I frequently rail against the willfully ignorant and stupid people who call themselves "pundits" and pollute our airwaves. Today I want to do the opposite: praise a real pundit who came out of nowhere (politically speaking) and rose to the very top of the "profession." His name is Nate Silver and his website is FiveThirtyEight.com, named after the total number of Electors in the Electoral College. (If you divide by two, 269 is a tie so 270 is needed to win.)

Last night, Silver made the "big time" with an appearance on Countdown with Keith Olberman. Watch the video below and you'll see why Silver is so good: he's precise, factual, thoroughly informed, practically wise, and humble.

    Please help unite
Obama supporters in rejecting McCain’s
negative campaign style. We must clean up politics if things are ever to get
better. We have a chance to be so much more than the same old attack politics,
but Obama must hear the voices of his supporters on this.

 

Please read the message to Obama on the following blog and
help spread it to others.

 

http://manyhands.blogspot.com/

 

 

After the CIA's miserable failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, then-Senator Pat Moynihan proposed eliminating the CIA and putting the State Department back in charge of collecting intelligence, as it was before World War II.

Now, after the intelligence community's catastrophic failure on Iraq, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is proposing an idea that's nearly as radical: intelligence analysts should talk to bloggers like Juan Cole:

Last weekend at Netroots Nation, Matt Palevsky of The Real News had a brief but thoughtful interview with Matt Stoller of OpenLeft.com about how much the Netroots can change American politics and the world. Stoller, as always, was militantly realistic:

The scale of what we need to do is far larger than our capacity right now. Just changing the way we relate to each other and the land around us - because we have a country and a world that is actually run by thieves - that's the problem.

Speaker Pelosi went to Netroots Nation, but mostly to stonewall and lie. Here's Smintheus:

The first question was about "inherent contempt": Why hasn't Congress used its power of inherent contempt to jail current and former members of the Bush administration who have ignored Congressional subpoenas? The Speaker talked instead about the failure of the Justice Department to pursue the complaint that the House has sent DOJ. Asked a second time about inherent contempt, and specifically when the House would "put [Karl Rove] into that little cell down in the basement", Speaker Pelosi responded that committee chairs have said they will take care of the matter. Congressman John Conyers, she said, asked her to leave it to him.

I went to the first two NetrootsNations (then known as YearlyKos) in Las Vegas 2006 and Chicago 2007. I didn't got to NetrootsNation3 in Austin, so instead I'm blogging from a distance.

Here's Hunter:

If the narrative of the first two years was that of our mere existence, and our ability to shape events, this narrative is just as primitive: towards what end?

Exactly. Will the Netroots simply chatter, or will it bring about change?

Hunter just wants to chatter:

It's bad enough that Nancy Pelosi took impeachment "off the table" during the 2006 campaign, and kept it "off the table" despite the accumulation of overwhelming evidence of impeachable offenses.

But it's outrageous that impeachment is "off the table" at "Netroots Nation," which is supposed to be the annual gathering of progressive bloggers and their readers, a.k.a. the "netroots."

The closest any panel comes to "accountability" is a panel which entirely ignores the fact that Democrats control the House and Senate now, and instead postpones any form of accountability until 2009.

Over at Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald is mobilizing blogs to block House "Democratic" leader Steny Hoyer's corrupt deal with George Bush and the Telecoms for warrantless wiretapping immunity. Democrats.com is proud to join the effort, which is called TheStrangeBedfellows because it includes progressive blogs like ours and Ron Paul-supporting libertarian blogs. The money raised will be used for hard-hitting ads against Hoyer and two key Bush Democrats, Chris Carney (PA-10) and John Barrow (GA-12). What makes the anti-Barrow campaign especially potent is that he faces a strong primary challenge from progressive State Sen. Regina Thomas, who also happens to be black - in a district where 70% of primary voters are black.

Digby is the soul of the progressive blogosphere, and of course one of my favorite bloggers. So why isn't she calling for impeachment?

When ABC reported Bush personally approved torture last Friday, Digby's first reaction was shock.