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My life has been, well, busy doesn’t quite have the muster for describing the recent quotidian plodding of The Chad, and I haven’t been blogging nearly as much as I would like. But in a really, really bizarre way I found myself stumbling across these two videos. The first is a spur-of-the-moment interview done outside the Democratic debate in LA, and given what most on-the-street interviews say about the idea of “average intelligence” I found this extremely insightful, not for Obama’s ideas on policy (details), but for how informed, how enervated this country is about politics.

If you are interested in more on what he has to say, check out his response on youtube.

For the second video, this is the last 10 minutes of Barak Obama’s speech in front of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. This goes to the heart of what Obama brings to the dry lake bed that is our political spectrum, and why so many of us find something so unexpected and so precious in what this man represents.

This is an important moment. My first presidential vote went to Bill Clinton in ‘92 and after 12 long years living under the plague of Reagan and Bush he was a breath of fresh air. But he wasn’t this. This is something new in my lifetime.

-c

The other day I was stumbling through Salon.com’s site as I normally do and happened upon a touching essay by Garrison Keillor. The profound message that I took away from this writing was that hope and cheer are the results of an inward, personal discovery, and we should keep this in mind and in dark times such as these look for such panaceas right in front of our faces. True that, Mr. Keillor. Unfortunately, I sometimes find such forays eventually hollow, as if I were on some drug trip that however wonderful it felt, was somehow slightly pulled away from reality. And this is the duality of living during the plague of Cheney and Bush; alternating between being pulled down into the murky depths of the daily news, or floating in the ignorant bliss of escapism.

And then enter Naomi Klein, and her latest book The Shock Doctrine. While I haven’t read the book yet (I hope to pick up a copy soon), it was the video she made with Alfonso Cuarón that really made me stand up and notice. Not only is it a video with an incredible impact for its short duration, but it does a wonderful job of maintaining that tenuous marriage between hope and reality. Unlike the end of An Inconvenient Truth, where it seems as if all hope is exterminated by the time the credits roll and then they ply you with “we can do it!” and “you can change the world!” and flowers and bunnies; too stark of a contrast. And while the Klein/Cuarón film does tread on that line, I have to say I came away somewhat uplifted by it. More and more people are speaking out and trying to change things, and yes the process is very slow, but this is the American Spirit I thought had disappeared 6 years ago when someone who made Dan Quayle look brilliant got put into the highest office in our land. And then somehow re-elected.

But hey, I was talking about an improvement in mood, so let’s not dwell on the war criminal that needs his speeches written in phonetics. Check out the video if you like; it does start off dark but it does grow, and I especially love the flowers blooming. You can watch a higher-quality version of the short here, or check out the YouTube version:

In addition, you should check out Ariana Huffington’s latest blog entry about Klein’s book contrasted with Alan Greenspan’s tripe, in particular note the collaboration between Klein and John Cusack (in particular, the preview for War, Inc.)!

Today, the Washington Post has an article concerning a draft of the latest report on Iraq coming out of the Governmental Accountability Office, which was leaked to The Post today. Here’s a snippet:

The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version — as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Congress requested the GAO report, along with an assessment of the Iraqi security forces by an independent commission headed by retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, to provide a basis for comparison with the administration’s scorecard.

This is what really drives me crazy about the “genius” of Karl Rove; Turd Blossom’s tactics seem to boil down to “lie and distort whenever and to whatever extent serves your purposes.” And trust me, “genius” would not be the term I would use, as to me this just boils down to being as unscrupulous, selfish and immoral as necessary to get what you want (who among us can really admire that?). But unabashed prevarication seems to be standard operating procedure of the neocons these days, and will eventually lead them to reap what they sow. However, since they hold sway over the reins of our government, we unfortunately get to follow where they lead….

Anyway, the report is worth reading- yes more dreariness about the cluster!*@&$ in Iraq, but at least it appears to be undistorted this time.

-c

One of my mostest favoritest blogs/podcasts out there is Christopher Lydon’s Open Source, which is currently on a summer’s hiatus due to some financial flibbertigibbet. The concept of Open Source is to take the open source software development design and apply that methodology towards a radio show. Concepts, guests, questions, nearly every aspect of the show’s content and production is brought about by the show’s producers in conjunction with the readers of the web site. The audience is freed from its passive cage, and is now an integral part of the discussion.

While the show is off the air for now, the man who hosts it, Christopher Lydon, however, has not been on hiatus. He continues to post to the Open Source site on such topics as Emerson, and lately, his conversation with William Gibson. He has a new book out, called Spook Country, but unlike most book tour type of engagements, this one was merely two intellectuals, sitting down to discuss.

And here’s one thing that popped up:

I met a number of Department of Defense people about 14 years ago, and I was so impressed that they were on top of the asymmetric war paradigm, and so commited to not repeating the mistakes of Vietnam. Where did those guys go? I think they were fired, or frightened into silence. I know I comforted myself on the day of 9/11 by remembering those people. I was thinking: we have some really hip people in the Pentagon and maybe we won’t make the obvious and ridiculous mistakes that the terrorist wants us to make…

According to the emergent paradigms of warfare, when you invade another country, you just lost. Period. When you use air power against relatively undeveloped people, you lose. Period. Those are at the top of the list of things you don’t do if you want to win against non-state actors, but they’re culturally counter-intuitive… Everything the United States has done — I really can’t think of a counter-example — is the opposite of what the theory of asymmetrical warfare would suggest you do.

You can read or listen to the full show here.

=c

Hmmm, one supposes that instead of “particle spin” Cheney has “partisan spin”. In addition, according to the Dirac Equation, there would have to exist an anti-Cheney out there somewhere. Well, at least that’s the theory. Maybe he’ll (she’ll?) turn up soon, and annihilate the current VP in a puff of released energy. Hope doth spring eternal….

-c