Ostensibly

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Tuned into Hardball tonight for the first time in a long time, because I'd missed seeing live the endorsement of Obama by John Edwards. I expected that would be a reliable source for seeing the replay.

Unfortunately, what I also got was what Hardball has become a master of playing of late. The race card, courtesy the Tweety-Buchanan double-team. And cheap shots, courtesy Andrea Mitchell.

First the race card. They're really pushin' it at Hardball. Kentucky, it's all about Kentucky, because Kentucky is full of all those "you know"s. Evidently there are no hardworking Americans nor white people either in Oregon. One thing this campaign season has proven, it hasn't been just Hillary Clinton getting increasingly brazen and ham-handed about pushing the race card.

And then there's Mitchell, who brings up a fundraising letter sent by Edwards today to his supporters. Only after several minutes elapsed did she say "Ostensibly" it's about raising funds for college students. Caught with your ham-handed fist in your mouth, too, Andrea? One wonders who made the call that got the producer whispering into her ear piece sayin' you better clean up your mess, Mrs. Greenspan.

That's my scenario, and I'm stickin' to it. Here's the Edwards letter. Judge for yourself if it's "ostensibly" about fundraising for college students:

I want to begin by thanking each of you for all of your support and commitment over the last year. It has meant so much to Elizabeth and me. We have been very busy since January working on the causes that got us into the campaign in the first place -- helping to build the One America we all believe in.

You may have heard me talk about one of those programs called College for Everyone -- a scholarship pilot project that Elizabeth and I started a few years ago in Greene County, North Carolina.

The program is based on a simple promise to students: make good grades, work at least 10 hours a week, and stay out of trouble -- and the program will help pay for your first year of college. Since we launched this effort in 2005, the percentage of Greene County high school graduates attending college has increased from 54 percent to 74 percent.

As I write you, 165 high school seniors in Greene County are set to graduate in May and 94% have been accepted into N.C. colleges and universities. Most of these young people are doing just what many of us did -- sitting around the kitchen table with their parents, wondering how they will pay for tuition.

Every parent wants to give their child the opportunity that comes with a college education. But for too many American families, the dream of a college degree is just that -- a dream. Now, I need your help to make the dream of a college education a reality for some hard-working students in rural Greene County.

That's why I need your help today -- with a tax-deductible donation of $10, $25, $50 or $75, whatever you can afford -- to bring us one step closer to our goal of College for Everyone. By contributing now, you will help fulfill the college dreams of deserving students in Greene County and show the world that if we work together on big and important issues, change is possible.

But change can only come with your help. Please contribute now and bring us closer to building One America where every child has the opportunity to go as far as his or her talents and hard work will take them.

Thank you,

John Edwards

P.S. Contributions made by Friday go towards scholarships for the students graduating in May.

The link takes you to Network for Good, not the Edwards campaign.

Shame on Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan and Andrea Mitchell...and Hardball and MSNBC and NBC.

Maybe I could watch to learn if they mend their ways, but why waste the time? Instead, I think I'll go read Evan Thomas' review article in the new Newsweek, "Divide and Conquer"--which tells us about Nixonland, "a stunning new book that argues that Nixon was also the grandfather of today's politics of hate."

And Nixon's philosophical grandchildren are alive and well on Hardball these days.

On the Street Where They Live....

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Much is made these campaign days of the candidates and their surrogates meeting the public in venues grand and small.

Tonight NBC's Chris Jansing reported on a place none of the candidates have gotten to, yet.

The back of the van that Scott and Kay Bishop live in these days.

In the hyperventilating pace of the campaigns and, if it's possible, the even more hyperbolic realm of the punditocracy which is pushin' pastor and horserace and polls and....

it all really comes down to folks like Scott and Kay Bishop. Who had a modest home, and now don't even have that anymore.

This country is so far in the ditch too many don't even recognize the depth to which we've fallen. Too many are vulnerable and too many are more than happy to prey upon that vulnerability.

Big Oil, Big Pharma, the banking and credit card industries and their wholly owned subsidiaries in Washington on K Street and in the Beltway Bubble media and in the Congress and most notably in the White House. Their greed and avarice is second nature so entrenched they don't even see it.

Permanent tax cuts, anyone? Grandpa Charlie? George Bush? John McCain? Bueller?

Some people call you the rich and powerful, I call you my base....

Not so funny to folks like Scott and Kay Bishop. Not so funny to anyone with an ounce of integrity.

In the hurly-burly of the campaign season, as candidates stage gas tax events by hopping out of their SUV caravans. As an ex-president whose ego seemingly can't stand a younger man of color upstaging him so he's doing "outreach" to rural communities. As the Republican talks gas tax holiday with no clue of the hundreds of thousands of people who'll be frozen out of their jobs on infrastructure... there's been too little time for what's real amid the posturing.

So consider the back of Scott and Kay Bishop's van. And ask yourself, how far away am I from that fate? And then, vote as if your country depended on it. Or, at the least, the very least, as if your neighbor depended on it.