Finally some wiser heads in journalism are starting to speak out in support of Wes Clark and the simple truth of what he is saying and why he is correct to be saying it. The wimps in this sorry distraction have been the usual suspects in traditional media.

The Nation's editorial, which was picked up by Yahoo, calls into question the outrage against Clark's "mundane" observation:  

Wes Clark stood by his criticism of John McCain in a television interview last night, stressing that while he would "never, never dis someone's service," it is legitimate to discuss what types of military experience are relevant to being commander in chief. Republicans have been twisting Clark's mundane observation that McCain's experience "getting shot down" in a fighter plane is not a "qualification to be president." Clark made the point in response to a question from CBS' Bob Schieffer on Sunday, while noting that he "honor[ed]" McCain's service and considered him a "hero."

http://news.yahoo.com/...

Jeff Wood is waiting to die on Texas Death Row with an execution date of August 21st, 2008. Jeff was charged under the Law of Parties and was not the shooter in this crime. Jeff could not anticipate that a murder would occur. The actual shooter in this case has already been executed by the state of Texas.

It took 17,000 people contacting Governor Perry and the Board of Pardons and Paroles to make a difference for Kenneth Foster, whose death sentence under the Law of Parties was commuted by Governor Perry last year. Please help save Jeff as Kenneth was saved.

Please read his story here: http://www.texasmoratorium.org/
and sign the petition.

UPDATED:

UPDATED X2

Wes Clark, Joe Lieberman's nemesis, followed Lieberman today on Face the Nation via satellite from Little Rock. General Clark did a great job on behalf of Barack Obama, which I'll get to in a moment.

But it was the General's tie that got my attention. I wondered whether perhaps his wife Gert had picked it out for him. And if so, I thought, what enjoyment they must have had choosing it. Wes usually sports a pretty standard tie in red or blue, something traditional. Today he was wearing a black and white tie. And I thought of Michelle Obama's black and white dress that she wore on the view.

That tie spoke volumes to me....it was so supportive of what the Obamas are trying to do for this country.

Check it out yourself after the jump:  

Richard Clarke told Keith Olbermann the other night that McCain's campaign seems determined to fight the election on national security and fear.

Given that the only issue on which McCain is currently out polling Obama is national security, it's no wonder that Charlie Black, McCain's strategic adviser and a Middle East lobbyist blabbed that a terrorist attack would be good for the McCain team in November. Holy fear mongering, Bat Man!

Barack Obama's campaign rightly fired back that this kind of talk is reprehensible.

One can hope that Americans, after 8 years of George W Bush's catastrophic belligerence, have been immunized against the fear tactics, but the traditional media, e.g. Tweety, are mesmerized by McCain's so-called national security credentials.

That's why Wes Clark would be perfect as VP.

"What were you thinking, Mr, Bush?" went Michael Moore's voice over in Fahrenheit 9/11 as we all watched while Bush just sat there in a Florida school room taking the news from his aide that the World Trade center had just been hit by a plane.

Mr. Bush just sat there for several minutes, staring, waiting. He didn't seem too surprised. He didn't spring into action. he just sat there almost like maybe he had been expecting the news - or at least that's what Michael Moore was hinting at.

Well, it seems that ExxonMobil, Shell and BP are finally getting their contracts back, after 36 years and almost 5 years of bloody war.

This diary will deconstruct the latest excuse for the war - bringing democracy to the Middle East, one torture victim at a time.

General Wesley Clark, long time friend of Senator Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton, under whom Clark served as NATO SACEUR, endorsed Senator Barack Obama on June 6th, 2008 3 days after Barack Obama declared victory and one day before Senator Clinton held a press conference to pledge her support to Senator Obama's victory.

On June 6th, General Clark called on his supporters to "Unite Behind Barack Obama" on his blog securingamerica.com:
http://securingamerica.com/...

And a few days ago, Clark hit McCain hard on his National Security expertise:

Some media pundits are clueless about the political diversity of the people who serve in the military and also clueless about the skepticism of the voting public wrt the wisdom of Bush/McCain policy in protecting our security. Michelle Bernard seems to be one of them.

Today on David gregory's show "Race for the White House", Michelle Bernard, who considers herself right of center, was asked by David Gregory about General Wesley Clarks' remarks that on national security, John McCain is

"...largely untested and untried. He's never been responsible for policy formulation. He's never had leadership in a crisis, or in anything larger than his own element on an aircraft carrier or [in managing] his own congressional staff. It's not clear that this is going to be the strong suit that he thinks it is."

Michelle Bernard's response was that Democrats should avoid challenging Senator McCain's military expertise.
Say what?

With so much at stake this election, it was a peculiar year for activists like Senator Carl Levin to intentionally break DNC primary rules to make the point that Michigan Democrats resent the advantage that New Hampshire and Iowa have in picking the Democratic nominee for president.

That said, Senator Levin has a point. At the DNC hearing recently he reminded us that the Democratic presidential nominee is usually picked by either NH or IA because they go first. The urgency to change the system could not come at a better time. The Democratic Party, thanks to the crises precipitated under George W Bush's two terms, has perhaps never been more engaged. It's hard to know whether Barack Obama is our nominee because he has engaged a new generation of voters or whether a new generation of voters plus the rest of us cried out for a candidate of Obama's talents and Barack answered that call.

So with all of us fully engaged, Iowa and New Hampshire no longer have the argument that they pay closer attention to what's going on. We're all paying attention.

On June 2nd, on Open Left, Matt Stoller wrote a terrific piece on why Wes Clark would be a unifying choice for Barack Obama as he works to bring the party together as well as an excellent choice to serve as VP.

If you haven't seen it, please read Mr. Stoller's article here:
http://www.openleft.com/...

My personal heroes are those men and women who stood up publicly to denounce the ugly drum beat of war in the fall of 2002. And I'll always wonder what really happened to Paul Wellstone who along with Robert Byrd was one of the fiercest challengers of the rush to war.

Barack Obama and Wes Clark were among that small vocal group of political leaders who recognized that George W Bush and Richard P Cheney's vision for the Middle East was delusional. Recently Scott McClelland said that Bush's preventive war was really about "spreading democracy" in the Middle East, and that the lies about WMDs were tactics to trick the public to war. SPREADING DEMOCRACY??? George W Bush misjudged Scotty McClelland. Mr. McClelland it seems has a conscience. Perhaps "spreading democracy", one torture victim at a time, was just intolerable to him. Otherwise, why would such a seemingly gentle soul have subjected himself to the blowback and outrage that would surely rain down on his head from his new book?    

General Wesley Clark, speaking on behalf of Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign is passionate in his insistence that every vote be counted including those in the wayward Florida and Michigan primaries which broke party rules.
General Clark may be right that the voters of Florida and Michigan are being unfairly punished for the failures of their State Party leaders. However there is another group of voters in Florida and Michigan for whom this election can never be made right - those who didn't show up because they were told their votes would not count. And there is no way to know how the primaries in Florida and Michigan would have turned out if those states had obeyed the rules and held a real primary. There is no way to know how many more voters would have turned out and for whom they would have voted. Those absent voters can never be fairly represented.

Bottom line, the Florida and Michigan primaries are so tainted that there is no way to include their results in the selection of the Democratic candidate in the coming election.  

'splain me says Eric on Plunderbund blog
http://www.plunderbund.com/...
to fellow blogger Jill Miller Zimon of http://writeslikeshetalks.com/
what will it take for us to win over Hillary Clinton's supporters to Barack Obama?

ERIC:

    Two-thirds of Clinton’s supporters there said they would vote Republican or not vote at all rather than for Obama, according to the polls.

   Forty-one percent of Clinton supporters said they’d cast their vote for John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, and 23 percent said they would not vote at all.

This being the case all the while most polled say they think Obama will indeed get the nomination.

So I will ask Jill and the rest who are harping on what Obama must do to heal this type of problem (and it IS a problem): How is someone supposed to convince voters to side with him when they vote for his opponent knowing she will not win and claim they will not support him once he wins the nomination as they are predicting? 64% will vote McCain or not vote. That’s a huge problem.

There have been several diaries written about AIPAC, the secretive right wing Republican political action committee and powerful lobbying group that claims to stand for what's good for Israel. Their weapon of choice against critics who dare suggest that hard line policies have made Israel less safe and the Middle East more violent, is to call that person an anti-Semite and hope they shut up.

The goal is to shut out any criticism, even from serious, well-informed, honest brokers.

Hillary Clinton has taken a page from AIPAC's play book to avoid the bed she herself has made but refuses to lie in. Her latest weapon of choice is gender. "THEY WON'T LET ME WIN BECAUSE I'M A WOMAN AND EVERY WOMAN IS BEING DENIED HER BIRTHRIGHT IF I AM NOT ELECTED PRESIDENT".

Actually, this is only her most recent ploy to manipulate the emotions of her supporters. Others that have been diaried about have included ethnicity, race and culture, the divides that keep us from paying attention to the big things we have in common, like economic well-being, environmental sustainability and so on.

I've been calling Kentucky for Barack. At one home, when I asked for the voter, the lady identified herself as his wife and asked if she could take a message. I said I was happy to speak to her and I was calling for Barack Obama and asked the lady if we could count on her support.

She said she was undecided. So I started to explain why I thought Barack Obama would bring the country together blah, blah, blah....

And she took over.

Barack Obama, son of a white mother and African father, growing up deeply loved by a strong, independent minded woman and then learning the personal hurt of mindless racism, has said that it is in his DNA to bring us together.

In so many ways he is like each one of us, regardless how differently we may choose to view each other. He truly embodies our diversity. And that is more than his physical self. In his perceptions and understanding, he embodies each of us and understands most importantly that which we have in common.

He also understands that leadership must first of all take the responsibility to frame our path to sustainability around shared values rather than allowing divisive tactics to distract us while robber barons clean out the treasury.

This afternoon I started calling West Virginia for Barack Obama. I had read "Big Coal" by Jeff Goodell and felt a special empathy for the people of West Virginia and wanted to share with people why I thought they would be best served by an Obama presidency.

Most of the people I called weren't home so I left several messages. I did speak to one woman who was undecided and said she appreciated hearing from me and having a chance to hear what I had to say. She said she was most concerned about the candidates' principles and their faith.

Then came the call that put a wrench into my calling.  

Hillary Clinton seems to have come free from her moorings. She seems to be in a manic/psychotic state, willing to say or do anything to bully the country into giving her her way.

When confronted with the fact that no economist agreed with her gas tax holiday, she didn't seem to find that relevant, saying "well I don't agree with them".
George W Bush didn't agree with General Shinseki either or for that matter with any of the military experts who said that Don Rumsfeld's military plans were not grounded in real world military experience.

If one cannot face reality during a competitive campaign when the spotlight is shining, how honest will one be when one actually has power behind the closed doors of the White House? And make no mistake, Senator Clinton recently said that she will not ask President Clinton to release the names of those who funded President Clinton's library to accommodate concerns over possible political favors - "not till she's president" would she release this information...right, that's when we'll get it...and if and when we do what will we do with it if people on that list have policy decisions thrown their way?

This is in direct contrast to Barack Obama's calls for transparency in government.

We all know that General Clark has been an enlightened voice for policies that respect culture and diversity. Even in the face of George W Bush's mindless saber rattling and fear mongering, General Clark was the person who spearheaded the http://www.stopiranwar.com initiative and told us that Iran is a multicultural country of 70 million people and that one person (Ahmadinejad) does not speak for a diverse country of seventy million.

General Clark warned us in Congressional testimony in 2002 what would likely happen if we were so foolish as to invade Iraq as a "preventive" strike and Wes's worst fears were realized and thousands of our soldiers and millions of Iraqis have born the terrible brunt of what Clark described as a "strategic blunder of monumental proportions". Senator Clinton at the time did not heed General Clark's warnings and then stubbornly refused, for years, to acknowledge how terribly wrong she was to vote for the war while she continued to defend its rationale. This went on while Clark was telling us that the war had made us less safe, undermined our democratic principles and decimated our leadership position in the world.