Thanks Hillary for all your hard work as a Democrat and a candidate.  Tonight, in your orange pantsuit you shone in color opposite to the blue background- popping out there with your humor and genuine oratorical brilliance.  You showed America and the world with your excellent speech why you were such a formidable challenger in this election.  

You told your own story but you integrated that story into the real purpose for political parties and candidacies.  You were fighting for real people and real issues that mattered.  You were fighting for change and a better life for Americans.  You had faith in your own considerable powers as a leader and you had courage to put yourself up there to run for the highest office.  

Frank Rich has been a favorite Sunday treat for me, during many of these years of the dismal and shameful Bush Presidency.  Today he writes an amazing column, calling out John McCain and demanding! yes, demanding! that Obama stop making nice and start telling Americans how he will change the world.

McCain’s trigger-happy temperament and reactionary policies offer worse than no change. He is an unstable bridge back not just to Bush policies but to an increasingly distant 20th-century America that is still fighting Red China in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in the cold war. As the country tries to navigate the fast-moving changes of the 21st century, McCain would put America on hold.

What is John McCain's Favorite TV Program?

House!

(credit to kossak ebradlee10 in this humor diary

A little humor to lead off a diary about Health Care for All.  Thursday, amid the many House diaries, I wrote one about the New England Journal of Medicine's comparison of the health care policies of John McCain and Barack Obama.  New England Journal of Medicine lays it on the line as to what it will mean to have health care with the McCain policies:  

I know this is the day of multiple McCain houses and huge disconnect between McCain and the lives of everyday Americans.  But it is also the day that the New England Journal of Medicine came out with a great summary of McCain and Obama's health care systems and it also demonstrates McCain's supremely dangerous plans for the health care of ordinary Americans.  New England Journal of Medicine is one of the most influential in the world.  Their comprehensive summary on health care plansof the two presumptive nominees- Obama and McCain- outlines some scary possibilities.  The most disturbing possibility?  

I have been reading the story of Dr. Bruce Ivins and the anthrax act of terrorism with great interest.  I came across a fact that was reported today widely reported in the news from the LA Times- Dr. Ivins is an inventor on two patents filed by the Army after the attacks began in October 2001 and would have financially benefitted from a commercial anthrax vaccine developed with his technology. link

Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins also is listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines.

Mirror Mirror on the wall- who is the fairest of them all?

Well Our Candidate, "The One" is apparently too handsome even if he isn't "Snow White.".  Too attractive, too young, too popular, just plain too photogenic.  And Republicans have been noticing that he is getting more than his fail share of shots in The Washington Post.  .Deborah Howell, the Washington Post Ombudsman has been counting them up, and finds the paper is tilting in favor of youth and beauty over McCain and Cindy.

McCain is going to balance the budget in 2008 while he lowers corporate taxes, continues to pass huge tax benefits for the rich and runs an expensive war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places in between.  Federal revenues might be a little down what with the recession and the housing crisis and health care costs spiraling out of control.  Federal spending might be a little up what with the inflation and the huge bills for spending programs.  McCain views all efforts to discuss NFTA reform as somehow a moral failing in Barack Obama, who is going back on his word [although Jesse Helms could refuse to pay United Nations dues just because].  

How you might ask?  How in the world will McCain be able to balance the budget while dealing with all these big economic forces.  Its easy!  

Crocs.

Today I am leaving my usual sort of diary to enter into the world of tin-foil-hattery.  I am a scientist by training.  When I do write a diary, it is filled with citations and usually too long.  I qualify my speculations and express my opinions as such.  

Yesterday I posted such a diary on John McCain's wisit to the countries providing us our drugs,  Mexico and Colombia.  I discovered the many connections between those governments and their elected leaders and the funding of the "war on Drugs", now turned into a War on Illegal Armed Groups (IAGs).  While doing so, I came across the oddest factoid.  On July 2, while visiting Mexico on his July 4th Senate break, John McCain had a private dinner with Carlos Slim, by some accounts the world's richest man. link  This was only reported in the Miami Herald, whhich has a sister paper in Mexico City which covered McCain's visit with more attention to details.

Barack Obama spent July 4th in Montana, celebrating his daughter Malia's birthday and attending a parade link.  Here on Daily Kos were are engaged in a massive fit of buyer's remorse and we want our primary vote back.now that we don't have the Clinton's to kick around any more, we seem to want to kick the nearest Democrat.  Why oh why, when there is John McCain to mock?

Where in the world was John McCain on the Fourth of July, the only one he gets in his campaign for President?  Why he was down Mexico way, Cindy and Joe Liebermann at his side (along with his Republican BFF, Lindsey Graham), celebrating how well the war on drugs is going these days and figuratively delivering a big giant check for 400 million dollars.  And then back home to the McCain Compound in Sedona Arizona for a little campaign regrouping.  link

Are feminists, especially white women who supported Hillary Clinton, unfairly letting Michelle Obama down by not defending her from slanders in the media and the internet?

The Loud Silence of Feminists by Mary C. Curtis suggests this is true.

I'd like a little of that solidarity back now, not suspicion because someone of my race defeated someone of our sex.
Michelle Obama is being demonized for things she allegedly said on tapes that are rumored to exist. She is a victim of sexism and racial stereotypes.
Just as the Rutgers women's basketball team was miscast by Don Imus, Obama is being labeled something she clearly is not. Her achievements are being dismissed.
But in America, there's seldom a cost for disrespecting black women.
I'm waiting for feminists who speak of second-class citizenship and being pushed to the back of the bus to remember the civil rights movement that gave birth to those words. After all, it was a black woman, Rosa Parks, who took her seat up front and pulled others there, too.

Yes, I suffer from "bag lady syndrome"- the irrational fear of being poor and homeless in my old age.  I am afraid I won't have money for health care or necessities as I age.  I am less afraid than many women, since I have been working all my adult life, minus about 6 months when I didn't work to stay home with my infant children.  I saved and put away, but we are still not living in a home we completely own and I can't throw things out- junk like happy meal toys and soap from hotel.  Even my daughter fears becoming a bag lady.  

But this fear, "bag lady syndrome" is one reason Hillary Clinton resonated so well with American women voters, and why they can be persuaded rationally (or subliminally if needed) to vote for Barack Obama over John McCain.  

There has been a silent epidemic of deadly drug interactions.  If you weren't reading the local news in West Virginia you won't have heard about it.  But today they reported the 4th vet to die.  These are young men, combat vets taking prescriptions prescribed in combination by Army psychiatrists and they are going to sleep and not waking up.  The combination is Klonopin and Seroquel and Paxil.  Sometimes pain killers or even alcohol may have been involved.  

I have been struggling for almost a year now in the primary season that never ends to decide how to cast my primary vote.   My general election vote has never been in doubt- I will vote, donate and campaign for the candidate who emerges from the selection process.  Frankly, I never believed my vote would matter that much.  In 1960 the West Virginia Primary led to John F. Kennedy's nomination, but we have been late and irrelevant for quite some time.  

So finally, I have decided to vote for Barack Obama in the primary.  My reason for doing so is ultimately his electability.  Hillary Clinton is now unelectable vs. McCain, so I will throw my one vote to Obama, to stave off the landslide for Clinton which will emerge from West Virginia. Obama's failure to convince West Virginia voters is foreshadowing the very real difficulties he will have in winning the presidency. I will discuss the issues which are swaying voters in my State towards Clinton.

For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, used wire transfers to funnel money out of the NRCC and into other political committees he controlled, then shifted the funds into his own personal accounts

Link
Link

Thats right- our big Democratic Party Scandals concern people who pay their own money for prostitutes, pay them a living wage and then have the good sense to be embarassed about their sexual habits and try and take the business out of town.

Every night like five million other people world wide, I take Vytorin- at least until tonight.  My cholesterol is high and my family history is one of cardiovascular problems.  I control my blood pressure with generic medications (a low dose diuretic and beta blocker, both generic), work on losing weight and blog to reduce some stress.  

Tonight the article published an article indicating that Vytorin has been shown to not reduce plaque formation in arteries, and may even marginally increase the plaque formation.  I am contacting my physician about this and maybe you should too.

Headline Charleston WV
More Coal Miners Developing Black Lung according to a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) expert's testimony to a WV legislative committee.

Today was sort of a down day for me- on "vacation" this week with lots of things to do and no interest in getting anything done.  I turned on Music TV after the news was just too depressing.  Children in Iraq blown up after getting toys from soldiers, people dying in typhoons and the entire rice crop of Bangladesh being destroyed, people dying because they didn't wear seatbelts, houses being foreclosed on- generally bad news.  

M-TV had an astonishing video on.  Absolutely blew me away.  An odd darkhaired bearded man singing in an operatic fashion with children in a game parlor fighting war.  The video had the children acting out the war in Iraq and the images were chilling.  Playing war including a carbomb nad children left dead on the street.  The song was "Empty Walls" from a new release called "Elect the Dead" by Serg Tankian.

November 10 is celebrated around the world as the US Marine Corps Birthday.  On this day in 1775 the Marine Corps was founded in the Tun Tavern Philadelphia when the Second Continental Congress voted to raise two battalions of Marines.  

On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress commissioned Samuel Nicholas to raise two Battalions of Marines.  That very day, Nicholas set up shop in Tun Tavern.  He appointed Robert Mullan, then the proprietor of the tavern, to the job of chief Marine Recruiter -- serving, of course, from his place of business at Tun Tavern.  Prospective recruits flocked to the tavern, lured by (1) cold beer and (2) the opportunity to serve in the new Corps of Marines.  So, yes, the U.S. Marine Corps was indeed born in Tun Tavern.  Needless to say, both the Marine Corps and the tavern thrived during this new relationship.