PSoTD

Two words: Colin Powell. Could she really be considering bringing back a proven political eunuch that helped push us into the most disastrous foreign/defense policy since, well, ever? Just the fact that she said it should be as good a reason as any ever provided to vote against her as a candidate.

Please, Democratic Party candidates, please point out the sheer banality of her suggestion.

On Facebook's part. Very, very, very shilly.

Zoning is not going to be how we alleviate the problem of sex offenses against children, and government officials who pretend that it's part of the solution are not serious in their approach to the problem.

I guess I ought to admit it - I am burned out on political blogging. Not on blogging in general, but focusing on politics - and if you've been reading, you can probably tell by the recent past of this blog.

The biggest part of the burnout, I suspect, comes from the sinking sense that things are not going to change. Corporatist government is as strong as ever, the Democratic presidential candidates offer very little to get excited about, which means that at least the next 4 years, and likely the next 8 years, there will be very, very, very little progress towards governance that I actually can appreciate. The commercial news media is a playground of the very wealthy manipulating the most pathetic look-at-me personalities available to provide a coverage that serves as distraction from actual value, or worse, misinformation.

But the thing that burns the most is that not enough people care. They just don't. Too many treat politics as sports, rooting for their team against the other, accepting their team's cheers and slogans and opposing the other team's, without as much as thinking about what real solutions might be - or even what the real problems might be. And the political structure fosters that disinterest and shallow thinking, nurtures it, breastfeeds it and bottlefeeds it and finally ends up heaving tons and tons of slop in the stalls of America to feed that disinterest and shallow thinking, because it benefits those who have the power to do just that.

This is the way it has always been, with perhaps a few notable exceptions, in our history. That's the way it will be until we find that brief moment in our future which could be the next exception. I'd like to hope that I could be blogging politically when we reach that moment, but at the pace and direction we're going, I'll be long gone from memory before that moment comes.

The number of cards, letters and packages to be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The peak for cards and letters will be December 17th, which is the busiest mailing day of the year. Take THAT, April 15th!

about the design - and I think the location - of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall in Washington, DC. But from my view, it's one of the most powerful-to-the-soul places this nation has ever created.

Don't freak somebody out, but if you get the chance, go hug a veteran today.

Vandalism as an action really pisses me off, and I think it really requires a more active role of the general citizenry to define it for what it is. There are lots of crimes on the books, and they tend to get generalized:

Crime of Passion
Crime for Profit
Hate Crime

etc. But we really have not focused on the pointless general destruction of property, goods and time that occurs with vandalism. It shouldn't be hard to generalize such crimes - just look at the following and what comes first to your mind?

I really wish Chuck Schumer had better logic behind his support for Mukasey. How many other laws will be required to be passed by the Congress to ban practices because Mukasey doesn't know if they're wrong or not?

A Schumer gem:

To defeat him would be to abandon the hope of instituting the many reforms called for by our investigation.* No one questions that Judge Mukasey would do much to remove the stench of politics from the Justice Department. I believe we should give him that chance.

But who is going to remove the stench of selling out by some Congressional Democrats? It'll take more than Glade.

*Chuck Schumer's Office is now known as the Center of Abandoned Hope.

Wow, what a disappointing bunch of nonsense she spewed in the Times. Frontrunners, this close to the election, should expect to be targeted for tough debate, tough questions, and hits on character. That's the way national politics are played. The character questions might be demeaning and less than valuable, but that doesn't make it sexist or racist.

"John Edwards, specifically, as well as the press, would never attack Barack Obama for two hours they way they attacked her," said Geraldine A. Ferraro, the 1984 vice presidential candidate who supports Mrs. Clinton. "It’s O.K. in this country to be sexist," Ms. Ferraro said.

"It’s certainly not O.K. to be racist. I think if Barack Obama had been attacked for two hours — well, I don’t think Barack Obama would have been attacked for two hours."

I'd say that Ferraro's comments are probably more damaging to Hillary Clinton, considering that she's a supporter of Clinton, than any of the Democratic candidates attacks on Clinton, including Edwards. I think it's a fair question to ask HRC whether she buys into what Ferraro said or not.

It manifests itself in many ways. Clearly, the world knows about George W. Bush.

Swampland's Joe Klein gets it right.

I'm puzzled by all the neoconservative bloviating and war-whooping about Iran and the near deathly silence about the deteriorating situation in Pakistan . I mean, we have actual terrorist training camps in Waziristan that are just sitting there, ripe targets for the sort of quick special forces strikes that the Turks are laying on the PKK in Northern Kurdistan (with our not-so-tacit approval). But I haven't read much in the Weekly Standard about the need to act against Al-Qaeda-Not-in-Iraq. Bill K, N-Pod, you remember Osama, right? What gives?

...

Is it possible that the reason why the neos are so obsessed with Iran and relatively silent on Pakistan (which, you may recall, actually has nukes) is that--ok, I'll go ahead and say it--Israel is obsessed over Iran? Indeed, Israel has a right to be obsessed. It's not just because of--or even mostly because of--Iran's nuclear program, either. It's because of Iran's military and financial support for Hizballah, which fought the vaunted Israeli defense forces more successfully than any other Arab army in history during the summer of 2006 and continues to fester just beyond the northern fence.

I agree that Iran is a matter of real concern for us. But it is not our top concern. It is Israel's top concern. Our top concerns are resolving the disaster in Iraq and preventing a disaster in Pakistan--and trying, once again, to dismantle the hierarchy of Al-Qaeda-Not-In-Iraq.

Always tricky bringing Israel's interests into any discussion of American foreign policy. American and Israeli interests certainly dovetail but they do not always exactly match. And the Neo-Cons tend to keep getting them backwards - like they did in Iraq.

Declaring that one is for Hillary Clinton for President in the Telegraph without giving any real good sense as to why her.

BTW, I would like to see Superman be elected MP for Henley. He has X-ray vision and can leap tall buildings. I cannot imagine Boris Johnson doing so.

Here's the point, Boris: Not being George W. Bush is not GOOD ENOUGH alone to be elected President. Being married to a former President is NOT GOOD ENOUGH alone to be elected President. Otherwise, Boris would find Laura Bush a credible candidate.