It just gets worse and worse and worse for Harold Ford, prospective senatorial candidate for the state of New York.

I love the Olympics, in part because of an old friend who was a world-class cyclist. The work, dedication, and absolute delight for what he was doing was incredible. My friend knew other cyclists who talked a good game, knew all about bikes, and knew all about the strategy. But they didn’t do the work, and so never even had a chance of winning.

I wish there were more Democratic politicians like my friend, rather than like those other cyclists.

I am sick to death of listening to people who have no freakin’ clue what they are talking about, go on and on about how reading someone their Miranda warning means they won’t give you action-able intelligence.

Please shut up now.

Sarah Palin is picking really odd ways to try to appeal to the large anti-war isolationist libertarian contingent that has been attracted to the tea party movement — a movement whose leaders cast it as drastically different from the mainstream GOP. But then, I was reminded that the folks behind the tea party organization are just plain old movement Republicans looking to con voters into thinking they’re not really Republicans.

Love Is In the Air

Featuring new videos from Wild Beasts and The Soft Pack.

It was only a little over a year ago that Barack Obama won the state of Connecticut 61% to 38%. A Democrat holds every single congressional seat. Connecticut has a PVI of D+7. In presidential approval numbers, it ranks among the top six states—two-thirds of nutmeggers still approve of the job Obama is doing. This is a very blue state.

Yet, just over a year after the inauguration of this theoretically still popular president, the candidate for US Senate in Connecticut just went out of his way to distance himself from the White House on two hot issues—a civil trial for KSM and the reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Fed Chair.

As the recession drags on, and as anti-tax Republicans continue to hold sway over the lower levels of government, more and more states and municipalities are discovering that Norquist’s dream is more like a nightmare.

Since I got the shit beat out of me in comments, let me try to refine what I meant to say. What I meant was that, very improbably, and in part because of Obama’s handling of the withdrawal, advocates of a less imperial or less militaristic foreign policy are not getting tarred with the dismissive suggestion that they suffer from an “Iraq Syndrome” as happened after Vietnam.

Senator Dick Durbin, the Democratic Party Whip, has just thrown his weight behind an effort by Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) to reform the filibuster.