I’ve had a long-time love/hate relationship with the place(s). Well it never reallyu got to ‘love”. Though I really like the people at my local place, in fact i’ve always liked the baristas, it was the mega-cup corp. that was a constant source of irritation.

But this post is not about the people or corporate culture; it’s purely about the coffee. At first when they originlaly began to expand in New York City, they were relatively small and the coffee was bracingly fresh. Not the mediocre expresso, the in-store brews. And the beans they ground and sold by the bag were strong and fresh.

But then as the corporation grew, time and again I’d find I’d brought home a bag of stale or less-than fresh beans. Once when I complained to the manager I got into one of those (verbal) fights that got me permanently banned from that store–until I wrote a column about it and got the district manager to “re instate” me. (The fight grew out of my saying the beans I’d bought were stale and the manager responding by saying he’d have to go into the back office and check its freshnes date, and my telling him I didn’t care what he found in the back room, it wouldn’t change the fact that the coffee he’d sold me was stale..

Anyway, not long after that they began putting expiration dates on the bags (I’m claiming credit for my column doing that), but the problem wasn’t solved. They still had too much inventory or poor inventory control to keep maximally fresh beans in stores and I stopped buying it for home although I kept drinking it in-store. The fact that their numbers were tanking had something to do with this failure of their core business, I b elieve.

Then they came up with the wrong solution to their problems. The hideous Pike’s Peak blend. For some reason they listened to the wrong critics of their in-store coffee. All the thin-blooded people who said it was “over roasted”, when, I think, they just can’t handle strong drink.

So what they did is come up with this incredibly medicore weak blend, this “Pike’s Place” brew, thin and under-roasted, with an awful acrid stale-before-it’s-time taste even when it wa fresh, and made it their standard, sometimes the only brew available in-store. (You still can order a “bold” blend, but it’s not always available.

So they’ve trashed the one thing they built their entire brand on for this weak coffee- flavored hot water. It’s a huge gamble. A bet on the bad taste or who-has time-to-care taste of the American public.

I hope they come to their senses before they lose big. Not for their sake but for yours and mine.

…the line about bin Laden. About how John McCain says he’ll “follow him to the gates of hell, but he won’t follow him to the cave where he lives.”

Huh? So you’re saying you (and presumably McCain) know where he lives? It invites a response from the McCain campaign. “Okay let us know the GPS of the cave and we’ll go in after him together.”

My theory: this is a direct echo of John Kerry’s failed line in 2004 that he knew where in Tora Bora bin Laden could have been caught. I have a feeling it was probably Kerry’s “contribution” to the speech and Obama trying to take him seriously.

But I guess this is an attempt to blame another for an Obama error. He’s not perfect, but he’s far, far better than any nominee my party has offered since JFK, though JFK was far from perfect, I know. Maybe he’s the best since FDR.

…self-possession. It’s a word I’ve been searching for ever since I was struck by the way he connected with audiences, and predicted his nomination win last November on this blog.

He really is his own person. Which is something I don’t think can be said about many other politicians on the scene. Not swayed by the petty carping of the “I’m not a racist, but…” opponents on the right. Nor co-opted by the juvenile hysteria of some on the left. (Vide his line in the speech about being able to disagree with people without attacking their character).

For those who dwell on his youth and inexperience, there are a lot of politicans who are older but not wiser. Incapable of learning anything, they haven’t reached maturity whatever their age.

This guy is both wiser than his critics (look at how simple minded the anti-Obama commenters look by comparison, driven crazy by the fact that he’s smarter than they are)–and savvy enough to be able to learn from experience.

And he’s no pushover. He didn’t wrest the Democratic nomination from the death grip of the Clinton crime family by being Ghandian. He did it by outwitting them and out-toughing them. His favorite movie, remember, is The Godfather.

That’s it really: I’ve alway said the people who caricature him as an effete Adlai Stevenson elitist are way off. He’s got the self-possession and the strategic wisdom of Michael Corleone.

…ignorant and immoral. It’s a sad truth but when you write about Obama, you find that there still are flat-out undisguised racists out there. They don’t seem to recognize how pathetic they sound; it’s like they missed a step in evolution.

And the worst racists are cowards who too timid to use their real name. I’ve long had a policy against posting racist, abusive, obscene comments, especially by anonymous cowards, but some seem to slip by the moderation I’ve given into because I can’t spend my whole life monitoring them personally. But I apologize for those that do.

Nonetheless they’re instructive: reading them is reason enough to want Obama to win. It’s why I say it will be a civil rights victory, and redemption for our greatest national sin. Yes, we’re a great country and our ideals are noble. But there was this hideous thing called slavery embedded in the Constititution for a century. I’m in favor of every excluded minority getting its day in the sun, but blacks were literally–and “legally”–enslaved, raped and murdered by the hundreds of thousands, probably millions if you count the causalties of the “Middle Passage” in the centuries before the Consittution. Anyone who thinks this is something we can bury without coming to terms with is foolish.*

All you people out there who oppose Obama on issue grounds, I have no quarrel (except on the issues) with you. But you should know that your anti-Obama cause is being befouled by racists. Not just the “subtle” ones who can’t bear a non white being called “smart”, or find some other transparently fraudulent reason to speak viciously about Obama, but overt spittle flecked haters. Move on, you’re obviously lonely and filled with bitterness and failure, you’ll find lots of kindred souls on David Duke’s website.

Still, every racist comment is just one more argument for electing Obama president.

* For my further thoughts on the question see this.

It’s almost sad how clueless Joe Biden is. (”clueless Joe” may replace “shoeless Joe” as an American icon of a sort, though in this case an icon of dimness). He’s so proud of the supposed wisdom of his father that he quotes it yesterday at his unveiling:

“I was an Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton with a father who like many of yours in tough economic times fell on hard times, but my mom and dad raised me to believe, it’s a saying Barack you heard me say before, my dad repeated it and repeated it. Said champ, it’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how quickly you get up. It’s how quickly you get up. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s your story. That’s America’s story. It’s about if you get up, you can make it.”

And if you can’t, tough luck. Poor clueless Joe, he’s so proud of Pappy’s alleged wisdom.

Because this is essentially a Republican slogan. Anti-New Deal rugged individualism with contempt for those who need help. It basically says in times of misfortune you’re on your own. If you can’t overcome being fired or foreclosed or struck down by disease, if Fate knocks you down the way it can the best of us and you can’t manage by yourself, than too bad, you’re just a loser by Joe’s lights, or by the lights of his father.

A Democrat, Barack Obama, one hopes, even a compassionate conservative would say; there are times when people need a helping hand and that it’s a more humane thing to do– to help them up rather than to watch them squirm in the dust, trying to get up after they’ve been knocked down (say by one of the credit card companies or banks that financed Joe’s career as a Delaware servant of America’s economy-destroying finance comanies in the Senate.)

But I guess this explains why he sponsored the cruel anti-consumer bankruptcy bill for his paymasters. Still it doesn’t quite explain Biden’s intellectual bankruptcy. He doesn’t even know what party philosophy he espouses.

You wonder why I seem irate about clueless Joe. Because I think it would be an electrifying, transformative thing to elect our first non white President, the final triumph of the civil rights movement. And I think bloviating Joe could easily ruin it.

It’s starting. Here via ABC News is my man Joe in a cringemaking “joke” about his wife’s “problem”:

“Ladies and gentlemen, my wife Jill, who you’ll meet soon, is drop dead gorgeous,” said Biden.

“She also has her doctorate degree, which is a problem,” he added. “But all kidding aside, my Jill, my Jill, my wife Jill and I are honored to join Barack and Michelle on this journey, because that’s what it is, it’s a journey.”

OK, all kidding aside, Joe, what do you mean “problem”? For whom? For you? For her? For voters? (she’s too “elite”?). A problem because she makes you look dumb? Maybe that’s it, he’s trying to be self deprecating to take the edge off the bragging, but can’t quite bring himself to do it, because he doesn’t think there’s anything to be self deprecating about?

Ladies and gentlemen, you know what we have here? We have a man who is as cringingly unable to be funny when he tries to make a joke as the true master of that particular talent: Richard Nixon.

And his miscues are baroque enough to earn their own flava: Bidenesque. I’ll continue to track them but welcome any submissions in comments.

As Joe says “It’s a journey”. Right, and for poor Barack it’s going to be like he’s Steve Martin and Biden is John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. What was he thinking?

Not just my mistake in predicting Nunn for Obama veep (see previous post) even though I stand by my assessment of Biden:

Biden’s sagacity and earnestness act would only go over in the class of dummies that is the U.S. Senate..

But a huge mistake by Obama in choosing a self-important clown for vice president, a choice that is the gift that will keep on giving to his opponent throughout the rest of the election. Biden has proven himself incapable of opening his mouth without making you cringe at his self-congratulatory pretentiousness.

But why? One thing I always felt about Obama was that he wouldn’t be rolled, played, by traditonal pols. And yet there is evidence that’s what happened. It turns out he surrounded himself with top staffers from loser hacks like Dick Gephardt, the kind of people who are revered in the Senate “class of dummies” I referred to. Beltway brilliant. Smart only in sucking up to reporters. The only kind of people who could take Joe Biden seriously and don’t realize how they’ve betrayed the trust of Obama supporters who believed that he was something different. Not only betrayed his supporters, betrayed Obama.

And he seems to have listenened to them. What other explanation for picking a fool who tried to pander to southrn racists in the primaries by calling his own state, Delaware, a “former slave state”. Which he somehow seemed to think would give him common ground with voters proud of their former slave state status. [corected error here:Delaware, a former slave state was not a former Confederate state, which led to confusion on my part. Mea culpa, thanks for calling it to my attention.]. Sorry, this man is a shameful blowhard. Anyone who watched him ask his painfully obvious attempts to show-off phony constitutional erudition at a Supreme Court nominee’s hearing could tell you this.

Doesn’t it count that he used an unmistakable racist slur to describe Obama (He’s “clean” unlike I guess, all the other people of color Biden has encountered in his “former slave state”. The people of color who didn’t work in 7-11s which is apparently all Biden knew of his state’s Indian citizens).

The guy is a walking gaffe, and not innocent gaffes but one that reveal a confused dim witted persona inside.

I have to admit I’m in a state of shock.

Since all my predictions about Obama made back in November, when the press was calling him dead in the water (look it up!) have all come true. (Win Iowa , lose New Hampshire, win nomination) I know the world will be hanging on this one, made shortly before noon Tuesday August 19.

(Okay I did, at a later date, predict Jim Webb as veep choice and that seems unlikely. He withdrew his name, though I wouldn’t rule out him being “persuaded”.)

But I do have a strong feeling now that if Obama is as smart and shrewd as I think he is (no drama, but no dreamer) and he wants gravitas, especially in the wake of Georgia, Russia and all that, he’ll have made up his mind when that mini war broke out last Friday. And would have chosen Sam Nunn.

Nunn’s flown under the radar for a lot of folk in the past decade, but he’s doggedly devoted himself to a forgotten but all-important cause: the reduction of nuclear weapons, security of the nuclear arsenals that remain, relentless attention to non proliferation. His Nuclear Threat Initiative organization has kept its eye on the prize–making us more secure in a proliferating nuclear environment–while nobody else has paid nearly enough attention to it.

It has meant that Nunn knows Russia, he’s dealt with civilian and military authorities on all levels for a decade. He’s someone who must distrust Putin, who won’t be fooled by him, but who can probably hit the ground running as the most knowledgeable person about dealing with him. And with his nukes. And with all the other nukes floating around.

So that’s my prediction: the choice of Nunn will be hailed as brilliant. And it will be.

But the choice of Biden? For gravitas? Give me a break. I’ll never forget sitting in the Senate gallery before an important (to those of us who care about civil liberties) vote on an idiot flag burning bill meant to pander to those historically ignorant enough not to realize America was founded by dissidents who wouldn’t bow down to a graven image.

Biden had co sponsored it in an attempt, supposedly, to head off a Constitutional Amendment. Bob Kerrey, who lost a leg in Vietnam–for love of country not a painted piece of cloth–wasn’t going along with this cynical ploy.

Anyway down on the Senate floor, shortly before Kerrey was to give a brilliant speech on the question, Biden came up to Kerrey and in an oil way put his arm around Kerrey as if, it’s all politics, and I thought I saw Kerrey cringe.

I wouldn’t blame him. Biden’s sagacity and earnestness act would only go over in the class of dummies that is the U.S. Senate.

If Obama doesn’t pick Nunn, he’ll have missed an opportunity. But go to that website anyway. You may not agree with his approach to the long obscured nuclear dilemmas we face, but it might shake you out of a state of denial. Props to Nunn for sticking with it.

Do you think the timing was accidental? While they shilled for the Party of mass murderers in China, the Olypmics served as a useful diversion for the Putinizing of Georgia. Wasn’t it convenient that Putin had George Bush where he wanted him, in the weirdly powerful KGB mental karate powerlock of his gaze. (Remember Bush’s pathetic “I looked into his eyes and knew I could trust him”?).

Once again–and I’m certain it entered into Putin’s calculations–the whole world was pretending to be celebrating the oneness of the human spirit–and thus much too busy to pay attention to the crushing of a democratic nation. The media as usual was complicit in not wishing to let a potentially world-changing tragedy to distract it very much. Come on! The U.S. swim team is piling up the gold!

Meanwhile the bodies are piling up on the streets of Georgia. All hail the Olympic spirit!

Probably not. But I bet the thought has crossed her mind, certainly Bill’s bitter brain. The thought first crossed my mind when as far back as May, the issue of whether she would allow herself to be nominated and let her delegates vote for her was raised and not resolved. In fact I raised it even earlier than that in a post here about why Hillary kept hanging on after the numbers were against her. I’d suggested she wanted the historic and symbolic meaningfulness of allowing her self to be nominated at the convention, allowing her near-majority of delegates to demonstrate their strength (for a national television audience, for the future) and as a milestone for women in politics.

Then, when the numbers clearly indicated she lost and she sort of conceded, the question of whether she’d still have her name put in nomination just hung there. Was it a requirement of the primary system that her pledged delegates vote for her at the convention. And if it wasn’t a requirement that pledged delegates vote for whom they were selected then Obama’s delegates were free to change their minds weren’t they? Seemed like an opening.

At first I thought one aspect of Obama’s foreign trip was to demonstrate to the world that the nomination was signed, sealed and delivered. But don’t forget we’re dealing with the Clintons, and the foreign trip may have backfired in the polls.

And now Obama’s people have announced that they want the Florida and Michigan results fully counted, not cut in half. Which means that in some calculations Hillary moves ahead in the primary popular vote count, and closer in the delegate count.

And then the clincher for me: Hillary publicly declared “I don’t want to be nominated.” Translation in Hillary speak: “I have to say this, but what I’m really saying is that there’s nothing to bar me from being nominated”–otherwise why so conspicuously beg her supporters not to, unless she wanted to remind them that they could–”and so if some of you PUMAS out there want to nominate me and see if by then some super delegates, even pledged delegates have changed their mind and want to get a kind of Wendall Willie draft thing going, well gosh, I guess I’d have to respect their fervor. After all I asked them not to, but I can’t help it if they love me and feel I’ll be better for the party.”

And now two weeks before the convention the matter has still not been resolved and more people are beginning to wonder if her failure to close off the option is part of a deliberate strategy. See this piece in the American Thinker.

I don’t think there’s a realistic possibility, but it’s clear the Clintons are positioning themselves in case lightning strikes in some form. Cue the (false) ending of every horror movie ever made where things seem safe at last.

In any case if she’s not plotting to steal the nomination, she should immediately say to her delegates, I release you from your pledge, all I want is a prime time speech. But even if she does, you know that in a certain part of her mind she’s maintaining the “audacity of hope”.