cross posted from DailyKos

I received a link to an article in the St. Pete Times from of all people, my Uncle in France by way of My father in Florida. A rather surprising path to a very embarrasing (for McCain) article.

It seems that one of McCain's own cousins has had his fill of McCain's selling out of his core principles and his despicable campaign tactics and his flip-flops in order to appease the fundy right.

cross posted from dailykos

There has been a lot of hyperventilating recently with the new Quinnipiac polls showing McCain gaining strength in several key swing states, including surpassing Obama for the first time in my own state of Colorado.

Breathless MSM outlets have siezed upon this one set of polls to push the false meme that McCain is catching up.

But the MSM reality seems to be an alternate reality. If we take a more holistic look at the situation, another side of the story emerges. Even as the Wall Street Journal tries depserately to zero in on statistically insignificant details of their own new poll to spin reality towards some kind of "good news" for their preferred conservative candidate they can not escape their own poll results.

In the wake of the dot com meltdown of 2000 and of 9/11 the following year, as an IT worker I became one of the statistics. One of the up to 95% unemployed in the IT sector.

I ended up selling my house, my cars, and most of my worldly posessions in a vain attempt to provide for my family which consisted of myself, my wife -a stay at home mom, and a four month old baby. When the money began to run out after a full year of unemployment, we made the decision to relocate to Colombia, my wife's native country.

We owned a condo there free and clear, and as my wife is a licensed Colombian attorney, if worse came to worse, I could stay at home with our daughter while she brought home the bacon, at least until things improved in the US, if not permanently. (we ultimately returned to the US in late 2005)

For those who don't know me personally, which would be most of course, let me explain something. I am not Colombian. I am a blond haired green eyed fair complected gringo through and through.

As such, I stick out like a sore thumb, and present as a virtual walking kidnap target. Just the kind of person the FARC would love to get their hands on, or worse get their hands on my child who is equally fair in appearance.

cross posted from DailyKos

Well Granny calls us purity trolls, PsiFighter says we should just grow up, Olberman is telling Obama how to do his job, to read this blog lately you'd think the entire progressive movement is about to crumble to dust because our latest patron saint of progress has declared a measure of independence from us, the "righteous" left, or perhaps the "self righteous" left is apropos.

From the perspective of a generational researcher it all comes off like some kind of self indulgent comedy, like so many brilliantly argued theses on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We become trapped by our own ideology, shouting into the echo chamber that is our own little corner of the blogosphere.

We wring our hands in fret, some because our once saintly anointed leader has spurned us, and others because now that we have entered meltdown mode he is surely to crumble amidst the loss of our once united support.

Yes, you read that right. First covered only by foreign media it has now been picked up by US media, CBS and CNN. They are saying that for the first time in recorded history the North Pole may be completely free of Ice by the end of the Summer.

This seems like a staggering development and although they are saying that it won't have any immediate significant effects, I for one find that hard to believe. For example what happens to the arctic wildlife such as Polar bears? And what about world sea levels?

Video below the fold

I had intended to post the continuation to my series The Coming Democratic Earthquake this week. But, like many others here, the whole FISA thing has knocked me seriously off track.

For me this kind of came out of left field. I suppose I should not be surprised really. The Netroots have always been a better friend to Obama than he has to us. If you look at his Dailykos participation you see he has only posted two diaries on the Great Orange Satan, both way back in 2005. His movement has always been about people powered politics, but exactly which people those have been is the operative issue.

cross posted from DailyKos
Huffpo is reporting a statistical dead heat in Georgia today.

A New InsiderAdvantage / PollPosition survey conducted June 18 of registered likely voters in the November presidential contest shows Sen. John McCain leading Sen. Barack Obama by a single point in Georgia, making the race in Georgia a statistical tie.

Based on an Insider Advantage Poll

McCain: 44%
Obama: 43%
Barr: 6%
Undecided: 7%

(cross posted from Dailykos)
William Straus and Neil Howe broke social science ground in 1991 with the fist in a series of books studying American generational history, this book "Generations", traces America's generational history back to 1584 and establishes their theory that US history can be fairly accurately framed as a roughly 80 year repeating cycle of 4 distinct generational groups.

The theory postulates that each generation has certain characteristics which distinguishes itself from the other generations in it's cycle. Among those distinctions are social attitudes, behaviors, and politics.

This theory has recently been advanced even further by the Morley Wiongrad and Michael D. Hais book "Millennial Makeover" which focuses on the millennial generation sometimes referred to as Generation Y.