[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

As of this writing there are precisely 15 days left in August 2008, a tragic, horrible month on the American calendar when Bush is in power that has yet again delivered mayhem and a tattered pathetic leadership response.  Just as Bush sneered you’ve covered your ass to frantic memos the United States was about to be attacked or watched from 30,000 feet as New Orleans drowned, August 2008 saw Bush in a grab-ass Olympics jaunt as Russia blew up 2,000 little people, the Secretary of State resolutely on vacation.

Incredulously, as if to nail home to any doubters how lost in space the United States is, Poland announced on Thursday it had "crossed the Rubicon" to implement a stupid insane missile "defense" system with the US right on the doorstep of Russia, heaving a salted heated spear of provocation straight into the fresh crisis wound of Georgia.

Glad to be out and about on a Friday night just like the young 'uns for once we went to see Tropic Thunder with Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black and Ben Stiller.  In the first ten minutes the move tried to dramatize a soldier getting his hands blown off, making fun of person with a disability (stuttering), and then disparaging the life of a child, a son.  We walked out.

Roger Ebert gives this movie a 4.5 out of 5, it was supposed to be a fun good movie, but I don't get using troops being eviscerated and getting their hands blown off as something I'm just supposed to casually accept as make-believe, I won't do it.  I don't know why, but I was wearing my Netroots for the Troops t-shirt I got in Austin tonight.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

08/10/08 0718.21 pst
San Jose, California

My two Obama for President yard signs were vandalized and removed from the lot last Thursday, an act that still leaves me a little surprised, for I’m in a bluest of blue districts (CA-15) in a blue state, something like this has never happened to me before.  There was no damage to property or gardens, just the signs removed.

I will order two more today, of course, along with a poster to put in a front window; if they had flags I’d buy one too.  Perhaps it was a wankstain who will never grow up, or maybe our Republican brethren are feeling a little desperate, there’s no way to know, but faithful Democrats live in this house, and anyone who walks by is soon to instantly know it, as usual.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

We can know with utmost certainty that 2008 will be classified by future historians as another year in one of America’s darkest, repressive eras, easily surpassing the McCarthy witch hunts in cruel stupidity and trampled freedoms.  When a Department of Homeland Security hack equates seizing your laptop to copy all of its contents with rifling your backpack at a border search we are in one of our worst spots as a country, ever.

How tired I am of being outraged and angry at yet another gross humiliating invasion of privacy at the airport, how truly weary I am of ranting millions have died defending the Bill of Rights that’s being ripped to shreds right in front of us.  Today, in fact, I will be in neither state, hoping the reader will forgive some simple declarative sentences before I wander away to wonder if we’ll ever get the country back.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle describes the sickening debacle of modern American politics turned on full blast the last week as "political hunting season," as if reality had somehow magically turned John McCain and Barack Obama into orange-vested stalkers, peering around trees with rifles, but by far the best description came from Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly, who sneered that watching McCain ridiculing Obama and the electorate was "like watching a bunch of sixth graders crack themselves up telling fart jokes."

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

I am not a real blogger, of course, merely a weekend pinch-hitter, a lowly brunch cook of blogtopia, as it were, trusted enough to competently sling out some slop for the regulars who wander in with nothing better to do until the jefe shows up on Monday.  After enough time I settled into being an essayist, duty means a 750 word piece (play with a net, as the demigod Krugman intoned) every weekend morning, every month, all year, unless you absolutely can’t.

Blogging has very accurately been described as a Death March of Bataan activity, a very difficult daily grind of unpaid lonely advocacy for nothing but pittance.  One might think two essays a week—often three—would be no big deal, but after about a year one gets an inkling of just how hard daily political writing often is, an arena of very dirty, lousy political play in a world of hurt.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

An extremely puzzling report was issued by the California Public Utilities Commission yesterday, warning the State will likely miss its 20% renewable energy goal by 2010 without $60 billion invested for infrastructure and sure to miss it if the current tax credits for wind and solar plants expire.  The utterly predictable bleating from Senators assuring corporate welfare to solve problems was as assured as the sun rising after the report was issued, but the baffling element to report was omission: where was conservation and home micro production?

Homeowners and citizens have no active role to play in reaching the pathetically low bar of 20% renewable energy production by 2010?  No wonder the goal is so puny, how unsurprising we’re not going to make it, selling out the people of this country by incredulously leaving them out of solutions is a guaranteed way to fail.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Much has already been deservedly written about the utter piece of filth Dana Milbanks published at the Washington Post Wednesday, Milbanks so ably demonstrating himself to be a panting water boy for the Republican narrative of "presumptuous nominee."  Although this element of carrying the narrative is correct, my further take on this amazing arrogance and contempt for the reader was an implacability of judgment, a sickening declaration that Dana Milbanks and the Washington Post will decide the election, not voters.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

A United States Marine (E-3) in dress blues wandered into the 7-Eleven I often stop by after work for cigarettes this afternoon, looking intently around and loitering in a way I instantly recognized; so nothing to any of us who always walk into the place, but so classically American to him, wherever he came from, finally picking out a quart of water and reluctantly joining the checkout line.

"Put your money away, Marine, it’s no good here," I said.  The Middle Eastern oh all of our people have immigration lawyers checker instantly got it, reaching out for the Marine’s water and scanning the bottle without comment.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Frank Rich of the New York Times and Ian Welsh of Firedoglake both do an excellent job this morning chronicling the irrevocable forces of change that overtake events absent of any leadership, vacuums in economic and foreign policy simply rendering our stupid and rudderless leadership into pretzels of absurdity.  Senator Barack Obama was rapturously received in Europe partly because he didn’t hideously grope a Prime Minister or deliberately blast Texas oil industry flatulence from the world’s greatest polluter all over everyone, go figure.

Be foolish and obtuse enough to start a lying war for class-coddling regressive resource policy backed by paper funny money, as Welsh so aptly chronicles, and the implacable reality of the markets, the planet and human behavior will finally smash the pathetic rationalizations to the leave the American people in a world of hurt.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Everybody loves a winner, goes the old refrain, come home with the trophy and all is forgiven in politics. The Republican Party has enjoyed the benefits of grim butterfly ballot and swiftboat-assisted victories in the last two national elections, seriously ugly stuff, yet victory shielded them from the massive risk they’re about to be crushed with in that kind of campaigning:  play hard’n brass-knuckled ugly...and then lose.

The conventions are weeks away, yet already John McCain has been easily humiliated by issuing one of the most stupid campaign challenges of all time, Barack Obama triumphantly paraded around the Middle East and Europe to adoring crowds and politicians like the new political Eurasia rock star he is. ¹ Not only did John McCain childishly whine about the press in this disaster, but also got heinously ugly, saying Barack Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Via Suburban Guerrilla, the great political writer Matt Taibbi wrote on July 19th for Rolling Stone that our America era of "fantasy elections" is soon to inevitably end, for the howling pain from the abuse of our people just cannot be ignored forever.  One might be justifiably surprised that the will of the American people is being ignored after endless elections in the 2008 political season, but the American process almost earns the title of fantasy, and there is disturbing historical precedence that, in fact, it could go on for a very long time.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

The background of tension and reticence that has been dogging Netroots Nation came to a boil yesterday morning when attendees were threatened with having their convention badges revoked if they disrupted Speaker Pelosi.  The issue dogging the convention is that Congressional Democratic failure reached a tipping point with FISA and the base, there is no significant trust or faith anymore in our Party leadership, not to mention quite a bit of anger.

Convention attendees were obviously not trusted to be civil to Speaker Pelosi, either, and things had the potential to get really ugly yesterday.  I was actually late for Speaker Pelosi’s introduction, so I didn’t hear warning, and although I probably would have accepted it I also would have been seriously provoked by it, to me it had the distinct feeling of being pushed around.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

07/18/08 1457.31 cst
Austin, Texas

Given a very handy 2-hour head start from the Pacific time zone I have suddenly made myself into a Night Person for Netroots Nation, staying up well past midnight, but unfortunately I still snap awake with the dawn, so I’m burning some reserves here, something I’ll likely being doing all day and night.

I’m having a wonderful time here at the Hilton, it is so very good to see all these great writers I have known in the screens all these years.  As I was waiting for this morning’s panel to start a nice woman moved past my aisle seat and settled in.  "All right, Lady," I growled jokingly as stuff was put down, pleasant smiles all around.  We chatted a few moments and then she opened her laptop, and there was The Left Coaster in the screen.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

Eight incredibly long years ago the Democratic Party base watched their candidate and all the Party’s chance for leadership in the new century get stolen right in front of them.  Instead of standing up for the base, the Party gallingly played along with Bush with tax cuts while Condi Rice blew off blaring warnings the US about to be attacked.

The base not only had to put up with no accountability from this horrifying negligence¹, they then had to watch a viciously implacable trap close upon eternally cowardly Democratic Partly leadership about being soft on terrorism.  Tom Daschle stood on the Capitol steps and led the caucus in God Bless America, right before he signed away huge chunks of the constitution with the Patriot Act, a scene good hard-working liberals have had to watch in sickening basic repetition over the years.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

07/12/09 0632.11 pst
San Jose, California

Very soon I am to perform the ultimate triumph for any blog, for my machine-chained soul is soon to be actually teased out of the house by blog activity, away from the ether and into the real oxygen of day, quite an accomplishment considering I’m such a webhead homebody.

Tailgating at the Oakland Coliseum this afternoon for Athletics Nation V, an annual event day for Athletics Nation, this time a big party in the eastern lot before playing the hated arch-rival Angels from Los Angeles.  I love baseball, July coastal weather, hickory smoke, family and friends...I feel very privileged indeed that the ol’ college try has worked out so well, I got extremely lucky, it is very good to be alive, yes.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

I am sorry to be so quiet lately, I was briefly ill and then very busy, so I am still, with just a few minutes available before I scurry off to my ethereal structures.

It is a dark day, a dawn of smoldering fury in a smoke-shrouded California, yet another day when my own people willingly shred the constitution—our precious rights—for nothing but stupid criminality and fear.  FISA is an easily seen core 4th amendment issue by recent history and current judicial rulings, but the Democratic Party leadership won’t care if the press ignores it.

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

In a political summer of 2003 with "nothing to do" Howard Dean started a candidacy out of Vermont with a visionary internet campaign manager, Joe Trippi.  I had an easy cube job in the Valley that summer and happily joined in, thrilled with a Democrat who at last would fight, feeling more like a demi-god every day as the code I toiled in transformed a political world, eventually to garner the endorsement of a real political god, Al Gore.

That marked a turning point for all the political forces possible to whap this upstart back, and well all know how that worked out.  A pep talk after defeat in Iowa for earnest Deaniacs who had not a clue how to caucus was not the greatest of ideas, no, but the flaying of a candidate in the stocks with the Dean Scream is still a painful memory for me.