Oooh, nuance!

This is one of the best articles I've read about how we got in this pickle, and how it's possible that the votes of two of the biggest states in the Union are not being counted...by the party of voter ENFRANCHISEMENT.

From Wayne Barrett at The Huffington Post. Read it and fume.

Then call HoDo at the DNC and tell him to seat those delegates NOW, or we may lose two very important swing states in the fall.

And we'd deserve it!

I am officially dubbing the traditional media in the U.S. the Land of Make-Believe. The relationship between what they tell us and what is actually happening is truly non-existent.

Remember, for example, how the Surge Was Working? John "100 Years" McCain still thinks it is. Well, most of us Murkins knew that was nothing but feel-good spin. Perhaps because the facts contradicted the propaganda, you might have noticed that in the Land of Make-Believe, the occupation of Iraq has become less and less visible.

But things have gotten so bad that even the Land of Make-Believe has been forced to establish a brief relationship with reality. As soon as influential Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suspended his truce and unleashed the Mahdi Army, violence exploded in Iraq. And it looks like the police don't want to fight al-Sadr's army, either.

But not to worry about those dead, wounded and dying. Everything's back to normal in Basra now.

In Baghdad, not so much.

In Baghdad, where a three-day curfew was mostly lifted, the truce seemed tenuous at best. Explosions struck the "Green Zone" government and diplomatic compound in what police said was a volley of six mortar bombs. Sirens wailed and a recorded voice ordered people to take cover.

U.S. military spokesman Major Mark Cheadle said there were clashes in several Baghdad neighbourhoods early on Monday.

U.S. forces called in at least three helicopter strikes in Baghdad late on Sunday after Sadr's ceasefire, including one in which they said they killed 25 fighters who attacked a convoy struck by a roadside bomb. U.S. helicopter strikes, once rare in the capital, became common over the past week.

"The attacks haven't stopped. There's still a lot of enemy out there, we're not going to quit protecting the populace," Cheadle said. But he said fighting in the capital had eased over the past two days and U.S. forces expected it to ease further.

"They were looking for an excuse to stop fighting," he said. "They don't like facing us because they get killed."

Sadr City, a sprawling slum of about 2 million people that is Sadr's main stronghold and which has witnessed some of the worst fighting in the past week, remained sealed off by U.S. and Iraqi troops, but appeared quiet, said resident Mohammed Hashin.

"The last days were a tragedy: no water no food, garbage heaped in the narrow streets."

Reuters correspondents said southern towns that have seen fighting such as Kut, Hilla and Nassiriya appeared quieter.

A Reuters photographer in Mahumidya, south of Baghdad, said dead bodies were being kept on blocks of ice in a Shi'ite mosque because it was not yet safe enough to bury them.

I ask for the 100,000th time, what the hell are we doing in Iraq? Does anyone, outside of a few corporate cronies like Cheney and brain-dead neocons like McCaca and Lieberman, actually think that we are accomplishing some mission? If so, I'd just LURV for them to tell me what it is, and give me some actual measurable way in which we are accomplishing it.

[cricket cricket cricket]

Reality in the Bush years has been massively painful and damaging to the core values of Americans and America. Seven years of fearmongering, torture, treason, and endless aggression towards the Middle East has made us all weary to the bone and desperate to cleanse ourselves from the poo that the Deciderer and his monkey cronies have flung at us.

The problem is, the Land of Make-Believe has contributed mightily to this damage. By painting a falsely optimistic picture of the Worst Administration Ever, it has created a cognitive dissonance that is very hard to overcome. We are less able to process and analyze, too weary from our three jobs (Uniquely American) to think about what the talking heads are telling us. It's just easier to go along and hope that the next President can actually do something to get us out of this mess.

Well, I know this isn't high on too many peoples' lists, but I hope the next President will also get us out of the Land of Make-Believe. It's long past time for the American people to grow up and stop playing with toys like Britney Spears. It hurts to become adults, but being children who believe in fairy tales isn't an option any more.

Just ask the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

My mother died in March of 1996. It's been 12 years now, and the pain has mostly gone away. But I've found myself thinking even more about her than usual this year.

Perhaps it has to do with the possibility of the election of the first woman President of the United States, but in any case, Mom - this one's for you.

My mother was a free-thinker. For example, she was an atheist whose father was blacklisted for Communism in the 50's. (He really was a Communist, unlike some who were just caught in McCarthy's sick web, but of course, he was just a typical Jewish screenwriter of the times, not an eeeevil spy for the Russians.) Politically, she was quite liberal - an original Beatnik, in fact. She was, sometimes embarrassingly so for my Virgoan sensibilities, open about sex.

Oddly enough, she was also somewhat anti-feminist.

Let me explain that a bit. She had nothing against the goals of the feminist movement, but she felt that women being "free" to join the workforce was the wrong focus. Instead, she would have preferred that women get paid for raising the children and taking care of the household. "This whole 'women working full-time' thing is the biggest rip-off men ever perpetrated on women," she once told me in a conversation I will never forget. "We already work full-time! Now we've got the possibility of two full-time jobs with pay for only one of them. Doesn't sound like a good deal to me!" She also thought that bra-burning was stupid. "Hurts us more than it hurts them," she said, in her typical blunt manner. And what about equality with men? "We are not physically equal to men. It makes us look stupid to suggest that we are, or that we can and should do a lot of the things men do. We should be celebrating our differences, not pretending they don't exist!"

Interesting perspective, eh?

Here's to you, my Mamacita. I miss your original brain, your empathy and your loving heart every day. I hope that somewhere, somehow, I am making you proud.

Being an exile in the land of the lefty Blogosphere, I've been cruising around trying to find sites that do not worship at the church of Hillary Hatred. I've added two to my blogroll:

The Confluence (for Kossacks in exile); and
No Quarter (the blog of National Security expert Larry Johnson).

Both these sites are unabashedly pro-Hillary, which is a nice antidote to all the vitriol I've had to listen to for the past several months. But one thing really threw me: They (and other Clintonite blogs) often quote right-wing pundits like Pat Buchanan and Frank Luntz. They point to stories on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets. (Visit them and see what I'm talking about - I just can't bring myself to link to the enemy...) Today, the indefatigable Taylor Marsh, another Hillary partisan, praised Republic talking head Joe Scarborough (although he is on MSNBC, not Fox News, and has been less conservative lately).

And of course, there's Hillary herself, who recently sat down with the editorial board of Richard Mellon Scaife's Philadelphia newspaper to give an extensive interview. You know Scaife - the architect of the Arkansas Project (that's the "vast right-wing conspiracy" to those who are unfamiliar with the Clinton era)?! And look - there's my candidate on Greta Van Susteren's show on Fox News!

What the hell is going on with my world, when the only place I can see or hear somewhat non-partisan opinions on the Democratic race for the nomination is... Bushbotonia? Am I stuck in the Bizarro episode of Seinfeld here?

Well, my little brain was all tangled up with this question for quite some time, and then I finally got it. No, it's not that traditional media is virulently anti-All Things Clinton and (for the moment) All About Obama. That's a reason for Hillary to go to the Dark Side, but not for the inhabitants of Mordor to be complimentary - or at least, even-handed - towards her.

Based on the commentary of these righties, I've come to believe that the reason has to do with the fundamental nature of conservatives and conservatism, brilliantly detailed in John Dean's "Conservatives Without Conscience." In sum: Conservatives are bullies. They only respect you when you stand up to them. And guess who's stood up to them - and won - for the past 16 years? Why, that would be Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Conservatives have warmed to the Clintons because they wouldn't back down in the face of an unrelenting attack. That's really all there is to it. Even KKKarl Rove admitted that he would rather run against Obama than Hillary. (No, I won't link, but it's out there.) And frankly, this somewhat revoltin' development is yet another reason to want Hillary to be our Democratic nominee. She's shown she knows how to win over the other side - and as I've been saying for a long time, it's not by holding hands and singing "kumbaya." And if she has won the respect of Republics, who by and large are disenchanted with Bush and also don't like McCaca, then who is REALLY the more electable candidate in November?

Food for thought, no?

here is more, from the incomparable Greg Palast, about the extremely innnnnnteresting timing of Eliot Spitzer's downfall. Thanks for pointing it out, FJ!

Highlights include the true history of sub-prime mortgages and deregulation, how the predatory lending was (surprahz, surprahz!) racially targeted, and how those big bucks Ben Bernanke threw to the banking industry might not have been available had Governor Spitzer still been in charge.

Just read it. You won't be disappointed, but you will be, once again, enraged at the sheer unmitigated gall of the Bushies.

And perhaps you'll be a little less upset at the Democrats for not stopping them. The Democrat Surveillance Program is a very powerful weapon...

Despite the personally insulting nature of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's recently-publicized sermon, it took Senator Hillary Clinton about a week to say anything even remotely critical about Obama's 20-year mentor, pastor and friend. (Wow, she sure is evil and diabolical and would do "anything to win!") She kept her mouth shut until she was asked directly about what she would have done had she been in Obama's place. Her comments were that you can't choose your relatives, but you can choose your church, and that she would not have chosen that church. When pressed to say more, condemning Wright the way that Obama himself has done on numerous occasions (including in the Greatest Speech Evah), she would not do so, calling religion a "personal choice," and that everyone would have to evaluate what Obama had done for themselves and make their own decisions.

Well, duh.

There is so much bullshit and apologia going around about Obama's spectacularly poor judgment in choosing this church that it absolutely astonishes me. My favorite one is this:

"You can't pigeonhole the message of this church with a few soundbites!"

Oh, really? Then why did the church create that video and put it on the TUCC website for sale? Weren't TUCC and Wright the ones creating the soundbites and promoting them as representative of the church's message?

Look. If Hillary really were the caricature the haters make her out to be, then she would certainly have been hammering away at Obama over this the second it came out. Obama would be done for in about five milliseconds. Instead, it was Obama who took the low road (as usual), by putting out a photo of Bill Clinton shaking Wright's hand ten years ago. How pathetic. Obama did the same thing with a photo of Hillary, as First Lady, shaking Reszko's hand. Yes, public pictures are the exact same thing as close 17-year and 20-year relationships!

Who is Obama trying to "bamboozle" with this ridiculous false-equivalency crap? Why, his own followers, many of whom are already going from the assumption that Hillary and Bill are genuinely horrible people. (Never mind why they think this, they JUST KNOW IT!!!11J!!!!) Don't you love a "unity" candidate who repeatedly and constantly smears his opponent while pretending to be a pure and holy person? Remind you of anyone else who said he was a "uniter, not a divider?"

Let me tell you who is REALLY destroying the Democratic Party. It's the folks that insist that one candidate is a saint, and the other is a monster. It's the folks whose candidate repeatedly said he would not support Senator Clinton if she were the nominee and has only recently changed his tune. It's the folks whose candidate has been negative from the very beginning of the campaign. It's the haters, the irrational, the ones who make their decisions on emotions, not facts.

As I've said before, Senator Obama's Hatin' Hillary supporters don't seem to understand who the enemy really is. But true-blue Democrats know: it's Senator John "More Wars, My Friends" McCain.

The sad thing is, they won't even get it once Obama is being pummeled by McCaca and the right-wing scream machine after his nomination. They'll cling to their delusions of Obama's electability even then.

And then, when we inaugurate President McCaca in 2009, whose fault will it be?

Why, Hillary Clinton's, of course.

My Jeebus, what is it with these Republic operatives? Do they have clones? Are they robots? Why is it that just one is able to accomplish so much destruction with so little effort?

Case in point - the disastrous fall of the tireless Wall Street antagonist, Democratic New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Like Al Gore and Michael Dukakis, did Spitzer get...Stoned?

We all had suspicions that the FBI's investigation into Governor Spitzer's finances was politically motivated. After all, the history of the Bush Administration and Democratic governors is quite terrifying. Don Siegelman, the popular Democratic ex-Governor of Alabama, could tell you a few stories. (He's serving seven years in federal prison for something he did not even do and which he could not possibly have done given the prosecution's own evidence. Da, Comrade Bush, all our enemies go to gulag!)

But this story seems to show that Roger Stone, GOP operative since the Nixon era, may have had his filthy fingers all over Eliot Spitzer too.

Last November, his lawyer wrote a letter to the FBI. In it, GOP political operative Roger Stone's attorney, Paul Rolf alleged that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer "used the services of high-priced call girls" while in Florida, basing his information on a "social contact."

The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Stone gleaned the information from "a social contact in an adult themed club."

"The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services," Rolf wrote. "It is Mr. Stone's understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer."

It continued, including particular detail -- Stone's lawyer wrote that the governor hadn't taken off his calf-length socks "during the sex act."

It's unclear whether Stone's letter sparked the investigation: court papers say the investigation began "in or about October 2007."

The story then goes on to detail how Stone was a long-time antagonist of the Spitzers, and how Stone predicted Spitzer's downfall in early December of 2007. The final sentence is chilling - Stone has a picture of Richard Nixon tattooed on his neck.

WOW.

My question is this: How in the world could Stone have this information about Spitzer - especially the socks? (Whatever turns you on, Eliot baby.) Let's see, could it be... WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING?

If the Democrats were any good at framing, they would have made sure they said these words over and over:

"Democrat Surveillance Program."

Get it, media dumbasses who call it the "Terrorist Surveillance Program?" The program was in place prior to 9/11, yet the attacks still happened. Either the program was useless, or it wasn't meant to prevent terrorism at all. Neither choice gives much logical reason for Bush's continuation of this program for seven years.

The program's real name, the "Democrat Surveillance Program" (DSP for short), tells you everything you need to know, doesn't it? No wonder the Democrats in the House have taken a strong stance against Bush's desire to immunize telecom companies from prosecution over their complicity in the DSP.

After all, according to Bush, every Democrat must get...Stoned.

Our Deciderer is vewy, vewy sad about the (at least) 4000 dead U.S. soldiers that he murdered for profit. No, REALLY! (No word yet on whether he's cried for the millions of displaced, tortured and murdered Iraqis, but if he does, I'm sure CNN will cover those very important drops of saltwater.)

President Bush is "grieved by the moment" as the U.S. military death toll in Iraq surpassed 4,000, his spokeswoman said today.

"He obviously is grieved by the moment, but he mourns the loss of every single life, from the very first that was lost in this conflict, to the ones that are lost today," White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters this morning.

Bush "bears the responsibility for the decisions that he made, and he also bears the responsibility to continue to focus on succeeding. And one of the things that he hears from families of the fallen is that they want him to lead the country to complete the mission [emphasis added]."

Oh! Silly me! I thought the mission was ACCOMPLISHED. I wonder why so many people died AFTER we won the war?

As for the rest, Dana, you lying whore, Bush bears NO responsibility for anything he has ever done. Everyone in America knows this by now. As I've said before, his only job is to catapult the propaganda - or as my husband says, he's a cheerleader. He and his Bushbots lied 935 times to drag us into Iraq. Bush, Cheney, Rummy and Condi are vampires feeding off Iraq's resources, and the more they suck, the more they need. They're addicted to the no-bid contracts and all that free-flowing oil, especially at the special Bush-Cheney price of $110/barrel.

We don't need tears and prayers. We need action.

Unfortunately, with these vampires in charge of our government, we won't get any. All we'll get are professions of grief and the same old "stay the course" policy we've had for five fucking years.

And if we elect McCaca in 2008, we'll have many, many more years of this war - and I suspect we'll all be crying a lot more as our husbands, fathers and sons are drafted for the new Vietnam's meat grinder.

But our grief, unlike Bush's, will be real.

Since neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton can be the Democratic nominee without the SuperDelegates (unless one of them drops out, of course), there has been a lot of talk about what those SuperDelegates should do at the convention. Should they represent the so-called Will of the People (heard most often from Obamans, but also from Hillary partisans and neutrals)? Or should they do what they think is best for the nation?

It's a tough question, but I think the answer is clear. They must do what they were put there to do - use their own judgment when selecting the nominee.

This "will of the people" meme sounds very democratic, does it not? But the problem is, the will of the people is unclear. Senators Clinton and Obama are practically tied in delegates and popular vote, especially if you stop ignoring the voters in Michigan and Florida simply because the DNC may not seat their delegates. (Big mistake. Huge mistake. Do something please, Howard! Do a re-vote or seat the delegates as they are...or feel the wrath of millions of disenfranchised Democratic voters in November.)

Why would the SuperDelegates want to duplicate a tie?

Yes, I do want Hillary to be the nominee now and someone other than Obama to be her VP, after the Reverend Wright business with Obama has made it impossible for him to win the General Election. (No, America will not elect a man whose preacher gives Louis Farrakhan an award and screams "God Damn America!" from the pulpit. Na ga hapin.) But think about it - if the SuperDelegates vote the way their states voted, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Bill Richardson will all have to vote for Hillary, when they are pledged to Obama! That doesn't seem right, does it?

In my opinion, this race will come down to the wire. If I were Hillary, I'd hang in there until Pennsylvania, at least. We will see what the long-term effects of the Wright scandal will be in the primary, but I don't doubt for one minute that if Obama is the nominee, we will see a lot more videos like these (courtesy of the "OMG! I totally didn't realize we were putting out this ad - let's play it again 70 more times on CNN!" McCaca campaign.)

And isn't it interesting that even though Hillary ZOMG!!!1!!!ksoiu5! will Do Anything To Win, she has stayed quiet and classy about this possibly fatal wound to Obama, while Obama has returned to his customary slimy assaults on Clinton's character and judgment?

It's Johann Sebastian Bach's birthday today. My recommendation? Listen to some of Bach's beautiful music and allow it to pick up your spirits, even if you're observing Good Friday.

We can't be sad and intense every day. Bach may have written The St. Matthew Passion, but he also wrote The Coffee Cantata.

Not content with "embedding" reporters, preventing photos of coffins and wounded soldiers from being on the TeeVee, and fabricating heroic stories (a la Jessica Lynch) out of whole cloth to gin up support for the occupation of Iraq, we now discover that the Bush government is arresting reporters to control information.

Fascism with a smiley face, eh, Jonah Goldberg? Methinks your puerile little graphic would look quite natural on George Bush's neck.

Associated Press president Tom Curley says his news organization does not buy the government's argument that one of its photographers arrested in Iraq was working on behalf of the enemy, and he alleged the US is rounding up journalists in an attempt to control information.

"To say the least, we see things very differently," Curley commented dryly, regarding photographer Bilal Hussein, who was arrested two years ago and remains in military custody.

Noting that at least a dozen other Iraqi photographers have been detained or arrested, Curley stated, "It's impossible not to conclude that the words and pictures these journalists produced were considered unhelpful to the war effort and that their arrests would have served a broader strategy of information control."

Of course, there is a "legal" basis for these detentions - the putrescent Patriot Act. Ah, poor George Orwell; you thought you were writing a satire, not an instruction manual!

Curley also called on journalists to demand that all the presidential candidates make a commitment to reversing a directive issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly after September 11 that radically restricted the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

Ashcroft's memo stated, "When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."

Curley told the National Press Club, "When a matter of public policy poses a straight-up choice between the public's rights of access to government and a government effort to infringe or even narrow those rights, journalists cannot pretend to be disinterested observers."

"This is the moment to make it clear to all the presidential candidates how important reversal of the Ashcroft directive is to us and to the people," Curley continued. "We need to ask the candidates at every opportunity ... whether they are willing to appoint an attorney general willing to follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law that protects the people's right to know what their government is doing."

Senators Clinton and Obama, I hope you are listening to this man. We have seen how secrecy and lies have been an integral part of the survival of the most corrupt Administration in history. We need the next President to open the doors once again to transparency and openness in government.

A democracy cannot function without information. Our media has been slowly turned into a Missing White Woman/Shark Attack/Britney Spears infotainment machine. We need to put the news back on the evening news.

I am stunned, but not surprised, by the orgasmic reaction of Obamans to the Senator's speech yesterday. Do they really think it helped?

I have read the text of the speech, and I actually do think that a lot of it needed to be said. But why did he not say it before now?

For example, he stated:

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

Like so many of Obama's statements, this one floored me. How many times over the course of this campaign have I heard the words "Obama," "transcend" and "race" in the same sentence? Let's do a Google Search, shall we?

110,000 results.

No one transcends race, Senator. And you know it. You knew it when, all the while pretending that race had no part in your campaign, your operatives plotted to smear Hillary and Bill as racists, despite their years of service to the black community at home and abroad. (I recently was pointed to this incredible speech given by Bill Clinton in 1995 on the occasion of the Million Man March, which reminded me why he was called the "first black President.") The only way past racism, especially when it is institutionalized as it is in America, is through action and education: a fact which President Bill Clinton was not afraid to address and to act upon during and after his Presidency.

Where has your courage been during this race, Barack Obama?

The Senator's speech was troubling for other reasons. It shows that he believes that Americans are too dumb or distracted to remember how many times he has flip-flopped on the subject of his church.

Obama had never heard Reverend Wright say those words and didn't know he harbored those thoughts.

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.

But once the statements were "brought to Obama's attention," he decided they were controversial...at the beginning of his presidential campaign.

When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

Despite thinking of leaving the church because of the pastor's sentiments which he had just noticed after 20 years, he still claimed on the campaign trail that his church wasn't controversial.

Then, in his speech yesterday, he admitted he had indeed heard Reverend Wright preach in this manner.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes.

Come now, Senator, who are you trying to bamboozle here?

I know that my reaction to this speech, and many of my thoughts about Obama in general, could be viewed as trying to smear the Senator from Illinois. I've made it pretty clear that I don't like a lot of what he does, and that he is my least favorite candidate for President. I am very upset that he has made it this far by running one of the most market-driven and savvy, but soulless and disingenuous, campaigns of all time.

I am not saying these things to try to destroy Obama. But we must remind ourselves that if we do not acknowledge the flaws in our candidates, then we will be ambushed by the Republics once we pick a nominee. The Obamans seem to be so focused on the Senator's sanctity and "obvious" moral superiority to Hillary that they are ignoring the reality of what he will face in the General Election.

I do have problems with Hillary. When she voted for Kyl-Lieberman, she was Dead To Me. That was why I had first wanted Gore, then eventually had chosen Edwards as my candidate. Hillary's hawkishness in general is a turnoff for me.

Unfortunately, I do not Obama as superior to Hillary on that level. (Truth be told, Edwards wasn't either, but I preferred his focus on domestic issues.) If you look at legislation to help end the war, Obama is actually WORSE than Hillary is. She was the one who prevented Bush from pursuing his "Iraq 4-EVAH" plan. She was the one (with Robert Byrd) who wanted to sunset the AUMF in October of 2007. She was the one who took on Robert Gates and demanded that he provide her with an exit strategy for Iraq. And as for Iraq policy after the Presidency, Samantha Power, Obama's most senior foreign policy advisor, may have been not "resigned" from the campaign not for the "monster" remarks, but because she stated that Obama's promises of Iraq withdrawal were a "best-case scenario." Hillary's plan has been to gather experts on safe withdrawal methods and to begin bringing troops home in 60 days. No wonder the man who gave the Dems their backbone on Iraq, Representative Jack Murtha, has just endorsed Hillary for President.

I do plan on voting for any Democrat in November, as I have said repeatedly. However, the choice has not been made yet, and I want to add my voice to those who believe that Hillary would be a much better choice than Obama against McCaca.

Let's see what happens in Pennsylvania. If the margin of Hillary's victory is as high as I think it will be, I don't see how Obama can counter her "I win all the important states" argument. And I don't see how the superdelegates can avoid the conclusion that she is the best hope for the Democrats in November.

Of course, I've been wrong before, so...YMMV.

Today is a day to remember that, no matter how interested we are in what Eliot Spitzer or David Paterson do in their personal lives, there is a larger issue out there that is impacting every aspect of American life - the illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Is continuing the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan pointlessly maiming, torturing and killing Americans, Iraqis and Afghanis?

Check.

Is it destroying our army?

Check - notice who was against the escalation before he was for it. Another lying flip-flop from McCaca.

Is it destroying our economy?

Check.

Has it almost completely destroyed our reputation among our allies and greatly impaired our ability to negotiate with Middle Eastern countries like Iran, which used to be much friendlier to our interests?

Check.

I saw the odious Fred Kagan on Jim Lehrer's show recently. He was adamant that we not, NOT call Iraq an occupation. Why? Because it's true, and it shows the inherent uselessness and malignance of our presence in Iraq after these five long years.

Impeach Bush and Cheney. Bring them home.

For Jeebus' sake. Enough with the interest rate cuts already!

Once again, the willful blindness of the free-market worshipers is absolutely astonishing.

If you are going to have a market-based economy, you have to assume that people will continue to consume. A lot.

But what if people have no money?

What if the cost of living and wage increases do not keep up with each other? Like, say, what if the price of oil quintuples in a nine-year-period, affecting the costs of essentials like gas and food, but real wages either increase only slightly or actually DECREASE? And then what if your ARM mortgage payments suddenly go from $200/month to $2,500/month? And then what if you don't have health insurance and your son gets hit by a car? And then what if your company is "downsized" and you lose your job?

Let me ask the free-market orthodoxists - like Alan Greenspan - how's that gonna work out for us?

"The crisis will leave many casualties. Particularly hard hit will be much of today's financial risk-valuation system," he wrote.

[Translation: No, mortgage companies, it's not safe to loan $800,000 to people who make $40,000 a year. No one could have anticipated...]

While insisting that current risk management models and econometric forecasting methods remain "soundly rooted in the real world," he said risk management can never be perfect.

"It will eventually fail and a disturbing reality will be laid bare, prompting an unexpected and sharp discontinuous response," Greenspan said.

[Translation: The shit's gonna hit the fan.]

He added, however, that he hoped one of the casualties from the worst U.S. financial crisis since World War Two would not be the spirit of broad self-regulation within financial markets.

Well, OF COURSE. Don't let the fact that deregulated markets led to this crisis cause us to, um, regulate the markets!!!

Look. The fact that we're even listening to this man on finances is a symptom of our national illness. It's like coming to the doctor who gave you heart attack medicine when you had arthritis, and expecting him or her to suddenly be competent to treat your problems. We simply cannot give up the idea that trickle-down economics works.

Why can't we? Well, because if we did, we'd have to admit that "Fuck you, I've got mine!" is not a basis for society, and that yes, we ARE responsible for our neighbors.

I believe that fundamentally, we Americans are a generous people. But we also have our beloved myth of American self-sufficiency, which has been metastasized by corporatists into this malignant tumor of libertarianism. It has caused us to build walls between ourselves and our fellow Americans. The poor are poor because they're lazy. There is no more institutionalized racism in this country. Everyone has health insurance through emergency rooms. Taxes are "stolen money." You get the idea.

The truth that very few in the punditocracy will admit even now, is that we need the New Deal. We need it all the time, and it is the only basis on which our democracy will work. We need to invest in people, not corporations. We need to provide a social safety net. We need to invest in the arts and in education. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and invest in alternative energy. We need to leave Social Security alone.

Sorry, conservato-fascists, your way doesn't work. You can take your ball and go home now.

The adults are taking over in 2009, and we will clean up your mess yet again. But don't expect us to let you be in charge of the playpen until you've grown up.

We've learned our lesson, and this time, I hope it sticks: or we may never recover from the NEXT Republic Great Depression.

And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Senator, this is what happens when you campaign on your Christianity and you're a Democrat. McCaca's wacky religious affiliations are being suppressed, of course - IOKIYJM (It's OK If You're John McCain) - but we must admit, in fairness, that these are endorsements by, not 20-year close personal relationships with, controversial figures.

Here is one of Obama's campaign flyers, via Talking Points Memo.

Barack Obama, Committed Christian

In what universe would it not be okay to report on Obama's church after he has campaigned like this? Add this to the already virulent anti-Democratic bias in the mainstream media, and there was absolutely no chance that Pastor Wright's inflammatory views would not come out. Earth to the Senator from Illinois: When you are running for President on how incredibly holy and Christian you are, you had better be a boring old Methodist, Presbyterian or Catholic.

Let me be clear. I am a lefty-left Democrat, and I don't see too much wrong with a lot of what Pastor Wright said. Haven't all of us super-liberal folks wanted to scream "God Damn America" when our government does something particularly horrific? But the vast majority of Americans are not lefty-left Democrats. They don't want to hear that 9/11 was blowback from our crappy Middle Eastern foreign policy, even though it was. They don't want to hear that blacks are treated unfairly in America, even though they absolutely are. Americans are raised and nurtured on the idea that our country is the "shining city on the hill." What about this is difficult to understand?

I have said for the past week that there is now, in my mind, absolutely no chance that Obama will beat McCain in the general election. He is toast. I personally don't think there is anything he can do to erase those 20 years of extremely close association with the pastor.

Will the Obamans finally get a clue and stop shoving this man down our throats? He has won mostly caucuses and states that will not go Democratic in the fall if he is the nominee. (Sorry, Utah and Kansas are not going to vote for Barack Hussein Obama. Get real.) Their movement is much smaller than they think it is in their Internet echo chambers. We have to think strategically and not pine wistfully for the candidate who we think is more inspirational.

Hillary is the only answer for November. If we nominate Obama, I very much fear that the twin narratives of "scary black Muslim" (Wright) and "corrupt politician" (Reszko) will torpedo his chances.

And then prepare for the worst: Say hello to President McCaca, and "more wars, my friends."

They've returned to their tax-and-spend ways!!!!!!! ZOMG TEH FREE MARKET!!1111!!

The Senate on Thursday rejected the idea of renewing many of President Bush's tax cuts as all three major presidential candidates interrupted their campaigns to cast their votes. The House approved a budget blueprint that would raise taxes by $683 billion over the next five years.

The Senate did embrace Bush reductions aimed at low-income workers, married couples and people with children.

The House budget plan would provide generous increases to domestic federal programs but still is designed to bring the government's budget back into the black by letting all of Bush's tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. That plan passed the House on a 212-207 vote with Republicans unanimously opposing it.

The Senate voted 99-1 to extend the cuts for some workers as well as couples and parents. Senators voted 52-47 to reject a move to extend tax cuts for middle- and higher-income taxpayers, investors and people inheriting businesses and big estates.

The votes were mostly symbolic, but they put senators in both parties on the record for when the tax cuts actually expire in three years.

Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, voted for the full roster of Bush tax cuts. Rivals Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., both voted against them.

The Republic worship of the failed Bush tax cuts is not just lock-step ideological, but also selfish. Most of them are multimillionaires and don't want to give up that sweet, sweet extra cash.

Notice that, despite the bloviatings of the free-market pseudo-intellectuals, it is really not that hard to understand economics if you want to. For example, no other president, besides our oh-so-beloved Deciderer, has cut taxes in a time of war, because war means unprecedented amounts of expenditures on weaponry, active duty troops, and in this day and age, overpriced mercenaries and other "support services" for our men and women in arms. The total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations is now projected to be $3 trillion. [Must...not...yell...AAAAACK!...]

So here we have the U.S. suddenly incurring large expenditures, while at the same time DECREASING REVENUES by drastically cutting taxes on the wealthy. A seven-year-old child could have told Bush that this was a very bad idea, bound to destroy the Clintonian surplus (which he had hoped would be a slush fund for emergencies) and create a massive deficit. We have been forced to borrow from the country that attacked us on 9/11, Saudi Arabia, to try and infuse cash into our empty coffers, as well as China, the country that sells us poisoned toys and toothpaste. Yes, we are now heavily indebted to countries that have either actively or passively been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. And they say the economy has nothing to do with national security!

I'll leave all the Ponzi scheme speculation of the super-deregulated banking and mortgage industries for folks like Atrios and Paul Krugman. My point here is that I'd rather be a tax-and-spend Democrat, than a borrow-and-spend Republic. The government has to spend money no matter what we do. Why not make it pay-as-you go?

It's the economy, stupid. And as usual, John "McCaca" McCain and the Republics are on the "stupid" side.

hello, FBI! [via Talking Points Memo]

WASHINGTON — Senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation repeatedly approved the use of “blanket” records demands to justify the improper collection of thousands of phone records, according to officials briefed on the practice.

The bureau appears to have used the blanket records demands at least 11 times in 2006 alone as a quick way to clean up mistakes made over several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a letter provided to Congress by a lawyer for an F.B.I. agent who witnessed the missteps.

I am currently reading "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA." If this book is any indication, then incompetence, lying and CYA are much more common in the intelligence services than actual intelligence-gathering. So far, the FBI is apparently running true to form.

The F.B.I. has come under fire for its use of so-called national security letters to inappropriately gather records on Americans in terrorism investigations, but details have not previously been disclosed about its use of “blanket” warrants, a one-step operation used to justify the collection of hundreds of phone and e-mail records at a time.

[snip]

By 2006, F.B.I. officials began learning that the bureau had issued thousands of “exigent” or emergency records demands to phone providers in situations where no life-threatening emergency existed, according to the account of Mr. Youssef, who worked with the phone companies in collecting records in terrorism investigations. In these situations, the F.B.I. had promised the private companies that the emergency records demands would be followed up with formal subpoenas or properly processed letters, but often, the follow-up material never came.

This created a backlog of records that the F.B.I. had obtained without going through proper procedures. In response, the letter said, the F.B.I. devised a plan: rather than issuing national security letters retroactively for each individual investigation, it would issue the blanket letters to cover all the records obtained from a particular phone company.

So to cover up their illegal activities, they committed more crimes. Awesome! What's even more terrifying is that the Bush DOJ is actually uncovering this scandal. Imagine the whitewashing that went on BEFORE this story leaked to the press!

I have come to believe that our "intelligence" services are not a boon, but a hindrance to America in general. The CIA is at the root of most, if not all, of our interventionist foreign policy maneuvers to "defeat Communism" (which for the most part had disastrous consequences). They have aggressively used psy-ops at home and abroad to manipulate Americans into rooting for war since the early 1950's. And the FBI seems to be more concerned with spying on ordinary Americans and Democrats like Eliot Spitzer than gathering intelligence on actual threats to America.

Our democracy is weak and getting weaker. Let's hope that our next President will clean house at the DOJ, reform the FBI and CIA, and start bringing transparency back to our government.

And let's remember that McCaca will never, ever be the one to do this.

As we all know, Florida and Michigan decided to move up their primaries in defiance of the rules of the Democratic National Committee. Thus, their delegates are currently not being seated at the Convention in August.

In a contest with a clear preference, such as the Republican primary (which McCain has already clinched), this would not matter so much. But since the votes were held anyway, and hundreds of delegates would be awarded to the winner, and about 100 delegates currently separate Obama and Clinton...those delegates are suddenly very important.

It appeared yesterday that Florida was settling on a mail-in re-vote solution. But the Obama camp has said that they are worried about the mechanics, and the Florida Democratic House members have suddenly taken a strong stance against it.

I just don't know what the best solution would be. Clearly the Michigan delegates should not be seated, since not all the candidates were on the ballot there. But in Florida - millions of voters showed a marked preference for Hillary, and all the candidates were on the ballot. In addition, Florida is run by Republics. Since when do Republics get to decide how Democrats vote?

Howard Dean is in a real bind here. As Democrats, the last thing we want to do is disenfranchise anyone. That's the Republic way. But he also wants to show that the states must defer to the national party as to when their primaries are held.

I just feel like the best thing to do is for Dr. Dean to get the candidates together, say "Guess what? It's clear that America wants you both. We've had many caucuses and primaries already, and you've won almost exactly the same number of delegates and votes. Get over yourselves, flip a coin and decide who's on the top of the ticket, then shake hands and be friends." Then, the Michigan/Florida delegates won't be seated, but it won't matter.

It's either that, or a brokered convention. Because no matter how hard the campaigns spin, the math does not allow either candidate to win enough delegates to clinch the nomination. If Hillary loses PA, that would be a big boost for Obama's narrative; however, she currently holds a double-digit lead there, according to Survey USA (the only pollsters who have been correct during this whole crazy season).

Of course, Al Gore did say that if the convention was brokered AND he was drafted, he would serve. But considering that no one voted for him in the primaries, I'm not sure how Democrats would feel about it. His campaign might be tarred with the brush of illegitimacy from the start. (I'd personally be thrilled, since I believe he is by far the best possibility out there, but I can't speak for the tens of millions of other voters out there!)

Hmmmmm....very, very interesting. Only the Democrats could make this slam-dunk year such a nail-biter. As Will Rogers said,

"I am not a member of any organized political party.

I'm a Democrat."

Why, why did it have to be the Democratic Governor of New York? We've suffered for so long under the Republics, who have allowed corruption to reign supreme in Albany, and who have all but bankrupted our treasury. Now what are we going to do?

The New York Times is reporting that Gov. Eliot Spitzer has told senior advisers that he had been involved in a prostitution ring.

On its Web site, the newspaper cites an anonymous administration official as the source and says Spitzer was meeting with his top aides. The 48-year-old New York governor, and former state attorney general, is married and has three daughters.

The New York Sun reports that Spitzer is suspected to be connected to a prostitution ring that charges up to $5,500 per hour. Earlier Friday, the Sun reported suggestions that a public official was suspected of having hired one of the expensive call girls.

I'm so upset about this. The guy was a great Attorney General in New York, and I had such high hopes for him as Governor.

I just don't know what's going to happen now, but I doubt Mr. Incorruptible can survive this scandal. Perhaps Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, who seems like a committed progressive, will take over.

As some would say on Eschaton, fuckety fuck fuck.

Hopeful Wooooooohooooooo!

Tucker Carlson, the formerly bowtied, banal Face of Evil at MSNBC, will apparently be fired today.

I don't know the person who is quoted on the possible reasons for the buh-bye, but Mr. Alex Blaze certainly has a way with words.

"Maybe MSNBC has realized that swinging to the Right to try and shake out Fox News for viewers isn't a winning strategy," opines The Bilerico Project's Alex Blaze. "Or maybe they realized that at least half their commentators should accept the reality that white men aren't oppressed. Or maybe they think that people don't want to watch a bully wannabe talk about his fun days of beating up [gays]. Or maybe they got tired of his history of abusing the rules of logic, evidence, and reality."

May I add to that excellent summation?

Perhaps MSNBC looked at Rachel Maddow, then looked at Tucker, then looked at Rachel again and said, "Hmmmmm....who are people really liking and respecting on this show?"

We don't know who will replace him, or what format the show will take, but I'm optimistic as always, and I'm hoping it's La Maddow. Despite her recent Obamania, she's still one of the most intelligent and insightful liberal/progressive political commentators around; and it sure would be nice to see more of them on my teevee.

WoooooooHoooooo!

CHICAGO - Nearly two years after taking control of Congress, the Democrats have claimed another prize by capturing former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert's seat - a development that Republicans say is not a harbinger of things to come.

The longtime Republican district fell to the Democrats Saturday when wealthy scientist and businessman Bill Foster snatched the seat in a closely watched special election.

While Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen predicted Foster's win would send out a "political shock wave," Republicans were quick to downplay its significance.

"The one thing 2008 has shown is that one election in one state does not prove a trend," National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Karen Hanretty said in a statement.

[What's that scent you're wearing, Karen? Ah yes. Desperation, by W. Smells like flop sweat and Jack Daniels.]

Republicans had been hoping to hold on to the district that President Bush easily carried in 2004 with 55 percent of the vote. The district runs from Chicago's far western suburbs to almost the Mississippi River.

Foster defeated wealthy Republican businessman Jim Oberweis by capturing 53 percent of the nearly 100,000 votes cast in the election.

"Tonight our voices are echoing across the country and Washington will hear us loud and clear, it's time for a change," Foster told cheering supporters.

Well, I'm not so sure that Washington will hear anything. That bubble is mighty thick.

But this November, if we do the smart thing, that bubble is going to burst once and for all. Can you say "Permanent Republican Minority?"

I knew you could.

Remember my Hillary-as-devil picture from a couple of days ago? I must have been reading Samantha Power's mind.

"In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win," Power is quoted as saying. "She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything."

Power issued a statement Friday in which she acknowledged the comments but said she "deeply regretted them."

"It is wrong for anyone to pursue this campaign in such negative and personal terms," she said in the statement. "I apologize to Senator Clinton and to Senator Obama, who has made very clear that these kinds of expressions should have no place in American politics."

[I am stopping here to guffaw loudly and snarkily at the thought of Obama, Mr. "Hillary Is a Racist," making it clear that negative campaigning is bad bad bad.]

Obama's spokesman Bill Burton said in an e-mail: "Senator Obama decries such characterizations which have no place in this campaign."

[Well, at least he "decried" it. Snicker.]

Though Power immediately attempted to withdraw the remark, the newspaper insisted she had agreed in advance that her interview — part of a book tour — would be conducted on the record.

"You just look at her and think, 'Ergh'," Power is quoted as telling the newspaper. "But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

So let me see now. Hillary is now a monster. Of course, she also makes you want to vomit when you look at her. Sure! Looking at a racist monster will do that to you. And then of course, she has to lie - unattractively - to gullible, dumb-ass poor people in order to get votes. Hey, when you're a racist monster, lying is just another facet of your general horribleness!

From the very beginning, Obama has been trumpeting his moral superiority to Hillary Clinton and the other candidates who voted for the AUMF. He has done this on the basis of one speech in 2002 that was given in a very liberal district in Illinois, where he would have been taking a risk supporting the Iraq War.

When he became a Senator, he voted exactly the same way as Hillary, and admitted that he might have voted for the AUMF had he been in the Senate at the time. Never mind, though, he has superior judgement and morality because he gave a speech in 2002. Never mind what he did after that, when he was in a position to act on his supposed beliefs. Don't compare him to Russ Feingold, who has consistently voted against funding for the Iraq War and who also voted against the AUMF. These are not the droids you're looking for.

Obama's totally NOT cult supporters have swallowed this line of BS hook, line and sinker. As a result, like their candidate, they have been going around with an air of unbearable smugness and arrogance. I for one have been completely turned off by them, and the way they jump on every statement and action of Hillary's as if it were the WORST THING EVER, while acting as if their candidate, because of a speech in 2002, could do no wrong.

I ask again. Who went negative first in this campaign? Who is practicing the politics of personal destruction? Who has been dividing the party and dissing its most reliable members?

Let me tell you something, Samantha Power. I am not poor, not that there would be anything wrong with that if I were. I am a liberal New Yorker who makes a good living. I am the fucking base of this fucking party too. And I am really, really sick of having my chosen candidate demonized by you.

I know Hillary can forgive a lot - after all, she was the one to float the first trial "Clobama" balloon - but boy, she must be a freaking saint if she can still consider teaming up with Obama after Ms. Power's comments.

Or, you know, maybe she's just a politician who wants to win the Presidency, and so is Obama. Can we finally, finally admit that both candidates are imperfect, ambitious, and will do just about anything for the job? (Heaven knows why, you couldn't pay me enough.) And that these characteristics do NOT make them unsuitable for the job, but in fact, make them more likely to succeed in it? And that either one would make a far, far better president than McCaca, Giant Green Lizard forbid?

Or is that just too "monstrous" for the Obamans to realize?

ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease let this be true.

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton hinted at the possibility of a democratic "dream ticket" with Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking on the Early Show on CBS, Clinton said "that may be where this is headed, but we have to decide who is on the top of the ticket." Clinton said the race between her and Obama remains "incredibly close," with just "smidgens of difference" between them.

With Clinton's wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island last night, I think her argument that she can win big states and swing states is pretty persuasive. Of course, Obama's charisma and his ability to bring new voters and fresh enthusiasim to the party should not be underestimated either. And I don't think anyone wants the superdelegates to decide this thing for either candidate.

Will the Democratic Party do the smart thing for once? Will our strong, persuasive, intelligent candidates get together and become one unstoppable force - dubbed by the fabulous Res Ipsa Loquitur as "Clobama"?

Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease....

Here's what the Obamans say:

• Declaring the "first Black President" (and his wife by extension) racist - not divisive.


• Copying the "Harry and Louise" flyer from the anti-Hillarycare days to lie about Hillary's health care plan - not divisive.


• Based on the evidence of right-wing shill Matt Drudge's anonymous sourcing, accusing Hillary of disseminating a photo of him in a turban - not divisive.


• Publicly saying he's not sure his voters would vote for Hillary - not divisive.


• Stating repeatedly that he'd put Republics in his Cabinet - not divisive.


• Claiming that it's Bill Clinton's fault that the Democrats lost Congressional and gubernatorial seats in 1994, conveniently ignoring that 1994 was the year of the Gingrich Revolution - not divisive.


• Everything Hillary does - divisive. And of course, horrific, inexcusable, slimy, and Republican-lite.

Look, I'm not saying Hillary is perfect; far from it. She has indeed gone very negative lately. But a veritable truckload of slime has been pouring from the Obama campaign from the very beginning, and it's pretty much destroyed the Clintons' reputations. I find it very hard to forgive Senator Obama for that, since Bill was our first really successful and popular Democratic president since FDR. Now who do we have to be proud of as a party? And do we really hate ourselves that much, and are we such big fucking babies, that if our preferred candidate does not win the nomination we just won't vote? Do we really not get that McCaca would be worse than the Worst President Evah?

I really still wish for a combined candidacy, because I think that would be the biggest landslide we've seen in a long time. In fact, I'd like to see some polling on that! But I also think that it would be uniting for the Democratic Party to see these two bitter opponents put aside their differences for the good of the country and for the party.

Perhaps a deal will be struck tonight. (And people say Hillary supporters have no optimism!)

Reading comments on the Intertubes about how Hillary is hoping to destroy the Democratic Party by staying in the race until the convention, or how she is hoping McCain wins so that she can run again in 2012...I realized that these people will literally believe anything about Senator Clinton.

I mean, it simply could not be that she wants to win, and that she still has a chance, especially if the Michigan and Florida delegates are seated.

Unpossible.

I must be blinded by Hillary's Devil Powers. Where do I get my special glasses that make me see the candidates like this?

On second thought, no thanks. I'd rather look at this.

Ah, all better now.

Racism is a fact in America. It's been around for centuries, and it's not going away any time soon. While it is wonderful and amazing that a man of African descent may become the next President, and that would be a huge step in the right direction, I think we are all aware that we still have a long way to go before we achieve anything approaching equality for people of color in our society.

But what about the hatred that dare not speak its name? What about misogyny?

Via Atrios, here is a brief but excellent commentary about a horrific op-ed from the Washington Post by a woman named Charlotte Allen. The original title of the piece was "Why are Women So Dumb?" Forgive me if I don't find that very amusing, and forgive me if it makes me want to send Hillary Clinton my entire savings account.

See, if Hillary were not a woman, I'd still choose her over Barack Obama. But seeing the brutal misogyny that has been coming out in the press since she began her run only makes me support her even more strongly. The atrocities have been well-documented at Media Matters, so I won't even bother to list them. But my favorite had to be when Chris Matthews went on a rant about how Hillary only became the Senator from New York because her husband cheated on her.

I know I'm only 40 and make a good living, and thus should be drooling over Barack, apparently. But despite the "generation gap," I just identify so strongly with Hillary and what she faces every day. I have been treated with condescension and dismissal countless times in my professional and personal life simply because I've got a double X chromosome. As Senator Obama said,

"I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal."

FYI, Barack, Hillary is 60. She doesn't menstruate any more, but thanks for playing.

Am I really dumber or more emotional because I'm a woman? Is Hillary? Why in the world do we still have to ask and answer these questions?

It's because misogyny is still widely accepted and promoted in our media, and in large part, because it's a much more hidden hatred than racism. Women were never slaves in this country - at least, not in a societally institutionalized sense.

In fact, misogyny and sexism are so hidden and accepted that a lot of younger women don't even see them. Even though Hillary Clinton's run for the Presidency may not be successful, she can certainly be proud of the fact that she has uncovered this ugly boil on America's backside and given it a good spanking.

Thank you for that and for so much more, Hillary. Perhaps the next time a woman runs for President, she will not have to suffer quite as much of the hatred that dare not speak its name.

but worth it.

We're home.

More tomorrow as I rediscover the world outside our new apartment.