re: The Great Endarkening, I wrote:

Typical! They put us in charge at the precise moment it all really starts to come unglued.

But, obviously, the other thing is that it's this very "ungluing" that unsticks the door enough for a Presidential first (I would argue black or female) to (maybe) walk through. A strong and prosperous America as we have previously understood those things to mean (strong, prosperous, America) would have neither needed nor allowed now evoked (invoked?) the kind of change a first black or female president represents.

Three distinct things that made an echo recently:

1 - In a Generation, Minorities May Be the U.S. Majority

Ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation’s population in a little more than a generation, according to new Census Bureau projections, a transformation that is occurring faster than anticipated just a few years ago.

The census calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would come in 2050. [full story]

2 - Every asshole in America knows the change is coming:

All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light.

Save it for 2050.

It also exposes a very strong weakness for him—his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values. [full asshole, by which I mean, full Mark Penn]

3 - But unless we (by which I mean you and I, dear reader) do something quick, that demographic inheritance check is very likely going to bounce:

Meanwhile, Russia got its house in order under the non-senile, non-alcoholic Vladimir Putin, and woke up along about 2007 to find itself the leading oil and natural gas producer in the world. Among the various consequences of this was Russia's reemergence as a new kind of world power -- an energy resource power, with the energy destiny of Europe pretty much in its hands. [...]

We could have spent the past ten years getting our own house in order -- waking up to the obsolescence of our suburban life-style, scaling back on the Happy Motoring, reconnecting our cities with world-class passenger rail, creating wealth by producing things of value (instead of resorting to financial racketeering), protecting our borders, and taking the necessary measures to defend and update our own industries. Instead, we pissed our time and resources away. Nations do make tragic errors of the collective will. The cluelessness of George Bush is nothing less than a perfect metaphor for the failure of a whole generation. The Boomers will be identified as the generation that wrecked America. [full Jim Kunstler on the implications of the Georgian conflict] [h/t James Wolcott]

Typical! They put us in charge at the precise moment it all really starts to come unglued. Better get your lead on now, colored folks, while there is still an outside chance of righting the ship. 2050 will be too late, and, moreover, the Mexicans and Central Americans will be blamed for the mess, and, by extension, blacks, gays, cities, evolution and so forth.

Obama is on board with Democratic capitulation on retroactive immunity for warrantless wiretapping, but promises/hopes to do an accountability do-over later down the road:

I guess there's no chance cut-and-run McCain helped inspire Osama?

In 1993, 18 U.S. soldiers, part of a contingent sent on a humanitarian mission to famine-struck Somalia, were murdered by street fighters in Mogadishu. Bin Laden later claimed that some of the Arab Afghans were involved. The main thing to bin Laden, howev er, was the horrified American reaction to the deaths. Within six months, the U.S. had withdrawn from Somalia. In interviews, bin Laden has said that his forces expected the Americans to be tough like the Soviets but instead found that they were "paper ti gers" who "after a few blows ran in defeat."[from Time]

Just to be clear, I'm not endorsing the invasions of Somalia and Haiti, just pointing out that Republican rhetoric about invasion, withdrawal and the rightness of those courses of action is bullshit.

h/t Wayne for forwarding.

I guess every era is convinced they live in the best/worst of times, but when I read stories like this one in the LA Times (h/t Digby) I feel that our claim on America's nadir is more than narcissism:

In May 2007, Victoria Arellano, a 23-year-old transgender immigrant from Mexico, was sent to a detention center in San Pedro after being arrested on a traffic charge.

Arellano, who was born a male and had come to the United States illegally as a child, had AIDS at the time of her arrest but exhibited no symptoms of the disease because of the medication she took daily. But once detained, her health began to deteriorate.She lost weight and became sick. She repeatedly pleaded with staff members at the detention center to see a doctor to get the antibiotics she needed to stay alive, according to immigrant detainees with whom Arellano shared a dormitory-style cell. But her requests were routinely ignored.

Asked why she's staying in the race, Hillary Clinton today evoked, of all things, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Talking Points Memo has video of the offending comment and of the non-apology.

I had to go over to the otherwise odious FOX News to learn that Clinton made much the same point on May 7th, but the story didn't catch on until she repeated it today and the reference was picked up by the Drudge Report. Clinton's subsequent non-apology (no reference to Obama or even why the comment might be offensive) and the Drudge sourcing indicates to me that her camp has processed this issue Jane Hamsher-style, meaning they view it as nothing more than "ginned up controversy" (to use Hamsher's words after the Blackface Joe incident) created by manifold enemies in order to "further distract from the issues important to the voters"Clintons. In this view of events, instead of legitimate concern over Clinton's word-choice, we have black folks, with our dumbness and our annoying hypersensitivity and tendency to keep losing leaders to gunfire, being played for cynical, strategic advantage.

As November draws near, expect the number of times someone - be they GOP and Democratic partisan - refers to, references or depicts people pointing guns at Obama, or lynching, or sexually torturing Michelle Obama to only go up. Exponentially.

When the right wing does it, it will be a media outrage, and when someone on the left does it, it will be just an "ooopsie!" that the right is trying to exploit, so shut your black mouth if you know what's good for you. That each of these episodes will feature white folks fantasizing about the physical mortification of the Obamas, and that racism is the one thing that often unites white folks across the political spectrum, will not be discussed.

I'm late to this party, but:

Filmmaker Althea Wasow, likely in response to my saying in The Root that I couldn't think of any pro-Hillary Clinton viral videos, sent me this in the emails:

I thought we were buds, Althea?

Hillary Clinton sits down with Marsellus Wallace. From illdoctrine. h/t Jack & Jill Politics.

Binyavanga Wainaina's New York Times op-ed on recent events in Kenya.

THIS thing called Kenya is a strange animal. In the 1960s, the bright young nationalists who took over the country when we got independence from the British believed that their first job was to eradicate “tribalism.” What they really meant, in a way, was that they wanted to eradicate the nations that made up Kenya. It was assumed that the process would end with the birth of a brand-new being: the Kenyan.

Compared with other African nations, Kenya has had significant success with this experiment. But it has not been without its contradictions, though they had never really turned lethal until now.

It's hard for me to believe that just 12 months ago I was in an altogether different seeming Kenya. Of course, I was in a visitor's bubble: tourism, hotels, travel and the hospitality of knowledgeable hosts, all of which meant I had little exposure to the cracks and fissures in Kenyan society that have appeared since last week's election.