Unfuckingbelievable.

Three out of five of you are willing to sacrifice your beliefs to elect a politician.

Another one of you is willing to accept a politician for what he is.

What else are you willing to sacrifice? Your career? Your family? Your Constitutional rights?

What else are you willing to accept?

A fundamental discussion has arisen among us, but has actually been present for awhile. Brought to a head by recent actions (Fisa, Clark) by Obama, it has its roots in the conservative movement and in particular George W. Bush.

That discussion is how or whether to politically support a candidate or party who you disagree with on major issues.

For me, that is answered by lines that politicians cross, good lines, and bad.

Follow me after the jump. Which is a kind of line I suppose :).

Why am I such an incurable romantic? Why, oh why, did I give my heart so easily? I should have known. It's happened to me before. I never learn.

My choices are always bad. Liberal politicians. They make you big promises and then let you down. But, oh, they say such sweet and promising things.

How could you Barack. How could you do this. (sob) Please excuse my tears. Sorry for my inability to just suck it up. No stiff upper lip. Not British you know.

Back in the seventies I recall reading a harsh Australian government warning aimed at the Aboriginal population, which at the time was hopelessly mired in chronic alcoholism: "Adapt or Perish!". Although I thought it heartless at the time (since we not only introduced all things boozy to a people who had never tasted alcohol in their previous 60,000 years, their land was also taken from under their feet) it did convey a brutish, unmistakable message of "survivalism or else". That message, regardless of its bluntness, ought to be hammered, no, etched deep into all politicians' consciousness worldwide as we are facing a number of intractable problems, most of them resulting from decades of bad policies fostered on us by inept, possibly corrupt, greedy & non-visionary leaders.

What's more, the writing has been on the wall for quite some time, and as our own bonddad noted today, "the US’ current economic trajectory is unsustainable in the long run". So is the rest of the world. All it takes is a change of behavior.

Bill Clinton had Al Gore in which he ran in 2000 after Clinton's tenure in office ended. VP's usually would run for office after the president is done, which was not true of Dick Cheney. If Obama wants to continue to have a Democrat in the White House for the next 16-20 years, then he has to choose someone who is young as his VP. This means that Biden, Nunn, Clinton, Dodd, Richardson, Webb, and Wes Clark cannot be the VP if Obama wants this. That is because these guys will be too old to have a chance to win.

There's been too much talk lately about the deep (but healing!) divisions the Democratic primary has caused. I'd like to take a moment to step back and talk about the reason why things got that way: we were passionate about someone that inspired us. That's a good thing!

But I wanna know more. Who else inspires you? Who in politics and the media has made you passionate about politics?

Here's my short list (in no particular order, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few):
Bill Moyers
Keith Olbermann
Tony Benn
Dennis Kucinich
George Carlin
Jon Stewart
Arianna Huffington
Barack Obama
Ed Murrow

Update: Just to clarify, I included only people who I have personally seen/heard/read and were inspired by. You need not hold yourself to such strict rules, but that's why there are some obvious, glaring omissions here.

Those are the words of a rarely sung verse of "America the Beautiful." It is my favorite verse –-  since for me, that patriots' dream is even more beautiful than spacious skies and purple mountains'  majesties.

Why is that verse sung so rarely, and why is that verse not the passage that springs first to most Americans' minds when they think about patriotism?

What is patriotism, and what would a "patriotic" President be like?

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

- Thomas Paine

    Ok, call me crazy but I thought a foreclosure prevention bill is suppose to be designed to help average folks stem off foreclosures. So will someone tell me how a foreclosure prevention bill would contain bail-out money for automakers, airlines, alternative energy producers and other struggling industries? What do these clowns in Washington have to do to prove to the American public where their loyalties lie. Why is it that when average Americans seek help from their government they are treated to: rely on capitalism and the free enterprise system, but when these CEO’s, who get million dollar bonuses whether their companies succeed or not, make bad business decisions it is ok for the government to bail them out. Who says we are capitalist? I guess the poor are, but the rich sure as hell aren’t.

It is surreal to listen to the news media, the pundits on the talking heads shows, and politicians on both sides when they talk about Iraq.  Everybody, and I do mean everybody, is talking in abstracts--how do we draw down the forces, how many years do we stay in Iraq, what's the best way to get out, whose plan is the best, when will we know that we've  achieved "victory," and on and on.  Where is the person who is going to boil this thing down to the important question?  Human sacrifice. Dead people. Wounded people.

Since politicians regularly visit DailyKos.com, I decided today to write a letter to them, expressing just how bizarre the current political situation is.  For the most part, this diary is a link-fest: don't just read the diary itself, check out the links.

Sometimes, politicians lie to get elected. This is a fact, and is not okay. Politicians are the elected leaders of our communities, and should, among all people, be the most trustworthy and honest. In recent weeks, all three presidential candidates' records have been scrutinized for thousands of hours. From all this review, some disturbing discoveries have been made, notably, of Hillary Clinton's repetitive embellishments on the truth, or just simple LIES.

This is Jeremy Paxman.

This is what American journalists are like when I'm dreaming.

The last week's news has been full of candidates and officials behaving in ways hard for the ordinary person to comprehend.  The revelation of Elliot Spitzer's assignations with prostitutes, encompassing six years and costing thousands of dollars; Hillary Clinton's allowing her campaign to make racist pronouncements and then issuing a non-apology apology--I can't be the only person who has wondered "how on earth do they think they can get away with this?  Isn't there anyone who can get through to them?"

Well, no, there isn't.  

1.  we have the highest rate of incarceration in the Western industrialized world

2. we have the highest rate of execution in the Western industrialized world

3. we have the highest rate of murder in the Western industrialized world

4. we have perhaps the greatest economic disparity in the Western industrialized world

5. we have the lowest rate of medical insurance in the Western industrialized world

It seems to me that our American exceptionalism should be a matter of embarrassment if not outright shame, and not something about which we brag.

(more)

In the court room or in the surgical theatre or ICU, you are not totally knocked out with anesthesia.

You hear the words, OOPS.
How does it make you feel?

You ask your wife, how she is doing after giving birth, and she says
PRESENT.

I don’t understand why the people from around the world still are sending so much money to be invested in the United States when the system it is run not much better than a "Banana Republic."

The politicians in Washington can’t connect the dots even if it is necessary to save their own lives – most of them lack even a minimum amount of common sense.

You really don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that it would be nice to extend the safety net when the country is in the process of getting into a major recession.

I know it is very hard to connect the dots and figure out that when you are getting into a recession the unemployment figures it will go up as more people lose their jobs as the economy starts to implode.

I also know that it is very hard to connect the dots that by giving an unemployment extension the government would be putting money in the pockets of people that might be able to pay their mortgage and keep the sub prime mess from getting in even worse shape.

Actually an unemployment extension would help people pay their bills when they don’t have another source of income; kind of help people to stay afloat.

By: Ricardo C. Amaral

.

I sit here and play Eva Cassidy records and idle my time away by desultory flicking through various American political blogs and finding little there that either suits my mood or feeds my mind.

Many complain that it is the in-fighting and the rancour of the present Primaries that make them turn away. For me it is not the venomous dislike of other candidates that I find ugly. It is the idolatry of their own preference that I find offensive.

I don’t know where this comes from, this belief that somehow a sudden and genetically impossible evolution will occur by the initiation of a single person to usher in a New World where most of our problems will be solved.  It is as sad to see the extent of the investment of hopes and aspirations placed in particular candidates by the left as it is to see the religious right look towards the coming of their divine Messiah to change the human condition.