Proof

The BBC has an astonishing report providing definitive proof of vote-rigging by dictator Robert Mugabe's forces using a concealed camera bravely carried by one Shepherd Yuda, who has now fled the country with his family:



With over 200 members of Mugabe's opposition seeking refuge in the U.S. Embassy to avoid the systematic murder that has intensified in the aftermath of the rigged run-off election, it's a stark reminder of the very right so many Americans take for granted. When people all over the world put their actual mortality on the line for the right to free and fair elections, it's a shaming rebuke to all those in our country who don't bother to exercise their right here.

Worth noting this Independence Day weekend, and godspeed to those who would take Mugabe down.

4th and Four

Four months from today the big decision gets made. Today the well-mannered, anti-Progressive ex-Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) has passed away. I won't pretend to mourn him politically, nor do I enjoy the white-washing (sic) the MSM is bent on doing, but do offer bloggy condolences to his family.

With four months to go we've got an outgoing President being openly heckled at a moderate-sized Independence Day event. We've got oil prices above where our nation's arch enemy, Osama Bin Laden, has wanted them since before the start of El Presidente's disastrous Presidency, Cheney/Bush essentially using their eight years of rule to give Osama the win. We've got a Republican candidate running who, in this time of economic peril and energy crunch, owns eight-count'em-eight homes.

On the other side, we've got a challenger to all of the above GOP cognitive dissonance whom they are flailing around to negatively brand, and whom is considering hosting the largest acceptance speech audience in American political history -- at Denver's Mile High Stadium.

So after reading attacks on Obama from the left, some of them even justified, most of them revealing partisan ignorance of the candidate who's being nominated, it is particularly enjoyable to read Andy Borowitz's latest juicy column full of satire, "Liberal Bloggers Accuse Obama of Trying to Win Election":

Suspicions about Sen. Obama's true motives have been building over the past few weeks, but not until today have the bloggers called him out for betraying the Democratic Party's losing tradition.

"Barack Obama seems to be making a very calculated attempt to win over 270 electoral votes," wrote liberal blogger Carol Foyler at LibDemWatch.com, a blog read by a half-dozen other liberal bloggers. "He must be stopped."

But those comments were not nearly as strident as those of Tracy Klugian, whose blog LoseOn.org has backed unsuccessful Democratic candidates since 2000.

"Increasingly, Barack Obama's message is becoming more accessible, appealing, and yes, potentially successful," he wrote. "Any Democrat who voted for Dukakis, Mondale or Kerry should regard this as a betrayal."

As a young teenager I watched the Left in this country commit ritual suicide with a combination of infighting and corruption.

Let's not let history repeat itself.

Healthy

I was going to write about all the Hillary/Bill/operatives hostage-taking that's going on, but it's just too negative when something as healthy as this overdue airing of "respectful disagreements" just happened:



Cheers to John McCain for gracefully navigating his political position with humbleness and tact under such uncomfortable questioning. But praise to Ellen Degeneres for bringing up the issue itself in a way where she gently but firmly used her humanity, her own presence, to confront this conservative representative with the real logic of that faintly liberal but altogether unsatisfying position.

This discussion is not only healthy for our society, it is necessary for our survival and evolution.

Digby

Blogging is a great way to participate in the marketplace of ideas without having to physically put yourself in that marketplace. Since you can always be tracked down and hounded it isn't exactly a cowardly way to participate, but there is one prominent blogger who has always made a point of keeping her privacy, as even her online name plays genderless, or even shades male.

This past week, at the Take Back America Conference, Digby came out.

It turns out she's a she from Santa Monica and besides having one of the finest voices in the liberal blogosphere, she revealed herself as a hell of a speaker. You can read the text of her remarks here, or watch the video here.

She does a great job of providing context for the leftist blogging revolution we're currently experiencing, lists some of the key bloggers writing today, points out how diverse the group is, and then sums up what brings us together. An excerpt:

All of us who blog in the progressive blogosphere, have a common goal. It's the same goal of virtually everyone in this room tonight. We want to begin a new era of progressive politics and take back America.

We may argue about tactics and strategy or the extent to which we are partisans vs ideologues--and believe me, we do. But there is no disagreement among us that the modern conservative movement Of Newt and Grover and Karl and Rush has proven to be a dangerous cultural and political cancer on the body politic.

You will not find anyone amongst us who believes that the Bush administration's executive power grab and flagrant partisan use of the federal government is anything less than an assault on the constitution. We stand together against the dissolution of habeas corpus and the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. We all agree that Islamic terrorism is a threat, but one which we cannot meet with military power alone.

She sat for an interview at the conference which reveals a little more about her in an informal setting. With an eyes-wide-open appreciation of this moment borne of having lived through the later 1960's progressive apex (and subsequent undermining), I couldn't agree more with her conclusion:

I actually feel very confident about it because there is this new political debate going on that is allowing us to make arguments that have not been made in a very long time. I don't think people have heard the progressive argument explicitly in a long time, not filtered through the right wing and the conventions of their media and interpreted by the mainstream media. I think as a lot of people are going directly into the blogosphere people are going to be hearing our arguments again. Now, whether we make them all and whether they are effective you never know; I don't think there are any guarantees there. But I think there is a new political debate that has opened up at a very propitious time for us as a result of the unfortunate failure of the conservative project under George W. Bush, and let's just say there will never be another time like this one.

Only time will tell if the current progressive blogging end up being considered a golden age or not, but if it is it wouldn't be unjust to consider Digby a middle-aged, female, publicity shy Thomas Paine of our time.