This may sound like a good idea if it actually worked as intended-- up to a point. the fifty bucks to be directed by the voters sounds like a good idea, as does substantially increased limits on private donations, but keeping the big money secret is an invitation for creative corruption.

I'm not going to give ANYBODY a hundred grand, or even ten grand, if I can't hope to influence them, or with no means to communicate that I did so. If the big money private donations were made private, people with big money would still find a way to make known their financial directives to the politicos, but it would be outside the public eye, laundered in various ways. This is better?

And ordinary people would no longer at least know who owns their politicians-- and they'd still be owned by others.

For my part, I think quite a few of the more prominent bloggers do in fact aspire to "the big time." If you read a lot of blogs, not necessarily all that worthy an endeavor, you can catch the occasional whiff of careerism: bloggers who close ranks in discussing the democrats and scold other lefty bloggers who don't, as well as bloggers who seem to relentlessly discuss the same NY Times and Washington Post articles everybody else does, pursuing "traction" on technorati.

When you watch the local tv news, don't you ever have a sense of which of the younger reporters seem more preoccupied with being the next Stone Phillips or Katie Couric than the rest of them? I'll bet you do!

and if you want to dismiss my view as the sour grapes of a not-so prominent blogger, well, that's your privilege, although I'm mostly content doing the equivelant of the farm report.

but now that Carter is on the outs with the AIPAC types, what will perennial Gore booster Martin Peretz say?

All I know is, if Gore is waiting for more encouragement before he decides-- and I note that he hasn't ruled it out-- he better decide pretty quickly if he hopes to have a shot.

Upon reading the announcement, my partner Darcy said, "I hope the Edwards campaign knows what it's in for."

"I'm sure they do," I said.

from Arvin Hill's Carnival of Horror:

http://arvinhill.blogspot.com/2007/02/cold-turkey.html

(see the comments)

"After pondering this little dust-up, I believe the Edwards Campaign saw this as a two-fer. Props from the netroots for the hires, and when it all goes south, a Sista Souljah moment for Edwards. Even the most marginal campaign talent could've choreographed such an Aaron Spelling-ish drama... so Edwards probably hatched it himself.

Edwards is certainly calculating enough to have generated the event. The Earnest Candidate, having spun plates with his fellow entertainers, Donohue & Malken, delivered a pitch perfect FUCK YOU to the potty-mouthed, left-leaning Dem bloggers standing between him and the nomination because of his Pro-Bush, Pro-War, Pro-Death vote in The Senate. Anyone who thinks that kind of opportunity just happens probably believes in dragons and unicorns."

You say "Bob" offered you the job before Marcotte. I wonder if he would've been less likely to offer you the gig if your blog had a more sober-sounding title that would've made you less of a potential target for right-wing wrath. Please don't misunderstand me Lindsay: I'm not suggesting the tactics of persons like Donohue are acceptable, or that you need to be defensive about your blog's name; rather, I expect that Arvin's "two-fer" hypothesis is sound, and was intended to apply to you as well. Bob's lack of concern about your ongoing blogging only reinforces this.

Kohlmann says we have to stay because things will get worse if we don't, but recognizes that the civil war is happening precisely because of the US military presence, and that virtually all groups in Iraq want the US to leave.

1.Some commenters have argued for a draft, echoing Kohlmann's prescription for a soldier at every corner. Bullshit. We are already having problems with expanding the limits of the volunteer army's potential pool of able soldiers, routinely giving waivers to criminals who in turn are causing disproportionately greater harm to the reputation of the US military when they show up in Iraq. The only thing a draft will do is cause a temporary spike in college attendance and marriage statistics, and send more parolees to Baghdad.

2.In the summer of 2006 Maliki floated a reconciliation plan for securing a peace, which included amnesty for insurgents. Would it have worked? We'll never know because immediately, two democratic(!) senators-- Barbara Boxer and Carl Levin, cried wolf, saying the US wouldn't back any plan that absolved persons who had killed US troops. Maliki quickly backed down and neutered his proposal.

The reluctance to acknowledge that maybe the US is the problem, that we might in fact be the obstacle to peace, is very human, and understandable. But completely wrongheaded.

Birkenhead observed that Junior and Oprah may have more in common than they realize: the president has often been described as projecting all sorts of qualities onto others, such as describing Al Gore as a liar, etc.

Well. I can't help but wonder if Oprah buys into all this mumbo-jumbo out of unacknowledged guilt over how big she has made it, as it's easier to do that than to believe that one has been somewhat arbitrarily rewarded when others, equally deserving, haven't been so lucky.

Maybe someone else already made this observation in the comments, after all, it's an easy pop psych call-- I'm afraid I don't have time to read them all and check, because I have to go read Think and Grow Rich, or chant, or something.