How many guest commenters on Cable News programs trotted out this new talking point yesterday?

To paraphrase; " In fact, we are quite delighted that the presidential race is as close as it is.  We come to this contest as the underdogs."

"We are really very surprised. This isn't supposed to be as close as it is."

Hosting family visitors reduced my usual overdose levels of infotainment during the first day of the convention, and yet I managed to catch this being employed by GOP "guest-contributors" on at least 3 occasions.

As Friday August 15 dissolves into Saturday August 16th, you will note a ground breaking change of policy at Daily Kos.  It is a startling reversal of policy. One is reminded of observing "glasnost" era Gorbachev's USSR.

Somehow it has become not only possible, but recommendable to suggest, without much convincing evidence that current US President George W Bush is "responsible for the Russian invasion" of Ossetia.

See a gnostic 's diary... or you couldn't have missed it anyway ?

http://www.dailykos.com/...

I support a gnostic's right to post his diary.
But consider this.

Normally considered barely competent, President '43 is portrayed as capable of remotely controlling the armed forces of a foreign state widely thought to be governed by Vladimir Putin and a ventriloquist dummy by the name of Medvedyev.  ( the y helps )

What does this embrace of unproven and unsubstantiated assaults on DKOS tradition mean ?
Jump below to consider the possibilites.

People with solemn faces..like Brit Hume or Lou Dobbs or even David Gergen might give you that solemn look, one eyebrow slightly raised ..to suggest that Barack Obama might be just a bit "one bridge too far" by holding to a 16 month withdrawal plan.

Maybe you've had the thought that Barack might lighten his load by saying ... 16... 18... whatever it takes to do it right and safely.

Have you noticed that all of this is worrying is contigent on something.

That "something" is of great significance.  The operating assumption is that Iraq in 16 months will be much like Iraq today.  McCain seems to think so.  "It might be too soon. We might give up the gains we have made."

Why would Iraq be in a similar state to today's 16 months from now?
IF Iraq IS in a similar state to today's situation in 16 months... what logical conclusions would one draw from that ?

If you gave the current government of Iraq "16 months notice" of intent to redeploy, and began to implement it.. why do we presume that Iraq remains frozen in 2008 as America enters 2010?

Its worse than that.  Read on.

Once in a while one is privileged to catch for a micromoment, an epiphanous glimpse of stark ugly reality.  The kinds of things that pass for normal and go unnoticed until you realize your moral compass isn't dead or de-magnetized.

It happened while channel hopping late night in L.A.  The "markets" in Europe are open and a panel of Fox market watchers was in high gudgeon. Exactly the cue to channel up. But as the television was responding to the channel change I thought I saw something positive about pawn shops in the information bar across the bottom. The one called a chiron I learned in the last two years.

And low and behold:

There were 5 military deaths reported in Iraq from last week.

Members of their team will note their passing.
Their team is not a network news team. Their loss will be felt away from the cameras and celebrity talking heads.

Fathers' Day will be a difficult time for 5 more families from now on, to add to some of the 4,100 families for whom it may now be a terrible day.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/...

 Ok, I am a liberal arts and humanities kind of guy. Mathematics of an  order higher than arithmetic can trigger feelings of anxiety and inadequacy.

However even my limited faculties have detected a 50% collapse in the cost of octane as a component of gasoline. That beloved constituent of gasoline that makes it burn more efficiently, or hotter, or cleaner or at least more expensively just doesn't keep pace with the price of oil or gas!

My neighbourhood ARCO here in suburban Los Angeles was selling gasoline a year ago at say $2.00, $2.10 and 2.20 per gallon depending on the octane level.

This week that station is selling gas at $4.49, $4.59 and $4.69 per gallon, the 3 prices based on the same rationale.

Notice something funny?

Octane prices haven't gone up. Relative to the other constituent parts of gasoline, octane's  price has fallen dramatically.

  Consider the theory of "pre-emptive attack" on a real threat mounting against  your nation-state.  America has converted this theory to policy  for no real purpose and to poor effect in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

 The quagmire of the Iraq occupation has NOT triggered a withdrawal or public rejection of the American defense of the logic of pre-emptive military action.

   Consider the daily open discussion in western media about if or when or how soon either the USA or Israel will  bomb Iran.
 What country in the world today is more publically, openly and unapologetically told to anticipate an illegal military attack than Iran?

I have no intention of defending Iran's current regime or its agenda. I feel poorly informed about Iran in the first place. I no longer trust American media reporting on Mid-Eastern oil states of all persuasions.

I also note that the people of Iran are about as culpable for or supportive of its nation's policies as those of America.

BUT the logic of American foreign policy  either permits or requires Iran to launch an attack on the USA or Israel or both.

Is this conclusion correct?
If correct, consider the timing and its implications.

  Perhaps cynics, humorists and misguided youths of 2003 might have suggested that Comedy Central was hosting the most truthful news program even if disguised as a satire/comedy show.

 By 2004 there was public discussion in the mainstream media about the "problem" of a growing number of young people who cited Stewart's Daily Show as their primary news source.

 By 2006 the Daily Show was arguably the most important or anticipated interview for any controversial spokesperson/author with a message to sell. This was the program most likely to unmask a fraud.

The Colbert Report added a new layer of media "competition" by mimicing the buffoons of "mainstream media".  A very commercial media.  Colbert's empty headed ego maniac character manages to embarrass the otherwise shameless advocates of Bush foreign policy into the stunned silence they so deserve.

 By now its fair to ask what the Comedy Central programmers, the writers and creative minds behind Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, deserve in return.  What prize ought be awarded the "satire-comedy" shows .. Stewart and Colbert.. to recognize their important service?  How do we recognize and thank them for the regular re-assurance they provide that the outrage is shared. Shared widely.  

The dominant trends in "journalism" in the mainstream corporate media have, over the last eight years, logically produced one of these 3 things:

1. re-inforced but not changed the best and worst of media/jounalism tendencies.

2) improved the quality of reporting or options available to news "consumers"

3. worsened the situation, making the echo chamber effects of shallow reductionism, inter-partisan analysis fronting as "fairness", and group-think consensus passing as "wisdom" more awesomely threatening to informed discourse in a democracy.

( Chris Matthews, David Gergen, if out there.... pick one of the above.  If you are Joe Scarborough or Glen Beck, you already found this too complicated and quit.)

Lets test the theory.  
George Bush: Year 2000. Candidate for President of the USA.
Barack Obama: Year 2008. Candidate for President of the USA.

The topic: PATRIOTISM as an element of FITNESS FOR PUBLIC OFFICE.

Follow below the fold...(or just surrender to the utter preposterousness of the topic in advance.)

The setting, camera angles and visual imagery built into tonights debate were an astonishingly blantant use of  ABC-Disney's entertainment-artistic expertise.  Art critics and professors could discourse learnedly, and perhaps someday will, on the visual content of the specific frames.  There is the Hillary shot, The Barrack shot, the "two shot", the questioners' desk shot, and the audience shot.

 They varied slightly in content over the course of two hours but had consistent features worthy of note.

 (I have taken a post graduate course in art-history with a specific empahasis on propaganda and revolutionary-political imagery.)

 But maybe YOU saw it too.  And I hope YOU have the technical skills to flesh out this dairy with screen catches or video from tonight's debate to illustrate these observations.

ABC DISNEY DISPLAYS DEMOCRATS IN MASSACRE SCENE.

Follow the jump.

Barrack's comments in the San Francisco soundbite are not his golden moment in political analysis.  Sentences that don't know exactly where they are going are regular fare of discourse. The listener usually follows the train of thought if there is one there.

I heard Barrack define and describe something real that requires no apology.  

Diaries concerning Reverend Wright's sermons and how to interpret them, how much tape before or after the "damaging words" to view and the like continue to appear.

Diaries concerning how much we can use against McCain because of Hagee and Parsely are continuing to appear.

Until the Democratic Party nomination is decided, until one party has conceded, all further discussion of Reverend Wright simply keeps alive a story that does Barack Obama no favors.  Obama replied brilliantly. All that can be said to give back some respect to Reverend Wright has been said.

 Picking at this scab, that is trying to heal over does 3 kinds of damage. Follow below.

Disclaimer: This diary will posit no alternative explanation for the events of September 11, 2001.
It does recognize the recent work of the NY Times reporter and his book on the 9/11 commission. This diary also recognizes that Kean and Hamilton have distanced themselves from the reliability of military testimony about which they considered pressing charges. Large redacted sections dealing with one country are enough of an indication that the results of the investigation are motivated by political considerations more than by the awful necessity of the full truth.

The most widely accepted narrative and analysis of the events of September 11, 2001 is a conspiracy theory that has never been adequate.
While extreme and unreasonable claims have been made by many hypothesists the most important and valuable reply to those hypothesists is a full and fair re-investigation of the events by irreproachable individuals free of "intelligence agency", foreign policy and international political attachements.

 After I wrote an impassioned but historically defensible comment in a diary earlier, in which I posited that it takes a "good German" 1941 style to have a problem with Reverend Wright's remarks, that I received a reply suggesting I could use some "anger management'.

 I have given that some thought.  I am not opposed to reflection and self examination.  There was and is some form of anger brewing in me and my comments reveal it.  So after taking a breather and a cold beer out of the fridge, allow me to articulate how the DKOS community experience has contributed to a deep disappointment that is creating anger.

  Most regulars of the last few years here, ( I lurked and read for a long time before registering ) will share in the sense of resistance on a daily basis to the abuses of power, abuses of truth and abuses of morality that litter the Bush administration.

And so Hillary's kitchen sink policy works, the idealistic gloss of the Obama bid worn thin by engaging in the day to day knife fight with Mark Penn, marginally modern white voters driven into corners at the notion of Obama's "overwhelming" support among blacks...

And the convention nominates Hillary Clinton.

And now it's down to the last two.  Hillary Clinton or John McCain.

The American Republic is, by design, capable of producing greater good for its citizens.  

Combined with its wealth, resources and and level of education it is capable of maintaining a position of world leadership by merit rather than force.

These two statements above address potential.  Something has gone very wrong in the last few decades and in the last decade particularly.

America's current politcal system produces laws and policies that, for the most part, contradict the will and best interests of its citizens.  In the process it has adopted policies regarding the world, its resources and its progress that are at once self-defeating, counter-productive and thoroughly unworthy of emulation.

I have absorbed this amazing week, from the SOTU, to the Reagan library, to the Kodak moment and viewed an overdose worth of analysis and spin.
Tonight's episodes of Bill Maher and Keith Olberman are the final inputs as I try to gather thoughts and put some coherence on what I am witnessing. The post-Kodak talk on Olbermann tonight finally drove me to articulate what I believe is happening in front of my eyes. Then the chit chat on Bill Maher just demonstrated more of the same before I sat down here.

And I am witnessing something. It is not unlike a new American revolution. It is something I have long hoped for. I suspect many of you see it as well. I will try to spin it in the positive.

What was the Kerry phrase, "the most inept, the most ..... " . The list of possible adjectives was endless. Arrogant, incompetent, counter-productive....

And wasn't John Kerry right?

And since the 2004 election result, which defied the polls, things have changed. They have moved.  Since the 2004 election things got worse.
That helped produce the results of the 2006 mid-terms.

(And how i miss the energy and spirit here at DKOS for finding and helping the best of the new progressive candidates!)

Since the mid-terms, the public perception is that things are, if not improved, not as egregiously awful.

John McCain reached out to "military, economic and social conservatives" on television yesterday. And he met the "military, intelligence, security" elite today for support and a photo op.

If the campaign in the fall trends away from social issues towards security are Democrats at all ready?