odyssey

"Can opener to top of beer can makes a great ashtray!" - kyle m'ccaterbear.

we will now begin our odyssey, jetting to Jersey and then training to the capitol of our united nation of fifty states and countless territories and bona fide bombing areas.

we will be encountering Wobs. sunday i will hold in my hands the tickets that will take the Wobs family and I to see Barry Obama inaugurated as top guy.

alarms

this is the way a world could end.
so help me cripes. if one more shoe drops, i'm moving to Birmingham faster n' you can say 'emo kid.'

Headline: Heavy coffee drinkers 'more likely to hallucinate

Drinking my morning cup a joe, I was perusing the star trib, looking for new tidbits on the Franken/Coleman contest, and I saw this article:

Heavy coffee drinkers are more likely to have hallucinations or feel "the presence of dead people," according to new research.

A UK-based study quizzed 200 students on their caffeine intake and found those with the highest consumption were also more prone to report seeing, or hearing, things that were not there.

I didn't find anything new on Franken...but I am fairly confident that he has won and will be seated, but I could be hallucinating...

Hilary Hearing (not very live) Comment Zone...

I am not able to live blog the hearing, but watching the hearing so far... it has been a snoozer...

Did hear some serious crap re: defense of Israel's recent war crimes....not surprised...

anyone else have a comment that must be voiced? Have at it...will check in periodically to update...

BHO from Pres-Elect to Pres

John Nichols has a darling piece for the Progressive that joins works by Adolph Reed and Doug Henwood in the canon of the left-Obama-critics. Nichols falls out with the latter two - if only as a matter of tone - with his insistence that Obama is at heart - if not in deed - "a progressive.*" Due to the ideological vagaries of American political culture, and the slings and arrows of electoral politics, Nichols believes Obama will gravitate towards centrism (maybe re-frame it as "post-political" or plain "pragmatism") and carry out what some have called "compensatory neoliberalism," or a plodding, market-based liberal reformism. But, but...Nichols contends that Obama, thinking as he does (progressively) and being who he is (a progressive), could be leveraged into behaving "progressively" by the Left - were the Left to mobilize, enunciate, get its shit together, etc.

Does this sound like an obvious point, one that you've made in your own heads 1,000 times? Absolutely. But sometimes it's nice to see your thoughts grafted onto someone else's voice. Well, it is for me at least. Great artcl, but given its 'self-evident' nature there's no blurb I can find that doesn't seem almost redundant, given the OG demographic. Anyway, it's bigger than the sum of its pieces and joints.

*In light of this blurbless link and my blurb about it, a question?

1) Does the term "progressive" denote a discrete set of ideologies/practices/texts in Barack Obama's USA 2009? If so, can we isolate some of those keystones?

2) Bonus question: how does the socialist wing of the Democratic Party feel about the Progressive Democrats of America? Do we get into Trot-style# ideologiko-rumbles? Or are we chums just like Lucy and Ethel? Obviously we know where the Trots for Romney come down on this one.

# Let me apologize. That link is horrid. 'Looks like a Maoist critique of les Trots, but it feels like an anthropological curiosity if you're me, which you aren't, so that link is unfair. Avoid it.

Hillary

Too bad I'm not in a place where I can live-blog tomorrow's Clinton confirmation hearings. Le politico reminds us to pay particular attention to the Kerry/Clinton interface:

While unlikely to be acrimonious, this exchange – tinged with the awkwardness most familiar to the high school prom court – is on the list for reasons of pure spectacle.

To wit: Kerry wanted to be president. Then Clinton wanted to be president. Then Kerry wanted Obama to be president. Then Obama became president. Then Kerry wanted to be secretary of state. But Obama wanted Clinton to be secretary of state. This all sets the stage for Tuesday’s confirmation hearing, where the back-and-forth will be finely parsed for any evidence of recriminations.

Or maybe Kerry will eliminate the need for such parsing by asking, “Why you and not me?”

More Solis

More reason for optimism that "greening"/stimulus/EFCA might could be integrated into a whole, big, New Deal 2-ish package: green Jobs jedi (and Ginger endorsee) Van Jones says, Hilda Solis = "not crap."

I'll See Yr Right-Wing HateJob and Raise You a Gay Whiskeypalian

Ezra Klein on the president-elect's decision to include the openly gay Rev. Gene Robinson in the Rick Warren-laced inaugural pageant:

This is, incidentally, why it's useful for progressives to criticize the president. Politicians respond to incentives. To noise. To anger. Warren, on some level, was a response to the loud protestations of evangelicals who believed the Democratic Party had no place for them. It's hard to see Robinson is anything but a response to progressive activists who sense that Obama was more willing to risk cross those who supported him than those who opposed him. Erase the anger from either side and it's not worth Obama -- or any president -- taking the risk to placate them. But this is a step in the right direction. This is genuinely inclusive. If it was the plan all along, the Obama administration sure did a good job keeping the secret. And if it wasn't, then equality activists have something to be proud of this morning. They changed the incentives.

Overheard on Twitter

Fantasy Island had that crap right: "careful what you wish for" is the ultimate frame for the Revenge Movie that is this life.

[micro-blogging is like blog-bonsai. and twitter is off the chain if you know the right people.]