Obama was in excellent form at the Debate in Los Angeles tonight, and no moment more so when he took Hillary Clinton to task about Iraq. In doing so, he not only proved her to be the spineless establishment shill that she is, not only shook her up, but took one of her most annoying lines from her.

We have often heard Hillary claim that she is a candidate who would be “ready on Day One” of becoming President.

After excoriating her record on Iraq - even getting her to nod, stunned, before she realized what she was doing when he said, “we will have a strong argument against the Republicans if we debate them saying we realized all along going into Iraq was wrong” - he told the audience this:

“It is not only important to be ready on Day One, but to be right on Day One,” speaking of Clinton’s absolute misreading of either the pre-war Iraq intelligence or the Bush administration’s intentions. That will resonate, and it is important that it does so.

It gets to the bottom of why Obama is the right choice - not just ready on day one, but right on day one.

The world is, indeed, a many splendored place, as wonders and puzzles like the seventies, the daily content of fark.com and most of Japanese culture often reminds us. Today was rife with celebrity curiosities that made the front pages:

A seven thousand year old city was discovered, Jerusalem was smothered in snow, Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post endorsed Obama and Hillary Clinton threw a party for herself in honor of being the winner of a primary only she competed in after promising not to compete.

The first - the city in the desert - reminds us that the mysteries of the past will never cease to reveal themselves. As we develop from the past, our perspective transforms. And as we gain new eyes, we look back to discover new things, and change yet again. Most fascinating about this archaelogical marvel is that it may involve cultural elements that far post-date its original founding - Greek and Roman elements, meaning that it was likely in use, part of the known world from the dawn of civilization, for thousands of years, before it vanished.

“An electromagnetic survey revealed the existence in the Karanis region of a network of walls and roads similar to those constructed during the Greco-Roman period,” the council’s chief Zahi Hawwas said.

The remnants of the city are “still buried beneath the sand and the details of this discovery will be revealed in due course,” Hawwas said.

The remains date back to the Neolithic period between 5,200 and 4,500 BC.

Jerusalem, a place of extreme strive and extreme beauty, was blessed with snow. Snow in the desert may be explanable as one of the freak weather patterns climate change is inspiring, but on the objective face of it, it is a miracle of sorts in such profusion. For the temperate climb to be so plunged into winter has provided not only a rare pause in the bustle of the magical city of Solomon, but a touch of loveliness to the contested capital of the three faiths of the Book.

Men in long Arab robes pelted each other with snowballs in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and the West Bank city of Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian government, came to a standstill.

“I’m originally from Gaza where snow never falls,” said Bothaina Smairi, 28, who was out in Ramallah taking photographs. “The white snow is covering the old world and I feel like I am in a new world where everything is white, clean, and beautiful.”

Jerusalem’s Old City was coated in white. A few ultra-Orthodox Jews, wearing plastic bags over their hats to keep them dry, prayed at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site.

Another note for unity and hope despite the grim, poisonous past few years was struck as Barack Obama received an edorsement from the NY Post - former flagship newspaper of Rupert “FOX News” Murdoch. For me, this represents a rare altruism on the part of the paper, assuming it is sincere; a media outlet more dedicated to removing the contentious tone from public life rather than stoking it. Contrary to the obscenely impartial or provocatively biased coverage we’ve become accustomed to, the best journalism might be the most responsible kind, and the Post’s editorial seems to echo that long-lost sentiment:

Obama represents a fresh start.

His opponent, and her husband, stand for déjà vu all over again - a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency.

Does America really want to go through all that once again?

It will - if Sen. Clinton becomes president.

That much has become painfully apparent.

More painful in its clarity is that Clinton will not just be a repeat of the years before the Bush years, but of the Bush years as well. This is evidenced in her attempt to steal the election, a perfidious scheme far beyond just shutting the doors to caucus sites half an hour ahead of their closing time or dispensing lies about Barack Obama being a Muslim terrorist over e-mail that she celebrated last night. After swearing not to campaign in Florida, Clinton did, won the state, and is now trying to force the Democratic National Convention to recognize the delegates from that election.

It was a perfect reproduction of an actual victory speech, delivered at a perfectly ersatz celebration at a perfectly pretend location: a faux Italianate palace with lion sculptures, indoor fountains and a commanding view of Interstate 595. The Signature Grand (”Elegant Weddings and Grand Social Occasions”) was also holding receptions Tuesday night for a pediatric practice and for a group of optometry students, but the Clinton campaign was the biggest draw: It filled the Silver Palm Room, the Golden Palm Room and the Emerald Palm Room.

…Even some of the faithful in the hall doubted that the big margin for Clinton, flashed on a projection screen, was an accurate gauge of the race here. “Probably not,” said Eleanor Forte, on the outer rim of the celebration. “If they had campaigned here, it probably would have come out differently.”

That was a nuance the Clinton campaign was hoping to overlook as it sought retroactively to give weight to the Florida primary. “I am a gutter-ball bowler,” Clinton said as she campaigned Sunday night in the state in which she had pledged not to campaign. The remark, overheard by a Miami Herald reporter, was no doubt meant literally; she was standing outside Lucky Strike Lanes in Miami Beach. But in politics, too, Clinton has recently been putting some questionable rotation on the ball.

First came the South Carolina primary, in which she and her husband tried unsuccessfully to morph Barack Obama into Jesse Jackson. Then came word Sunday that she would fly here to celebrate her “victory” in the Florida primary — even though she and the other Democratic candidates long ago declared it null and void. She said she wanted restoration of the stripped delegates from disobedient Florida and Michigan (where Clinton, the only major candidate on the ballot, beat “uncommitted,” 55 percent to 40 percent).

In my opinion, breaking her promise not to run in those states should have had her tarred and feathered by the press for being a cheater. In my opinion, demanding that the delegates from those states should be recognized should result in her being ejected from any consideration as the nominee. In my opinion, any Democrat who refuses to see that this smacks of the kind of voter manipulation the Bush team was suspected of pulling in 2000 is morally vacant.

And thankfully, the world being a many splendored place, there may still be a chance for those many endorsements, these many stories of infamous deeds and the character of America’s virtue to be brought into play, and to spare us another four years of cynicism.

The Chinese curse - “may you live in interesting times” - comes to mind when I reflect that tonight is the last time we will hear a State of the Union Address from one of the most interesting Presidents America has ever had. George W. Bush, for all the mysteries and mistakes that characterize his tenure in office, will surely say that “the state of the nation is strong.” And in many regards, the news of the day suggests that even if we are not yet strong as we might be, our inner strength will see us there.

Our military efforts are increasingly successful. This is largely due to the military leadership of David Petraeus and the tens of thousands serving under him, whose aptitude and innovation have allowed him to circumvent the idiocy, vanity and avarice of the politicians in charge of him. Every significant accomplishment - most significant of all being the coalition with the militias we fought against - was in spite of, not because of, our political leaders. Today, we are closing in on what might be the elimination of al-Qaeda’s major tactical assets in Iraq.

U.S. commanders have described Mosul as the last major Iraqi city with a significant al-Qaida presence, although they have warned insurgents remain a potent force in rural areas south and northeast of Baghdad.

But the military has said Iraqi security forces will take the lead in the city — a major test of Washington’s plans to someday shrink the American force and leave it as backup for Iraqi security forces.

Al-Qaida and its supporters would find themselves without a major base of operations if ousted from Iraq’s third-largest city, which occupies transport crossroads between Baghdad, Syria and other points.

At home, another kind of circumvention of the politically perditious is going on. Following an eviscerating victory over Clinton in South Carolina that saw him more than doubling her numbers and even claiming nearly double the percentage of the white vote he was expected to get, Barack Obama is gathering scads of endorsements from the people who count. A trend is becoming increasingly obvious - the moneyed and shiftless support Clinton, the intelligent and dynamic support Obama. We see this in the plethora of poets, philosophers and policy gurus that have thrown their support behind Barack, and the media moguls, corporate officers and radicals who favor Hillary.

“In addition to trouncing Clinton by a more than 2-to-1 margin in South Carolina on Jan. 26, Obama, an Illinois senator, has locked up two key endorsements. Caroline Kennedy, announcing her support yesterday, likened Obama to her father, President John F. Kennedy; Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, one of the few Democrats with a national following, announced his endorsement today.

Also, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, who described Bill Clinton as the U.S.’s “first black president” a decade ago, announced her support for Obama. In a letter to Obama released by his campaign, she said he has displayed “wisdom” that makes him “the man for this time.”

And so we continue to gather our strength - we set the wise against the wealthy, and the confident against the corrupt - and we hope that it will be enough. I believe that we can demostrate that it is, even though we have stumbled and been tripped many times by the likes of W. and Hillary. Tonight, we will hear that we can.

In a week and a day, we will have to prove it.

The big news this week was all abuzz with the upcoming primary in South Carolina and the salvos being fired back and forth between the Democrats. In that regard, there was no real news at all.

If Clinton’s untouchability is the chief headline of the day, it’s not a day worth getting out of bed for, journalistically speaking. Every sagely columnist from Peggy Noonan to Dan Savage agrees that Clinton should be eradicated from the political scene. Most within the Democratic party seem thoroughly disgusted with them. And yet their numbers are astronomic, their public support thunderous. In essence, the Clintons seem to me the acoustic of American mass idiocy, much like the early chapters of the Bush years seemed.

And that kind of news - that people can be underhanded, conniving, manipulative, venal and power hungry and still be revered by defensive masses - is not news at all. It is the last eight years of my life.

Even though everything may seem like the past, though, we are definitely living in the future. One major news item this week announced that we are close to creating artificial life.

US scientists have taken a major step toward creating the first ever artificial life form by synthetically reproducing the DNA of a bacteria, according to a study published Thursday.

The move, which comes after five years of research, is seen as the penultimate stage in the endeavour to create an artificial life form based entirely on a man-made DNA genome — something which has tantalised scientists and sci-fi writers for years.

Great. Maybe the Earth will finally be home to a sentient being.

Obama was endorsed by a leading South Carolina newspaper, The State, yesterday. I hope it is one of the first of many such high-profile endorsements. To counteract the Clinton threat, the media will likely have to saturate the public consciousness with the merits of her rival and the failings and perversions of her own methods. Otherwise, whenever I use a term like “Clinton threat,” people will either look at the screen strangely or become convinced I am listening to Glenn Beck.

The State’s endorsement distilled Obama’s chief asset to this nation well:

Sen. Obama’s campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership. In a time of great partisanship, he is careful to talk about winning over independents and even Republicans. He is harsh on the failures of the current administration - and most of that critique well-deserved. But he doesn’t use his considerable rhetorical gifts to demonize Republicans. He’s not neglecting his core values; he defends his progressive vision with vigorous integrity. But for him, American unity - transcending party - is a core value in itself.

Can such unity be restored, in this poisonous political culture? Not unless that is a nominee’s goal from the outset. It will be a difficult challenge for any candidate; but we wait in the hope that someone really will try. There is no other hope for rescuing our republic from the mire.

That last paragraph, though some may not realize it, is the key cultural question of our times. If we cannot be united, we will collapse into bush wars, petty bickering and extremism. Nothing breeds radical solutions like the drowning of moderate voices by the mob. In order to overcome threats ranging from the cacophony of the internet, the clash of cultures and the isolation Americans feel from their government, the world and each other, we need a candidate for unity.

Not someone who will “withstand” the Republicans. Someone who will unite the Americans.

Another twisting of our system from the Clinton campaign has come to light, as hundreds of reports of voters being turned away from the Nevada caucuses by Clinton personnel have been brought to the state Democratic party. Apparently, thwarted in their attempt to block the casinos by legal means, they resorted to the traditional method of outright lying to people’s faces.

Spokesmen for Obama’s campaign told reporters that a Clinton party handout urged registration lines for the caucuses Saturday to close at 11:30 am, whereas state party rules said anyone in line until 12:00 pm was to be allowed to participate.

“Despite clear rules and timelines laid out by the Nevada Democratic Party that caucus doors should remain open and voter registration should continue until noon, the Clinton campaign encouraged their operatives to close the caucus doors at 11:30 am, a half hour before that deadline,” said spokesman Bill Burton.

Fortunately, Obama still won more delegates from Nevada, which will count if it comes down to a close clinch following Super Duper Tuesday. But more likely is that one or the other candidate will sweep the states. I like to think that if any thinking Democrat - or voter, for that matter - learned of the stories like this and the others I have been following, the candidate who sweeps would be Obama. It has come to the point that regardless of Clinton’s policies, her methods have established her as a perpetuator of the most vile perversions of democracy - manipulations of the truth and of the people. This alone is enough to bar her from office, whatever her ultimate goals may be. And we would do well to remember that of all the Bush administration’s failings, it is their constant evasion of responsibility, misrepresentation of the truth and disregard for facts that caused most of our troubles.

Sometimes I feel as though I am beating a dead horse, day after day posting what new ill Hillary has committed. But the point is that the horse is not dead - the damned thing is running around inside the house, kicking in doors and knocking down walls, and no one is doing anything effective to stop it. Someone must, or we will be enduring another four to eight years of regular irregularities in our political process.

So rarely do public figures seeking office point out the absurdities that riddle the game of politics. Usually when they do, it sounds canned or contrived. But in a recent speech to folks at Rancho High School in Nevada, Obama pointed directly at the aspects of this primary race’s democratic dialogue I most detest and laughed at them.

Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night’s debate when he and his rivals were asked to name their biggest weakness. Obama answered first, saying he has a messy desk and needs help managing paperwork - something his opponents have since used to suggest he’s not up to managing the country. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others, and Clinton said she gets impatient to bring change to America.

“Because I’m an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, ‘What’s your biggest weakness?’” Obama said to laughter from a packed house at Rancho High School. “If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, ‘Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don’t want to be helped. It’s terrible.’”

He could not be more right. When I was watching the debates on Tuesday night in the interest of analyzing them for this blog, I simply cast my proverbial pen aside in disgust because of responses like that. First of all, no one was saying anything truly revelatory about their political positions - they’re all for alternative energy, all for fixing immigration without mass deportations, all for reducing troop presence in Iraq in some form or another. But second of all, and most importantly, no one was calling Clinton on her double-talk and vitriol. They even mentioned the Obama-Muslim-Terrorist e-mail, but did not mention that the only time that boggun of the WWW had been traced back to its source, it was coming from her campaign. They were letting it all slide.

The sliding stopped at Rancho. It was to my amazement this morning that I read of Obama’s “new act” in Vegas, as he was not missing a stitch:

Folks, they don’t tell you what they mean!” he said. Obama chuckled at his own joke before riffing on another Clinton answer in the debate, when she said that she is happy that the bankruptcy bill she voted for in 2001 never became law.

“She says, ‘I voted for it but I was glad to see that it didn’t pass.’ What does that mean?” he asked, again drawing laughter from the crowd and himself. “No seriously, what does that mean? If you didn’t want to see it passed, then you can vote against it! People don’t say what they mean.

I think - hope - we have heard the “I was for it before I was against it” of this campaign.

In light of that hope, the real significance of Obama’s comments is illuminated. The value of his words is beyond just their humor. And it is beyond their somewhat cynical but, sadly, essential application to the task of eradicating his rival in the primaries. Obama’s statements at Rancho are important because of what they say about how the era of Clinton-Bush politics have shaded our perception of political speech.

“Those kinds of tricks, that kind of approach to politics is what has to stop because what happens is then nobody believes anything,” Obama said. “The voters don’t believe what politicians say. They get cynical. Folks in Congress, they’ll tell you they’re looking out for you - they’re looking out for somebody else. We have to change that politics and that’s why I’m running for president.”

From the beginning of his comments, right to the conclusion they came to, I found I had only to say, “Yeah. What he said.”

The latest salvo launched against Hillary in Nevada by Obama supporters, this by a labor ally, declares in Spanish she “does not respect our people” - a statement her recent actions suggest to be entirely true.

“Hillary Clinton does not respect our people,” the ad says in Spanish (original and Clinton campaign translation after the jump), referring to the lawsuit that failed today to shut down special caucus sites on Las Vegas’ strip. “Hillary Clinton is shameless.”

To which I say, “es veridad!” Hillary Clinton is shameless. We already know she doesn’t respect many on the opposite side of the aisle; one of my chief concerns. Now it seems she extends that contempt to fellow Democrats who might not march in lock-step with her.

She demonstrated this when, two days after the Culinary Workers Union gave its endorsement not to her, but to her rival, Obama, she supplied a battery of lawyers to elements in the Teachers Union of Nevada so that they might bring a lawsuit to block the Culinary Workers from using their caucus sites. Even though the sites had been agreed on a year ahead, the suit was supposedly over the concern that it would be too convenient for the Culinary Workers to use sites in the casinos in which they work. Too convenient! Can’t have that.

In short, because a Democrat-inclined Union long allied with her switched to her opponent, their assets were suddenly unfair. Clinton herself gave no comment on the situation - just gave a legal team - until today. Confronted by a reporter asking for his position on the lawsuit, Bill Clinton blew up into an uncharacteristically uncool eruption of fabrications about it, among them that the Culinary Workers’ votes would “count five times as much” - all untrue.

It seemed like this squall would just blow over, as the Nevada judge’s ruling on the lawsuit - just in a couple of hours ago - was that the caucus sites were fair to use.

I am glad to say, this could not be the case - that after the Obama-Muslim-Terrorist e-mail, lying about her position on nuclear weapons, shady campaign finances and relentless negativity and secrecy, Hillary Clinton may be taken to task. Graciously - and somewhat infuriatingly for a scrapper like me - Obama has said nothing on the matter. His supporters in the Culinary Workers Union and in his campaign were not so forgiving.

The political director for the textile and hotel workers’ union UNITE-HERE, Tom Snyder, confirmed a portion of the transcript, and defended the decision to run it.

“We’re doing this because forces allied with her campaign are trying to keep our members out of voting through this lawsuit, which neither Senator Clinton nor former President Clinton have denounced,” he said.

A spokesman for Obama, Bill Burton, did not condemn the ad or the independent spending specifically, but instead attacked Clinton.

“Sen. Obama believes, and has said clearly, that campaigns should fund themselves and discourages supporters from spending outside the campaign,” he said, and echoed the charges in the ad. “Coming from a campaign that is repeatedly launching absolutely false attacks against Sen. Obama, it takes some chutzpah. The facts is their camp clearly would like to have worker’s voices silences and they need to live with that unfortunate position.”

It does take chutzpah. And it takes shamelessness. And hopefully Clinton’s iniquities in Nevada will bring it to light so that the majority of Americans will know that it is no longer rumor that she is these things - no longer fabrication.

It is true.

As we gear up for the Democratic Party debate tonight, some consideration for those not standing center stage is due, and why their presence matters.

Dennis Kuchinich very nearly was excluded from the debate, and may yet be. His argument is that he raises contrary opinions and controversial issues that the more centrist candidates won’t touch. In doing so, he is giving voice for many Americans who feel disenfranchised by the process, and this is a good thing. It is when the disenfranchised voters flail about for an alternative, shouting into the proverbial void by casting votes for “minor parties” or “third parties,” that America starts to sicken.

I worked on the ‘Shadow Convention’ in 2000 - an organization with, actually, some rather high-profile people involved that was intended to be an organization of all those ‘minor parties’ and disenfranchised voters. This was, for me and many involved, a compelling education in the practicalities of politics.

The first thing I learned about organizing the current population of non-voters: They are exceedingly difficult to organize. One of the reasons that the two existing parties do so well is sheer logistic strength - they have thousands upon thousands of people devoted to the task of locating their party members, mobilizing them and framing the issues. By contrast, even a well-established party like the Green Party lacks these assets. Often they do not have large voter lists, do not know how to make them, do not know who to reach, or how to frame the issues to reach them, or how to frame the issues once people are on the lists to mobilize them, and so on.

But let us say that those parties actually do come together in one place, with the common goal of making their voices heard by the establishment, as ‘The Shadow Convention’ did. What is the trouble then?

The trouble is that no one could bloody agree on what the whole group should stand for. They were, by definition, individually identified, and so all believed different things. By contrast, groups that vote a certain way due to party allegiance have real political coherence and real power. To extend your metaphor about guns, the existing parties line up like the British in the Zulu war, aim and fire as one. Getting together “non-voters” or individuals lead to a lot of firing in wild directions - even at one another.

So, more than disaffection and desperation, or the promise of a big tent, parties need three A’s: Ambition, Agenda and Activity. Why people don’t vote for third parties is because they believe nobody else will, and the third party will lose, and they are right, because no one in those parties has worked tirelessly to get thousands upon thousands working tirelessly for their cause.

But the most important lesson I took from that year was this: Third parties do matter. They can cost a party an election.

Nader had 97,000+ votes in Florida. That would have cleared Gore the state, easily. Gore would have been in charge, and who’s to say what would have happened? We know a few things with certainty:

We wouldn’t have the Global Gag Rule now. We would not have had Don “Lighter Is Better” Rumsfeld undermanning any wars. We would not have had a Conservative Supreme Court installed for the next generation. Or the energy policy we do. Or the stain Alberto Gonzales left on the Attorney General’s office.

So, yes, third parties do matter. They arguably won the election for Clinton in ‘92, and for Bush in ‘00, by convincing disenfranchised and fussy people that it did not matter who you vote for, you get the same crap no matter who is in the White House - enough such people that they get the person diametrically opposed to their concerns elected.

What began as simply bad, craven politics has become a campaign of sheer scum by the Clinton campaign now that Hillary’s blood is in the water.

I was very ready to like Hillary Clinton, believe it or not. Her victory in New York excited me with its possibilities. Since then, she has proven consistently disappointing in every regard, and downright horrid in some instances. This week has been one of those instances.

In fact, I have not seen worse. I remember the Atwater v. Carville days - the sheer viciousness of that Bush campaign. I recall wondering when Bob Dole got so damn bitter and angry. And I had my eyes open during Rove, that walking poison pill in the American political dialogue. But Hillary is doing all she can to make me forget about Max Cleland turning into Osama bin Ladin, or John McCain being accused of having fathered an illegitimate black child.

First off, this business about “race” in the race. The Clintons said some rather gauche, rather clumsy things that some might take as belittling the importance of Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights movement and declaring a black President to be a “fairy tale.” This has made headlines. In response, the Clintons have accused Obama’s campaign as making an issue out of it - not the press, as was actually the case.

…Black leaders have criticized their comments, and Obama said Sunday her comment about King was “ill-advised.”

“I think it offended some folks who felt that somehow diminished King’s role in bringing about the Civil Rights Act,” he told reporters on a conference call. “She is free to explain that, but the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous.”

As evidence the Obama campaign had pushed the story, Clinton advisers pointed to a memo written by an Obama staffer compiling examples of comments by Clinton and her surrogates that could be construed as racially insensitive. The memo later surfaced on some political Web sites.

So, as proof that Obama is making an issue out of the race comments, the Clintons present a memo that was not released, and that has not been acted on. Brilliant. More rabbit hole logic follows when one considers Hillary’s comments on ‘Meet the Press’:

“This is an unfortunate story line the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully,” the former first lady said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”"I don’t think this campaign is about gender, and I sure hope it’s not about race.”

It’s not about gender? Amusing, considering she’s constantly going on about “finding her voice” these days - a line straight out of the feminist canon. Frequent mentions of breaking the glass ceiling are not uncommon either, and let us not forget her appeal for solidarity to the Latina community of Nevada this weekend, as she declared, “No woman is illegal.”

Clearly, she’s going gender neutral.

She’s also going loyalty neutral as well, inspiring and aiding her supporters in suing to prevent the Culinary Worker’s union in Nevada - which switched its endorsement to Obama - from voting in the upcoming caucus:

The lawsuit, filed against the Nevada Democratic Party by the teachers’ union, argues the nine “at-large” caucus locations provide an unfair advantage to Obama.

Under rules set by the state Democratic Party, only hotels and casinos that have been organized by the state’s most powerful labor union, the Culinary Workers Union of Nevada, were selected as caucus sites.

Her logic, therefore, is since the endorsed candidate of the Union is her opponent, the powers of the Union to caucus are thus against the law.

This same logic is applied in another connection she made, this one right before the New Hampshire primary: Since another President in the White House means she is not in power, terrorists will attack us.

Yes, as Keith Olbermann notes, not only is Hillary so narcisstic as to weep for the sake of an America that may not know her benevolent rule, she shares with our President the conviction that she and she alone can keep us safe. Before a crowd in New Hampshire, she as much promised that an Obama victory would be an al-Qaeda victory.

It would be a triumph for the decadent and depraved too, in her opinion, as she has once again used the oblique method of raising a point - claiming someone else didn’t actually say it, but then talk about it ad nauseum - to bring up Obama’s drug use.

Robert L. Johnson — a prominent businessman who founded Black Entertainment Television and is a top fundraiser, or Hillraiser, for the Clinton campaign — was giving a lengthy introduction of Clinton at a campaign town hall in Columbia, S.C., when he launched into a defense of the senator and President Bill Clinton for remarks that have drawn criticism in the black community.

Johnson said the Clintons have been “deeply and emotionally involved in black issues — when Barack Obama was doin’ something in the neighborhood that I won’t say what he was doin,’ but he said it in his book.”

The Clinton campaign later put out statement in which Johnson claimed he was referring not to drug use but to community organizing.

Of course! He meant the organizing - he was making a connection between the Clintons community organizing and Barack organizing; that is what he meant by “doin’ something … I won’t say what,” for, surely, innuendo about community organizing is a great way to tear down an opposing candidate. Preposterous.

In short, this is sleaze at its worst - manipulative, evasive, unrelenting and anti-democratic. It should be the spark that brings down the Hillary Hindenberg, if there is any justice until Super Tuesday.

Let us hope it is not a preview of four more years to come.

There have been prettier weeks than this one.

If 2008’s first week celebrated change, the second week reminded us that change isn’t going to come any time soon. It’ll be a long haul, and most likely not a pretty one.

* The now-notorious “Obama Is A Muslim Spy - Honest!” e-mail made its rounds during that critical 36 hour window before New Hampshire. Golly gee; what an amazing coincidence. I suppose it has nothing to do with the disappearance of Obama’s 10 point lead over Hillary and the 18% of voters who said they decided on the last day. That the only source we have ever discovered for this abomination was a Clinton staffer is, I’m sure, also just a coincidence.

Fortunately, the new version of the e-mail has a link to snopes.com - included above, too - so that people can click on it and find out its false. Any simple internet search would do this. So that means, only idiots who would fail to check the facts on something before turning it decisive belief and action will succumb. Unfortunately, that seems about 70% of America.

* Iran harassed us with speedboats. Considering we’re the most powerful army in the world, one would think we would tell them that if they did it again, we would blow their zippy little boats into zippy little bits without so much as a “fare thee well.” Instead, Bush and the GOP candidates insisted it was proof Iran was “a threat.” Yes; clearly, Iran was not just trying to poke at us to show it can make us roar like a big, tender giant. Clearly, Iran’s next speedboat assault will render us more vulnerable, more broken, than even the colossal Red Army of the 70s could not.

This was just another incident that made me hang my head in a combination of shock, shame and prayer. I miss the 80s. Do any of you all remember when we actually acted like the invincible superpower we are?

* In what is, in fact, an odd coincidence, Bush visited Auschwitz the day that a German Events Planner put out a shirt protesting smoking bans that features a Star of David patch - a la the Nazis - with the word ’smoker’ in it.

* Meanwhile, the most important story went largely ignored - as usual. The real imminent crisis is not Global Warming or illegal immigration. These make great boogeymen, but are localized and manageable compared to the immense trouble caused by our economic policies of the last eight years - which are, if you’ll allow me an extension of metaphor, four-hundred foot tall, radioactive chickens looking to come home to roost:

The economic crisis is that we have been taking this country’s real wealth and turning it into debt, and then selling that debt overseas.

In short, this tale begins with the tech bubble bursting. Our surplus teeters on becoming a defecit. Bush’s solution is to significantly lower taxes for the highest tax brackets. This in turn encourages corporations to expand, buying new development on credit. Meanwhile, everyone in the lower tax brackets is given a rebate and told to spend more. Americans do, buying more goods that the expanded corporations are producing. Corporations cut jobs to make themselves more competitive in the market, and then reinstate jobs at lower wages after they have expanded in their holdings. The result is a rise, then drop, in unemployment but an overall drop for salaries for middle class and lower class earners. This means more middle and lower class using more credit, while big business uses more credit to expand and so to produce goods they can sell to the middle and lower classes.

All the while, places like China and India are producing those goods, while at the same time China and nations like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are selling American consumers and businesses debt. They do this so that we can continue to buy the goods we pay them to produce cheaply.

Only now, chips are starting to be cashed. People are starting to think that maybe high-interest loans and maxed out credit cards wasn’t the way to go. Maybe they needed the tax cuts, and fiscal responsibility. But already, major banks like Citibank and Countrywide have sold these peoples’ debt to overseas, so that they can hike their market share and use those Fed tax cuts to buy their business larger.

Something’s going to give. Today, as those above links show, the market plunged and Citibank, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, offered itself up to Beijing. The house of cards is not going to be pretty when it falls, but how it’ll stay up is anybody’s guess.

Half a world away from the battles over the American future being fought in the polling stations, a substantial stage of victory for the American future in Iraq has been reached: Anbar province has been slated to return to Iraqi security control in March.

In many ways, this announcement substantially clarifies the character of the Iraq War for those who care to look closely.

First and foremost, it brings to light the most critical trend in the key strategic elements in Iraq - that our forces must begin to draw down their presence, even in vital regions of the conflict. It is a matter of practicality that the astonishing endurance of our troops and materiel overseas has to be renewed by circulation back to home bases. Yet on this practical inevitability hinges the fate of the country’s security; the US remains a strong player in the situation, and the reduction of its role will surely have an effect. Whether it is a slight bump or an opportunity for al-Qaeda or Iran to blow the door wide open again remains to be seen.

Second, it takes some of the air out of the obnoxious argument that “timetables” are a sure course to defeat. They are not; they are the reality of war - Soviet Russia understood it had a ‘timetable’ as far as the winter stall of the German offensive in 1941 was concerned; our forces in the first Gulf War had a set window in which to build up and then to draw down. Timetables are the sinews of military planning, not the recipe for retreat some politicians would have us believe. The announcement some months in advance - as is customary - that we will be turning Anbar province over the Iraqis shows that those politicians who claim both military wisdom and contempt for timetables are fools or liars. The reality on the ground dictates a set time for the transfer, and we will see it through.

Through to where? That’s point number three: The character of the Iraq war is increasingly evident as dependent on Iraqis providing their own security. This was actually always the case. The ratio of land the Iraqis occupy, the forces they have, have not changed appreciably - their loyalties, however, are another matter. This underscores what a debacle disbanding the Iraqi Army in 2003 was: We spent some three years fighting the people who should have been - and now are - doing our security work for us. They were busy that entire time struggling for their nation’s security; the problem was they were doing it against us. Now we have proficient, organized and essentially entrenched militias cohering into provincial governments, and working alongside us. This hand over of Anbar is mostly just ceremony to the close observer: The militias there had previously denied the province to us; now they’re denying it to al-Qaeda.

Lastly, the significance is in how this transfer is going about. The article frames this salient aspect in a passage of criticism here:

Thus far, nine of 18 Iraqi provinces have reverted to Iraqi control, most recently the southern province of Basra in December. The process has gone substantially slower than the Bush administration once hoped, mainly because of obstacles to developing sufficient Iraqi police and army forces. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he expects the process to continue.

The italic emphasis in this passage is mine - the slow progress is what’s important. However, it’s not important because of its negative value, but its positive: Namely, that the Iraqi police and army have been undergoing some thorough, painstaking changes to weed out sectarian and militia influence. They are falling short of their expected development because the US and the head of the Iraqi police are prioritizing political reliability over quick production of units.

All this amounts to many practical factors that benefit our aims for a stable Iraq. They do not, however, amount to a “success of the surge.” For good or ill, the surge’s stated objectives included political reconciliation legislation and development of a government infrastructure extending from the parliament - revenue sharing, provincial elections and constitutional reform. None of these things have been advanced by Prime Minister al-Maliki’s government. None. All the advances I listed - from provincial stability to improvements in the police and army - have been done behind al-Maliki’s back, often against him. The tribal leaders in Anbar may hold real power, but it is illegal power.

The Administration is doing nothing different to change the situation. While Petraeus achieves what had been considered impossible by some, and is in opposition to Baghdad by any measure, the White House plays the same tape we’ve heard for years:

Gates also said he was encouraged by security gains achieved in Anbar and Baghdad in the year since President Bush ordered an extra 30,000 U.S. troops to those areas of Iraq in what became known as a “surge.” Gates said it has created new promise for long-delayed political reconciliation.

“We clearly are hoping that the reconciliation and improvement in the political environment that has taken place at the local and provincial level over the past number of months will now meet further progress coming at the national level,” Gates told a Pentagon news conference.

They’ve been “hoping” since 2004. To coin a phrase, “hope isn’t a strategy.” Then again, as far as this White House is concerned, it’s more than just a strategy. It’s seemingly a religion.

Fortunately, the re-energized and defiant command of Petraeus and the Joint Chiefs has kept things dynamic and moving in the right direction. A large offensive against al-Qaeda’s residual strongholds began last week and, with some considerable muscle behind it, has made significant tactical gains. This is fortunate for a country that is enjoying better levels of stability by the day - an objective positive.

But this announcement of stability in Anbar underscores that. The transfer of power underscores the promise of the factors that have composed it. But at face value, it is a reminder that fortune is emphemeral:

Because at face value, it is a story of how the military brilliance that has borne us thus far despite the politicians will not and should not be around for much longer.

The machine won last night.

Hillary pulled off a two point victory over Obama in the nation’s first primary, New Hampshire. And the means by which she achieved this victory are what set me - and should set others, regardless of partisan stripe - so staunchly against the Clinton campaign:

First, she did so via ‘the machine’ - meaning the entrenched political bureaucracy of influence and money that the Clintons, with their long standing in the Democratic party, have in New Hampshire. One can’t blame them for being veteran, but it is grim to think about all the favors they are accruing in the process, and all the sheer nepotism that commands their base of support.

Second, she did so via manipulation - namely, “the crying game”. No, I’m not casting aspersions on Hillary’s womanhood, but rather pointing out that by bringing said womanhood into play with her “display of emotion” on Sunday. And perhaps it is a sad commentary on how jaded I’ve become when it comes to her, but I watched the video and simply do not believe it.

The premise is that she’s getting emotional. Alright, I can buy that premise; I get emotional when I see pictures of happy otters or listen to tragic sea shanties - I can only imagine that being short on sleep, low in the polls and close to your dream might choke someone up. But when I listened to what’s supposedly filling her throat with tears, she lost me.

What Hillary gets misty about in the video is, apparently, the sad state of our country, and the potential she could bring to it. Yet which part of the sad state of this country - so far as the legislature is concerned - wasn’t she complicit with the wrong side on? Was she getting upset about the PATRIOT Act she re-authorized? Or the Iraq War she authorized? The border fence she voted for?

So what initiative of this administration has she stood staunchly against? Most are social issues - things like DOMA, Unborn Victims of Violence and such. Is that what’s bringing her to tears? Because when people think of the black pall the Bush Administration has brought over the country, my guess is that what chokes them up are the very actions she helped facilitate.

Is it something more immaterial, then, that summoned the emotion to her heart? Many accuse Bush of having taken manipulative, venal politics to a new level. If that’s the ‘dark era’ we’re undergoing, can she sincerely believe she’s not part of that phenomena - an extension at best, a superior practitioner at worst? From Norman Hsu, to push polling, to threatening the media, to planting questioners in the audience over four times despite apologizing for doing it, to relentless negativity, to playing to the worst instincts of one’s base - how could she possibly be crying over the very tactics she’s employing?

So I don’t believe her supposed ‘display of emotion’. And I find it loathesome that it likely helped her win that two point victory.

“Loathesome” because of the third means by which she won New Hampshire - pernicious lies. The day before the primary, I received an e-mail that was identical to the one I’ve written about previously that originated from Clinton’s campaign staffer - the one about Barack Obama being a Muslim sleeper agent. What a coincidence.

I need not go into the details of the e-mail again: It was the same tripe about Obama being taught in a Wahabbist madrassa, refusing to face the flag and such nonsense. But most atrocious - and most indicative of Hillary’s outlook on politics - is that in the body text, the e-mail says, “I checked this out on snopes.com - it’s true!” Yet if someone so much as bothers looking on snopes, the e-mail is listed as incontrovertibly false. This is the breed of manipulation the Clinton campaign and its forerunner embodies - that they are so confident in people’s stupidity and laziness that they count on them not exercising the most basic diligence.

So far, as the two-point lead suggests, it’s working. If it is not stopped, then we will truly have something to cry about.

As New Hampshire geared up for the last phase in a brutal battle between the powers that be and the powers that would be, an upstart to our superpower’s influence in the Middle East stepped on the USA’s toes - Iranian speedboats zipping around our warships, practically with “suicide bomber cruise lines” painted on their hulls.

Small Iranian fast boats swarmed around U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, and a heavily accented voice threatened, “I am coming to you. … You will explode after … minutes,” according to a video released by the Pentagon on Tuesday.

The Iranian boats appeared to ignore repeated warnings from the U.S. ships, including horn blasts and radio transmissions.

Despite what those who want to slip off the safeties might think, this isn’t a prelude to an attack; it’s what we and the Soviets used to do to put each other in check on the Chess board of the Cold War - a tactic called “brinksmanship.”

Brinksmanship is basically a display of force with the intention of making the other guy look like he’s blinking or about to swing. It’s a game of chicken; a show of cool. And it’s the best thing Iran has going for it at this point, considering that in real terms it doesn’t even rate when measured against the might of the US - politically, economically or militarily.

It may be the only thing Iran’s political leadership - President Ahmadinajad - has going for him. Since being installed by the radical forces stirred up by America replacing Iran’s regional arch-enemy and next door neighbor, Iraq, Ahmadinajad has shown what kind of poker player he is: The one who keeps a straight face while going all in, time and again. It was all in on the nuclear deal, all in with the holding of British sailors, all in with his radical rhetoric. Bush and Cheney earned him big points by going all in against him on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, and lost with the world community when our NIE stated what the President was being told anyway. But it isn’t just that he’s emboldened by this victory that Ahmadinajad has been stabbing at our ships with speed boats, trying to stir up specters of World War III. It’s also that he’s weaker than ever before.

Iran’s President has lost more real ground from his policies than he’s gained from his brinksmanship. In Iraq, his infiltration of Iranian agents is suffering from regular crackdowns, loss of his control over the Shia militias and the evaporation of Shia-domination over the customary points of Iranian weapons entering Iraq, the police stations. And in Iran, his economic and political policies are judged disastrous - see my previous posts on that. This has led to Iran’s Ayatollahs distancing their support - not dispensing it - from Ahmadinajad.

Like the Cardinals of the Medieval Ages, Iran’s Ayatollahs are not so much the embodiment of theological fervor as they are the last word in political pragmatism - the “real power behind the throne”. They know that though he grabs headlines, Ahmadinajad has not helped but has hurt Iran.

In the past, when Mr. Ahmadinejad was attacked by his political opponents, criticisms were usually silenced by Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final word on state matters and regularly endorsed the president in public speeches. But that public support has been conspicuously absent in recent months.

There are numerous possible reasons for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s loss of support, but analysts here all point to one overriding factor: the United States National Intelligence Estimate last month, which said Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure. The intelligence estimate sharply reduced the threat of a military strike against Iran, allowing the Iranian authorities to focus on domestic issues, with important parliamentary elections looming in March.

“Now that Iran is not under the threat of a military attack, all contradictions within the establishment are surfacing,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economic and political analyst. “The biggest mistake that Americans have constantly made toward Iran was adopting radical approaches which provided the ground for radicals in the country to take control.”

Much like his counterpart in the US, President Ahmadinajad has tried to keep the focus on war and the threat thereof. Now that this is not working, he’s doing all he can to keep tension levels high. After all, it looks good when you’re the pint-size who throws mud in a giant’s eye and makes him blink. Fortunately for him - and unfortunately for Americans - the leadership in the White House is ready to build Iran up into a giant.

“It is a dangerous situation,” President Bush said in a White House news conference. “They should not have done it, pure and simple. . . . I don’t know what their thinking was, but I’m telling you what my thinking was. I think it was a provocative act…

“Iran was a threat. Iran is a threat. And Iran will continue to be a threat if they are allowed to learn how to enrich uranium,” he said.

Both sides want to look like the nemesis of the other. But it is important for analysts and average Americans alike to keep in mind that only /one/ side gains in stature from being cast in a staredown. The real threat of Iran at this point is that it distracts us from the more critical, more complex threats that it is our duty to tackle.

A call for change was sounded in Iowa last night, as the caucases came out strongly in favor of the two candidates who best embodied a shift from the status quo: Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. I hope that, in both cases, it is the first victory of many.

My opinion of Huckabee hasn’t changed since I doggedly tracked his debate progress - I think he’s a novice in most every regard in foreign affairs and has some downright regressive social views. That having been said, I find him appealing as a candidate - though not as a President, mind you - in the way he and Barack Obama most distinguish themselves from the flock:

The man seems honest.

Part of this is just his personability, I’m sure. We tend to impute trust on those we enjoy the company of, and Mike Huckabee is, if anything, amiable. But more significant in favor of his honesty is that he is dramatically different from the standard Republican position on a numbers of issues. Those of you in the GOP stroking your chins and contemplating the reality of a Huckabee Presidency, take heed.

Firstly, he’s best known for social programs. Most of his achievements in Arkansas come from his success in maintaining a decent budget while increasing - not decreasing - government services, particularly to the poor, to children and to the ill.

Secondly, he’s very in favor of diplomatic engagement abroad, and criticizes the Bush administration’s foreign policy, particularly its use of violence and refusal to talk to enemies. In the latter case, one can understand why, when you’re as charming as Huckabee.

All this amounts to a change from the current archetype of the GOP candidate typified as someone W. could pass the torch to: An aggressive, pro-Bush, anti-big government, pro-business, anti-social welfare candidate.

If all it took to qualify for President in 2008 was change, Huckabee would fit the bill. However, I’m convinced that many of his policies are wrong headed, I reject the fundamentals of his evangelical values and I think he’s a lightweight compared to the others on the trail.

Which brings us to my man for change - Barack Obama.

Whereas Huckabee had a very good night last night, Obama had a great one. We’ve yet to have people recognize how great.

His speech was phenomenal, and he proved he’s tapped in to the American desire for a new way - honesty balanced with idealism, realism with boldness, and the values of the past with the world of the future. In every sense, he distinguished himself, and though the papers are growling about how Clinton is hardly bruised, I’m confident that the blood’s in the water.

In a candidate that’s tough, on the mark and not afraid to go there, I’m confident America has been calling for a better way.