...for Obama supporters I've ever seen.

PLEASE UNRECOMMEND THIS DIARY and recommend Seneca Doane's phonebanking diary.  Let's keep the liveblog going.

You sit here and just hit F5, again and again, over and over.  You post a pootie pic, or make a relevant point, or HR someone, and think you've done your part.  You sit on your asses and think that by posting in this big orange echo chamber you've made a difference in this election.*

You know how I know that?  Because I do it too.

I'm committed to change.  Are you?

(Caution: Rant.)

If Clinton supporters can't take DailyKos, how are they supposed to be able to function if, as they hope, Hillary Clinton manages to kneecap Obama, convince the superdelegates that he's crippled, and get the nomination?

If they can't take the relatively mild criticism they get at dailykos, by people who want the best for the Democratic Party, how are they going to handle the much harsher criticism the Swiftboating Republicans dish out in the fall?

You pissed off Grandma.

Obama's grandmother: No more dirty tricks

"Untruths are told that don't have anything to do with what Barack is about," she said in the local Luo language, her gray hair smoothed neatly under a headwrap. "I am very against it."

UNRECOMMEND THIS THREAD!  Go to the Part III thread here.

This is the second thread.  No text because I have to be fast.  Here's a link to the first one.

For those with television, the dinner's on C-SPAN.

For those in the Washington DC Metro area, it's on C-SPAN radio at 90.1 FM on your radio dial.  Does anyone use actual dials anymore?

For those wanting to stream the dinner, the Windows Media stream seems to be down, but the bloatware RealPlayer stream can be found here.

A year ago tonight, I was in Los Angeles celebrating among friends the life and legacy of Robert Burns, the quintessential Scottish poet, who would have been a ripe 349 years old today had he not tragically passed away at the age of 37.  For the uninitiated, Burns is generally celebrated with a rousing Burns supper on his birthday, January 25, featuring haggis, other traditional Scottish foods, Burns's poetry, and (of course) a great deal of Scotch whisky.

Last evening, I was trying to figure out exactly why Bob Kerrey was being so damned stupid.  

I mean, it's one thing to engage in dog-whistle racist politics; it's another thing entirely to announce you're engaging in dog-whistle racist politics by using the term "madrassa."  The whole point of a dog-whistle is that the people aren't supposed to hear it.  Anyone with ten political brain cells to rub together could figure out that when he describes Obama's time in a "madrassa" while "complimenting" him, he's probably not appealing to the better angels of voters' natures.

So why the hell was Bob Kerrey being so damned obvious?

Then it hit me: I know how Hillary Clinton's going to try to win this thing.

(Crossposted at One Million Strong.)

"There’s a new book, and we’re gonna write it.

You can win if you run a smart, disciplined campaign, if you studiously say nothing — nothing that causes you trouble, nothing that’s a gaffe, nothing that shows you might think the wrong thing, nothing that shows you think.

But it just isn’t worthy of us [...] It isn’t worthy of us, it isn’t worthy of America, it isn’t worthy of a great nation.  We’re gonna write a new book, right here, right now. This very moment. Today."

--Jed Bartlett, "Manchester, Part II," The West Wing

I asked about this in a comment in a diary earlier, but I didn't get any answers... this could be the way out we're looking for that (a) enables Congress to make up for their capitulation on FISA, (b) secures our right to privacy, and (c) returns some semblance of balance back to our government.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm no legal beagle or Constitutional scholar, so this is really more speculation than anything else - let those who are legal beagles (and particularly those who are experts on Constitutional law) correct me if I've got this totally wrong.

Space: The Final Frontier.

Eight hundred years ago, we thought it was a system of concentric glass spheres in which the stars and planets were set by the hand of the Almighty.  One hundred fifty years ago, we thought it was filled with a mysterious substance called "ether" - the only way we could explain the transmission of light waves.

Now, we understand that it's (mostly) a vacuum - a vacuum occasionally dotted by little marbles of matter, of resources, and (occasionally) of life.  A vacuum constantly humming with background radiation, gravitational and magnetic forces, and of course the energy given by the only power plant the Earth has ever really had, the Sun.  A vacuum of infinite possibilities, infinite promise, infinite hope.

The Washington Post is reporting this morning on a memo to GOP Senators outlining the importance of the Schiavo case for the '06 election. Calling the case a "great political issue," the memo specifically targets Bill Nelson and others, saying that this issue could prove an important wedge in '06 to pull the Religious Right out to the polls. More below the fold...