All right, ENOUGH already.  The candidate advocacy has long passed this Beltway native’s capacity for political spectatorship.  We have two acceptable candidates.  Neither one is perfect.  Neither one goes nearly as far as I would like, and both are beholden to some questionable influences.  Still, they’re both light-years beyond the best the Republicans can or will run, i.e., the "moderate", "maverick" John McCain, regardless of who he gets saddled with as running mate (which would matter if he were to be elected, due to his age – but he isn’t going to get elected).  As the vangard of progressive pressure, it’s time for us to move on and get working on the NEXT big problem.  Not how to get elected.  What we are going to DO once elected.  We have to prepare, not to campaign, but to rule.

It’s obvious that the U.S. economy is a fast-sinking ship.  With the Fed making its second major interest-rate cut in less than two weeks, it’s also obvious that the U.S. currency will be sent to the laundry in order to rescue the titans of our virtually unregulated financial system who have once again (remember the Latin American debt crisis?  The Dot.com Bust?) pushed themselves – and with them our entire financial structure – out on a shaky limb in search of ever-more-fantastical profits.    The pitiful remnants of value represented by the American dollar are being marked to market.   We realize that not only have individuals borrowed money they couldn’t afford to repay in order to chase ever-more-expensive housing, but our nation as a whole is as deeply in debt as the average single mom with three kids and a deadbeat ex.  The financial wheels of our great Sole Superpower are greased, like those of every superpower in history, by Federal Funding.  And deficit spending.  And when in the course of human events, deficit spending becomes uncontrollable, we become faced with the problem of Sovereign Insolvency.

Academic anthropologists and sociologists are unanimous these days in assuring us that human beings are an innately social species that requires, nay, CRAVES the company of other human beings.  And, of course, evolutionary theory assumes that the ultimate purpose of all this gregariousness is the continuation of our genes through the act of reproduction; thus sexual ecstasy is the ultimate experience of joy and its purpose, the production of babies and lengthy nurturing thereof, is the end-all and be-all of an ordinary mortal’s existence, at least those of us who don’t wear thousand-dollar suits and carry nuclear code briefcases.  

Much ado is made by Democratic leadership and strategists of the need to cultivate voters who are not committed Democrats.  Every program proposed by the "left wing", every advertisement by MoveOn.org, is countered with a wail that "we"must avoid alienating these uncommitted moderates, these working-class and union backers, these social conservatives and paleolithic patriots, who must be courted with proposals that are, above all, not too Radical.  There’s just one little problem with this strategy, about which I think perhaps the Democratic leadership needs more information.  The problem is, it’s WRONG.  I should know, because I’m one of those people who will never, ever allow themselves to be labeled as Democrats.  Liberal, maybe.  Radical, far more likely.  Independent, always.  NOT a Democrat.  Where I come from, that’s like saying you’ve given up the right to think for yourself.

With carbon-offsets turning up everywhere in the chic set, it’s not surprising that mainstream organs from Business Week to the LA Times are doing articles questioning – OF COURSE – the real versus the mythical value of such offsets.  After all, our corporate masters don’t want their convenient "externalities" turned into real costs to eat away at their almighty Profits, and even voluntarily offsetting the cost of their carbon emissions begins to look suspiciously like a Tax if it becomes a necessity of maintaining public respectability.  But lo!  It’s not enough for the Ownership Class to balk at paying their fair share towards cleaning up the mess they are making of this planet.   Hither, thither, and yon as I researched my own carbon consumption, I found that the REAL opponents of carbon offsets not necessarily the Evil Corporate Empires ... they are in fact our own most strident compatriots, those for whom no solution short of Total Commitment can ever be enough ...

Let me start by saying that the Michael Vicks incident intrigues me.  Day after day, here on Kos, we lament the studied distractions of the MSM which elevate trivial activities and sins of "celebrities" notable only for their vast media exposure over the real and serious matters of national and international importance.  Nevertheless, given the opportunity to obsess over the sins of a football player, what hits the Kos headlines day after day?  You guessed it.

Do I approve of Vicks' actions?  Hell, no, of course not.  I even admit to prefering several of the discussions to ever-more bash and counter-bash on the merits of a Hillary candidacy.  Vicks' case allows us to discuss the day to day weighing of ethical choices, relative equality of crimes and punishment, the importance of compassion and the continuing influence of archaic concepts of human superiority and the Chain of Being in the post-Enlightenment era.  Stroszek has recently written a fine diary here prompted by his reaction to articles appearing on the HuffingtonPost, and rather than subject you’all to an obscenely long comment, I thought it might be better to tackle my response in a separate diary.