Gena at Deadly Stealth Frogs has an interesting post about the repeated cover ups of the rapes and murders of female soldiers. It’s worth a read and worth writing to your elected representatives about.

I’m watching Barack Obama give a pretty good speech on patriotism right now. He’s doing a really good job of hitting all the high minded rhetoric of americanism here, including most of the liberal ideas and some recent liberal causes. He also took a shot at moveon.org for their “general betray us” ad.

I don’t like this idea of national service as a requirement for college aid. College aid should come because it’s the right thing to do, both for the citizens who receive it and the country as a whole.

He was speaking from Independence, Mo, so the Truman shout out was inevitable.

I guess you can’t talk about patriotism without bringing up Lincoln and Washington.

Now they cut to a news conference from John McCain. He’s all “I love free trade and Obama doesn’t” in regard to Columbia and the free trade deal, CAFTA, NAFTA, etc. The questioners so far are throwing McCain total softballs a la “Do you think Senator Obama is being hypocritical here” on something in the campaign.

McCain can’t seem to make a statement without saying “we have differences and I look forward to discussing those”.

McCain laughs like a muppet when he’s being a politician. He doesn’t actually laugh, he makes this goofy grin and then rapidly bobs his head up and down.

And now MSNBC appears to be cutting away. End of live blog.

I need to get in the habit of posting here again. My political ramblings have been happening elsewhere lately.

I just watched a clip of Nancy Pelosi giving a press conference yesterday about oil speculators. She said that she and the Democratic leaders assembled behind her were putting the oil speculators on notice. She then said that she’d sent a letter to President Bush asking him to use the FTC’s emergency powers to step in and put a half to this. In my mind, that’s about the same as saying “stop or we’ll stand here impotently shaking our fist at you!”.