Some Wednesday Reads

This is Hilarious!

The Power of Oprah

Why the Primary Election is Gonna be a Close One

Hillary went Wild at Wellesley--Well, Not Really

Craig is Playing Footsy with the Idea of Staying

The Stuff Bruins are Made of

The Internets Is Taking Over

This blog has a facebook group now. Join it.

What is the Democratic Foreign Policy Debate all About?

This is required reading. No, really.

In a related article, The New Republic laments the rise of the liberal realists.

Oh Yeah, I Forgot

We beat up on Stanford Saturday.



We moved up to #14 in the AP poll that came out today, and #13 in the coaches poll.

See you all Saturday at 3:30 at the Rose Bowl home opener for BYU. If you can't make it out, it will be on "Versus" the channel formerly known as "OLN".

Quote of the Day

"Iowa, for good reason, for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord, should be the first caucus and primary."
-Governor Bill Richardson in another wtf? moment, this time in Sioux City, Iowa.

Is there a Parallel Between Gore 2000 and Edwards 2008?

Vanity Fair's Evegina Peretz penned a great analysis of how the media contributed to the downfall of Gore's 2000 presidential run. She ultimately arrives to an interesting question: will the media manage to knockoff John Edwards' primary campaign in the same way that they managed to knockoff Gore's 2000 campaign?

Weighing the Surge

The Washington Post weighs the success and failure of the surge. I'll let you be the judge.

Edwards picks up major union endorsements

Fitting that on Labor Day, John Edwards picked up the official endorsements from both the United Steelworkers (USW) and the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA).

But perhaps even more key than those endorsements, remember last month's AFL-CIO debate? The most memorable moment was not something any of the candidates said, but what former steelworker Steve Skvara said about his wife's health care. He appeared on Hardball the next day with Chris Matthews. At the time, he hadn't chosen a candidate yet. See the interview here.




Well, a month later, Steve has most definitely made up his mind. This is from Monday morning's rally where Edwards got the union endorsements.

"There arose a young man whose family came from the mills. And he stood with working people his whole life. And I believe in this man. And I believe what he can do for our country."

Ok I Need Discussion On This One

Do we classify this in the bogus right wing attack category, by saying he needs to be driven around in cars like this? An excuse similar to the candidates needing to take private jets to campaign events. Or do we simply call him out for his "do as I say, not as I do" bad logic? Is this another inconsistency between Edwards actions and his rhetoric?

It wasn't so long ago that the Republican speaker got caught in a similar situation.

I am really not trying to expose a bad story here, I want to hear what everyone thinks of this.

Some Tuesday Reads

Exacting Donors Reshape College Giving

Bremer Fights Bush's Accusations in Dead Certain

U.S. Intelligence Agencies use Facebook and Wikipedia as Models for Information-Sharing

9/11 Lawsuits Will get Their Day in Court

As Support Lags, Colleges Tack on Student Fees

NYT Takes a Look at Hillary's Iowa Rhetoric

And, of course, An Analysis of Obama's Labor Day Rhetoric

George Skelton Weighs in on the CA GOP Power Grab

Republicans Don't Know who to Vote for

Some OC History For You LA Folk

Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall both were apart of this case seven years before Brown v. Board of Education. I had the honor of meeting Sylvia Mendez a couple of years ago. This is some Southern California history we should all know and be proud of. Make sure you go get the stamp! It comes out on September 14th.

Read the wiki on the case here.

McCain--Still not the Right Guy for the Job

Not to kick a guy when he's down, but John McCain is still falling terribly short of impressing anybody. The New Yorker followed McCain around for a day, and nearly everything he had to say to the magazine represented exactly what the country doesn't want right now: a leader who mistakes tough decisions for easy ones.

When asked "Is Iraq a hard call?", McCain responded, "I think it’s not that hard, because I have had no doubt. It hasn’t been a struggle within me."

That kind of self-assured tone about Iraq sounds awfully familiar. It also makes me wonder whether the senator has given serious thought to the matter. I suspect that even the most confident neoconservatives question the wisdom of their ideology from time to time. Apparently, the senator never had a moment of doubt, which suggests that he couldn't have possibly fully considered the weight of the decision to commit the United States to nation-building.

Americans, not just Democrats, want someone with gravitas to secede President Bush. After all, eight years of unthinking hubris is quite enough.

Some Monday Reads

Clinton Says she's the Candidate of Experience and Change

More on Dead Certain

Bush Makes a Visit to the Troops in Iraq

It's a three day weekend, kids. My apologies for only three reads, but I gotta bounce.

A New Book on the Bush Presidency

Bob Woodward gave Americans unprecedented access into the post-9/11 Bush White House with his Bush at War book series. This Tuesday, we'll get another look inside with Robert Draper's new book, Dead Certain.

Much like Woodward's books, Dead Certain is based on hours of interviews with adminstration officials and the president himself. The New York Times hints that the book will touch on the sorrow and optimism of the Bush presidency.

"The transcripts and the book show Mr. Bush as being keenly interested in what history will say about his term despite his frequent comments to the contrary; as being in a reflective mode as his time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue dwindles; and, ultimately, as being at once sorrowful and optimistic — but virtually alone as commander in chief, and aware of it."

This looks like it will be required reading for Bush's critics and supporters alike. We're looking forward to the debate.

CA-42: Rise of the bloggers

Next door to us in Orange County, an unheard of thing is now happening. A blogger is running for Congress. Not a politician who started blogging because that's the new medium, but an honest to God regular ol' blogger who finally decided he had enough, and with a great group of fellow blogging friends, took the jump and became a candidate. His name is Ron Shepston, and he's running against one of the most corrupt Republicans (and that's saying quite a lot) in Congress, Gary Miller.

Back in July, we had a series of diaries gradually rolling out the announcement on DailyKos, using the combined forces of some of the top bloggers living in Southern California. Here are the diaries from that time for everyone to read up on the candidate, the movement, the opponent, and the lay of the land.

Previous diaries in the CA-42 campaign rollout series:
7/15: thereisnospoon's CA-42: A Kossack is running for Congress
7/16: atdnext's CA-42: The Case Against Dirty Gary Miller
7/17: Major Danby's CA-42: I'm managing a netroots U.S. House campaign
7/18: CanYouBeAngryAndStillDream's CA-42: Hi, I'm Ron Shepston and I'm running for Congress
7/19: hekebolos's CA-42: A Netroots campaign-- politics the way it should be.
7/20: dday's CA-42: The Lay of the Land
7/21: OrangeClouds115's CA-42: "I Know His Heart"
7/22: Shockwave's CA-42: Ron Shepston rides into a Republican stronghold
7/23: Major Danby's CA-42: The DCCC knows us, reads us, and likes us
7/24: Major Danby's CA-42: On YearlyKos, anger, and dreams
7/25: thereisnospoon's Get Off the Internet!
7/26: buhdydharma's Help Save This Baby! **
7/27: clammyc's CA-42, 2008 and the netroots: a jumping off point

What everyone here should know is that some of the key braintrust behind Ron's campaign are recent UCLA grads. A few weeks ago, L.A. City Beat did an excellent profile of the campaign and its genesis, putting three UCLA grads from the Class of 2003 as the main photo for the piece.

More than a year ago at Canter’s Deli, a group of political bloggers met to celebrate the arrival of a friend from New York City. The occasion: Their friend, Adam Lambert, was the first recommended diarist on DailyKos, a big deal on the political blog that currently boasts about a half million hits a day. All attending were regular DailyKos posters who had become friends after sharing their ideas about the Democratic Party. It was meant to be a pleasant evening, but a sore spot came up fast.

Everybody present believed in the idea of the “50-state strategy” espoused by 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean: Campaign everywhere, and build the Democratic Party by winning elections. As progressive Democrats, each had made this idea the hub of their political platform; but nobody had announced a candidacy for the 42nd Congressional district that covers much of Orange County. Would entrenched Republican incumbent Gary Miller run unopposed again? The bloggers felt their beliefs were at stake, and an atmosphere of collective frustration hung over the celebration.

Then somebody remembered a little detail. He turned to Ron Shepston, the athlete in the crowd, the pink-faced engineer with username “CanYouBeAngryAndStillDream,” and asked a not-so-innocent question.

“Ron, don’t you live in Orange?”

Tired of just typing away their concerns, the bloggers went home from the get-together with an idea that would put their political talents to the test: They would nominate one of their own. Shepston was going to run for Congress in 2008.

....

His campaign is managed by Greg Diamond – username “Major Danby” – a lawyer from Chicago and, at the moment, the only paid staff member. His team is a ragtag collection of enthusiastic volunteers with a flair for writing, a strong commitment to the Democratic Party, and a fondness for odd usernames such as “thereisnospoon,” “hekebolos,” “Shockwave,” “OrangeClouds115,” “occams hatchet,” “dday,” and “clammyc.”

Two of Shepston’s most ardent supporters are brothers David and Dante Atkins. Both graduated from UCLA with degrees in Latin and Greek and later founded their own research company, the Pollux Group Inc. Padding around in their comfortable apartment off the Miracle Mile, they pause thoughtfully before offering their positions in the company. David, 26, is president, and Dante, 25, is vice-president. Both are quick to dismiss the prevailing myths about bloggers.

“Our political opposition – and this comes from both entrenched Democrats and Republicans – like to perpetuate this frame of sorts that we’re all young punks sitting in our mother’s basement who have no political experience or professional expertise,” said Dante. By contrast, for example, David Atkins (whose username, “thereisnospoon,” references The Matrix) has parlayed his Internet reputation into editorships on other political community blogs and invitations to exclusive press conferences.

....

“The party’s getting better, partly due to pressure from people like us,” David Atkins said, “but by and large there’s still this thing where people believe, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that Americans are going to be scared off if a Democratic candidate takes democratic positions on universal healthcare, the environment, the climate crisis, Social Security, or the occupation of Iraq.”

Dean’s strategy was contrary to the dominant Democratic practice of “triangulation,” in which candidates tried to position themselves as simply being more moderate than the Republicans – and, even then, to only campaign in swing districts where winning was more likely.

The result, as David Atkins put it, is that “nobody knew what the Democratic Party stood for anymore, because we spent so long triangulating away from anything we believed in.”

Hopefully the Bruin Democrats can get Ron to come out to an event or meeting later this year. I know he'd be very enthusiastic about it, and there will most definitely be volunteer opportunities in his campaign for us to really sink our teeth into in the next 14 months. For now, you can add him as a friend on Facebook.