This is one of those headlines that I have wondered if I would ever live to see.  And there it is.  The entire economic edifice and ideology that has shaped the world through my lifetime now caught up short.  And those of us who have been ridiculed and berated for years, decades, about the unsustainability of an economic worldview based on cheap and abundant fossil fuels?  Now we're told that we're standing in the way of the drilling that will get us out of it!  

Not much really to say beyond this:  We've just lost another one of the greats.  Here's the link.

It's not a bad legacy:  to have a beat named after you!  And thus to have made more people dance over the last half century than just about anyone.

The small city of New Castle is in west-central Pennsylvania, about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh, 25 miles east of Youngstown.  I've stopped there while traveling east on I-80, and I know a bit about it from some relatives who live in that area.  According to Wikipedia, its population in 2000 was 26,309 -- down over the decades from almost twice that many in 1940.  Wikipedia adds:

New Castle is a prime example of a Rust Belt city which has been forced to adapt to changing economic situations.

 It's quintessential Pennsylvania.

It's like the first faint glow of pale light after an endless night... the first thin beam of sunlight cutting through the clouds after a thunderstorm... the first calling of migrating geese in the spring after the long, dark winter (I'm writing from Wisconsin....).

And so there it is, on-line at the New York Times:  Bush Begins Long Farewell on World Stage.

For at least three years now, I have had the Iraq Coalition Casualties website bookmarked on my computer.  Every morning I go to it before I go about my other computer tasks.  That has been my personal way of keeping vigil during this crime of a war.  It's been my way of not letting myself forget the war, the sacrifice of these young American lives, and the destruction of the hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq.  It's been my way of bearing witness -- of not letting the arrogance, incompetence, and dishonesty of the Bush administration go unforgotten.

Inspired by this comment in RobertInWisconsin's Hillary, it's time to pull the plug on yourself.

It wouldn't let me sleep last night....  This excrutiating primary season all reminded me of something buried deep in my brain... something I'd seen long ago, in a very different place... something that just seemed to capture the feeling of this post-Wyoming, post-Mississippi dramatic moment.

Then, in a flash, it came to me:  Since January, Barack and Hillary have been re-enacting Scene 4 of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "Arthur and the Black Knight of the Bridge"!  You all remember it... the scene where the Excalibur-wielding King Arthur leaves the Black Knight, sans arms and legs, flailing and angry and unyielding, on the ground.  The noble Arthur seeks an honorable conclusion to the conflict.  The Black Knight remains, to the end, unbowed (so to speak).

This is driving me nuts.  So I go on-line to find the final results and delegate count from the Texas caucuses.  I go the New York Times' Election Guide 2008 results page and poke around.  What I find are useful graphics and numbers, but they leave a firm impression that Florida and Michigan are done deals.

As I wait here -- much too late at night for me -- with hope that the tide might yet turn in Texas, here's the thing that eats at me... the thing that I just cannot stand to wake up in the morning facing:

The groundwork for Hillary Clinton's primary victories tonight was laid at 12:50 AM, October 11, 2002, when the U.S. Senate passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.  She voted for it.  I try very hard to believe her when she says she did so based on her understanding of the evidence.  I simply do not believe her.  I believe in my heart of hearts that she cast that vote in the full knowledge that the evidence of Iraq's WMD capacity was without merit, and that she did so based purely on the calculation that doing otherwise would doom her presidential hopes.  And tonight the voters of Ohio and Rhode Island and maybe Texas are vindicating her in that calculation.

I was up late last night, hanging out at polling palace after it closed to get the fresh results, watching and celebrating as the statewide results came in, and then waiting for the adrenalin to flush out of my system.  It was a phenomenal, historic day in Wisconsin in so many ways.

"Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter"....  Cabin fever has reached epidemic proportions in Wisconsin.  We've had snow on the ground since early November, and have received what seems like a never-ending series of arctic blasts and winter storms.  Record depths of snow cover my part of the state -- 80 inches and counting!

It's an apt symbol of the long nasty winter of the last eight years.  We've faced relentless cold blasts of lies, deceptions, scandals, outrages, corruptions, incompetencies, and assaults upon all that is right and good about our nation.  We who hold this democracy dear have been insulted, ignored, browbeaten, marginalized, and abused by a gang of thugs who have ruled through fear and intimidation, have sought to turn us all into cowering subjects, and have made us pariahs among the nations of the world.

This morning, in Wisconsin, a state that has played such an important role in America's progressive political tradition, I will do my civic duty, walk down the street, enter my polling place, cast my vote, and help put an end to this winter of our discontent.

It's true!  Theodore Roosevelt has signed on to the list of environmental leaders supporting Barack Obama at Environmentalists for Obama.  Okay... it's Theodore Roosevelt V, the great-great grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, but you have to figure that the DNA connection is pretty strong!

I may be wrongly assuming that no one else has come up with this yet.

But I am just so momentarily full of myself that I believe my recommended line for Obama will RULE THE DAY when it comes to the question of the role of the Michigan and Florida delegates!  However, I must hold you all in suspense a little....

Today was a terrible day of inevitable backlash in Burma, with the military dictatorship attacking the peaceful protesters at sites around the country.

Thank you to zysea for keeping this visible through the day here with this recommended diary.

Yesterday I posted this diary about the rapidly evolving situation in Burma/Myanmar.  (And thank you again to the good rescue rangers at DKos for the extra push!)  This is a follow-up and update.

If you are reading the news, you know that amazing events are unfolding in Myanmar/Burma*.  I've been watching DailyKos for any diaries on this, but having seen none, I'll step up and offer some thoughts.

I had the opportunity to spend a difficult, amazing, disturbing, enlightening month working in Myanmar ten years ago.  I have followed the fate of the pro-democracy forces there ever since.  I have been dumbfounded at the world's neglect of the situation there, and the failure of the international community to confront the brutal ruling junta (especially those who loudly and proudly proclaim their commitment to liberty and democracy).  I have tried, in my own small way, to lend support to those who have kept the flame lit through the long night.  The events of the last few days suggest that the light may finally be returning.  In any case, the situation is changing fundamentally; things will not be the same, and will not return to the status quo ante.  I am praying for and meditating on a peaceful revolution.

The Washington Post is running an article today by Bob Woodward providing further elaboration of Alan Greenspan's comment in his new book that "the Iraq War is largely about oil."  See Greenspan: Ouster Of Hussein Crucial For Oil Security.  As is so often the case with Woodward's reporting, it is simultaneously fascinating and absolutely infuriating.  Once again Woodward uses his insider influence to report stunning statements... years too late for it to make any difference at all.

First we get Bush doing his bogeyman act today before the American Legion.  Shades of smoking guns and mushrooms clouds:

He had especially belligerent language for Iran, accusing Tehran of funding terrorists around the world, as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan, while pursuing technology that could put the region under "the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."

"Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere, and that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions," Bush said. "We will confront this danger before it is too late."

"I want our fellow citizens to consider what would happen if these forces of radicalism and extremism are allowed to drive us out of the Middle East," he added. "The region would be dramatically transformed in a way that could imperil the civilized world."

In today's Washington Post, Dan Froomkin has an item in his White House Watch column about the Denver Three (who were thrown out of a 2004 Bush campaign event in Denver because of their anti-Bush bumper sticker).  The item includes a link, courtesy the ACLU, to the White House's official "Presidential Advance Manual."  This is the document that lays out all the steps in preparing for a presidential visit.  The manual became available through a deposition in a separate court case in West Virginia.