Senator Barack Obama said:

Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President’s illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. [Emphasis mine, JH.]

Since Jill has already layed claim to the best omnibus title, I’ll have to make do with this nod to Dr. Seuss. Today I read:

This Land Is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich.

I took a little vacation recently–nine hours in Sun Valley, Idaho, before an evening speaking engagement. The sky was deep blue, the air crystalline, the hills green and not yet on fire. Strolling out of the Sun Valley Lodge, I found a tiny tourist village, complete with Swiss-style bakery, multistar restaurant and “opera house.” What luck–the boutiques were displaying outdoor racks of summer clothing on sale! Nature and commerce were conspiring to make this the perfect micro-vacation.

But as I approached the stores things started to get a little sinister–maybe I had wandered into a movie set or Paris Hilton’s closet?–because even at a 60 percent discount, I couldn’t find a sleeveless cotton shirt for less than $100. These items shouldn’t have been outdoors; they should have been in locked glass cases.

Then I remembered the general rule, which has been in effect since sometime in the 1990s: if a place is truly beautiful, you can’t afford to be there. All right, I’m sure there are still exceptions–a few scenic spots not yet eaten up by mansions. But they’re going fast.

George Bush’s latest powers, courtesy of the Democratic Congress by Glenn Greenwald.

So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words — the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists — and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.

That’s the “compromise” Steny Hoyer negotiated and which he is now — according to very credible reports — pressuring every member of the Democratic caucus to support. It’s full-scale, unconditional amnesty with no inquiry into whether anyone broke the law. In the U.S. now, thanks to the Democratic Congress, we’ll have a new law based on the premise that the President has the power to order private actors to break the law, and when he issues such an order, the private actors will be protected from liability of any kind on the ground that the Leader told them to do it — the very theory that the Nuremberg Trial rejected.

Oil shortage a myth, says industry insider By Steve Connor.

“The bad news is that by underestimating proven oil reserves we have been lulled into a false sense of security in terms of environmental issues, because it suggests we will have to find alternatives to fossil fuels in a few decades,” said Dr Pike. “We should not be surprised if oil dominates well into the twenty-second century. It highlights a major error in energy and environmental planning – we are dramatically underestimating the challenge facing us,” he said.

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is The climate change denial industry primer.

[Update –1153: Here’s a more complete statement form Sen. Feingold:

The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President”s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home. Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity.

And under this bill, the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power.Instead of cutting bad deals on both FISA and funding for the war in Iraq, Democrats should be standing up to the flawed and dangerous policies of this administration.

I wish either of my Senators had a backbone.]

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said:

[HR 1285 to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978] is not a compromise; it is a capitulation.

Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity.

[Update — 0937: And Feingold isn’t the only one pissed.]

1140 Stem to stern description by Robert Cox of Drudre Retort – AP matter

Senator Barack Obama wrote:

The decision not to participate in the public financing system wasn’t an easy one – especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections. But the public financing of presidential elections, as it exists today, is broken – and the Republican Party apparatus has mastered the art of gaming this broken system.

From the very beginning of this campaign, I have asked my supporters to avoid participating in unregulated political activity such as so-called 527 groups, and instead to help us build a broad coalition of small donors free from the influence of PACs and Washington lobbyists – the ultimate goal of the public financing system. And voters have responded in record numbers: More than 1.5 million people have contributed, and nearly half their contributions have been for $25 or less.

David Brooks wrote:

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they”re running against some academic liberal who wouldn”t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn”t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they”re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there”s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who”d throw you under the truck for votes.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He”s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he”s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Beyond Blogs.

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is A Beginner”s Guide to E-Books.

1234 McCain-Williams-rape fundraiser fiasco: blogging at its best
1216 Tim Ryan [UPDATE- doesn”t go] after my YouTube account[?] – UPDATEx2: we”re back live on Vimeo
0551 Stop Doing Nothing

It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman, Peter Sayles and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

ONE PERSON”S FAT IS ANOTHER”S FLESH… A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how Wal-Mart”s single-minded drive to the bottom is like an anorexic”s compulsion to be thinner: neither knows when to stop and the end results can be tragic for everyone involved. Keep reading…

THINK TECH SUPPORT FROM INDIA IS BAD…? One of our most loyal readers, critic and Wal-Mole alerted me this morning to a Consumerist story about rumors of Wal-Mart expanding its electronics departments to include installation and repair services in electronics. Keep reading…

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION WAL-MART…? Prominent on the front page of this morning”s Wall Street Journal is the headline: Boardroom Brawl Roils BP”s Russia Venture; Talks Break Down; Kremlin”s Role Murky. This is precisely the type of event I”ve been predicting for Wal-Mart in the former Soviet bloc. Keep reading…

WAL-MART ABANDONING LOW PRICES…? Not really, but in its Marketside groceries, Wal-Mart appears to be making yet another bumbling to go upscale with what it”s calling a premium format. Note to management: Has anyone at headquarters realized that Yuppies are so last century? Keep reading…

NOTICE WHAT THEY LEAD WITH… Watch…

WAL-MART GESTAPO DEMANDS MAN”S PAPERS… The issue of demanding to see a receipt before allowing paying customers to leave a store is a big box problem, not a just a Wal-Mart problem. On Have Coffee Will Write I wrote extensively of the battle between Michael Righi and Circuit City in Clevelaind. Keep reading…

FISHMAN BORROWS A PAGE FROM FORD… Charles Fishman knows Wal-Mart. Businesspeople mine his The Wal-Mart Effect for his Wal-Mart insights. In speaking to the Canadian Corrugated Case Association in Toronto, Fishman offered advice that I found reminiscent of Henry Ford”s genius. Keep reading…

SAVE MORE, LIVE BETTER… RIIGGGHHHHTTTTT… Brian White thinks that monospony is a good thing because, in the case of Wal-Mart, the power of being the biggest, and in some cases the only, buyer of a wide range a products is allowing Wal-Mart to single-handedly stave off big, bad inflation. Keep reading…

SAVE US WAL-MART… Cigars and brandies all around for the folks at Edelman. The effusiveness of the recent Wal-Mart love fest leads me to believe that only two possible tasks remain for the public relations firm responsible before it rides off into the sunset, its job here done. Keep reading…

THIS IS SO DEPRESSING… While I currently make my living as something of an educational fixer, my vocation is writing. So when I read a Jurgen Wolff”s conclusion on Time To Write this morning, a cold shiver ran down my spine. Could Wal-Mart really do to publishing what it”s doing to music? Keep reading…

NEGOTIATING WITH WAL-MART… The perception, and I would still argue the reality, of negotiating with Wal-Mart is simple: Wal-Mart presents its requirements and the vendor either meets those requirements or Wal-Mart goes elsewhere. So Julie Hanna”s perspective this morning surprised me. Keep reading…

I have a monk problem. Not the tonsured kind, the Tony Shalhoub kind.

Several years ago my dad and I were talking about Shalhoub’s show Monk, where he plays a San Francisco detective with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In the conversation my dad told me that he had a touch of OCD: he counts items on his fingers.

From my own observations, I don’t think it has affected his life greatly, and I haven’t given it a great deal of thought before this morning; when I pondered my backlog of blog posts. Not posts that I might write someday — I have plenty of those and they’re not a problem — but rather posts that I intended to write in the past and didn’t.

What’s the difference?

My readers know that I post regular entries that are tied to subject but are not necessarily time sensitive. My chapbook and blogpile posts are just two examples. Readers will also have noted that when I miss a few days, I go back and fill in the gaps.

That’s one of my own OCD demons.

When the gaps pile up I expend an hour or two writing posts that I then backdate so that some fictitious reader won’t see gaps in the posts. Yet I know that no one other than myself ever notices what a slacker I’ve been.

That’s a waste for two reasons. First, readers have no way of knowing that there are posts they haven’t read back there before the latest batch they have read. That means that the back dated posts are less likely to be read. Second, the past is the past. If I didn’t have time to write the post on the day I intended to write it, why should I steal future/present time to correct history? The work piles up, becomes unmanageable and the here and now suffers.

No more.

Effective today, I’m no longer back dating any of my posts. If I can’t get an entry posted in the here and now, then it will wait for the future.

The World won’t end.

My journey out from Egypt began on 19 April 2008.

1831 Obama now a muslim antichrist – according to emails
1620 Stop Doing Nothing
1750 McCain-Williams-rape fundraiser fiasco: blogging at its best

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is 16 Ways to Keep A Razor- Sharp Focus at Work.

Tony Horwitz writes:

Bottom line: small-towners in the Rust Belt and Appalachia don”t cling to guns and religion so much as they do cigarettes.

By rejoining them, Mr. Obama would also touch voters in several heavy-smoking swing states: Michigan, Missouri and Nevada. Added bonus – Virginia and North Carolina, two leading tobacco-producing states, are both in play this election.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I”m an Obama supporter and fellow Nicorette chewer. Thanks to the gum, I no longer crave cigarettes. But I do miss the companionship of a shared smoke. Indulging in a vice stigmatized by most Americans is an easy way to bond with people with whom you otherwise have nothing in common.