— from TomDispatch

These days, the price of oil seems ever on the rise. A barrel of crude broke another barrier Wednesday -- $123 -- on international markets, and the talk is now of the sort of "superspike" in pricing (only yesterday unimaginable) that might break the $200 a barrel ceiling "within two years." And that would be without a full-scale American air assault on Iran, after which all bets would be off.

Considering that, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, oil was still in the $20 a barrel price range, this is no small measure of what the Bush administration years have really accomplished. Today, it's hard even to remember not 9/11, but 11/9 -- November 9, 1989 -- the day that the Berlin Wall fell, signaling that, soon enough, after its seventy-odd year life, that Reaganesque Evil Empire, the Soviet Union, was heading for the door. In 1991, it disappeared from the face of the Earth without a whimper. Until almost the last moment, top officials in Washington assumed it would go on forever; and, when it was gone, most of them couldn't, at first, believe it. Soon enough, however, the event was hailed as the greatest of American triumphs -- "victory" not just in the Cold War, but at a level never before seen. Finally, for the first time in history, there was but a single superpower on the planet.

Mikhail Gorbachev is not a frivolous man. He was the Soviet leader who introduced the conceptual breakthrough of "mutual security" to Soviet-American relations, as well as the man who did more than any other individual to bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion. In my opinion, he ranks as the greatest statesman of the twentieth century (something I was able to tell him personally, when we talked in St. Petersburg, Russia in May 2006).

So, when Mr. Gorbachev says, "Every US president has to have a war," and "I sometimes have the feeling that the United States is going to wage war against the entire world," - as was reported by the Telegraph.co.uk on May 7, 2008 -- I take him seriously. More to the point, Gorbachev's assertions probably elicited widespread agreement, not only in Russia, but also across Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

It's over. Maybe Hillary doesn't know it yet. Almost assuredly Bill doesn't. But it's over.

And, no, I don't just mean the Democratic presidential nomination process. I mean the whole shootin' match. Obama is the nominee and Obama is the forty-fourth president of the United States. You heard it here first.

Sure, it's possible for this thing to derail, not least because of an October Surprise abroad engineered by Dick Cheney to keep himself out of jail. But, short of that, fughedaboudit! And even that most despicable of classic political ploys may not work anymore. If anything, the Reverend Wright episode has demonstrated that the historically immature American electorate night just be angry and desperate enough not to be distracted this time by the latest Willie Horton ad or gay marriage spectacle. There are powerful signs that the old black magic doesn't work anymore.

The results in Tuesday's twin primaries--Barack Obama by 14 percent in North Carolina and Hillary Clinton by 2 percent in Indiana--confirmed that Clinton is finished as a contender. Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president this fall.

Clinton, the private-schooled, Wellesley and Yale-educated millionaire lawyer from Chicago, first tried to present herself as a White House veteran, and then, in recent weeks, as a NASCAR mom on Food Stamps, and in Pennsylvania resorted to cheap race-baiting and red-baiting in an effort to derail her opponent, has failed. Barack Obama, another private-schooled Harvard and Yale-educated lawyer, but one who actually did have to work his way up the economic ladder, won decisively in North Carolina, even drawing a significant number of working-class white voters in a state where white voters have not traditionally voted for candidates with dark skin.

Obama's electibility reflects his likelihood of winning. The chance of victory hinges on key states.

I've said Obama is unelectable. Yet no one can say definitively that Obama would do worse than Hillary against McCain. Polls over McCain vs. Hillary, McCain vs. Obama are brought out by one candidate's side to denounce the other. The media is blitzed with polls, predictions, and punditry. Those in one camp are receptive to information positive for their candidate and negative for the other. The same holds true for those in the opposing candidate's camp.

I do hope the majority of this nation, who do hold a set of largely progressive values in common, can overcome the squabbling of two politicians and focus on the larger issue, which is beating John McCain in the fall. Compromise is invaluable tool in politics, and the idea that progressives would abandon each other if their candidate isn't nominated is utterly childish.

I recently sent some e-mail to David Scott (D-Ga) about Barney Frank's H.R. 5842 and just got this reply back from him.

I am unsure if he will actually see this reply to it, or if he has any real time to "waste" on such an "unimportant and trivial topic which there isn't any time for right now and will detract from real issues and might possibly cause the Democrats to lose every election for the rest of our lives!!!!!!!!".

Or some other such usual nonsense I have to listen to when I bring this topic up.

But I do it anyway. That's activism.

To paraphrase Harry Truman’s dictum that the only things we don’t yet know being the history we haven’t yet read, current headlines, in a comparative vein, are reminiscent of 1960.

Shortly before the beginning of the Democratic Convention of 1960 a group of prosperous looking Texans stood in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, the convention’s headquarters, and one said in a strong, determined accent with a notable Texas twang:

“That Kennedy is making me damned mad!”

The youthful Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy and the politically experienced majority leader of that same body, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, had exchanged plenty of verbal blows as each sought to win the Democratic nomination and the opportunity to face Vice President Richard M. Nixon in the fall presidential campaign.

I’ve been thinking about registrations. Actually I’ve been thinking about the 2008 elections, the endless campaigns, the Supreme Court, endless payment increases, and a growing malaise affecting all US/us. It is really difficult to get fired up for the coming elections which are still some six months off into the future. This is no small observation coming from me – the all-time news and political junkie! I am not alone in this feeling of weariness as many of my readers agree on this.

You see the Tuesday primary elections in Indiana and North Carolina “may” determine who will be the standard bearer for the Democratic Party in the 2008 Presidential election, but I am not counting on it. Both Senators Clinton and Obama claim they are in the fight until the 2008 Denver Convention. Senator McCain has “locked in” the Republican Party spot on the ballot. Campaigning has gone on for two years. The conventions, real debates, and podium combat still loom before us. I was disgusted and undecided about my choice options in 2004. I voted for President last and ended up actually flipping a coin - John Kerry “won” the toss! That is no way to make a voting decision. Please read on.

One segment of the May 4th edition of CBS television's 60 Minutes provided an update on the struggle of Mary Tillman, mother of NFL star-turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman, to get the full story of the circumstances of her son's death while in action April 22, 2004 in Afghanistan. (May 3rd was the anniversary of Tillman's funeral that the Pentagon so shamelessly exploited through the media, including the posthumous award of the Silver Star, the second highest military decoration for bravery in the face of enemy fire.)

But Tillman had not died from enemy fire while taking on a large enemy force and giving his comrades time to regroup and eventually survive the encounter. Yes there was a very hot firefight between Taliban/al Qaeda adherents and the mixed Afghan/U.S. Army Ranger unit hunting them in the rugged mountains of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Given that first reports are invariably wrong, when Tillman's spouse and parents were informed of his death, a simple "we are still investigating" should have been the "explanation" proffered - especially to the media. But even today, Mary Tillman believes the Pentagon still has not told the whole truth about her son's death.

Tuesday, May 6th, was the decisive night in the struggle for the Democratic nomination. It provided new insight into the character of the two competitors.

Coming into the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, Hillary Clinton appeared to have the momentum. Her supporters were counting on decisive victories to prolong her winning streak and give a fundraising boost to a campaign starved for cash. They believed she could run the deck on the remaining primaries, close the delegate gap with Barack Obama, and make a compelling case with the all-important super delegates that Senator Clinton had found her voice and, therefore, would prove to be more effective campaigning against the Republican Candidate, John McCain, in the Fall.

I argue with my friends. Some of them thought invading Iraq was a good idea. Almost all believed that Afghanistan was "the good war," the one from which Iraq distracted us. (They're starting to come around.) A few are even bigots. We disagree about these issues, often vehemently. But we're still friends. I would never diss a friend in public (or, in politicalese, "distance myself"). Even a former friend deserves respect.

Crisis reveals character. In politics, it reveals judgment.

Barack "Uniter Not Divider, This Time We Really Mean It" Obama was praised for dumping ("distancing himself from") Reverend Jeremiah Wright. ("What Barack Obama did was a profile in courage," said the Reverend Al Sharpton.) But the McCain campaign's silence indicates that it is quietly editing its fall attack ads. Obama's apology, they'll say, came too little, too late. Obama has fallen for one of the hoariest old tricks in the political playbook: guilt by association.

Can this season's news coverage get any dumber?

Remember that in just about every newsroom in America there are people called "editors." These "editors" make decisions about what you see, read, and hear. And the decisions these people are making--and almost exclusively at the highest levels of their respective forms of media (radio, television, and newspaper)--have been extraordinarily shallow.

So Jeremiah Wright is a buffoon. So what? If we're going to tar people by association, at this point wouldn't it be better to start with anyone who has walked out of Dick Cheney's office over the last seven years--except for the fact, of course, that according to Cheney, he belongs to no known branch of the U.S. government, and thus we aren't allowed to know who those people are. But I guarantee you that, aside from the people who listened to Wright's sermons, the preacher hasn't tortured anyone, has ruined no one's energy policy, has defied no subpoenas, and has told no one to fuck off on the Senate floor.

Progressive author and Internet powerhouse Arianna Huffington has appeared on MSNBC more than 30 times over the last 12 months, offering up her combative opinions on current events. The tally probably would have been double that if the stretched-too-thin writer and editor had accepted all the channel's requests that flood her office.

So when Huffington set out late last month to promote her new book, MSNBC seemed like an obvious first stop. In fact, producers had already been in touch, asking about Huffington's availability during her book push. And I hear an informal memo circulated within MSNBC detailing the order in which Huffington would appear on the various MSNBC news programs in coming weeks.

"I want you to feel that Iraqi life is precious," he told them.

Well, that's not going to happen. Here, at the level of basic humanity, the occupation of Iraq -- indeed, the entire Bush administration -- begins to unravel. We can see this with excruciating clarity as requests for an apology waylay the smooth, legal cover-up (one in a series) of the latest spasm of panic and target practice by Blackwater thugs, which left 17 Iraqis dead in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in September.

Even the embedded media, so valiant in their attempts to cast the American presence as well-intentioned and, you know, doing the best it can (under the circumstances), couldn't help but convey, as they reported on the investigation of the Blackwater killings, the humanity of the grieving Iraqis. In so doing, the coverage hinted, unavoidably, at the truth about the occupation: that we are, to put it mildly, the bad guys, that what we're doing there is barbaric, racist, insane.

A Mickey Mouse war policy begets Mickey Mouse results. On that note, the perfect coda to the 5-year-old disaster that is John McCain's favorite war just arrived: The company that built Disneyland, Los Angeles-based C3, is now designing a multi-million dollar entertainment complex on a 50-acre lot adjacent to the Green Zone in Baghdad. That lot, conveniently, became available when, as a result of the invasion of Iraq, the once world-class Baghdad Zoo was looted and destroyed, the animals scattered among the rubble that was operations Shock and Awe and Enduring Freedom. In the wake of the bungled invasion, the zoo was left without power and then abandoned. The animals, many rare, were killed and eaten, or stolen and sold on the black market. Of the 700 animals in the zoo, only 35 survived.

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated US law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers -- most of them with financial ties to war contractors -- into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences.

A speech for Peace Action Maine on April 26th, 2008

Thanks so much for inviting me and for making me feel so welcome. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to say this evening.

Frankly, it is a tall order to stand up in front of a group of people who have just eaten and be expected to say anything that can compete with the natural digestive process. And it is tough to fly from New York and assume that what I would prepare to say would automatically be relevant or interesting to this Maine community as you come together to celebrate and honor a few of your own.

Just imagine for a minute that you wake up one morning to learn that someone has stolen the arm off of the Statue of Liberty. And with it, her torch. No more will she "lift my lamp beside the golden door." Instead, her great lamp is already shredded; it's on a slow boat to China as we speak.

To be followed, soon after, by the Verrazano Bridge.

Farfetched? Maybe today. Maybe not tomorrow.

Earlier in the week, I toured a scrap metal business in the Northeast Kingdom.

In a startling way, the price of scrap metal has risen so high that people are selling everything they can get their hands on. Suddenly, that old washer and dryer in the side yard, the ones with the vines growing through them, are valuable. So are those old tire rims.

From Black Agenda Report

Almost all black Americans are in agreement with the recent statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He has been castigated for doing nothing more than pointing out that there is a well documented history of genocides committed in this country.

Black people are and always have been the largest group of truth tellers in the United States. Our history proves that the country's most beloved mythologies are shams. Our every day lives tell us that racism persists, and that our political leaders lie constantly. We were always very difficult to fool, that is until Barack Obama ran for president.

In the wake of the North Carolina and Indiana Democratic primaries, it becomes quite apparent that barring any totally unforeseen circumstances, Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic presidential nominee. I see no way Hillary Clinton can get the nomination unless the super delegates decide to totally ignore the will of the people in the primary states, which is quite unlikely.

Finally the time rapidly approaches to address the real question, namely, is America ready, willing, and able to vote for a Black male as President of the United States? An election process beginning as the search to pick the most qualified candidate for president must inevitably end by testing the climate of racism in America. Ironically, the Democratic theme during the primaries as well as the upcoming national elections will be the necessity of change, an obvious approach after seven long and seriously flawed years of the Bush Administration and an enabling Congress. Any Democratic candidate would be running on a platform of change. Ironically, Barack Obama represents a whole lot more than mere political change. He is a Black man in a nation that historically and presently continues to be a hot bed of racism and discrimination. America, ready or not, has reached a critical nexus point in its history, and racism can no longer remain on the back burner.

What? The hyper-organized, disciplined, get-out-the-message, self-righteous Republicans are in trouble? Quick! Call for help! Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… it’s … ::cricket, cricket::

Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money.

Oh no! What’s a Republican to do? Ooo! Ooo! I know! Pick me! Solution: Every man for himself!

The New York Times and the Washington Post have put the Democrats on notice: If you want to become president, patriotism still counts. Whether by coincidence or some conspiratorial design, both of the bellwethers of the political center gave the issue of patriotism front page coverage this past weekend.

Democrats may be tempted to dismiss the patriotism ploy as a distraction from the really important issues of the campaign. Glenn Greenwald, for one, has already denounced the Post article as “small-minded, juvenile gossip” about “tiny sideshows” like lapel pins and the Pledge of Allegiance.

You have to give Hillary Clinton's team credit for one thing: they have masterfully played the perception game. It might have been all smoke and mirrors, but they have done their job of keeping people confused and distracted them from what really matters.

The reality is that: 1. She has no chance of beating Barack Obama. 2. She has had no chance of beating Barack Obama for a long time now. 3. Most importantly, she has deluded people into thinking her chances of winning the nomination were improving as they were getting dramatically worse.

— from Truthdig

In the increasingly unlikely event of a McCain-Clinton election, folks who care about the peace issue would have serious reason to worry. Both of these candidates are inveterate hawks, and what we would be up against is a choice between the neoconservatives and the neoliberals as to who could be more adventurous in getting us into unjustifiable foreign wars.

Both not only voted to authorize President Bush's irrational invasion of Iraq but also have failed to apply those lessons to the real challenges we face, particularly concerning Iran. On the one hand, we have Sen. John McCain's wildly inane "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" singing refrain, and on the other, Sen. Hillary Clinton's commitment to "totally obliterate" Iran in response to any nuclear attack by Tehran on Israel.

The US border with Mexico is 2000 miles long and is heavily guarded, at a cost to the US taxpayer of $7.8 billion last year. (In 2006 Bush declared that "Unfortunately, the United States has not been in complete control of its borders for decades . . . ") Now consider what would happen if Mexican security forces were pursuing a criminal who had fled into the US and they opened fire across the border, then crossed it, killing a US border guard.

If a US citizen was killed by foreign soldiers within the United States there would be reaction verging on the hysterical. There would be cries for retribution and demands for punishment of those responsible. Quite right, you will say, if only because international law, in the shape of the Charter of the United Nations, specifies that all signatories shall "refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity . . . of any member or state, or in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations." All perfectly clear: a country that uses force against another without justification that is approved by its international peers is acting illegally.