corruption

A nation built with African slaves inaugurates an African-American President.

A nation driven by culture wars born out of the Vietnam era moves into hope for more pragmatic, if still partisan, politics.

A nation fallen into the darkness of torture, of "collateral damage" of hundreds of thousands of lives, of ends justifying any means returns to an age of striving for the highest of American ideals.

A nation seduced by the fantasies popularized by Ronald Reagan, that markets are God, that government is evil, that global warming is a myth, that liberalism is out to destroy America, a nation almost paralyzed with the shock of the revealed lie of those fantasies -- a long nightmare, really -- returns to a reality-based vision of the world.

A nation coming off of one of the more ugly racist federal elections puts a black man into office.

Barack Obama is a pragmatic progressive whose intellect brings us hope that his leadership can guide the cumbersome bureaucracy and conflicting interests and influences into actions that make sense, based on reason.

It was truly audacious two years ago to believe this could happen. It took a lot of hope and the hard work of millions, and the faith of many more. But here it has happened.

Barack Obama is about to become President.

How unlikely.

How amazing.

The world is astonished. Today America returns to the light.

...do you think the nutroots would stop plugging their ears and shouting "nah nah nah nah nah nah nah"?

Oh, probably not. It's that godless science that's the problem, right?

Book says Souter mulled resignation after Bush v. Gore.

In “The Nine,” which goes on sale Sept. 18, Toobin writes that while the other justices tried to put the case behind them, vid Souter alone was shattered,” at times weeping when he thought of the case. “For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice,” Toobin continues. “That the Court met in a city he loathed made the decision even harder. At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the Court was never the same.”

What happened in those deliberations?

...you get this:

The owner of the mine, a fat not very pretty older man, had become a media star, and had said something in the last news cycle that the press had latched onto, and now talking heads were saying nasty shit about him, the kind of stuff they never say about politicians or TV anchors, the stuff they reserve for the powerless, death row inmates, Don Imus.

What he did wasn't so clear. They said (in an amazed tone) "and now he's denying he ever said it." They showed tape of him denying it, but the tape didn't include what he was denying having said. In other words, here's a fat, ugly, old man, being defensive. He's a bad person. I found myself thinking, nahh, he's probably just an average person, caught in the gears on a slow news day....

The thing is, why we need to be paying attention to this in the blogosphere....

Ummm ... yeah, paying attention is important.

Via Shakesville, we learn that Hearst Newspapers did a little reading between the Pentagon lines:

The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 -- a record-high number -- by the end of the year.

I'm speechless.

"It doesn't surprise me that they're not talking about it," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former U.S. commander of NATO troops in Bosnia, referring to the Bush administration. "I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention paid to this."

I really really hope this analysis is wrong. What is definitely not reassuring is that we now have a military surge industry that is making very very big bucks on the war, and stand to lose out on mega cash flows when we withdraw. Dina Rasor writes in The Huffington Post: