Just as Michael Bloomberg seems to be getting more serious about a potential third-party presidential bid, Unity 08 -- which looked to be the natural vehicle for a bid by the NYC Mayor -- is scaling down it's operations.

"At the current moment, we don't have enough members or enough money to take the next step toward achieving ballot access in 50 states, reaching the goal of establishing our online convention, and nominating a Unity ticket for president and vice president this coming fall."

The full letter from Unity 08's board of directors follows below.

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One of the most ridiculous things about the Unity 08 "movement" this past year, which in my mind encompasses the fascination with Michael Bloomberg, the whole DC Brooks/Broder/Klein punditry set as well as the actual lame online Republican/Democrat Unity 08 ticket thing, is that it seems to exist in a world without Barack Obama. Like his message or not, Obama has been remarkably consistent ever since his 2004 convention speech: "there are no red states or blue states, we are the United States..." What is the purpose of Unity 08 if not that?

But no, the movement seems to think it's filling some void. Barack Obama to them is just another partisan Democrat. To them, someone who changes parties out of political opportunism and leaves that party because it's crazy is some sign of virtuous independence, as is being forced out of a party by an embarrassing primary defeat and endorsing a presidential candidate of an opposing party, breaking a pledge he'd made to voters of his state. To them, bringing a Republican and a Democrat together on a ticket is in itself a revolutionary act of unity, no matter who those people are, apparently, certainly moreso than getting behind a progressive candidate with a D next to his name.

You see, no matter how unifying Obama's message, he breaks the cardinal rule of what a "unity" Democrat has to be: a Bush enabler, not a Bush critic. But now that voting has actually begun and Obama is turning his post-partisan message into electoral victory in at least one state, likely more, I hope the pundits for whom partisan bickering is the worst thing afflicting Washington will realize there is a candidate who on some level, anyway, speaks for them even though {gasp!} he's a Democrat. Also, I hope it will lead Bloomberg to end his flirtation with a presidential run; Bloomberg could make a case that he fills a void if the candidates nominated on both sides are partisan warriors, say Clinton and Romney, but if Obama wins the nomination and Bloomberg and the rest of the Unity 08 crowd continue to parrot the same "partisan bickering has to end" crap, their so-called movement will be revealed to be as hollow as they claim bitter partisanship itself is.

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Sam Waterston, who is getting a promotion to DA on Law And Order next season thanks to Fred Thompson's run for president (or whatever,) appeared on Hardball on Tuesday to once again push this whole Unity 08 idea, that two random people will be chosen by folks on the internet, regardless of party, and it will be some sort of non-partisan love fest. Have you heard, partisanship is bad, because Sam Waterston says so. In fact, it's so bad that it led us right into Iraq.

Waterston:

Here's the thing about Iraq that I think is really important to say and that is that the Iraq situation that we are in now is a direct outgrowth of this kind of winner take all head to head take no prisoners politics that we've been having and that if there had been more attention to consensus before we went in we might not be in this pickle now.

It boggles the mind. Well, credit where credit is due, Chris Matthews did not let that go and called Waterston out on his ridiculous claim, and really laid bare the biggest flaw in the argument of these advocates for bi-partisanship: look what it's gotten us.

Matthews:

But didn't we have a lot, we had Hillary and John Kerry and Joe Biden and John Edwards all voted to authorize the war, all these Democrats trooped over across the aisle and backed a Republican president when he told us we had to go to war with a country that hadn't attacked us. If the system is broken, isn't it broken because there's too much consensus?

Nice.

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I haven't paid a great deal of attention to Unity 08's brand of "non-partisan" bullshit -- anyone whose stated goal is to get beyond blind partisanship but seems to think Joe Lieberman is just dandy is pretty obviously full of it. But today a friend of mine pointed something out to me. One of the founders council of Unity 08 is Tom Stroock the former U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala (1989-93) who is notorious in some circles for his outrageous treatment of Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was abducted, raped and tortured by a right-wing goon squad in Guatemala in 1989.

Even though Stoock later provided a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights investigating the case which indicated that he had seen through his "own personal observation, that [Sister Ortiz] was seriously beaten and mistreated", he slandered her and speculated to the State Department that "(Ortiz) had perhaps staged (her) own abduction to secure a cut-off of US aid to the Guatemalan army."

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Some time ago I registered on the Unity 08 website and created my "dream ticket". Since then, despite asking not to be kept on their list, I have received periodic updates from their "campaign".

Normally I file dispatches from this bizarre little astro-turf group of ego-tripping consultants promptly in the wastebasket without giving them much of a look, but just last evening one arrived that caught my attention. It asked me to be the Captain of the Trailblazers!

Now I'm from Portland, so Trailblazers hold a special spot in my heart (DRAFT ODEN!), but this wasn't about basketball. No, it was about Unity 08's newest plan to engage these grassroots they've been hearing so much about:

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