I am a supporter of Sen. Obama over Sen. Clinton [FN1], but I am alarmed by the cocky attitude being displayed by my fellow Obama supporters.  

After the wins in Louisiana, Washington, Nebraska, Maine and the Virgin Islands there has been a dramatic uptick in strutting and an unsettling number of comments that look beyond the primary battles in the days and weeks ahead to what comes after Obama is nominated ("Who will he choose as VP?"  "Dude, he is so going to win the primary in Ohio in 2012" "Where do I get my tickets for the inaugural ball?  Should I call campaign headquarters directly, or...?").

This is disconcerting, and it is disconcerting the hell out of me.  

Follow me over the fold for the rousing, good old-fashioned woodshedding you so richly deserve.

Well the polls are in in New Hampshire, and I am stunned--positively stunned--to learn that my non-campaign is almost eking out Mike Gravel, who leads me just shy of something like a couple hundred votes.  

The grist mill of this administration has been churning out a single meme since 2003, and they churn it out week after week, month after month, through minions and lackeys on talk shows and in press conferences and in the blogosphere.  

The message is this:  Democrats don't want to fund our troops, Democrats don't stand with our troops, Democrats are encouraging the enemy, Democrats aren't serious about the War on Terror, Democrats don't want us to win.

This is a simple diary, to the point, and devoid of the sort of jacknapery and ribald good fun you have come to expect from your ole buddy Lars.  

Here is my question:

How would defunding the war work to end the war?  Put another way, how do you know that defunding the war will result in our pullout?

To call this day a serious setback to those who supported the Democrats in 2006 with the stupidly naive hope that they would, in the majority, exercise a little gumption and start getting this country in the right direction, is a grotesque understatement.

Someone needs to put it to the Congress that they are there for a reason.  A big reason.

To set things right.  

Someone needs to kick their asses a little.

Maybe, I fantasize over the fold, someone kicks their sorry asses into line...David Mamet style.  

There is new and mounting pressure on Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General who just a few days ago once again dazzled us with his almost prescient powers of judgment and observation when, it was reported, he told associates that he had weathered the storm and all this was behind him.

Now that storm clouds are gathering around Gonzales (thanks to Jim Comey and Alberto himself) at roughly the same speed and billowy thickness as the clouds that gathered over Dana's apartment building near the end of Ghostbusters, it occurred to me that we may see Gonzales go soon--very soon--but for all the wrong reasons.

Follow me over the fold.  There's an amusing traffic tale in it for you.  Come, won't you?

It takes a particular kind of courage these days to admit that at one time you were not only a Bush supporter, but a loyal, enthusiastic, card-carrying member of the President's booster club, a man about whom you shouted from the rafters, hoping to draw anyone to your way of thinking.  

I imagine it's like someone having to admit to a room full of decent people that he used to huff whippets out back of the Safeway on Friday nights, alone and pantless, holding only a stripped down Barbie Doll while humming Pet Shop Boys songs.  I imagine it's like someone having to tell people that he is a Yankees fan.  It's humiliating and sad.  

But there comes a point where one must grasp the demons that come with hitting rock bottom.  There comes a point where one must admit to the errors of his ways, or be lost forever.  There comes a point where one must confess, if only to ensure that the sins of the past never take root again.  

My name is Lars Thorwald.  And I am a recovering Loyal Bushie.

The President's stance in stark defiance against Congress on the war strikes me as odd.  It is at odds with what I assumed would be the White House's post-election political strategy: adoption of an approach that would superficially show some measure of compromise with Democrats, a strategy that would, in turn, allow him to wash his hands of some of the blame for the mess that is Iraq while putting the Democrats partly on the peg of ownership for the war.

To my surprise, he's done just the opposite.  And in doing so has doomed his remaining political capital and any chance at a viable positive legacy (no matter how small) after he left office.  

Follow me over the fold for my mildly amusing thoughts on this point, and what it all means.

In the continuing battle between the Democratic Congress and the Bush imperium over the issue of whether, in fact, the Emperor has new clothes, logic is on the Democrats' side, but the crucial political leverage belongs to the Emperor. It behooves the realists in both camps to recognize what the tailors and the country have at stake -- and negotiate a compromise.