Reprinted with permission

This begins a series of examinations into the kind of person Barack Obama considers to be a friend. Someone that helped to launch Barack Obama's political career. And someone whose past Barack Obama doesn't think is important anymore. Watch these videos and draw your own conclusions.

Part 1

There's more...

It is amazing how often this primary season has prompted me to haul out a spyglass to peer back into my life. A lot of the memories are soft focus now, a little more so with each passing year; but the time period from the early 60's to the end of the 70's is when I was young. And I hold the recollections of this time to be dear, shared only with intimates. I have never written about them although I am a fierce critic of those who do.

The tale of the 60's and 70's  has never been told to my satisfaction probably because I keep seeking my story, and it is never there.  I was more political than a flower child. Free love and drugs were ok, if that was your thing, and I smoked grass, especially when I went dancing; but to me this aspect of the era was more incidental than substantial. Love-ins, flower power, bell bottoms and tambourines were the trappings. The meat of  the era was Political and no song summed it up better than "Something Happening Here" by  Buffalo Springfield:  

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

The song captures an entire gestalt, the mindset of a generation not only committed to ending a war of intervention, but also determined to make the world into a better, safer, more humane place. One fit for children and animals, which was a slogan one often saw on posters.  But we were not self conscious about it. People rarely wrote things down.  No one imagined how this time in our lives would become almost mythological. We all believed the way it was is the way it would always be. I didn't write much either. In those days I was just a face in the crowd. I listened, clapped, carried signs, and cheered others. This was fine with me. I didn't aspire to more of a role. The working class part of me remained a little withheld. It took a lot for me to break the law; so many others were way ahead of me.  And yet it seems to me now, that I was there, at so many of the Big Moments.

There's more...

Cross-posted at the DailyKos

LithiumCola did a great diary this morning on Michael Moore's SICKO, and an example of some of the kinds of news articles we're seeing, and likely to keep seeing. If you haven't read it already, you oughtta. I agree with almost all of it. But I do have a little problem with this part:

So now begins the spin, the smear, the blinders from the mainstream media.  All provided in an alleged "news" piece about . . . well, about something.  

My problem? The mainstream media's a problem, but it's the wrong target here.  If you want to know how to change the puppet show we call the mainstream media, you have to go after the puppeteers.

Welcome to the wonderful world of corporate public relations.

Let's go back to the LA Times piece and see what we can learn about messing up the health insurance industry's most excellent puppet show.

We start off on the flip.

There's more...

I blogged about this on Kos, so it's a sort of, yet sort of not cross-post. I'll post in the extended part what I did in the extended there, but MyDD has the same ad up.  It's the one with the water tower stating "Keller, Home of the Indians", then stating below that:

TV Freedom will bring competition and choice to America.

The House of Representatives acted, now it's time for the Senate to finish the job.

Tell your Senator it's time for competition and choice.
Read More

So, if you click on that, you go to...

There's more...

Former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry is deceiving the public, and its making my blood boil. With this Op-Ed in the Washington Times and this one on MyDD on behalf of the telco cartel, McCurry shows himself as either willfully dishonest in the debate over Internet freedom or just plain cluesless. Now, to be clear, working as a lobbyist for telecommunications companies is fine. As he explained in a comment on MyDD, he's just paying his mortgage. What's NOT fine is that he's misrepresenting the fight. McCurry is pretending to uphold the Clinton legacy on the internet.From MyDD:

I joined the effort opposing regulated net neutrality because, contrary to what you write, it's absolutely consistent with the Clinton Administration's policies toward the Internet. The Internet became a true mass-market medium during our eight years…These so-called "net neutrality" regulations would completely undercut this legacy.

And from the Washinton Times:

In my view, we're far better off continuing on the sound path the Clinton Administration established.

We agree we need to continue down the path of the Clinton/Gingrich years. So that’s not the issue. The issue is: Who in this debate stands on the side of the Clinton legacy of a free and open Internet where the little guy can turn a small idea into a big idea online? The giant telecom cartel? Not exactly. You see, what McCurry did not tell the public was that during the Clinton years, the FCC actively enforced net neutrality — the Internet’s First Amendment – against his telecom clients. Common carrier statutes have in fact been a bedrock principle of telecommunications law since 1934, and in 1996 Congress ratified that with a commitment to network neutrality. Yet less than a year ago, in August, 2005, the Clinton -Gingrich policy of enforced network neutrality was radically upended by the FCC:

The FCC said that phone companies such as Verizon, SBC, BellSouth, Qwest and other local telcos will no longer be regulated by traditional telephone rules when it comes to their DSL broadband services.  The FCC agreed unanimously to classify DSL broadband as an "information service" rather than a telephone service. Phone companies will no longer be required open their broadband networks to access by third-party ISPs.

After a one-year transition period, the phone companies can arbitrarily end any agreements they were forced to make with independent ISPs. During the transition year, the ISPs can attempt to negotiate new deals, but the cards are all in the hands of the telcos.

In other words, you know all that nice Clinton-Gingrich policy that made the internet work?  Yeah, after a one year transition period, that's gone, as a sort of sunset provision for the free internet sets.  This is incredibly sneaky.  What McCurry is doing is couching a radical change to the internet in the guise of the status quo.

McCurry knows that due to the actions of the industry he represents, we are in the waning months of the Clinton/Gingrich-era internet, where telcos are forced to treat everyone fairly. In three months, we won't be there anymore unless Congress passes Net Neutrality legislation. It's funny how the telcos want Congress to cement the FCC’s radical change to the Clinton/Gingrich era into the law while no one's looking – all while pretending others are advocating such radical change. And McCurry's treatment of this fact is simplistic and gallingly deceptive.

The Internet, now in its adolescence, is healthy and growing nicely. There is not even the slightest hint of illness... Having government now step in to administer treatments would be bad bureaucratic medicine.

That is absolutely false. The government did step in, a year ago, and the changes are going to take effect in three months. In other words, if we do not revert back to the Clinton-Gingrich policies that protected network neutrality, the free internet as we know it has three months to live.

Now, Mike McCurry is a nice and a smart guy, and I have a lot of respect for him and his communications skills. The problem is that here he's operating in bad faith. He might just be lying, or he might be just too clueless to know any better.  It doesn't really matter; McCurry just shouldn't be involved in public policy in this area.  Anyone who pretends that a massive giveaway to anti-competitive private interests is somehow a continuation of the status quo is not fit to responsibly create policy around something as vital as the internet.

There's more...