So I was home in TX, and in a strip mall I saw a rather unusual bumper sticker. What was unusual about this bumper sticker was not the sticker itself--it was a McCain 2008 sticker--but that it was on a Toyota Prius. As everyone knows, a Prius usually comes with a pre-installed Obama sticker.

Not only was it unusual, but it signified something deeper.

So I'm pretty swamped today, but had a chance to check in on MSNBC's convention coverage. Twice.

First time? Joe Scarborough interviewed a self-described "black dude" preacher who was gravely concerned about Obama's ability to appeal to blue color -- wait, make that 'collar'! -- voters. He quoted Pat Buchanan about Obama bringing too much of the 'faculty lounge' with him, and I turned off the TV.

I'd like everyone to write a 5-paragraph essay on why the Posting Rules are wise, benevolent and good.

From the AP:

Iraqi and U.S. negotiators have finished work on a draft security agreement that would see all American troops leave Iraqi cities by June 30 and the rest of the country by the end of 2011, Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

The security deal is to govern the status of the more than 140,000-strong U.S. military force after the U.N. Security Council mandate for its mission expires at the end of this year.

Also from the article:

There's no panic yet, actually, maybe because I don't think this message is getting heard. I saw this interview with the American academic and retired army colonel Andrew Bacevich last night, and wondered how his message would resonate in The Forvm, which seems to content to slavishly follow mainstream narratives. Discussions on the day to day minutia of campaign ads etc abound.

For something more than a little different, the transcript and video (50 min.) with Bacevich is here:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08152008/watch.html

* Hausa farmer, Niger
Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly


Let’s take a step back, put more of the landscape in the frame. At the risk of oversimplifying, I’ll attempt to lay out Trotsky’s point. Nations, then and now exist at various states of development. More precisely, they exist in various states of backwardness and they’re all trying to play catch-up. Backward countries need capital, and they’ll do almost anything to get it. It’s a sad fact of life: backward countries are badly led. A good measure of how badly a country is led is the percentage of subsistence farmers. Workers aren’t a whole lot better off: they leave the farm, only to spend their days doing manual labor in the factory, getting a fraction of the profits, but hey, it is a step up and don’t blame the capitalist, that’s the way these things work. These backward countries can’t wait around for bad leaders to die off and better ones replace them.

Countries with fewer farmers have the luxury of plenty of capital. An enterprising worker can run down to the bank with a good idea, get a loan and buy the means of production. Once he’s got a nice little company running, he can expand his business. If it’s a really great idea, a venture capitalist will fund him into the big leagues. The subsistence farmer has no such options.

The following has cropped up here and elsewhere, and appears to be a whisper smear campaign against McCain; the story goes, 'he's the father of a black child'… no wait! That was the South Carolina whisper smear campaign from 2000. Sorry about that, but they are oddly related, because there seems to be a correlation between the types of people who routinely say, "Bush is despicable, look at what he did to McCain in South Carolina" and those pimping this latest one. Now, before anyone assumes I'm only speaking of the port side, I'm seeing it from people on both the left and the right.

You know you wanna.

Because it is there.--attributed to George Mallory, as his answer to the question: “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?"

So Senator McCain, as part of the now-familiar Pimp My Bio effort, frequently tells the moving story of the cross in the dirt that gave him courage and the will to go on. Funny thing is, this extraordinarily cinematic tale wasn't part of McCain's earliest recounting of his POW experiences. Even funnier? It's very similar to a story told by the greatest man of the previous century, Alexander Solzhenitsen.

Hey. Maybe that's not actually funny.

Andrew Sullivan noted this first. He's now asking a relevant question. When was the first time McCain told this moving biographical anecdote?

Betcha there's some folks digging, and digging hard, right now. And yes, I'm sure it's all true and I'm sure we'll get some kind of confirmation in the next few days because I know Senator McCain would never ever inflate or embellish like that. Any more than he would use his POW experiences as a campaign prop. He's just not that kind of man.

Unless he did, of course. And then...?

Heh.

UPDATE! Speaking of embellishing, hey, if nothing else? It wouldn't be the last time. Here.

BONUS UPDATE! At last night's Saddleback Forum, Pastor Rick made it clear that Senator McCain was in a 'cone of silence' so that he would not reap undue advantage, eg know what questions were coming before they were asked. Senator McCain even joked about trying to listen through a wall. Heh. Except it turns out McCain wasn't even in the church during the first half hour of Obama's hour long segment. Gee. That's not quite an embellishment, but. Oh never mind.

BONUS BONUS UPDATE! The Story of the Cross begins to spread. Hey, remember Senator Clinton and the tarmac? Heh.

* Iskra Offices
37a Clerkenwell_Green
London

Trotsky’s escaped from Siberia and fled to London in 1902. Why London? It was a magnet for Russian exiles and other personae-non-grata. Lenin had also escaped to London and was editing Spark magazine, Iskra in Russian. Trotksy began writing for Spark, as were several other raffish ex-prisoners of Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias. All would figure large in the years to follow. This little magazine would be the fulcrum upon which Marxism would teeter and totter. With a smaller circulation than many college newspapers, around 8000, struggle for control of its editorial board would have consequences far beyond anyone’s ability to predict at the time. I give you the cast of characters, for Trotsky cannot be understood without them.

Trotsky had married while in prison. He had left his first wife and two daughters behind in Russia of necessity: escaped prisoners don’t usually go back to their families, and his wife understood completely. Trotsky met his second wife in London, took her name and had two more children. The children of Trotsky’s first marriage were raised on their grandfather’s estate. His first wife would later die in the gulag of Kolyma, mining gold in the Arctic. She was last seen in 1938 and has vanished from history. Varlam Shalamov describes the mass graves where she was doubtless buried in his Kolyma Tales, left as an exercise to the reader. Solzhenitsyn said Shalamov, not he, saw the worst of the Stalinist evil. In 1903, Stalin was in Siberia, a young sociopath and thug in training, soon to return to Georgia to a career of robbing banks and extorting money for the Bolsheviks. But this would be far in the future.