Obama in Fargo

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Senator Barack Obama spoke to a group of veterans, military and their families, and the general public in a town hall event in Fargo today. You can view the speech and the Q&A session here. He talked with reporters, too.

Earlier I noted that Conventional Wisdom in the Village shouldn't assume North Dakota is a lock to continue as a red state. Clearly, Obama has found a warm reception in the state both times he's visited, today and back in April for the Dem state convention in Grand Forks, when he spoke to a crowd of 18,000 and nearly that number were turned away.

If I were the McCain campaign, I wouldn't be posturing for joint town hall appearances either...Obama does just as well in the give & take of small groups of a thousand as he does speaking to dome-sized crowds.

UPDATE: Nor should they underestimate the rapid-response of the Obama team, demonstrated by Obama's comments live on CNN even as I update, on the issue of Iraq. Obama reiterating: we must be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in.

UPDATE II: Josh promising video over at Talking Points Memo--we post this link because you know how the BBQ media loves to slice'n'dice video to suit their own narratives.
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For Your 4th

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Whatever you have on tap for this holiday weekend, take a little time out to give thought to what you can do to truly "support the troops" who don't have a choice between the usual holiday at the resort, or the beach, or the national park, or even "staycation."

Men and women are putting their lives on the line each and every day for us...in Iraq and Afghanistan...on the fire line in Big Sur...at home, ready if the call for first responders goes out.

We talk a lot here and throughout the blogosphere, and one of the things we've talked a lot about is Congress and oversight. Why, we ask, haven't the now in control Democrats put the brakes on the runaway freight train about to careen off the side of the mountaintop that is the Bush Administration?

We talk a lot...but what are we doing? How many have sought out our Senators or Congressperson to say, listen to US. Listen to America. Don't listen and vote for the special interests on K Street, like the telco's who just had their way with the House of Representatives while doling out a paltry few thousands of campaign dollars.

I'm thinking that works because the Congresscritters are tellin' themselves, if I don't vote AT&T's way, then maybe Corp X, Y and Z would see that they might not get their "money's worth" and turn off the campaign contribution spigot, too.

A screwed-up system.

On the Imus Show this week, Tom Friedman, the man who put the "FU" in friedman unit, opined, as though by a timely cosmic revelation, we've got to fix our democracy here, we've got to fix our country.*

Well no shit, Sherlock.

Welcome to reality, pal. While you've been busy furthering the friedman unit, the rest of us out here in the real world have been dealing with the consequences of the Village's blithe bolstering of the gut of Bush. And it ain't pretty. So put down that plate of cocktail wienies, step away from the RNC blast o'the hour, let go of the self-indulgent claptrap, grab your media-darling cronies, and say, hey, maybe it's about time we stopped treating this as some kind of theatre of the absurd, pushing people around like pawns—a few thousand layoffs here, a few thousand layoffs there, a few hundred thousand casualties over there, pretty soon it adds up to real yadda, yadda.

Because oversight belongs to all of us. Congress. The media. And you. And me.

So this Fourth of July, between the wienies and the fireworks, ask yourself...what am I putting on the line?
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. Need a jump start? Christy's got some great ideas and tools over at firedoglake.

* my paraphrase, because WABC hasn't put the interview up on their website for linkage and exactitude as of this writing...not that that ever stopped the BBQ Media from runaway adoration of St. Mc and distortion of whatever they feel like distorting on any given day.

FISA & the Sagging Middle

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In novel writing, they call it the sagging middle. Beware the sagging middle. It's when your reader, captivated initially by your story premise and characters, dives into your story, reads along chapter after chapter and then....

the story falls into predictability and sameness and if it's a mystery, you don't care whether the detective catches the bad guy. If it's a romance, you don't care if Mr. Big figures out the secret baby is his. If it's SF, you don't care if the technos win over the....

And that's when the book gets set aside and forgotten, or tossed against a wall sayin' it's the same ol' same ol'....

If you haven't met Glen Greenwald before, do stop by and give a read to his commentary on Obama, FISA, and the cautionary tale of the same ol' same ol....

And beware the sagging middle.
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Manchurian Bush

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Now is the winter of our dishonor as a nation?

NYTimes is reporting this morning [props to Atrios] that interrogations used by Americans at Guantanamo have been based on a 1957 Air Force chart in an article entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.”

Yes, "interrogation techniques" used by Chinese Communists against our own American soldiers. Techniques that were known to produce false information.

But I guess when you blow up frogs as a kid...and mock the deaths of those whose lives are in your hands when you're governor of Texas...and diss the family of a black man chained and pulled to death behind a pickup...and become president and from the cosy confines of the Oval Office and Camp David let your gut send others to their deaths for oil....

then it's not about the information, it's about the sadism.
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Prairie's Reading: FISA & Brandeis

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The words of Justice Brandeis echo down thru the decades...via McJoan at Kos. And Christy's keepin' us on our toes, what a patriot looks like, over at firedoglake. FISA matters, precisely because of Brandeis' words:

If the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means 'to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal' would bring terrible retribution.
[From dissenting opinion in Olmstead vs. United States, in which the court upheld the use of wiretaps in a case involving an investigation of bootlegging. Brandeis strongly defended the individual right to privacy from government intrusion.] -Louis D. Brandeis, 1928

Bobbleheads

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Bob Schieffer guested on the Imus Show this morning. Imus sidekick Charles McCord interrupted their conversation to point out to Mr. Schieffer that Imus was flicking his Schieffer bobblehead all the while Schieffer was talking.

Pretty much summed up the conversation.

Although Schieffer deftly deflected his own complicity in the whole controversy over Wesley Clark's response to his "question" about whether getting shot down over Hanoi qualifies one to be president. I say, Schieffer deftly deflected his own complicity over....

Yep, another media "who, me?" clown commentator blithely in self-denial about his role in pushing a narrative.

"It wasn't politick," Schieffer said about Clark's response—virtual repetition—to Schieffer's question/statement.

What wasn't politick was pulling a brief statement out of the whole, thus distorting the entire meaning of what Clark said.

Oh, and, after skewering Clark, both Imus and Schieffer gave fluffers to loveable ol' misunderstood Lieberman, explaining to all of us yokels who watch RFD-TV what he really meant.

Same ol', same ol' bobbleheads....

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FURTHERMORE: Last night on Dan Abrams' MSNBC show, General Clark had this to say:
"I honor John McCain's character. As I said in the show he's been one of my heroes for a long time. He's been over to my house. This is about the qualifications to be president. It is also about the nature of politics today that a comment can be taken out of context so much to create a hullaboo."
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EVEN FURTHERMORE: McCain agrees with Wes Clark...see Thinkprogress' report.
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Clark Tells Truth, Part 2

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Amazing. General Wesley Clark tells truth to power on Face the Nation.

And stands by what he says.

Furthermore, he insists on presenting the context and content of what he said, instead of allowing the rightwing McCainiacs and BBQ media framers to distort his words to fit their false narrative.

Statement from Wes Clark:

"There are many important issues in this Presidential election, clearly one of the most important issues is national security and keeping the American people safe. In my opinion, protecting the American people is the most important duty of our next President. I have made comments in the past about John McCain's service and I want to reiterate them in order be crystal clear.

"As I have said before I honor John McCain's service as a prisoner of war and a Vietnam Veteran. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. I would never dishonor the service of someone who chose to wear the uniform for our nation.

“John McCain is running his campaign on his experience and how his experience would benefit him and our nation as President. That experience shows courage and commitment to our country—but it doesn't include executive experience wrestling with national policy or go-to-war decisions.

"And in this area his judgment has been flawed—he not only supported going into a war we didn't have to fight in Iraq, but has time and again undervalued other, non-military elements of national power that must be used effectively to protect America.

"But as an American and former military officer I will not back down if I believe someone doesn't have sound judgment when it comes to our nation's most critical issues.”

All day Monday, the Usual Media Suspects were busily having the vapors.

This morning, Bob Schieffer is scheduled to appear on the Imus Show. Will he add to the handwringing BBQ media's distortions? Or will he tell his colleagues to get a grip, snap out of it, deal with the truth?