Obama needs a homerun in his VP pick.  Someone with the experience and integrity to match Obama’s vision and integrity.  The choice is obvious.  Al Gore would be the best person we could imagine to balance the ticket.

I’m sure Obama would love to have Gore.  But would Gore do it?  

I believe if Obama offered Gore the chance to commit 100% of his time to leading the climate control policy of the US, and the full support of the U.S. government in leading for climate change in the world, Gore would consider.  

McCain is SO awesome.  And this has nothing to do with McCain asking people to post on this blog and my desire for points.  (Maybe I'll get a t-shirt?)

So, I want to highlight the points that he, I mean that I, think are important.  McCain is a partisan hack, I mean a post-partisan leader and it is time for solutions after the Bush mess, and McSame, I mean McCain will continue, I mean fix the problem.

While taxes are never a particular joy, some people have injustice inherent in their taxes.  We all know how this country is hurting the poor with regressive taxes, but I think the homophobia in our tax structure is largely unknown.

Conservatives gripe about the 'marriage penalty,’ which affects a very small number of people who could find ways to work around it.  However, there are massive major benefits as well.  This year, I have to pay taxes on $6,899.48 of "income" for the market value of the health insurance my domestic partner and his kids received last year.

Decent people have decried anything that hints of racial overtones in the Clinton/Obama campaign.  Anything that plays into racist stereotypes must be eschewed, and we need to be careful because we have a racist society with a history of inscribing various, negative attributes to African Americans.

That said, we have just as long a history of sexism, and sexism is just as deeply written into our culture and more deeply written into our language.  

Obama’s recent statement, "I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal," smacked of sexist stereotyping.  While I voted for Obama last month and will support the nominee regardless, if he continues in that vein, I will not volunteer for him (and I’ve done everything from Precinct Captain for countless campaigns to regional coordinator for MoveOn in Manhattan, to VIP coordinator for YearlyKos).

They say the personal is political; I find that more salient with this election.  Increasingly, I'm becoming a feminist.  I've never really considered myself a feminist as much as a humanist, in that I cared about all injustice.  Gay rights dominated my activism because of the great, glaring injustices.  But the last few months are teaching me things I hadn't previously noticed.

Hillary's win tonight is important because of the personal message it sends.  Her run will, perhaps imperceptibly, lift ceilings.  And if she wins, if we "watch a woman get older before [our] eyes on a daily basis" maybe it will make quotidian life easier for women, who are getting older on a daily basis, everywhere.  

Maureen Dowd echos the mainstream media myth that Hillary keeps dissing Obama.  "She usually ignores Obama and John Edwards backstage, preferring to chat with the so-called second-tier candidates."  Far be it for Dowd to back up her allegations with facts, as she has always played fast and loose when trashing Dems, but a) this is a sexist argument and b) I want to know what this meme is based on.  At the YKos convention, Hillary talked with Obama backstage for about 5 minutes.

Stephen Colbert and Frank Rich did a charming interview at the 92nd Street Y tonight.  Colbert added the ‘t’ to his name and spoke opening (and charmingly) about the show, the run for the presidency, blogging and the book.

The talk included the stunning revelation that following Dumbledore’s outing "Gandalf is only bi-curious;" they had to use wire cutters to get Bill O’Reilly’s microwave and the Colbert didn’t really want the gig at the Daily Show and only started on it to pay his rent.  While it is impossible to include everything, I’ve got some highlights after the jump.  

As one of the people working backstage at the convention, I got to see the private side of many of our guests.  I've been reluctant to blog about what happened backstage, and I won't talk about any difficulties because sometimes people have a bad day and shouldn't be judged for it.  Every single one of our guests did us a great favor by coming.  However, two people stuck out: both Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton really impressed me.  They are fine people, unbelievably smart, and kind.  Dean went out of his way to see as many people as possible.  He really cares about the netroots, not just the idea, but the people.  He talked warmly about people he knew from this or that place and is clearly really engaged.  Hillary struck me with the breadth and depth of her knowledge.

While I am not sure who I am supporting, I think people should know more about Hillary based on her actions and not the right-wing noise machine's crazy caricatures.  She was intelligent and inquisitive when it was just me and not anyone who mattered.  She asked about my work, my concerns and had an extraordinary grasp of the issues.

I protest so that I can be heard.  I protest to celebrate what is good as well as rejecting what is bad.  I protest to be part of something greater than myself—part of a community.  A good protest should exhilarate, leave us connected to a greater community and ready to do more.  Memories of an anti-war protest in Portland Oregon, with a Tyco drum band is 2003 still leaves me excited and engaged.  But few protests manage to do so.

Yesterday’s DC rally disappointed me.  We are becoming so media savvy (in some ways) that we are selling out the soul of protest and ultimately, that could do to protests what political consultants are doing to campaigns.  Focusing primarily on what the cameras see and not on the experience of the protestors dissipates much of the energy and vitality, and turning protest from an experience people "want to" to an "ought to."  I urge people planning rallies to look from the point of view of the participants as much (if not more so) than the TV camera.

Brooks then shows the difficulty of irony in the current age.  Voicing his concern with entertainment that puts people down, he pens "when you are telling socially insecure audiences they are superior to their fellow citizens there is no need to be subtle."  

So, the people that go to see Borat are "socially insecure," but it would be wrong to look down on people in entertainment.

no matter how hard the Bush administration may try to ignore the constitutional division of power, Mr. Bush's ability to make deadly mistakes has rested in part on G.O.P. control of Congress. That's why many Americans, myself included, will breathe a lot easier if one-party rule ends tomorrow.

The debauched Iraqi reconstruction demonstrates the utter failure of the neo-con cronyism/free market policies:  

Bechtel... is leaving Iraq. Its mission ... wasn't accomplished: Baghdad received less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much of Iraq's population lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. But Bechtel, having received $2.3 billion of taxpayers' money and having lost the lives of 52 employees, has come to the end of its last government contract. ... Whatever our leaders may say ... when it comes to rebuilding Iraq they've already cut and run.

the war is a calamity by [Bush's] definitions as well. The American command's call for a mere 3,000 more Iraqi troops to help defend Baghdad has gone unanswered... When Iraqis do stand up, violence goes up. And when American and British troops stand down, murderous sectarian militias, some of them allied with that "unity" government, fill the vacuum, taking over entire cities like Amara and Balad in broad daylight. As for those "difficult decisions"

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

American voters deserve to have their views represented in Congress. And according to opinion polls, most Americans are actually to the left of Congressional Democrats on issues such as health care.

Krugman rightfully notes that the current partisan divide is because of the Republicans:

The reason we have so much bitter partisanship these days is that that's the way the radicals who have taken over the Republican Party want it. . .  As long as polarization is integral to the G.O.P.'s strategy, Democrats can't do much, if anything, to narrow the partisan divide.

Linda took the time to meet with the volunteers in the afternoon.  She was warm, gracious, and even promised to defend this "Bill of Rights" that I, as an out-of-touch liberal, sprung on her as a condition of support.  She seemed familiar with the document (as well as "The Constitution"--another document many of us liberals support).

Based on recent polling showing her within the margin of error, talking with Independent voters today, the fact that Linda is going to receive The New York Times endorsement tomorrow, and the anti-Republican mood in the country, I strongly believe that this is no longer a long shot and, with a little support, Linda has a real chance of winning this race!  

From the diaries. mcjoan

In Tomorrow's column "One-Letter Politics", Paul Krugman argues that "this is a one-letter election. D or R, that's all that matters."

Krugman frames the column with questioning whether we can trust Lieberman when the stakes are this high, opening with his ludicrous statement in the Hartford Courant that he hadn't thought about whether "America would be better off with his party regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives."  After laying out the huge stakes of this election (which I'll highlight below the fold), Krugman concludes:

What about the Senate race in Connecticut... Is this a case where the man, not the party, is what matters? Only if you believe that Mr. Lieberman's promise not to switch parties is 100 percent credible.

Krugman gives two major reasons that party matters much more than the individual candidates--the GOP in basically monolithic; McCain may say some good things to get on to TV, but he, like nearly all the GOP nearly all the time, votes for torture or Bush's power grabs or whatever else.

if the Republicans retain control of Congress, even if it's by just one seat in each house, Mr. Bush will retain that free hand. If they lose control of either house, the G.O.P. juggernaut will come to a shuddering halt.

Krugman believes subpoena power is the most important issue in this election.  We won't have enough power to override a veto, but they will be able to investigate.  

Krugman doesn't mention it, but we all know that our government was meant to have checks and balances.  The Constitution (or is that now as quaint as the Geneva convention) is very clear about this and Congress has a Constitutional duty to oversee the Executive Branch.

If [the Democrats] win they will gain the ability to carry out investigations, and the legal right to compel testimony. The current Congress has shown no inclination to investigate the Bush administration. Last year The Boston Globe offered an illuminating comparison: when Bill Clinton was president, the House took 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether Mr. Clinton had used the White House Christmas list to identify possible Democratic donors. But in 2004 and 2005, a House committee took only 12 hours of testimony on the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

If the Democrats take control, that will change -- and voters should think very hard about whether they want that change. Those who think it's a good idea to investigate, say, allegations of cronyism and corruption in Iraq contracting should be aware that any vote cast for a Republican makes Congressional investigations less likely.

One more thing--we all know that we underestimate the Republican Machine at our peril.  Give some time and treasure to progressive candidates and key races.  We've only got three more weeks!

because there are many districts that the G.O.P. carried by only moderately large margins in recent elections, a large Democratic surge -- one only a bit bigger than that needed to take the House at all -- would sweep away many Republicans holding seats normally considered safe. If the actual vote is anything like what the polls now suggest, we're talking about the Democrats holding a larger majority in the House than the Republicans have held at any point since their 1994 takeover.

I guess abhorring 'moral relativism' means that any differences in the situations are irrelevant, like a 10 year age difference versus and 40 year age difference, and not abusing power.  It is shameless hypocrisy!