The controversy over Trayvon Martin’s death continues as his father Tracy Martin, described “the police version of events in a meeting Wednesday with Washington Post reporters and editors,” and he told them “he did not believe the official account, which was conveyed to him two days after his 17-year-old son was killed Feb. 26.”

From his new Wrecking Ball tour, Bruce Springsteen is performing an updated version of “American Skin (41 Shots)”. “This is for Trayvon,” Springsteen said last night in Philly…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Via David Remnick on The New Yorker…

Suddenly, the mood went sombre and Springsteen said, “This is for Trayvon.” I first heard “American Skin (41 Shots),” at Madison Square Garden a dozen years ago, but now the lament, as the circumstances changed from the shooting of Amadou Diallo, in New York, to Trayvon Martin, in Florida, was less subdued, far tougher, as if to underline the outrage. Like “Born in the U.S.A.” and the new “We Take Care of Our Own,” “American Skin” belies its easy reading; it attempts to get at the complexity as well as the grief and fury of its subject.

Last night a police video of Zimmerman taken after Trayvon was killed was released casting doubt on Zimmerman’s “I was attacked” defense. But, Zimmerman’s defense team continues to double down, with his father now doing an interview.

America is still waiting for answers and justice…

In a move that has instantly infuriated feminists, it was announced today that “Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, will cut off its funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates, where the foundation has traditionally paid for preventive screening services.”

Planned Parenthood has been at the center of a lot of heated political battles lately. Most center on whether the group, as an abortion provider, should receive government funds for other services it provides, such as offering contraceptives and preventive screenings.

The move by the Komen fund was immediately decried as a cowardly attempt by the Komen fund to bow to conservative pressure.

Twitter has been aflutter with the news for a couple of hours now… Tweet of the Day on the topic:

@kelly_carlin Hey Susan G. Komen, we’ve shown you our tits, now show us your balls. #FightRWNJAgendas

It’s a sad day for womens rights and the cure for breast cancer. Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America said today, “We are alarmed and saddened that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation appears to have succumbed to political pressure. Our greatest desire is for Komen to reconsider this policy and recommit to the partnership on which so many women count.” 

Read more here, about how Planned Parenthood is fighting back and their new fund to keep breast exams covered at their facilities.

The Susan G Komen fund has been recently running TV advertisements to brings in participants and donors for upcoming 2012 3-day walks. It will be interesting to see how that pans out for Komen in the wake of today’s news.

A few days ago, I watched an interview with Angela Jolie about her new movie – first directed movie – In the Land of Blood and Honey. I was so deeply moved to witness her talking about wanting to open a discourse about the rape of women used as a weapon of war. It’s a much welcomed yet long overdue open conversation. I truly hope it helps bring the problem into awareness of our world and to heal the wounds that cause it and are caused by it.

Here in the U.S. we may agree that the rape of women as a weapon of war is horrible. Yet we have done our own atrocious acts as part of our participation in war – sexually demeaning and humiliating prisoners of war in Abu Ghraib, urinating on the bodies of slain enemies in Afghanistan, and who knows what else! But what about the use of rape in the war against women right here at home? “Not possible,” you say? Sadly, tragically, it is possible – and it is occurring.

A relatively new occurrence: There is a law recently passed in Texas – and also recently upheld by the appeals court in Texas – that makes it mandatory for a woman who seeks an abortion to have an invasive vaginal ultrasound . . . under the guise of educating her, say proponents, but in reality to intimidate her out of having the abortion.

Now most women I know would completely understand that is a form of rape . . . to be forced by your government and the law to have an object – even an ultrasound scanner – put into your vagina by your doctor . . . even if your doctor doesn’t want to do it, but more importantly, even if you don’t want it. And many of the men I know understand the truth of that, too. But there are many women and men who don’t get it . . . yet. And their not getting it passively, unconsciously allows and even helps it to go on.

Maybe this will help them get the reality of rape as a weapon in the war against women:

The FBI recently redefined rape. Now included in the definition of rape is . . . the use of an object. So, no matter the guises for the Texas law, it is in direct conflict with the FBI definition of rape.

I hope you care. I hope you care about your body being violated in that way. . . raped by an object at the hands of the government.

I hope you care about your mother’s, sister’s, daughter’s bodies being violated in that way.

I hope you care about your wife’s, girlfriend’s, fiancee’s body being violated in that way!

Too many of our women – not just in the US but all over the world – were sexually abused as children. This law and others like it would be a repeat abuse of the earlier violation and wounding.

We need to care – deeply – for if the government can force rape as a weapon in the war against women, then the people in our country who are afraid of the empowerment of women and of powerful women will be able to continue escalating the war against women . . . just like so many others have continued escalating other wars in our world.

I hope we will work together to protect our girls and women . . .

I hope we will work together to prevent the further escalation of the war against women . . . and in so doing, prevent the further escalation of war! and protect our world!

© Judith Barr, 2012

First, an observation which I seldom see in print: King remembered going to a lecture on the principles of Gandhi, and how it changed his thinking. And Gandhi remembered reading Henry David Thoreau‘s “Civil Disobedience” while in jail in South Africa. Now, of course, we know that another South African prisoner, Nelson Mandela, was, in turn, inspired by King in South Africa, where Gandhi had both spent time in jail, and read “Civil Disobedience.”

Some may recall that Thoreau was an Abolitionist, and that Lawrence, Kansas’ main street is named “Massachusetts Street” and not “Main Street” for the New England Emigrant Aid Society, many of whose fundraisers were held in Massachusetts and some of which were attended by Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, his friend and neighbor. Wikipedia:

The slavery crisis inflamed New England in the 1840s and 1850s. The environment became especially tense after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. A lifelong abolitionist, Thoreau delivered an impassioned speech which would later become Civil Disobedience in 1848, just months after leaving Walden Pond. The speech dealt with slavery, but at the same time excoriated American imperialism, particularly the Mexican–American War.

And so, Thoreau must be pleased in the Hereafter. Gandhi was able to translate Thoreau’s theoretical clarity into strategy and tactics, and King and Mandela were able to perfect them. And those tactics toppled the dictatorships of Egypt and Tunisia last year, before the wave of non-violence of the “Arab Spring” was quashed in the classical gunfire of repression. A more profound wave of world revolution has rarely happened even WITH guns. Without guns, it is astonishing.

It has always seemed odd to me that, in order for that little essay, written in the environs of Walden “Pond” to arrive in Montgomery, Alabama, it had to detour through South Africa and India. But that was its original purpose, fulfilled long after the death of the author.

If you have a moment, read (or, hopefully, re-read) “Civil Disobedience,” as influential an essay as you’ll find in American letters.

And, by the by, the old saw ”That government is best which governs least,” is coined in the first sentence of the essay.

While Gandhi is always mentioned and Thoreau is never mentioned in Martin Luther King, Jr. remembrances, King himself said this:

During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau’s essay On Civil Disobedience for the first time. Here, in this courageous New Englander’s refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery’s territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau’s insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.

—The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

But that’s not the sad irony of this day of observance.

The sad irony is that Martin Luther King was a Baptist preacher in the South, but, significantly, NOT a Southern Baptist preacher:

The Progressive National Baptist Convention, Incorporated (PNBC) is a convention of African-American Baptists emphasizing civil rights and social justice. The convention was formed at Cincinnati, Ohio in 1961, in a separation from the older National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. (NBCUSA). After the 1954 Supreme Court ruling concerning desegregation of public schools, the NBCUSA followed a policy of official detachment from the Civil Rights Movement. The desire of some members for the Convention’s full support of the movement was a focus of discontent. Other disagreements concerned the election of officers and the length of the Convention president’s term. The old Convention was unwilling to enforce the tenure of officers, and it did not fully support the program and methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the Civil Rights Movement. The proposal to limit tenure was also related to civil rights issues, as King supported the removal of the president, Joseph H. Jackson. King’s support for and nomination of Gardner Taylor as president of the NBCUSA was defeated at the 1961 Convention, leading to the call for the formation of a new convention.

The Southern Baptist denomination is the #1 Protestant denomination in the USA. It emerged from a schism with the American (Northern) Baptist church in the 1850s, over, you guessed it, slavery. (Historical footnote: the Baptists midwifed the First Amendment —  fearful that the New England Puritans would outlaw them, as had been the case at the foundation of the colony — by insisting that a religious freedom clause be inserted into the Bill of Rights.)

We’ll skip over the long, ugly road that the Southern Baptists took through justifying slavery and then Jim Crow.

By the 1980s, it was fairly mainstream, and then a Texas judge decided that it was getting too “liberal.”

Holy War: Fundamentalists Fight To Capture the Soul Of Southern Baptists
– Purges and Censorship Grow As Zealots Try to Finish Takeover From ‘Liberals’ — Where Women Went Wrong

By Peter Waldman, The Wall Street Journal
March 7, 1988

[...]

What fundamentalists say they are doing now is cleansing the leadership of a small cadre of liberals who have tried to subvert traditional Baptist belief in the complete literal truth of the Bible. These fundamentalists call themselves “inerrantists,” after their position that Scripture contains no error.

It was Justice Pressler who figured out a way to “recapture” control. The Texas jurist realized that less than 5% of eligible delegates usually showed up at the denomination’s annual convention. He says those who came, many of them denominational employees on expense accounts, brought about a “liberal drift” by electing liberal officers who in turn appointed liberal trustees to the boards of church agencies.

Justice Pressler and like-minded fellows became circuit riders, traveling from church to church to exhort inerrantists to attend the annual convention. The strategy worked. Since 1979, fundamentalists have elected every denominational president. And as trustee terms have expired, inerrantists have gained control of the largest agencies.

“What we’re doing here is basically returning the Southern Baptist Convention to the people,” contends Justice Pressler, interviewed on a preaching trip to rural Tennessee. “If return of the convention has a detrimental fallout in some areas, that’s a small price to pay.”

That fallout is everywhere. In January, George Sheridan lost a job with the Atlanta-based Southern Baptist Home Missions Board because of his views on Judaism. He had been the evangelical agency’s ecumenical representative in the Northeast for 12 years, working closely with Jewish groups in metropolitan New York, his home. In 1986, he wrote an article stating that Jews retain a “covenantal” relationship with God, as spelled out in the Old Testament, and therefore shouldn’t be targets of evangelism. Recently the Home Missions Board, in a letter citing Mr. Sheridan’s beliefs about Judaism, gave him three weeks’ notice to accept a non-ecumenical post in Atlanta or resign. He quit.

“There’s a good aspect to my case,” he says. “It was never openly stipulated before that the denomination has official theological positions. At least they finally took a public stand.”

Women are especially affected by the fundamentalist drive. In 1984, the convention passed a resolution stating that because Eve initiated sin in the Garden of Eden, women should be forever subject to men. Accordingly, the Home Missions Board announced it would refuse financial aid to churches hiring female pastors. In Fort Worth, Texas, emboldened trustees of Southwestern seminary denied a faculty appointment for a prominent local pastor because women served as deacons of his church.

The Home Missions Board resolution also prompted the Shelby County Baptist Association’s move against Mrs. Sehested in Tennessee. The local group voted to “disfellow” her Memphis church, Prescott Memorial, for having hired a woman pastor. “It’s bizarre for people to call themselves Christian and act this way,” Mrs. Sehested says.

Many employees have been purged at denominational publications. “There’s been a conscious attempt by Paul Pressler and others to intimidate the {Southern Baptist} media,” says Wilmer C. Fields, a 28-year employee who recently retired as vice president of public relations for the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee. He also directed the Baptist Press news agency, where, he says, fundamentalists two years ago forced a full investigation of their allegations of liberal bias, only to be rebuffed by a committee of journalism professors. Now there is talk of putting the agency through another review, this one before the fundamentalist-controlled executive committee.

[...]

After a century of anger issues that no longer fit with contemporary realities, some Southern Baptists decided that the hate needed to stay, but needed to be redirected at “liberals” and “abortionists.” Which brings us to the sad irony of this long weekend:

Influential Christian leaders look for consensus candidate to stop Romney

By Wayne Slater/Reporter
The Dallas Morning News
4:49 PM on Wed., Jan. 4, 2012

Some of the nation’s leading religious conservative leaders are gathering this weekend in Texas in an effort to consolidate a fractured GOP electorate around a single presidential candidate who best expresses their views. “One thing unites all in this group – Romney is not their guy,” said one of the participants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The meeting at Brenham ranch of Paul Pressler, a former Texas judge and influential Southern Baptist, is part of an ongoing effort to unite social conservatives around a single candidate….

Now, some feel manipulated. Hmmm.

Conservatives feud over Santorum endorsement
Some say Texas weekend gathering manipulated
By Ralph Z. Hallow-The Washington Times
Monday, January 16, 2012

In an evolving power struggle, religious conservatives are feuding about whether a weekend meeting in Texas yielded a consensus that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is the best bet to stop Mitt Romney’s drive for the Republican presidential nomination.

A leading evangelical and former aide to President George H.W. Bush said he agreed with suspicions voiced by others at the meeting of evangelical and conservative Catholic activists that organizers “manipulated” the gathering and may even have stuffed the ballot to produce an endorsement of Mr. Santorum over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Santorum, who nearly upset Mr. Romney in the Iowa caucuses, won the first ballot ahead of Mr. Gingrich in Saturday’s Texas meeting but the margin was too slim for organizers to claim a consensus. It was not until the third ballot, taken after many people had left to catch flights back home, that Mr. Santorum won more than 70 percent of those still in attendance and claimed the endorsement….

It seems almost the antithesis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. Then, religious Baptists, men of conscience, stood non-violently to change an unjust government. Here, a Texas judge stood to sweep all tolerance from his denomination, Southern Baptists, and now his multi-denominational collaborators meet in secret at his ranch to sweep all tolerance from a just government.

Ozymandias 2011

Not “Ozymandias,” perhaps, but a more imminent and intimate tragedy.

We have to live here.

Courage.

=======================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

One throws up one’s hands in despair for poor Reason, so oft invoked, so rarely practiced.

Take a look at the snarling coverage.

(I don’t know that any actual snarling is going on, but there is a general blogospheric need for venting, from the evidence.)

The tacitly agreed-upon tactic seems to be to smear using the 1 = all proposition and hoping the endless scheiss-sturm will rub off on the Occupy Wall Street Protests around the nation and around the world.

Against such a tide of chaos this little skiff of a blog cannot hope to row.

So, here’s something funny I found, instead. Author unknown:

And so it goes.

Uh, what were we talking about, again?

(Please do not send this in an e-mail to your grandmother. Thanks.)

Courage.

I slept the day away in hopes that I would feel better, but, today’s Ten Post Round-Up tells me I probably should crawl back into bed:

1: Shameful: US servicewomen more likely to be raped by fellow soldiers than killed by enemy fire…

At War With Ourselves: Battling Sexual Violence in the Military–AlterNet

2: Not A Surprise: Teenage girls adopting eating disorders from healthy eating messages at school…

‘Eating disorders fuelled by teachers’–The Australian

3: ACLU comes out in defense of polygamist ranch…

ACLU weighs in on Texas polygamist custody case–CNN.com

4: Florida fire hydrants to begin multi-tasking as spyware…

Florida Gets All Stasi On Citizens–duckplops

5: Smart: Bush sneaks into New Orleans, Not So Smart (?): To discuss expanding NAFTA…

José Can You See? Bush’s Trojan Taco–Greg Palast

6: Grandma’s weird Depression-era recipes are beginning to look good, now…

Food Rationing Makes Unwelcome Return–The Huffington Post

7: Oh, but flip-flops are so comfy, aren’t they?….

McCain: That was then (flip). This is now (flop).–Hypocrisy.com

8: Un-frak-ing-believable…

Judges deny some crack convicts legal help on sentences–McClatchy

9: Put this in perspective: The Army and Marines are recruiting individuals who would otherwise not be able to purchase or possess guns as civilians or be able to live in neighborhoods with a school nearby…

Army doubled felony waivers for recruits in year of Iraq surge–Raw Story

10: Oklahoma sheriff (D) works to up the ante of sexual predators vs (R)s…

Cain’t Say No–Reason Magazine

272 días hasta el final de un error…

Peace.

(I like my morning cuppa with a little hypocrisy chaser)

This is how the Republicans are trying to define Barack Obama: Too Liberal, Too Out of Touch.

“I know what makes people there ‘bitter.’ It’s slick-talking politicians who look down on their beliefs and values.”  Michael Goodwin wrote in Sunday’s Daily News about his small town in Pennsylvania.

The well-circulated quotes from Huffington Post — of Obama telling a closed, well-heeled fundraiser that people in small towns in Pennsylvania are bitter and cling to religion and guns out of frustration — have created a dangerous firestorm.

This brouhaha exposes an existing political vulnerability — the perception of an elitist Obama. He will be tagged as the Harvard-trained candidate of the young and educated.  The Republicans managed to stick a similarly crippling perception on the candidacies of Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. 

And the Democrats didn’t stand a chance.

The Democrats have not lost elections because they are out of step with the white working class Catholic vote — the key swing vote — on economic or foreign policy issues… they have lost because of cultural issues — “God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag.”

And this is going to be a real problem for Barack Obama. Not so much in the nomination struggle, but in the general election.

“It’s arrogance on steroids, fueled by a secular elitist view of Middle America as filled with ignorant red-necks,” wrote Goodwin. Come November, the Republicans are going to cram this perception of Obama down the throats of voters.

Remember, the only Democrats who have been elected president since John Kennedy have been southern moderates.

There is nothing wrong with what Obama said.  It’s all true and very perceptive.  It follows a Marxist economic view that religious faith is rooted in economic anxiety. There is a lot of anger and bitterness in small town America today.  But when you are running for President you can’t say this kind of stuff. 

A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth, as Michael Kinsley wrote in the <em>Guardian</em> 16 years ago.  You can’t be a coolly academic political sociologist. In the heat of battle, the last thing you can tell voters is the truth.

Voters, ravaged by economic upheaval, don’t want to hear the truth.

Michigan primary voters didn’t want John McCain telling them that their old manufacturing jobs are not coming back. So, instead, in January, they cast their votes for rival Mitt Romney, who offered them bromides.

America is coming into some rough economic times: you have to keep it simple…. Stupid!

The Republicans are going to seize these issues and whoever is the Democratic nominee is going to have to play along.

You can’t tell the voters in Rust Belt America that you are not going to make everything all right ….like it was before.

If you are a politician, you have to promise them that you are going to bring back the factories and the high paying jobs. You have to tell them that you will build a wall on the Mexican border to keep out all those illegal immigrants who are taking their jobs….. even if it’s not true.

And you have to promise to gut the free trade agreements like NAFTA.  You don’t dare mention that you really can’t do this because the treaties are signed, and if you did Canada would stop sending us their oil and natural gas.

You don’t tell them that if we closed our borders to all the foreign goods coming in from China, prices would skyrocket at Wal-Mart and the Chinese wouldn’t buy our wheat and farm products and our farmers would go crazy.

You gotta keep it simple. Blame the immigrants, the Canadians, the Mexicans, the Chinese, Al Qaeda, Iran….. Blame anyone, blame everyone, but make sure that finger is pointing away from American soil.

Jimmy Carter made this mistake in his 1976 “Malaise” speech, in which he admonished American “self-indulgence and consumption.”  It proved to be a fatal blow to his presidency — and he lost his reelection bid.

I have admired Obama’s ability to talk in inspiring generalities about Hope and Change, without getting into specifics, but he seems to have stumbled this time.

It would be sheer folly to expect complete honesty from politicians during an election, much less during a nominating process.

You can’t really be a good politician, or a good president, without being somewhat of a morally flawed human being. The too-good-for-this-world politicians — George McGovern, Barry Goldwater, Adlai Stevenson, Michael Dukakis, Jimmy Carter — have had an annoying habit of losing elections.

Americans know they need a president with a different skill-set: someone who will take care of them and their needs but is not too fastidious to do what it takes to win.

A Presidential candidate shouldn’t have the same opinions and concerns during the primaries as he has in the general election … or during governing — that would be stupid.

Campaigning politicians are expected to charm and cajole relevant constituencies, to pander, to bob and weave, and to continually cobble together disparate interest groups. These are the skills – making political moves and having the capacity and courage for bold, persistent experimentation – an effective president will need.

Good presidents should have an agenda – a strategic vision, a fundamental core of beliefs, ideas, and a burning passion; but they should also be pragmatic, flexible, cunning and be able to demonstrate the capacity to grow and change.

This should be our modus operandi when picking a president. We should judge a candidate on what, we believe, he (or she) is really going to do when he (or she) becomes president, and not by whatever gibberish they have to spout to win the nomination.

We need to pick a president who is going to be able to deal artfully with a complicated, dangerous geopolitical situation.  Someone who can forge a coalition of Arab states that will make it possible for the U.S. to get out of Iraq …who can create an international climate that dries up anti-American terrorism…who can win over the Europeans and the Asians…who can preserve and restore American hegemony, without being a bully…and who can nimbly confront the coming economic maelstrom.

It doesn’t really matter who opposed the Iraq war first. This has nothing to do with what we need for our future safety and prosperity. What matters is which candidate has the depth and dexterity to get us out of one of the stickiest and scariest situations America has ever faced. The maneuvering is going to take a deft and delicate hand.

These skills are, coincidentally, similar to the skills that it takes to get the nomination.

You have to win the nomination first, and do whatever it takes, then you can think about what kind of campaign you want to run in the general election, how you want to govern, and what you want to, and can, accomplish.

The history of the great presidents of yesteryear has shown that campaign themes/promises and subsequent governing often have little to do with one another.

Nor would we want them to.

All of our great presidents have shown — for lack of a better phrase — a great deal of “ideological malleability” and pragmatism.

Thomas Jefferson reviled public debt so much that in 1798 he proposed a constitutional amendment that would have prevented the federal government from borrowing. But in 1803, when presented with the opportunity to drastically increase the size of the United States by purchasing vast swaths of land known as the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson quickly abandoned his fears about borrowing.

During the campaign of 1860, Abraham Lincoln persistently promised not to interfere with slavery in the Southern states. But when the Southern states declared their independence, Lincoln soon issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in states that had seceded from the Union.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign was based on his pledge to cut taxes as a way to deal with the Great Depression. He did nothing of the sort of course. His opponent, Herbert Hoover, tagged him as a “chameleon in plaid,” but FDR went on to become one of our greatest presidents by increasing taxes and spending.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy ran on a platform that shamelessly exploited fears that the U.S. had fallen grievously behind in the arms race against the Soviet Union– the Phantom Missile Gap. We hadn’t, of course, as later became obvious.

Lyndon B. Johnson pandered to his conservative southern roots during the 1960 election and yet, as president, he pushed through the most extensive civil rights reforms ever enacted.

The first rule in politics is: if you don’t succeed in the short run, there will be no long run.

Somehow the voters knew, when these wannabe presidents were running, that they were tough enough, nimble enough, and artfully pragmatic enough to successfully negotiate some of the thorniest problems this country has ever faced: Slavery and Rebellion, the Great Depression, World War II, the threat from Communism, and the Civil Rights struggle.

Candidates with uncompromising ideals, who promise a new kind of politics, are very appealing. But ultimately, politicians who practice compromise and calculated obfuscation tend to be our most successful presidents. Had these great presidents clung steadfastly and bull-headedly to their campaign positions, our country would be far worse off.

[Cross posted at The Huffington Post]

Editor’s Note: The Democratic Daily is pleased to add Blake Fleetwood to our growing list of writers and contributors.  He can be reached at: jfleetwood@aol.com.

The Democratic Daily is not sponsoring or endorsing this event, but, you should know about it — in the name of democracy.

If you happen to be in New York City today and tomorrow, seriously consider showing up at Hillary Clinton Forum NYC Protest Tomorrow, April 11. It is co-sponsored by the independent Hillary Clinton Online Forum and the independent Veterans for Hillary (v4hill.com).

If you aren’t in New York or can’t participate in-person and wish to “participate,” please go here.

It’s not about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. It’s not about rules. It’s not even just about the Democrats winning this November. It’s the next election and the one after that, and the one after that. It’s about democracy.

When you can make up rules that result in the disenfranchisement of innocent voters, whatever the goals of those rules may be, you abandon any pretext of being a democratic institution. Hiding behind “the rules” does not change that.

Not to be alarmist, but I’m pretty sure that there will be no functional Democratic Party after 2008 if Florida and Michigan votes are not counted before the nominee is determined–Before! If you don’t think the first elections were valid, then you should have revotes. It really is that simple. But the flippant disregard for democracy among people who envision themselves as the liberal/Democratic intellectuals makes it worth repeating. It’s not just absurd. It’s dangerous.

With my kids getting a little older and not needing 100% constant supervision (including the fact, as we are doing lessons, they can follow me around the house for instruction when I give them homework) and with the limited time I chat with my husband, online, I am finally getting a groove where I find that I can actually accomplish many things of substance and in a short amount of time. I haven’t had that since before the little ones were still in diapers (which is about the same time that I also started my business). So, now, I am actually experiencing boredom. What a relief!

So what do I decide to do on a workday, when I could be resting up for the long night ahead?

Chocolate? Yes, of course.

But, not only that, I decided to post a round-up. I must like you guys, a lot. Besides, according to my site stats, I have one loyal reader, so I don’t want to disappoint him/her.

It’s snowing outside, so it’s possible that I may not even go to work if it get’s nasty. The weather outside and all the dramz in the nooz is putting me in a miserable funk, so I figured I’d offer up something upbeat and funky for your musical intervention, today (btw: Dizzy abso-friggin-lutely LOVES this song): Ce Ce Peniston – Keep On Walkin

Stop a moment and let me walk you through today’s Ten Post Round-Up:

1: Wholesale Lies: The surge is not working as planned…

General William Odom Tells Senate Rapid Withdrawal Is Only Solution–AfterDowningStreet.org

2: Health Compromised: Eating ourselves to death…

Pollan: Nutrition “Science” Has Hijacked Our Meals — and Our Health–AlterNet

3: Worthless Education: President with an MBA failing the USA in the time of financial crisis…

“Mr. Bush has sometimes seemed invisible during the housing and credit crunch”–AMERICAblog

4: Let’s Raise A Toast(er): The Cylons are coming! The Cylons are coming! (PSA: Friday night on Sci-Fi Channel) Consider yourself warned!…

Battlestar Galactica–BuzzFeed

5: Sigh of Relief: We should be glad that GWB made the wrong decision after thinking about it for some time, instead of implementing his deadly decision right away…

David Gregory says Bush showed good judgement for not invading Iraq immediately after 9/11–Crooks and Liars

6: Knock on Wood: Help for homeowners may be on its way…

Foreclosure-Prevention Bill–Free Market News

7: Why Ask Why: Americans have not forgotten about Iraq, the media has just forgotten to report on it…

Myth: Americans Tuned Out Iraq Fact: The Press Tuned Out Iraq–The Huffington Post

8: Talk about “Whack”: Beware of the credit bureau “bait and switch”…

Profiting Off Debt–OurFuture.org

9: Keep on Walkin’: Indeed, in regards to race issues, “the past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past”…

Exhausting Race, Pt. 1–Pam’s House Blend

10: Cha-ching: “Republicans truly are the party of personal responsibility…unless you’re gay, poor, or a woman”…

Another Reminder–Shakesville

Just remember: Some days you’re the windshield. Some days you’re the bug.

That is all.

290 días hasta el final de un error…

Peace.

(Walk This Way…)