Oh. Dear.

Well, it looks like it's put up or shut up time for the political talking heads touting the success of the troop escalation last year in Iraq. It's increasingly clear on word of today's news in Basra that Al-Sadr's gonna end the cease fire.

I should add to my previous post that the speech, largely written by Obama himself, offers a big clue as to how he would approach the Presidency in general and diplomacy in particular. It's clear to me that he will be a fine diplomat, and that bodes well for the country at a crucial time in its History.

I'm not superstitious, so I don't think I'll jinx it when I say that Obama's speech in Philly on race earlier in the week elects him. The wingnuts will try and take excerpts out of context, but the fact remains that this speech, when taken in its entirety, is one of the best on the subject from a major candidate that I've ever seen.

The false narratives are hurting Obama now, but there's a lull in the campaign. Once things start happening I think he'll be all right. As they say, there's a lot of ball left. Somebody needs to exploit the wingnuts now for being hypocritical. They can't both paint Obama as a muslim and the wrong kind of christian. I suspect he's gonna take a hit in Pennsylvania, that's inevitable. When it comes down to it, once people start paying attention to the candidates themselves again instead of third party pundits and blabbermouths, Obama will come back out ahead. 2008 is going to be a benchmark year: will we continue to allow ourselves to be governed by our fears or our aspirations about where we need to be?

"And tonight we're gonna party like it's 1988." Oh, Geraldine. Tsk tsk. Not only is this offensive, but it's just wrong. It was wrong then, and wrong now. And I look forward to the backlash.

How many more ways can I say "Wisdom Trumps Experience in 2008-Vote Obama?" This article sums it up pretty nicely.

The campaign is starting to depress me. It's turning into the same old shit. I am just disgusted with the Clintons and their Tammany Hall style shenanigans. I fear that this is just going to end up as more of the same. The subject of Florida and Michigan should not be on the table. They broke the rules. Period. And the only reason the Clintons want to reinstate the delegates is because Hillary won in both cases. But the thing that's most disingenuous is she won't even acknowledge that Obama wasn't on the ballot in Michigan. That's just sleazy.

This assessment makes a lot of sense. I'd add that in some ways the kind of racism in places like where I grew up can be more toxic than you might see in some places in the south now. The African American population where I'm from was under 1%, so there certainly wasn't a lot of day to day interaction, but there were certainly a lot of epithets, many of which I blindly repeated when I was little, before I knew any better. Not sure how much has changed, but I doubt much.

Speaking of wishing I knew better, my prediction of Obama taking 10 points in TX was, oh, just a little off. Goes to show why I'm not in the politics business. Talk is cheap. I just hope things don't get too nasty now. So far it's been a relatively civil primary campaign compared to years past.

Well, this is interesting. Maybe I should've competed in the mathletics or something. I am still wary of the Clinton strategy and think they're gonna slime up the convention. I'm not ready to call it for Obama just yet, but I do believe I hear the fat lady warming up.

Rush Limbaugh is still a big fat idiot. "I don't know who Curious George is," yeah right.