Gen. Wesley Clark is currently going through the ritualistic self-immolation required whenever the media seizes on a comment and tries to make it into a “gotcha!” moment.  Once he’s done throwing himself to the wolves, the only response the media will accept when someone dares to do something other than genuflect before John McCain, the man they deem untouchable, perhaps we can more soberly evaluate what he said.

Clark did not “swiftboat” McCain (though McCain has bizarrely responded to Clark by using a Swiftboater as his mouthpiece).  Clark did not attack McCain’s service–as Americablog and Media Matters note, he praised McCain’s service.  When talking head Bob Schieffer asserted that, unlike McCain, Obama hadn’t flown in a fighter plane and gotten shot down, Clark reasonably noted that this is not a qualification for being president.

Clark is right.  The media has, by its own admission, given McCain a pass on national security issues.  As Clark and Obama consistently say (and I certainly agree), McCain’s service is worthy of respect.  But there is a difference between being respectful and being sycophantic.  The media has chosen the latter route with McCain, taking it as a given that his military service gives him an edge over Obama.  No one ever asks  a simple question: why?  Does serving in the military automatically qualify a candidate to be commander in chief?  Is a candidate who served in the military always stronger on national security than a candidate who has not served?

You know how it is, elections, elections, elections on the blogs, all the time!

John McCain is apparently unaware of the price of gas and doesn’t see how it really matters anyway:

WICKSOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?

MCCAIN: Oh, I don’t remember. Now there’s Secret Service protection. But I’ve done it for many, many years. I don’t recall and frankly, I don’t see how it matters.

I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.

That line sounds familiar. Oh, that’s right! George Bush didn’t know the price of gas, either!

Speaking of McCain, he (or maybe his wife) also owes the IRS money. Maybe he should propose a gas tax holiday on beer heiresses worth over $100 million.

And lastly, desmoinesdem has a fascinating post on what you should do if you are push-polled. A must read for all activists!

What have you been reading today?

I have a hard time believing that McCain is really giving serious consideration to Mitt Romney as his running mate: during the primary season, Romney called McCain dishonest and McCain said that Romney lacks the experience and judgment to be commander in chief.  But the Politico insists that “Romney tops McCain veep list“.  I hope they’re right, as I’d love to see McCain try to respond to that charge about Romney not being ready to be commander in chief.  Who knows though–it’s little hard for me to take the Politico story seriously when it closes with this line: “Party leaders don’t expect [McCain to choose Lieberman as his running mate].  But McCain remains, after all, a maverick.” 

Now there’s objective reporting–a reporter who accepts a campaign slogan as undisputed fact.  I can’t wait for the Politico article that closes with a line like this: “Barack Obama remains, after all, an agent of change.”  More likely that we’ll hear Wolf Blitzer praise McCain’s “straight talk.”

Two-Timing Joe Lieberman is at it again:

CBS’ Bob Schieffer talked with Sen. Joe Lieberman about the Iraq policies offered by Barack Obama and John McCain. Lieberman said that if Obama’s plan had been followed then Iran and Al Qaeda would now be in control of Iraq.

Lieberman said, “If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do, for the last couple of years, today Iran and Al Qaeda would be in control of Iraq.”

It really doesn’t matter how many times he is reminded that Iran and Al Qaeda are mortal enemies, Joe will still try and connect America’s biggest bogeyman of the last decade to what he hopes will be the biggest bogeyman of the next.

Do you think Americans buy it? Are all scary Muslim men the same to us, no matter what sect they come from? How do we educate America to at least differentiate between the two largest Muslim categories? It can’t be that hard…we can tell the difference between Catholics and Protestants, right?

I recommend knocking back, if the knock of opportunity is being presented by the right wing.

Admittedly, I’m not a member of the audience for the American Idol variety of shows, which I understand are an economical way of creating television shows without huge budgets to hire actual actors. This is an opportunity in itself, the television industry’s use of innate qualities of the audience that wants to be a star to save on budgets. Seeing the competition gimmick used by a presidential campaign, offering a $300 million prize to the first in your block to invent a better mousetrap, oh, ‘xcuse me, battery, to solve high gas prices, now there is the ultimate use of Merkin individualism imagery.

Earlier this weekend, I got a similar gag reflex at Wall Street Report’s Maria Bartelomo describing the stock market dive as another ‘opportunity’. Well, how could any investor who’s just lost his kids’ college education not be inspired, here you are, on a golden platter, your chance to go out and buy, say, GM, really, really cheap? Go on, I dare you. Loser. It would be un-Merkin to stop now while you’re not but just a few decades of hard work behind.

Not so long ago, to be exact, just before March of 2003, I listened to Gen. Colin Powell representing this worst administration ever, before Congress calling the Iraq frame-up a ‘great opportunity’ that we couldn’t afford to pass up. The opportunity was not for the Merkin people, thought his statement didn’t point that out. It was a great opportunity for the war criminals in the White House, to use false information to get this country into a quagmire, and they went for it in a very big way. A great opportunity, as long as they continue to get by with throwing away our treasure, and our security, for their gain of a war of their choice.

The White House cabal tried to get Merkins to throw away Social Security in exchange for the great opportunity to invest their earned old-age security in the stock market. Oh, yes, that stock market, now having the worst June since 1930.

Giving opportunity a bad name should be one achievement chalked up to this executive branch, and it isn’t a surprise that McCain would continue to jump on it. An energy plan depending on awarding the winner of a big contest, that is carnival barker politics brought to a new precipice.

Running unopposed after forcing the challenger Morgan Tsvangirai from the race with state-sponsored political violence, dictator Robert Mugabe “won” all 10 provinces in Zimbabwe and was sworn in again as president.

The results:

Mugabe won 85.5 percent of the presidential runoff vote, against 9.3 percent cast for Tsvangirai, Chief Election Officer Lovemore Sekeramayi said in a telephone interview from Harare today. He didn’t say how many of the ballots were spoilt.

Tsvangirai, 56, won more votes than Mugabe in the first round on March 29, without gaining the 50 percent needed to avoid a rerun, according to state-appointed electoral officials. The MDC gained majorities in most of the nation’s city and district councils and forced the ruling Zimbabwe Africa National Union- Patriotic Front into a minority in parliament for the first time since 1980.

What, if anything, should the international community do about Zimbabwe? It’s hard to say. Military intervention should always be the option of last resort, and there are still a lot of other leverage points to try first. The UN has barely issued a statement against Mugabe, much less implemented sanctions or other pressures.

The trouble is, with the election over, the political will to do anything about the situation might evaporate until Mugabe’s term is up. Then again, perhaps if Zimbabweans continue to speak out, the issue will stay at the forefront of world affairs.

What is the right course of action for the international community? How should we solve situations like this? Is it even out business?

We learned this week that - surprise! - diplomacy works!

North Korea turned over its nuclear secrets and demolished its reactor cooling tower and in exchange, George Bush has moved to normalize relations with the isolated country by taking it off the infamous “axis of evil” list and lifting some sanctions. All this, as Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times points out, is very un-Bush-like:

North Korea’s declaration of its nuclear activities is a triumph of the sort of diplomacy — complicated, plodding, often frustrating — that President Bush and his aides once eschewed as American weakness.

In more than two years of negotiations, the man who once declared North Korea part of an “axis of evil” with Iran and Iraq, angrily vowing to confront, not negotiate with, its despotic leader, in fact demonstrated a flexibility that his critics at home and abroad once considered impossible.

There is now only one country left in Bush’s “axis of evil:” Iran. The question is, will we have to go down the same road with Iran that we went down with North Korea?

In 2000, the media and a lot of other Americans bought into the idea that the multimillionaire son of a president and grandson of a senator, educated at elite schools, was the kind of regular guy you’d like to have a beer with (even if Bush is an alcoholic…small detail).

In 2008, there has been a laughable effort to paint Barack Obama, raised in less than affluent circumstances by a single parent, a man who took out loans to go to school, and the first African-American with a real chance to be elected president, as an out of touch elitist.  That simply won’t work this time.  The Republican nominee, John McCain, comes from privileged beginnings, married a beer heiress, and is divorced from the real world experience of most Americans. 

Newsweek presents the latest evidence of McCain’s elite out-of-touch perch–a trust his wife oversees failed to pay taxes on a property in La Jolla, CA.  Four years of tax notices went unanswered.

As Newsweek puts it, “when you’re poor, it can be hard to pay the bills.  When you’re rich, it’s hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying.”  The McCains are so wealthy and own or manage so much property, that they can literally lose track of all their holdings and obligations.

I don’t think the McCain as regular guy thing will work.  That doesn’t leave him with a lot to work with–I’d wish him luck if the stakes weren’t so high.

1789 - The framers of the constitution determine that African-American slaves are only 3/5 of a person.  Only white, male landowners are allowed to vote.

1862 - The slaves are technically granted their freedom by the Emancipation Proclamation, but they are systematically blocked from voting and in many ways remain slaves under Jim Crow.

1965 - The Voters Rights Act guarantees African Americans the right to vote.

2008 - Barack Obama becomes the first African American to be nominated for president by a major party, and might very well become the first president not to be a white male.

After the Constitution was ratified, it took 73 years for African-Americans to gain the right to vote, and another 103 years to actually be able to vote.  That’s a total of 176 years.  But fast forward only 43 years, and we’re looking at the strong possibility of an African-American in the White House.   Could the nation have conceived of such a thing in 1800, or 1900, or even 2000?

Granted we still have a long way to go with race relations in this country, but we need to pause to celebrate Obama’s incredible achievement.  History is going to view 2008 as a very important election, no matter what happens between now and November.  Looking all the way back to George Washington, there is not a single election I would rather be around for than for 2008. 

My question is:  Are we too bogged down in partisan politics to appreciate the grandeur of this moment?  Is our country too wrapped up in the here and now to be able to see just what is transpsiring before us?

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m going to argue and debate and bicker as much as anyone between now and November 4 - so I’m saying this as much for myself as I am for anybody else.  But let’s remember to take a step back and just breathe in the excitement that is the Obama campaign - no matter how how upset we might be about FISA.  In our lifetimes, we might never see something like this happen again. 

I received an email last Thursday afternoon; a friend wrote to tell me someone had created a group on Barack Obama’s website for the purposes of asking him to oppose the FISA legislation pending in the Senate.

Several months ago, Obama promised that he would support the filibuster of any legislation that granted immunity to telcos that illegally wiretapped American’s communications at the behest of Alberto Gonzalez and Dick Cheney.

Just last week, Obama flip-flopped and sold the Constitution for 30 shekels. With the primary over, he’s apparently made the calculation that he can afford to betray the people that supported him at least partially based on the premise that he’d stand up to the old politics of fear and false choices. He decided that he was going to support the current package of legislation that not only offers telco immunity, but grants unprecedented authority to the executive by removing critical checks and balances.