With each racial dogwhistle "misstep" of the Clinton Campaign, I have become more and more appalled.
With each new variation on basic math in terms "how to count delegates," I have become more and more puzzled.
With each new justification on why Democratic Party decisions on rules for seating delegates can be ignored (see Florida and Michigan), I have become more and more mystified.

This is not just People Behaving Badly, it's People Behaving Worse and Worse.

1. First outer Satellite Shaheen implied Obama was a drug dealer.

2. Inside the Orbiter Bill Clinton made his Jesse Jackson comments.

3. The Royal Sun herself conflated "hard-working people" with "white people."

The arguments have become more tortured and more outlandish on math and "how to seat delegate" questions. They've lost...so why are Clinton, Lanny Davis, et al they becoming more and more outrageous?

The. Chutzpah. Is. Unbelievable.: In a press conference yesterday, Laura Bush took the Myanmar junta to task for failing to prepare its citizens for the recent cyclone (est. death toll: 10,000) and for spurning foreign aid.

Asked whether she worried that US aid might not reach Myanmar's people, Laura Bush replied: "I'm worried that they won't even accept US aid."...

Gee--it's too bad the junta couldn't learn how to lead from Boy Bush's government:

In one exchange, State Department officials anguished over whether to tell Italy that its shipments of medicine, gauze, and other medical supplies spoiled in the elements for weeks after Katrina's landfall on August 29, 2005, and were destroyed....And while television sets worldwide showed images of New Orleans residents begging to be rescued from rooftops as floodwaters rose, U.S. officials turned down countless offers of allied troops and search-and-rescue teams. The most common responses: "sent letter of thanks" and "will keep offer on hand," the new documents show.

http://www2.nysun.com/article/53433?page_no=2

While we debate endlessly about the race card in the Dem primaries, it's alive and well on other fronts: There is an anti-Semitism already strong in this country that now targets Arabs instead of Jews.  

Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”

Yesterday's New York Times shows how Arab educator Almontaser and the Kahlil Gibran International Academy were sabotaged by the Sun and the Post, and, yes, the Department of Education. The future of our world, and our hopes for peace and understanding, rest with our seeing other people as people, and not as inherently worse than we are. This kind of racism is affecting all of us. read the article, substitute "Jew" for "Arab," and you'll see what I mean.

Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School

More below the fold.

Per the AP, a study by the Rand Corporation, not a liberal bastion, is documenting the enormity of the mental health crisis that the Iraq War is bringing to our shores:

WASHINGTON - Roughly one in every five U.S. troops who have survived the bombs and other dangers of Iraq and Afghanistan now suffers from major depression or post-traumatic stress, an independent study said Thursday. It estimated the toll at 300,000 or more.

But that's just half the story. Not only are the head problems psychological--many are physical injuries as well:

As many or more report possible brain injuries from explosions or other head wounds, said the study, the first major survey from outside the government.

Per the AP, only half with mental health issues have SOUGHT help (not received all the help they need, only "sought"), and even fewer of those with head injuries.

Hillary Clinton is doing all of us progressives a big favor by staying in the race. I realized this last night as I watched the second amazing debate I have seen. Josh Marshall commented this morning on something I noted too:

But one of my big questions about this debate was Hillary Clinton's lack of aggressiveness toward Barack Obama. I think it spoke very well of her on a number of levels -- personally, as a potential leader, etc. She made her case on her merits and policies.

But there is no mistaking the fact that by every metric and every visible trendline Barack Obama is in the process of winning the nomination. At least conventional political logic would dictate that she had no choice but to go after him just as she has been doing on the campaign trail.

But she didn't.

So why is she still showing up?

Have we all become so jaded that this doesn't get remarked upon? In the last week alone, FOUR public killings:
I just ran across news of another public shoting, this one at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. A woman shot and killed 2 students and then killed herself.

http://news.yahoo.com/...

Yesterday a man killed 6 at a City Council meeting near St. Louis.

This fellow just killed his current girlfriend and then stabbed and shot his ex-wife in front of her class full of kids:
http://www.wkyc.com/...

On Feb 2, 5 women were killed at a Lane Bryant store outside Chicago.

Where is the outcry?

Though not my first choice, HRC's ability to keep her shit together during this primary season has really impressed me. I saw Maureen Dowd's headline about HRC crying her way into the white house and clicked off the NYT. She presents HRC as someone who only cares about running the WH, as if there is something SO unseemly about ambition. As if a lack of ambition ever got anyone but the older Gandhi anywhere (e was very ambitious when young, as was Mandela, MLK, etc...) There is so much sexism it's making me ill.

Case in point: HRC's famous "meltdown in the NH debate." Wow--look at the debate. What meltdown? Oh, she showed some emotion.  Crazy woman...

And it's making me think I need to take a good second look at Hillary Clinton, as a leader, as a stoic, as a fighter, and as a liberal.

Reading many of the candidate diaries and also recalling my own fervent love and faith in past candidates (Bill Clinton! Jimmy Carter! what a fool I USED to be, as Johnny Winter would say), I am struck by what lovesick romantics so many of  us are when it comes to politics.  We project onto ordinary mortals abilities of mythic proportions that have nothing to do with a) ordinary mortals, and b) how our political system works. We could even discount "a," and elect Jesus Christ as president*, but if he didn't know how to get Congress to introduce and support legislation that forwarded his vision, he'd look like a dewey-eyed fool as they passed veto-proof legislation that had nothing to do with his ideas.

[Implies belief in JC as "other"--old Catholic habit.]

And that is why this girl who "cain't so no" to her romantic political impulses is considering voting for Obama, though Edwards is the passionate voice that makes her heart pound and the "at last!" ring in her head.

Chaoslilliths diary on "Great People Who Have Changed" http://www.dailykos.com/...prompted this response, too long for a comment. In thinking of people cemented by past attitudes and words, the situation in Israel immediately came to mind.

I recently finished "Long Walk to Freedom," Nelson Mandela's autobiography, in which he chronicles the development of his own political thinking.  What struck me is that the tragedy in MOST political thought is people refuse to change, to develop, to open their minds to their opponents' views (no matter how offensive their past language and behavior) so dialog and meaningful change can occur.

Mandela came to believe violent resistance was necessary against the white government.  He says nonviolent resistance was always a tactic. On some level he knew that if the ANC finally concluded it wasn't having an impact, they would have to escalate. In one of his trials, "They insisted that the ANC must renounce violence...before the government would agree to negotiations...Their contention was that violence was nothing more than criminal behavior that could not be tolerated by the state."

This was a Top Story in Pakistan's internet edition of Dawn, Pakistan's most widely ciculated English language newspaper, on January 4, 2005:

US may double Osama reward
WASHINGTON, Jan 23: The US is likely to double the reward offer for Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden to $50 million. .

..
http://www.dawn.com/...

What dummies we were! All the stinkin' collaborators who were prepared to turn Osama in for a paltrey $25 million (relative peanuts in Pakistan, due to the exchange rate), said, Whoa, Dude, like why should I hand the big O over for a measly $25 mil? I'm waitin' for the big payoff.

Stinkin' collaborators are nothing if not patient. Yesterday, the Senate got some news that made them decide big, bold action was finally necessary:

A leaked draft of a new US intelligence report says al-Qaeda is at its strongest since just before the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

After 16 weeks in captivity, BBC reporter Alan Johnston was freed by his kidnappers, the  Army of Islam, this morning.

As an insomniac who listens to the BBC throughout te night, one of the most moving stories I've heard has been the way the BBC foregrounded Johnston's kidnapping night after night, never letting the story die. They started a global online petition which almost 200,000 people signed. They interviewed Palestinian journalists and politicans who protested Johnston's kidnapping. They interviewed British government officials as to what they were doing to try to obtain his release.

Story after story kept his kidnapping alive. It was almost as if the disappearance of a courageous, fair-minded reporter was as impostant as--well, as Anna Nicole Smith.

Alan attributed his release to our bete noir, Hamas: "Thanking the BBC, British Government, Palestinian journalists, and the more than 180,000 people who signed a petition for his release, he also attributed his freedom to the efforts of Hamas."

This morning I did something I’ve been meaning to do since last year. I went online and switched my energy supply company (ESCO) to one that supplied green power.

And I'll still be saving money over last year's electric bill.

IDT supplies energy from wind, solar, biomass or water for a price differential of only 1.5 to 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour. I selected IDT after reviewing all ESCO rates for my state (New York) at PowertoChooseNY.com. I found the site by googling “Compare ESCOs New York,” and I imagine other state energy departments provide similar cost comparison lists that also list green alternatives. A company called Energetix offered a marginally lower rate, but I’ve long been interested in IDT after reading about energy efficiencies they are involved in.

Last night I saw an amazing movie, "Days of Glory," about the unheralded contribution North African Arabs from the colonies made in freeing France during World War II. The movie's French titles is "Les Indigenes--the Natives--and I guess someone thought it would market better as a war picture than as a picture fundamentally about racism. My father was raised in Morocco, the son of a French civil servant, and it addressed things that matter to me. The movie tapped into a vein that's been hurting for a long while, that of the rampant racism of the French toward the Arabs, and the way the US has caught this fever so quickly. The movie is beautifully shot, the story line riveting, the acting impeccable. I don't want to give any of it away, except that I will point out what happened to all the pensioners from those countries (don't continue reading if you don't want it spoiled).

I write to clear up a misconception about the HPV vaccine. It protects against 4 strains of HPV, only 2 of which (16 & 18) are cancer related. It DOES work in males, clearly not to protect them from cervical cancer, but to innoculate them against the HPV viruses that causes genital warts (6 & 11), a painful, often intractable, and common STD, and to stop them from becoming carriers of the potentially fatal strains to women.

It ALSO may be indicated to protect against anal and penile cancer, caused by the same strains of HPV. The mianstream press isn't that interested in this part of things, but the word is out:

"The rate of anal cancer for gay men is similar to rates of cervical cancer before the use of Pap smears, a test used to detect precancerous cells. Many gay men are unaware that they have an increased risk of anal cancer.
Pharmaceutical giant Merck has made a vaccine called Gardasil that has been approved by regulators in Australia and the European Union for boys ages 9 to 15. Data shows it caused an immune response in boys, but its ability to prevent infection in sexually active men has not been demonstrated."(The Advocate)

Please recommend this diary to clear up these misconceptions. More below the fold.

I

What the hell is the rhetorical opposite of "Cut and Run"? It's such a mindless but effective phrase.  Stay and Kill? As in, are you one of those Stay and Kill Republicans (or Democrats)? Leave and Let Live?
   I'm late for work but I heard Scott Ritter speak last night with Sy Hersch about all the action that the US and Israel have going down in Iran, and it made me ill.  Incredibly articulate. Then this morning I heard one of those mornoic NPR Steve Inskeep (?) interviews with an exhausted Rahm Emmanuel and I realized that I heard 2 hours of intense subtance at the Ethical Culture Society in NY last night and 5 minutes of leff/right/ooh those angry bloggers fluff this morning, and substance is NOT getting out into the mainstream.
 

Last night on BBC radio, an artist in Beirut spoke about the conflict.  There are over 1 million "displaced" persons (love that euphemism, as if people are merely shifting to another place while their homes and places of work are carpet bombed) now living in schools and parking lots and 1,000 dead Lebanese civilians, untold wounded. There is not enough fuel for hospital generators, and people who need dialysis or who are supposed to be undergoing chemotherapy are having their treatments delayed or the places they were being treated are simply closing. Similar suffering is occurring in Israel, though on a smaller scale.  People of all backgrounds are burying their dead.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/...

There is a demonstration in front of the White House on Saturday at noon.  

I often listen to "On the Media" on NPR, even though it usually feels like one is settling for wrist slapping when a good thrashing is in order. This morning they looked at coverage of the war in the Middle East. It reminded me of whites who were trying to be good sports about "Negroes" (as in "Some of my best friends are...') in the mid-twentieth century but clearly thought of them as some kind of easily led, childlike species.

Brook interviewed an ABC reporter about the Hezbollah-backed television station. Her main criticism could have been done about the American media as a whole in spades. Patriotic shots of soldiers to swelling music?  Exactly which of our news services doesn't do this? This news was delivered in a burst of laughter, in which Brook joined. You'd have thought they were discussing some dumb old boyfriend.

On  visit to AlJazeera.net this morning I found this poll:

http://english.aljazeera.net

 Who is responsible for the chaos in Iraq?

a. Coalition forces
b. Divided Iraqis
c. Lack of qualified statesmen
d. All of the above
e. None of the above

Answer below the fold