Courage, Audacity -- and the vain hope that the candidates will read this Time article

This is awesome.

I'm quite sure I don't agree with Joe Klein on everything, and indeed, I don't agree with his whole Time article, but I'd so I'm on board for most of it.

Frankly, it's the most intelligent center-progressive agenda I've seen from anyone in the US that I can think of. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by someone, somewhere, writing something sensical about the election, but there you have it.

Go, read.

...a Presidential election would seem a perfect moment for laying out an ambitious new goal or two, especially at a moment when 70% of the public thinks the country is moving in the wrong direction. The problem is, politicians hate having to talk about anything remotely adventurous in the midst of an campaign. They prefer safe recitations of conventional wisdom... The candidates owe us answers, whether they want to give them or not... you can learn a lot from the character of their evasions—how their minds work, how much they know, what their basic principles are. Occasionally, they might even say something courageous. And very occasionally, there comes an election where the ability to be courageous, to tell the public things it may not want to hear, is the most important quality we need in a leader. I suspect 2008 will be that sort of election. [Ok, good luck with that one, Joe-boy -- J] The public has come to understand what market-tested political blather sounds like, and it may be ready to reward a politician who tells some inconvenient truths, to coin a phrase, who asks for the sort of sacrifices, in pursuit of specific goals, that President Bush refused to do. But which sacrifices, which goals?

Energy independence.
Universal health insurance.
Education reform.
Mandatory national service.

Solutions are possible, but they will require drastic changes in the way we go to school, get our health care, serve our country, live our lives. No politician with any sense would attempt to join all these battles, all at once, in the midst of a presidential campaign. But in 2008 a candidate who refuses to show some courage on at least one of these issues probably lacks the character to be President.

True enough, man.

Go, please, read this.

Sen. "Mentum" Lieberman: Using Bush'shit Dirty Tricks

I haven't seen much news of this in other places: Lieberman using DC Lobbyists to pose as average citizen-supporters. I found it thanks to Tom Tomorrow. Of course, MyDD's Matt Stoller (he of the first link) acknowledges that MyDD's Aldon got there first.

It has run in a story by Jennifer Manes in Connecticut's Record-Journal (at least a trial subscription necessary). As Stoller asks, will the mainstream media pick it up, though?

My guess: judging from the oh-so-extensive coverage of Bush's use of this tactic in 2000 (documented, according to journalist Eric Alterman in his book What Liberal Media?, in the Bush campaign's tax documents as they hired entertainment for their out-of-town "average Florida citizen" protesters), I'm gonna say... um, no.

Though, on The Coffee House, Nathan Newman points out that there's no particular guarantee that Lamont is a super-progressive member of Left Blogistan -- actually, there's significant evidence against this. He is, however, better tha Lieberman, and perhaps can be considered a minor good instead of lesser of evils (my words, not Newman's).

To wrap all this up, Billmon points out the Lamont still pretty much falls into the rest of the Dipshit Dems as far as the conflagration and tragedies in the Middle East, a disappointment in this area like Howard Dean, who recently took the opportunity with other Dems to chide the Iraqi Prime Minister over his critique of Israel's role in the conflict with Lebanon for insufficiently blame the Lebanese, who are rather busy getting blown up. (Hezbollah is of course acting criminally as well and busy blowing up swaths of Israel, but when 300 or so civilians have died on one side, and something like 12 on the other, well... my sympathies in general lie with the heavier civilian casualties, the people of Lebanon, who are seemingly being collectively punished by Israel. A scan of the linked document shows that both sides are perpetrators of war crimes, but the greater capacity of Israel to destroy and deprive civilian entities indiscriminately places, in my opinion, a greater burden on them -- this is a burden they themselves have taken on through their choices of targets. (Not to mention that it doesn't seem to be, you know, WORKING.) To synthesize Billmon and Newman, Lamont should be supported -- as I blogged earlier, NYT's endorsement of Lamont over Lieberman points out the nature of his actions antithetical to, in my opinion, democratic dissent and Democractic dissent -- but Lamont also should not be viewed as a great white hope. Which, you know, I don't.

If you want to be crazy, crazy like a fox, there's also the Green, Ralph Ferrucci.

Sigh. It's too bad the Greens imploded over 2004....