the 60th Senate Democrat?

Hysterical. Clever, clever Obama. Judd Gregg is a Republican Senator from New Hampshire. The person who would appoint his successor is John Lynch, the Democratic governor.

This is where we see just how "bareknuckle" Obama is. If he wanted, he could use this opportunity to create a Democratic supermajority in the senate and ram through his entire agenda, Parliament-style, Republicans be damned. Or, he could hold out this possibility to Mitch McConnell to extort something big out of the GOP, say a big climate change package or a well-functioning government health insurance program.

My suspicion is that Obama will do neither of these and pass up a golden opportunity for the sake of comity with Senate Republicans, as much as I hate to say it. He may even publicly disavow such a hardball move as a gesture of good faith. I think Obama's a true believer when he talks about bipartisanship. Let's hope his faith in the better angels of the GOP is justified.

The main argument I've heard against the possibility of this happening is the question of Gregg's motivation to go along with something that forever tarnish his name in his own political party. Well, here's his incentive: Gregg's up for re-election in 2010 and under 50% against Democrat Paul Hodes in rapidly bluing New Hampshire. Interesting fact about the 50% mark: those senators who polled above 50% during the year of their re-election in every poll all won their re-elections. Among the incumbents who had even one poll in that entire year show them under the magic 50% mark, fully half lost their elections. And let's not forget that he'll be running in New Hampshire, which booted the other Republican senator from office in November, both of its Republican congressmen, 7 of state senators (out of a total senate of 24), and 102 state representatives (out of a total assembly of 400) in 2006, and just re-elected its Democratic governor with 74% of the vote.

According to the odds, there's a 50/50 chance that Judd Gregg will not be senator in 2011 no matter what he does. Looks like plenty of incentive to me. I imagine that, if this coup doesn't happen, it will have been aborted by the president, not the senior senator from New Hampshire.

a book by a conservative that i'm buying right freaking now.

No, not that book.

Here I am trying to enjoy the miraculous victory that Michael Phelps had in the 100m butterfly today, and I flip over to KERA as a pure fluke (TiVO's out of commission for the moment - I never channelsurf).

I see a couple of white-headed guys going on about some general political stuff and I flip back over to Numb3ers. Phelps takes the gold, and I still don't think I've seen a frame of video where he's actually in the lead anywhere, and as NBC goes to break, I end up flipping back over to KERA.

Before I know it, I'm totally sucked it by a guy named Andrew Bacavich (pronounced BASE-uh-vich) who's making a brilliant series of nuanced and emotional statements about the state of where we are as a country today.

Bacavich describes himself as a conservative - disillusioned with the failures of the Republicans to uphold their collective promises of smaller government, balanced budgets, and a return to the "traditional values" of the past (his quotes). Further disillusioned with the American imperialism that sent his own son off to die fighting in Iraq, and with the lack of Congress to illustrate a meaningful picture of the greater good, Bacavich describes the rise of the American imperial presidency. This presidency isolates the president from Congressional oversight with its myriad of agencies that don't answer to congress: The FBI, CIA, NSA, joint chiefs of staff, Attourney general, etc - and the congress willingly thrusts its powers onto the exective branch, so that it can get on with its business of getting re-elected. Further, he details how the empire of production that arose out of WWII shifted to the empire of consumption that we live in today, and the threat that the full-on consumption culture poses to our society and our security as a whole.

Watch the entire interview when you get a moment. It's flat-out fascinating.

It's a blunt, scathing critique of the state of American govt and policy. And it rightly puts the blame not on those that run for and are elected to office, but to our moronic electorate that continually puts them into office. As Carlin says, "Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens you're going to get selfish, ignorant politicians. So maybe something else sucks around here." - actually, watching that passage again it's amazing how parallel the sentiments run.


So the book is called The Limit of Power, and I'll own it just as soon as I can get my oily mitts on it.

Here's a quote from the interview:

BILL MOYERS: What do you value most?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I think the clearest statement of what I value is found in the preamble to the Constitution. There is nothing in the preamble to the Constitution which defines the purpose of the United States of America as remaking the world in our image, which I view as a fool's errand. There is nothing in the preamble of the Constitution that ever imagined that we would embark upon an effort, as President Bush has defined it, to transform the Greater Middle East. This region of the world that incorporates something in order of 1.4 billion people.

I believe that the framers of the Constitution were primarily concerned with focusing on the way we live here, the way we order our affairs. To try to ensure that as individuals, we can have an opportunity to pursue our, perhaps, differing definitions of freedom, but also so that, as a community, we could live together in some kind of harmony. And that future generations would also be able to share in those same opportunities.

The big problem, it seems to me, with the current crisis in American foreign policy, is that unless we do change our ways, the likelihood that our children, our grandchildren, the next generation is going to enjoy the opportunities that we've had, is very slight, because we're squandering our power. We are squandering our wealth. In many respects, to the extent that we persist in our imperial delusions, we're also going to squander our freedom because imperial policies, which end up enhancing the authority of the imperial president, also end up providing imperial presidents with an opportunity to compromise freedom even here at home. And we've seen that since 9/11.

guest post:A moment of positivity

You're so negative Derek. :)

Here's what the real story is tonight:


Over the course of this campaign Barak Obama has proven himself to be several things:

-Smart
-Passionate
-Eloquent
-Charismatic
-Politically ruthless
-A tough negotiator

and most of all

-Galvanizing

The man can just jack up a crowd. Last night I was up at 11:00 yelling my head off at the TV because the little Penguins had just flat out stolen the Stanley Cup from the hated Red Wings. Loved that. Tonight I was up at 9:00, cheering at the TV again - only this time because the world was hearing the Barak Obama that I've grown to admire and respect over the last several months.

No one will argue that the coming contest between he and McCain is going to be contentious, tightly fought, and ideologically weird. Demographics, swing states, issues, and gaffes will all be unpredictable and will all yield surprising skews one way or the other. But with all of the uncertainty in the air, if Obama continues to present himself with this much eloquence, charisma, and political prowess he's going to win and he's going to win big.

The coming debates are going to be great to watch. Given the last few election results I personally have a pretty high level of disdain for the American voting public, (and it is entirely possible that we'll screw this one up too) but for now lets sit back and enjoy the fact that our window may just be cracking open one more time.

guest post: our window

I know that this type of post can be found in various forms all over the internet on a daily basis, but I've got to get it off my chest all the same.

There I am, lying dead asleep this morning as the rain falls gently outside my window, when the dog (terrified thing that she is) tries to jump up and sleep on my face. I send her back to her own bed and am suddenly stricken with a kind of sadness that hits me from time to time when I start to think about the way that things are.

I realized that it has been weeks since I watched an Obama speech, and when you consider that the man is both a magnificent orator and a campaigning presidential candidate that can be a long time. It has been weeks since I thought anything positive about this race. And weeks since anything worthwhile has been covered.

We had a small window there that we probably should have made it a point to enjoy while it was open.

After the New Hampsire primary in early January, Barak Obama gave a speech that was so inspiring that it moved a number of high-profile artists to put it to music and create the kind of viral grassroots thing that shapes internet culture in a vast and dramatic way. It leaped forward into the mainstream media, and the political discourse moved significantly away from gossip, Bush bashing, and vacuous pontification and significantly towards a real discussion of how we as Americans can begin to reunite and re-influence this government in a real and positive way.

And the window was open.

And it stayed open for a remarkably long time, when you consider the forces that rushed to the sill and applied all of their collective weight to slam it back shut. Clinton called the speeches "empty" and mocked them. McCain and Romney subtly asserted that all democrats are terrorists and that we'll be overrun with car bombers and taxes if they succeed. The 24-hour cable news outlets collectively craned their necks and dug for more gossip to cover.

Together as a group they leaned on the window, trying to slam it shut. The light was still shining through it however, and the American people (who hadn't seen political sunlight in quite some time) weren't ready to just let it get slammed on them. They handed Obama multiple and sizeable victories, hung on every speech, and sent ratings of said speeches through the roof. The news outlets were forced to acknowledge this phenomenon and to cover it, but they hated it because they could not control it. In newsrooms across the country, news directors reluctantly broadcast speech after speech, waiting for something to break so that they could return to the inane gossip, biased punditry, and false outrage that steadies ratings and keeps food on their tables.

Then it happened. Sean Hannity, who automatically displays a loathing for any American with a D next to his name, pushed reverend Wright into the spotlight from his pulpit on the right wing of Fox News' stage. The media pounced, digging into the story that they had been waiting so patiently for. An endless loop of a 2 second clip still hasn't gone away.

When the video emerged the window neared the sill, and Obama himself walked over to try to keep it open. He gave a speech the likes of which I've never witnessed in my adult life, but then i wasn't around for Kennedy. He spoke honestly, directly, and sincerely. He treated Americans like adults, and the news outlets responded like children.

And just like that, the window was slammed shut the moment Obama walked off of that stage. It may open again, if Obama is allowed to discuss actual issues once again, but I won't be holding my breath.