Did you read my title and come jumping in here to tell me I'm wrong?

Don't bother.  I know it was wrong.  You don't get to be someone in Gen. Clark's position and not be an intelligent man.  Wes Clark is not an idiot.

But he is not a good politician, either.  And, while not being a good politician is generally a compliment for the rest of us, it's not so good when you're on a Sunday morning talk show advocating for a candidate.

Like it or not, Wes Clark was off the mark yesterday.  Regardless of whether or not he was telling the truth (and I happen to agree with what he said), he shouldn't have said it.

For example: John McCain called his wife a c$&!.  Does that mean Barack Obama, or Bill Richardson, or Kathleen Sebelius, or anyone else, should go on MTP and say that John McCain calls his wife the c-word?

John McSame has done his green-screened best to try and portray Barack Obama as some sort of foreign policy newbie. But with a crisis raging in Zimbabwe, an opposition leader in hiding, who is doing the leading?

Barack Obama.

"I have spoken with MDC Leader Morgan Tsvangirai to share my deep concern for the way his supporters are being targeted by the regime and to express my admiration for his efforts."

Mr Obama’s intervention represented his first remarks on the developing crisis in Zimbabwe since June 13.

John McCain, his Republican rival, has emphasised repeatedly what he claims are his superior foreign policy credentials. However, he last commented on Zimbabwe on April 7, describing Mr Mugabe as an autocrat and his government a pariah.

Is it any wonder that the peoples of the world are desperate for some intelligent and engaged leadership in the US?  

Don't get me wrong, I love this place.

I've been here for more than four years, I've probably written 300 diaries, and Buddha knows how many comments.  But, as much as I love Daily Kos, I love the real world even more.

And I absolutely have loved participating in the real world the last two weekends.  Last weekend, I took the family out to a festival, and we registered voters.  This weekend, we went to a Democratic picnic to support the local party and sign up as volunteers for neighboring swing states Virginia and Pennsylvania.

After a 4th of July vacation, we'll be hitting both states frequently, taking our toddler and infant along on neighborhood walks, to fairs and festivals, getting out the vote for Barack Obama.

In a little town in the northern suburbs of Virginia, Manassas Park, the local elected Republicans are feeling the heat.  The growing popularity of Barack Obama in Virginia, and the low opinions of the Republican party, are causing some to even rethink their status as party members!  An article Manassas Park Republicans to Run as Independents says it all.

According to [Republican] Manassas Park Vice Mayor Bryan Polk, toeing the party line isn't necessary at the local level.  This may partially explain why he and two other like-minded councilmen are running for re-election this fall as independents. Polk won as a Republican in 2004, yet he and former Republican Mayor Bill Treuting and fellow Councilman Keith Miller, a registered Republican, will be running as independents on Nov. 4.

More cowardly goodness below the fold.

Quinnipiac has just released a poll showing Sen. Barack Obama with a 47-43 (41-45) lead over McCain in Florida, outside the 2.6% margin of error.  

Updated It gets even better than the AP wire report - Quinnipiac also now has Obama up in:

Ohio 48-42 (Obama was down 40-44)

and

Pennsylvania 52-40 (Obama was up 46-40)

YES!

The candidate who doesn't know the difference between Al Qaeda and Al Sadr has reached a new state of confusion - this time on his own plan to combat climate change.

Sen. McCain, if you're going to be all:

"I know that climate change is real," said John McCain. "We can have a debate about how serious it is, but the debate about climate change is over."

You might want to understand your own plan to deal with this "real" problem.

The gaffe, which he's made more than once, below the fold.

So, with the troops, we can either bring them home or leave them there.  Those are pretty much the choices, right?  We can either not have troops permanently stationed in Iraq, or we can.

Probably why the McCain camp is offering a bait-and-switch defense on his "leave 'em there" quote from the Today show.

Sen. McCain has consistently opposed a timeline for withdrawing our troops from Iraq. And our friends on the opposite side of the aisle have a long history of attempting to twist Sen. McCain's words on Iraq. The fact that Sen. McCain opposes a timeline for withdrawal and is principally concerned about the safety of American troops and the security of Iraq is pretty much "dog bites man."

My friends, I have something to say about this.

With all the hoo-hah, the breathless "Will her supporters back him?" and the other nonsense that passes for political coverage these days, CQ Politics has a new report out that should cause heads to turn.  For all the "concern" about Hillary's voters coming out for Obama, the party with unity problems is actually the Republicans.

John McCain may be the presumed Republican presidential nominee, but he’s still not connecting with a critical group of donors the way President Bush did during his 2004 re-election campaign...According to a Congressional Quarterly analysis, only about 5,000 of the 62,800 donors who gave the maximum contribution of $2,000 to Bush — roughly 8 percent — had given to McCain as of April 30.

This is HUGE.

For those who didn't see it, or hear it, Barack Obama just hit one out of the park in North Carolina.  Sen. Obama took it to John McSame's Bushonomics, and how.  From the LA Times:

Obama launched his "Change That Works for You" tour in Raleigh, N.C, where he blamed much of the nation's economic troubles on the Bush administration and policies that he said are "little more than the worn dogma that says we should give more to those at the top and hope that their good fortune trickles down to the many who are hardworking."
...
"For all of George Bush's professed faith in free markets, the markets have hardly been free - not when the gates of Washington are thrown open to high-priced lobbyists who rig the rules of the road and riddle our tax code with special interest favors and corporate loopholes," Obama said.

It got even better.

19 years ago on this date, the world was waking up to some terrifying images, being sent from Tiananmen square in China.

A standoff that became famous

had found a bloody end in the night.

And that morning saw a bleak future.  Students who had hoped to make history were dead, dying, and fleeing the bloody scene.

How different my television this morning.

The continuing mistreatment of US veterans and soldiers who served (and many of whom continue to serve) in Iraq never ceases to disturb me.

This morning, the Post has broken a new story that defies the imagination.  The Army is housing wounded soldiers in a "warrior transition" barracks at Ft. Benning in Georgia.  These barracks, designed to help soldiers recoup from the damages of war, are literally steps away from one of the Army's busiest firing ranges.  The results are predictable:

Across the street from their assigned housing, about 200 yards away, are some of the Army infantry's main firing ranges, and day and night, several days each week, barrages from rifles and machine guns echo around Strickland's building. The noise makes the wounded cringe, startle in their formations, and stay awake and on edge, according to several soldiers interviewed at the barracks last month. The gunfire recently sent one soldier to the emergency room with an anxiety attack, they said.

More below the fold.

Amid all the controversy over the latest pastor's remarks and who denounced or rejected them sufficiently enough, there is some very real, very serious, and very bleak news out about the housing market.

America's house prices are falling even faster than during the Great Depression.

As house prices in America continue their rapid descent, market-watchers are having to cast back ever further for gloomy comparisons. The latest S&P/Case-Shiller national house-price index, published this week, showed a slump of 14.1% in the year to the first quarter, the worst since the index began 20 years ago. Now Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale University and co-inventor of the index, has compiled a version that stretches back over a century. This shows that the latest fall in nominal prices is already much bigger than the 10.5% drop in 1932, the worst point of the Depression. And things are even worse than they look. In the deflationary 1930s house prices declined less in real terms. Today inflation is running at a brisk pace, so property prices have fallen by a staggering 18% in real terms over the past year.

More, below the fold.

The AP is running a story that blows up the myth that Barack Obama will have problems in key demographics this fall against John McCain:

Polls this month show the Illinois senator leading McCain among women, running even with him among Catholics and suburbanites and trailing him with people over age 65. Results vary by poll for those without college degrees. And though Obama trails decisively with a group that has shunned him against Clinton — whites who have not completed college — he's doing about the same with them as the past two Democratic presidential candidates.

Yeah, so, that whole "will women support him?" myth?  Busted.

Many of you know that I've been on board with the Obama campaign for a long time - but I haven't come out for any particular person to run on the second half of the ticket.

So I always take note when people like Robert Novak and Karl Rove play their "reverse briar patch" games with the various candidates for the ticket.

So Novak's column, which the Post teases as She's no moderate, which was all about Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, made me sit up and take notice.  Particularly when the words "serious moral evil" appear in the first paragraph:

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, whose Roman Catholic archdiocese covers northeast Kansas, on May 9 called on Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to stop taking Communion until she disowns her support for the "serious moral evil" of abortion. That put the church in conflict with a rising star of the Democratic Party who is often described as a "moderate" and is perhaps the leading prospect to become Barack Obama's running mate.

In an interview with a Tampa Bay reporter (listen to the first interview), Hillary Clinton displayed the tin ear that has gotten her to where she is today: second place in a one-place race.

R: Some people might say, where were you when we needed you?  When the rules and bylaws committee was stripping away our delegates, you were silent, and some of your top advisors, Harold Ickes Tina Flournoy, were voting for that penalty.

Clinton: Well, I don’t agree with that decision of the Democratic party, and I’ve been pushing for them to rectify that decision, and I hope that they will do so...

Oh, Hillary.

(applause)

Thank you.

Friends, I just got off the phone with Senator Barack Obama, and I congratulated him on his win tonight in Oregon, and in the Democratic party's nomination procession.

Senator Obama has proven that he has the courage and the vision to lead this party to victory in 2008 against the Republicans, and I want all of you to work as hard for him as you did for me.  I want you to fight as hard for him as I fought for you.  Because this country cannot afford four more years of George W. Bush's economy, four more years of George W. Bush's wars, and four more years of George W. Bush's health care.  And that is exactly what John McCain promises.

I also want to make sure that Florida and Michigan participate in Denver this coming August, and that their voices and votes are counted when all is said and done.

(applause)

What the hell is a diary doing on the rec list that defends the actions of Neville Chamberlain?  I understand that history is nuanced, and that the UK wasn't prepared to take on the Nazi war machine, but, please, do we need to become a place where old history is dragged out and reassessed?

People!  Message discipline!  Who the fuck cares about Neville Chamberlain?  There were TWO points yesterday that need to be made again and again.

First, the Republicans know dick about history, and that's why they are awful leaders.  Not - we are so smart, but they are so dumb.  Leave it at that.  No one likes a know it all.

Second, John McCain has flip-flopped on how to treat Hamas.  THAT'S IT!  Nothing else!

The Washington Post is rightfully attacking China's refusal to allow international experts into Sichuan to help in relief experts, arguing correctly that such refusal not only endangers its own citizens, but provides ideological shelter for the Burmese Junta's similar approach to Monsoon relief:

Yet China is contributing to the mounting man-made disaster in Burma even as it rescues its own citizens. The communist government has adopted the position that it will welcome international aid for earthquake victims, but not foreign aid workers -- the same xenophobic stance that Burma's military junta has taken...

More below the fold...