This was the Campaign for America's Future's Big Afternoon at the Big Tent. CAF took over the Digg Stage (the entire upstairs floor of The Big Tent) for a series of four panels addressing some of the Big Questions we wrestle with here.

Conservative governments have resolutely cut budgets and driven out the experts whose job it was to keep the country's public works in good working order. But they never expected there would be an Obama Moment—a moment of national renewal in which progressives would be able to seize the process and launch some bold, creative acts of our own. It's not an overstatement to say that we may never have a creative opportunity like this one again.

Progressives have been picking at the whys and wherefores of liberal presidential candidates being brought down by withering attacks from the right ever since Adlai Stevenson lost to Eisenhower. But there's one fairly simple and glaring factor that I'm increasingly convinced plays at least some role in this—the different cultural roots of conservatism and liberalism. Seen this way, some solutions become obvious.

Conservative governments have resolutely cut budgets and driven out the experts whose job it was to keep the country's public works in good working order. But they never expected there would be an Obama Moment—a moment of national renewal in which progressives would be able to seize the process and launch some bold, creative acts of our own. It's not an overstatement to say that we may never have a creative opportunity like this one again.

Progressives have been picking at the whys and wherefores of liberal presidential candidates being brought down by withering attacks from the right ever since Adlai Stevenson lost to Eisenhower. But there's one fairly simple and glaring factor that I'm increasingly convinced plays at least some role in this—the different cultural roots of conservatism and liberalism. Seen this way, some solutions become obvious.

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Los Angeles rocked and rolled its way through a 5.8 earthquake shortly before noon today. In California, that's considered a good middling-size shake -- enough to throw stuff off bookshelves, pop tile off the walls, instigate minor power and phone interruptions, and crack patios.

Mental illness will probably figure largely in the story of 58-year-old Jim Adkisson, who opened fire during a kids' performance Sunday at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist church. But for those of us who've watched and worried about right-wing crazies for years now, there's the sickening feeling that our worst nightmare may have also come true.

When we're finally clear on what a cowboy is and is not, it'll be all too clear to everyone that George Bush is not. He's just a two-bit drugstore shitkicker in a too-big hat, rough in the saddle and mean as a rattler on a hot day to boot.

It's not just Texas.

Rick blogged yesterday on the collapsing roads and bridges of Denton County, Texas. Unsurprisingly, it's happening in other places, too. From today's Arizona Star:

Nuclear power is about to rise from the grave like a reanimated zombie, and it looks like we're going to have a harder and harder time escaping some very brain-dead discussion about it. Neither supporters nor opponents seems to be even remotely aware of emerging second-generation nuclear technologies that pretty much render every argument on either side absolutely wrong.