time in his life...he lost an election...and he lost his cool.

For neigh on 4 years I've come to this special cubby hole to listen to and occasionally argue with people who basically shared my hope for our Party and our Country.  Lately, however I don't think this is a party (small 'p') that I enjoy much anymore.   Oh, not to a GBCW extreme...that's just for attention seekers anyway.  No, I expect this place will find it's groove again, but it certainly can't come soon enough for me.

As a child of the seventies I grew up thinking "Shuckin' and a Jivin'" was a clever lyric from a sitcom theme.  A sitcom about black people on network TV - back when you had sitcoms about black people on network TV.   Just this week I've found out that is an offensive phrase.  Moreover, whenever I may have used it in casual conversation (not often, but I must confess to using it often enough to remember that I had) I was being insensitive in my ignorance.

I really am sorry...I'll try to go on.

When I remarked to someone that there seemed to be an "arbitrary" line that bumbling white-male idiots like me inadvertantly cross I was informed by a helpful commenter that it was offensive to the extreme to insinuate that the line was "arbitrary".  That being the case I would love some help defining what this very "non-arbitrary" line...

George W. Bush and every one of his minions from the peak of Mt. Doom downward have insisted since the inception of "The Surge" that there is and never will be a "Plan B".  Of course anyone knows that is "Bullshit".

Of course Bushco. has a Plan B and it's been the endgame of "The Surge" all along.  In fact significant, measurable success of the presumptive "Plan A" would have been a surprisingly unexpected inconvenient truth.   General Petraeus  knows the endgame, Dick Cheney knows the endgame and David Gates knows it because he cribbed it right from the old man's (Bush the Elder) playbook.  No one else in Washington is privy to Plan B including Condi because they simply wouldn't get it...this plan makes as much sense to those with the "Bush Gene" as it perplexes those without:

To set this up: this A.M. I was checking the "Daily Prophet" of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (Dredge...duh...) to see what the this mornings meme from Darth Rove was when a blip caught my eye.   The lead mentioned that Michael Smerconish was being considered by MSNBC for Don Imus' chair.   That would seem to make sense as the stench of ignorance in Don's studio wouldn't be at all offensive to the bald toady from Philly but when I clicked on the link it simply took me to a generic radio station webpage that wasn't even dedicated to Smerconish.   I now wonder if in fact he was even being considered for the job OR was Dredge inventing the reality to push his crony?   Well, it seemed like a good idea so maybe we should adopt it, get proactive and try to get a legitimate Progressive on the morning lineup.

...in two weeks thanks to Ed Rendell and Bob Casey.  I live the PA-18 and actually tried to support the Chad Kluko Kampaign right after the primary but frankly they didn't get back to me for weeks after I signed up online to volunteer.  This is a common problem with Dems and one of the weak links that we have to shore up if we are to match and beat the red campaign machine.   I ended up throwing a lot of money to Jason Altmire in the nearby PA-04 and I think he is a great campaigner.

That said, Kluko may benefit from a huge turnout by dems voting for Rendell and Casey and this may be a trend that helps us in several states.

Real short, meaningless thread here...in fact it's more a filliment than a thread.  A diary about nothing really.  Just venting about the recent rash of Troll ratings being thrown around for one reason only.  

Defending Rumsfeld?  No, even real Trolls don't do that anymore.

Espousing racism?  Naw, anti-semitism and hispano-phobia seem quite popular here these days as long as it is properly dress up.

Denying the infallibility of the Muslim "street"...BINGO!!

A lot of hand-wringing has been going on lately about the horrid state of affairs in the Gaza strip.  Since we, as liberals, naturally look first at the needs and conditions of the downtrodden we focus on the miserable little people who's lives amount to nothing in the wasteland between the Israel they scorn and the Arab world that scorns them.  Unfortunately they are discovering a fact that we understand all too well because of our own experiences right here in  the USA.  

To paraphrase a popular headline from 2004:
HOW COULD 1,376,289 PEOPLE BE SO STUPID?

This is going to be real short and the ending is sweet.  Joe Leiberman will pull out of the Conn. Senate race by October 1st and it will be entirely because the netroots took action and have framed the debate squarely as No-Mentum Vs. Te Democratic Party.   This isn't progressive against conservative/appeaser policy, this won't even have anything to do with Iraq.  This will have everything to do with the one thing that all campaigns come down to.....

While global warming naysayers are touting a, potentially, milder, Carribean hurricane season China is feeling the punch of it's worst typhoon season ever.  Perhaps they learned from FEMA's mistakes during Katrina but so far it appears they are handling things in much better fashion.  THUS FAR:

The most powerful typhoon to hit China in five decades slammed into its southeastern coast Thursday, destroying hundreds of homes and battering the region with rain and wind after more than 1.3 million people were evacuated, state media reported. At least two people were killed.

Typhoon Saomai was the eighth major storm to strike China in this summer's unusually violent typhoon season. Torrential rains were forecast in the next three days as it churned inland across crowded areas where Tropical Storm Bilis killed more than 600 people last month.

 Israeli aircraft blasted main roadways north of Beirut for the first time in the three-week conflict on Friday, knocking out four key bridges.   This seems to signal a shift in strategy as the IAF struck key infrastructure in Lebanon's christian heartland.

Okay, this makes no sense unless Israel wants to isolate southern Lebanon even more than it is now.  Why?   I don't know but there are more than one possible explainations.

Howard Dean was in Pittsburgh today stumping for a terrific Dem challenger to Delay sockpuppet Melissa Hart for the PA-04 seat by the name of  Jason Altmire   .  I will talk more about Mr. Altmire below the fold but what I want to headline is how it felt to be part of a real party.   Howard Dean has taken a lot of flack for taking the battle to the enemies turf but what they don't get at the DLC and the DCCC and the DSCC is that there are no "Red" Districts.  We have democrats everywhere and we can win everywhere.  The most important tool in our arsenal and what we have so completely gotten away from the past thirty years is putting the "party" back in the Democratic Party.

Okay, I am going to get the full-blown flamethrower treatment aimed at me but I am really getting unhinged by the ridiculous, conspiracy theories that are being tossed around this blog with zero evidence.   While Israel may be a flawed social experiment, it is also the only stable democracy in the middle east and it deserves the same secure borders as the autocratic fuedal states that surround it.   The devastation that Israel has brought on Lebanon is horrible and defies our pampered sense of humanity and time may prove the IDF has acted in an irresponsible and malicious way.  However, facts on hand clearly lead to the conclusion that Israel is fighting for it's very survival as we speak and is thus acting accordingly.   Some of us may not appreciate that this is "The Big One"...but I think it is and I am scared.

First of all my apologies to Eye On Wisconsin.  I wanted to post this on his
"Wisconsin Supports Civil Unions" thread but it was fast falling down the diary list and I felt this was important enough to bump.  His diary clearly makes the case that "protection of marriage" and "civil unions" are seperate issues in the minds of most Americans.  My wife has been telling me for years that the simple solution is to give marriage to those who invented it as a sacrement in the first place: let "Marriage" as a legal term belong to unions of a man and a woman.  Let "Civil Unions" be binding legal relationships between a gay couple.   If Dems would propose a "Definition Of Marriage Act" that clearly spelled out that fundies get what they want and lefties get what they want it could be a great win-win for the party while codifying "marital" rights for all Am ericans.  Democrats can and should protect "Marriage" while doing the right thing for all Americans.