From politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com

McCain predicts 'spectacular' terror attempts in Iraq

   (CNN) — John McCain said Friday he expects the presidential election this fall will increase the occurrence of "spectacular" terror attempts in Iraq.

   "I predict that they will make an attempt as we get in to the election season to make more of these spectacular kinds of attacks which they're still capable of doing," he said. "The suicide bombers, et cetera, would not surprise me and we've already found out that they're going to try and step up their attacks and try and do things in a more spectacular fashion so that they can erode the support of the Maliki government."

..."but by golly, I'm gonna insinuate that he is!  Scary!  Red scare!  Boogah boogah boogah!"

Okay, so McCain didn't say that last bit -- out loud.  But the implication was loud and clear.

Yep, folks, the latest smear from the Straitjacket Express is that old-fashioned GOP favorite:  The Democrat's a socialist who's bent on destroying America!

I'm sometimes mistaken for an Obama hater. In fact, I'm something less interesting: a critic from the left. There are much more authoritative and prominent versions of me, like Paul Street and Adolph Reed Jr.  I generally share their views on Obama's politics, but I part company with them when they say or suggest that it's not important that Obama win.

I want Obama to win not just because he's up against a fanatical freetrader who has Norman Podhoretz's foreign policy and James Dobson's position on abortion; I want Obama to win because he embodies important progressive principles that must be defended. It's a central irony of his campaign: while his policies and political philosophy are frustratingly moderate, a victory by Obama would be a victory for vital progressive principles: racial tolerance, mutli-culturalism, general acceptance of difference. On the other hand--and this is the focus of this piece--a defeat would be a devastating defeat for those principles.

This will be a bit of a rant.

I was in DC recently.   I was near the Whitehouse when very bored looking police blocked all traffic.   Suddenly a motorcade appears of mostly black SUV's with Secret Service staring battle like out of some of them.  They must have been going 60+mph on a little side street near the Whitehouse.  Soon  after, I heard on the radio it was VP Cheney.

What immediately popped into my mind was Baghdad.   These guys were behaving like they were in eminent threat just like they were driving around Baghdad, not Washington D.C.  It was just like scenes out of Syriana

Fear:  

a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

Hope:

the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best

In each case, the first definition of the noun form of the word as found at Dictionary.com  Both conditions/emotions can be real, but both can be illusionary, leading us to act overly defensively or not at all in the first case, or blindly without regard for consequence if in the second case it approaches a pollyanish attitude.  

I am a realist.  I recognize that there are bad things, that there are people who intend other than good for me and those about whom I care.   But if that were my dominant emotion, I would be paralyzed, unable to act in a fashion to make a difference in the world around me.  Had I any doubt, I would merely need to look at how fear has distorted our politics and our policy.

Kinda like a cross-post:

ACTION ALERT: Attacking Me for Schuring's Gas Tax

Dear Friends,

You may have heard of "Freedom’s Watch" – they’re a group of former Bush administration officials who plan to spend billions of dollars in 2008 to send more George W. Bush-style Republicans to Washington.

They’re also confused. They’ve just started sending phone messages to local voters attacking me for the Ohio state gas tax that my opponent, Kirk Schuring, voted to increase in 2003. I voted against it.

Schuring voted for Governor Taft’s transportation bill, which imposed $580 million in new taxes on Ohio families. Because of him, families in our state will pay more than a quarter of a billion dollars in extra gas taxes this year alone.

Why is Freedom’s Watch telling people to call me about a gas tax I opposed? Shouldn’t they be asking voters to call Kirk Schuring instead? And why are big-money Washington groups dumping cookie-cutter attacks on our district while Schuring himself hasn't said a word about his energy plans?

We had high drama in OH-16 yesterday...

My grandmother was born in 1903. Theodore Roosevelt was the president, at the time.  Evaryone wore onions on their belt, because that was the fashion.

The Dog’s signature line is:

If you live in fear, then the worst thing that can happen to you already has. Will YOU live in fear?

It means a lot of different things at different times and there have been times where the Dog has been told he is betraying his sig line (commonly when the Dog argues against impeachment on the grounds that we will fail). Since today will be a dark day in the history of our nation as we watch our 4th Amendment rights voted away by in a Congress that Democrats control, the Dog thought it might be a good time to detail exactly what he means by not living in fear.

I have become convinced in the last several weeks, following the emergence of Barack Obama as the probably Democratic Presidential nominee, that the Daily Kos store should be stocking vast quantities of litmus paper . . . because it seems so many Kossacks are proposing this or that absolute test for the candidate.

We have moved from being a critical lot to being a testy lot.  

We seem to want everything to go our way.

We seem to have adopted the mantra "He's either with me, or he is against us."

Why?

And what will that get us?

Think of this as a neurophysiological analysis of the winning Obama strategy.

Amidst all the excitement about FISA and refinements of the Obama position on withdrawal from Iraq, I think people are missing the essence of the Obama strategy.  

This is particularly true in the online world where people actually care about issues and policy.

Obama's single minded goal on his course to the White House is simple:  stay cool, stay boring, say nothing, do nothing, threaten nothing.

His goal, it seems clear, is to become an empty vessel, a mirror on to which people can project their own fantasies about who an American president is, what he should look like, how he should sound.   You can't be that mirror, that empty vessel, if you say things that enable others to define you as "controversial" or "flip flopping" and if you become perceived that way.  You've got to keep people's limbic systems (the fight or flight response system) quiet, so that they can hear your discourse, keep in mind their aspirations for a better America, and accept you as a President.

I've been subjected to an entire day of glorification of 'patriotism'; some decent, some pretty fuzzy, some pure bovine manure.  Here's my opinion for the mix:
If one's feeling of loyalty to one's nation has a significant admixture of militarism, what one is observing is Nationalism, rather than Patriotism.  Karl Liebknecht said, when the First World War was developing, the following:

"This war is an imperialist war for domination of world
markets, and for the benefit of bankers and manufacturers.
It is also a war tending to destroy
the growing labor movement. It is not a war of
defense. It is therefore our plain duty to vote
against the war budget."  See google books

Leibknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered by their  government, shortly thereafter.

Class War is defined by our MSM as when the working class starts fighting back.

'The people should not fear the government, the government should fear the people' -- V

My local Seattle Air America affiliate radio station has been running very serious-sounding ads, ostensibly from the National Crime Prevention Council. Their basic message is "Be afraid—at home, at work, wherever."

Now, the NCPC is an interesting organization that seems to be essentially a trade & lobbying association for companies that stand to profit from fear. They last floated into my awareness as the purveyors of those cute commercials featuring McGruff the Crime Dog® offering kids a guide to coping with strangers, school bullies, and similar threats. But their mission has obviously broadened to target adults and make sure we're good and afraid of scary people who might try to blow us up.

The interesting thing to me was the tag line at the end of the spots, which says (approximately): "Brought to you by the NCPC, the Department of State, and the Advertising Council." Would it be cynical of me to suspect that government and industry are partnering to crank up the terror threat as we head into the election season?

i'm an amateur with something bothering me....

A call to action for McCain to sign SF-180 and release his full military records so he can be properly vetted. The MSM must stop giving McCain their blessing. Please stay with me.

Rich's op ed today is entitled If Terrorists Rock the Vote in 2008  and focuses on how irrelevant the twin themes previously used by Karl Rove are now, the fear of terrorism and the fear of gays.  Obviously his title refers to the former, relevant to discuss now because of Charles Black's comments in Fortune that another terrorist attack would be to McCain's benefit.  But would it?  Would not it undercut ideas like "fighting them over there means we don't have to fight them here", or "if we leave Iraq the terrorists will follow us home" or "the policies of Bush have kept us safe" or any of that rot?  To me that has always been obvious, that another attack would equal failure of the Bush approach, and undercut support for Republicans.  Let's look how Rich demolishes this Rovian argument, one of several services he does for us as he serves as the little boy in the fable of the Emperor's new suit of clothes.

The Dog tries to never piggyback a front page diary, but Kos’s conservative mind got the old pooch thinking. Is there a difference between fearing something for itself or fearing it because you are ignorant of it? Let the Dog give you an example; when the Dog was younger he was afraid of chainsaws. What is not to fear? A portable machine that spins a sharp chain fast enough to chew through wood like butter, who would not be afraid of that. Then add in an uncle that took him to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre at far too young an age, you get yourself a nice reasonable phobia. However, when the Dog had a chance to handle and use on in a controlled setting, well, hell, it is just another tool you have to take reasonable precautions with. There was really nothing to be scared of about chainsaws but carelessness.  

Anyone with email can be a dumbass.

FACT: GEORGE W. BUSH AND CABINET ARE GUILTY OF WAR CRIMES.

PROOF: VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder and Elizabeth de la Vega’s United States v George Bush et al and the 35 Articles of Impeachment introduced by the honorable Dennis Kucinich.

I won't try to emulate some of the eloquent rage and contempt expressed on many other diaries about the moral and pragmatic grounds for impeachment. I just want to reiterate that while Bush and Cheney are in the WH there's a high probability that there will be a major attack on Iran. For the sake of self preservation I would think that Barack would want to use those masterful powers of unification of his to unite Congress behind an impeachment.

Not trying is tantamount to capitulating to the unspeakable.

UPDATE: Seriously, if you vote no in the poll please tell HOW you can imagine MLK being any less vocal than Kucinich? Do you not agree with Dennis? If not, WTF, dude?!

I love my friends, but what really bugs me is when they get sent something ridiculous.  Something every fiber of their being is telling them is wrong, but they still somehow think there's a possibility of truth.  So they forward it to me, when a simple google search would have put all their worries to rest.

So tonight I received such an email from a good friend.  She sent me this...

http://www.youtube.com/...

REALLY?!... you gotta watch this. It sounds like V for Vendetta II. I know it's sensationalism at its finest, but have you heard of any of this?

:) Sleep well.

So clearly she reads it as sensationalism, but it's been forwarded to her from family and friends and she's curious.  So, I wrote her back, a couple of paragraphs of what I knew from the subject matter after watching the ten minutes of trash that is included in the youtube link.  sigh  It was surely more than she was asking, but I had to at least let her know 1)What I knew about the subjects, because well its just polite since she asked and 2)It's always okay to ask, though forgive me if I seem frustrated...

My reply after the fold....