What I saw of the McCain video was brilliantly done. It really wasn’t until the very end where you had the darkened hall and Fred Thompson’s blathering about “when you’ve lived in a box” where it went a little too over the top. Up until that point, it was tone perfect, brilliant political theater/propaganda.

Am I too cynically rooted in pop culture? Fred Thompson’s bit at the end made me start humming this:

Woke up this morning
Closed in on all sides
Nothing doing
I feel resistance
As I open my eyes
Someone’s fooling
I’ve found a way to break
Through this cellophane line
Cause I know what’s going on
In my own mind

Am I living in a box
Am I living in a cardboard box
Am I living in a box
Am I living in a cardboard box
Am I living in a box

Life goes in circles
Around and around circulation
I sometimes wonder
What’s moving underground
I’m escaping
I’ve found a way …
I’ve found a way …
Am I living in a cardboard box
Am I living in a box (living)
Am I living in a cardboard box
Am I living in a box (living)
Am I living in a cardboard box
Am I living in a box (living)
Am I living in a cardboard box
Am I living am I living am I living
Am I living am I living am I living
(In a box)

Am I living am I living
Am I living in cardboard box
Am I living in a box
Am I living am I living
Am I living in a cardboard box
Am I living in a box

I’ve seen several instances in recent weeks where people I didn’t know who were commenting in my friends blogs and livejournals mocked the job of community organizer. I immediately suspected that these people were right wing morons. That has certainly been proven tonight. Nearly every Republican speaker mocked the idea of community organizing and the job of community organizer. So now I’m quite sure that the people who have done that in recent weeks were just working from the GOP talking points.

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 keep reading that the federal reserve won’t let us slip into a depression. They point to the “aggressive” cuts in interest rates, etc. You can’t use monetary policy to stave off a depression. If you could, we wouldn’t have slipped into the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve existed back then. It served the same purpose. There have been no major innovations in monetary policy since then. The whole idea that the fed can stop a depression short of giving away money for free is just ridiculous. It’s almost magical thinking.

I get accused a lot of being a Hillary Clinton supporter. Every time it happens, it feels like a through the looking glass moment. I have been somewhat anti-Hillary since the run up to war in Iraq. When you go back into, say 2006, that was a pretty rare position to be in amongst Democrats. That was the point when the “inevitability” story started being written. She had such unprecedented financial support and such strong poll numbers with Democrats and even likely primary voters and caucus goers that she seemed like a shoe in. A lot of the Obama supporters are fanatics. If you are anything less than one of them, you’re against them. Right now that means you’re a Hillary supporter. If you really are an open Hillary supporter then you’re all kinds of terrible things. Every terrible thing they can project onto Hillary gets projected onto her supporters. This may well come back to bite them in the general election. Obama is the likely nominee. He has to contest the remaining primaries, but now is the time for him and his supporters to start trying to bring the Democratic Party back together. That, more than anything, will make him appear presidential.

I expect that Hillary will probably take this thing to the convention. I’m sure she’ll take it at least through May 6th. But it really is time for her to hang it up and get out. The media isn’t going to let this “misspeak” on her trip to Bosnia go away quickly. I was surprised to see them still talking about it this morning on the Today show. I will not be at all surprised if we see other such “misspeak” events brought forward between now and May. We are at the beginning of a spiral that’s going to damage the nominee. We can’t afford to have the Clinton and Obama camps tearing each other down. That’s how we manage to find a way to lose to John McCain.

Mitt Romney is running one of the dumbest commercials on TV right now. It’s an attack on Hillary Clinton. Mr. Romney, Hillary is the least of your problems right now. You can’t even pretend to maybe be the front runner and, hence, above the fray. It’s such a hamfisted attempt at pushing the “we hate Hillary button” that sits blinking on the forehead of most conservatives that I doubt even they will fall for it. The “substance” of the ad is that she’s never run anything–not a city, a business, or any organization of any kind and is, therefore, not qualified to be president. Does anyone buy that? Can anyone look at her biography and not see a smart, capable (perhaps even ruthlessly so) person? Conservatives must see her in that light to be so afraid of her. Does anyone believe she wasn’t intimately involved in the decision making of the first Clinton whitehouse? Worse, though, is a clip of Romney reacting with disbelief to the (never made) claim that Hillary can learn the job on the fly as if she’s on an “internship”. Oh, snap! He said “intern”. heh heh heh heh.

Nearly every damn word and image in the commercial is just wrong.

If the conventional wisdom of the last few days was correct, then Barack Obama will win Iowa. The conventional wisdom was that high voter turnout favors Obama who has all these students and independents voting for him. The conventional wisdom was that low voter turnout favored John Edwards whose support comes from a lot of tried and true caucus goers. Polling places all over Iowa are reporting in packed to the gills, often with 2,3 or 5 times as many caucus goers as those same precincts had in 2004. 2004 was a year of record turnout.

The conventional wisdom does line up with a poll released this morning that gave Obama the largest lead he’s seen so far. I know one thing that’s different this year. I’m not willing to make a prediction even on the night of the vote. Four years ago, I predicted a Kerry victory a couple of days ahead of the polls. I was a pretty strong Dean supporter at the time. It hurt to make that prediction because Kerry wasn’t my 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th choice. A lot of the media still thought that Dean’s money, organization, and endorsements might well carry him to victory.

For months and months and months, John Edwards has been right at the top in Iowa. Poll after poll has put him at 23+%, always within the margin of error of being in first or second place. The national media just refused to cover or even tell that story, though. The story has been “Hillary Clinton’s inevitability” or “Hillary vs. Obama”. A poll by Research 2000 is getting a lot of coverage today. It has Edwards and Obama at 29%, Hillary at 28. The real story hasn’t changed. It’s still a dead heat. But today, I’m seeing pundits say that Hillary needs to hope that Edwards wins Iowa if she doesn’t. They believe that Edwards can’t carry the momentum from an Iowa win. It’s an interesting shift in the narrative, but one that still refuses to take Edwards seriously as a candidate. I can’t figure that out. An Edwards win in Iowa will certainly help him in New Hampshire, but it seems to me that it could really help him in South Carolina, Michigan, and Florida. Edwards has long been the strongest candidate in Nevada. Someone winning most of those states is in a great position for the 20 plus state primary on Tuesday, February 5th.

I’m far from saying Edwards is going to pull this thing out, but I think any solid look at the first month’s worth of primaries that starts with an Edwards win would then look very good for him.

J. Edgar Hoover sent a plan to the White House just after the outbreak of the Korean War that would have suspended Habeas Corpus and imprisoned 12,000 Americans indefinitely, without access to a trial.

“Independent Democrat” fucktard Joe Lieberman takes yet another step in his god awfully slow coming out of the closet as a Republican process by endorsing John McCain for the presidency. This comes months before the Democratic party that he supposedly belongs to even picks a nominee and is a hell of a stab in the back for both the DLC and the Clintons.

Strom Thurmond had an easier time giving up on the Democrats than Lieberman has.