McGovern's Advice for Hillary and Barack

I agree with this hopeful suggestion from McGovern.

Excerpted from NY Times Op-Ed, A Two-for-One Campaign, May 13, 2008:

To reduce the risk of creating the kind of divisions that afflicted Democrats during my campaigns, here is a proposal that I hope Senators Clinton and Obama and our party will consider.

After today’s vote in West Virginia, the two candidates should agree to make joint visits to the sites of the five remaining primaries (in Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota).

During these visits, Senators Clinton and Obama should agree not to criticize each other. They would simply state what each would do if elected president. They would also point out why President Bush’s policies have failed and why they would continue to fail under John McCain.

After each candidate speaks for 15 minutes or so, they would then be taken to a reception where citizens paying $50 a ticket would mingle with the two candidates. The money raised would go to the state Democratic Party to assist local and state candidates in the fall elections.

The two candidates should also visit the two disputed states, Michigan and Florida. No matter what happens to the delegations from those states, their voters are entitled to see and to hear these two historic candidates.

This is an agenda that could unite our party and prepare us for a successful convention with a big victory in November. It would also be a refreshing and welcome change for American presidential politics.

How We Got Through the Bush Years...

...and kept our sanity.

Now that the final nails in the coffin of the Bush Administration are just about in, I feel like its time for a retrospective, or tribute, to those elements of culture (mostly the web) that got us through the past 7 years.

1. Daily Show with Jon Stewart
(and OnLisasRadar....Lisa Rein kept the best clips available back in the day)
And now its going to be annoying as he takes on the Democrats ever more and more. The knife cuts both ways, alas. But I will always be grateful for Jon Stewart between 2001 and 2007.

2. Get Your War On
www.mnftiu.cc
Frigging brilliant!

3. This Modern World
www.thismodernworld.com
I'm so grateful that Salon kept providing this, as well.

4. The Onion
www.theonion.com
Ok, they got me through stuff even before 2000, but thank God for the stance they took on things afterwords. Note: Personally, I think the writing has taken a dive recently, but either it will be like Saturday Night Live in its lifespan, with cycles of brilliance and failure, or it is the long term consequence of their move to NYC a few years back finally setting in.

5. WhiteHouse.Org
Especially those WWII-esque POSTERS!!
Got me through the first term, especially.

6. Dan Froomkin (originally White House Briefing)
Froomkin on the Washington Post Web
Especially as the years went on and Blogs came to the fore, he was an essential aggregator.