After NC and Indiana secured the nomination the Obama campaign went into GE mode. From that point on there was nothing but effusive praise for Senator Clinton and the campaign she had run from Barack in his stump speeches and interviews. Standing down the campaign against Hillary cost him some votes and a few points in the polls but Obama was thinking with his head and had his eyes on November.

Senator Clinton is conceding and endorsing Barack Obama. The Obama campaign understands how critical bringing Hillary's supporters into the fold is. Evidently that is a fact totally lost on many at Daily Kos. Rather then following the Obama campaigns lead I see a lot of diaries focused on Hillary that will look like the equivalent of a victory dance in the end zone to her supporters. Imagine for a minute that the situation was reversed and you where having to suck it up and support Clinton as the party's nominee right now. You would not have much tolerance for the other sides supporters continuing to trash your candidate after she has conceded and endorsed.

I'm a regular reader of James Wolcott's blog at Vanity Fair. Even when I don't agree with him his writing is reliably intelligent and witty. He has just posted some comments about Obama's speech on race and I think his comments are emblematic of a strawman argument that contrasts Hillary as a down to earth scrabbler and Obama as a head in the clouds academic.

To quote Wolcott:

I watched most of Obama's speech afterwards online and found it serious, moving, in a Tiger Woods league of its own, but I question that a "conversation" or dialogue about race is what the country wants or needs right now--it may be a pedagogical aria that appeals to the political media elite and other word-crafters but occupies a plane irrelevant to most people's concerns as the economy implodes.

A lot of energy is being expended on demanding the party step in to reign in Hillary or that the super delegates must step in and put a stop to this  before it destroys the party, or that Hillary must do the right thing and step aside. You are wasting your time.

Obama is standing between Hillary and her life long ambition. She does not give a crap what the party elders think, what you think, she is not going to be reigned in, she is not going to quit and she is going to do what ever it takes to win. The only way to stop her is to beat her. The super delegates will not step in until there is an absolutely clear winner. A TKO won't do it, it needs to be a knock out. Expend all that energy on PA. An upset win by Obama there could end the race. And if that does not happen it's on to the next 9 primaries.

The administration and the news media have been touting the surge in Iraq as a success. Levels of violence have been reduced. Sunni militia's have turned on Al Qaeda and Al Sadr's Shia militia, the Mahdi Army have continued a cease fire begun 6 months ago. We are now back to the level of carnage and mayhem of 2 or 3 years ago. The civil war has been turned down from boiling over and brought back down to a  simmer. So what has all the sacrifice of American life and treasure to bring about this reduced level of violence brought? Who has been the beneficiary of all this sacrifice?

The answer was beamed to TV screens across the middle east recently, although it received barely a brief mention in American media. The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejahd's visit to Baghdad, a first for a high-ranking  Iranian official was announced with great fanfare. When the American President visits Iraq there are no announcements preceding the visit. He must sneak in directly to fortified bases and any contact with Iraqi's is behind blast walls protected by US forces with schedules and itineraries a top secret.

When it comes to the war in Iraq the main Republican talking point seems to be, "no one is interested in dwelling on the past we are where we are now so lets talk about what we do from here". This is a peculiar stand for a party that claims to model itself on the more efficient methods of private enterprise and prizes personal responsibility and accountability.

If you hired a CEO to run a business and the CEO failed miserably at meeting his stated goals, showed a complete lack of foresight and planning and had driven the company into the ground, would the board and the shareholders be OK when reviewing the CEO's performance with the CEO telling them "no one is interested in dwelling on the past we are where we are now so lets talk about what we do from here". Not likely.

I'd like to make a proposal to the Obama campaign. In the next debate propose to Hillary that she join him in petitioning the DNC to sponsor primaries in Florida and Michigan in the beginning of April. The two campaigns should offer to foot part of the bill. Nations call snap elections so if we have the will there is more then enough time to organize two state elections. Although Caucuses would be cheaper these are not caucus states and the rules should follow the states already agreed upon rules on whether it is open or closed and primary or caucus so no one can say changes where made to benefit either candidate.

So far Bilary's strategy of dragging Obama down into the mud and off his message and transforming him in the media from the post-racial candidate of hope who wasn't black enough to the angry black politician seems to be working. Bill Clinton is the most talented campaigner and politician of his generation. He's proving much more subtle and devious then Rove and his crude Republican ilk at the politics of slime. Many might say that the Republicans will do worse to the Democratic candidate in the general but I don't agree. The Republicans will be much cruder and sleazier and easier to parry. Bill is a much more formidable opponent and this is turning out to be Barack's trial by fire. So far he has played right into the Clinton's hands and if he can't find a way to blunt the Clinton's slime machine and stay on message well maybe he's not ready for prime time.

While the hit on Hilary in the debate for being on the board of Walmart was absolutely true. You could see Hilary was positively giddy that Barack was getting down to her level. She was looking forward to the food fight. See Obama's as bad as I am! Just another sleazeball politician and I'm better at it. I can beat the Republican's at their own game so I'm your best shot at winning!

"They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread? "

"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," (Depression era song)
lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931)

The Fruits of the Republican Revolution

A global credit crisis, collapsing housing market and equity markets worldwide teetering on the edge. We are at the beginning of the unraveling of the great Republican scam. Ronald Reagan was certainly a transformational president. He began the transformation of the American economy from the greatest economic income producing engine in the world into a vast Ponzi scheme designed to transfer wealth from the American middle class into the pockets of a tiny elite - and it worked. The unions were destroyed, New Deal liberalism was demonized and America's manufacturing base was boxed up and shipped out. It's been downhill for middle class earnings and astronomical gains for the richest 2 % ever since.

John Edward's economic populist message has been an inspiring call to the party to return to it's roots as the party of working Americans rather then a shill for corporate interests. I'm voting for Edwards in the primary not because I think his confrontational style would be the most effective method for effecting change in the current environment but because I want his message heard loud and clear by the party.

I'm encouraged by the rise of Obama (and Edwards) and the decline of Hilary. If the Obama wave is truly catching fire and he becomes our next president I think Edwards would make a great attorney general (I don't think he woud be a good VP choice for Obama considering the different approaches).

For 7 years the laws protecting workers safety, voters rights, consumer, patient and investors rights have been flaunted with impunity. The combo of Obama as President with a pit bull for the people at the helm in Justice could be very effective.

Watch any WWII era American war movie and it was easy to tell good guys from bad guys, The evil, ruthless, immoral Nazis and Japanese tortured captured POW.s, allied spies and local insurgents with abandon. The line was always "You will tell me what I want to know" or "We have ways to make you talk". Nowadays those lines are more likely to be spoken by the fictional TV character American CIA agent Jack Bauer. Right wing talk show hosts and Republican politicians alike love to use Bauer as a model for the hypothetical "if you knew it would save American lives wouldn't you torture a terrorist"?

Well let's look at how that hypothetical might work out in the real world. Let's say you rounded up 1000's of young males along with some suspect women, children and old men in a war zone, like say Iraq. Now let's say we put those rounded up in a prisons like say Abu Ghraib. Now we know they have information we want and it could save American lives and win us the war so what would Jack Bauer do?

With the Republican party in self-destruct mode the big money puppet masters need a new political machine to keep their ponzi scheme running smoothly and it seems they have settled on Hillary as their best chance to contain the damage and maintain control of our futures. From Larry Kudlow to Alan Greenspan, Hillary has become the 'responsible' and 'realistic' Democrat. The Wall Street wing of the Republican party is looking forward to a replay of the Clinton's in driver's seat.

Now that no communications by non-US citizens are guaranteed any expectation of privacy when handled by US communications networks I wonder whether there will not be an effort by foreign governments and corporations to guarantee the privacy of their citizens and businesses by becoming independent of reliance on US telecommunications networks. Certainly the US government and US businesses want a guarantee of privacy and security of private and business communications and would not allow a foreign government with no respect for international law to poke around at will in the communications of US citizens and businesses.

Hostility to science and scientific research is already ceding future development in areas like stem cell research to foreign business. American colleges that always attracted the worlds best and brightest are getting more competition from foreign campuses as life is made more difficult for foreign students. Will the shredding of the constitution and the transformation of the US government into Big Brother also have an unintended economic impact on telecommunications, finance, and banking?

It was hilarious watching the financial pundits and Wall Street suits on CNBC today demanding government intervention as the market's tanked and the credit markets seized up. This is the crowd that thinks the government has no business in education, social services, health care or interfering in businesse's right to pollute the environment, fleece consumers and endanger the health of it's employees.

Iranian president Ahmadinejad's populist base elected him to do something about Iran's stagnating economy. From the NY Times:

Ahmadinejad was elected last year on a populist agenda promising to bring oil revenues to every family, eradicate poverty and tackle unemployment. And he has faced increasingly fierce criticism in recent weeks for his failure to meet those promises.

He is being challenged not only by reformers but by the conservatives who paved the way for his victory in 2005 presidential elections. Even conservatives say Ahmadinejad has concentrated too much on fiery, anti-U.S. speeches and not enough on the economy -- and they have become more aggressive in calling him to account.

With oil prices declining ( perhaps with a helping hand from the Saudi's to weaken the Iranian/Shia threat ) his incompetent handling of the domestic economy assures the end of his political career. That is unless the gang that couldn't shoot straight in the White House comes to his aid with another dose of "Shock and Awe".

It was reported on CNBC this morning that margin debt in the stock market hit $270 Billion in 2006. A number very close to record levels. Despite this the SEC has proposed lowering margin requirements for institutions on stocks, options, and futures. Now ranging from 25% to 50%, the proposal is to drop them to 15%. This would increase margin debt to nose bleed levels.

At the same time as the equities markets are expanding credit, consumers have been borrowing themselves into debt levels not seen since the great depression. When was the last time we saw leverage like this in equity markets and consumer debt? It was the last time the Republicans ran everything: 1929.

There has been a lot of  noise about the suggestion that the US should negotiate with Syria and Iran. Along the lines of how do you expect Iran and Syria to help us if they are supporting the people we are fighting and are out to destroy us?

There is an old saying, I believe it's from that part of the world, "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer." In a war you engage the enemy on all fronts, military, political and diplomatic. Both your allies and your foes have a complex web of self-interests that affects their actions and that you must manipulate to your gain and their disadvantage. The arrogant, ignorant and simplistic policy of Bush which can be summarized as - we don't talk to bad guys, if your not with us, your against us and we're the USA we kick ass when and where we please- is a sort of an infantile macho grade schoolers world view right out of a Rambo movie. But this is the real world not an action hero comic book  and going to war with that sort of Bush league thinking will get you your ass handed to you in short order.

When it comes to the minimum wage, the social safety net or workers rights you are sure to hear Republicans wailing about socialist government programs interfering with free market capitalism. It seems however that when it comes to the rich getting richer, government interference in free markets and government sponsored welfare is just swell.

Not only have we gotten billion dollar give aways to oil companies and agribusiness, rigging prices at retail for Medicare and billions borrowed to provide the wealthy with mega "tax cuts", but it seems we may be looking at market manipulation as well.

What if your 16 year old son or daughter started receiving emails from a middle aged teacher who wasn't even his or her teacher asking for photos? How would you describe those emails to the school principal, would over-friendly, G-rated and naughty be the words you would use? I think words more like disturbing, outrageous and dangerous would be more likely. Would school parents be satisfied if the principal reported back that they had a little talk with the teacher and the offending teacher ensured school officials that it was all totally innocent and you won't have to worry about him contacting YOUR child again? Do you think that principal and that teacher would still have a job? Does anything the Republicans have been saying in this Foley scandal pass the smell test?