Wow.

HRC's top strategist Mark Penn thought the democratic primary races were a winner-take-all affair. He didn't know that for the past twenty years, it's been proportional representation.

The republican primary race is structured as winner-take-all.

This critical misunderstanding makes sense if you consider Mark Penn is a republican and his PR firm is co-owned by McCain's chief strategist.

Time magazine details HRC's other mistakes.

Happy Cinco de Mayo all you illiterate, immigrant-hating tequila lovers!

Imagine not 4,000+ Americans dead, but 150,000 American fatalities in the last five years.

Thirty or more American deaths on the average day, week in and week out, with no end in sight.

Would that be enough to arouse the citizenry, to demand an end to the killing and bloodshed?

You'd think so. But the answer is no.

The 4,000 US fatalities in Iraq pale beside the 150,000 Americans killed by firearms in this country over a five-year period.

Wednesday, the first anniversary of the massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech, the media paid a little bit of attention to memorials and observances around the country.

But there is no real outcry and no concerted national effort to end firearms violence, even though 32 -- the number of people killed by gunfire at Virginia Tech -- is also the number of gun homicides recorded on an average day in the United States.

That's because many gun-toting Americans seem to think we have a constitutional right to kill each other with firearms, or at least to be free of any sensible restraints that might limit or prevent gun violence.

Next week, General David Petraeus will travel to Capitol Hill and make his report to Congress on the war in Iraq. If, as expected, he announces a pause in the withdrawal in troops from Iraq, our Congress must say "no" for the sake of our military and of our servicemembers.<br><br>We can not pause the withdrawal of our troops because we are seeing, everyday, the absolute devastation our wars, with frequent, long, often extended deployments, are having on our men and women in uniform.<br><br>How can we constantly churn our troops like this? How can we consciously compound the wounds of war? We are sending men and women back for fourth and fifth tours of duty when the Department of Defense, by its own estimation, says that with each additional tour, troops are 60% more likely to develop severe post-combat mental health issues.

---

A memo that was released yesterday demonstrates that John Yoo had another of his "opinions" after 9/11 that various unpleasant things done to prisoners by the military are just hunky-dory. You know, "assault, maiming, and other crimes." This in itself isn't a huge surprise since we've heard that before, but a note in the memo (and where else but Washington is an 81 page document a "memo"?) alludes to another memo in the following disturbing way

... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.
See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and
William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from
John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty,
Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 2001). (emphasis added)

On another blog someone posted this article by Tim Wise entitled "Jeremiah Wright, Barak Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth -- Of National Lies and Racial America".  It was such an excellent article I thought I would link to it here also.  The full article at Counterpunch.org.  An excerpt:

"But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.

This is what James Baldwin was talking about in his classic 1972 work, No Name in the Street, wherein he noted:

An interview from "The Real News" with Jeremy Scahill, author of "Blackwater USA  The Worlds Largest Mercenary Army".  Scahill discusses the Clinton and Obama plans for Iraq. (7 min)  A similar discussion with Scahill on Democracy Now can be found here. (8 min)

UPDATE: Obama to give speech Tuesday addressing Rev. Wright.

The Wall Street Journal:  "To be sure, such attacks often fail to mention that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain had a similar uncomfortable brush with controversy when he gratefully accepted the recent endorsement of Texas televangelist James Hagee, best known by some by some for referring to the Roman Catholic church as “the great whore,” and a cult. “I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee’s, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics,” McCain said, during a recent stop in heavily Catholic New Orleans.

Will Obama get a similar pass? The Illinois senator clearly hopes Tuesday’s speech will help. An aide said it is specifically tailored to address the mess wrought by Wright."

***** 

There is, at least in my mind, a political racial platitude to the whole controversy, still....I think it qualifies as worthy of analytical debate.  This is one of those things which should be put into the context of it's actuality.

Our thanks go out to the Drum Major Institute both for helping to support us financially, and for providing a very slick widget to web sites around the country that show a score card for your own state's legislators and what their voting record is on issues affecting the Middle Class. We've included this (look on the right on every page except the front page) and it's enlightening. Funny how in Wisconsin all those names with a D behind them do really well, and all those with an R behind them do really badly. As it's been said, remember that to go forward you put the gearshift in D, and to back up, you put it in R.