With Jim Webb’s name floating high as a possible Obama running mate, there has been a left wing ecstasy reminiscent of Michael Moore’s dreamy eyed endorsement of Wesley Clark in 04. Wow, we finally have actual General to throw at them, so now who’s really tougher?

Like Clark, Webb isn’t all guns and roses. Much concern has be expressed about his fitness and potential vulnerabilities. Kathy G stated the case against Webb well yesterday on the Yglesias blog. It’s not just his brashness on the campaign trail, or that taking him out of a Red State Senate seat would be strategically stupid, but it’s also his “wingnutty” Republican recent past.

The Senate coalition argument strikes me as the strongest. However brash he may be, veeps and running mates play the roll of attach dog (think Cheney and Agnew) in the modern presidential beauty contest, and Webb does this very well. And in a related matter, he gets major points for standing up for our troops while sticking it to McCain, Bush and Co. on the GI Bill.

From today’s Jerusalem Post:

Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who concluded a trip to Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.
…
The Army Radio report, which was quoted by The Jerusalem Post and resonated widely, stated that according to assessments in Israel, the recent turmoil in Lebanon, where Hizbullah has de facto established control of the country, was advancing an American attack.

Bush, the official reportedly said, considered Hizbullah’s show of strength to constitute evidence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s growing influence. In Bush’s view, the official said, “the disease must be treated - not its symptoms.”

Is Paul Maslin talking about electoral votes or bowling?
Because I think Obama could get to 270 electoral votes, but there’s no way he could bowl it.

Jamie Rubin writes in today’s Washington Post on the hypocrisy of McCain’s harsh criticism of Obama. It seems Ol’ Straight Talk advocated negotiating with Hamas after their electoral victory two years ago.

The Edwards endorsement does seem like the beginning of the end for Hillary. Here’s how it will probably play out:

Obama will get the nomination by the end of this month, but Hillary will not give up in anyway. It will become apparent that she is in fact a Terminator sent from the future. She will brutally kill John Edwards and Ted Kennedy with an electromagnetic health care policy pulse wave, which sucks the air and blood out of its victims causing a slow and cinematic asphyxiation.

Suddenly, as she’s about to terminate the one candidate who would have eventually saved the future by restoring hope, Arnold Schwarzenegger crashes through a wall. It turns out that he really is a terminator from the future sent back not to save Kalyfornia, but to stop HT 4 (Hillary Terminator) from destroying the future of hope.

In the ensuing fight, they crash through walls, overturn trucks on highways and destroy highway ramps and airplanes. Just as it looks like HT 4 is about to terminate the Gubernator by retroactively revoking his citizenship (through a wireless interface with Teledyne Cybernetic Systems), Barack Obama appears and saves him by hacking into the democratic donor database and terminating her funding. She immediately shuts down and Judgment Day is forestalled, but not permanently prevented. We know she will be back.

Bush’s not so veiled attack on Obama yesterday serves as good reminder of the divisive and heinous essence of his tenure. Obama has repeatedly said that he would negotiate with our enemies. He has not said he would appease terrorists. He has also said that he would go into Pakistan ("Pokistan") and get Bin Laden.

So after a disastrous foreign policy driven by ideology, incompetence, distortion, and secrecy, the great divider yesterday did what he does - distorted and attacked. As McCain tries to distances himself from Bush, keep in mind that:

Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages with terrorists;

The blundering of the Iraq War is the biggest foreign policy disaster since Viet Nam. This statement doesn’t even need any backup; and

Bush’s corrosive foreign policy, which has shunned negotiation, international institutions (like the United Nations and the Geneva Convention) has done great damage to America’s credibility, influence and prestige in the world.

Ipods are cool and sleek. A timeline of the history of design in the store Design Within Reach has the pod as the pinnacle of the evolution of design. And they sure are popular. But I’ve felt for a while that ipod’s market dominance is more a result of marketing than quality. In fact, in concert with itunes online music distribution, Apple has approached monopolistic dominance in the emerging digital music market. There’s got to be better value for the money.

One of the big problems I have with the mighty pod is directly related to its market dominance. And it bugs me is that almost no one talks about this. A given ipod can only be used with a certain number (3 maybe) of registered computers (that is without some kind of funky and unauthorized software), and even more striking is that music files can’t be transfered from an ipod to a computer. Music can only go from computer to ipod. Once again, that’s unless unauthorized software is used. This is certainly purposefully designed to maintain Apple’s hegemony on digital music distribution which approaches vertical integration. Functionally, this is a major limitation and I’m amazed that there hasn’t been more open criticism. Maybe Microsoft should re-edit the Hillaried re-edit of the famous Orwellian Apple commercial - placing Ipod in the screen where Hillary was.

So I’ve pulled the trigger and ordered the Zune. Both the 80 gig Zune and 80 gig Ipod cost around $249. The Zune gets slightly better average user and reviewer ratings on cnet than the pod. I’m pretty sure that Zune doesn’t have a closed file transfer system like ipod. My major concern is how difficult it may prove to be to import my itunes catalogue into the zune software. I will keep you posted.

Zune also has two cool features that ipod doesn’t: FM radio, and wireless synching and sharing (which probably can be used with any computer).

So to paraphrase a political maxim, when the revolution becomes the orthodoxy, even Microsoft can become the rebel. I wonder how Chuck Berry feels about this…

It’s widely accepted that the media pigeon-holes stories and people into simple narratives with a strict limit of one to two sound bytes. This campaign cycle is interesting, not merely because so much of the conventional wisdom now seems quaint, but because it presents an opportunity to observe the re-renderings as they happen.

Hillary’s bytes have changed the least. While always seen by oxycontin right as the ambitious embodiment of 60’s liberal evil, she has also been tagged “divisive” yet intelligent and diligent, and her persistence makes her seem like terminator 4 in a blue pantsuit. The narrative of her campaign has progressed from the unstoppable Clinton machine, to a mismanaged Machiavellian leviathan which is now entering its terminal phase. So the blue collar, shots at the bar act didn’t fly, but we respect and admire her steely endurance.

Barack Obama’s media id badge may be the most interesting because it is the most dynamic. Obama materialized on the 2004 convention stage, a ready made democratic messiah, almost a direct cross between Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. However, all pundits knew how naive this hope stuff can be. Sure the speeches were nice, but is soaring rhetoric weapon enough in the blood sport that is presidential politics? Danger was near as Mo D lucidly explained that:

The lioness of Chappaqua is hot on the trail of the Chicago gazelle, eager to gnaw him to pieces, like a harrowing scene out of a George Stubbs painting.

And if she didn’t shred him, certainly the dread republican attack machine would. Surely enough, a “bitter” remark, an angry preacher, a weather undergrounder, and an “undercaffeinated” debate performance against the machine that is Hillary turned the once unflappable messiah into Dukakis and/or McGovern. Had our man been crucified at the alter of Jeremiah?

Hold the Press. Last week’s blow out in North Carolina and overtime showing in Indiana have forced a new narrative, still in progress. Could the “Chicago gazelle” now be battle tested?

Even George Will (who has showed signs of Obama cool aid ingestion in the past) wrote that:

Obama is the Democrats’ Reagan. Obama’s rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan’s ideological nourishment, but he is Reaganesque in two important senses: People like listening to him, and his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness – the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.

So even George Will admits there maybe steel behind the cotton candy.

But what about John McCain? The straight talking maverick with temper problems? Bill Clinton has done a good job of mitigating media bytes concerning McCain’s temper. (Perhaps there’s an Associate Press guideline that only allows per one label per person per news cycle, unless it’s Republicans claiming the Reagan mantel, which ironically enough, has been claimed by Obama.)

And reality itself should be sufficient to force a re-write of the straight talk, maverick thing. By reality, I mean Maverick’s blatant genuflection to Brothers Robertson and Falwell and his windsurfing flip on the Bush Tax Cuts.

The renegade who in 2000 referred to the religious right as “agents of intolerance,” who have “turned good causes into businesses,” and “shame our faith, our party and our country", was in 2007 in full pander mode at Liberty University. And this very same maverick could not in “good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief” has in 2008 made making these cuts permanent the center piece of his economic platform. Never mind the deficit, our grandchildren, and principle, better to shore up the Rove permanent majority before we unleash the swiftboats.

So as the democratic nomination soap opera enters its 22nd inning, I wonder - will Obama re-emerge fired up and ready to go, leading a realignment ending the Reagan era? Or will he turn into George McGovern as McCain’s Roves flood the airwaves with the “bitter” and “liberal” gospels of Jeremiah?