Thanks for this. I am a descendant of the "Pilgrims," but I am also an anthropologist. Last year, I read Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower," which is pretty frank about the interactions between Pilgrim and Native, although still from the English POV.

So thanks for the link to this speech.

Aloha,
Bob in HI

There are a number of big differences between being a Senator and being the SoS:

(1) Being a senator gives one a certain amount of independence; you can publicly take a stance for a strategy different from the president's. As SoS, Hillary would have to resort to leaking, in order to oppose any administration policy she does not like.

(2) Being a senator does not require much executive experience. But an SoS needs many new skills to run the huge bureaucracy at State. And what executive experience does Hillary have? Look at how she ran her presidential campaign, and how she managed her health care task force back in the early years of Bill's administration: Both were fraught with problems that ultimately thwarted her main objective.

If I were Hillary, I'd stay in the Senate.

Bob in HI  

The racism inherent in the current campaign has been a very under-reported issue. David Broder recently was drunk with DC Kool-Aid when he giddily lauded John McCain for not stooping to run a racist campaign. I think he needs a remedial course in Post-Modern Deconstruction.

The Nadir of the campaign for me came when Palin apparently said, looking out over a sea of white faces, "He doesn't think like we do." It doesn't take too much candlepower to guess who "we" are.

The only depressing thing is that, although the majority of whites who believe that is shrinking, its still a majority. "He doesn't think like we do" was an important reason that Jesse Jackson didn't do better than he did in his run for the presidency. Obama was very skillful at showing himself as one who is not threatening, and who has been able to capture a sense of the way that we as a nation do, in fact, think.

McCain-Palin represent the last gasp of WASP domination. Obama's strategy of a trans-racial campaign was brilliant. I will be quite interested to see the ethnic & racial breakdown of the national vote tomorrow.

Bob in HI

Y'know, I thought I heard him say, "My fellow prisoners" in the debate yesterday, as well. Or some other live clip I saw recently.

Maybe his campaign staff is making him feel all cooped up-- like-- a prisoner?

Reminds me of the all-too-brief TV series by Patrick McGoohan-- The Prisoner--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisone r
where life has the appearance of normalcy, but in fact there is no escape. Maybe John can identify...

Bob in HI

So Campbell Brown is an independent thinker? Who knew?

Bob in HI

I think they hit Clark because they fear him, more than anyone else, as Obama's VP. I'm one of those who thinks that Clark would be an excellent choice.

Put Clark against McCain on military issues, and see who comes out looking like a fool.

Bob in HI

McSame should not only have to define victory, but to actually demonstrate awareness of the meaning of "Pyrrhic" victory, and how it differs from his idea of victory in Iraq. Like, how many Americans died in the World Trade Center on 9/11? And how many Americans (let alone Iraqis) have already died as a result of our invasion and occupation of Iraq?

There was a widely circulated photo from the Florida Everglades a few months ago showing the "victory" of a large python over an alligator: The python had managed to swallow the alligator, but in its death throes, the alligator's hind legs ripped open the python's belly, and both died. But the python won... didn't it?

"Victory" ain't all its cracked up to be.

Bob in HI

Whatever you do, don't forget Molly Ivins' suggestion to keep the number of planks specific, but small. Remember what she wrote? Democrats love to advocate for their 49 favorite issues, and the result is that no one can remember what they are.

Our local Progressive Democrats of Hawaii group chose 5 several years ago:

Stop the war!
Healthcare for all
Impeach Bush & Cheney!
Public funding of elections
Sustainable environment

with the acronym, S.H.I.P.S.

That's what we need nationally: no more than 5 planks, with short easy to remember titles.

Bob in HI

""You did not break a single rule and you should not be punished for matters beyond your control," Clinton told the crowd.

(What she didn't say was that the state parties in both Florida and Michigan broke national party rules by moving up their primaries on the election calendar.)"

Hillary is right, in a sense: the public didn't break the rules. But the superdelegates from FL & MI did break the rules, and therefore should be deprived of their votes. This whole mess is their fault. BTW, "emptywheel" over at FireDogLake wrote a detailed proposal about this, so I don't get any credit for the idea.

I don't think HIllary should be rewarded for being willing to break every rule in the book in order to stitch enough votes together to "win" the primaries. I used to be a Hillary Clinton/Jesse Jackson "liberal", but I don't like what she has become in the past 2 years or so. Her high negatives will only galvanize the remnants of the Republican party, so I think that her claims to "electability" are somewhat specious.

Bob in HI

I am all for making Joe Lieberman irrelevant, but consider this: Progressive Punch gives him a 79.76 rating for '07-'08, placing him 46th among current Senators. If you want to throw darts, throw them at Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, or the inexplicable Tim Johnson. In fact, darling Barack Obama, at 82.77, rates only a few places higher than Lieberman. Even when the "chips are down," Lieberman rates as high or higher than those unholy 5. The real puzzle is Tim Johnson. What is he, or his staff, thinking?

http://progressivepunch.org/members.jsp? member=HI1&search=selectScore&ch amber=Senate&zip=&x=25&y=9

Bob in HI

This is just so perfect because it communicates that the Republicans have decided what you deserve, and intend to give it to you. It has a decidedly paternalistic tone.

Note that it is not necessarily the change you want. In fact, it could be said with contempt, as in "You SOBs, you're so stupid that you deserve a Fascist State, and we're going to give it to you!"

Blergh. I think I need a stomach pump.

Bob in HI

"According to the exit polls, AA turnout was 13% (11% Democrat/2% Independent)."

Geez, I just figured out that "AA" means African-Americans, not Alcoholics Anonymous.

Still, I'd like to know the exit poll numbers on alcoholics anonymous, but then I guess they wouldn't be anonymous, would they?

Bob in HI

Jerome,
I'd like to accommodate your request in the opening paragraph, but I'm a bit confused by what you want the focus to be.

I've been on MyDD for several years, so I'm no stranger. I've also been to Israel/Palestine, though it was in 1967 when things were a lot different. I was also on both sides of the border, visiting with a Jewish scholar at Hebrew University and his family, as well as living in an Arab village during an archaeological excavation, during which I had an Arab crew.

Your title, "Two State Solution" is really a misnomer, because in Israeli politics that usually means Israel and Palestine as the two states. So what you're really discussing here is a THREE-state solution.

From my historical perspective, the Israeli Government has, over the past 40 years, embarked on a program of chopping and dicing the Palestinian territories into smaller and smaller pieces, in a divide-and-conquer strategy. Splitting Gaza off from the West Bank only aids and abets this policy.

Carter's book says it all. Why should we be supporting apartheid anywhere in the world, much less in Palestine? The real solution is and must be a One state solution based on one vote per adult person.

But for MyDD, the question really should be why has American Political Discourse been closed to free debate for the past half century? Why is debate about Israel and Palestine less free here than it is in Israel itself? Why have we allowed a few Israeli lobbies to hijack the ground rules of free speech?

Let's take Howard Dean, ca. 2004. He had the temerity to suggest that American policy towards Israel and Palestine should be fair and balanced. The shrieking that resulted was far louder and more sustained than Dean's own famous "scream". Dean actually had to retract his proposal to be "fair" in his dealings with Israel and Palestine. So apparently it is no longer American to be fair and balanced.

American politics needs to be freed from the clutches of Republican Neocons, and from Israeli Neocons. Debate in the U.S. media should be at least as free as it is in Ha'aretz.

Bob in HI

Yeah, mollusk, we might call this the "election-year shift", except it was last year. So, its fair game for progressives to target these chameleons with Democratic challengers.

But part of the point, to me, is that perhaps these 11 are among the least likely to "stand by their man" when it comes to an impeachment vote.

Bob in HI

Thanks, georgep, for help with the link. Yes, actually among the current candidates, the most progressive, according to PP's ratings, is Hilary Clinton:

Senator Clinton 91.29     16/100
Senator Obama     88.76     24/100
Rep. Kucinich     87.42    121/432
Senator Dodd     86.57     28/100
Senator Biden     84.26     31/100

Ha! I bet you didn't know that Clinton and Obama are both more progressive than Kooch! But what really bothers me in Clinton's record are her votes in two areas tracked by PP:

War & Peace
(17 subcategories)     80.30     39/100(T)
Human Rights & Civil Liberties
(9 subcategories)     82.22     30/ 99(T)

These are Clinton's "least progressive" issues, and I give these issues more weight. These are two areas in which I fear Clinton may not roll back Bush, Cheney & Co.'s excesses as firmly as Edwards would.

Bob in HI