So, apparently, there's a lot of hysteria on the blogs, and some Hillary Clinton supporters are even saying they might not vote for Obama.

Well, Hillaryland, I'm calling your bluff.  If you want to leave the Democratic Party, then you are welcome to.  Just don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.  I dare you, I triple-dog dare you, to stay home or even vote for John McCain.  If it makes it easier, just picture me saying whatever hateful things will motivate you to quit the Democratic Party.  I want you to be pissed off at me personally so I can take the credit for driving you out of the party.

Lest we forget, there were some who thought that Martin Luther King Jr. was too moderate.  People such as Malcolm X disliked King's non-violent and integrationist approach.

Stokely Carmichael was one such man.

Imagine a presidential candidate pushing this three-tiered national health care plan:

- States should be required to guarantee coverage for all children under age 23. In return, the federal government should assume responsibility for drug and acute medical care for Americans over age 65.

- Older Americans deserve a pharmacy benefit under Medicare (an unaffordable impossibility under Bush's current fiscal policies). This would cost $450 billion over 10 years, a little more than 1/4 of the value of Bush's tax cut. With a pharmaceutical package, Medicare becomes a decent insurance program.

- Finally, to cover those between the ages of 23 and 65, we should use the present employer-based system with refundable tax credits and federal subsidies to cover low- and moderate-income Americans who lack insurance.

Imagine this candidate's rivals for the Democratic nomination assailing his plan from the left as not comprehensive enough.

(previously posted to Open Left)

Gallup recently ran a poll in anticipation of General David Petraeus reporting to Congress.

I don't really feel like messing around with tables, so here are some of the results.  When asked whose recommendations they had confidence in, the public gave the responses of "great deal" or "fair amount" for the following people in these percentages: General Petraeus 63%, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military leaders 58%, Congressional Democrats 44%, Congressional Republicans 41%, George W Bush 38%, and Iraqi Officials 27%.  On the other hand, 43% of people say that they have almost no confidence in President Bush, way more than other parties.  Petraeus gets this support despite only 40% believing he will give an independent and objective report vs. 53% who believe he will say what the Bush administration wants.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban passes along an e-mail he received from the one of Bill O'Reilly's producers asking for comment on Brian DePalma's recent movie Redacted, which Cuban produced (through HDNet Films).

I'm not sure I believe it, but this has been bandied about in comments at a few places.  With regards to the Iraq funding bill, some people have suggested that Obama was trying to lure Hillary Clinton into possibly voting yes by playing it soft and signal indecision.

There are several questions here.  Is this a good strategy for Obama to take?  Does it have a chance of succeeding?  If it has a chance of succeeding, what is Obama giving up by pursuing it?  What should Edwards do?

Not that I would ever vote for any of these guys, but at the same time I'd like to see them asked interesting questions.  I may even watch instead of reading the transcript later.

Here's who will be there:

The Ronald Reagan Library announced that Sam Brownback, Jim Gilmore, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Tommy Thompson are all confirmed to attend the Library’s debate on May 3rd.  The debate will take place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, and will air live on MSNBC from 8:00 to 9:30 pm (ET) and stream live on MSNBC.com and politico.com and will include audience questions gathered on politico.com.

I am delving into the recent huge Pew survey.  This is the first thing that caught my eye.

On page 10-11, there are charts profiling Democrats/Democratic leaners and Republican/Republican leaners by state, grouped by primary date.  Nationally, Democrats and Democratic leaners are divided into liberals (31%), moderates (44%), and conservatives (21%), while Republicans and Republicans leaners are divided into conservative white evangelical Protestants (26%), other conservatives (35%), and moderates/liberals (37%).

One simple measure of deviance from the national ideological breakdown is to sum up the differences between state figures and the national figures in each category. For example, South Carolina is plus-9 in conservative white evangelical Republicans, minus-6 in other conservative Republicans, minus-8 in moderate/liberal Republicans, minus-6 in liberal Democrats, even in moderate Democrats, and plus-4 in conservative Democrats for a total of 33 with a Republican deviation of 23 and a Democratic deviation of 10.  Some results after the flip.

It strikes me that the current controversy over fired U.S. Attorneys is a scandal that is easier to understand and that it is blatantly more obvious that there is wrong-doing and not just stupidity at work here (and I don't think that the latter is grounds for impeachment).

I've often thought that the left misunderstands the media and why so many stories appear that seem to have a conservative slant.  In my opinion, the great failure of the progressive movement has been its inability to understand and use the media properly.

Over at the Christian Science Monitor, a publication that you should be reading for its exellent coverage of the Middle East, Drew Curtis (the founder of Fark.com) has an opinion piece on Why the media passes off bunk as news in which he concludes:

It's looking more and more as though the age of impartial journalism was a temporary blip in history whose reign ended a few years ago when the Internet turned news consumption from all-inclusive (per newspaper) to a la carte (per story).

Consider this a useful place to discuss managing whatever blogs you read.

I currently have over 1000 subscriptions in my RSS reader and I haven't found a good RSS reader to manage all of those.  I'm currently thinking of splitting my feeds between two readers, possibly a politics/non-politics division because most readers seem to get bogged down dealing with large numbers of feeds.

I oppose invading Iran, even if everything the Bush administration claims is true and the country was months away from a nuclear weapons test.  I would oppose sending U.S. troops to Darfur to protect civilians and clean up things there.  I wouldn't support using U.S. troops for even the most just of causes anytime in the next one hundred weeks.

I do not say this because I am a pacifist.  I do not say this because I am pro-Iranian.    (I most assuredly am neither.)  There is one simple reason why I am willing to make such a blanket statement.

His name is George W. Bush.

The Washington Post notes that there are more Jews than ever in Congress.  It may shock some that Arlen Specter isn't the only Jewish Republican.

While Gerald Ford is being criticized by people such as Bill Bennett and the blog Captain's Quarters, but at the same time I have seen critics on the left (I'm not going to call anyone out by linking to specific diaries and comments that can be found on Daily Kos, but they are there).

A few days ago, I wrote a misunderstood diary in which I criticized the way in which some people are talking about impeachment.

Consider this a follow-up.  I intend to make the case that Democrats in office shouldn't say that they are for impeachment and that this is not the same thing as saying that Democrats shouldn't be for impeachment.

If you've ever wondered why we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway, I'm the kind of guy who wonders instead why liberals opposed to Wal-Mart complain about the decline of traditional mom-and-pop stores while conservatives opposed to gay marriage complain about the decline of traditional moms and pops.  So, is it any wonder that I turn my eye toward comparing supporters of impeaching that miserable failure George W. Bush to supporters of that miserable failure's miserable failure in Iraq?

Before you get your panties in a bunch and start throwing pie, this isn't a claim of moral equivalence between the aims of the two groups.  I don't think that the validity of impeachment or the Iraq war is particularly relevant to this discussion.  Rather, this is an example of my overarching social thesis that right and left ideologues think alike and differ mainly on their starting assumptions (with liberals having, on average, better starting assumptions than conservatives).

Since a lot of people want the Democrats to be more partisan in opposing Republicans, I think this would be an interesting poll here.  So, who is the most partisan Democrat in the current field of contenders (defined as the options in the most recent DK straw poll)?

Feel free to follow it up with polls on other facets of the field.  How about, who is the wonkiest of them all?  Who would win in a Kos-sponsored pie-eating contest?

Take a look at these numbers from [http://pewresearch.org/obdeck/?ObDeckID=99 the Pew Research Center] asking Democratic voters and Democratic leaners who should get the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination (some candidates deleted).