The Obama campaign has sent its current spreadsheet of distributed delegates to Steve Clemons, the excellent blogger at www.thewashingtonnote.com, and also founder of a new Washington think tank, The New America Foundation (www.newamerica.net).

THE SPREADSHEET IS AVAILABLE AT right now at http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/...

I CANNOT CUT/PASTE it into the diary format (dont know why), so I apologize for a short diary.  You'll have to go to the link.

I thought kossacks would want to see it, even though I cannot write a really conventional diary on this.

Please accept apologies for an unconventional diary.
www.thewashingtonnote.com

The LATimes has a story up today showing how Bill Clinton uses his foundation to accept contributions from politically risky sources.  http://www.latimes.com/...

Obvious problem: What favors do these donors want in return--if Hillary gets the presidency?

I think the story shows  Billery isn't "vetted" at all-- a laughable claim, given the Clinton modus operandi in, say, given the unresolved circumstances of the pardons, and the frenetic fundraising for the Foundation and the Library.  Since the Clintons are self-advertised "2-fers," the story illustates the possible conflicts of interest in Bill's fund-raising activities and a third Clinton term.  

The slow-drip for this subject may be starting.  (I hope it is--wish it were faster than a slow-drip.)  We all remember the uranium deal.  http://www.nytimes.com/...
Specifics of the new episode below the fold.

You want this guy running the country?  Running in and out of the White House to 'fix' things???

Guess what? They've started early!! They fixed it so I can't cut/paste.

No surprise here.  http://thepage.time.com/

Look at this face (and the shaved head.)  

Straight out of some camp--the Clinton camp!!

You want to go back to this?

Seriously??

The NYT has a front-pager up about the 'endgame' being planned by the here-to-fore incompetent Clinton advisors.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

OK...I'll risk disapprobation (practicing my vocabulary) with a really short diary.  I know you're supposed to throw in a bunch of palaver, but HONESTLY FOLKS, you don't need it with this!!!  Speaks for itself!!!  

If you don't have fun with this....you're..you're an idiot.

This is a short diary.  Dont know how to 'move' videos or I would have moved it here, rather than depend on a link.

So you'll have to click on the link.  Trust me.  Your evening is made.

Go, O!!!  http://www.guardian.co.uk/...

The Seattle Intelligencer is reporting that an Iraqi epidemiologist who co-wrote the October 1966 article in The Lancet (thelancet.com) estimating Iraqi civilian deaths since the U.S. invasion at 655,000 been denied a visa to address academic audiences in the US.

This estimate is nearly 10 times larger than other studies, according to the paper.  

It is reported by an all-news website that the U.S. Air
Force has bombed (or is bombing) parts of southeast Baghdad.

http://www.news24.com/...

Juan Cole (www.juancole.com) put this at the top of his indispensible blog this morning.

He calls it a war crime.  I would like to second his plea: write/call your congperson about this.  

This is lower than I thought we would ever sink, in violating the principles accepted by the international community as legal behavior.

If not, check this.

You know Jeff Greenfield and people like him actually make a lotta money (unlike people who get up at 4 am, wash hair, feed kids/pets, and spent 2.5 hours in traffic to get to a really bad job--namely, the mass of the U.S. public.)

But Jeff Greenfield has fun.  He dines and sups in the Village; he swarms upper East Side cocktail parties.  He flies to Europe for fun several times a year.

And--also for fun--and because he's not smart enough to find something else to file this week--he mocks Obama's wardrobe, tying Obama to the screwball Ahmeddiajad---however you spell it.  (Now tell me who cares how you spell Ahmedjinadajad???)

Jeff:  When next in Paris: Please choke on your mussels.

Thanks.  US public will be very grateful--and very well 'served.'

Britain's GUARDIAN newspaper reports today that Dean has been hired to advise the Labour Party on organizing for next May's elections.  These are critical: the Conservative Party leads in the polls.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/...

(Hey friends! Did Howard just get a contract that Car-vile was hoping for?)

The article says Dean was hired SPECIFICALLY because he has pioneered organizing tactics that are DIFFERENT from the Clinton tactics used in 1997 (which we know were engineered in part by Car-vile.)  It appears that Labour has repudiated Car-vile's command-from-on-high methods, and plans to move to grassroots and netroots-style organizing.

Looks like it's the first, and it's a good one. Lots of info about his career, and assessment of his political talents.

But most important: It summarizes arguments why he should run NOW, not later. This is a crucial issue for Democrats, IMO.

The New York Times' Frank Rich (quoted at the site) agrees with the site sponsors:

It's a no brainer...of course he should run...The question is whether Mr. Obama will stick up for his core principles when tested and get others to follow him. That's why it is important to remember that on one true test for his party, Iraq, he was consistent from the start...he repeatedly questioned the rationale for the war before it began..." At www.nytimes.com behind a firewall; or at http://www.truthout.org/...

A top UN human rights investigator has publically described a US tactic of cutting food supplies from towns before they attack in order to force civilians from their homes.

These people would have nowhere to go--into the desert? toward the lines of US soldiers surrounding the towns?

Would you want to take your children in to this?

There are reports of people starving as a result. Or course, a US military spokesman, denies the US is using such a tactic. The story is also reported by the BBC.

In the BBC story, the US spokesman, after denying use of the tactic, then rhetorically asked what use the supplies would be in a war zone?

"...Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a US military spokesman, later rejected the accusations...It does not do relief supplies any good if you have them going into a firefight," he said.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:f0x37CSLed8J:news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4344136.stm+ Jean+Ziegler+Iraq+supplies&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

 Snips from the story in the INDEPENDENT below:

but this is under-reported here, IMO.

The stakes apparently are colossal. The WHO has declared a pandemic "inevitable," likely to kill between one and 7 million (Reuters 9/8.) A recent British study, focused only on Britain, shows a pandemic would cripple the UK economy. (The virus is said to have killed about half of all 112 persons known to have been infected.) Only one drug is effective, but no adequate stockpiles--in Britain, sufficient to protect less than 2% of the population for a week. (TIMES, 8/28)

(For much more detailed information, google H5N1, the technical designation for the virus.)

The Bush response: stockpile $100mm worth of the only vaccine known to be effective(oseltamivir, sold as Tamiflu)[ABC News 9/16]; and push 5 major countries, including Russia and China and the UN to pool resources in an effort to head off a pandemic (The Independent.co.uk today)

Very sobering, perhaps horrifying, decisions are also being made by Blair. (Is Bush doing the same thing here?)

He's the most cogent voice in the country on environmentalism, its nexis with the Bush "kill-government" agenda, and the massive, practical harm the administration has done in a short time by abrogating environmental regulations.

In speech today before the Sierra Club, he added some non-environment-related themes: centralized corporate control of the media, and the character of Donald Rumsfeld, among others.

I think we need to add him to the list of people who are the face of the national Democratic Party -- somewhere, somehow -- and soon.

Consider these comments, apparently somewhat extemporized (or recorded and transcribed):

The Bush women continue to do the truly ugly spinning jobs.  Now it's Laura's turn.

In a speech yesterday at the Heritage Foundation, she described how grateful the hurricane evacuees truly are for all the private charity they've received.

In three trips to the war zone, however, it appears she somehow failed to discuss with evacuees the federal government's response to the disaster.  

I guess the trips happened before Karl decided George should do a semi-mea culpa--so even in the PR spin, another example of confusion over how to respond.

How have we sunk so low? Imagine Eleanor Roosevelt instead.  

FEMA and the Bushies continue to astound.

According to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, they are also not in telephone contact with their own people, so that they know how to direct supplies, and generally carry out the logistical function elemental in any military campaign.

Havent we seen this Bush planning and logistics failure somewhere before?  

Remember the push to Baghdad?  Our soldiers were stranded in the desert without gasoline and food because Rumsfeld apparently never calculated the possibility that Saddam's strategy was go to ground, then mount an insurgency--obvious though that possibility was because Saddam was so outgunned in the conventional sense.

So US soldiers got halfway to Baghdad way ahead of reinforcements.  

Bush, and all of them, are 'Swagger Lee'.   What fraudsters.

with more than 60,000 entries...please pass this one to anyone you know who is looking for someone...

This list was put together by GulfCoastNews.com.

Anyone with access to the net can sign up to say they're ok, and give their location; or you can enter the name of someone you're looking for in a request section.

http://wx.gulfcoastnews.com/katrina/status.aspx

If this doesnt prove how unprepared FEMA and feds were generally, I dont know what would:

...In belated recognition of the depth of the crisis, Washington swallowed its pride and asked for blankets, food and water trucks from the EU and Nato, and beds and medical supplies from Canada...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1562789,00.html

NATO?  

I understand that all the big-wheel personnel transport vehicles in the National Guard in LA and MISS were sent to Iraq. This is one major reason NO needed a flotilla of boats. If anyone has documentation on this, would you post?

Paul Krugman does it again today (www.nytimes.com).  

Quoting the Chi Trib, he says that ... that the U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients...

According to a local NO TV station, FEMA uniforms and badges have been stolen, and are being used by robbers to loot.

...The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Saturday that many FEMA uniforms, badges and letterheads have been stolen in the New Orleans area are being used as fake identification by robbers.

FEMA leaders said the crooks are referring to themselves as "FEMA Procurement Officers," even though no such officers exist...

http://www.wdsu.com/news/4932913/detail.html

This truly is looting, unlike much of the scavaging by people who had gone days without food or water.  IMO, it is also another example of the gross incompetence of a weakened FEMA under the Bush admin.

Juan Cole (www.juancole.com), the UMich Middle East expert whose blog on Iraq is the only good thing to have come out of the war on Iraq, today posts a great comparison: the Bush administration's attitude toward the looting in New Orleans, and the looting in Baghdad.

A must read.