Comic books have tackled politics themselves and the political climate increasingly. But this isn't about that.

Comic books have historically been the subject of much controversy and politicking. But this isn't about that.

Comic books have an enormous penetration into out popular culture regardless of low comic literacy rates... not that either.

Comics could have existed through most of history but, like the compound bow, waited until they were already superceded by more advanced technology to be invented. Interesting? Yes, but no.

Yeah, you. Really. The person reading this.

What I like about you is that you have good intentions. That much is obvious or you wouldn't be reading this site. You also have a healthy self interest being what drew you to this particular diary, and that is an essential component of empathy. You can't follow the Golden Rule to good effect unless you care about yourself.

No, this isn't some Ayn Randy rant in the least. This isn't really about me, either. This is about you, a person, and not some abstracted individual of any definition.

So who are you?

Red tape means that communication is worse, not better. Wouldn't you say?

This is from an article on the filming in NYC of "I Am Legend":

Creating such a tableau would be difficult in any large city, but accomplishing it in post-September 11 New York seems nothing short of Sisyphean. The number of permits and permissions involved was staggering. "Just finding out who you needed the permits from and who needs to sign off was a job," Kramer says. "I needed to get permission from the (Economic Development Corp.), (the Department of Environmental Conservation), the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, the New York City (Department of Transportation), the New York State DOT, the Department of Small Business Services, the FDNY, the NYPD Harbor Unit, the NYPD Aviation Unit, the ( Federal Aviation Administration), the U.S. Army, the National Guard and the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting."

If that seems Byzantine in its web of red tape, there is a reason. According to John Battista, deputy commissioner of the mayoral film office, the hoops are all about safety.

...If he is indeed running...

Needs to be prepared for and respond victoriously to the way the war room still engaged against Democrats will try to frame it. You can see by the way Biden's innocent remark was shredded, even here. I loaded google news to get this as top story: Biden Enters Presidential Race on Anti-Black Platform.

We should realize that Kerry's own "foot in mouth" problem was distortion. We should realize it was we who were played because the aim, successful as it was, was to get people not loyal to the candidate to have a reason not to like the candidate. Either because we believed the charge, or failing that, felt it enough of an indication of lameness to forbid "electability." The Obama stuff is out there and the Hillary "evil and bad men" remark which could refer to either her husband or OBL(!), is out there. The damage of the latter two remains to be seen but no doubt more is in store.

This is not a science diary; I am not even an amateur meteorologist. But one thing I do know about is the personification of storm in the hands of a red-bearded god with a temper, a hammer only he can wield.

It's not Katrina, there, this time. But it's not much of a love tap either. It's no more or less obviously a probable symptom of global warming than Katrina though, or any warm sunny winter's day far above the Tropic of Cancer.

LONDON - Hurricane-force winds and heavy downpours hammered northern Europe on Thursday, killing 27 people and disrupting travel for tens of thousands _ including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose plane circled for 15 minutes before landing amid winds gusting to 77 mph.

The storms were among the fiercest in years, ripping off part of the roof at Lord's Cricket Ground in London, toppling a crane in the Netherlands and upending trucks on Europe's busiest highway.

It seems to me that Americans agree on one thing: That the future is a black plain under a hellish sky. One camp looks forward to wearing the jackboots and deciding where to lay the barbed wire.

The other wants to postpone this future for which it can propose many alternatives and yet cannot agree on any of them.

From socio-economics, to social issues, to crime and punishment, and of course to the environment, minds hold incredible nihilism that makes 1984 seem quaint and appealing in its supposition that a totalitarian government should even care what individuals feel, much less manage to provide for the general welfare.

Manifest Destiny is a powerful notion in this country. It follows that the strongest shared fantasy would become that destiny. Much has been said about the decline of political optimism but little is done. Instead many people look to the politician with the grin and mistake vague hope, for the ability to do something about real problems, and to keep the worse imagined ones from becoming real eventually. What is missing is a strong, clear, agreeable dream.

What if I told you that plans exist to put vast numbers of Americans into camps where they will be stripped of all civil liberties, potentially be subjects in medical expiriments, exposed to great physical harm, violent demands, and even swift execution without a trial by jury? What if I told you that some of you had explicitly asked for or endorsed the idea recently? Be careful what you ask for...

Because you might get it.

When the election went to Democrats many of us did a double-take and said "Ruh Roh," like Scooby-Doo, even without a clear idea why yet. My gut feeling all along was that the Republicans were screwed as long as they possessed total governmental control because that would make them the logical root of subsequent problems no matter how good at scapegoating others they are. The only solution to that problem would be to share power, ostensibly.

When Bush said that the elections meant Democrats would get some, if not most, if not all of what "they" wanted that made me say "Ruh Roh" deep in my soul. But I didn't know why. Not for sure. The pieces were all there and I had shaken my head at each in turn, but now at last the picture is coming clear. And it ain't pretty.

I'm an advocate for something I'll call "tough patriotism." Naturally I'd like to see this minted as a Democratic Party term as we head into 2008, but more importantly I think it is a summation of the national philosophy we really need now, of use beyond politics.

We have had many appeals to patriotism and for patriotism in recent years. But these are to a very low standard. They require only that the "patriot" accept the national power of the United States and call it good. It would apply equally if the entire country were converted into a burning landfill or sold in total to the People's Republic of China.

The common concept of patriotism as popularized of late is actually counter-productive, if not outright rotten. It is no different than the nationalism that any people on earth can be stirred to. American exceptionalism preaches that ours is a new history, unique in the world, but to realize that destiny we need to be free of garden-variety nationalism.

You can make a career out of stating the obvious. Here goes:

"Fight them over there so that we don't have to fight them over here" would make much more sense from a terrorist perspective. An American dead in Iraq is just as dead as an American killed in a fundamentalist muslim state known to have harbored 9-11 terists, such as but not limited to Afghanistan.

Whether wiretapping everyone is the right way to combat terrorism or not, is a stupid argument. Sorry.

What we ought to be saying is: "Wiretapping is too soft on terrorists."

Just round the bastards up since you know where they are, obviously, or you couldn't be wiretapping them. I'm so tired of this soft treatment BS.

Terrorists can't take pictures on bridges, or in the Port Authority bus terminal. Terrorists have to take their shoes off at the airport and go without the liquids and gels of daily life in flight. Terrorists have to sacrifice their freedom for the appearance of security, or so the blanket of mistrust makes it seem.

(Let me warn you this diary is not going to make you happy. That is, unless you let it do so in its own way.)

I'm a little late in renewing my ACLU and Amnesty International memberships this year. I've been away some, and busy, and now I have a ton of pleas from these and other groups, including non-legalistic charities, and political fundraising drive-bys, all over my place. No sooner do I scan and chuck a sheaf, than another appears; or so it seems, there are credit card offers abounding as well. My three year old has even started opening and summarily tearing up my mail.

(When is the last time anyone got an actual letter in the mail? Or for that matter something they wanted, via the actual US Postal Service? Have the nation's mail-carrying legions been turned into nothing but SPAM couriers? Isn't it lousy to live in a time when a three year old tearing up your mail sight unseen, might not bother you particularly?)

Everybody has got a story. And it pertains to their place in politics. I'll share mine because, what the Hell, I'm going to sign my John Hancock properly because I'm old enough to know that if you don't, you may never; at least not before what your name signifies changes.

A late weeknight seems like a better time than some to pretend this really is a "blog." So, for those few interested, join me for a story similar to the ones politicians tell of why they were drawn to politics, but in this case is the opposite.

This is somewhat opposite from the methods that sometimes seem to be most prominently advocated here; namely attacking the figures of authority while staying above the fray on the messy individual issues...

Well I'm a pretty calm and dispassionate fellow I think. But just suppose that we really are headed for "World War Three." A BS WW3. That would be a state of imprisonment essentially for progressives. I'm not talking nonsense about a state of actual physical imprisonment because of course, no P.A.T.R.I.O.T.ic citizen concerns one's self with such matters. No, I'm talking exclusively about ideological imprisonment.

What you are told to do by the authorities, and what seems sensible, is to just mark your time and you'll be fine eventually, you'll have your freedom back. Don't try to use your individuality if you want to preserve it and get back to it. Enjoy the approved reading list, the care packages of inspected wine and cheese from France, and the actually quite stimulating conversations possible through censored correspondence.

A few days ago I flipped out a bit when someone wrote:

Is there a human heart beating in there, or just a Jewish heart?

And I called that person, who is actually a good poster here, anti-Semitic. In defense of another Kossack whom I did not agree with. I was triangulating, I suppose, although also speaking my mind. But with intolerance of my own perhaps...
And last night someone said of me:

you just think that if your little brain can pin someone as dirty, poor, and generally not all that civilized as per Western values... that if that person wants to defend their way of life, then that makes them a terrorist.

your new direction is 100% backwards. and your little racist mind obviously makes people sick.

Wow, 100%! And I'm having an impact. Heck, I'll make lemonade....

We're all Hatfields and we're all McCoys by blood relation. Science and the Good Book agree on one thing for sure: Every human being is cousin to every other human being.

I don't happen to be very close to anyone who's a personal part of the Hatfield and McCoy feud over in the West Virginia-Tenessee backcountry. I have a lot of friends and relations named "Hatfield" though, so to speak.

I suppose I've met a great deal more Hatfields than McCoys, including one fellow who was in a tank out in the desert for quite some time, under the white and blue Hatfield banner. My current landlords are very Hatfield; they spend time in Hatfield country all the time, in fact they just got back. I like them a lot. If somebody ever attacked them I'd pitch in first on their side and ask questions later.

Unlike the diarist "wclathe" whose diary "Israel is bombing my nephew and niece" I don't have a face to put to people in McCoy country. But that doesn't matter. Because deep down I know they are all my cousins. Everybody is my cousin.

This is something that I'm seeing everywhere that really hurts rational discourse and a healthy society. It is Forced Equivalence. And it is one of the evils of misperception and misdirection.

You see it all the time and maybe you even perpetrate it. It is a devious mental disorder so satisfying in its druglike effect that people actively cultivate it, and others can catch it from their enemies in the culture wars.

I hope you will immediately see what I mean, and recall many occasions where you see this doing its work. Criticize America or its ally and you hate America. Burn a flag, hurt America literally. Don't want religion in public schools and you don't want religion anywhere. But it goes far deeper, beyond what we think of as politics.

Having attended YearlyKos I am both excited, and worried, about what I had encountered. And oftentimes for the same reasons. There are a great many people involved in our community here, who are very new to activism. That they know and care to know, on average, little about how activism has formerly been done, is a question mark followed by an exclamation point.

Optomism. Energy. Expertise.
Despair. Hubris. Inexperience.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
---Benjamin Franklin.

The involvement of the internet, and a fresh crowd of people, does not mean this has not occurred before. There are many pitfalls that "movements" encounter and, my point is, this community is not being wary enough of them.

People vote a certain way for one of two reasons:

1) As an individual
2) As a member of a voting block.

Voting blocs are not ways of looking at voters. This isn't analysis, this is purely factual.
People don't go in and vote thinking "This is for Mississippi" in a national election; they might do it for "The South," or even "New Orleans." But they are likelier to do it as a participant in a bloc.

It's not about states; the 50 State Strategy is great but it isn't everything.
What is everything?
Getting voting blocs to move over to our side.
And getting individuals firmly into voting blocs that are on our side.