I'm sitting in a pretty nice cafe at the moment, listening to yuppies complain about Obama and McCain.  Turns out they're against war because America no longer makes bullets or tanks.  I guess they'd be for war if I told them that was all America now makes.  Well, they're clearly in some service industry so who cares about trade?

Me, I like knowing that the rights our parents and their parents died for, died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, died licking brushes to paint radioisotopes onto clocks, died in the mills and mines, died on the picket lines by the Pinkertons, died to keep kids out of the labor market, and to get health care benefits, and to get a 40 hour work week and to get vacation....  Me?  I support FAIR Trade, the best way to make sure that everyone gets lifted up.

What does Free Trade do?  It enriches businessman by subsidizing their products and labor costs by arbitraging labor rights.  That is, we suffer until we give up those labor provisions while they find cheap labor suffering even more who will work for much less and without those health, safety, and environmental benefits.

Free Trade is not a positive sum game.  It's a ZERO sum game.  FAIR Trade, trading with companies and countries where laborers have the right to organize, no child labor, occupational safety, and environmental protection, THAT's a POSITIVE SUM GAME.

What this has done to Chicago is turn over public spaces to private interests. It's happened here in San Francisco, too. And what's worse is, our tax dollars are funneled to inefficient contracts to private entities.

Second, he is unschooled in the many reality-necessitated departures from the simplified models of Econ 101's first plateau.

Third, while he listens to many voices, he is overly receptive to various crankish conservative theories of government incapability.

It is now, and will always be, what are the policies he will actually advocate for when he is in a position to do so?

Or have we not learned that lesson?

I want somebody who's independent, somebody who can push against my preconceived notions and challenge me so we have got a robust debate in the White House.

Grim Proving Ground for Obama's housing policy

We are a very screwed up and contradictory species deep in our economic hearts.  

I thought that was pretty stupid of him to debase the greatest economy this country has ever had.

I cannot for the life of me understand why Democratic bigwigs run away from Clinton's record. (BernieO)

I think they like Bill Clinton's record and refer to it often without naming him. But underneath this I believe a deeper motive was at work when Dean, Brazile, Pelosi and other Dem poobahs in a collective fit of self-righteousness viewed Bill Clinton as a moral stain on the party and sought to redeem the Dem party by running an African-American for prez to associate Dems with an image of "moral courage" (in their eyes) and an image of "true progressive values," sort of a reverse twist on moral redemption from sexual sin via racial equality (They couldn't try to redeem the party in terms of sexual morality without becoming a bunch of evangelicals -- although there's a trend of that going on among Dems as well), so the racial avenue was ideal new territory to "renew" the Dem Party). How "courageous" this move was could be debated given they probably figured (cynically) they could succeed with an AA candidate largely because of Bush's dismal poll ratings, and (as we saw play out) political correctness would make criticism of BO difficult lest people be tagged with racism (this along with race-baiting was widely played upon, as we all saw, to defeat primary opponents, especially the least racist among them, Hillary Clinton). Little did the poobahs (or we) realize the Great Black Hope would turn out to possess little moral gumption politically, being a panderer in fact, with a curious lack of center while clamoring to the Center, thus losing -- oops! -- the progressive Democratic base and rapidly losing his lead. Bizarre.

If BO loses the election, Dem leaders might have lost a big gamble not only by losing the White House -- yet again -- but by throwing out Bill (and Hill) with the bathwater, all going back to the puritanical streak of moral judgment (and cowardice) of Dean, Brazile and Pelosi who exercised piss-poor political judgment.