If you're looking for (further) proof that Americans are keeping a tighter grip on discretionary income, coffee behemoth Starbucks is shutting down a staggering 600 stores in the United States alone.

The future doesn't look too bright, either:

The Seattle-based premium coffee company also announced Tuesday it expects to open fewer than 200 new company-operated stores in the United States in fiscal 2009.

The company says it will try to place workers from closed stores in remaining Starbucks.

Call this one a misadventure in framing.

If you're like me, a little piece of you dies every time a Republican or even a self-styled Independent Democrat engages in a framing device such as substituting "Democrat Congress" for the correct "Democratic Congress." The goal of this wordplay is to both emphasize the "rat" in Democrat in the hopes of tarnishing a political party as untrustworthy and, more sinisterly, to try to lessen the usage of the word "democratic" in political discourse.

But sometimes framing has some unexpected results.

My office is in downtown Portland, a few blocks west and north of the Willamette River waterfront, site of yesterday's massive Obama rally. From walking these streets on a daily basis for several years now, I encounter all variety of working folks and young activists, but mostly the homeless, and sadly, the same homeless people who never seem to find a way out.

For the past few weeks (especially the last week), and also from the vantage point of my office near Powell's City of Books, I've encountered/seen many supporters/volunteers of both Senator Obama and Clinton walking up and down SW 10th Avenue.

I just got back from getting coffee at the Peet's at SW Broadway and Washington, where I had a less-than-pleasant encounter with a Hillary Clinton supporter.

Now the race for the Democratic nomination is presumably over, assuming that Lanny Davis was just blowing smoke about fighting all the way to Denver, I want to take a deep breath and think a bit philosophically about the fight for the nomination.

Hillary Clinton faces a realization that must sting like no other: she will never realize her greatest ambition. In her mind, the last sixteen years (at least) of her life—enduring her husband's presidency and its most embarrassing moments, two successful Senate campaigns—have been building to this moment, to a long-awaited rendezvous with history as the first woman president.

It was all for naught. She lost. She failed on a huge stage, with an entire nation watching.

And no matter what you think of her, you can't say that Hillary Clinton didn't try her damndest to land the job of Most Powerful Person on Earth.

Four Reasons to Doubt the Existence of God or any Benevolent Supreme Being, starring:

1. Hackers who deliberately tried to cause epileptic seizures and migraine headaches
2. Mitt Romney
3. Lisa Mayne, who stole from her Alzheimer's-stricken father
4. Pro-Mugabe thugs and killers terrorizing Zimbabwe

and one small reason to feel hopeful:

1. An end to inhumane gassing in Illinois animal shelters

Prepare to test your faith below.

I realize there will be hundreds of diaries written about this subject up until the time that our party's nominee, Barack Obama, selects his running mate for the general election. (Speaking of that, have I mentioned red state governor and Obama supporter Kathleen Sebelius lately?)

I digress. Other than the myriad reasons why Hillary should not win the Veepstakes—high negatives, Clinton-era baggage, the enmity of African-American voters, etc.—my argument against the "dream ticket" can be summed up thusly:

Bill Clinton could be the next Dick Cheney.

Five Reasons to Doubt the Existence of God or any Benevolent Supreme Being, starring:

1. Our new insect overlords
2. Painful sores and skin rashes
3. Hillary Clinton
4. The Chicago White Sox, and
5. Mike Erickson, GOP candidate for Congress in OR-05, caught stealing

Prepare to test your faith below.

How disgusting is this?

Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation "embarrassing," and some members of Congress vow to fix it.

Does anyone really believe this is an accident? It's not just Mandela who's on the list, but all members of the African National Congress (ANC). You know, those wicked terrorists who wanted to end Apartheid.

What have we become? As FairyTale commented, "what we have always been."

What the hell? Is war coming early?

http://rawstory.com/...

More coming... just posted on Jamie McIntyre's CNN blog a few minutes ago...

Now there's a CBS story about it:

A civilian ship working for the U.S. military fired warning shots at two small boats that approached it in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy said Friday.... The Western Venture was in international waters in the central Gulf on Thursday morning when it was approached by two small boats of unknown origin, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

From the title you might think I'm writing about Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. If you're one of her supporters, you deserve to feel good about your candidate today, and perhaps you'll even be inclined to throw a few bucks at her to help erase that $10 million in debt.

Actually, though, this is a very serious diary that goes out to the good Democrats of the Tar Heel State. Please heed my words, dear friends. I'm very concerned about you, and what you might do to yourselves on May 6, the day of your state's Democratic primary.

It might not be safe to write about it in a public forum, but consequences be damned! This is a grave issue. Should you to vote a certain way, you might unwittingly terminate your own existence in the eyes of one candidate's campaign.

No, it's even worse. You won't just be dead, you will be... irrelevant.

I am genuinely puzzled by this. Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich, representing Ohio's 10th district, was one of only two Democrats to vote against the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008 (HR 5036).

According to the Associated Press, the act, sponsored by New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt, Jr., would have...

....allowed states and jurisdictions to be reimbursed by the federal government for converting to a paper ballot system, offering emergency paper ballots or conducting audits by hand counts.... The bill would have provided reimbursements for states to provide voter-verified, audited balloting for the general election, but it would not have mandated standards for the states.

This comes as a big surprise who remember Kucinich's protest of the results of the 2004 presidential election on the House floor.

Yeah, I know, the snarky response is, "Wow, this would have mattered in 1994." But Michael Stipe, rock & roll Hall of Famer and lead singer of R.E.M., is a tireless advocate of numerous progressive causes, especially investing the historic preservation of band's home town of Athens, Georgia.

And in January 1993, Stipe performed with Natalie Merchant at the Clinton Inaugural.

How times and attitudes change. Here's what Stipe has to say now:

I'm for Barack Obama all the way. The Clinton campaign has took a desperate turn and has, I think, shown its true colors. How dare they use fear against Americans after these past seven years? I'm really tired of politicians telling me what to be afraid of. On the other hand, Obama is hopeful, grounded and clearly intelligent. He is, relatively, an outsider to the beholden D.C. club, and I think that is what America is calling out for; not a career politician but a true outsider candidate. He represents I think the true spirit of the beginning of the 21st century.

Here, here.

Let me open with the disclaimer that accompanies so many diaries and comments on dKos these days: I am an Obama supporter. But I'm deeply disturbed by this new feature on Slate.com: the Hillary Deathwatch.

The article is accompanied by a cartoon of Hillary trying to avoid going down with a sinking ship. But the attempt at humor doesn't really soften the opening paragraph, written with no sense of humor/irony at all:

Hillary Clinton is as good as dead. This became the consensus over the past week, when the media awoke en masse to the dual reality that 1) Clinton can't close the pledged-delegate gap and 2) Obama has her beat in the popular vote.... So the question now is not just "How dead is she?" but "When will she realize it?"

Sometimes I just want to punch a wall over this issue. Wednesday afternoon I wrote about Senator Clinton's assertion to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that the early, DNC-defying primaries in Michigan and Florida were fair elections:

http://www.dailykos.com/...

And several diarists, including Bobo2020, rightfully excoriated Clinton for repeating her claims the following morning on NPR's Morning Edition.

But Clinton isn't alone in making this claim. Her campaign manager Maggie Williams, too, has asserted that the results of the bogus Michigan and Florida primaries should stand.

But Saturday's logic-defying assertion by another surrogate really made me furious.

I shouldn't be shocked...

...but, yes, contrary to historical fact and what the reality-based community accepts to be true, this is what the junior senator from New York believes... and says publicly.

Today she addressed the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and unloaded this whoppper:

"If you are a voter from Florida or Michigan, you know that we should count your vote. The nearly two and a half million Americans in those two states who participated in the primary elections are in danger of being excluded from our democratic process and I think that's wrong. The results of those primaries were fair and they should be honored. Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of discussion about what we should do to ensure that the voters in Florida and Michigan are counted.

You may already know about falafel enthusiast Bill O'Reilly's recent dust-up with Sen. Barack Obama's security detail in Nashua, NH, as diaried here:

http://www.dailykos.com/...

and Lynn Sweet's (Chicago Sun-Times) original story:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/...

As a side note, I find this little tidbit interesting:

O'Reilly grabbed Nicholson's arm, said "move" and shoved him, another eyewitness said. Nicholson, who is 6'8 said O"Reilly called him "low class."

Funny how a big bully like Bill O'Reilly thinks of a taller guy doing his job as "low class."

To the point: Obama refuses to play O'Reilly's rigged game, and the animosity dates back over a year.

Later tonight, if you are watching C-SPAN or MSNBC glass-eyed because your candidate is making his or her concession speech, I have a sure-fire way that you can feel better about yourself, especially for those of you who live in cold-weather climates.

It's not alcohol. It's not drugs. It's not even a gesture like throwing your support behind whomever wins the Iowa Caucus tonight.

Think about your furnace. Is it running? If so, you have a lot to be thankful for.

Oh, Grandpa:

Without saying Clinton's name, (former Tennessee senator and GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson) said -- quote -- "There is no woman on the horizon that ought to be president next year, let's all agree on that."

How clever. He's referring to You-Know-Who, of course. But I'm sure there were plenty of right-wingers in Iowa who took it even a step further.