Reagan made Carter into a laughingstock, and now McCain's primed to become a similar target of ridicule.

If Obama *loosens his stance on offshore drilling, it will be better than if McCain makes his only wedge issue stick and divide the vote in Florida, Michigan, Colorado and New Hampshire.

Pristine environmental preserves could be irreperably violated and those suffering most marginally helped, if at all, while the elite continues to prosper.

But then again, extract that to a general national policy and that would be what would happen everywhere with McCain.

But why should we accept stupidity on drilling from Dems?

Good God: all the hand wringing on this site.

We always knew we'd have a lot of work this election. Hard work.

If you're trying to cherry pick some piece of data telling you that voters will never ever ever vote for a Republican again and Bush has cooties you're being lazy and looking for other people to save your participatory government for you.  Which is exactly what these people who can't make up their minds yet (but will) have been doing for decades.

OK Senate candidate Andrew Rice's speech at Bergey Wind Company in Norman, OK on June 23rd was simply stunning.  

Though I've been supporting the progressive state senator for months, I'd never heard him speak about environmental issues with the kind of focus and organized thinking with which A Siegel, and to a lesser extent myself, have hammered away with here on Daily Kos.

This election is personal down to the smaller, obscure races.

This is not about revenge.

It's about getting things right.  About the cry for balance echoing throughout the universe, and the deep unease rattling in our bones.

Nevada is a true (South-)Western swing state: a mixture of hard-righties, surburban indies and liberals, legalize-my-pot and gun-loving libertarians, cohesive unions and a strongly growing latino population.

Historically, Nevada's economy is  likely to be exceptionally hard hit by downturns in the nationwide economy. By at least one measure, NV is doing worse than the US as a whole.  And how might this effect the elections in November?

Charts and more below the fold...

The global economic system is not merely at the pop of a cyclical, natural bubble caused by overconfidence and greed, but transforming.  Ambition and greed, their present form known by "Anglo disease" as named by Jerome, has become so reckless that irreperable change is being wrought in a way that did not happen in 1999, or 1987.

While many of the points are not new, most Americans--and especially the "serious" boys and girls--remain fundamentally ignorant of what's going on.  

Behind the scenes, Senator Kennedy is preparing one of the cornerstone pieces of legislation for a new political age. I will be brief.

Amidst the haste, the fighting, the devastation, the chaos, it can outright medicinal to take in and digest a simple act of beauty. However flawed and human, however compromised. Last June, Senator Max Baucus, (D-MT) often not our favorite Dem, helped the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land preserve a massive swath of western Montana!

This region holds perhaps the greatest store of ecologic riches in the Lower 48. -- Kat Imhoff, director for the Nature Conservancy in Montana

Pictures and details below the flap...

I will no longer be donating to Barack Obama for the forseeable future, though I'm one of his earliest and most vociferous, consistant supporters on Daily Kos. I'm plum broke, and I have neglected my other candidates in critical congressional races.

It's time to put my money where my mouth is. We've lifted Obama up, we need to give him a progressive majority.

Our history is not written in stone.  It is time to bring new history to Oklahoma.  Will you join me, below?

Laying all your eggs in one basket is poor planning whether the subject is finance, politics or in life in general.  The Obama campaign rejected such silliness when they released their 17 state roadmap, a list of swing states to expand the battlefield.  So why do we let the old swing state narratives from the media influence our discussion now?

Rather than take their dubious advice, I propose something very simple that we can do to reduce our risks for November below the fold...

Seeing as my first close friends at my Catholic elementary school were fellow brown kids of filipino descent, I have at least a rough understanding of some aspects of the Filipino-American experience, cuisine and culture.

Coupled with my overview working knowledge of the US's complicated relationship with the Philippines, I could only congratulate Preznit Shrub-Bush on his deft handling of a formal meeting (oh my gosh alert) with Preznit Arroyo.

Let's see the Preznit's fine work below...

Last November, Senator Joe Biden (DE) stated:

"The president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran, and if he does, as Foreign Relations Committee chairman, I will move to impeach

Considering that regardless of this statement Bush still seems obsessed with attacking Iran, it might be time we got some clarification from our other Dems on the Executive's rights and powers.

Cindy Lou Hensley McCain seems to be a complicated but self-assured person.  This national story should not even involve her but for the fact that a majority of polled Americans recently expressed that a candidate's spouse does matter in their voting.  But we are not, ultimately voting for Cindy or Michelle Obama, we are voting for their spouses. So their relevance is more in how their spouses connection to them than their personal stories.

Obama's so called "weakest" hand in this election is national security, and the core of that hand is US-Israeli foreign policy--policy in a turbulent, war-wracked, cruel Middle East..  He not only just shattered the lattest variation in a history of slur against Democrats' integrity in war--"soft on communism"/"socialist"/"terrorist __" blah blah--he also just forged his unity with Jews amidst roaring, spontaneous applause.

Conventional wisdom says that if the election is about foreign policy, it's McCain's. And if the economy is center-stage, in the bag for Obama.  More than ever, our nominee seems to be a more tactful, stronger warrior in the campaign battle than John McCain.

Welcome the political alignment.  Witness the tables being turned, and Republicans having to run from who they are.

Bad at the New Orleans rally when he suggested that we as a nation must become "energy independent".  Perhaps he might have realized that there would be some Texan oilmen and allies of Freeport in the audience.  There's something interesting about this booing though, something generally unexpected.

Please, do not injure the Democratic Party for a fight you cannot win.

You are still a powerful figure in the party... you are perilously undermining that.

Only a mind as balanced and penetrating as George Monbiot's could get to the heart of the matter when oil prices meet state policy. In the mess of connections between OPEC outpit, the statements of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the British, US and French governments, Monbiot organizes them all into coherence.

And we can realize the threat looking back in the mirror, the caution we should take at the sign of our own anger and fear.  It's not Arabs or OPEC to fear but our own irrationality.