Tonight on Countdown, Keith Olbermann asked Jim Webb what he might suggest next in support of the troops and Senator Webb though committed to their cause did not have a ready answer. For me, whenever I see an insipid Support The Troops sign on someone's lawn, or worse, a bumper sticker to that effect on a gas guzzling SUV, I think Why not a $ 10,000 bonus for each tour that these folks have served and will continue to serve? If all these Superpatriots were willing to put their money where there overly large mouths are, Support The Troops might mean something to war critics like me.

I am looking forward to the Obama presidency and huge Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress with reasonable optimism. I know Obama is a politician and I like to think we're both realists. His reality is the "classic" candidates strategy of run to your base in the primaries and then move to the center for the general election. I get it! But as an individual citizen fighting to preserve the constitution that protects me and hoping still to see justice done in respect of the crimes of the Bush administration,I have my strategies too and the main strategy I follow is to support those who stand up for what I believe in. I don't believe the wishy-washy weak me-tooism of the Democratic Party has been an effective position in opposing Bush and so my "realism" is to pragmatically support those who demonstrate a willingness to fight for what's right, not expedient.

About the most outrageous piece of political hogwash I've ever seen posted on a blog is up on the Huffington Post at this moment. Under the teaser, "Big Rewards Await Clinton If She Drops Out Now," Thomas B. Edsall, political editor of the Huff Po and reputedly a professor of Journalism at Columbia University, asserts in his second paragraph:

One of the most inviting is the near certainty that the Obama campaign would agree to pay back the $11.4 million she has loaned her own bid, along with an estimated $10 million to $15 million in unpaid campaign expenses.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

It made me so hot and bothered, I couldn't even pay the gentleman the courtesy of reading the rest of this absurdity. Someone must have diaried this already? I'd be happy to delete!

As he said to Dubya about attacking Iraq, we'll ride that horse as War President for eight years. Now it's McCain's turn to play out Rove's web of evil. And, he'll have the full support of Bush and Cheney. While we spend our days being distracted by Hillary, the other Iran War hawk, the wheels are in motion to attack Iran and use the resulting chaos to boost McCain's presidential prospects. For who but the great war hero is capable of taking the helm from Alexander W. Bush and Julius Cheney, our great military leaders of today!

Check your hypotheses about PA and the "Reagan" Democrats and about expecting Obama to do better than he did. All the pundits are stating that Obama has to find the way to connect with blue-collar ethnic voters and practically speaking they are right but in a different sense that's just continuing the disastrous downhill course the party and the country has been in since Reagan.

It's quite disingenuous to critique Obama for not doing better with that voting group when the Clinton's cynical and selfish campaign turns on the "permission switch" to energize that group's negative tendencies towards him; i.e. he's an elitist(SF bitter), he's a black radical (Rev. Wright), he's the kind of radical that cost us the Vietnam War (Ayers), don't forget he may be a radical Muslim (last minute Osama ad), and finally Big Dawg's "Obama played the race card on us!"

Want to apply the Coup de Grace to the Clintons and end this fiasco? Why not offer a "No Paid Ex-President Speeches Pledge?" That should be something Obama would cheerily accept and it would serve to bring to the forefront a discussion that is too easily ignored: Why do ex-Presidents get compensated so lucratively for speeches? Isn't this an issue that everyone, including the MSM, is totally ignoring? Let's think about this for a minute.

I'm shocked at John Edwards seeming total withdrawel from the scene. I can't believe he can stand offstage and watch this fiasco of the Clinton's making and not speak out. Is he really so undecided between the two? It seemed during the debates and in the discussions on this blog that the positions of Obama and Edwards and their progressive orientations would make for an easy Obama endorsement, so why the eery silence on his part?  

You know who's really experienced by HRC's standards? Dick Cheney for sure, Dubya? eight years is a lot of time in the job. Those two would surely be ready on Day One, why not just have four more years? Results, judgment, they don't count. Only years on God's Green Earth and particularly trudging the path of experience between the Capitol, the White House and K Street. Why that's the best experience of all!

It’s so uplifting to see the master Oxford parser preaching to everyone who will still listen about imaginary distinctions between the Clintons and Obama. For a person who still has trouble with the definition of the word IS it is refreshing to see his surrogates out there criticizing Obama for admitted drug use. Too bad Barack didn’t have the good sense Bill showed when he didn’t Inhale! Talk about a generation gap, at least Barack’s generation seems to have a bit more candor and honesty about themselves than Bill’s does. And before you Boomer Defenders jump on this, congratulations to all us Boomer parents who may have actually taught our kids something about honesty and integrity, now we have a chance to show some too.

Did that get your attention? I could have also entitled this diary: Here's  A Second Chance To March With Dr. King. For all those who were too young or otherwise unable to participate in the great events of the civil rights era, the chance to experience the struggle first hand is here. Literally here. Even on the pages of this liberal blogsite the scent of racism and countercharges is everywhere in the air. We're barely out of the voting blocks and the ethnic fur is flying. Perhaps we should take a leaf from Karl Rove's Swift Boat Playbook and in this case make a weakness into a strength...flip it!

As the litany of Bush administration crimes and scandals rolls on like a newscrawl and as they respond with thinly disguised and familiar, if not laughable, defenses such as the well-worn inability to comment on ongoing investigations there is a sense that their wily arrogance and disdain is what protects them from accountability and ultimately impeachment. But that is not truly the case. In reality, they could easily be impeached if the opposition party in power wished to do so. The case is nakedly overwhelming and any impeachment proceeding would develop an even stronger case.

Debate night last week I saw the ghosts of JFK, MLK, and RFK returned to the earth. Drawn of necessity by the terrible mess we've all made or allowed to be made of our country during our lives. Boomers now have a chance to redeem themselves not by electing one of their own but by seeing those ghosts manifest incarnated by the presence of  Barack Obama and joining with him in picking up the  standards that were dropped on the field of battle and finishing the job their death's left undone.

Who's running the show in the US Congress? The Democrats claim to have won the last election, yet they are no better at controlling the agenda than the enabling doormats of the GOP were. Biden was featured frequently in the past few days on MSNBC, it was discussed in his presence that this week's timing of the Petreaus Repor' was questionable and stage managed by Bush. Who's fault is that if not Biden's, Levin's and by extension, Pelosi and Reid's?

There is no political future in fighting mad dogs by patient tolerance. The 30 % support for Bush and the war that is being touted in today's polls demonstrates that there continues to be and will continue to be a hardcore base of mad dog conservatives in this country that will not be satisfied until they have destroyed it. Whatever that extreme fringe group's psychological deficiencies are, and the effects of their masters' manipulations, the Democrats continued patient, moderate approach, their attempts at appeasement, is a failed and failing response. Unless the Democrats stand up for the 70 % who now know what a disaster the war and Bush's other policies are by taking a firm and aggressive stance, they are marching themselves and us into eventual defeat and destruction.

The Petraeus Report due in September will be the beginning of the endgame for our misadventure in Iraq. No matter with what bluster Bush today begins to lay the groundwork for blaming the Democrats for losing Iraq, the reality-based world will finally impose itself  on the "bubble boy" who has once again failed at a pretend job. Unfortunately for the nation, this time Papa Bush can’t simply find a convenient friend to bail his son out and make a discreet departure possible for him.

So our Dems have scurried out of The Beltway to head home ready to meet with their constituents, huh? Well, as another diarist seems to suggest today: good luck finding your rep to talk to. If they're a Democrat, the party we Kossacks are dedicated to elect and keep electing, they should be hard to find, to conceal their shame (if any actually have any?) Doesn't the ridiculous failure of the Democrats in Congress during the session just ended give anyone else here qualms about being taken for granted as part of the Democrats base? I feel completely supportive of all the issues discussed at Daily Kos, but are we really serving those interests when at the end of the day we plan to vote Democrat and they can count on us to be there. How has that advanced our causes in the past, how will it do so now?

Let's face it, all we know now about Cheney and Bush would make both of them candidates for the 25th Amendment's provision intended to provide for the removal of a President who may have gone insane. Well, Brent Scowcroft, trusted advisor to Bush 41, has publicly stated "that's not the Dick Cheney I know!" And perhaps his pal who he shot in the face might say the same? As for Dubya, insanity is written all over his smirky face, we've known it for years, now it's becoming obvious to one and all: the refusal to deal with reality in Iraq, the messianic disdain he has for Congress, batting down subpoenas like he was Superman?

The late Kurt Vonnegut referred to Bush and Cheney as sociopaths, he may have been kind. In the face of staggering failures such as in Iraq and in the "war on terror", these two "psychopaths" are probably ready to attack Iran.

The results of such an attack can only be predicted to be a huge international crisis and the worst Wag The Dog act in our nation's downward spiralling history. Can impeachment come quickly enough to stop such an outcome?

We critics of our elected Dems leadership may be misjudging their smarts instead. In order to impeach Gonzales, Cheney, and Bush they will need the support of almost half the Repugs. Such support can only come, as it did during Watergate, when the administration's violations are clearly seen to be illegal by common public opinion; when they are shown to be in flagrante delicto.

Now Patrick Leahy in the Senate Judiciary Committee and John Conyers in the House Judiciary Committee have begun to lay an inescapable trap for both Bush and the Repugs that will force an eventual and very abrupt successful impeachment. And all of this is taking place while we in the blogosphere berate Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi for having taken "impeachment off the table." That may be a brilliant dodge to entrap Bush further in his unrealistic belief that he is a king, not a president.