Aside from the to and fro of Obama's VP pick.  And aside from simmering questions about cones and crosses.  There is a palpable sense of discord in the left-wing blathersphere because Obama's polling numbers seem to be tanking a bit from their stratospheric heights of yestermonth.

I look at www.fivethirtyeight.com quite regularly and even understand some of what is said there.  That site has become, I believe, the gold standard of election forecasting.  Their model has Obama maintaining a slim, although eroding, lead in the polls with overall a 56 % shot at winning.  Beyond that particular site, others have recently noted the erosion in Obama's lead.  Particularly TPM and several bloggers on this site.  However, I believe that the numbers as they look now are not only realistic, but demonstrate the best way for Obama to win in November and offer the Democrats the building blocks for long-term political ascendancy.

The latest CBS poll has George Walker Bush at 25 % approval rating.  These polls sometimes come back with a bogus answer or two, but in the CBS poll, Bush appears to be consistently under 30 % these days.  To state the obvious, that is remarkably bad.

Living in these times, it is easy to forget just what an awful eight years this has been.  In the interest of being honest, I never liked Bush, even when 90 % of the country did, but when he ran against Gore, I didn't see the real harm in electing this guy.  His 2000 campaign was predicated on being a centrist Republican.  This was back when I was naive enough to think that there was such a thing.  It seemed to me like it would be good for the Republican party to be pulled toward the center by this young, vibrant sleazeball.  I figured - "Give him his four years.  It'll look a lot like Clinton's third term plus a few extra bungles."

As it turned out, he was quite possibly the worst person to put in that position (other than me, of course) for what followed.  For what had to follow.

I had to travel for work today and so found myself in the car for several hours.  On the way to the work site this morning, I tuned into Rush (yes, that Rush) for a few minutes.  Not long, but long enough to hear him indirectly call teachers, nurses, and social workers "losers and nobodys".  I wonder if he interacted with any nurses while in drug rehab?  I also heard about 7-year-old girl Obama trashed America to.  And then I heard about Michelle Obama.  And then more Obama, and then more Obama, and then more Obama.

On the way back from work I tuned into Sean Hannity for a few minutes (yes, that Sean Hannity).  Just long enough to hear about a twelve year-old girl Obama trashed America to (maybe these were two separate incidents?).  And then I heard about Michelle Obama, and then more about Obama, and then more about Obama.

Interestingly, I heard almost nothing about McCain.

Obama visited Israel today and made the logical and politically necessary speech of calling a nuclear-armed Iran a "grave threat".  He's right, of course, in the sense that any nuclear-armed country (including Israel and India) are a grave threat.  But still, this sounds a little too reminiscent of Bush's "grave and gathering" alliterative characterization of pre-shitstorm Iraq.

Obama, contrary to the shouting Fox commentators, has always been a centrist.  That's ok with me.  In part, because I think he's the good kind of centrist and not the Joe Lieberman, Tom Friedman neo-liberal kind of centrist.  But I was hoping for a steadier hand in Middle Eastern affairs.  Bush set a very high bar for non-involvement (read: complete capitulation) in Middle Eastern affairs.  So even if Obama manages to eat a falafal or two he'll have greater involvement than Bush.  Nevertheless, we can't have another four years of axis-of-evil nonsense.

We know that a nuclear-armed Iran is a dangerous thing.  But an Iran with nuclear power done in cooperation with French and Russian envoys is not scary at all.  The only logical goal is to bring Iran into the fold.  Help them grow their economy and show them the benefits of living in the 21st century.  The venue for Obama's speech today probably prevented him from saying anything concilliatory about Iran.  But, frankly, I would take silence over another parsed sentence which inevitably leads to more dead civilians.

Talking Points Memo is running a story describing how the Department of Justice is currently running a 10-year backlog on whistleblower cases.  They link this to the fraud and graft going on in Iraq.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.co m/2008/07/todays_must_readof.php

Just think of the goodies tied up in that backlog.  You don't think any of this is intentional, do you?  Do you?  Imagine being a young staffer with the incoming administration and looking through those files.  Shock and awe.

This got me thinking:  What other surprises will await us in 2009 when Bush leaves office?

Viewed through the lens of U.S. political definitions, the Catholic Church is quite paradoxical in its value system.  Staunchly pro-life and holding traditional views toward women and homosexuals, the Catholic Church seems to be a natural fit for the Republican wing of the Republican party in the U.S.  However, the Church is also serious about promoting economic equality, peaceful solutions to world crises, is open to modern scientific thought such as evolution, and welcomes action to prevent climate change.  The Catholic Church is also extremely active in promoting health services (sans abortion) in the Third World.  One could reasonably argue that the Church is actually to the Left of the Progressive wing of the U.S. Democratic Party on these issues.  And so we are left with a paradox.

Even viewed through this seemingly contradictory lens, it was surprising for me to learn that the Vatican is considering developing a collection of environmental thou shall's and thou shall not's known as the "Environmental Ten Commandments".  It was even more surprising to read the Commandments being considered.  They range from mundane to truly radical and would probably not see the light of day even at the most Liberal caucus meeting you could find in the U.S.  Let's have a look.

From the Catholic News Service:

Deep thoughts:

It is fascinating to me that the name "John McCain" lends itself to a more damaging moniker than the name "Barack Obama".  On its face, the name Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama no less, would seem to lend itself to a myriad of permutations of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden or twenty other distinctly alien-sounding Middle Eastern names.  This should be tremendous baggage on Barack Obama.  But so far nothing seems to work.  Sure, all the right-wing blowhards emphasize his middle name.  But, really, that's going to get old, if it hasn't already.

But somehow the moniker "McSame" seems more damaging.  I personally don't care for it.  Nevertheless, it seems to capture the zeitgeist better.  People want change, they want George Bush to disappear from the face of the Earth for good.  Plus, the opening "Mc" gives it a certain low-rent cookie-cutter quality like "McMansion" or "McDonald's".  Yes, I know I am reading way too much into this.

Poblano over at www.fivethirtyeight.com has an interesting post up today examining the frequency of negative hits against the three remaining Presidential candidates, McCain, Clinton, and Obama.  The metric used is press releases by each of the candidates, the DNC and the RNC.  The differences are quite stark with Barack Obama both sustaining the highest total number of negative attacks and delivering the lowest number of negative attacks.

The current tallies, from September 2007 to May 2008 are:  226 attacks on Obama, 196 attacks on McCain, and 56 attacks on Clinton.  Meanwhile Obama has delivered 19 attacks compared to McCain's 27 and Clinton's 144.  But, the real key, I believe is this statement from Pablano: