Semi Truths

I would love to have attended YearlyKos, but it was not to be (this year). I have read many accounts of this gathering of progressive bloggers, but the most affecting by far comes from Jeffrey Feldman at his blog, Frameshop. It’s a little long, but you should definitely read the passage under The Powerful Emotion of Trust.

My friends and I have frequently joked (???) for the past few years that we all somehow slid into a parallel universe after the 2000 elections and somewhere in the positive matter universe, our proud nation was being led by an intelligent and benevolent Al Gore.

This weekend, I heard President Gore on NPR’s Fresh Air and discovered that he had recently done an SNL skit on that very premise. Yes, this had probably been all over the internet the past few weeks and I just missed it. If you did too, you can catch the video at Crooks and Liars.com.

Rosa Brooks has rapidly become one of my favorite UVA writers and columnists. Her biography is formidable: lecturer at Yale, worked in the State Department during the Clinton years, served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA, term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. She’s smart. And right.

She recently wrote an article for the L.A. Times, reprinted on Common Dreams, titled “Bush’s $15-a-Barrel Blunder“. Here’s an excerpt:

If the U.S. is truly concerned about energy security, we should shift from a foreign policy that alternates incoherently between selective inattention and sudden spurts of bullying to a foreign policy based on engagement, transparency and the promotion of genuinely democratic political and economic development. If we can’t do that, we’d better get used to bicycling to work.

You should read the whole article here.

As always, Waldo and his band of loyal readers have an interesting discussion going on regarding the VA primaries. I sympathize with Waldo’s frustration, but I also agree with the point that a well-fought primary campaign only makes the candidate a better campaigner and better prepared for the real fight. If you think things are nasty now, wait until our guy goes up against George Allen…(shudder).

You can see a pretty good “debate” video of Harris Miller and Jim Webb here.