Pickpocket strikes in a cafe.

Today I went to the ATM, then went to the cafe to work on class prep. While I was engrossed with my work, a professional pickpocket lifted my wallet, with all those nice crispy 20s, out of the front pocket of my backpack which was sitting on the floor between us right next to my leg. I remember vaguely noticing a man sit down at the table next to me, but the next time I looked up it was because of the coughing of the woman another table down and he was gone.

When I went to leave, I discovered my wallet was missing. I searched desperately through my backpack, looked everywhere, asked the baristas, and flashed back to that odd feeling I'd had earlier. I realized what had happened, and then had to cancel checks, ATM card, credit cards, and make a police report in case I have to contest any charges or bad checks. Also lost my AAA card, my library card, and all those coffee discount cards. Oh, and my faculty ID, much good that will do anybody. I have a duplicate drivers license, but I will have to report that as well.

The thing is, when I lived in Berkeley, something like this happened to me because I had my purse sitting next to me on a bench at an outdoor cafe and someone reached over the back of the bench and lifted my wallet, so I am usually so super careful. I'm just dismayed that I was so oblivious. But this has happened to other people I know; pros are slick.

An hour later, after being all calm about it initially, I find myself shaking and anxious. No, it's not the end of the world; I don't think anyone can do anything bad to me, but I hate the idea that a thief now has my address, my child's pictures, my really nice wallet that I just bought two months ago and that was the perfect wallet. I hate feeling like a chump. Losing $200 is pretty crappy, too.

Laugh so I don't cry

Time out for McCain to "fix" the economy? Uh oh. Remember what happened last time he did that?

"Something is going haywire with the campaign" says Letterman.


"Welfare for the rich"

UPDATE: As long as I'm linking to late night talk show hosts, I adore Craig Ferguson.

McCain "suspends" campaign, or Stick a fork in it, he's done!

McCain says he must rush back to Washington and cancel Friday's debate to deal with the nation's important business! O Rly?

This is the same Senator who missed 80 % of Senate votes in this year.

David Letterman and Chris Rock weigh in.

Don't know much about geography...

Oh, my. The next several weeks are going to be stressful. As an educator who struggles to ensure that my students know where Spanish is spoken in the world, this whole McCain/Spain thing hits home for me. Keith Olberman covers the story, and goes beyond the joke: Ignorance, senility, or belligerance toward our NATO ally? Wait for the part where he talks to Steve Clemons about Spain's role as our ally in Latin America, and with troops in Afghanistan.
Rachel Maddow has a new show on MSNBC. She also has a bit on McCain's confusion over Spain (after her observations about his economic confusion), and whether or not Spain is "one of our adversaries," as well as other geographical and political confusions.


Here's another Spanish-language joke about a conversation between McCain and Zapatero.

Our friends in Canada have a similar set of concersn about militant cultural ignorance (to see subtitles, click on the small arrow on the right of the YouTube viewer to enable transcription).

Where is Spain? don't ask McCain!

Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo and John Aravosis from AmericaBlog have been all over this story. Is McCain hostile to Spain? Does he think Zapatero is the president of a country in Latin America? is he senile? going deaf? you decide.

For my Spanish-speaking readers, here is the article in El País, the Spanish newspaper, about the radio interview between McCain and the reporter from Miami radio station Radio Caracol.

Here's a Spanish "translation" of the remarks McCain made in English when asked about José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, presidente del gobierno de España.

Here is Zapatero presenting the law for a vote that made marriage between same-sex partners legal in Spain.

Here is the Spanish transcript of the speech he made when the law was approved. Here is the English translation.

John Amato, whose site Crooks and Liars has been such an important source of the video record and polticial commentary in the last few years, has written a cri de coeur, a call for people to vote on the issues, not personalities.

I am totally behind what he says.

"A vote for McCain equals more War.

A vote for McCain equals No universal health care.

A vote for McCain equals a continued collapsing economy.

A vote for McCain equals higher gas prices.

A vote for McCain equals no help for the housing market.

A vote for McCain equals a further erosion of woman’s rights.

A vote for McCain equals ideologue judges being placed throughout the country.

And yet, so much of political discourse ends up sounding like advertising slogans, as these Twitter generated memes echo:

Sarah Palin is your new segway

is the new Barack Obama is your new bicycle.

How about listening to the man who can talk without using a Teleprompter and who can write his own speeches.

File under: Somebody had to do it!

I'm envious of those folks who have can do these creative video mash-ups. The Colbert Report recently issued the "Green Screen Challenge" (aka Make McCain Intersting); take a set bit of a McCain speech (the one where he was backed by the green screen) and add what should have gone in the background. The results are hilarious and creative.
via Pam's House Blend:
John McCain gets BarackRolled!


Priceless!

(What is Rickrolling? Wikipedia tells us here.)

(frame-by-frame comparison of the BarrackRoll with the original Rick Astley video)
.

Reactions to the RNC

Now that the elephants are leaving St Paul, the experts weigh in! For the adult conversation, click on GritTV over on the right.

For buffered responses, we turn to YouTubia, the great leveler, because Tina Fey won't be on SNL until Saturday.

First, a sample of the pundits ON the air:
Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow review the nomination on Sept 1.

Tom Brokaw and Chuck Todd on MSNBC.

CNN has Donna Brazile, Roland Martin, Toobin and more.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow sums it up in five seconds at 3:20.
(Who is Rachel? Air America host who will now have a show on MSNBC).

Then the pundits when they think they're OFF the air: in first place this morning for views at YouTube: Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy, two conservative commentators, are caught saying what they REALLY think of McCain's VP choice: "It's over."

But enough of the pundits. What else is out there? Warning: the following contain satire, profanity and all-around bad taste.

McMoney

LisaNova imagines the conversation between McCain and Palin when he offered her the nomination!

Kevin Nalts does a Tootsie take on Palin in response.

Check out SarahPalinvlog #1!

Headzup! is a daily political cartoon you can view on your cell phone
Here's the McCain rap song (as part of the Headzup playlist).

They gave away a T-shirt for every time McCain said "my friends" in his speech last night: ten.

Famous people have opinions, too: P. Diddy's put up his own vlog about the Palin pick, and there are now a gazillion responses. I am fond of Michael Buckley of "What the Buck?".

After the P. Diddy parody, check out this hilarious song, a parody of I kissed a girl, rewritten as I picked a girl.

The Ballad of Sarah Palin #1 (to the Davy Crockett theme song)

The Ballad of Sarah Palin #2 (with a banjo!)

And here's an interview with Jon Stewart, who is now a more respected source of news than other TV newscasters. With the McCain campaign sounding identical to SNL, we can understand why.

More vitally important citizen journalist coverage of RNC police intimidation

The events of the last few days are bringing back memories of police thuggery and repression of the past several decades. To anyone involved in political action, the police raids, beat-downs, and illegal and unconstitutional campaign of political repression is not new, but it still brings the outrage, because we are hammered night and day with propaganda about America's freedoms, our rights, blablabla. And many of us work to make those words a reality, not a hollow, empty, cynical appeal to jingoistic nationalism. Today's planned march, beginning at 11, will be big.. I warned my friends who are going to be very careful, but I'm glad they are turning out. I am feeling too ill to make it, although I really want to go.

Bloggers are covering the story, with interviews, video, and eyewitness accounts we are NOT seeing the local or national press outlets who are treating this as "police stop dirty anarchists from throwing urine at cops" story. Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law litigator and author, is doing a great job of bringing the news at his blog Unclaimed Territory, crossposting at Salon.com.

At Thinkery, thanks for another great link roundup of blogger and press coverage, as of Sunday evening, of the campaign of police intimidation of protest at the RNC. Krista notes with irony that the Canadians are wondering why the mainstream media is not telling this story. We have to look at Firedoglake to find the news that should be in the Star Tribune.

TC Sidewalks blogger billiam posts a unique insider's perspective of the campaign of police raids and intimidation from inside the RNC Welcoming Committee. Another local blogger, Phoenixwoman at Mercury Rising, continues her coverage. I hope all the mainstream press camera crews haven't left town chasing McCain for photo ops from Gustav, because even though the RNC has been scaled back, it is still going on, and the business of the party of corruption and fear is still newsworthy, as is the principled objection to it.

Thank you, John McCain! You just helped elect Barack Obama!

Jumped the Shark!
McCain, meet the shark you just jumped.

Q. What is jumping the shark?
A. It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on...it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it "Jumping the Shark." From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same.

The term "jump the shark" was coined by site founder Jon Hein's college roommate of 4 years, Sean J. Connolly, in Ann Arbor, Michigan back in 1985. This web site, book, film, and all other material surrounding shark jumping, are hereby dedicated to "the Colonel."

The aforementioned expression refers to the telltale sign of the demise of Happy Days, our favorite example, when Fonzie actually "jumped the shark." The rest is history.

Jumping the shark applies not only to TV, but also music, film, even everyday life. "Did you see her boyfriend? She definitely jumped the shark." You get the idea.

Palin: "But as for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell ya, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me, what is it exactly that the VP does every day?"


Married to an BP oilman;

Advocate of teaching creationism in public schools

Subject of state investigation for her efforts to get her ex-brother-in-law fired and endorsed by corrupt Ted Stevens;

Broke the law by using Alaska's DNR website to advocate against the Clean Water Initiative in favor of polluting mining interests;

Opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest;

Hates polar bears!

And it is insulting:

"it's a slap in the face of other Republican women like Kay Bailey Hutchison, bless her heart, who was forced to stumble through an interview on TV trying to make the case for Palin whom she has never met. There are certainly women in the Republican party who were "in line" for this before Palin. Did the Rovian type advisors to McCain just cynically think that throwing a young attractive inexperienced woman into the mix would satisfy women who long to see a woman president? Women, and Republican women, are not so stupid as to fall for that! It is reminiscent of the Republicans putting up Alan Keyes to run against Barack Obama for the Illinois Senate just because he was black. Voters saw through that pretty quickly."

And they won't like Palin just because she has breasts.

I have to agree with Pam Spaulding here:

"McCain Veep Meltdown: He's Unqualified to Serve".

Why Georgia, why now?

Cui bono? is that very useful Latin phrase "to whose benefit?" which has its origins in Roman legal discourse (Cicero cites it as one of Cassius's sayings) as a maxim used both to understand the motives and intentions of a crime. In political theory it also is invoked when we want to figure out the always complex and sometimes unintended results of political events. We don't have to reduce the answer to the one-size-fits-all conspiracy theory to see that too often, the answer seems to be "men with guns."

While China hosts the Olympics and consolidates its control over internal dissidence, as Naomi Klein details, The Guardian's Ian Traynor lays out the immediate consequences of Russia's defeat of Georgia's military (armed, trained, supported by U.S advisors and Halliburton) this past week. Some news has filtered its way through the inane chatter about medal counts, but, as usual, we (and by that, I mean the general public in the United States watching CNN on the aiport monitors while we wait to pick up our loved ones) have little to no clue as to what is really going on and why. Which stories should we believe? Who thought they would benefit, who really benefits, and why?

One view, (in it sometimes seems as if the entire world acts only in function of the U.S. presidential campaigns), is evident in this piece by Joe Lauria in HuffPo, highlighting the benefit of these events to the McCain campaign "Did McCain Help Bait Russia into Georgia?" because the revival of Cold War rhetoric is seen as an asset to the neocons. Lauria also reminds us that McCain's chief foreign policy advisor (and registered foreign agent for Georgia) is Randy Scheunemann, whom Lauria calls "the personfication of the military- industrialist racket" and one of the many players in a much larger geo-political game about oil, capitalism, and hegemony.

The tendency among many Americans is to consider any point of view that takes history into account a "conspiracy theory" and the mainstream press has tried hard to sneer at the explanation proposed by some of us during the runup to the war in Iraq, sometimes called "It's the oil, stupid", but this hasn't prevented many scholars, journalists and the ever-diligent Noam Chomsky from persisting in their pesky analysis of the larger historical contexts of these conflicts. William Engdahl's analysis of the geopolitical implications is illuminating, because it clearly shows how Georgia fits into the wider geopolitical strategies of Russia, the U.S. and the NATO countries (let's not forget them, in the post-Soviet scramble to maintain control over the rest of the world).

Can you say "competing oil pipelines"?

SFMike at the blog CivicCenter sends us to the TBR News for the back story of the conflict in Georgia, and how this territory is a staging ground for power struggles between Russia and the U.S and its allies for control of Central Asia, the broader arena in which Afghanistan and Iraq are only two of the theaters of bloody conflict.

Let's not forget that Cheney and Rice and the Bush-McCain neocons are busy carrying out their plans, formulated decade ago, in the continuing struggles begun over a century ago for control of oil and territory. European imperialism in this region is sometimes called The Great Game. Understanding the current nature of global capitalism and imperialism between rival powers entails historicizing these events . Cui bono? Who stands to benefit from these events? Not the people who have been hiding in their basements while men with guns bomb, kill and pillage.

'The world as it is and the world as it should be'

Listen to this man. Think about the world as it could be.

After eight awful years, isn't it exciting to contemplate a leader who can complete a grammatical sentence, speak in full paragraphs, follow a train of thought that is his own, respond with reason and even humor to questions, explain his own ideas, frame problems-solving in terms of cooperation and collaboration?

Here are his remarks in France.
In London, in Berlin before a crowd of over 200,000 people.

Michelle Obama spoke to the DNC's Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council

ETA: a reminder of why McCain must be defeated!

With Hillary Clinton on the team, the Democrats can't lose in November

From bitter experience, I know what it is like to put up with sexual harrasment at work, misogynists who constantly belittle and undermine my professional capacity, and the complicity of women and men in making excuses for the abusers rather than rallying to support the abused. Even though Hilary Clinton's stands on a number of issues are not ones I could embrace (nor are some of Obama's for that matter--my politics are far to the left of both) I was more than ready to vote for her if she had emerged as the Democratic nominee. So I join with Katha Pollitt at The Nation, and others in thanking her for having the courage and the fortitude to fight on, in spite of all the ugly, misogynist and hateful crap that was flung her way:

"There's another reason to be grateful to her. Clinton's run has put to rest the myth that we are living in a postfeminist wonderland in which all that stands in women's path is women themselves. Like a magnet--was it the pantsuit?--Clinton drew out the nation's misogyny in all its jeering glory and put it where we could all get a good look at it. "Iron my shirt" hecklers. Wearers of Bros Over Hos T-shirts and buyers of Hillary nutcrackers. Fans of the Citizens United Not Timid website (check the acronym). Vats of sexist nastiness splattered across the Comments section of hundreds of blogs and websites. It's as if every obscene phone caller and every exhibitionist in America decided to become an amateur political pundit.

As for the real pundits, thank you, Hillary, for showing us the snickering belittling of women that passes for media commentary: Rush Limbaugh, no Adonis, wondering out loud if "the country" was ready to watch a woman age in the White House; Chris Matthews, Don Imus and Tucker Carlson with their litany of insults--she-devil, Satan, witch, Antichrist, Lady Macbeth. NPR's Ken Rudin compared her to Glenn Close's indestructible bunny-boiler character in Fatal Attraction. And surely a special prize goes to Keith Olbermann for his indignant, hysterical bombast after Clinton's ham-handed reference to RFK's assassination. Rarely has men's terror of women with more brains than a Bratz doll been on such public display. And, of course, men were what we mostly saw up there on the small screen, yakking and blathering away.

It wasn't just men, though. Thank you, Hillary, for letting us get a good look at female sexism: the catty fashionistas and Style page dingbats obsessing over her clothes, her hair, her weight, her cleavage, her laugh. Air America's Randi Rhodes calling her a "big fucking whore," Maureen Dowd offering up her twice-weekly dose of vinegar and dozens of women writers musing prettily about why they and their friends all hate Hillary. Could it be they're jealous? Not, as novelist Mary Gordon has suggested, of Hillary's bagging of sexy Bill (yuck) but of her unsinkable ambition and drive. Hillary's run upset the carefully balanced apple cart of trade-off and resignation and semi-suppressed frustration that is how women of the professional class accommodate to patriarchy lite."

We are going to have to put up with a lot more yammering about what everyone "should" do in the next week, but I'm looking forward to bringing it to John McCain and the failed, discredited, divided Republican party. We cannot afford to let McCain win. I'm sure that Hillary Clinton will bring her formidable skills to that task, and that she will play an important role in shaping the political agenda of the next four years.

And while we're at it, let's throw out that slimeball Norm Coleman and elect Jack Nelson-Pallmayer, a candidate whose stands on the issues I really can endorse, and who will be a worthy successor of Paul Wellstone in the Senate.

Uh-oh, the logic board had to be replaced!

My MacBook went dark over the weekend, so I have not had access to digital things unless I drive to the office to use the desktop computer there. Since I've been trying to work from home now that classes are over, this is not impossible to do, but it does mean that I'm spending more time on campus (and commuting) than I would be otherwise. I was not completely unplugged, but I'm so accustomed to having easy access that it was interesting to observe how often I had the impulse to look something up online:
What is the cost of gas in European countries right now?

How many people does the Xcel center hold and how many turned out for the Obama speech?

What else has Eliot Pattison written besides the four novels I've read about Tibet?

How many people will lose their jobs because of GM's stupid short-sighted gas guzzling priorities?

Have the kids been having any dry weather in the Badlands?


What a relief that I bought the 3-year Applecare warranty! I have been informed that they are replacing the "logic board" (that's the motherboard in Macspeak), so it would have cost me a pile if I'd had to pay for it myself. I'll find out what else might have gone wrong when they call me to let me know when it is ready, either today or tomorrow. I've been reading around about known Macbook issues with overheating, replacing the logic board because of a "whine" and having to tinker with the Time Machine settings once the logic board is replaced :(

As a result, I've been relatively unplugged for the last few days, and let me tell you, it has been interesting to see how psychologically dependent I have become on having instant access, especially when I want to follow a news story. My phone allows me to read my email and even browse, although it is slow, but yesterday I followed the Obama/Clinton/McCain news solely on mainstream media. Yuck, was that painful. And no, I did not go to Saint Paul to stand in line for hours to get into the Xcel center to then wait for more hours to watch a speech because I knew that Chuck Olson and the good folks at The Uptake would be there.

Why John McCain must be defeated in November

John McCain has been getting a free ride for too long. His record is abysmal, but the media has been all about Clinton and Obama, letting him have a free ride with his wife's money. He's a corrupt politician, with a record of cynical influence peddling. He's worse than Bush in many regards. Many of his own party don't trust him. The media have been shamefully negligent in covering his record. So we have to do our homework. Michael Tomasky reviews three books about John McCain in the New York Review of Books,

• Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, by David Brock and Paul Waldman
  

• The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him—and Why Independents Shouldn't, by Cliff Schecter
  

• McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, by Matt Welch

Don't have time to go to the library and read these books? Here's the Cliff Notes version:

10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don’t): gracias, Professor Zero and MoveOn.org

1. 
   

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has “evolved,” yet he’s continued to oppose key civil rights laws.¹
2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.”²
3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.³
4. McCain opposes a woman’s right to choose. He said, “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”⁴
5. The Children’s Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children’s health care bill last year, then defended Bush’s veto of the bill.⁵
6. He’s one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a “second job” and skip their vacations.⁶
7. Many of McCain’s fellow Republican senators say he’s too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He’s erratic. He’s hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”⁷
8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.⁸
9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his “spiritual guide,” Rod Parsley, believes America’s founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a “false religion.” McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church “the Antichrist” and a “false cult.”⁹
10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.¹⁰

And since we want documentation, here you go:

1. "The Complicated History of John McCain and MLK Day," ABC News, April 3, 2008
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/the-complicated.html

"McCain Facts," ColorOfChange.org, April 4, 2008
http://colorofchange.org/mccain_facts/

2. "McCain More Hawkish Than Bush on Russia, China, Iraq," Bloomberg News, March 12, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aF28rSCtk0ZM&refer=us

"Buchanan: John McCain 'Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi,'" ThinkProgress, February 6, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/06/buchanan-gandhi-mccain/

3. "McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill," ThinkProgress, February 20, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/20/mccain-torture-veto/

4. "McCain says Roe v. Wade should be overturned," MSNBC, February 18, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17222147/

5. "2007 Children's Defense Fund Action Council® Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard," February 2008
http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_learn_scorecard2007

"McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion," CNN, October 3, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/03/mccain.interview/

6. "Beer Executive Could Be Next First Lady," Associated Press, April 3, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-S1sWHm0tchtdMP5LcLywg5ZtMgD8VQ86M80

"McCain Says Bank Bailout Should End `Systemic Risk,'" Bloomberg News, March 25, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHMiDVYaXZFM&refer=home

7. "Will McCain's Temper Be a Liability?," Associated Press, February 16, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4301022

"Famed McCain temper is tamed," Boston Globe, January 27, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/27/famed_mccain_temper_is_tamed/

8. "Black Claims McCain's Campaign Is Above Lobbyist Influence: 'I Don't Know What The Criticism Is,'" ThinkProgress, April 2, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/02/mccain-black-lobbyist/

"McCain's Lobbyist Friends Rally 'Round Their Man," ABC News, January 29, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4210251

9. "McCain's Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam," Mother Jones Magazine, March 12, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3519

"Will McCain Specifically 'Repudiate' Hagee's Anti-Gay Comments?," ThinkProgress, March 12, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/12/mccain-hagee-anti-gay/

"McCain 'Very Honored' By Support Of Pastor Preaching 'End-Time Confrontation With Iran,'" ThinkProgress, February 28, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/28/hagee-mccain-endorsement/

10. "John McCain Gets a Zero Rating for His Environmental Record," Sierra Club, February 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/environment/77913/

Defeat McCain in November.

Eyes on the prize, people. John McCain in the White House will undo what vestiges of reproductive freedom there are left for women in this country.
Don't tell me that doesn't matter. He has stated repeatedly that he is in favor of repealing Roe V Wade.
To some people, the evidence of McCains utter corruption during the S and L scandals of the 80s, and his role as one of the Keating Five is "ancient history" but to me it is one of the reasons why the man should be disqualified from holding public office. He is a symbol of the corruption of big money capitalism at home and abroad.
ETA: Cliff Schecter's book The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him--and Why Independents Shouldn't is a scrupulously documented record of McCain's actions and words.

Campaign notes

Here are just a few of the more interesting discussions in blogs that I have found on what is currently happening in the presidential race, now that Obama has come out ahead in more primaries:

Derrick Ashong, who turns out to be an extremely smart and progressive musician (and part of the group Soulfege) is interviewed by a rather rude reporter about why he supports Obama. The reporter keeps cutting him off and pushing him for specifics, Derrick answers every question with a smile and a well-informed analysis. By the end of the conversation, the two are shaking hands.
UPDATE: Derrick responds to the enormous attention his interview got on YouTube.

MN Blue helps us understand what happened on Super Tuesday in a small town in the Iron Range of MN, an area one could call "middle America" in its mix of socially conservative economically liberal voters, influenced as much by personal relationships as by issues.

Al Giordano, publisher on Latin America from Narco News, blogs on the presidential race at The Field. Here's a post on foreign coverage of the race. The world is very invested in the outcome of our election, which will have a huge impact on the economy, the war, and the direction of environmental policies, among other issues.

Citizen Orange (via Nezua) analyzes the candidates from the perspective of analysts on both sides of immigration reform issues, both pro and con.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula is critical of the religiosity of Obama's speeches, but explains why he'll vote for him anyway.

The awesome Pam Spaulding helps us understand why the mainstream media pundits have it all wrong about what's happening in the race.

At Slaves of Academe, we find the usual beautiful writing and deep thinking about the politics of race and gender in the campaigns.

And what about John McCain? These two videos about the cost of the Iraq war and McCain's unwavering support of it remind us what is at stake in a Democratic victory in November:

Two elections

The landscape of the U.S. presidential election campaign is becoming less populated as candidates drop out: Kucinich was the one whose proposals most closely match my views (impeach now!) but I never expected him to gain major popular support; Giuliani is a fascistic creep, and I'm so glad he has dropped out; but John Edwards? I'm sorry he's gone. He had detailed proposals on health care, campaigned on issues of poverty, which need to be talked about but are getting lost in the "horse race" style of coverage we are subjected to. I thought his campaign pushed the others to be less evasive. The comment thread on the Crooks and Liar announcement (one of my favorite blogs for reporting on the political ins and outs) gives a sample of reactions among more lefty political junkies. Nezua from the Unapolagetic Mexican posts the text of an endorsment of Obama by the Mexican-AMerican Political Association (MAPA) that lists many of the concerns that we want to see addressed by the candidates, but that are seldom talked about in public in meaningful way.

I'm afraid we are in for several months of extremely irritating he said/she said bickering, in part because of the internal party struggles over delegates and the primary process, which most people don't understand, and which the press declines to explain adequately. But a lot of folks are fired up, so I refuse to be cynical.

There are other elections coming up: Spain will hold elections in March, and it's hard to predict which parties will come out on top. Since the system often requires that the major party make an alliance with a smaller one in order to govern, it's not just a question of winner takes all, but also how the smaller parties use the big ones to their strategic advantage.
eCuaderno.com's JL Oriheula has put up this link to a page on the General Elections in Spain, if you are interested in taking a break from the Hillary/Obama/McCain fest. This link presents the resources for citizens to not only follow the campaign, but interact with the democratic process online, what they are calling "ciberdemocracia", through all the Web 2.0 resources including flikr, google, youtube, social networking, etc. I am particularly interested in how many political figures are writing their own blogs, not just putting up sites run by a campaign.

Oh yeah, just in case you forgot? we don't like your kind.

Just in case I'd forgotten what it was like to work in a hostile, women-hating, homophobic, racist climate, some kind soul saw fit to remind me by anonymously leaving me two photocopied hostile, women-hating, homophobic, racist articles, decrying the "corruption" of universities by women, gays, black people and leftists. This is not the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last. It's not random, because nobody else got them. I guess some people see me as very powerful, much more powerful than I actually think I am. Maybe I'm doing something right.