This Obama phenomenon is a puzzle. Why him, why now? I have thoughts, but still more questions than answers.

I don’t want to get caught up in the “sheeple” thing, that’s a shallow and ultimately meaningless term, but bear with me for a moment on the concept of a bellwether. Not in the common political sense of a district that has had a voting pattern the same as the national outcome, but in the Old English sense of a lead sheep that the rest of the flock will follow out of instinct, the need to do so transcending rational thought or consequence.  Read more 

CBS owned 41% of broadcast media, in clear violation of Federal law, in 2000. CNN sat at the crossroads of a merger AOL and Time Warner wanted, for profits; but the Clinton FTC didn’t let it happen. Along comes W, promising less regulation, and the stage was set. Suddenly all the media had a bottom-line motive for scuttling any political opponent of W. Not just “mainstream media” but the ENTIRE news industry: W promised them PROFIT$.

First, go read McCamy Taylor at Democratic Underground’s excellent backstory on this. Then tell me why Bush hasn’t been impeached yet.  Read more 

This seems a bit suspect to me:

Aug. 23, 2006 — - It is one of the more unusual battle lines in the culture wars.

Liberals, it is said, have a baby problem. They don’t have enough of them, compared to conservatives. And this failure to replenish their ranks is a reason why they lose elections. Call it a fertility gap.

“The political right is having a lot more kids than the political left,” Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks says. “The gap is actually 41 percent.”

Studying numbers from the General Social Survey — a government survey of social trends — Brooks found that 100 unrelated liberal adults have 147 children, while 100 unrelated conservatives have 208 kids.  Read more