Summertime

And the living's easy...for my kid. We have three playdates scheduled this week at our place, which means I need to get food and clean up and vacuum and otherwise stay off the damn computer.

Posting will be even more intermittent although I can get on a roll at night. I make up for being news-starved during the day. I caught a bit of the Black Commentator on the radio this morning while driving the kid to summer school. I didn't know BC was on the radio but then I don't listen to radio much.

I caught just a teeny tiny bit at the end of a very interesting story on Barack Obama, a promising young progressive running for Senate in Illinois. The question was: will he sell-out, just as other politicians have, to the DLC? As I have been harping for a while, the DLC represents the corporate faction of the party, the part which makes Ralph Nader spout there's no diff between the Repubs and the Dems. The DLC, very briefly, is pro-Iraq invasion, pro-NAFTA, pro-corporate interests, anti-grassroots, anti-union and oh, pro-NCLB.

Long story short, Obama eventually requested to have his name taken off their list. Phew. And yay.

Of course, I looked up the story. Going backwards, here it is.
Obama To Have Name Removed from DLC List

In Search of the Real Obama: Can a Black Senate Candidate Resist the DLC?

Not Corrupted by the DLC says Obama

These are all well-written articles by the BC, trying to figure out whether Obama would sell-out or did sell-out. But they are also worth reading to find out more about the political influences within the Democratic party, especially for a more grass-roots progressive candidate.