Pretty Funny Political Video

here. Parental advisory.

Love Me Some Barack

I'm sorry, but is this as funny as I think it is . . .

Love Me Some Barack
(To the tune of: Loves Me Like A Rock by Paul Simon)

When the OxyContin Kid
Plays the Obama/Osama game
I say that’s voodoo, voodoo for stupid people
But the time has passed for ploys
Charlatans and other liars
Obama this country, this country
You give the hope it needs, so help me
Oh I love me some Barack
I love me some Barack Obama, yeah love me

Then that silly child Ann
Went and attacked your middle name
I say that’s voodoo, voodoo for stupid people
I smell desperation’s plans
Exercises in futility
Obama this country, this country
You give the hope it needs, so help me
Oh I love me some Barack
I love me some Barack Obama, yeah love me

(It goes on; more here. SalmonChantedEvening, for babylonsister.)

Primary Voting 101 -- Pls Share This

It's easy, it's fun; here's what you need to know.

In Texas and some other states, we're having primary elections this Tues., March 4. This year for the first time in decades, the TX primary actually matters for Dems.

If you haven't decided who to vote for, or maybe even if you have, pls see my previous posts, esp. Litmus Test #1.

The drill varies depending on your location, but in TX, any registered voter can vote in the primary.

The following info is for Dallas County, TX. You can find your polling place (your place to vote) here (Dems) or here (Repubs). (Find your precinct number on your voter registration card.)

If you're not already registered, you can get a registration form from any U.S. Post Office, among other places. If you're not already registered, just go ahead and get that done now, even if it's too late for this primary. Like most things in life, better late than never.

If you're not sure whether you're registered or just want to confirm you haven't been kicked off the roles (legally or otherwise), go to canivote.org (this site is maintained by an association of Secs. of various States, so I believe it should work for states other than TX). I wouldn't assume it's foolproof, but it's better than nothing. (Lately, provisional ballots have seemed to have a way of not being counted.) In Dallas County, you can also check here.

In TX, once you vote in one party's primary, your registration card will be stamped to show it, so you won't be able to vote in the other.

Different political parties in different locations have different rules re- primary voting. In the Dem primary in TX, there's a two-step process, and the second step allocates 1/3 - 1/4 (I've seen both numbers) of the delegates; so if you're avid for your candidate, go on and vote in the regular way, and then for the second step, go back to your polling place at 7:15 pm and sign in under your candidate's name. You don't need to stay for the rest of the proceedings unless you want to participate in the selection of the individual delegates to the national convention.

Litmus Test #2: Will You or Will You Not Re-Institute the Draft

We should demand that each candidate answer: Would you, under any conditions, re-institute the draft? If so, under what conditions? And what's your current best guess as to the soonest those conditions might materialize?

(We should also insist on the candidates' detailed positions on election reform and media reform, including real net neutrality.)

Litmus Test #1: Did You or Did You Not Authorize the Invasion of Iraq?

I used to think, ok, Bush lied to Congress as he lied to us all. But it's no longer plausible to me that any D.C. insider could have been so hoodwinked -- esp. not Clinton, with her years of "experience."

As I pointed out in a previous post, the point was NOT whether or not Hussein had WMD's (though it turned out he didn't). The critical issue was, was the threat that he'd use them against us not only so real but also so imminent that we could not even afford to give the U.N. inspectors a few more weeks to complete their work?

There was never any credible evidence that Hussein would have the capability or desire to attack the U.S. with WMD's any time soon.

I saw through the lies: how can I, why should I rely on anyone who, at closer range, failed to do so -- or who chose to hope they wouldn't be held accountable for a bad faith vote on such a crucial matter?

Obama was not my first choice. But Clinton, for whatever reason, got the Iraq war wrong, while Obama got it right. I can't get over that.

TWO STEPS to Voting in the Texas Dem Primary

The primaries in Texas will be held on March 4, 2008.

Per Texas Dem party rules, there are TWO steps. Texas has both a New Hampshire-style primary AND an Iowa-style caucus.

1. Go to the polling place and vote.
2. Return to your polling place at 7:15 PM and sign in at your party convention. You do not have to stay and caucus, you just need to sign in.

Only 3/4 of the total Texas delegation (126 delegates) will be based on the primary returns. The other 1/4 (42 delegates) will be distributed based on the number of people attending the precinct convention. To "attend" you need only sign in (at which point you indicate your candidate) and then you can leave.

Of course, if you want to stay -- and if you want to actually run to be a delegate -- you can do that, too.

It's vital to go and sign in, because that sign-in number determines the percentage in attendance for Obama vs. Clinton vs. Undecided, and delegates are allotted based on that number alone. The choosing of delegates is a subsequent step that's based on the sign-in sheet, but separate from it.

Help Bust the Media Blackout on Edwards!

John Edwards is the candidate whose positions on the issues are closest to mine -- he's the only one besides Kucinich who seems willing to take on our corporate masters -- and who I believe has a real chance to win -- last I saw, polls showed him more electable than either Clinton or Obama; see, e.g., here.

But the corporate media's pretty much blacked out coverage of his campaign. E.g., in Iowa, where all three top Dem contenders campaigned hard, he beat Clinton, even though I understand she outspent him 7 to 1 -- yet media coverage of the results barely mentioned him. CNN has simply stopped including Edwards in their polls, while continuing to include all four of the top Republican candidates -- even though, despite the dearth of attention to Edwards, the last poll CNN did that included Edwards showed him beating all four Republicans handily (see here).

Let's make it impossible for the media to continue to ignore Edwards. This Fri., Jan. 18, has been designated for an effort to break all records for a single day's donations by raising $7 million for Edwards on that day.

Ask yourself why the corporate media prefer to ignore Edwards. (If nothing comes to mind, see, e.g., David Sirota or jamess on Daily Kos.)

If you like Edwards, put a tickler in your calendar and make a donation on Fri., Jan. 18 -- you can do it here. Remember, all donations will be matched.

(Thanks to KingOneEye on Daily Kos and News Corpse, The Internet's Chronicle of Media Decay, for the info on this initiative).

Last night I happened to see Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961, script by Irwin Allen & Charles Bennett), which yielded this memorable quote, among others: "Nothing is inevitable, except defeat for those who give up without a fight."

UPDATE: It's official. The Project for Excellence in Journalism's latest campaign coverage index for January 6 - 11 shows that Edwards got only 7% of the political coverage during those days -- less than one-fifth of what Clinton got, less than one-fourth of what Obama got, and substantially less than that given to Huckabee, even though he, like Edwards, finished third in the New Hampshire primary.

In a recent article, "Study: John Edwards Doesn't Exist," Greg Sargent writes, "Indeed, the virtual media blackout of Edwards got so glaringly obvious that even New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt urged his paper to give Edwards more attention back in November. At a certain point we should just acknowledge that Edwards basically got screwed . . . ." Make that present tense.

Plan Now to Vote in the PRIMARIES

The perfidy of our current elected officials in Congress, both Republican and Democratic (see, e.g., Salon), has made only too plain the importance of participating in party primaries to try to ensure we’ll have the chance to vote for candidates who might actually prioritize the will and the Constitutional rights of the people over the interests of big business.

So please find out how to vote in the primary in your state and DO it.

In my own state, the primaries are scheduled for March 4, 2008, and if you’re registered to vote, you can vote in a primary merely by showing up at the appropriate polling place on the date of the primary, so long as you haven’t already voted in the primary for the other party (which would have been marked on your voter registration card). [UPDATE for Texas Dem voters HERE.] Primary dates and the requirements for voting in them vary from state to state, however. Primaries in some states take place as early as January 3, 2008; so check it out NOW.

You can find the date of your primaries at Wikipedia or The New York Times.

We vastly outnumber the bad guys; their power persists only through our inaction. At this point, I plan to vote for Edwards.

On Iraq, the Patraeus Report, and the 2008 Elections: Three Things to Remember

One. How our Congressional reps. voted on the resolution giving Bush authority to invade Iraq is likely to come up (as it should) during the run-up to the next elections. When your candidates try to justify their vote by saying, "everyone thought Hussein had WMD's," please point out: that wasn't the issue (though it turned out he didn't have them). The issue was, was the threat that he'd use them against us not only so real but also so imminent that we could not afford even to let the U.N. inspectors complete their work? I mean, like, Hussein had to have had the ability and desire to drop a major WMD on us within months, not years.

Whatever the evidence of WMD's (and plenty of us recognized it as tenuous at best), no one ever presented credible evidence that Hussein would have the capability, let alone the desire, to deliver that kind of attack any time soon.

I supported Kerry in the last election, but since then I've realized, it simply is not plausible that he or other Dem leaders were actually hoodwinked by the Bush Admin. I don't know what they thought they were doing, but they failed in what may have been the most important decision of their career.

So for me, it's a litmus test: any candidate who voted for the authorization should be fired, and certainly should not be promoted. This alone disqualifies Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Edwards.

Two. We will soon have General Patraeus's report on the results of the surge. No one expects the Admin. to admit it's not working. The alleged "success," such as it is, will be attributed in part to Petraeus's new strategy of trying to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqis by showing them that we are there only to protect them from the insurgents (such insurgents being described by the General, as quoted in The New York Post, as "foreign" and "al Qaeda"). While this approach has to be better than what came before, I wonder how effective the implementation will be so long as we insist on controlling Iraqi oil.

A new Iraqi law being pushed through notwithstanding opposition from the majority of Iraqis "would transform Iraq's oil system from [the existing] nationalized model [, which is] all-but-closed to U.S. oil companies, to a commercialized model, all-but-fully privatized and opened to U.S. corporate control. . . . As a result of the invasion, . . . U.S. oil companies will emerge as the corporate front-runners in line for contracts giving them control over the vast majority of Iraq's oil under some of the most corporate-friendly terms in the world for twenty to thirty-five years" (per HuffPo).

Not to mention that under our watch, by the most conservative U.S. estimate as reported on May 12, 2007 in The New York Times, at least 146,000,000 barrels worth at least $7,300,000,000 have simply vanished, without any benefit to the Iraqis (not to mention the U.S. taxpayers, despite Bush Admin. suggestions that Iraqi oil would pay for this war).

Three. Whatever the report says, it'll also have to support the argument that we can't leave any time soon. But the fact is, we have no hope of "winning" in even the most limited sense unless we stay there at least ten more years. And by all accounts, our supply of soldiers is too broken to continue the job past this spring. Will they reinstitute the draft? They won't talk about any of that any sooner than we force them to.

Some say "the campaign to keep us in Iraq is . . . linked to the campaign to justify a war with Iran . . ."