Internal Monologue

Obama scores some points for putting forward binding legislation that would get us out of Iraq. I like what Digby says on this subject: This time it's McCain or Rudy who will gain if the war is going well next year. (Fat chance.) And if it isn't, people will be looking to Democrats who took a bold stand to end it, not those who played around the edges. No Democrat will get any points for being wishy washy on the war at this point. They will get lots of points for being up front and offering a reasonable alternative. In for a penny in for pound guys. If the presidential club is smart at all they'll sign on or up the ante. There's no margin in non-binding resolutions or adding more Friedman Units at this point. Good for Obama.

There's a lot going on in the Senate re: our failed occupation of Iraq. One of the major questions is: How much power does Congress really have to quash this escalation and/or pull our troops out? This is an ongoing Constitutional issue between Congress and the Executive that hasn't really been fully resolved. There are a lot of arguments, but it's telling to note that many Republicans have shifted their arguments dramatically from when the Executive was a Democrat. Once again, Greenwald does the digging for us : When Bill Clinton was President, most of the country's leading Republicans did not seem to have any problem at all with Congressional "interference" in the President's decisions to deploy troops (really to maintain troop deployments, since President Bush 41 first deployed in Somalia). There wasn't any talk back then (at least from them) about the burden of "535 Commanders-in-Chief" or "Congressional incursions" into the Pre

My brother mentioned the existence of this and I figured I should link to it. I'm not sure I buy into all the "PowerPoint is destroying the way we think" stuff that's going around. But there is something about the format that homogenizes everything. Perhaps because most of what is presented with PowerPoint is annoying corporate stuff no one really cares about, we are trained to not care about anything delivered via that medium.

As difficult as my recent long plane trips with baby Quinn have been, here's one inconvenience we were able to avoid (HT: Sullivan ):

Here's a handy re-enactment of the trench scene from Star Wars: A New Hope (HT: Mad Latinist via e-mail).

VLWC links to this Rolling Stone article about the possibility of Gore running in 2008: If the Democrats were going to sit down and construct the perfect candidate for 2008, they'd be hard-pressed to improve on Gore. Unlike Hillary Clinton, he has no controversial vote on Iraq to defend. Unlike Barack Obama and John Edwards, he has extensive experience in both the Senate and the White House. He has put aside his wooden, policy-wonk demeanor to emerge as the Bush administration's most eloquent critic. And thanks to An Inconvenient Truth , Gore is not only the most impassioned leader on the most urgent crisis facing the planet, he's also a Hollywood celebrity, the star of the third-highest-grossing documentary of all time. For what it's worth, I'd probably support him enthusiastically if he ran.

This obvious statement has been put forward by those on the left before, but as usual Glenn Greenwald makes the argument clearly and forcefully: Most media flaws are so fundamental and systemic that they will take a long time to resolve, if they can be at all. But one quick, easy and critical step would be to cease speaking of the elected civilian President as our military Commander and instead treat him as the public servant that he is. There is no obligation or duty to support the President, fully including matters relating to war. Quite the contrary: he "should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole." The fact that we have to have this argument is pretty sad. In this county, a civilian controls the military, not the other way around. So many very basic things about America and its constitution (rule of la