Grim news came out of Iraq two days ago, as the three-member presidency rejected the hard-fought Provincial Election legislation. It behooves me to state the obvious and note that they were expected to be rushing this law into passage last summer. More to the point, this law is why, ostensibly, we engaged in the Surge.

The presidency approved two laws concerning the 2008 federal budget and a general amnesty, but “the law to hold provincial elections has not been approved and has been sent back to the parliament,” the statement said.

The three bills formed a flagship package of legislation seen as crucial to reconciliation efforts but which had been held up for months amid sectarian feuding in parliament.

The other two bills are some marginal progress. The budget is, of course, necessary. As for the amnesty bill, it is largely aimed at mending the wounds caused by the war effort:

Iraqi MPs have said in the past that the amnesty bill would not apply to those sentenced to death or convicted of terrorism, premeditated murder, kidnapping, robbery with aggravating circumstances, incest, drug trafficking, forgery, rape, sodomy or the smuggling of antiquities.

It will also not apply to anyone formally charged with these crimes.

It would however apply to as many detainees as possible including those held for corruption and other financial crimes.

Around 24,000 detainees are held in two US prisons and thousands more in Iraqi-run detention centres. Most of them are Sunni Arabs.

The corruption and financial charges amnesty will be particularly helpful for the corruption-ridden federal government. It’s a small wonder that one got passed without too much trouble; only some six months overdue.

As for the provincial elections - the formal recognition of the predominant factor in our recent tactical successes in Iraq, the “Sunni uprising” - it remains to be seen. The other two bills were matters of the federal government covering their collective behinds. Giving political power and legitimacy to the ad hoc army of insurgents now fighting under America’s flag is more like cutting their own hamstrings.

All the same, given the political realities of Iraq - that the militias truly do have the power, and that the federal government really must improve the lot of the locals - it is a necessary surgery.

Tonight is the night of a Democratic Party debate that brings to mind that famous line, “Two men enter, one man leaves.” Of course, in this case, it is a matter of two formidable candidates, but make no mistake despite the gender difference: This is Thunderdome.

The fatal nature of the contest is not merely due to its date - a week before the Primaries in Texas and Ohio prove Hillary’s risky firewall strategy. It is also because, in order to marshall her base, stir up the drama of the moment and, most importantly, shred the majesty and hope her opponent inspires, Hillary has as much said she is throwing everything at Obama, kitchen sink included.

“Everything” entails hurling every sleazy insinuation, every rumor of misdeed, every accusation of falsehood, every joke and every rhetorical jab, in the hopes of tarnishing and bloodying him. I commented recently that Hillary had traded the Latino political organizer par excellance, Patti Sollis Doyle, for her hatchet woman - Maggie Williams - because she would not be basing the remainder of her campaign on grassroots organizing and groundwork, but on a relentless, lie-a-minute smear campaign. Hillary has been good enough to oblige my prediction.

She has tried sarcasm, belittling Obama’s message of hope and comity here and abroad.

She has tried sheer meaness, calling his flyers about her vocal support of NAFTA and her promise of inflicting a mandate in her Health Care plan “Rove tactics,” saying they misrepresent and lie.

And, true to form, she has tried racism and xenophobia. In anticipation of today’s debate, the Clinton camp began spreading a picture of Obama in a turban and tribal robes through its e-mail network - the same vehicle that had distributed the “Obama is a Muslim!” hoax.

Only this time, it didn’t end up with a crowd of hand-wringing white people who took it as gospel truth and fair warning of the opening salvo in a secret Islamofascist invasion. This time, Matt Drudge got ahold of it and, in a moment of typical rabble-rousing instinct, made sure it was the top headline on his Web page, the central nervous system of modern news. Hillary’s tactic went from silent sniggering behind Barack’s back to the front page of many a major newspaper today, accusing her of smearing.

Of course, she denied it. And she did so in the most perfidious manner - Ms. Maggie snarled at Obama for finding anything divisive in the first place about the photo being spread around, making it clear his campaign’s offense was what was truly offensive in her opinion. Then Hillary declared she didn’t know what the big deal was - she wears the clothes of other countries all the time, our little naif Hillary insisted - and chalked the whole hooplah up to Obama trying to distract from the issues. All this, of course, while never once denying that they distributed the picture.

On all of these points, Hillary has promised, she was going to take Obama to task tonight. She wants to have a debate to “talk about his tactics.” So, in anticipation of that debate, I thought we might go over hers.

First, the matter of the NAFTA and Health Care flyers. They don’t lie. It will be pretty hilarious to see Hillary try to prove otherwise tonight, because that will mean she will have to prove the following:

1. She did not talk up NAFTA during the early 00s, take partial credit for it in her autobiography and generally pass legislation that was in line with it. She did, and the flyer has quotes from her indicating this.

2. That the “mandate” part of her Health Care program will actually not mandate anything - it will not force you by penalizing you if you don’t comply, and it won’t garnish your wages if you can’t comply. It’ll not be a mandate at all, except that it will…except that it won’t. Or will.

Yes, Hillary is going to have to first disprove history - which, considering her history, one could see why she thinks it “unfair.” And then she will have to disprove logic and/or definition.

Next, she’s going to take him to task for inspiring people - including the media, who she criticizes for calling her out when she lies in personal attacks, but not chastizing him for telling the truth in the attacks he makes on her. I’m sure that will work famously. People always love to hear that they’re doomed, that they need to accept lies as a matter of course in politics, and that there’s no hope for changing the tone in Washington.

She’ll do this by comparing Obama to Bush, by way of noting that both were men inexperienced in direct foreign policy, and look what happened with Bush! Of course, Obama might readily point out that the only three significant acts of foreign policy Clinton has under her belt that Obama doesn’t, Clinton voted with Bush: The PATRIOT Act, the War on Terror authorization and the Iraq War. So whereas Obama theoretically has poor foreign policy experience - though, in theory, he’s excelled so far - Clinton has demonstrably proven herself to be the same as Bush.

Lastly, we can talk about his making some hay of the “dressed” picture, as Drudge called it. Obama himself said this:

“Everybody knows that whether it’s me or Senator Clinton, or Bill Clinton, that when you travel to other countries they ask you to try on traditional garb that you have been given as a gift,” he told WAOI, “The notion that the Clinton campaign would be trying to circulate this as a negative on the same day that Senator Clinton was giving a speech about how we repair our relationships around the world is sad. We are going to try to stay focused on what will make a difference in our foreign policy, including bringing the war in Iraq to an honorable end.”

Very sweet of him. David Plouffe, his campaign manager, was less gracious, sharing my sentiment when he called the distribution of the picture “shameful.” He also went on to note that it is part of a pattern by the Clinton team, one personified by the ghastly, fear-mongering lie that Obama is an American-hating terrorist.

It is a pattern. And, should Clinton continue to be a factor in modern politics, we would not see the end of the kind of tactics that are fueled by fear and doubt, thrive on our resentments and depend on our ignorance.

Fortunately, it is a pattern that leads here - to Ohio, where Clinton’s double-digit lead has shrunk to nearly smaller than the margin of poll error, and where tonight, two will enter, but only one will leave with momentum.

I am turning this article on its head. We begin with the end - with the ongoing news cycle initiated by Hillary Clinton to grind her opponent down to a level of pathetic cynicism, division and venom, in which she scoffs that one of Obama’s supporters could not name one accomplishment of the Senator’s on Hardball.

Well, I can name one. A big one. It will come at the end of the list after I name some of the others.

In the time it took you to shill for corporations, network with larcenous and treasonous scum, and overall ride your husband’s coat tails, Senator Clinton, your opponent has:

* Written two books

* Quit smoking

* Become the first African American to lead the Harvard Law Review

* Be elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 - four whole years before you were elected to anything.

* Gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws, sponsored a law enhancing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare, and led the passage of legislation mandating videotaping of homicide interrogations, and a law to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they stopped.

* Worked as a community organizer during most of the 80s and 90s.

* Co-sponsored the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act.

* Wrote eloquently why you and others should not go into Iraq - after seeing the much-storied “same intelligence” as everyone else - only to be ignored by you.

* Fathered two children who seem happy and healthy enough.

* Tried to do something about giving relief to the Congo - about the most critical effort one could undertake in sub-Saharan Africa today.

* Travelled the world on fact-finding missions and in order to support the spread of Democracy.

* Expanded the Nunn-Lugar reduction of conventional arms act, limiting the spread of things like land mines the world over.

* Pioneered legislation to bring more transparency into political donations.

* Surpassed your Wikipedia entry for accomplishments - disasters like Whitewater and Hillarycare not counted - by a good nine inches.

* And absolutely, hands down, straight up whupped you last night in your supposed “fail safe” state of Wisconsin.

How’s that for one accomplishment?

In what is for a dogged Albanian majority a day of freedom, and for the rest of the world is a day to celebrate the notorious Balkans settling the Hell down, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia and was recognized.

This has been a raw knuckled process since the starting line - Kosovo’s first chirp for autonomy back in early 90s when Yugoslavia collapsed - this last year’s flat rejection of the call for independence by Serbia and Russia showed how fragile it was. When the Russian Bear put down its paw to say the Kosovars and UN would have to go back to the drawing board on the independence process in 2007, it looked like it would be years before the drafting of ways to placate Serbia while partitioning Kosovo as an autonomous entity could trudge back to the step it had been at - likely only to be slapped away by Russia again.

Now, taking a page from Israel’s playbook, Kosovo simply declared its existence and dared the world to take sides - a risky move considering that, unlike Israel, Kosovo’s chief opposition is an ascending superpower getting its old chauvanism back in spades, Putin’s Russia. But sides were taken, and with the exception of Spain and a few more less influential hold outs, the United States and the EU joined in their recognition of the nascent Republic of Kosovo.

Kosovo’s parliament has unanimously endorsed a declaration of independence from Serbia, in a historic session.
Celebrations went on into the night after Prime Minister Hashim Thaci promised a democracy that respected the rights of all ethnic communities.

Serbia’s PM denounced the US for helping create a “false state”.

A split later emerged at the Security Council, when Russia said there was no basis for changing a 1999 resolution which handed Kosovo to the UN.

Seven Western countries said it was quite clear the situation had moved on.

I support this move for a variety of reasons. One, as the sweeping Western support, demographics of Kosovo and economic realities indicate, it was about damn time. Kosovo is 92% Albanian, which under Serbia’s nationalistic system means about 92% second class citizens. Granted, this number was reached by a smidge of ethnic cleansing, up from about 89%. Kosovo’s freedom fighters were pals with al-Qaeda; they are hardly choir boys - staunch, nationalistic killers. However, given a massacre-rife history of Serbian oppression that extends into the Bush II presidency and a massive Albanian population, they are also right in demanding independence.

Secondly, I like tossing mud in the Bear’s eye and watching it stick. All pretense that Russia was going to be a liberal capitalism long ago went down the tubes with Boris Yeltsin’s regurgitated breakfast of vodka, and Putin is using Russia’s possibly-unparalleled oil wealth to shove other great powers around. A choice playing piece in his political game board was Kosovo, which he always liked to make noise about subjugating or marginalizing whenever we brought up nuclear disarmament or his shady petro-chemical dealings. Upping the ante like this when Russia is weaker than it will be the next time it could have rejected talks over Kosovo independence was wise. It will not shut Putin up - or the Serbs; there are already bombs being thrown by Serbian nationalists - but it will expedite the settling of this issue before Russia gets truly mighty and belligerent.

At the end of the day, Kosovo’s independence was not a clean process. It is not a resolved issue. But it is a cause to celebrate the freedom of a people from centuries of domination and the hope for the future that made it possible.

Bill Clinton belled the latest trope of the Clinton mob today when he claimed his opponent - I mean his wife’s opponent - was all about speeches, not substance. Followers of my blog will join me in an ironic chuckle as dry as one of 007’s martinis - for the better part of last year, I was snarling about Obama having put out specific, substantial policies while Hillary skated by on Bush-bash acid.

So I thought I would put out a special holiday issue of the ol’ Web log today by covering the major points of Obama’s projected policies. I will spare Clinton the same lens, but will, before I recount Barack’s ideas, note that many of hers - such as her Foreign Affairs essay - continue to sound substantial, being stuffed to the gills with factoid-based bitching, but actually express little in the way of a plan.

First, Obama’s foreign policy. There is no better account of it than his Foreign Affairs essay. It was published July of last year, nearly six months in advance of Hillary, and it reads like a love letter to me. Truly, this was when his candidacy became my Valentine. Here’s a highlight:

Although vigorous action in South Asia and Central Asia should be a starting point, our efforts must be broader. There must be no safe haven for those who plot to kill Americans. To defeat al Qaeda, I will build a twenty-first-century military and twenty-first-century partnerships as strong as the anticommunist alliance that won the Cold War to stay on the offense everywhere from Djibouti to Kandahar.

Here at home, we must strengthen our homeland security and protect the critical infrastructure on which the entire world depends. We can start by spending homeland security dollars on the basis of risk. This means investing more resources to defend mass transit, closing the gaps in our aviation security by screening all cargo on passenger airliners and checking all passengers against a comprehensive watch list, and upgrading port security by ensuring that cargo is screened for radiation.

To succeed, our homeland security and counterterrorism actions must be linked to an intelligence community that deals effectively with the threats we face. Today, we rely largely on the same institutions and practices that were in place before 9/11. We need to revisit intelligence reform, going beyond rearranging boxes on an organizational chart. To keep pace with highly adaptable enemies, we need technologies and practices that enable us to efficiently collect and share information within and across our intelligence agencies. We must invest still more in human intelligence and deploy additional trained operatives and diplomats with specialized knowledge of local cultures and languages. And we should institutionalize the practice of developing competitive assessments of critical threats and strengthen our methodologies of analysis.

Finally, we need a comprehensive strategy to defeat global terrorists — one that draws on the full range of American power, not just our military might. As a senior U.S. military commander put it, when people have dignity and opportunity, “the chance of extremism being welcomed greatly, if not completely, diminishes.” It is for this reason that we need to invest with our allies in strengthening weak states and helping to rebuild failed ones.

Plans! Actual plans! Yes, and these are not the first in the essay - this section comes after talking about how we should adjust our military, how we need to be deployed in Iraq and how we will abridge the flow of nuclear proliferation, all with actual numbers.

As for domestic policy, we have two main realms in which he is distinct from his rival - economics and civil rights. There is also his proposed college credit for those who volunteer for community service that he plugs in every speech these days, but given that that’s not an unknown, we’ll pass over.

On civil rights, he is staunchly socially progressive in a libertarian way that could draw in the John Warner and Ron Paul set. This is evidenced by his statements in the LGBT Debate on Logo TV, well-analyzed by the Iowa Independent:

…What’s more, Obama’s positioning on the matter of gay coupling is the most astute of the Democratic candidates. It’s something of a libertarian view: disentangle the religious elements of the relationship (marriage) from the legal rights (civil unions). The state should ensure that same-sex couples have the health care and job and discrimination and legal status and protection that heterosexuals do.

The question of marriage, says Obama, should be left to the churches. The Baptists and Catholics can say no to gay weddings, whereas the Unitarian Universalists will arrange the flowers. And so on.

Obama’s strongest claim to support from the LGBT community is the fact that he raises its issues in key events. In his star-making 2004 Democratic National Conventional keynote address, Obama talked about red-staters having gay friends. Similarly, he talked about gay rights that cold day in Springfield, Ill., in February when he announced his run for the presidency.

“I don’t just talk about these issues where it’s convenient,” Obama said.

As I noted before, Hillary says we should let states decide - the very thing that has led to the Amendment of 28 State Constitutions to define marriage as only a union between a man and a woman.

Obama’s economic plans focus on starting up America as a leader in energy management economy and pouring money into infrastructural works. The most recent incarnation of the latter can be found in this day’s issue of the Washington Post.

The newest element of his proposal was the establishment of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, which would spend $60 billion over a decade to rebuild deteriorating roads, bridges and waterways. Obama said the spending would generate 2 million new jobs, many of them in a construction industry that has been hard hit by the housing market downturn.

Some state and local governments have established separate infrastructure accounts that are not subject to balanced-budget rules as a way to finance long-range building projects. Lawmakers in Congress from both parties have flirted with the idea of a federal infrastructure account, but have backed off for fear of being accused of budgetary gimmickry designed to mask an expansion of government — and of the federal budget deficit.

Obama took a page from the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), promising to fund his spending by ending tax breaks that he says encourage companies to invest overseas.

Many economists and some business officials agree that companies are reaping tax benefits from overseas expansion. Before Kerry offered his proposal in 2004, Citigroup executives told industry analysts the banking firm had lowered its effective tax rate from 31.3 percent to 30.6 percent, boosting quarterly income by $52 million, by putting more money into overseas operations.

The shift could provide more money for job creation at home, as Obama suggests, but few would say that taxes are a primary — or even a significant — factor in the movement of certain kinds of outsourcing. For instance, even sweet tax incentives cannot stop some companies from seeking vast savings abroad.

That about sums it up. Obama has a hard sell on the economy if you’re a fan of trickle-down, but the article and his Web site gives you real numbers to crunch, for good or ill. He wears his civil rights agenda on his sleeve - solutions and sentiments alike. And his foreign policy is not a mystery - it was first out the gate, with a plan.

There’s my Valentine’s gift to you, and riposte to Bill.

Barack Obama dominated the Democratic Primaries held last night, further intensifying the building momentum his campaign is enjoying. His victories over Clinton were phenomenal, especially in the state she had hammered in hopes of making into her redoubt, the Commonwealth of Virginia, where her lead of recent days turned into a triumphant 27-point margin for Obama at the polls. As I mentioned in a prior post, now is the time that his own myth of an invincible challenger will build to his benefit until the climactic clashes in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania next month.

The Associated Press count of delegates showed Obama with 1,223. Clinton had 1,198, falling behind for the first time since the campaign began. Neither was close to the 2,025 needed to win the nomination.

His victories Tuesday were by overwhelming margins — 75 percent of the vote in the nation’s capital, nearly two-thirds in Virginia and approximately 60 percent in Maryland.

While the numbers are impressive, it’s their impact on future voters that truly counts. Right now, Obama’s luster and message allowed him to dazzle the Potomac voting population to a degree that forced Clinton’s core demographics to wane for her and wax for the Illinois Senator. And that is the true victory of last night - along with the notches on his belt that’ll make those of the Change Generation feel like they’re backing a winner, Obama carved into voting blocs Hillary had claimed as impermeably hers, claiming them for his own.

Obama edged Clinton for the white vote in Virginia, 52 percent to 47 percent, his first victory with that group in a Southern state, while she carried whites by only 10 percentage points in Maryland, according to exit poll data. It was a blow to the New York senator who long has held a clear advantage with that group. In overall Democratic presidential contests until now, Clinton has usually used solid white majorities to offset Obama’s huge margins with blacks. …

Clinton usually has run up margins of 20 points or more over Obama with white women in presidential contests. Overall, the two previously had split white males evenly, according to data from exit polls in 19 states that have held competitive Democratic primaries.

In another successful raid on Clinton’s most pivotal supporters, Obama got 60 percent of women overall in Virginia, as well as 68 percent of men, the exit polls showed. His margins were only slightly weaker in Maryland. In previous Democratic presidential primaries, Clinton - bidding to become the first female president - has routinely carried a steady majority of women while Obama has enjoyed support from clear but slimmer majorities of males.

He also led her by 10 points among Virginian Latinos. This was a formidable improvement for Obama’s campaign and a critical loss for Clinton. Should she lose command of the Latino vote in Texas - a state she only led by 10% a week before Super Tuesday, before the storied Obamamentum - it will lead to a rueful loss there.

Her campaign is certainly focusing its efforts there and on Ohio, but some blunders may prove costly. Latino leaders have expressed concern over the departure of Patti Solis Doyle from the top slot, a move that is increasingly looking like a dismissal rather than a tidy resignation. Numerous Latino leaders in Texas back Obama, especially in border towns. The groundwork for another uprising in his favor seems more likely than a firm foundation on Clinton’s behalf that will break his rising tide.

This much is certain: The next two weeks will be a tense time. It remains for Barack to keep on message, keep his energy high and to make earnest overtures to the Latino community, extending his message to them. For Hillary, she must not fall into the lure of trying to play the comeback kid - that is a bitter mixture with her message of experience and establishment, and will truly make her look second place. All those factors will culminate in a vicious row of a weekend right before High Noon Tuesday

Clinton puts her campaign under the management of a woman with no campaign management experience and a long track record of dirty deeds. We can expect lies and scum to soon characterize the war for the DNC’s top slot. A bit less predictable is the evolution of the conflict in Iraq, where Petraeus’ phenomenal efforts to turn the Iraqi insurgents’ weapons from aiming at us to aiming at al-Qaeda are paying bigger dividends by the day.

Captured documents from November detail a depressed al-Qaeda province commander moaning about the situation in Anbar province. Considering the look of the battle since then, we don’t have to cross our fingers too tightly that their declarations of doom for Islamofascism in Iraq were merely fabrications of our own counterintelligence services.

The Anbar letter conceded that the “crusaders” — Americans — had gained the upper hand by persuading ordinary Sunnis that al-Qaeda was responsible for their suffering and by exploiting their poverty to entice them into the security forces. Al-Qaeda’s “Islamic State of Iraq is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar”, the unnamed emir admitted.

In an apparent reference to al-Qaeda’s brutal tactics, he said of the Americans and their Sunni allies: “We helped them to unite against us . . . The Americans and the apostates launched their campaigns against us and we found ourselves in a circle not being able to move, organise or conduct our operations.”

He said of the loss of Anbar province: “This created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight. The morale of the fighters went down . . . There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.” The emir complained that the supply of foreign fighters had dwindled and that they found it increasingly hard to operate inside Iraq because they could not blend in. Foreign suicide bombers determined to kill “not less than 20 or 30 infidels” grew disillusioned because they were kept hanging about and only given small operations. Some gave up and went home.

The moaning emir’s remarks were certainly borne out. Significant tactical gains have been accomplished in Iraq, with al-Qaeda’s influence effectively localized and marginalized. Yet only just last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wore no gloves when she declared the surge a “failure”.

Has she simply been ignoring these gains? Well, no. And, for that matter, she makes a crucial point:

The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.”

Pelosi is correct. The troops did succeed. And yet, as many Americans need to realize, success of the troops does not mean victory in a war. And while I do think it is without nuance to say that the Surge was a “failure,” I think it would be foolhardy to announce it a success.

This is because the purpose of the Surge was to establish a lasting foundation of peace among Iraq’s governing bodies. What it did instead is marginalize them. We no longer have headlines full of Maliki corruption stories and legislative stalling because they are taken for granted. Rather than increase the Baghdad government’s power, Petraeus’ actions in the Surge vastly increased the power of Sunni and Shiite militias - the cost of turning them to our side and getting them to attack al-Qaeda. In that sense, Petraeus used the Surge to do exactly the opposite of what Bush declared it would do - give a time of security for Baghdad to formalize and establish its political power.

In the process, Petraeus has crafted a more stable, functional Iraq. However, simply looking at the means by which he achieved it reveals how intrinsically fragile such a method of peace is. The al-Qaeda letters describe it well:

“We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers,” he says. “Those people were nothing but hypocrites, liars and traitors and were waiting for the right moment to switch sides with whoever pays them most.”

We must bear that in mind. Backroom negotiations brought the very same people who were killing us - al-Sadr’s militias and the Sunni insurgency - onto our side, but by definition that means their loyalties are, shall we say, fluid.

The bad war is going good for now, but we best remember that it’s not for lack of bad guys in it.

Over the weekend, Hillary Clinton campaign manager Patti Sollis Doyle stepped down and was replaced by one Maggie Williams, Hillary former Chief of Staff during her White House tenure. The implications of this shift in leadership surpass the hints of instability in the campaign a cosmetic analysis suggests. It is a sign of Hillary girding for a trench war.

This becomes evident when Williams’ character and qualifications are examined. Unlike Sollis Doyle, a lifelong political operative whose canny work enabled Hillary to hold tight to the crucial and Obama-trending bastion of California on that crucial Tuesday, Williams is no campaign strategist, PR guru or marketing manager.

She has never run a political campaign at any level.

So what is Williams? She’s a plumber.

Though her curriculum vitae prior to the White House suggests her efforts were directly applied to the machinery of social justice, her role under Clinton was famously to clean up messes. She first came on the scene when she took documents from Vince Foster’s office following his suicide, then refused to divulge what. After that round of depositional dodging, she again showed up to shadow box with questions regarding massive illegal payments to Clinton from shady Chinese financier Johnny Chung. Since then, she has faded into the background, just behind Hillary’s strong right hand.

So, when evaluating what kind of fight Hillary is going to wage, we best look at the weapon she’s lifting. Numerous engineers of the mighty Clinton political machine could have been brought forth to replace Sollis Doyle if Hillary’s future strategy called for garnering endorsements, pulling strings with local party structures and grass roots organizing. But Hillary has not put an organizer in charge of her campaign, or a glad hander or networker. She put her major domo in charge - a woman peripheral to actual political process, but central to the record of covert deeds and open lies.

And when you slip on your brass knuckles, it’s not a sign of a fair fight ahead.

This was a particularly bloody week, politically and literally. The survey of it reveals a sweep of vicious Primary contests and paroxysms of violence, interspersed with a high pitch of absurdity - such as the man arrested for performing a home circumsicion and controversy over a cross-dressing third grader. By and large, this was a rather ugly week.

As for the political contests, I’ve covered them adequately in my past posts of this week. To summarize, Obama had a great night on Tuesday - though not a coup de grace - and has since surged forward. Hillary loaned herself money, perhaps as a ploy to raise money - all we really know is that she lied about being so strapped for cash that some of her campaign volunteered to go without pay.

Now the Primary attention for the Democrats shifts its focus from Super Tuesday to Sidekick Saturday-Sunday, when five states will be holding their elections or caucases. As for the GOP, Romney exited the scene with a whimper hanging his star on 2012, and all bangs heard were the jeers hurled in McCain’s direction at the mighty Conservative Political Action Conference.

Meanwhile, the wires were buzzing with news of Clinton profligacy and puling. Bill bemoaned his sorry station as a spouse who cannot defend his wife. He claimed that he had been misrepresented by the media for “factually accurate” statements, conveniently cherry-picking the incidents when his statements came anything close to factual accuracy.

On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Clinton called Obama’s celebrated opposition to the Iraq war “a fairy tale,” suggesting that while Obama had spoken out against the war in 2002 while he was an Illinois state senator, Obama had moderated his anti-war stance during his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.

Later, campaigning for his wife in South Carolina, Clinton suggested an Obama victory there would be a racial one, like the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s twenty years ago.

To our former President’s credit, he is in part right - a lot of hay was made by slanting his statements in the most offensive air possible. And yet, one cannot fail to realize that he made those very statements in order to be as offensive as possible to Obama. To compare his rival’s success to Jesse Jackson’s ill-fated and marginalized campaign was hardly an objective statement. To characterize Obama’s statements in 2004 about the war as grounds to call his opposition to Iraq “a fairy tale” is mendacious and mean. And citing those two incidents alone sets aside the absolutely inaccurate statements he made regarding the Nevada lawsuit to ban caucus cites that were predicted to be unfavorable to the Clintons and Obama’s statements regarding the worth of Ronald Reagan.

No boohooing, Bill - not when you’re the bully getting punched in the nose here.

As for Clinton spending, we now have another story akin to that of them stiffing the waitress in Iowa and tooling around in great, gaudy caravans of SUVs: Apparently they shafted some rental proprietor of his due funds and left the place in much the state they did the White House.

Rochester physician Terry Bennett said he rented a city building to people who worked for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — and skipped town without paying the bill.

Making matters worse, Bennett said, the 3,000-square-foot building at 236 Union St. was left trashed. Campaign signs were left lying all over the place, he said.

This is clearly an “oops, my bad” situation, but it seems indicative of the lack of care the supposedly super-organized Clinton campaign exercise over their personnel. A similar instance can be found on YouTube, where Hillary posted a video called “The Conversation Continues,” turned off the ability for users to make text comments, and ignored people telling her that the sound is wonky. If this is “experience,” I think I’ll go for vision.

The vision of the Democratic Party as a whole seems to be in question, as the Primary process has exposed some serious flaws in its organization. First off would be the poor way that the DNC handled the moves by the Michigan and Florida state parties to hold early contests - denying the delegates a vote at the convention, then mumbling into their sleeves about possibly allowing the delegates after Hillary won unopposed elections in those states. That is assinine enough to get the eyes rolling. On top of that, Howard Dean said this week that he wants to resolve the entire Primary matter with some sort of backroom sit down with the candidates. Can we get more elitist and shady?

The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario. So, after the primaries are over, the last primary is June 8th in Puerto Rico, there may be another state with there, and after that if we don’t have a nominee, I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April. But if we don’t, then we’re going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement. Because I don’t think we can afford to have a brokered convention — that would not be good news for either party.”

This idea sounds like something out of a novel Ann Coulter would write. Someone in a high place better inform the Screamer that what would really be “not good news” for the Democratic Party would be to make it seem like their candidate is being chosen in the board room and not the ballot box.

And personally, I feel a brokered convention could be fun - it would clear the Party palate, so to speak, like in ‘68.

A more morbid breed of insanity was apparent throughout this week as well. On the very day I reported on the deranged events surrounding the Super Bowl Massacre that didn’t happen, there were a number of shootings. First was a lunatic who killed his family and fought off SWAT officers in Los Angeles. Then came an attack on a Missouri City Council by a moron with assault weaponry. And now, just this morning, some woman gunned down some Lousiana college students and herself in the latest installment in what’s becoming a seasonal school shooting schedule.

So it was that random violence and reckless Primaries reigned this week in review.

In news that truly matters to the world, Obama raised more money from individual donors in a single day than Hillary donated to herself. That’s huge. And now for Drunkenstein’s.

Drunkenstein’s is one of the proposed names of a Halloween-themed bar that was the aborted dream of misunderstood genius, Kurt Havelock, who nearly unleashed his rage over its natal demise in the form of a machinegun-powered massacre at the Super Bowl. At the last minute, Havelock halted himself, sparing us a tragic bloodbath at that most hallowed of American sporting events. He did not, however, halt himself from mailing his “manifesto” to family and media, which is how we know how close we came to suffering the revenge of Drunkenstein’s.

“I will test the theory that bullets speak louder than words … I will slay your children. I will shed the blood of the innocent,” Havelock wrote. “No one destroys my dream. No one …

“Alas, this all boils down to an econopolitical confrontation. I cannot outvote, outspend, outtax, or outincarcerate my enemies,” Havelock wrote in the manifesto. “But for a brief moment I can outgun them.”

I call attention to this incident not only give us a break from the flailing, arduous tension of the Primary process with a morbid aside. There is also a dark brilliance to the whole story, and an oddity that makes it worthy of an art film. The idea of a Halloween-themed bar strikes me, an avid horror fan, as a novel and exciting idea. That Havelock would then invest notions of socio-economic macro-analysis in his goofy bar’s rejection by the Tempe City Council - casting it as epic, revolutionary drama - is even more strange and exciting. And that his solution was a Herostratic orgy of violence, a ruination of worlds for the sake of his Halloween dreamworld denied, is no less than remarkable.

A lot of interesting things happened today - Romney left the race, mass arrests of Mafia members swept the USA - but nothing quite so unusual as the story of Kurt M. Havelock, and the Haunted Castle Super Bowl Massacre that wasn’t.

Sometimes we, as analysts and philosophers and simple people, must clear our heads with a long sniff of the roses along our paths.

And sometimes, we must stop and see the sobbing man by the roadside, sitting on a dot-matrix printed manifesto, with a jack o’ lantern filled with booze in one hand and an AR-15 in the other.

______________________________________________

P.S. I think “Drunkenstein’s” is the best name for bar I’ve ever heard.

Super Tuesday was a remarkable victory for Barack Obama, one that reminds us that, while we are in a war in this Primary contest, it is one we are likely to win.

It was not a Waterloo - not an ultimate battle - but it was the proverbial beginning of the end. In all aspects where Obama had to prove himself supreme to continue on his path to total victory, he did. The only thing Hillary Clinton won last night was survival to endure another drubbing.

When we apply forensics to the factors in the battle, this becomes clear:

Obama won more states than Hillary - 14 to 8. For the sake of the casual viewer of the contest, this says much. The considerable proportion of the American viewing public that gets its national news in fifteen seconds will understand this more than the alchemy of superdelegates and brokered conventions.

Obama won more delegates than Hillary. This calculation is reached when you remove the contentious and inapplicable delegate counts of Florida and Michigan, which by all rights the DNC has and should.

With the delegate count still under way, NBC News said Obama appears to have won around 840 delegates in yesterday’s contests, while Clinton earned about 830 — “give or take a few,” Tim Russert, the network’s Washington bureau chief, said on the “Today” show.

Obama has the momentum. From being over 12 points behind her nationally, to being neck and neck in some counts and surpassing in others, Obama has been charging ahead to seize what Clinton now must defend. Momentum begets momentum, and clearly, the nation is just now beginning to get a look at Obama, and is liking what they see. The larger a presence absentee voting had in a Super Tuesday state won by Clinton last night, the larger the Clinton lead in it, suggesting polls gain in his favor since those votes were two weeks ago - before Obama truly swept onto the scene. She remains dominant in some demographic sectors, but that is just it - she is remaining, whereas he is gaining.

Obama, an Illinois senator, was getting support from more than four in 10 women and about the same number of whites, leaving him just a few percentage points behind Clinton. That was a narrower deficit than he has faced in most states that have held nominating contests so far, with part of his strength coming from people under age 44, whom he was dominating.

Obama is proven to be national. In every sector of the country at play, he penetrated and made gains, with the exception of the southwest. Nevertheless, even in the southwest, his results were between 10 and 20 points higher than what they were expected to be over a week ago. Critically, the bellweather state of Missouri went for Obama in a photo finish, suggesting the character and outcome of this national contest.

When two armies disengage and regroup after a rough battle, both sides are usually smarting, but a critical indicator of a battle’s bearing on the war is what terrain it has opened up ahead. And a study of the course ahead shows that last night’s outcome serves Obama’s favor far greater than Clinton.

For what lies ahead is a course best suited to Obama. Of the next three major contests, this Saturday, three are caucases - Maine, Washington, Nebraska - and the other two are the Virgin Islands and Louisiana, favored for Obama on both counts. Then comes what looks as if to be the Day of Joy for Obama supporters - the contests in Maryland and Washington, DC. A week later is Hawaii; another Obama bastion. What this amounts to is a three-week stretch of - predictably - Obama victories. If momentum wasn’t building after his leap up the national polls, it certainly will be then.

So no, it was not Waterloo. It was the Kursk. Hillary Clinton, like the German hordes in Kursk, arrived expecting a victory on the attack and instead only got a bloody beating, winning the ground that they had to, only to found themselves surrounded everywhere else by a building counter-offensive tide. And like at Kursk, with systemic factors in the contests over the month ahead favoring Obama, Hillary does not have a strong position to fall back to.

Last night was our breakout. As an extremely succinct and convincing analysis of the race on politico.com describes:

Money chases momentum, so Obama crushing’s 2-to-1 fundraising victory last month is revealing.

He raised more than $31 million; Clinton raised less than $14 million. The implication is hard to ignore: Democratic activists and donors are flocking to Obama at a pace that could have a profound effect on the race going forward.

This will not be reversed, and so cannot be stopped. There is little doubt that ahead will be a vicious brawl, even with a surge in delegate gains - Hillary will likely dump all pretenses of niceness that she tried on since South Carolina proved attack dogs alone will not win the day. The claws will surely come out. And Obama himself has the tough task of convincing he is a more substantial candidate than his rival’s surname suggests she is to a public that, by and large, barely listens.

They will have to be made to hear. I believe he can do it. And making it happen begins here, spreading the news of another major battle won.

As a cropduster above Griffith Park wrote in the sky, today is Ob-Day.

We can do this, and we will. Already the challenges against us have presented themselves in their formidable multitudes - reports of voter disenfranchisement due to confusing ballots and even more confused poll workers have swarmed Southern California, along with inexplicable delays of voting machines to certain key neighborhoods in Los Angeles, bastion of Clinton supporter, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

But we can do this, and we will. We can, because with every obstacle that I have heard of today, I have heard of two ways in which determined supporters of Obama have overcome it. I have received dozens of e-mails written in the most inspired, most revived voices across the political spectrum. I have experienced the palpable excitement of co-workers and family as they eagerly await their chance to cast a vote for change and hope.

I have, in short, witnessed precisely the change Barack Obama embodies and evokes.

So, yes, we can - can and will - make this day, and the future, ours.

Barack Obama broke Clinton’s lead in the key state of California over the weekend and, shock of all shocks, Clinton “found her voice” and wept publicly again today.

Continuing to soar after rising 11 points in the Gallup national poll, Obama has bounded ahead of Clinton on the crucial California battleground.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama opened narrow leads on Hillary Clinton in California and Missouri one day before crucial “Super Tuesday” nominating contests in 24 states, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Monday.

Obama and Clinton were deadlocked in New Jersey, and Obama enjoyed a double-digit advantage over Clinton in Georgia in two other Democratic contests on the biggest single day of voting ever in a U.S. presidential nominating campaign.

“The momentum is with Obama,” said pollster John Zogby. “If this trend continues it could be a very big night for him.”

Obama also won critical endorsement from La Opinion, a Spanish-language newspaper ubiquitous in California and significant throughout the nation, and has tremendous momentum in the Golden State and an endorsement by Maria Shriver, the wife of the governor.

Clinton’s reaction to this kind of momentum - the likes of which harkens to his post-Iowa victory charge - was, funny thing, identical to what she did the day before New Hampshire. Clinton cried.

Penn Rhodeen, who was introducing Clinton, began to choke up, leading Clinton’s eyes to fill with tears, which she wiped out of her left eye…

“Well, I said I would not tear up; already we’re not exactly on the path,” Clinton said with emotion after the introduction.

When Clinton got misty-eyed at an event in New Hampshire on Jan. 7, politicos and pundits filled hours discussing if it helped her, and Clinton eventually pointed to the moment as when she “found her voice” and turned the corner in the Granite State. [Ed. Note: Emphasis mine]

At the time, there was much debate if the candidate’s emotional response to a question — “How do you do it?”" — was genuine or calculated.

Some might say that it’s just coincidence that she did it, as before, on the day before crucial elections where she is behind in the polls take place. Others might say that the American public, canny vigilant always on the look out for such emotional manipulations, would consider it contrived and be put off by it.

I think that is giving the viewing public far too much credit. I think that is regarding the science of politics as more complex than it truly is in this emotive, sensationalist, media saturated age. I think that in politics, as in war, if something works the first time, you do it again - only when your enemy is considered wise enough to adjust do you refrain from doing that, and in this instance, the enemy is the fast-food-news-culture of the American voting public.

I think Hillary might have been more candid in saying, “Well, I said I would not tear up, even though doing it the first time won me an election that basically saved my ass and I badly need a lifeline like that again; already we’re not exactly on the path.”

I hope she is right - I hope we are not on “the path” where such cheap tricks work, and that the numbers of excited, positive voters that we see swarming the forums of political voice, from La Opinion to UCLA, the Garment Workers to the Kennedys, drown out such maudlin, trite tactics. I hope we consign such politics where we even given need to question a candidate’s tears to the past. I hope the trends I see prove true, not the tricks.

Only the future - tomorrow, and the long road to the Convention - will tell.

This week was most remarkable in that it culminated with Obama gaining eleven points in the national Gallup polls, which speaks well for the intelligence of the nation. If it truly is due to the wisdom of the electorate, this trend will continue, with factors like last night’s widely watched Democratic debate serving as significant assets to Obama’s ascent.

Yet the news today was news of the dumb: In some ways in an amusing sense, some an annoying, and in some a truly tragic, awful sense.

The laughably moronic item floating around today comes from across the pond. Apparently some knucklehead in marketing though it would be a good idea to call a bed for pre-teen girls, “The Lolita“. Working in marketing as I do, I can assure you this story is not nearly so far-fetched as it sounds. The article on it puts it best:

A chain of retail stores in Britain has withdrawn the sale of beds named Lolita and designed for six-year-old girls after furious parents pointed out that the name was synonymous with sexually active pre-teens.

Woolworths said staff who administer the web site selling the beds were not aware of the connection.

I would reckon that they were not. Or, more likely, simply did not listen to the people who repeatedly told them about it.

Next on the WWW agenda is a piece that falls under a “cardinal stupidty” - the kind endemic in government, that reminds us about the similarities between sausage and legislation. Legislators in Mississippi of all places, in what was more likely a joke or a jab at the earnest concerns about obesity, fashioned a bill to ban certain obese individuals from being served by restaurants. Naturally, this dog did not hunt in the land where even lard must have butter on it.

The bill, which is likely dead on arrival, proposes that the state’s Department of Health establish weight criteria after consultation with Mississippi’s Council on Obesity. It does not detail what penalties an eatery would face if its grub was served to someone with an excessive body mass index.

Whether that was just a dumb joke or a joke about the dumb will likely never be known outside of the Jackson Kiwanis Club. But in our next article, the joke is most definitely on us.

There may be talk of our credit bubble economy being close to popping, with energy crises slowing production world wide, but that hasn’t dampened the spirits of the good people at EXXON Mobil, who posted record profits. Now, just to be clear, I am not opposed to oil companies posting record profits - even at the expense of the tax payer, or the wealth of human misery that comes from regional instability. I am, however, opposed to them posting records profits at the expense of the tax payer [i]and[/i] from regional instability [i]and[/i] while our heavy industry and construction groans on the brink of collapse.

The eye-popping results weren’t a surprise given record prices for a barrel of oil at the end of 2007. For much of the fourth quarter, they hovered around $90 a barrel, more than 50 percent higher than a year ago.

Crude prices reached an all-time trading high of $100.09 on Jan. 3 but have fallen about 10 percent since then.

So as I put in $3.19 a gallon to fill my tank, I want to at least be put at ease by being able to look at the big picture - and I do not mean the swelling backsides and bank accounts of the oil companies. The only consolation I can take from that is, “at least Russia isn’t the one sucking it down.” But, of course, increasingly, they are.

The last news relating to the stupid is so ghastly that simply calling the unfortunates involved ’stupid’ is distasteful and saddening. It shows the lengths that the al-Qaeda elements in Iraq must go to and will go to in order to keep America’s veins open in the region. It’s probably the most vile news I’ve read all week, and I read the Drudge Report daily; this is saying something.

It involves the worst suicide bombing in Iraq in a long time - one that blew up, of all places, a location called “the pet market,” which did, among other wares, have pets, and which was perpetrated by mentally disabled bombers. According to Iraqi security sources, the two women - who were the instruments of sequential attacks - suffered from Down’s Syndrome.

Other officials said the women were apparently unaware of what they were doing in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert toughened security measures.

More than 70 people died and scores were wounded in the deadliest day since the US “surge” of 30,000 extra troops were sent to the capital this spring.

In the first attack, a woman detonated explosives hidden under her traditional black Islamic robe in the central al-Ghazl market. The weekly bazaar has been bombed several times since the war started but recently had re-emerged as a popular place to shop and stroll as Baghdad security improved. At least 46 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.

The second woman then struck a bird market in a predominantly Shiite area in south-eastern Baghdad killing up to 27 people and wounding 70.

Utterly heartbreaking, I hope that this most extreme action can only be the last gasp of an ailing al-Qaeda insurgency in Iraq. It is almost certain we will see other acts of violence from them, and even whole other armed uprisings, but hopefully this worst day will remain just that - the worst day since the surge, and no worse.