Assassination Plot

The CBS affiliate in Denver is reporting four men were arrested who were plotting to assassinate Barack Obama. At least one of the men had tattoos and other signifiers of membership in white supremacist organizations.

The expectations game

McCain's handlers have decided that Obama needs a 15-point "bounce" coming out of the convention, thereby setting up, say, a 5 or 10-point bounce (which would still mean an Obama landslide) as "failure."

Jeff Lieber at Daily Kos is a good deal more demanding than conservatives:

Barack Obama must get a six-hundred and thirty-eight point bounce.

Barack Obama must be inspiring, but not TOO INSPIRING SO AS TO SEEM A PROPHET, and present his ideas clearly, but not TOO CLEARLY SO AS TO SEEM SIMPLISTIC, and with specifics, but not TOO MANY SPECIFICS SO AS TO SEEM WONKY, and be tough, but not TOO TOUGH SO AS TO SEEM TO HAVE GONE NEGATIVE.

Barack Obama must walk on water (but not in such a way that suggests that either he or his supporters see him as a deity) and give a speech in front of 70,000 people (but not in a way that suggests that he's a celebrity) and completely unify the party (but not in such a way that suggests that said party is "liberal") and speak to the base (but not so much that suggests he's "out of the mainstream of America" ) and embrace Democratic ideals (but not so much as to suggest he's "going back to the days of Jimmy Carter") and remind America about all the good that happened under the last Democratic administration (without using the words "Bill" or "Clinton" or "Hope" or "Cigar" or "Blue Dress").

Barack Obama must be able to quote all the lyrics from American Pie and solve the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle in less that seven minutes and win American Idol and juggle a half dozen flaming chain-saws and name the capitols of all forty-nine states (Hawaii being recently deemed Unamerican and sold to the Chinese for a bag of gumballs) and eat poorly prepared Fugu without dying.

Barack Obama must be black, but not too black, and not black while trying to seem white, and certainly not black while trying to be white without trying to LOOK LIKE he's greyish-blue.

Krugman on Character Attacks

[I]n the world we actually live in, pro-corporate, inequality-increasing Republicans argue that you should vote for them because they’re regular guys you’d like to have a beer with, while Democrats who want to raise taxes on top earners, expand health care and raise the minimum wage are snooty elitists.

And in that world, stripping away the regular-guy facade — pointing out that everything Rush Limbaugh said about Mr. Kerry applies equally to Mr. McCain, that Mr. McCain lives in a material world few Americans can imagine — is only fair. Yes, Mr. Obama vacations in Hawaii — and Cindy McCain says that “In Arizona, the only way to get around the state is by small private plane.”

The squealing from the usual suspects demonstrates how much the Obama counterattack has the G.O.P. worried. Back in 2004 Fox News described John Kerry as “one of the haves” with a “billionaire wife”; now it asks whether raising the issue of Mr. McCain’s houses is “bashing the American dream.”

Well, exactly. Republicans can't win on the issues, so they accuse their opponents of the things they themselves are guilty of.

Good on Obama to respond to lies with the truth.

Hunter at Daily Kos...

Dismisses the customary hackery of Bill Kristol:

This is hilarious. I love it, because Kristol's not even trying to mask his concern trollery, and the end result is just a lumpy mess of Suck. The Democrats have a problem with a "Glass Ceiling", because Obama didn't pick Clinton? Excuse me, but were you watching the Republican debates?

Whose side are you on?

Everything Walmart does is guided by one consideration: anything that competes with maximum profits for the owners is something they oppose.

Workers want a raise?

That's competition.

Struggling main-street sporting goods store that has sponsored the local little league team since the current coach's grandfather was a player?

Competition.

Government investigating you locking workers in the store and other abuse of your workers?

Competition.

Liberals, get this straight: Walmart is the anti-Christ. It's better to buy ersatz affection at a whorehouse than a genuine hairdryer at Walmart.

"Free Trade" is "There'll be a pay cut before we fire you and 'offshore' your job."

"The nation can't afford single-payer healthcare" is "We rich people don't want to pay for single-payer healthcare."

Got that?

A Woman Called Hope

I side, reflexively and all the time, with the little guy. Unions. Blue Collar people generally. The Poor. Minorities. The desperate. The doomed. The outcast. That little old lady you see pushing a shopping cart full of garbage outside Starbucks? She's your sister. What can you do to help her? The fact that she's talking to people who aren't there means she needs help. How can we make America a place where she is overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows her around, ready to catch her if she stumbles?

The soldier returning from war, unable to escape the terrible knowledge that what he has seen has shown him the damnable lies that our country tells itself in order to enable men to do things that will haunt them forever? The one who wakes up downstairs, halfway out the front door, because he heard an explosion in his dream and is now warning buddies who aren't there that they are about to die and his wife doesn't understand but tries to be there for him any way she can, but at the same time she's worried for the children? What can you do to help them? They are your brother and sister. How can we make America a place where they are overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows them around, ready to catch them if they stumble?

The man, now 45, who suffers from nightmares and flashbacks from growing up in a neighborhood where he went to sleep many nights to the sound of gunfire; where he lost precious, priceless, irreplaceable friends to random murders, and is not sure he can handle one more fucking senseless death? How can we make America a place where he is overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows him around, ready to catch him if he stumbles?

The woman whose actual first name is Hope. The one who wakes up every morning and, if she's lucky, has a few moments of peace before she remembers that both of her precious grandchildren were murdered; before she remembers that losing the first one was hard, but staring into another grandson's coffin almost exactly a year later -- that that was the beginning of the desolation and crushing grief that robs her daily of the rightful, well-earned joy of being a grandparent. She spends her free time ministering to the kids in the neighborhood, doing what she can to reach them before the gangs or police do. The ones she loses to murder she prays for; the ones in prison she visits and writes to. She is a saint. She needs your help.

How can we make America a place where she is overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows her around, ready to catch her if she stumbles?

America has become a scary place in the last 30 years. How can we make America a place filled with people who are overwhelmed with gratitude at the help that follows them around, ready to catch us if we stumble?

It's Biden

I would have picked probably Bayh (though that would mean losing a Senate seat), but Biden should be a solid campaigner.

Things That Piss Me Off

I question whether the libertarian "left" is really "left" - you don't get to call yourself a liberal just because you're pro-choice and drive a Prius.

The most harm done to workers has been by Democrats (yes, I'm looking at you, Bill Clinton) who pivoted away from the notion that the power of government ought to be a counter-balance to the power of business, and sold out the New Deal to a bunch of greedy, corrupt boodlers.

I'm reading Thomas Frank's new book, and getting angrier by the minute. (I'll post a full review if I can keep from making the entire thing one long blue streak of angry swear-words.)

Revolution may be our only hope.

Interesting Factoid

The McCains pay $270,000 per year for butlers and maids--that's $50,000 more than the median value of an American home.

Saw this on a Daily Kos Diary...

and had to quote it, as it is extremely similar to my own journey from Rebublican to Democrat:

I began to see that all the talk of "small government" and "fiscal responsibility" and "everyone is equal so no one needs help" from the Republican Party was just, well, rhetoric. Empty spin. Republicans never seemed to follow their own rules, morality, or principles. And, shockingly, even though it was so-called "Republican" ideals that attracted me to their party, it seemed like Democrats were actually the ones whose votes and policies achieved the results the Republicans kept promising.

Digby on McCain Choosing Lieberman

It would spell the end of Obama's ineffectual paeans to "post-partisanship" and force him to make a strong case for progressive policies -- which I have long believed the country was finally willing to hear for the first time in decades. He's got a gift for speaking and that's what he needs to be speaking about.

Preach it, girl!

A Democrat Like This Would Be Nice

I'm (obviously) supporting Obama in this cycle, from the beginning of the primaries til now; but thought I'd post this just for fun; I actually composed (and then deleted) a version of this diary a couple years ago. For what it's worth, my post-Obama candidate for 8 years from now...

[Beginning of make believe]

My dream candidate is a state governor who grew up working class and made himself prosperous by his own efforts. He knows his way around a union hall; while he's been both a union member and management, one of the things that made him want to start a business is he didn't have the stomach for the kind of screwing over of workers that is part and parcel of being a middle manager in many large companies.

There's a story circulated about him that he once missed an important vote in the state assembly because it was opening day of deer season, and he was nowhere to be found.

He is passionate about doing what he can to make sure that workers get a fair deal in America. Reliable rumor has it he once threw a Democratic Party official out of his office, with instructions never to return, because that Democrat had dared to make a crack about "the damned union chiselers."

He's known for intervening personally to try to save jobs (especially union jobs) when some mill owner makes noise about "off-shoring" production. He once loudly and publicly questioned a plant-owners patriotism for sending jobs overseas. He drives a pickup truck; not because he's making some kind of "positioning" statement, but because he actually needs one for driving around his working farm. He overturned his state's "right-to-work" laws, and passed card-check legislation, as one of his first acts as governor.

He got elected governor by putting together a coalition of blue-collar workers (who, in reciprocation for his manifest passion for their welfare, would gladly walk through the fires of hell for him); hunters and environmentalists (the hunters love telling the story of that missed vote, the environmentalists respect him for the genuine passion with which he talks about conservation) and family farmers (who trust him implicitly to look out for their interests.)

He insisted that his son and daughter attend a state college, even though their grades could easily have gotten them into a top-tier private college. Anything that smacks of elitism is something he has little patience for.

There are a few things that really piss him off...

Anyone, especially a self-described "progressive," who has the temerity to say a word against unions and people whose collars are likely to be blue is going to be the object of a withering dressing down, and be called a "damned Judas."

Hypocrites: A pastor who has a mega-church in his state once got a meeting with the governor. No one is quite sure what transpired in that meeting, but his secretary remembers hearing the governor bellow, "No God-Damned Pharisee swindler in a thousand-dollar suit is going to tell ME what to do!!" followed by the Pastor retreating from the governor's office with an ashen face.

Polluters: He'd rather personally swim in nuclear waste than have some company dump a teaspoon of pollution on his state. He appointed a pitbull to go after polluters in his state.

He's more of an egalitarian than a libertarian; he knows instinctively that one of the primary functions of Government is to help balance society by keeping things (relatively, anyway) equal, thus providing stability.

[End of Make Believe]

A guy like this would make deep, deep inroads into the Republican working-class base. He would also be familiar to (and typical of) generations of Democrats from the late 1920s to 1970s.

Sherrod Brown was once asked why so many blue collar people in southeastern Ohio voted for Republicans. His perfect response: "Because Democrats stopped talking to them."

Worth pondering...