A REGULARLY RECURRING REMINDER FOR DRIFTING DEMOCRATS.   John McCain isn’t really a maverick or a moderate.  He’s carried more water for George W. Bush than Gunga Din did for the bloody British and his votes for bad Bush trade deals like CAFTA  show he’s a bona fide right-wingnut. (More)

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This morning I was searching for an AP article, which I found posted at Yahoo Finance. After reading the story, I thumbled across a “sponsored result” at the bottom of the page: No closing costs refi. No points. No credit report or processing fees. www.countrywide.com. Amazed that this defrocked sub-prime lending giant could still be making such offers, I decided to investigate. In the process I found a way that anyone with access to the internet can experience the pleasure of protesting such shenanigans (skip to final paragraph if you don’t want to endure my foreplay). (More)

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Don’ t know whether the confusion or the conspiracy theory applies here, but the pollsters and the press are setting themselves up for another butt-kicking in South Carolina. (More)

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In the Memphis sanitation workers strike where Dr. King was killed 40 years ago this year, a worker came up with a picket sign that read I Am a Man. It caught on and became the watchword for the Memphis strike and for other strikes of low-wage workers across the country in years to follow. At rallies, workers would chant and add in their own touches: “I am a man … I am somebody …. I am a hungry man….. I am somebody ….. I am a black man …. I am somebody.” And what does it mean to be a black man after four decades of marching and striking and chanting? For many, it STILL means you are less likely than a white man to be able to get a good education and a decent job, and more likely to do time in prison than on a college or university campus. (More)

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For several years after Dr. King was murdered, I worked pro bono as Mrs. King’s publicity coordinator, most harridly during this time of the year when we were trying to build the birthday celebration into a national event.  Mrs. King — or Co-retta as we called her out of earshot —  was a difficult boss, often remote and uncommunicative, aloof some said, maddeningly late for most appointments.  But there were times when a quiet sense of humor crept through, and she had a bent for putting people in their place.  (More)

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Had a great weekend. Spent the better part of Saturday walking in the crisp sunshine in Central Park. NYC was mixing it up. In one small, shared green space an African American father played catch (baseball) with his son, two fat middle-aged white dudes tossed a frisbee and a dozen swarthy Latinos (half of them no doubt ILLEGALS) went at a sweaty game of soccer. Thousands of walkers, runners, and bikers in every shape, hue and size imaginable streamed by. An old white horse with a purple feather in his cap and purple toe-nail polish clip-clopped sprightly along, pulling a white and purple carriage, quite unaware that the political party against slaughtering horses for table meat was beginning to eat itself. (More)

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What a couple of downer days for John Edwards.  First, the union that has milked him mercilessly for years flips and endorses Barack Obama. Then his former running mate passes him over for the surging-now, slipping-then senator from Illinois .  Both backstabs take place just a few days before the Nevada and South Carolina primaries, where Edwards arguably is still in contention. But don’t despair, John: politicians usually transfer only their negatives, and when it comes to churning out delegates to caucuses, the culinary union in Nevada probably can’t deliver a bottle of buttermilk. (More)

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Last week, the Washington Post’s Neil Irwin got the disastrous jobs report three-quarters right, but Peter S. Goodman and Michael M. Grynbaum of the New York Times got it wrong, wrong, wrong again. (More)

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