If you see me in a suit it generally means one of two things: I am going to a wedding or I am invited to an event with Bill Clinton.

The work I have done for Kiva, both as a lender and a blogger, has gotten some attention. My Kiva diaries are among the more popular ones I write. A little while back I was interviewed by BBC World News as a lender. And most recently, I was invited to a private panel discussion for the release of Bill Clinton’s latest Book, GIVING: How Each of Us Can Change the World. I do not have a copy of this book as of yet so this is not a book review, though that might come. Instead I want to discuss the event and some of the individuals and organizations that were highlighted.

Mark Twain said there are lies, damn lies and statistics and his adage applies to unemployment measurement. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six unemployment metrics monthly, each referred to in ascending order of inclusiveness of the unemployed as U-1, U-2, etc.

The measure reported by the media as the unemployment rate that severely undercounts the unemployed is referred to as U-3. The U-3 rate is obtained by dividing the narrowest definition of the unemployed by the work force.
The U-3 definition does not include whom the BLS calls discouraged and marginal workers, those who want a job but have given up the search because market conditions and personal experience indicate the process is futile.

U-6 Unemployment counts the marginal and discouraged plus those seeking full time employment but can only find part time work. The Federal Reserve tracks what it defines as the Augmented Unemployment rate, which I’ve read is equivalent to U-6 less part time workers. I couldn’t find any Augmented Unemployment releases on the Fed site and despite major data inclusion differences, some bloggers have used U-6 and the Fed’s stat interchangeably.

Last night was the beginning of a wonderful event in politics.... "The fake debates".

As I watched last night a couple of things came to mind.

1. Clinton, Obama, and Biden were for the most part strong throughout the process.

2. I want Mike Gravel at every debate and he must get more questions and air time. Then get his own show and I would watch.

3. John Edwards looked so pretty last night I thought he was posing for GQ not running for President. Not to mention he long pause as he looked toward God when they asked who is moral leader was. I though he was expecting God to come down and say" Oh that is me Brain, John looks up to me."

4. Bill Ricardson did a poor job overall. Too much hand movement and body movement. At times long winded and overextending his time. He needs to fine tune for the next debate.

5. Why were people in the audience fanning themselves with their programs? You would think a large great college like that would have the AC on?

6. If anyone gained or lost undecided people it would look like this for each......

1. Gravel: gained.... Why well if he went from 2 votes to 4 he still gets my vote as most entertaining and needs a position in the next administration anyway.

The Washigton Post reported yesterday that Hillary Clinton is fighting tooth and nail to keep her husband's impeachment out of any discussions involving her presidential bid :

Clinton Fights to Keep Impeachment Taboo - washingtonpost.com:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a new commandment for the 2008 presidential field: Thou shalt not mention anything related to the impeachment of her husband.

With a swift response to attacks from a former supporter last week, advisers to the New York Democrat offered a glimpse of their strategy for handling one of the most awkward chapters of her biography. They declared her husband's impeachment in 1998 -- or, more accurately, the embarrassing personal behavior that led to it -- taboo, putting her rivals on notice and all but daring other Democrats to mention the ordeal again.

Funny because at the nail salon, the republican feminist lady that was getting a french manicure was saying that it did matter to her.

A lot.

An interesting bit of speculation over at TPM Café:

Some top Democrats say that if Hillary Clinton wins the Presidency, which would vacate her Senate seat, they'd like to see New York Governor Eliot Spitzer appoint another Clinton to take her place -- Bill Clinton. The Examiner reports that under this scenario, New York law would dictate that Bill stay in his wife's Senate seat until 2010, at which point a special election would be held for the seat.

Um. Horse. Cart. Proper order.

In the - to me unlikely and eminently undesirable, but let's entertain the thought - event that the dynastic succession to the White House works out and America continues down the path of monarchy, it would make sense to stay in the same rut and hand the Senate seat to the husband of the departing incumbent. Thing is, Governor Spitzer - who would be making the choice - would probably come under intense pressure to nominate a black or Latino replacement (as TPM notes), or more likely a woman. That would probably lead to H. Carl McCall or David Paterson, or maybe - one can dream - Liz Krueger.

Darth swearing in Hillary; Bill looks on.

(Hat tip to The Caucus via The Politicker).

One of the many advantages to New Yorkers of having President Clinton making his home in this state is this: he comes out and campaigns for our guys. In this case, he's throwing his support to Democrat Jimmy Dahroug in the Third Senatorial District. This is really kinda cool: Jimmy is 27 years young, and has a former President shaking his hand and asking people to vote for him.

One can only speculate, of course, what the effect would be of a Bush campaigning for incumbent Caesar Trunzo; my guess would be to drive people into the voting booth shrieking in dismay and revulsion. But my guess is as good as anyone's.

Heh.

As both a blogger and as an activist Democrat who once was able to donate moderately large amounts of money, I sometimes get invited to the really high-end fundraisers, the ones with top-level political celebrities. But even back when I could afford larger contributions, I never was able to donate the large amounts needed to attend one of these fundraisers.

Last Friday I received one such invitation. Bill Clinton would be present at a Halloween night fundraiser for Christine Jennings, the Democratic candidate running in the FL-13 race to replace Katherine “I say whose vote counts” Harris. Now, not only would I LOVE to see FL-13 elect a Democrat to replace the corrupt Republican Harris (who is going down in flames trying to get elected Senator), but I would love to meet Bill Clinton. Look, I hear from my Green friends all the time how terrible Clinton was, but I think, given the weakness of Congressional Dems at that time and the nastiness of the Republicans, Bill did about as well as anyone could as President, and, had Al Gore followed him, many of his best legacies would remain. Greens seem to forget that Clinton set aside the largest amount of land for preservation of any President in history…something that was reversed by Bush the second he got into office, thank you Nader. In my life I have seen presidents in action since Nixon (can’t remember LBJ) and of them all Clinton was the best. So, to meet the man who I consider the greatest president of my lifetime would mean something to me.

There are so many ways I could hit this photograph with my final thoughts on this photograph. Yet, I keep coming back to two quotes that resonated with me during the whole Lunch with Clinton mess.

The first quote comes from FireDogLake's Hardin-Smith:

liberal bloggers were invited to meet with the former President of the United States to talk about policy initiatives and the Democratic party and politics going into the November elections.

These words resonated because it made no sense to me for any of the bloggers in that meeting to rationalize the omission of the top bloggers of color in the left; especially if these discussions were meant to hammer on what Democrats could do to win the midterms and, down the road, the presidency. Why would these bloggers be silent accomplices to this big tactical mistake? Why in the world would they want to keep the influencers of thousands of connectors within the colored grassroots?

Then I read this quote from Jeralynn Merrit: I enjoyed being with Liza one night in Amsterdam, but FDL is family.

I was so blown by how not just simple, but simplistic and pedestrian the explanation was. The photograh is about "family". Not just in the physical sense of the word, mind you.

Look again at the photograph?

Have you read at least 5 of these bloggers? Take any --MyDD, FireDogLake, DailyKos, Americablog, Mahablog, TalkLeft, Eschaton, The blogging of the President. Tell me, how really different are these bloggers' styles of writing, topics of discussion and brand of ranting?

Armstrong Williams (of all people!) wrote the following in an article called, Diversity, which is about the absence of people of color in the technology fields :

For example, when hiring, bosses may look for those personal traits they associate with their own success. Consequently, they may end up hiring people who look, think and act in a manner similar to themselves. If confronted with a minority applicant who looks, sounds or communicates differently, they may turn these differences into perceived soft skill deficits.

[...]

Unfortunately, this sort of latent discrimination is virtually impossible to prove. Partly because there exists a strong tendency among judges (and sometimes even juries) to favor an employer's interpretation of events. But more to the point, because people in management simply tend to mentor people who look and act and sound like their sons.

What that means is that young, white Americans have traditionally benefited from the availability of mentors to help hone their talents, while minorities, even to this day, suffer from a lack of mentors to identify with and learn from. There is a logical progression: a lack of mentors equals a lack of learning opportunities, equals a lack of advancement, and equals a lack of certain high level positions being filled by minorities. With time, this sort of arbitrary sorting of high and low level employees comes to be regarded by many as the natural way of things

Most of the people, and I would argue for the exception of Jessica Valenti, have had through the last 2 years what amounts to the kind of working relationships Armstrong describes in his essay. They refer to each other's work regularly, refer each other to grants, workshops, conferences and mainstream media opportunities. And they all as a block make decisions on which candidates they are going to be fundraising. As a block, they all work together as one seamless narrative called "the blogs".

That's the problem I see with that photograph.

We have here a picture of suppression. There are experiences taken out of the picture. There are political interpretations and strategizing taken out of the picture. There are whole swaths of voters and electoral percentage points taken out of the picture. There is a whole history and present of political activism within the Democratic Party that has been taken out of that picture.

It is not lost on me that the top black and latino bloggers of the "liberal blogosphere" are not too keen on Hillary Clinton running for president. It is not lost on me either that we describe ourselves as progressives and not as liberals. As you can see, not one of us is in that photo.

Which is why, when I asked the fateful 3 questions,

What does it mean though that there are 20 bloggers invited to this lunch and not one is black or latino? What does it mean for this group of bloggers to be patting themselves on the backs for being with Clinton when they are all in Harlem and not one of them is a person of color? What does it mean for these people to be there and have not one of them raise this issue in their blogs?

I was not just referring to race.

When I asked those questions I was thinking : Why is diversity such a dirty word when it should be considered an integral part of any political practice?

Fox News has been a source of propoganda and lies for the Republican Party for years now. This was an intentional policy on the part of Fox News as a company to mislead the American public, as outline in the documentary Outfoxed. One of their main lies, contradicted a hundred times by people at all levels of American intelligence, is the lie that Bill Clinton did nothing to stop Osama bin Laden. They give Bush's blatant incometence a free pass, but blame Clinton for terrorism despite the fact that Clinton was the ONLY president preceeding 9/11 who tried to go after bin Laden. And he was criticized by the Republicans at the time.

Bill is finally pissed at Fox NEws and he told them on air what he thinks of them. And all I can say is it is about time that Democrats start calling Fox News on their lies.

Excerpts from President Bill Clinton's interview on Fox News:

"I'm being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative run in their little Pathway to 9/11, falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. ...