We do not train to be merciful here. Mercy is for the weak. Here, in the streets, in competition: A man confronts you, he is the enemy.

A bunch of other miscellaneous stuff---

Pop star Madonna pisses off John McCain. As would be expected conservatives are throwing a hissy fit. How those guys can see themselves as muy macho while they whine like children who've just had their favorite toy taken away every time someone looks sideways at their candidate just escapes me.

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I watched some of the convention last night. A few observations--

It can't be emphasized enough that the talking heads suck. Most of the rest of the progressive blogsphere has talked about how the chattering hosts were simply clueless about everything they consider themselves "experts" on (I laughed out loud last night at a comment Charlie Gibson made about being a "political junky.")

My personal annoyance was how apologetic the media seemed at having to cover the dirty old democratic convention in the first place. Having to show Michelle Obama's biographical video sent the ABC hosts into a tizzy of warnings that the video was produced by democrats and they promise to show videos produced by republicans at the GOP convention next week. Never has the conservative domestication of the media been more apparent. Those guys are afraid of their own shadow.

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Kennedy's speech had me in tears. I couldn't shake the feeling this is the last time we're going to see that guy in action. The Kennedy's have become nothing but a punchline to the right in this country but to me they're still heroes.

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Shut up about the Clinton/ Obama spat already. There's no there, there. The media want to create a damned story line where none exists.

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Michelle Obama's speech had me AND my oldest daughter in tears. It's too bad she had to devote part of it to explaining to the audience why she loves America. In a rational world that wouldn't even be in question. We don't live in a rational world.

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I'm hoping that tonight and tomorrow night are the nights they trash McCain. Because he must be trashed. No mercy. Cobra Kai!

Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk down middle, sooner or later, get squished.

I would hope that Democratic leaders would take Matt Stoller's advice...

The admission that progressives are winning influence within the party is something I've noticed since my four years in politics. The party has been moving away from the DLC model of triangulation, and towards the politics of contrast. This is natural for an opposition party, but it also means that not listening to the progressive base could cause an increasing number of problems for centrists Democrats.

...to heart but I won't hold my breath.

Stoller is commenting on a piece by Ben Smith claiming Hillary Clinton is a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination (tons of money) and has a "50-50 chance" of actually winning the White House. Amazingly he doesn't say a thing about this bombshell.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that despite Hillary's money she doesn't have a chance in hell of winning the Democratic nomination and, were she to beat those odds she would be squashed like a grape in the highway in the general election.

Centrists and DLC types have consistently underestimated the strong sentiment against the Iraq war among the Democratic base. They have continued to try and play the middle by taking a powder on confronting the President both pre-war and, even more importantly in my view, after the invasion as the country sank into a bloody civil war. More than anything the Democratic party nominee for President in 2008 cannot be a pro-Iraq war candidate. The base simply won't have it.

But were she to beat the odds and slap the base down by winning the nomination her candidacy would be DOA. The political strategy she's been operating under seems to be an assumption that her base is in the bag (hardly) so she can afford to take "centrist*" positions early on in order to attract undecideds in the general election. Conventional wisdom has held that undecideds are the ones that actually decide elections.

George W. Bush has proven that this particular bit of conventional wisdom is wrong. Voters have become increasingly apathetic over the last several years with the importance of undecided voters diminishing as fewer and fewer actually go to the polls. The important thing to winning an election now is getting out your base on election day.

Short of a very public mea culpa and a loud denunciation of the war in Iraq and Bush's handling of same there's no way the Democratic base would turn out vote for Hillary and she would lose the election handily.

(* With over half the country now opposed to the Iraq war I'm not even sure you could say that a position supporting the President's handling of same could be deemed "centrist.")

Sweep the leg.

Glenn Greenwald caught Bill Frist (aka the Amazing Karnak) threatening to break the rules if he doesn't get his way with the Senate Intelligence Committee. On Friday Karnack informed Harry Reid that any attempt to investigate the NSA spying scandal will force him to reorganize the 30 year old committee shifting the balance of power towards Republicans and away from any possiblity of hearings. Please read all of Greenwald's piece. It's another one of those "I thought I'd reached the limit of my outrage but then this came along" things.

Greenwald quotes part of Karnack's letter to Reid:

I am increasingly concerned that the Senate Intelligence Committee is unable to carry out its critically important oversight and threat assessment responsibilities due to stifling partisanship that is exhibited by repeated calls by Democrats on the Committee to conduct politically-motivated investigations. . . .

I'm intrigued by the politics of this, however, and what I think it signifies. From a purely strategic standpoint it seems to me that the hearings were not much of an immediate threat to the Republican party. Such hearings by their very nature would most certainly be held almost entirely in closed session and remain classified. Likewise any findings of the committee would take years to see the light of day. I think the possibility that we'd see a report on findings before the looming mid-term election, much less the next presidential election, to be pretty darn small.

So why is Karnack feeling so threatened? Are his amazing powers of prognostication making his Spidey Sense tingle? Does he see what the results of the hearings could mean to Republicans five years down the line? Is Terri Schiavo alive and pole-dancing at a strip club called "Big Daddys?"

Not bloody likely.

The adminstration is scared. They aren't scared of the results of the hearings since, as I've already mentioned, they do little to affect their own political fortunes. They are scared of the hearings themselves. They're scared that the mere fact that the hearings were taking place by itself would highlight that the adminstration had done something untoward.

That's why they've pushed Karnack into a position where he has to cheat on their behalf. Just picture the heated conversation on the sideline:

ROVE: "Sweep the leg."

Karnack looks incredulous.

ROVE: "You have a problem with that?"

KARNACK: "No, Sensei."

All that's left if for Harry Reid to employ the Crane Technique that is closing Senate business until the committee, as it's currently comprised, votes on hearings. Judging by the Democrats complete lack of cajones this election year I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.