John McCain talks a big game, but does he have the chops to be commander in chief?

Rumor is that Barack Obama is on the verge of picking a VP nominee and may do so before the Olympics fat-foots news coverage next week. Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia may be at the top of the list. Without taking anything away from Kaine, I think that Obama’s campaign may be missing the best pick, Wesley Clark. The reasons go well beyond the preference in the netroots for Clark. His pick would open up perhaps a flood of votes from military members and families all across the country, perhaps carrying multiple borderline states. So really, nominating Clark is its own "fifty-state strategy".

While I’m incredibly angry about today’s vote in the Senate on the FISA amendment, I’m not surprised and I refuse to be at effect of the outcome. The forces of evil that brought us this are undoubtedly planning the next outrage as you read this, and we can ill afford to sit back and wait for their next attack. There will always be people who want to take away our rights because there will always be money in it. And, we are losing because we have not come to grips with the seriousness of the threat nor have we put together the proper forces to deal with that threat.

We need to look immediately to the next constitutional battle and prepare for it; and that’s what this piece is about. Good strategy dictates that we choose the battle and that we shape the battlefield. I think we should do that right now, rather than morn the loss of yet another set of rights.

John McCain plans to vote for tampering with FISA: "I will support this measure and hope that politics will be put aside in favor of this vital national security matter." In the brouhaha about Obama selling out on this issue, the Democrats have lost their opportunity to attack McCain on this issue. But McCain voting for the measure is every bit as bad as Obama voting for it. This is a bill specifically designed to undermine the Fourth Amendment and put political pressure on the courts to bring in a specific verdict, one that is intended to protect the White House from further legal prosecution.

The common wisdom in the media is that Sen. Obama is showing strength by "standing up to the left" by signing on to the FISA compromise. Like so much of what passes for intelligence on the idiot box this is a bunch of hooey. The charitable reading is that it puts a fig leaf over a very obscene part of Obama’s campaign. If it weren’t so logically flawed and the stakes were not so high, then it would be mildly amusing. But, that presupposes it’s a political fight, like some dustup over whether to do away with Social Security, and it presupposes that this was a left-right, liberal/conservative issue. Of course, neither of those premises holds.

But, I find myself somewhat less than surprised over Obama’s position and hardly outraged. After all, we all knew he was a politician, and we’ve learned that can be an epithet as well as a laudatory label. In the event, he may be irrelevant to the discussion. It would be good to know that someone about to take the oath of office would mean the words they speak, but is that ever the case?

Again, a brave soul walks lonely down the aisle of the House, the other members scrambling to get away and carelessly side-talking until he has to demand decorum on his own. The scurrying furry bodies quiet down somewhat, allowing him to continue with his simple plea for justice and the rule of law. Meanwhile, disreputable sorts scoff in the wings.

The dark stain of blood is visible to the trained eye of one who would look beyond the obvious exteriors of the worn benches and soft, absorbent carpeting. But no one would want to own up to the carnage the last batch of scurrilous shoplifters and bandits created when they rubberstamped a war they must have known was less about the needs of the nation than about lining the pockets of the already rotund gourmands of the public trough, so the experienced eye looks away. Only a "statesman" would go on such a fool’s errand, knowing that they would be pilloried in the corruptible press for speaking the truth.

Speculation that Barack Obama will choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate has peaked now that Obama has clinched the nomination. Common wisdom is that he must do this for the women who supported Clinton and have been bitterly disappointed by her defeat. But bringing her onto the ticket has significant problems, and Obama would be well served to use other means to heal the wounds of a brutal primary season.

That’s why he should pledge to appoint women to at least fifty percent of the cabinet seats in his administration. This may not be enough for many in the Clinton camp to bring them on board, but it would go a long way toward it. Beyond that, it’s time that women got their fair share of the real power in the executive government. A fully balanced cabinet is in the best interests of the country and certainly in keeping with the mission of the Obama campaign.

The R&B Committee should use the national polls to arrive at fair representation for Michigan and Florida. Then they should allocate the pledged delegates based on an average from those polls (in those states). This is the closest the Democratic Party can come to fair representation, and therefore it’s the best way to fix the broken process.

In the run-up to the war in Iraq, President George Bush lied to the nation in making the case to go to war. I say "lied" although he might claim that he was just putting out his version of reality, that there was a vague possibility that Saddam Hussein had some kind of chemical weapons so he could claim that Saddam had WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. If people somehow thought that means he meant nuclear weapons (however pronounced), then he was willing to let them make that mistake in service of his larger purpose (to line the pockets of his friends).

So it grates on my nerves when Hillary Clinton claims that Barak Obama needs 2200 or so delegates to win the nomination. Sure, it’s possible that in some universe (probably parallel) various decisions will be made that at some point in the future seat all the delegates from Florida and Michigan in a way that would give her the nomination. But, I don’t think anyone paying attention (least of all the superdelegates in this universe) would confuse this to mean that Obama needs these extra delegates to win.

And I would have to ask if we want someone to be President who would fudge the facts in order to get their way, given recent presidential history.

A 501 is running attack ads against Jerry McNerney (CA-11) on KCBS radio accusing him of being soft on the terrorists because he doesn’t support giving away our freedoms to support the Bush Administration. I have a call in to Ed Cavinero, News Director at KCBS (phone--415-765-4049) to ask why KCBS has chosen to run this false and defamatory ad.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, on Fox News: "I keep beating this drum. We cannot disenfranchise two of the most important states. . .".

Two points.

Point One: "We" didn’t disenfranchise these states. A select group of politicians in each state chose to disenfranchise their voters by holding the primaries when they wouldn’t count.

Point Two: "We" don’t think you should continue to campaign if it means electing a Republican President. So, if you continue this campaign and, for whatever reason, you aren’t the Democratic nominee and that nominee goes down to defeat, then you will have not only shortchanged every Democrat in the country, but you will have shortchanged the country.

Boy, do I hate to say it! I miss the presidential debates, even though they got less and less pertinent (to me) as the number of debaters shrank to two. But the post-debate primary season makes me long for three hours of questions about which kind of rubber chicken is the worst. Now we are parsing Hillary Clinton’s nightmares, as told by Hillary Clinton, and sermons by some obscure preacher, who none of us outside Chicago had ever heard of before March.

So, I have a modest proposal. BRING BACK THE DEBATES!

We will probably soon learn whether Obama’s speech about race freed his campaign to move on. But regardless of whether or not Obama becomes President, the impact of his speech may be far greater in the future than in this election year. As with other issues, Obama found a way to transcend the current question and turn a potentially divisive issue into a call for unity and change.

Obama brings something that has been so lacking in politics that I think we stopped being conscious of missing it. He is able to take the common political situation and add to it. Rather than defending Rev. Wright’s remarks or his involvement with them, he accepted them and then took the opportunity to talk about something that, frankly, he may have longed to talk about publicly for some time. In doing that, he opened up a path that was never available before. In doing so, I think he showed something that marks him as great presidential material.

I usually don’t blog in the morning because then I have to go to work, and I prefer to stay around to respond to comments. But today I’m having a particularly difficult time waking up because along with the Teletubbies on TV there’s now the idiot in chief spewing lies about telco amnesty and his commitment to protecting our liberties.

His words are directed at Congress and so are mine. Here’s the picture, Oh People of the House. If you cave on this I’m going to personally go on the rampage and you will be taking the brunt of it.

By next Tuesday, I have to decide who to vote for in the Democratic presidential primary. I thought I had made my choice earlier in the year, when Dennis Kucinich came out with a solid plan for national healthcare. But then he dropped out of the race.

As the primary neared, I considered switching my vote to John Edwards, who has made the working poor such a core part of his campaign. Putting him over the 15% threshold might be worthwhile even by itself. But then, he dropped out too.

So, now I’m faced with deciding whether to cast a vote for one of the remaining declared candidates. I’m not that enthusiastic about it, and I’m leaning toward just casting my vote for Edwards, anyway. He could get delegates, even though his campaign is "suspended". And what is my vote worth, anyway?

With the imminent arrival of my unexpected income tax break (that is, the estimated $600 that will probably actually come in late August after I get around to filing my return), I’ve been wrestling with the dilemma of what to do with this windfall. I want to help out the economy and my country, but the numerous considerations make the best policy less than obvious.

I pondered this for a number of days. It was very hard to reach a conclusion. But after some consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that the very best thing I can do with my money is to buy gold. My logic follows.

Now, even the Republican candidates have taken up the cry, "Change!" We need "Change!" Even Hillary Clinton is crying, "Change!" Everyone wants change, right?

No. Not me.

Maybe you’ve heard: "The more things change, the more they stay the same." I don’t want things to stay the same. So, candidates--Democratic candidates--give that word change a rest. There’s a better word, one the Republicans can’t co-opt.

The more I think about it, the madder I get. Here are the Republicans wasting our time again with another big lie. The big lie is that Congress can give immunity to the telecomm companies for their part in the (no longer) secret invasion of our privacy.

At first, I didn’t think too much about this. I just thought it was another attempt by the Bush Administration to help out their friends in the telecommunication industry. I figured that they wanted to bully the Democrats into helping them out. But then I realized that they weren’t even being honest about this. Because Congress can’t grant the telecoms immunity. They violated the Constitution. They need a constitutional amendment to save their skins.