Wisdom of crowds

I love The New York Times' letters page. Here are some offerings from today's letters:

Re “Palin Daughter’s Pregnancy Interrupts G.O.P. Convention Script” (news article, Sept. 2):

Gov. Sarah Palin has said she decided to carry to term her child who has Down syndrome. Of her daughter’s premarital pregnancy, she also says, “We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby.”

But how can one claim to be anti-choice and twice speak about “decisions”? A true pro-life candidate must believe that there is no choice but to bear the child, and that the law should bar any such decisions to the contrary.

Indeed, if the governor learned of her own child’s Down syndrome from prenatal testing, is it not hypocrisy to ever have such a test since the fetus has a right to life regardless?

Perhaps Governor Palin is, in fact, a proponent of choice after all.

Lawrence Rosen
Princeton, N.J., Sept. 2, 2008

Re “Palin Disclosures Spotlight McCain’s Screening Process” (front page, Sept. 2):

Ever since Gov. Sarah Palin was unveiled as John McCain’s running mate, the press has had a field day in uncovering her foibles, personal and political. The real story, however, is Mr. McCain’s lack of judgment.

Mr. McCain has already caused concern by his appalling ignorance of world geography and his tendency to oversimplify complex foreign policy issues. His choice of Ms. Palin makes it plain that he is not in the least concerned with America’s stature in the world or the ability of the next vice president to step into the role of commander of chief.

The American people deserve better from the Republican Party.

John Jeffries Martin

Durham, N.C., Sept. 2, 2008

I love how the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter is, according to John McCain’s campaign, “a private family matter.” This, after the Republican Party has spent 30 years making policy on women’s bodies. Why can’t Republicans recognize that reproductive decisions are private for all American women?

Claire Bushey
Chicago, Sept. 2, 2008

Double standard

As this blogger points out, Michelle Obama has taken a lot of heat for saying that "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country." Yet Todd Palin was, for years, a member of a party that preaches secession. Should he be judged by the same standard?

(Is there a legitimate distinction between a potential First Lady and a prospective Second Gentleman? To some extent, maybe.)

Let's be careful

For those of us who think that in picking Sara Palin, John McCain, (a) made a serious, perhaps fatal, error; (b) toadied to the right wing of his party; (c) showed cynicism and contempt for the voters;(d) lost his ever-loving mind; or (e) all of the above, it's all too easy to take cheap shots at Gov. Palin.

This is a bad thing. It is bad, because it is unfair, intellectually dishonest and because it will actually motivate some people to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket. Not only that, but it calls into question the idea--to which I subscribe, and I hope you do, too--that a woman should be permitted to make the kind of choices that Sarah Palin has, without being judged unworthy because she has children. (Let me hasten to add that she is also free to decide to devote her life to her children, or to take some middle ground.)

If you are saying that this page has taken some cheap shots, all we can say is that you may be right. And if we did, we were wrong.

Yesterday, I mentioned that a woman I know was outraged that Gov. Palin had put her daughter in the national spotlight by accepting the vice-presidential slot. Another woman friend was outraged that the governor would accept a place on the ticket while caring for a special needs infant.

When these kinds of assertions come up, the question we should ask, it seems to me, is whether we would say the same thing if Gov. Palin's husband were the candidate. Would we say that he should not put his daughter in the limelight? Maybe we would. Would we suggest that he could not be vice-president (or perhaps even governor) once he found out that he would have a Downs' syndrome child? I don't think so.

From now on, here at TONE we'll try to avoid cheap shots at Gov. Palin and Sen. McCain, no matter how tempting they are as targets.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove remain fair game, however.

OOPS!

Chuck Todd, of NBC, Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan forget that the mike is always live.



(Sarah Palin could tell them that the gun is always loaded.)

TPM kindly supplies a transcript:

Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we'll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We'll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she's the right woman for the job Up next, one man who's already convinced and he'll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.

(cut away)

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys -- this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it's not gonna work. And --

PN: It's over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --

MM: They're all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

Who's at fault?

Josh Marshall points out that it is the McCain campaign that has been stirring things up about Bristol Palin's pregnancy.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds

John McCain would like the American people to think of him as a straight-talking maverick who'll wage war on earmarks and the lobbyists who obtain them.

Sarah Palin, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, lobbied for and got $27 million in federal earmarks. That's more than $4,000 for every man, woman and child in Wasilla.

Whiners of the World, Unite!

Phil Gramm--a likely treasury secretary in a McCain administration--to a group of Bankers' Lobbyists in St. Paul yesterday:

If you’re sitting here today, you’re not economically illiterate and you’re not a whiner, so I’m not worried about who you’re going to vote for.

If Obama and Biden get the votes of all the whiners, they'll exceed the electoral landslide that FDR piled up in 1936.

So much ignorance, so little time

Does Sarah Palin think that the Pledge of Allegiance was written by the Founding Fathers? Daily Kos says she does. (Warning, the link on the DK page returns no result and says that the blog linked to does not exist--was it, maybe, taken down since last week? The world wonders.)

Note: One of the comments to the Daily Kos post said that Palin's response reminded him of Ma Ferguson, Governor of Texas in the '20's, who was quoted as saying, “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas.”

A woman's point of view

A woman of my acquaintance is outraged that Gov. Palin would step in to the national limelight--bringing her family with her--knowing of her daughter's pregnancy.

I hadn't thought of this, but she's absolutely right.

Too, too delicious

From the Chickens Coming Home to Roost Department:

Republican John McCain, whose running mate disclosed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, has opposed proposals to spend federal money on teen-pregnancy prevention programs and voted to require poor teen mothers to stay in school or lose their benefits.

Associated Press

(Our motto: Never Let the Easy Ones Pass You By.)

Hard to believe

Jake Tapper, of ABC, reports that the Alaska Independence Party (which he describes as a "'fringe'"--that is, he puts "fringe" in quotes--party) claims that Sarah Palin was a member. There is a YouTube video of her sending a message to the party for its 2008 convention. In it, she sounds like she is trying to bring party members into the mainstream of Alaskan politics.

The party's vice-chair told a group of supporters that Palin was a member of the party before ran for mayor of Wasilla. If true--and as far as we know there is no support for the boast--that could--we emphasize "could"--mean that she was part of a party that looks toward an ultimate goal of separating Alaska from the United States as late as 2000.

It's hard to believe that Ms. Palin (or does she prefer Mrs.?) ever seriously flirted with the idea of Alaskan secession, and this page should be the last to indulge in the practice of guilt by association. Mere membership in any party should not be a license to attribute all of the party's platform proposals to any individual.

It seems fair to ask, however, how the Republican Party--given its premises and its platform--could run a vice-presidential nominee who ever seriously suggested breaking away from the United States.

Well, maybe they'll argue that that constitutes experience in international relations.

Update: The NYT reports that Palin has been confirmed to have been a member of the AIP "for two years in the 1990s." In 1990, she was 26 years old; in 1999, she was 35. So this was not exactly a youthful flirtation. She married in 1988 (according to Wikipedia, she and her husband eloped--what was that about?), and had her first child the following year. So she was at least a young mother when she joined the AIP.

You heard it here second

In case you missed it, Gail Collins on the upcoming Vice-Presidential debate:

Joe Biden may already be practicing his drop-dead line for the vice-presidential debate: “I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine, and governor, you’re no Hillary Clinton.”

Commander in chief

It's true, I actually heard a McCain flack cite Sarah Palin's experience as the commander of the Alaska National Guard as a reason why she is qualified to be President. No shame.

Have you noticed that, despite the GOP and media excitement over Palin, the dynamic of the race has changed in the last few days? To begin with, the GOPhers are now on the defensive over what was probably their most effective issue--the claim that McCain's greater experience justified his election. Not only has he saddled himself with a laughably untested running mate, but he's now up against a team of Obama and Biden that, combined, has more experience, intellect, eloquence and humor than the Republicans.

Speaking of humor, McCain, who was once the happy warrior, has become increasingly testy and combative. Not a good sign for the Republicans. McC's only chance is to be an effective counter-puncher; increasingly, he looks slow and, yes, old.

If you didn't get a chance to see Obama and Biden on Sixty Minutes, last night, take a look on line. From our admittedly biased perspective, the look like a terrific team.

Where were they when....

Today, John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, swooped down on Jackson, MS, to check on the evacuation of people from the Gulf Coast ahead of Hurricane Gustav. As Will Thomas notes, this visit was of no use to the evacuees or those who are helping them; indeed, it put a load on local and state officials who had to make provision for the candidates, their staffs, Secret Service Details, press, etc., etc.

Of course, three years after Katrina, Republicans can be forgiven for a certain paranoia about Gustav, especially on what was supposed to be the first day of their national convention. (Almost all events have been canceled, in view of the hurricane, although it will hit nowhere near the Twin Cities.)

So, where was the Senator from Arizona on the day that Katrina made landfall? He was in Phoenix, with a friend:


The official White House caption for this photo reads, "President George W. Bush joins Arizona Senator John McCain for a small celebration of McCain's 69th birthday Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, after the President's arrival at Luke Air Force Base, near Phoenix."

Life imitates art, or at least televsion

Doesn't Sarah Palin remind you of someone?

Is she not doing a bad Gilda Radner skit?

Remember, the original Saturday Night Live cast was dubbed "The Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players."

One man's journey

A friend I met in the Obama campaign sent the following account of the journey that brought him to this point in our history. He has graciously permitted me to quote him:

Joe Biden quotes Robert Frost in Biden's (now best selling) book, Promises to Keep On Life and Politics:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Nancy and I spent the last four days (as I am sure most of you did) watching the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. (We discovered the first day that by watching the whole convention on C-SPAN we were sparred the commercial interruptions and the irrelevant commentators, and got to see every speech and hear all the music and spot friends in the crowd--nothing like actually being there, but the next best thing). We capped the convention last night, of course, by being swept away with the most riveting political speech of our lifetime. We both feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for living in this country at this time, and being able to participate in the most historic election for change in our lifetime.

So many thoughts and emotions came up for us, far too many to relate in this brief space. But some of the more salient bear noting, especially those that reminded me most poignantly of my own journey to this place of new-found hopefulness.

I grew up in a somewhat segregated small town in Central Indiana in the 1940's and 1950's, where African -Americans could go to public schools and participate in athletics, but could not swim in the local public pool, eat at the local drugstore lunch counter, or even try out for cheerleader. Racial epithets and covert prejudice were common, and some neighboring towns were widely known to be off-limits to Blacks after dark. I was extremely fortunate, however, to have had tolerant and accepting parents, and enough open-minded adults in the community that I felt I could and did develop some life-long friendships and attachments to several of my Black classmates (all of whom went on to impressive careers as lawyers,or school teachers, or ministers,or community leaders, etc).

I joined a fraternity while in college that had, it turned out, a national, de facto prohibition against admitting Blacks. None of the fraternities in my college accepted Blacks, and unfortunately few Blacks chose to attend my college.

I spent almost four years after college in the US Navy, almost all of it in Georgia and Virginia in the early sixties. I was introduced to Southern segregationist politics in Athens, Georgia in 1962 when the last of the long-time racist governors, Marvin Griffin, finally lost out to a "moderate" Democrat in the primary. Lemuel Penn, a noted Washington, DC Black educator , was assassinated by Klan nightriders in Athens shortly before I moved there, and the University of Georgia was first integrated when I was there in Athens. I lived in Norfolk, Virginia for two years, just after the schools were desegregated. I lived in rural Virginia for a year where the schools had just been desegregated but not the school buses. I was an officer on an aircraft carrier that had a special enlisted corps (stewards) that waited on officers and was made up solely of Blacks and Filipinos.

When I took my first (and only) law firm job in 1969, I learned that I would be joining an incoming class that had the first Black lawyer in the firm's then 120 year history (he later became with me a partner, a State Senator in Connecticut, president of the National Council of Christians and Jews, and remains one of my best friends .He was a delegate this week to the Convention, too)Happily, my firm has since taken leadership roles over the years to advance the opportunities for lawyers and staff of all colors and gender, so that now I think I can safely say that diversity is the norm, not the exception for us.

I set this brief history out to simply remind myself of how far we have come in this country (and in my own life) in the struggle to achieve racial justice. And to remind myself that Barack Obama, and hundreds of the delegates to the Denver Convention this week, had to overcome in their lives much of the prejudice and discrimination I just described. But we also were repeatedly reminded this week of how many miles we still have to go before we sleep, not only to achieve racial justice, but social, economic, and gender justice as well.

Almost too easy:

From McCain's announcement of his choice of Palin as his running mate.

As the head of Alaska's National Guard and as the mother of a soldier herself Gov. Palin understands what it takes to lead our nation and she understands the importance of supporting our troops.

Huh?

Think she's ever led troops in battle?

Let's not forget

Today is John McCain's birthday! He's 72 years old. And I do mean old.

So, from one old guy to another:

Republicans change position on major issue, now favor affirmative action!

Does anyone think that McCain would have chosen Sarah Palin if she were a man? I didn't think so.

Talkingpointsmemo had a screen shot from, showing McCain and Palin behind a podium emblazoned with the slogan "Country First."

If McCain were really putting the country first, is she the person he would have chosen to take over as President if he dies or becomes incapacitated in office?

Even before being named...

...there's a scandal about Gov. Sarah Palin (R.AK). (TONE regrets the earlier mis-spelling of her name.)

Before it fades away in the 24-hour news cycle

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit -- that American promise -- that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance. It's a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours -- a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.

And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln's Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

"The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things. They could've heard words of anger and discord. They could've been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.

But what the people heard instead -- people of every creed and color, from every walk of life -- is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

'We cannot walk alone,' the preacher cried. 'And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.'

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise -- that American promise -- and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Barack Obama,

Denver, CO
August 28, 2008

And the loser is.....

Apparently both Mitt (the Great Flip-Flopper) Romney and Tim (the Man Who Vetoed Money to Repair Roads and Bridges Before the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse) Pawlenty are out of the Republican Veepstakes. Last-minute reports are that it will be the governor of Alaska, Sarah Pallin.

Credit to my law partner, Kevin Powers, who has been predicting her for a while. (Could he have a pipeline to McCain? Hmmm. I'll have to check on that.)

Anthems

Stevie Wonder just sang Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm yours) for Barack and Michelle.

This being the Old New Englander, we still favor Happy Days are Here Again as the Democratic anthem.

Or the great American song, This Land is Your Land.



But if we're going to R&B, it ought to be Ain't No Mountain High Enough.

Bizarre

From a Dallas Morning News interview with John Goodman, who, according to the paper "helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy." After noting that those who must use the emergency room are, in effect, insured by the government, Goodman said,

I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime. The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.

I guess that passes for thinking among the GOPhers.

By the way, the Morning News headline for the article containing Goodman's comments was "Texas still leads nation in rate of uninsured residents."

Update: The McCain campaign denies that Goodman was an advisor.

Another great line

Bill Richardson:

John McCain may pay hundreds of dollars for his shoes, but we'll pay for his flip-flops.

Man of honor?

There's a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?

Read it in my books.

I've read your books.

No, I'm not going to define it.

But honor in politics?

I defined it in five books. Read my books.

John McCain in an interview with Time.

Hmm. Could it be that his mind was a little fuzzy?

Seriously, read the whole interview. John McCain has turned into the Manchurian candidate. He's clearly under the thumb of handlers who don't want to show the old--and we hope, the true McCain. Too bad for them, and him, because that guy might have a shot. When the American people see the new guy, he's going to get buried.

Best line of the day

So far, at least.

A talkingpointsmemo.com reader: "Lieberman is now seen as George Bush without the intellectual complexity."

It's early yet, but it would take a real talent to top that one.

One picture is worth....

Billboard being put up around the Twin Cities for next week:

The zinger that might have been

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Obama's people edited this line out of Dennis Kucinich's convention speech yesterday:

"They're asking for another four years -- in a just world, they'd get 10 to 20."

Kudos

Give credit where credit is due; that seems to be our new motto. I've never been a big fan of Bill Clinton, but last night's speech was terrific. I just hope he means it when he says he's willing to get out on the campaign trail for Obama.

To begin with, if I were Obama, I'd ask Bill to travel to the Twin Cities next week, along with Joe Biden, to bring some reality to the Republican fantasy that will unfold there.

And what would you think of Bill Clinton as ambassador to the UN?

Credit where credit is due

As regular readers will recall, this page was very critical of Hillary Clinton during the primary campaign. Let us acknowledge, then, that she has been a good soldier for the Democrats and the Obama campaign, crowned by her motion to nominate him by acclamation.

Let's also pay tribute to her ability to keep the fervent loyalty of her supporters. There are many who do not like Sen. Clinton, but she has built a cadre of people--not all of them women--who would walk through fire for her. Not many politicians can claim such a cadre.

A true test of character?

When I was canvassing for Obama before the New Hampshire primary, I ran into a number of independents who said they were intending to or thinking of voting in the Republican primary. Whenever I thought it not too awkward, I'd try to nudge them toward McCain as the best of the GOPhers.

Which makes me especially distressed that ambition seems to have stripped John McCain of all sense of decency and propriety, not to mention accuracy. The latest evidence of this is the way that McCain has twisted and distorted Barack Obama's words about Iran. TPM covers it very well here, so I won't repeat the details.

There are a lot of people who are after Barack to call McCain out for his distortions. A better tactic would be for him challenge McCain out what lies beneath the pattern of distortions that we are seeing. "Why is John McCain unwilling to have a serious debate on the challenges that face this nation? Why is he afraid to face what I really say? Why does he feel compelled to distort my remarks? Is it because he knows that he can't respond fairly and honestly to the ideas that I have put forward?"

Two New York stories

Think you've got problems? You'll shed a tear when you read about this family.

And I suspect you'll shed a different kind of tear when you learn about Sister Lucita Cangemi.

Two New York--and American--stories.

Happy Days Are Here Again

The MSM are pushing the disunion-angst theme at the Democratic convention. Viz. this from today's NYT.

I fear that when Barack Obama walks out on stage tomorrow night, it will be to some pulsing post-modern beat. Maybe I'm showing my age (why stop now?), but to me the theme of this even, and the Democratic Party, should be

As if things weren't bad enough

MSNBC reports that Bush is sending Dick Cheney to Georgia, and that John McCain is also dispatching his wife to the same place.

As an old Georgian expression has it, "Oy, gevalt!"

Musical interlude

Now, for your listening pleasure, the latest from the Obama campaign. Take a look here.

Practice makes perfect

Unless it doesn't.

McCain's people are running this ad using as his spokesperson...Hillary Clinton!



(Guess all those people who told Hillary she was acting as a stalking horse for the Repubs were right.)

We can expect a lot more of this from McCain's people, trying to counter McCain's age with references to Obama's (relative) inexperience. (For those who may not remember, Obama has more experience in elective office than a number of estimable presidents: Lincoln, TR, Wilson, and FDR come to mind. Not to mention the Republican hero, Eisenhower.

The real response to the McCain argument was given by my high school French teacher, Mary Jane Hogan. She used to tell us that the adage "Practice makes perfect," is wrong. Perfect practice makes perfect, she would say. If you practice it wrong, you just get worse. So, if you keep arguing for the wrong policies, as McCain has, you'll stay on the wrong road if you get into office.

A house is a house is a house

John McCain doesn't know how many houses he owns.

Then again, it's not clear that anyone else does, either. His staff says four. Newsweek reported last summer that he and Cindy own seven. A group called Progressive Accountability says the number if 10. And counting?

What does this tell us? That McCain is a rich guy who may be out of touch with most Americans? (Remember that he is the son and grandson of admirals and grew up on military bases around the world--not as a rich kid, but one with the privileges that accrue to the children of officers in a closed society that is in many ways cut off from the civilian US, even on bases in this country.)

Or is the guy losing his memory, perhaps?

Watch out for falling sky

A new Zogby poll has McCain leading Obama by five points nationally! Not only that, but more Americans trust McC on the economy than trust Barack.

Uh, huh.

You may choose to believe that more Americans trust McCain than Obama on the economy. You are also free to believe in the tooth fairy. The one is as likely as the other.

Could we be so lucky?

As to have John McCain pick Joe Lieberman as his running mate?

Please, please, please......

A friend suggests the perfect bumper sticker for the pair:

GRUMPY OLD MEN

Now HERE's a surprise

or maybe not. Thanks to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for this one:

According to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics, Obama has out-raised McCain among troops deployed abroad, six to one!

Now, the sample size--based on campaign-finance reports--is small, but indicative. The troops, after all, know which side their bread is buttered on, and they know what really counts.

Wonder if the MSM will pick this one up. I bet the answer is no: it doesn't fit their model of the campaign.

Another view

of the roots of the Georgian crisis, by Anatol Lieven, of the New America Foundation. You might be surprised that I agree with most of what he writes, in view of my earlier comments. However, I don't think three's really a conflict. I don't defend what the Georgians did in going into South Ossetia; clearly it was going to provoke a strong Russian reaction. That doesn't justify a full-scale invasion of Georgia, however.

Georgia on my mind

The Russian attack on Georgia is an obvious revival of Czarist imperialism. More properly, Russian imperialism; the Soviets were little different from either the Czars or the present republic.

Less obvious is a parallel between Georgia and Czechoslovakia, a theme being played by the Georgians themselves, who suggest that if the West will not stand up to Russian imperialism in their country, the other nations on the fringe of the old Soviet borders are doomed. There is a good deal of cynicism in this, but also truth; if the Russians manage to topple the elected (and recently re-elected) government of Georgia, how safe can the Baltic nations or even Ukraine feel? All have large Russian minorities (which were greatly augmented during the Soviet years, as part of a policy to dilute the power of hereditary claims on such lands), such as the ones being used by the Russians in South Ossetia and the other Georgia's other break-away region, Abkhazia.

The Georgians, encouraged by loud protestations of friendship and alliance from the West--particularly by our own George W.--overstepped by moving into South Ossetia last week. Or maybe not. It's been suggested that a collision with Russian interests was inevitable, and that the Georgians knew they'd lose militarily but hoped to arouse the West to protect them against serious future threats. That's a high-risk strategy, but when you are the pro-western president of a small nation on the border of Russia, it may be the best you can hope for.

According to The New York Times, the Russian offensive has now reached into Georgia itself, outside the borders of the separatist enclaves. That presents the West with a real challenge; whether the Georgian simile between that small nation and the Czechs at the time of Munich was valid or not, it looks legitimate today.

So, what can the West do?

Given Russia's oil and gas wealth, and Western Europe's dependence on supplies from it, economic sanctions are likely to be laughed at. Nor can we expect any of our important NATO allies to do anything to annoy the Russians. (Not even the Poles, with their hereditary hatred of Russia.) The French, Germans and Italians, who won't even engage the Taliban in Afghanistan in a meaningful way, are not likely to flex military muscles or do anything else that might antagonize the Bear.

The American debacle in Iraq is, of course, a contributing factor here; we are so spread out and weakened that the Russians were undoubtedly encouraged to believe that we will do nothing but bluster at their ambitions. (They may prove correct in that assessment.) One of the few beneficial effects of our ineffectual adventuring, however, has been to place American forces not too far from Georgia. There are steps that we could take to make the Russians pause and that might encourage a diplomatic end to the crisis. They would first raise the temperature a great deal, but Putin--the man who still controls Russia, from all appearances--seems to be like my uncle Harold, about whom we used to say that you had to hit him upside the head with a 2 x 4 to get his attention.

The 2 x 4 might include:

--Shipping surface-to-air missiles to Georgia. Shoulder-fired missiles took a great
toll on Soviet aircraft in Afghanistan.
--Move elements of the Sixth Fleet from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea.
--Move a carrier task group to the Eastern Med, off Turkey, where it could
potentially provide air support to the Georgians. (We would not have to announce
that; Russian intelligence would undoubtedly pick it up.)
--Send American aircraft to Georgia and park them ostentatiously around Georgian
airfields, to deter further Russian airstrikes there. Some of them could be A-10
Warthog ground-attack aircraft (tank-busters) as a pointed warning against further
ground incursions

As I say, these steps would be serious and would increase tension to a very high level. They would have to be accompanied by insistence that a diplomatic solution is absolutely necessary. But I fear that we have few other options except defeat for our declared allies in Georgia, and for other democracies along the rim of the old Soviet Union. That is where George W. Bush's policies have left us.

What is it about these people?

First it was John McCain offering up his wife, Cindy, for a "beauty" contest that turned out to be "essentially a topless beauty pageant. And occasionally bottomless, too." Now, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, (R. MN), formerly known as The Man Who Vetoed Money That Would Have Repaired the I-35 Bridge Before it Collapsed, and now a top contender to be McC's VP nominee, is described this way in the NY Times:

As is his way, Gov. Tim Pawlenty made a self-deprecating aside on a local radio show this spring during the ceremonial start of the state’s beloved fishing season. He praised his wife’s willingness to fish with him and to watch hockey games, then added, “And I jokingly say, ‘Now, if I could only get her to have sex with me.’ ”

Self-deprecating is one way to describe it. I call it creepy.

What is it about these people? I mean, I never really believed that they were the party of values, but at least a little taste would be nice.

Flopping and flipping...

flipping and flopping.

John McCain admits that checking the pressure in your tires is a good idea: .“Obama said a couple of days ago says we all should inflate our tires. I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it.”

Well, OK, so maybe Barack was wrong when he said that McC and his crowd enjoy being ignorant.

This is huge

Scientists at MIT take a giant step toward a practical means to efficiently split water into its constituents, which would permit hydrogen to become the equivalent of petroleum (and, I think, natural gas). Indeed, given that the Earth is 70 percent covered by water, and that combining hydrogen with oxygen (as in a fuel cell or an internal combustion engine) produces water again, coal, too, might be replaced.

I hasten to add that I don't really understand what this is all about; high-school chemistry was the only subject I flunked. But I think I know enough to realize that if this proves to be practical at scale, it is one of the most important developments since the splitting of the atom. And maybe before that.

A sad anniversary

Before we leave this day, let us note that, 63 years ago the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

The verdict is in

The suspense did not last long.

I am shocked! shocked!! to learn that CNN and Reuters report a guilty verdict in the Hamdan show trial. The surprise is that Reuters reports that he was actually acquitted of two of the charges.

Breaking news--Verdict at Guantanamo

A military jury has reached a verdict in the first "war-crimes" trial at Guantanamo Bay. Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver, has been on trial for allegedly aiding in al Qaeda's terror efforts.

The verdict is to be announced shortly.

I bet they find him guilty.

A new entry

Thanks to McCain's celebrity ad, there's a new entry in the Presidential race.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Ooops

Here's something that will endear John McCain to Evangelicals and social conservatives.

So there he was campaigning at the huge annual motorcycle rally at Sturgis, SD, and someone told him about a beauty contest at a local joint called the Buffalo Chip. So what does McC do, but suggest that Cindy, his wife, enter:



Cute, if a little hokey right? Well.......

Here's a video of the Miss Buffalo Chip contest which, incidentally, they hold every night.



A reader at Talkingpointsmemo suggests that, "This amounts to John McCain volunteering his wife for a Girls Gone Wild video."

Remember the Republicans are the party of values.

Let us save you time

We're going to save you a lot of time and energy over the next three months, by removing the need to keep following the presidential campaigns. That's right, we're going to tell you now what will happen.

Here it is:

The campaign will be close into October, perhaps as late as about October 24th. Then Obama will begin to edge ahead--he'll have a relatively small lead before that, but the gap will begin to widen. In the last weekend before the voting, the media will be talking about whether McCain can close the gap, but that isn't going to happen. In the end, Obama will win it going away, and it won't really be close.

You heard it here, first.

(The foregoing is based on the assumption that there will be no major shockers between now and election day--that McCain doesn't have a heart attack or it come out that Obama underwent electroshock therapy, nor some really huge gaffe by one of the candidates or his close associates ("Rum, Romanism and rebellion"). If something like that happens, all bets are off.)

Now, don't you feel relieved to have all that free time for the next three months? We're always glad to help.

Reason enough to vote for him

Obama tells Congressional Democrats that he would have the Justice Department comb Bush's executive orders to weed out any that "trample on liberty."

You can bet that John McCain won't do that, in the unlikely event that he is elected.

There is so much to be done that one term of an Obama presidency would not be enough to undo the damage the Bush and is cronies have done to the United States. In addition to trashing our reputation--our most important asset--overseas, and to the damage done by executive orders that undermine, if not actually violate, the Constitution and laws of the United States, there are thousands of regulations, many of them obscure, that were designed to turn back the clock on civil rights and liberties, employment rights and many other achievements that we had thought were well protected.

A massive project awaits the Obama administration.

World's Oldest Joke

According to Reuters, the world's oldest joke comes from the Sumerians, a people who used to live in what is now southern Iraq, and dates from about 4000 years ago. I warn you, it's not very funny: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." I guess you had to be there.

True, 4000 years is a long time, but that's not the world's oldest joke. Painstaking research reveals that the oldest joke is:

Abel: I've been seeing spots in front of my eyes.
Cain: Oh? Have you seen a doctor?
Abel: No, just spots.

Hard to believe

Seven years of trade talks broke down over Chinese food? Hard to believe that disputes over moo goo gai pan or hot and sour soup could be that acrimonious, but so the NYT reports.

Contemptible

The House Judiciary Committee voted this morning to cite Karl Rove for contempt. The vote is only a preliminary skirmish in the campaign to bring Rove to justice. Whatever they do to him, it will not be enough to express my contempt for the man.

Truer words were never spoken

"This is not America." That's what a flack for the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions responded when a reporter noted that in our country, reporters are able to watch witnesses and see evidence.

William Glaberson's perspective on the show trial of Salim Hamdan shows us how distorted the American ideal of a nation under laws has become. Guantanamo is a place where there is a judge and a jury, albeit a military jury, yet the judge has ruled that the 5th Amendment does not apply to the defendant. For those of you who don't have a copy of the Constitution handy, the relevant portions of the Amendment read, "No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." "No person"--not just citizens, or residents of the US, but every person in the jurisdiction of the United States. That's what you'd think anyway. But not in this administration's Alice-in-Wonderland view of justice.

In an ironic twist, Glaberson reveals that the government has presented an organizational chart of Osama bin Laden's security detail, of which Hamdan was a low-level figure. The head of the detail, one Abellah Tabarek, was also a prisoner at Guantanamo. He was released in 2004, while his subordinate is on trial.

And in a final irony, if Salim Hamdan should, somehow, obtain an acquittal, the government still maintains its right to hold him at Guantanamo, indefinitely. As an observer of the trial from the ACLU noted, "Where else in the world is someone being prosecuted for a crime who is already serving a life sentence and will continue to serve one if he’s acquitted?"

And we wonder why our opponents prosper.

Is this REALLY the message they want to send?

From the McCain campaign store:

McCain Door Mat 2' x 3'
Isn't that too much verisimilitude?

Most exciting story of the week

Actually, the most exciting story in a long time: Solar power collected in space and beamed to Earth. Sound like fiction? No, the technology is available now. Expensive? Projected cost of .08-.10 per kilowatt hour--competitive today.

When I read this on the Op-Ed page of the NYT, I thought maybe it was a satire or some wild-eyed dreamer, but the author, O. Glenn Smith, is a former manager of the International Space Station project at NASA.

This is one that clearly deserves further consideration.

Comment of the day

Dana Milbank of WAPO on the McCain campaign, on MSNBC:

"Well, it's a low budget campaign. He told them to cut out the fat and they misunderstood him and thought he said facts."

Good news on the justice front

Radovan Karadzic, one of two principal criminals from the Bosnian War of the 1990's, was arrested by Serbian police and will be shipped (as freight, we hope) to the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. He deserves to be presumed innocent, like any defendant, but I fear that I cannot suspend disbelief that far.

My cynicism also leads me to doubt that Karadzic's capture represents a real change in attitude in Serbia. But on that, I may be wrong; I speak with no real knowledge of the psyche of that country if, indeed, a nation may be said to have a collective psyche. (Is the United States the rogue, criminal country we have been for the past eight years, or something different and better? I know my answer to that one.)

And speaking of the US, the military judge at the show trial of Salim Hamdan, the first of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to face a military tribunal, threw out evidence obtained while Hamdan was a prisoner in Afghanistan. The material was gathered by coercive interrogation (i.e., the third degree), or maybe you call it torture. (As described in the NYT, the methods used are probably more police brutality than torture, if such a fine distinction may be made.)

OK, that's all the good news. The same judge also ruled that Guantanamo detainees lack a broad right against self-incrimination. Given what the judge threw out, the prosecution will have to rely on statements that Hamdan allegedly made at Guantanamo where, believe me, he got no Miranda warning. After all, we couldn't expect that the guy might actually be acquitted, right?

Surge?

John McCain has been bashing Barack Obama for having opposed the "surge" in Iraq. Any progress that he made by playing the foreign policy card was undone over the weekend, and then some. Did you see the video of Obama's reception by the troops in Kuwait? Better than gold--platinum.

Now, I was thinking about McCain's assumption that the surge has worked. There are a lot of weaknesses in McCain's argument--the factors other than the relatively few additional American troops that could account for the decline in violence.

Turns out I may have been wasting my time. Juan Cole, who knows whereof he speaks, argues that there has been little improvement in the situation at all.

Summer Reflections

I know that in a few months we'll be looking back fondly upon summer as we grit our teeth to face a long New England winter, but today I contemplate a solid week of heat, humidity and daily thunder storms (at least according to the meteorologists). Sheesh! Had I wanted this, I would have lived in Florida, Georgia or South Carolina.

I try to maintain perspective by asking myself whether I'd really like to live somewhere where there is no real winter. The answer, so far at least, is 'no.' Of course, with the advance of global warming, I might achieve that without moving.

Not all bad news

Among all the economic and political woe, there's good news tonight! (With apologies to Gabriel Heater.)

Foyle's War is back on PBS.

National priorities

Did you notice how the passing of former White House press secretary Tony Snow evoked more comment than the death of Dr. Michael DeBakey, the man who pretty much invented modern heart surgery? (The New York Times was an exception.)

From all reports, Tony Snow was a warm man, the exceptional conservative with a real sense of humor, not all of it at the expense of his political opponents. But he was a press secretary--basically, a flack. Michael DeBakey extended the lives of thousands of people.

Let's keep our eye on the ball, folks.

So much to do

Frank Rich reminds us of just how the criminals in the Bush administration have undermined our security--perhaps opening us up to another 9/11 attack.

Even if Obama wins, undoing the evil done by Bush & Co.--not just to our moral, economic and security position, but to almost all aspects of our national life--will take a lengthy, intense effort that will last at least until 2012. Indeed, it may not be possible to accomplish the task in two administrations.

Bush tells the truth, for once

Oops!

A briefing book distributed to reporters at the G-8 summit describes Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi as one of the "most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice."

Noting that Berlusconi took office in 1994 promising to "purge the notoriously lackadaisical Italian government of corruption," the biography goes on, "however, he and his fellow Forza Italia Party leaders soon found themselves accused of the very corruption he had vowed to eradicate."

The White House has apologized for this excursion into candor at the expense of a man who welcomed Mr. Bush to Italy last month by calling him, "a personal friend of mine and also a great friend of Italy." With friends like these, Silvio...

Pet Pander?

What the hell, it's the silly season:

A new poll reveals that pet owners prefer McCain to Obama. The AP suggests that that may be because the Arizona senator has a number of four-legged friends, while the Obama family does not.

Perhaps significantly, McCain's margin among cat caretakers is significantly narrower (41-38 percent--probably within the margin of error) than among those who own dogs (43-34 percent). I always knew that cat people were smarter than dog owners.

On the other hand, Obama leads by a wide margin among those who do not own pets: 48-34 percent.

Sen. Obama has told his daughters that they will get a dog after the campaign is over. The American Kennel Club is conducting a poll on what kind of dog the Obama's should get. However, the AKC has narrowed the field to five breeds, all unsuitable: Bichon Frise, Chinese crested (crested what?), poodle, soft-coated Wheaten terrier (huh?) or miniature Schnauzer.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, as a teenager, I had a miniature poodle, and he was a great dog. For one thing, he didn't know he was a poodle. He thought he was a hound.)

Clearly, the dog for the Obama clan is a Scottie. Black. Maybe name him Fala.

Age(ent) of change?

An AP-Yahoo poll shows that about 20 percent of respondents think "old" when they hear John McCain's name and "change" or "outsider" when they hear Barack Obama's. (It's not clear if that is the same 20 percent.) These responses led all others in the poll.

This is the kind of report that makes me think that Obama should have taken McCain up on his town-hall-meeting idea. Maybe he will, as the list of McCain's gaffe's grows.

We're baaaaacckkk

Hello again to any faithful readers who are still checking in, and to anyone who might happen upon us.

After almost a month off the air, TONE is back. There's lots to comment on; indeed, a surfeit of news seemed to sap TONE's energy and is partly responsible for the absence of recent posts. To anyone who's missed us, thanks for your interest.

A victory for America

The Supreme Court's decision today, affirming the right of Guantanamo Bay detainees to habeas corpus, is not just a victory for the Constitution and the law, but for America. By that I don't mean for the nation, but for the idea of America: that we have, as John Adams put it, a government of laws and not of men, that we have enough faith in our constitutional system to apply it even to great threats by those who would destroy our liberties, and that the law protects even the most loathsome persons.

This is the America that those parts of the world that believe in or aspire to liberty have seen as a beacon of freedom for more than two centuries.

It was, as you probably know, a "close-run thing," a 5-4 decision; the Great Writ of habeas corpus hung on a single vote. Sometimes, the scales of justice are barely tipped, yet the result is epochal.

Let me take a moment here to comment on what has been reported about Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent; I confess that I have not read the decision as yet. Scalia is said to have commented that, as a result of the decision, more Americans will die. There is no way to tell whether that is true, and it is unlikely ever to be knowable. But let us assume that Justice Scalia is correct. Does that make the decision wrong. No. No, it does not. We know that our system of justice may impose such costs on our society. We repeatedly boast, after all, that our system is intended to let 50 or 100 guilty people go free in preference to convicting one innocent individual. Some of those guilty persons will go back to preying on society, and we have always known that. And until the Bush Administration, we thought we knew that the nation abided by the Geneva Convention, our Constitution and our laws, even though those provisos might "tie the hands" of our intelligence officers and interrogators. Justice Holmes said that taxes are the price of civilization, but they are not the only price we willingly pay.

Dispatch from the front line

Here in Massachusetts, we have to get our cars inspected once a year. My car is scheduled for June inspection, so today when I saw an inspection station, I drove in and got it done.

When I went to pay, the owner--who had been talking away on his cel phone when I went in--said "when you drove in I was on the phone yelling at Sunoco." He then told me that the company is charging him $3.94 per gallon, and pointing out that the credit card fee he pays is $.10 per gallon for Visa and MasterCard, more for American Express. He said he's earning $.04 per gallon. Even if he's understating the figure by a bit, it's clear that he's not making any money pumping gas.

The exorcist?

There' been a lot of talk about Bobby Jindal, young, "conservative" Republican governor of Louisiana as a possible McCain VP pick. Now comes a report, based on an article that Jindal wrote, that he may be an exorcist. Will the right wing of the Republican Party accept an exorcist on the ticket? Doesn't sound like it would play well in the Bible Belt or parts of the Midwest. Not to mention Jewish neighborhoods in South Florida.

Is this the end of the Jindal bubble?

Thinking about vice

The vice presidency, that is. (Get your mind out of the gutter!)

I'm not going to handicap the prospective vice-presidential candidates, but let's take a few moments to think about the qualities that a vice-president should have.

Vice-presidential nominees are often--almost always--chosen for short-range political considerations, i.e., getting elected. But after the election comes serving in probably the least-rewarding job in western civilization. Or Eastern, for that matter.

The VP is the aide that the President can't fire. On the other hand, and for that very reason, the VP is also an aide who has at least a penumbral stature over and above what the President gives him/her. Thus we should hope that the VP is a person who can aid the President, perhaps by bringing an aspect of experience (with the economy in McCain's case, for instance) that the President lacks, or--and this would be my preference--through a relationship of trust and confidence between the two that makes the Vice-President a sounding board and confidant. In other words, a Vice-President with stature.

Although the President cannot fire the VP, he--or at some time she--can move the VP to the deep background. There are lots of jokes about the job of the Vice-President being to go to funerals. We'd be better off without that. Well, maybe. Clearly, the Bush administration would have been less pernicious if Dick Cheney had been sent off to more memorial observances.

I'm hoping that Barack Obama and John McCain will give at least as much thought to how his respective Vice-Presidential nominee would serve the nation in office as each does to how many votes the VP nominee might attract to the ticket.

Follow-up

A follow up on The Huckabee Heimlich:

Regular readers will know that our real motto is not the bromide at the top of the page, but "Don't let the easy ones go by." With that in mind:

It's true: all would be Republican Vice-Presidential candidates will be required to show that they are certified in CPR.

If you read the original post, you were waiting for that one, weren't you?

Tag line

Keith Olbermann suggests that every Obama campaign spot could end with, "When Bush became President, the price of gas was $1.47 a gallon. Now it's over $4.00. And you're thinking of voting for another Republican?"

Where is the world?

I was in Europe at the time of the Zimbabwean election, which meant that we heard a lot more about the story of the regime's stonewalling in the face of obvious electoral disaster than you did back in the States; the BBC covered it intensely, and CNN World is much more attuned to news out of Africa than it is in the United States.

In the past two months, the tragedy has only deepened. The world has stood by as the unbelievably incompetent, incredibly corrupt and amazingly brutal government party has worked to steal power from its rightful holders. And, not all that surprising, the world is letting Mugabe and his thugs get away with it. Taking cover behind Thabo Mbeki, Mugable's ally in fact if not in name, the rest of the world barely musters the energy to mouth meaningless protests at the outrages. When Mugable announces, on June 28th or 29th, that he has won another term, the rest of the world will tut-tut about "electoral irregularities."

Zimbabwe and Burma (a/k/a Myanmar), allies in the Coalition of the Brutal and Incompetent, each need another Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk, in case you've forgotten, overthrew the rotten and corrupt regime of the "Young Turks" in the Ottoman Empire. (Yes, that's where we get the phrase.) Ataturk laid the foundation for modern Turkey and, looking ahead to the time when he could no longer rule, set up a two-party system that led to today's near-democracy. Though by no means perfect, Ataturk was a true patriot, motivated by a vision for his nation, not the desire to line his own pockets. Unfortunately, people like him are rare.

(To give you an idea of the kind of man Ataturk was, in 1915, under his birth-name Mustapha Kemal, he had been assigned as a junior general to a backwater region--the price of his opposition to the Young Turk regime. The backwater was the Gallipoli peninsula south of Constantinople (now Istanbul). When British Empire forces stormed ashore, intending to force the Dardanelles, knock Turkey out of the war and open a supply route to Russia, there was only about a regiment or maybe a battalion available to oppose them. Kemal lined his few men up and said to them, "I do not order you to attack. I order you to die." He then sent them forward, where they checked the first wave of invaders, leading to the prolonged stalemate and ultimate disaster of Gallipoli.)

The Huckabee Heimlich

Mike Huckabee performed the Heimlich Maneuver on the Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina.

This will undoubtedly raise Huckabee's chances of getting the Vice-Presidential nod from John McCain, whose campaign could use a Heimlich Maneuver.

Hillary Clinton's exit

Hillary Clinton's exit was as generous and gracious as Barack Obama and his supporters could have hoped for. There were no sour grapes, no damning with faint praise. She gave her supporters all the reasons to support the Democratic ticket, whether or not she is on it.

If Clinton was gracious, some of her supporters, interviewed on NPR, were less so. (Were reporters looking for disgruntled Clinton people? Do dogs search for bones?)

I heard interviews with a couple of Clinton supporters, one who said that she would have to think about whom she was voting for in November, and another who said she would not vote for Obama--she might write-in Clinton or, perhaps, vote for McCain. And I thought how nice it must be not to have to worry about someone who might be killed in Iraq because John McCain is determined on "victory." Or about millions of people who would get health insurance under Obama but will be denied it if John McCain is elected. Or about the women who will not be paid equally with men under a Republican administration.

For its last six weeks or so, the Clinton campaign was kept afloat by sexism--the supporters (most, but not all of them women) who thought she should be President because she is a woman. (Would they support Libby Dole or Kay Bailey Hutchison?) Some analysts suggested that the approach she took in yesterday's speech was dictated by a cool appreciation of what she had to do to assure her political future. Maybe. But she also knew which of the remaining candidates would come closest--much the closest--to carrying out her program for the country, so whether it was a case of pragmatism, idealism or cold calculation, she pointed her supporters toward Obama. I hope that they will take the final message of her campaign to heart.

One-on-one

As you've no doubt heard by now, John McCain has challenged Barack Obama to a series of 10 joint "town-hall appearances" over the summer. He's even suggested that they travel to them on the same plane. (Is his campaign that short of cash?)

Obama should accept, on one condition: that to relax and loosen up before each appearance, he and McC play 20 minutes of one-on-one roundball.

All the news?

I know that The NYT says it publishes "all the news that's fit to print," by why is this story on today's front page?

Bush Overstated Evidence on Iraq, Senators Report

As the teens and 'tweens would say, "Duh-uh!"

How long?

For those who bewailed how long it took for Barack Obama to wrap up the Democratic nomination, consider this: He did it before the Stanley Cup playoffs had been decided, and before the NBA finals had even begun.

(Whether that's a comment on politics or the state of professional sports, I leave to the reader.)

OK, it's over

Finally.

The NYT reports that Hillary Clinton will "suspend" her campaign and endorse Barack Obama on Friday. Apparently, a group of her supporters in the House and Senate told her that they were moving to Obama, and that finally tipped the matter.

The phrase "forgotten but not gone" was beginning to apply to Hillary.

The final lap of this race was so long that it's hard to believe that the Democratic race really is over. So let's take a moment to stop and reflect on what Obama has done: A black man, with two years in the Senate, is going to be the candidate of the Democratic Party, and should be the favorite to stand up and take the oath next January 20th. Imagine that! Few would have a year and a half ago, when Barack Obama stood on the steps of the Old State House in Springfield, Illinois, and announced his candidacy for President.

This is not the only improbable candidacy for president; indeed, most of them are. Think of Ronald Reagan, former second-rate actor. Or Jimmy Carter, one-term governor and former peanut farmer. Or Abraham Lincoln--a one-term congressman who lost the race for the Illinois Senate seat only two years before being elected to the White House.

A couple of months ago, I would have said that Obama would roll to victory in November, in perhaps the most unlikely story in Presidential history. After the long slog against Clinton, with his repeated defeats in important states (albeit only among the Democratic electorate), that seems a bit less probable. I fear that I have begun to buy the idea that Obama needs to shift his argument, to make a more specific case to the American people. Just relying on his inspiring message will not work, in part because so many voters have heard the message that it has less power to inspire. But truly inspirational leaders--FDR, JFK--have been able to lift hearts and spirits on a variety of subjects and a variety of levels. This is the challenge Obama faces now.

AP calls it

The Associated Press calls it for Obama.

(George Orwell wrote a piece in which he distinguished between real news--like wars--and psuedo-events like press conferences. Most of our "news" these days falls into the latter category. Given that war, pestilence and famine (not to mention earthquakes and floods) fall into the former, maybe that's not a bad thing.)

Crazy as a bedbug

A Fox News employee has filed a lawsuit against the owner of the building she works in, and the maintenance company, claiming that bedbugs have invaded her workplace.

TONE wants to know why she was sleeping on the job.

By the way, isn't "Fox News" a candidate for the shortest oxymoron in the English language?