We're Moving - 7 Days To Go

By Cernig

In seven days - 1st April - we're moving to our new home at newshoggers.com, with a spiffy new look designed by our own Shamanic. We're finishing up the new site now and content will be mirrored there for the next week. After that, this blogger site will become simply an archive for our past posts and we'll put up a post redirecting readers to our new home.

We're really looking forward to this move, as it will radically improve the things we can do with Newshoggers going forward.

So get ready to update your readers, bookmarks and blogrolls. Newshoggers is on the move.

Stop it already

by shamanic

I will vote for the Democratic nominee, but this kind of stuff is an admission of defeat and tells me that the candidate in question should bow out now. I don't know how else to read it. "If we substitute some other metric for the actual way we do things, clearly my candidate would win!"

Quit it. If your campaign has now conceded there's no way to win, it's time to drop out.

And again: I will vote for the eventual nominee, so if that isn't what the campaign is saying, feel free. But if there's no way for Candidate A to win at this late date, Candidate A should withdraw.

An ephipany on the primaries

By Libby

I realized what is really bothering me about progressive bloggers who have gone partisan in the primary battle. Obama supporters seem to spend more time talking about Clinton and vice versa for Clinton supporters, than their own preferred candidates. Meanwhile, it's like the disaster otherwise known as conservative politics and the GOP has ceased to exist.

Checking the buzz today I see my plea for unity has had a negligible effect. Skippy noticed it too and has this to say.

but to mark's question: yes, you did miss the memo, mark. the left side of blogtopia (and yes, we coined that phrase) did agree a few months ago to abandon principled debate in favor of duplicitiousness, invective and logical fallacies in lieu of actual points and structured argument.

we're sorry, we didn't keep the memo, so we can't really tell you exactly when this was decided, but we're pretty sure it was sometime early in the primary season.

that's when lefty's decided it was not only all right to utulize the same unprincipled screaming tactics to pollute public discourse as the righties, but it was also quite acceptable to use them against fellow progressives.

My unity plea engendered a private email exchange among a few bloggers and the critical response surprised me. So let me add to skippy's observation, an abbreviated summary of what I told that group in one last attempt to find some comity.

I don't love either Democratic candidate but despite my own protestations to the contrary from last year, I'm going to vote for the Democrat no matter who it is because another four years of Republican administration, especially under McCain, would destroy anything remaining that is good about this country.

Presuming we can prevent that, no matter who is elected, we are not going to get the progressive agenda we want. Politicians lie, all of them. They tell you what you want to hear, but they don't deliver much. Did we get what we thought we would out of 06? What makes anybody think that's going to be different in 08? Whoever gets in, we're still going to have to fight for our agenda every step of the way. With a Democrat, any Democrat, at least we have a better chance of succeeding. I would think that would be more important than which Democrat it ends up being.

I'm not suggesting self-censorship so much as I'm saying to choose our battles well, and deploy our ammunition wisely in furtherance of the long term goal. Nobody can blog about everything. We consciously choose our topics on any given day, so why not choose to spend our energy targeting the final opponent, the Republican, instead of sniping at the guys on our side, one of whom will ultimately carry our banner into the deciding contest?

Ask yourselves if any of these points of disagreement that we now have with each other are going to feel all that important if McCain ends up appointing the next Supreme Court justice and comes on teevee to announce he just had to bomb Iran because the AQ are there. As far as I can see, as long as we're sniping at our own candidates, we're doing the wingnuts' oppo work for them.

If you believe in your candidate so much that you want to vehemently support them, fine, but how hard is it to promote them by highlighting their superiority to the GOP candidate, instead of why they're superior to the other Democrat? The contest is so close either one could end up pulling this out. We have a named GOP opponent who is running to beat all of us, and whose transgressions are being ignored and excused by his free booze addled, barbecue bribed press corps.

As far as I can see, when someone makes their case by tearing down another Democrat instead of targeting the Republican, they're building a frame for the GOP, not advancing progressive values. For myself, I'm going to choose to let the primary play out as it will on our side and start building a narrative for the contest that really matters in November. I see the next three months as an opportunity to defeat McCain before he gets out of the gate. I'm going for it.

This isn't about Democratic loyalty. I have none and come mid-November I'm happy to bash the Democrats when they fail to advance progressive values. But it's clear to me that McCain has sold his soul to the same neo-cons who have propped up our present administration for the last seven years. We can fight against McCain, or we can fight with each other. I'm sure I don't need to point out which choice advances the progressive values I thought we all shared.

Searching for unity in Leftopia

By Libby

Leftopia is making me crazy. I don't recognize this place anymore. The bickering over the Democratic nomination has created a murderous din that is going to kill us in November and spare me the bromides about how this is politics as usual and it's no nastier than it ever was. It is nastier than I have ever seen it in Leftopia and it's destructive. There's well over a dozen bloggers who I used to love that I can't read anymore. There is something very wrong when I see their posts on Memeorandum and it's mostly right wing bloggers that are linking to them -- approvingly.

If we wait until August to mend our fences, it will be too late. Am I the only one that foresees these blogs and YouTubes being traded by the Hillary-Obama partisans now, being used by the wingers against us once the nomination is settled? I see a lot of speculation about who the rightwing smear machine really wants to run against. I don't think they give a flying leap. We've given them plenty of ammo to use against either candidate and they're united in their hatred against us.

I say we, because I've been guilty of the same thing and I'll admit I mostly targeted the Clinton campaign but I've become really uncomfortable about Hillary bashing. If she wins the nod, I don't want to feel stupid for helping McCain get in because I spent too much time trashing her tactics. Those who spent more energy trashing Obama might consider the same.

It doesn't matter if the campaigns themselves use our words or not, internet archives are forever and the greater noise machine will use them against us. I can see the blog posts and viral emails and hear the radio spots now, quoting whoever and saying, "see, even their own party faithful agree." We won't win the White House by harping on the shortcomings of our own candidates.

While it's true the the vast majority of the electorate is not going to be swayed by bloggers, to some extent the candidates are adopting blogger talking points. We have an opportunity here to show them how to wage this battle for the nomination constructively. If you're excited by one or the other, that's great and pump up your man or woman to the max, but do it by telling the people why they're better than McCain, not by tearing down the other Democrat.

For myself, I don't care who wins the damn nomination. I only care that a Democrat gives the next State of the Union address. I've made a personal pledge to spend the time between now and the convention bashing McCain and the GOP agenda. I'm not going to say another negative word about either Democratic candidate. I hope my fellow Leftopians will join me.

Update By Cernig
Skippy says he's said pretty much the same and Dan Collins' prodigious intellect provides the requisite incentive.

The incomparable suck of daylight savings

by shamanic

Just my standard gripe about the idiocy of suddenly changing our clocks twice a year. Really, the older I get, the longer it takes my body to adjust, and I don't even have an office to get to in the morning or, for the most part, timed responsibilities.

I can't even say how this happens, but I get thrown for such a loop that my schedule does this: before daylight savings, I'm in bed around midnight and up around 7:30. After daylight savings, I'm up until about 3am, and awake around 11.

LEAVE THE CLOCKS ALONE!!!

Spitzer And The Prositutes

By Cernig

Accusations against Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, after being caught on a wiretap arranging for a high-priced call-girl, are tearing up the blogosphere.

I'll repeat my own reaction in response to allegations that John McCain was having a relationship with a blonde lobbyist:

Sex is solely the business of the three people involved and the shop that sold them the equipment.

It should only become a matter for public concern if the individual has built his position of power upon a claim to the high ground in matters of sexual morality or where the sexual favors have been recriprocated by political or business ones.

Their Inner Lieberman

By Cernig

Pachacutec over at FDL today has a long hard look at bloggy progressive support for Dem candidates, which leaves him waiting for the other shoe to drop.

we have no progressive candidate. We have no Wellstone, no Feingold, no ideologically based movement person. My question is this: which of these candidates is more likely to reveal an inner Lieberman of some form once in power? I don't have an answer. People can believe what they choose to believe, but both candidates have Liebermanish historical tendencies and both propel narratives reminiscent of Lieberman, the earlier years.

Thier "inner Lieberman". That deserves to enter the lexicon. It puts very well what my own problems are with both Obama and Clinton.

The rest of the post is an empassioned and well-argued appeal to bloggers and their commenters to drop their antagonistic rivalry - so conducive to the catapulting of Republican propaganda - and return to a position of holding all candidates' feet to the fire for the better of the progressive movement rather than one candidates electoral chances.

The ultimate question I will have for supporters of either candidate during these days of pie fights will be, whoever gets power, what will you hold your winning candidate accountable for once in office, assuming s/he wins? If your winner gets some accountability fire from people who once supported your opponent, will you simply defend your winner, or will you join in for merited criticism?

It's an admirable position and one I and the rest of the folks at Newshoggers will endevour to hold - even those of us who have already endorsed one candidate. But I fear we'll be drowned out by the campaigns themselves and by far larger trafficked blogs who have chosen to descend into the mire alongside their chosen campaign team. They too have their "Inner Lieberman" to contend with.

Rezkorama - The Coming Swift Boating Of Obama (Updated)

By Cernig

Right wing apparatchiks and bloggers are making ready to smear the eventual Democratic nominee, whether or not there's any substance to their smearing. They obviously expect Obama to be the eventual opponent for McCain because their preparations include a new website called "Rezkorama", which is anonymously registered but has clear ties to prominent conservative bloggers, including those behind the "Victory Caucus".

As Glenn Greenwald explained yesterday, Rezkorama is to be the Whitewater of the coming presidential campaign.

It's almost impossible now to find an article or news account about Obama that doesn't include some dark reference to the "Rezko" affair, always with the suggestion or even overt claim that it's reflective of some serious vulnerability, some suggestion of wrongdoing and corruption. But what is it? The reporters throwing the word around quite plainly have no idea.

Having paid only casual attention to it in the past, I spent several hours yesterday morning reading every "Rezko" article I could find in an attempt to understand as much as possible about the allegations. The point isn't that there is no credible evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Obama, although that's unquestionably true. It's far beyond that. There aren't even any theoretical allegations or suggestions as to what he might have done wrong at all. The person who is accused of wrongdoing is Tony Rezko, in matters unarguably having nothing to do with Obama. Nobody claims otherwise (although many try to imply otherwise).

The only substantive connections Obama and Rezko have is that the latter was a contributor to Obama's campaign and was a partner in a standard residential real-estate purchase which nobody suggests, at least in terms of Obama's conduct, was anything but above-board. But Rezko himself has a sinister-sounding, villain-like last name and is of Syrian origin, which, for multiple reasons, helps build the shallow media drama.

But Obama isn't even accused of -- let alone proven to have engaged in -- any wrongdoing at all.

Today, via our traffic stats at Statcounter, I noticed incoming traffic from a link to Libby's post on Clinton's Vetted Interests from a new website, Rezkorama, which is an aggregator of stories and blogposts which might broadly be taken as being about Democratic corruption - no mention of McCain's own problems with lobbyists at all. Not recognising it, I decided to take a look - and then got curious enough to try to find out who was behind it.

Rezkorama.com was set up as a domain via GoDaddy by "Domains By Proxy", an anonymous domain registering company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. It's servers, however, are listed as NS.TRUTHLAIDBEAR.COM and NS2.TRUTHLAIDBEAR.COM.

The folks at Truth Laid Bear, who run the infamous "blog ecosystem" rankings, also did development work for Hugh Hewitt and Frank Gaffney's ludicrously hyped Victory Caucus - which likewise registered it's domain names through the same Arizona anonymizer owned by GoDaddy CEO and torture fan Bob Parsons.

The guy behind Truth Laid Bear, Rob Neppell, is a member of The Heritage Foundation's New Media Advisory Board and of the Victory Caucus. He, Hewitt and others were once described by the White House as saying what they're told to say.

It appears that Bush has now passed them on as part of his endorsement of McCain.

Update The NYT's Caucus blog reports that the RNC are in on the smear act too, buying up a couple of score of domain names which could be used to attack either Clinton or Obama and cyber-squatting on domains that could serve to attack McCain. It's going to be a dirty general election.

Update 2 You'll never guess where most of Rezkorama's referrals are coming from on this, it's first day in action. Hugh Hewitt's Townhall.com, according to SiteMeter. Hewitt has a post touting the creation of his Victory Caucus pal up today - and admitting that the site is the work of Rob Nepell. So much for anonymous domain's eh? Maybe they should've thought more about the hosting servers.

Update 3 In comments, Rob Neppell writes in response to the question of why use a domain anonymiser, saying that it's "A good question honestly -- I suppose old habits just die hard..."

Fair enough. I think in all fairness, in today's climate of smears, Rob can probably see why I wondered. But the question has been asked and answered and I'm not going to impune his direct statement. The Rezkorama website now includes attribution - "Concept: Hugh Hewitt Technology: Kithbridge" - that wasn't there this morning.

The bigger question is whether Rezkorama will actually serve a decent purpose - which it can only do if there really is a connection between Rezko and Obama that still needs to see the light of day - or whether such partisan-backed ventures simply smear by association.

The Scary World of John Hindraker

By Cernig

Someone set of a tiny explosive device outside the Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Station in New York in the early hours of this morning. Despite the fact that the bomb was more bang than blast, not even shredding the old army-surplus ammo box it appears to have come in, the NY Police described it as an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) - which while technically true evokes parallels with IED's in Iraq and this device bore the same relationship to those things as a Times Square pigeon has to a T-Rex.

Predictably, the wingnuts are pissing themselves with fear over the possibilities.

John Hindraker at Powerline headlines his post "ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS OR CODE PINKERS?" (Yes, all in caps. I'm just amazed there weren't twenty exclamation points too.)

A.J. Strata doesn't even stop to seriously consider the Islamists - he knows who the real enemy is. "Who Would Bomb Recruiters In NY City? Lunatic Liberals Of Course".

And Ed Morrisey proves his rationality has sailed into the sunset with his move from the Captain's Quarters into the boiler room at Hot Air.

Given the escalating protests over military recruitment, it seems inevitable that people would bomb those who seek to protect the nation and fight our enemies.

I have to agree with John Cole - the logical gap in that sentence, that anti-war protests must inevitably turn to violence, is a veritable yawning chasm. Mind the step.

At least Confederate Yankee, who has his own impromptu analysis which shows just how much of a squib the bomb was, mentions the only evidence of any connection whatsoever to anyone at all and says clearly that he thinks it's unlikely any anti-war group was responsible. That evidence is the only evidence anyone has right now.

Law enforcement officials are looking into whether the suspect is the same man who threw explosive devices at the British and Mexican Consulates in the early morning hours in the past couple of years.

In October, witnesses told police they saw a man on a bicycle throwing a small black powdered device at the Mexican Consulate in Midtown. In May, 2005, a similar incident also occurred at the British Consulate building. No one was hurt in either of those two incidents.

Law enforcement officials said a preliminary review shows Thursday's explosion was caused by a can filled with some sort of explosive powder.

"In 2005, 2007, dummy hand grenades were used and the explosive, black powder, was put into those grenades and that caused the explosion," Kelly said. "Here, it may be similar powder -- we still have to determine that. But it was placed in an ammunition box. That was the carrier for the explosive. There was no grenade."

Mexico isn't even involved in Iraq or Afghanistan. James Joyner feels the evidence just points to "a thrillseeker with no real political agenda."

Lets see now - the evidence tying this to a lone wacko on a bike is circumstantial ("the size of the blast, the time of day, and a bicycle"), but the evidence tying it to an anti-war movement or Islamist group is...um...nil.

Must be Code Pink or AQI then.

Welcome to the Scary World of John Hindraker.

Note to self

by shamanic

Reading Andrew Sullivan on primary election nights is an awful lot like watching the "Leave Brittany Alone!" YouTube over and over and over again.

I'm just not clear on whether I'm supposed to be glad that our brave hero is not jumping out of his window. You can almost hear him screaming, "LEAVE BARACK ALONE!!!", as though Barack needs Sullivan's incredibly bitter help.

Why Internet health advice is not necessarily helpful when you're sick

by shamanic

Here in Atlanta, there's some kind of vicious stomach bug going around that I was lucky enough to pick up. I had dinner after Saturday night's poetry slam and was home by about 12:30 with some heartburn, so I didn't sleep well. By 4:30am, I was unbelievably sick.

The worst of it was over by about noon, and I was finally able to sleep (I'm not sure which part was worse -- being that sick, or being that sick on no real sleep). I was doing some reading on gastroenteritis, which the web helpfully explained is the technical term for what I had, and saw that it is an inflammation of the GI tract caused by a virus.

The part where web advice caused problems is that by about 7:00 last night, the body aches were so severe that I was nearly crying. I have a nice happy bottle of Ibuprofen in my room, but I kept having this thought that putting Ibuprofen on an inflamed GI tract might be bad. I called a friend who used to be an EMT, again, nearly crying, to see if I would be threatening my own life if I took a couple.

She was clearly on the amused side by my ramblings, but assured me that it was perfectly normal for everything to hurt, and that a couple of pills would be fine, would not cause bleeding, would not kill me, and would not bring the sick back. So I took them, and slept like crazy, and woke up at 4:30 this morning feeling not quite right as rain, but at least good enough to make some coffee and clean my kitchen up a bit (it was dirty for reasons unrelated to the sick, but I meant to clean it yesterday). I have a feeling that today will be littered with naps, but I'm definitely on the mend.

It occurred to me in the worst of it yesterday that the last time I was sick with a stomach bug, except for a day of food poisoning sometime in the late 90's, was back when my mom was still taking care of me. And yesterday, at the age of 31, I will admit that I wanted nothing more than for my mom to be here to hand me glasses of ginger ale and put cold washcloths on my head. I guess when it comes down to it, we're all kids again when we're at our worst. At least it was a quick bug.

Quote for the day

by shamanic

From Tom Tomorrow: "And if Obama is the nominee... boy are things going to get stupid."

Trees vs. Sun

by shamanic

As an intermittent gardener, I read this story with some interest. Basically, a California homeowner installed $70k worth of solar panels on his home in 2001, and his neighbor's trees grew to shade them. There is a never-before-used California law that protects a homeowner's right to the sun in just these instances, so the homeowner had prosecutors file charges against his neighbors, and years of legal fighting later, a few of the trees have to come down.

What's interesting is that if the homeowner had dropped a few thousand dollars to put a large patch of, say, organic garden on his property and was growing his own food and maybe donating surplus to area homeless shelters or something, he'd get no consideration from this law. I say that as someone with a large patch I'm going to till soon in a neighborhood of towering pines. I'll do the best I can, but I won't be growing any prize winning veggies out back.

I don't have any solutions or any judgment about, uh, the judgment. This is mostly thinking out loud. If we live close to each other, we're going to trample on each other's toes from time to time.

One really cool detail in the story though: The homeowner with the solar panels drives a plug-in electric car, meaning that he's not only generating energy for the operation of his home, but for the operation of his vehicle too. Those Californians really seem to mean it.

1,2,3 Meme Blogging

Damn you Tim F, you hit me with the dreaded 1.2.3 Meme

look up page 123 in the nearest book
look for the fifth sentence
then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.

The first book that I wanted to use was Volume 29 #1, March 2008 edition of the American Journal of Evaluation but that ended at page 116. So I can't look smart.

The second book that I have available to me right now is SPSS for Dummies so let me see what is in this piece of high art:

The table of date will be printed with lines between rows and columns, the same as they appear on the screen. The printed form has case numbers on the left and variable names at the top.

If you are not sure what your output will look like, you can choose File->Print Preview and see, on the screen, the same layout that will be sent to the printer.

Okay, I'll hit up Shamanic, the Angry Drunk Bureaucrat and Ol'Froth

RIP Lurch

Some sad news to report. Lurch, one of the major contributing writers at Main and Central has passed away. I have never met, nor have I ever communicated with Lurch in any manner other than leaving an occassional comment at his blog, or responding to an interesting and inciteful point here. However I have always enjoyed his writing and his apparant warmth as well as his depth of knowledge. The rest of this post is from his co-blogger, Fixer:

Today is a sad day in Blogtopia. We have learned, through a detective with the local police, that our dear friend Lurch has passed away. We didn't receive any details, the information is privileged for family members, but the cop was decent enough to give us that much.

I didn't know him that well, mostly through this blog and via email, but my wife and I feel honored we were able to break bread with him when he visited Long Island a year ago.

Lurch had a personality that drew one to him and the time we spent with him seemed far too short. Unfortunately, the trip he planned a few months back fell through and we're saddened another get-together is no longer in the cards.

What I know of his military service would fill a thimble, though I knew he served his nation with honor and distinction as an Army paratrooper during the war in Vietnam. Through his experience and study, he was one of the most knowledgeable people when it came to the workings of the service, strategy and tactics, and some of the best insight when it came to reading between the lines on defense issues. He was an invaluable resource as well as a friend.

Please join me in mourning our friend as well as passing on condolences to his family. I'm grateful for the time he spent with us here in Blogtopia, grateful for his insights, and grateful for the opportunity to have known him. I am proud to call him a brother in arms.

As they say in the Navy: Fair winds and following seas, my friend.

Until we meet again.

Rest in Peace Lurch

When The (Former) Terrorist Kissed Hillary

By Cernig

What kind of world is it when Democratic partisans are attacking John Podhoretz for his defense of a Democratic candidate? A topsy-turvey born out of a win-at-all-costs mentality where smearing your current rival is more important than party unity, that's where.

But Larry Johnson asks the question of news that Obama once visited Weather Undergrounder William Ayers: "What politician in their right mind would visit a known terrorist?...Is there anyone else other than Obama?"

Well, Larry and Taylor, there's this:



The accompanying London Times article - from December 8th 2007 not years ago - reads:

When the puckered lips of Martin McGuinness made contact with Hillary Clinton’s soft white cheek yesterday, a loud “Mmm-wwakk” noise could be heard across the hotel lobby – and, perhaps, beyond if American voters were listening closely enough.

Mrs Clinton had briefly stepped off the presidential campaign trail to meet the Rev Ian Paisley, the Northern Ireland First Minister, and his deputy, Mr McGuinness, who were in Washington on a week-long American charm offensive.

The two men, once sworn enemies, were later heading over to the White House for their first joint meeting with President Bush, where they were expected to ask for help in attracting investment to Northern Ireland.

The guy on the right is Mr McGuiness, who on one occasion was labelled the "IRA godfather of godfathers". McGuiness was certainly more than "some college kid spray painting railroad bridges with graffitti". He was tried and convicted of belonging to that terrorist organisation after after being caught with a car containing 250 lb (113 kg) of explosives and nearly 5,000 rounds of ammunition and at the time said he was "very, very proud" of his membership of the IRA.

(The guy on the left, by the way, was never a terrorist but is widely regarded as an odious bigot as well as funder and enabler of the opposite side's terrorists and as such has almost as undesirable a past.)

Mr. McGuiness, like Mr Ayles, has never apologised for his terrorist past - but time moves on and yesterday's terrorist has become today's statesman and messenger of peace. That's a good thing - and something he shares with several other Clinton buddies such as IRA leader Gerry Adams and Menachem Begin, the former head of Irgun. Talking to former terrorists is very often a good thing. But Johnson, Marsh and others are painting themselves into a corner by stating bluntly that talking to American former terrorists is always a bad thing.

So what's it to be, Larry and Taylor? Were Hillary and Bill wrong to share a podium with unrepentant foreign former terrorists or is it that you think American lives count more than, say, Irish ones? Or is it just that in your zeal to smear your favorite's rival you've lost all sense?

I suspect the latter.

Look, I mistrust Obama - he seems to me to have read Tony Blur's handbook on how to win elections by appearing to appeal to all the people much of the time far to closely. But this kind of dirty campaigning is even more abhorrent to me and, I suspect, to millions of voters. Cut it out.

I like the moon

by shamanic

I stayed up late in my driveway with a collection of friends, neighbors, and a stunning array of alcohol put together stone soup fashion, so I'm a little foggy this morning. But the moon: it turned capillary in the sky for so long, and the bright edge of it crawling free from the Earth's shadow, even today, with all our science and knowing, still struck the puny human with the neck straining upward as something like a revelation.

What I like most about celestial events and massive, raging storms, is that they push my mind toward the stream of human history and I imagine what it was like for an ordinary farmer, or an ordinary hunter gatherer, to notice that the sky had grown darker and look up and see something extraordinary. We have such rich mythologies to explain these things, dragons and wars between gods and cataclysms that usually fail to materialize. These events have always made us storytellers, and last night was no different. A bunch of us stood in my driveway, reclined on my house mate's car, drank tequila and beer and whiskey (as personal preference indicated), looked up at the sky and told stories to each other. Not fantastic ones, but ordinary ones. "This one time at work..." stories. "On 9/11 I was..." stories. And it was wonderful to spend that time with people I don't know well enough, enjoying the light show almost as much as their company.

Now the nasty part happens

by shamanic

I think part of my relative disinterest in blogging and the primary at this point is that now the intra-party knives are out in force, and I hate to see it. Go read the comments here for one example, but obviously this stuff is everywhere, and obviously if Hillary Clinton had run the superior campaign to date, it would be Obama backers (of which I count myself) lashing out as their candidate was thumped again and again. It's how things work, it's a normal human reaction, but I do hate to see it.

Last night a dear friend I went to high school with and have stayed close to for all these many years sent me a link to this pro-Clinton article, which I read thoroughly and which made feel more sad than anything else. I wrote back to her, gently, that I found the text inspiring and empowering, and that I had proudly cast my ballot for Barack Obama. That I'm a poet, and that I get fussy when people attack the notion that good ideas artfully phrased will change the world, and that I've been thrilled for a year by the caliber and quality of the Democratic candidates and that both would make fine presidents.

I watched clips of Obama's speech from last night, and was struck by the kind of transformation he wants to catalyze. He said it clearly: this isn't about policy papers or positions. He wants to recreate the way we as Americans view ourselves. He doesn't just want to change America, he wants to change Americans.

How does one do that except by providing a vision that can inspire the many to dream larger dreams than they dreamed before? How can you ask people to make themselves and their communities better if you don't put a brighter picture into their minds? If you don't tell them that they have the power to change the world? If you don't urge them to do so?

Years ago, I attended massage school and worked as a massage therapist for about four years until the last recession obliterated my client base. A client told me once that I earned my money with massage, but people hired me for the inspiration I provided in the conversations we'd have around the session. This stuff is important. It's the difference between technical proficiency in an endeavor and creating a lasting experience that continues to offer something to someone long after you walk out the door.

The knives are out in the Democratic Party and many, many people are attacking the very things which resonate most strongly with me: the ability to inspire and the ability to be inspired. I don't like it, I'm not comfortable with it, and I'll probably keep my head down for a while so I can keep my heart wide open. I will make arguments, but I have no desire to argue. The nominee will be decided in coming weeks or months. I'll vote for the nominee.

But make no mistake: of the three candidates standing at this point, only one can transform our core notions of who we are in a democracy and what we collectively represent as this thing called America. I don't know whether he'll win the nomination, but given the choice, I'll vote for that kind of transformation every time. It isn't an attack on Hillary Clinton, it's just my fundamental desire for today to contain more humanity, more humility, more service, more dreams, and more hope than yesterday did. And for tomorrow to hold even more than today.

The poet's punch list of the day's events

by shamanic

It isn't that I have nothing to say, it's just that I'm in a really awesome place with my poetry right now, and I've spent the day banging out initial (and flawed) drafts for two new performance poems, and despite their flaws, they are exceptional detours from my usual fare, turning on personal events and real emotions I've experienced and a week ago I completed a full on, massively intense, honest to God love poem unlike anything (written and performatively) that I've crafted before.

So, it isn't that I don't give a shit about the stupid ramblings of the Hillary Clinton campaign re: Barack Obama, who if you listen to them is made of pure air and whose candidacy, if you listen to them, is merely a breeze blowing through crowds of stupid Americans, as demonstrated by their willingness to hand him victory after victory over the aforementioned Hillary Clinton.

Oh no, it is that I don't care about that bilge. And I don't care about Taylor Marsh's choking sputterings because I am in Poetry Land, that much disregarded but still shining city on a hill where I aspire to have a summer home that I will stay in even in the depths of winter.

I am thrilled that Fidel Castro has resigned, but not optimistic about any kind of quick change in conditions on the island or between my government and the new Cuban dictatorship to be installed this weekend. Le sigh. Maybe they'll execute fewer journalists now. Fingers crossed.

Pakistan is changing. Good or bad? I don't know. Kosovo is independent. Good or bad? I'm inclined to say good, but again, I don't know. Hopefully good.

But as bloggers go, I am very bad these last days. Having no special wisdom, I have crafted extensive metaphors to describe many things, but not the feeling that one must have if one has just purchased a non-Blu-Ray HD system and will now have to purchase yet another one. Bet that sucks. I'll catch up one of these days.

A Polk For Josh

By Cernig

Congratulations to Josh Marshall and the TPM team on their George Polk Award for journalistic excellence.

Will Attywood explains why it's so richly deserved.

A Pulitzer next, maybe?