Earth Day.

It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is.

--Robinson Jeffers

THIS MAN IS F****** CLUELESS!

HERE IS YET ANOTHER HIGHLY INTELLIGENT EDITORIAL CONCERNING BARACK OBAMA'S VIRTUALLY UTTER NON-ELECTABILITY!

While I, personally, would likely support all of Obama's highly Liberal positions and votes, I am a dead serious realist when it comes to national elections involving the Republican Right-Wing "Freak Show" that has commandeered and destroyed the "public image" of so many Democrats in recent decades!

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OPINION

Obama's Flaws Multiply
By JOHN FUND
April 15, 2008

Barack Obama's San Francisco-Democrat comment last week – about how alienated working-class voters "cling to guns or religion" – is already famous. But the fact that his aides tell reporters he is privately bewildered that anybody took offense is even more remarkable.

Democrats have been worrying about defending Mr. Obama's highly liberal voting record in a general election. Now they need to fret that he makes too many mistakes, from ignoring the Rev. Wright time bomb until the videotapes blew up in front of him, to his careless condescension towards salt-of-the-earth Democrats. Mr. Obama has a tendency to make such cultural miscues. Speaking to small-town voters in Iowa last year, he asked, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?"

Mr. Obama is the closest thing to a rookie candidate on the national stage since Dwight Eisenhower, who was a beloved war leader. Candidates as green as Mr. Obama make first-timer mistakes under the searing scrutiny of a national campaign. Even seasoned pols don't understand how unforgiving that scrutiny can be. Ask John Kerry, who had won five statewide elections before running for president.

For all his winning ways and natural appeal to the camera, Mr. Obama hasn't really been tested in a major campaign. In 2000, then-state Sen. Obama challenged Congressman Bobby Rush, who was vulnerable after having been crushed in a bid to become mayor of Chicago. Mr. Rush, a former Black Panther, painted Mr. Obama as "inauthentic" and beat him 2-1.

In 2004, when Mr. Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, he had the good luck of watching both Blair Hull, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and Jack Ryan, the GOP nominee, self-destruct in sex scandals. Mr. Obama's eventual Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, was an unserious candidate who won the votes of only 56% of Republican voters.

Mr. Obama has prospered in Democratic primaries. But as John Harris and Jim VandeHei note in Politico.com, that's in part because these primaries have "been an exercise in self-censorship" about Mr. Obama's weaknesses. It is "indisputably true," they write, that "Obama is on the brink of the Democratic nomination without having had to confront head-on the evidence about his general election challenges."

There are many. His statements that he wants to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, combined with his lack of foreign policy experience, could hurt him. And his aides are hard pressed to come up with any deviations in a voting record the nonpartisan National Journal calls the most liberal of any U.S. Senator.

As a state legislator he was even more off-center. In 1996, he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, which the Senate approved 85-14 and President Clinton signed into law. He twice voted "present" on a bill to ban partial-birth abortions. In 1999, he was the only state senator to oppose a law that prohibited early prison release for sex offenders.

Mr. Obama also backed a total ban on handguns, a move his campaign now says was the result of a rogue aide filling out a questionnaire. But Mr. Obama's own handwritten notes were found on the questionnaire, calling into question the campaign's version of what happened.

Everyone knows Mrs. Clinton's electoral vulnerabilities – GOP consultant Mike Murphy jokes that "half of the country thinks she rides a broom." But Mr. Obama has shown weakness with key Democratic constituencies. He's had to fend off concerns about his Middle East policies with Jewish voters; he's also won only a third of Hispanic primary voters.

Then there is trade, where his insincerity is at least as clumsy as Mrs. Clinton's. During the San Francisco episode, Mr. Obama had a throwaway line about how working-class voters fixate on "anti-trade sentiment" in order to vent their frustrations. But isn't it Barack Obama who has been spending months stirring up "anti-trade sentiment?" He has threatened to yank the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement unless Canada and Mexico renegotiate it. Last week, he denounced the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

According to Canadian diplomats, top Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee admitted to them that they could dismiss his man's anti-Nafta rhetoric. All of this makes Democrats wonder if Mr. Obama is ready for prime time.

But they have themselves to blame for letting him get this far largely unexamined. While Republicans tend to nominate their best-known candidate from previous nomination battles (Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and now John McCain), Democrats often fall in love during a first date. They are then surprised when all the relatives don't think he's splendid.

Michael Dukakis had a healthy lead in 1988 against the elder Bush at this time and right through the political conventions. Then came the GOP's dissection of his Massachusetts record and his tank ride. Bill Clinton was able to win with only 43% of the vote in 1992, thanks in part to Ross Perot's presence as a spoiler. John Kerry had a six-point lead in the May 2004 Gallup poll over President Bush, then the wind-surfer crashed. All of those candidates had never run for national office before. Democrats paid a price for running a rookie.

Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager and an undeclared super delegate, is worried. "With the Wright controversy still lingering and now Obama's unartful comments," she told CNN, "it will paint the picture of Obama as being 'out of sync.'"

With 81% of voters telling pollsters the country is on the "wrong track," no one disputes Democrats can win in November. Still, it should be a matter of concern to them that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama currently trail John McCain in general-election matchups. Democrats would be wise to have more debates and sharper exchanges in the remaining primaries. It may help minimize the surprises they are likely to encounter this fall.

Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.

View this insightful article HERE!


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Spencer

THIS HAS TO BE THE SINGLE BEST AND MOST INTELLIGENT ARTICLE I'VE YET SEEN ON THE "PROBLEM" OF BARACK OBAMA

Why do I say this? It is simply because the views expressed in this article, as being those belonging to Bill and Hilary Clinton, are EXACTLY the same as what I have been saying for months now about Mr. Obama's fatal nearsightedness and self-absorption!

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What Clinton Wishes She Could Say

Politico: Candidate Won't Say Publicly What She Says In Private About Obama

April 14, 2008

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., makes a campaign stop at the Westside YMCA in Philadelphia last week. (AP)

Democratic Battleground

Hillary Clinton is on the offense in Pennsylvania, after Barack Obama's controversial comments about small town voters drew criticism. Dean Reynolds reports.

(The Politico) This story was written by Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris.

---

Why, ask many Democrats and media commentators, won’t Hillary Rodham Clinton see the long odds against her, put her own ambitions aside, and gracefully embrace Barack Obama as the inevitable Democratic nominee?

Here is why: She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama’s likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naïve Democrats just don’t see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps won’t tell the story.

But Hillary Clinton won’t tell it, either.

A lot of coverage of the Clinton campaign supposes them to be in kitchen-sink mode-hurling every pot and pan, no matter the damage this might do to Obama as the likely Democratic nominee in the fall.

In fact, the Democratic race has not been especially rough by historical standards. What’s more, our conversations with Democrats who speak to the Clintons make plain that their public comments are only the palest version of what they really believe: That if Obama is the nominee a likely Democratic victory would turn to a near-certain defeat.

Far from a no-holds-barred affair, the Democratic contest has been an exercise in self-censorship.

Rip off the duct tape and here is what they would say: Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico.)

Republicans will also ruthlessly exploit openings that Clinton-in the genteel confines of an intra-party contest-never could. Top targets: Obama’s radioactive personal associations, his liberal ideology, his exotic life story, his coolly academic and elitist style

This view has been an article of faith among Clinton advisers for months, but it got powerful new affirmation last week with Obama’s clumsy ruminations about why “bitter” small-town voters turn to guns and God.

There’s nothing to say that the Clintonites are right about Obama’s presumed vulnerabilities. But one argument seems indisputably true: Obama is on the brink of the Democratic nomination without having had to confront head-on the evidence about his general election challenges.

That is why some friends describe Clinton as seeing herself on a mission to save Democrats from themselves. Her candidacy may be a long shot, but no one should expect she will end it unless or until every last door has been shut.

Skepticism about Obama’s general election prospects extends beyond Clinton backers. We spoke to unaffiliated Democratic lawmakers, veteran lobbyists, and campaign operatives who believe the rush of enthusiasm for Obama’s charisma and fresh face has inhibited sober appraisals of his potential weaknesses.

The concerns revolve around two themes.

The first is based on the campaign so far. If the voting patterns evident in many states in nomination voting continued into the fall they would leave Obama vulnerable if McCain can approximate the traditional GOP performance in key states.

The second is based on fear about the campaign ahead.

Stories about Obama’s Chicago associations with 1960s radicals Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers landed with barely a ripple. So, too, did questions about whether he once backed a total ban on handguns (he says no but in a 1996 state legislative race his campaign filled out a questionaire saying yes.) Obama’s graceful handling of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy may have turned that into a net positive.

But all this was in a Democratic contest. What about about when Obama’s running against a Republican?

Let’s take the first point: Obama’s electoral coalition. His impressive success to date comes predominately from strong support among upscale, college-educated whites and overwhelming support from African-Americans.

Assuming he is the Democratic nominee, it seems virtuallycertain he would bring turnout of these groups to historic levels.

But there is reason to question whether he would be able to perform at average levels with other main pillars of the traditional Democratic coalition: blue-collar whites, Jews and Hispanics. He has run decently among these groups in some places, but in general he’s run well behind her.

Obama lost the Jewish vote by double-digits in the battleground state of Florida-where this constituency looms large--and that was before controversy over the anti-Israel remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

He won only about one-third of Hispanic votes on Super Tuesday - and did even worse a month later in Texas. A Democratic nominee needs big margins with Hispanics to win states like New Mexico, California, Colorado and Arizona. In the fall, Obama would be running against a Republican with a record on immigration that will resonate with Hispanics.

Then there’s the lower-income white vote. Does it seem odd that a woman with a polarizing reputation would be rolling up enormous margins among some of the country’s most traditional voters? Three out of every four blue-collar whites in small-towns and rural areas of Ohio voted for Clinton over Obama on March 4. The reality is, this is already an electorate with deep, racially tinged divisions-and that’s in the Democratic Party.

Cornell Belcher, Obama’s pollster, says most of these voting blocs will unite when the Democratic fighting is done. “You get a snapshot at the height of a battle within the family but after the family squabbles history shows that the family does come back together,” he said.

Fair enough. But McCain would be challenging Obama on a range of issues that would complicate this coming together---issues that Clinton did not use or used minimally because they would not be particularly effective.

McCain, by contrast, would have a free hand to exploit a paper trail showing Obama’s evolution---opponents would say reversals--over the past decade from liberal positions on gun control, the death penalty, and Middle East politics. He would exploit Obama’s current position in favor of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and beginning diplomatic talks with U.S. adversaries like the dictators of Iran and Venezuala. Will those issues help lower-income white voters “come back together” with Obama?

Those issues are all in-bounds. What about the issues that most journalists and probably McCain himself will consider out-of-bounds but that, if recent history is any guide, will echo nonetheless in the general election?

The last two Democratic nominees, Al Gore and John F. Kerry, were both military veterans, and both had been familiar, highly successful figures in national politics for more than two decades by the time they ran.

Both men lost control of their public images to the right-wing freak show-that network of operatives and commentators working mostly outside of the mainstream media-and ultimately lost their elections as many voters came to see them as exotic, elitist, out-of-touch, phony, and even unpatriotic.

Obama is a much less familiar figure than Kerry or Gore, with a life story that is far more exotic, who is coming out of a political milieu in Chicago politics that is far more liberal.

The freak show has already signaled its early lines of attack on Obama. Many Americans already believe---falsely-that he is a Muslim. Voter interviews already reveal widespread unease with minor and seemingly irrelevant questions like why he does not favor American flag pins on his lapel. Nor does it seem likely that voters have heard the last about Jeremiah Wright.

Obama’s advisors said they are not naïve about freak show politics. Their response is that Obama’s appeal to a new brand of politics, and his personal poise and self-confidence, will allow him to transcend attacks andcaricatures in ways that Gore and Kerry could not.

Obama is indeed poised and self-confident. But the current uproar over his impromptu sociology lesson in San Francisco about “bitter” voters in Pennsylvania raise questions about his self-discipline, and his understanding of how easy it is for a politician in modern politics to lose control of his public image.

Clinton has her own baggage, to put it mildly. But it’s been rummaged through for years, so what Democrats see is pretty much what they would get.

The frustration and even anger emananating from the Clintonites comes from being unable to say in public what they think in private.

Little wonder why. Bill Clinton’s comments comparing Obama’s support in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s may have been rude and they were certainly impolitic. But it’s absurd to contend, as many Democrats indignantly do, that they amounted to a shocking low blow or to “playing the race card.”

The reaction underscored the essential prissiness of the Democratic contest so far. One can be sure the general election will not be such a delicate affair.

By Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris
Copyright 2008 POLITICO

View this wonderful article HERE!


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Spencer

For What It's Worth.

The Shins is a United States indie rock group comprising singer, songwriter and guitarist James Russell Mercer, keyboardist/guitarist/bassist Martin Crandall, bassist/guitarist Dave Hernandez, drummer Jesse Sandoval, and Eric Johnson of the Fruit Bats. Their sound draws on several musical genres, including pop, alternative, alternative country, and folk. The Shins are based in Portland, Oregon.

Wincing the Night Away by The Shins was released in January of 2007. The Shins are one of many indie-pop groups that have caught my attention in recent years, though I've only listened to this album, their most recent. It's been on the playlist a lot lately. Because of that, I decided to scrutinize and offer up some of my thoughts on the album.



1. Sleeping Lessons
This might be the song I like the least on this album and perhaps the reason I hadn't discovered it sooner. I think the spacey, Lost in Translation-esque sound isn't really my thing. The lyrics are fine. In fact something I discovered AFTER I decided I loved this disc was the lyrics. The best moment in this song is the part that is ushered in by this phrase at "And spill it out on the ragged floor" at 54 seconds in. I do have to admit, I like these lyrics:

"You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise
See, those unrepenting buzzards want your life

And they got no right
As sure as you have eyes
They got no right "

The last part of the song from that point on is more like the rest of the album and I like that quite a lot.

2. Australia
How ironic, right? This one reminds me of The Smiths. Not sure why, exactly. Not familiar enough with The Smiths sound to really say it has that. This song doesn't seem to have any kind of lyrical hook or chorus... but it's great. There are moments toward the end that remind me of the late 60s music, The Archies, and all that,

"Been alone since you were twenty-one
You haven't laughed since January
You try and make like this is so much fun
But we know it to be quite contrary "

3. Pam Berry
I don't like this track as well. Here are the full lyrics to the 56 sec. song.

"This lass
Some fifteen odd years
Is widely known
To have spat
In her teacher's lap
And will not take it back
For now I see
How after all their crap
She rightly came to that."

4. Phantom Limb
The lyrics of this song are sort of bizarre and difficult to meld together to find some kind of deeper meaning.. I guess I'm not trying that hard.. but I will say I admire any song that uses words like this:
pilfered, latent, trite, zombie, and goathead. Actually, I take that back. I do have a sense of the meaning of the song, but It's full of allusion I don't understand.

Here's a snippet of lyrics that I think sum this one up a bit more:

"So when they tap our Sunday heads
Two zombies walk in our stead
This town seems hardly worth our time
And we'll no longer memorize or rhyme,
Too far along in our crime,
Stepping over what now towers to the sky,
With no connection "

5. Sealegs
This one is not one of my first favorites but I'm liking it better all the time. I like the images that it brings me. Ones that remind me of you and how you make me feel. I'm sure I don't want to make too close of a connection between the song and our relationship,espec. since I've not properly tried to disect the song. Let me share some lines I like:

"Girl, if you're a seascape
I'm a listing boat, for the thing carries every hope.
I invest in a single life.
The choice is yours to be loved"

"Of all the intersecting lines in the sand
I routed a labyrinth to your lap."

"We've no time to stall or protocol
To hem us in darling."

6. Red Rabbits
This one has a strange opening bit too, much like "Sleeping lessons."

"We've pissed on far too many sprites
And they're all standing up for their rights"

This line makes me think of that Oscar nominated foreign film from 2007, Pan's Labyrinth. This is a line that's repeated in the song. I really like the sound of this line.

"Born on a desert floor you've the deepest thirst
And you came to my sweet shore to indulge it"

This just has a great image to it.
This one too:

"So help me, I don't know I might
Just give the old dark side a try"

7. Turn on Me
This was the first song I loved on this album and not for any particular reason. I do like the first few bars of the song. It reminds me of some 60s songs or some country song.. it resonates. I like all the lyrics in this one. Here's a favorite clip:

"So affections fade away
And do adults just learn to play
The most ridiculous repulsive games
All our favorite ruddy sons
And their double-barreled guns
You better hurry
Rabbit run run run
'Cause mincing you is fun
And there's a lot of hungry hatters in this world
Set on taking it over
But brittle thorny stems
They break before they bend
And neither one of us is one of them"

8. Black Wave
This one has minimal lyrics and yet seems just as poetic as the rest. While it's not my favorite, it's still not one I'd skip.

9. Split Needles
For some reason, the music in this one appeals less to me. It's funny to say that since so many of the songs are alike in sound. It's hard to put my finger on it. It will probably turn out to be your favorite song, of theirs! :)

10. Girl Sailor
This is a good one. It has more of a clear story than any of the other songs. And the sound is great. Totally my kind of tune. "Oh girl, sail her, don't sink her"

11. A Comet Appears
This is a dismal ditty, but it's still worth a listen.

"One hand on this wily comet,
Take a drink just to give me some weight,
Some uber-man I'd make,
I'm barely a vapor"


--Kate

Wake up America.

-Kate

Don't Read Too Much Into This.

“Promissory Note”
by Galway Kinnell

If I die before you
which is all but certain
then in the moment
before you will see me
become someone dead
in a transformation
as quick as a shooting star’s
I will cross over into you
and ask you to carry
not only your own memories
but mine too until you
too lie down and erase us
both together into oblivion.

I just discovered this poem. I like Galway Kinnell. I like Galway, Ireland. I like this poem. Even though it has nothing to do with Ireland...
--Kate

Muy Bien, Señor Diaz.

Junot Diaz, in a picture not taken by me.

Though I do have a picture of him, becuase I met him. In fact, we had dinner a few weeks ago. Or I should say, my book club did. Right before he was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Dang.

He's also written a collection of short stories, Drown, which I've not yet read but has been highly praised by my colleagues. One thing that was great about Mr. Diaz and our discussion time was how he was willing to talk about his book and reveal some of his thoughts on the craft and interpretation of it. He was eager to talk about the "layers." We discussed themes and the footnotes and how they are almost a story unto themselves.

One theme that came up was the "deconstruction and reconstruction" that takes place in the story. Examples were cited. Connections made. And then I managed to stumble onto something that made me feel very good. I asked if the character of Isis who appears at the end of the novel, was named, in fact, for the Egyptian goddess known for searching the world and collecting the pieces of her brother/lover Osiris and putting him back together. I figured that idea might fit in with his theme. Junot responded with genuine delight and exclaimed, "You are the first person to pick up on that!" Well, how about that? Teaching Senior Literature pays off. Truth be told, I love Isis and I've included her in a poem of my own, an allusion to the very same trait.

--Kate, who does enjoy good literature. This book was good--wish I spoke more Spanish.