Yes we can, Amen

US President Barack Obama recently recalled “one of the great honours of my life,” his meeting with Billy Graham at the Reverend’s “mountaintop retreat”:

Before I left, Rev. Graham started praying for me, as he had prayed for so many presidents before me. And when he finished praying, I felt the urge to pray for him. I didn’t really know what to say. What do you pray for when it comes to the man who has prayed for so many? But like that verse in Romans, the Holy Spirit interceded when I didn’t know quite what to say.

And so I prayed, briefly, but I prayed from the heart. I don’t have the intellectual capacity or the lung capacity of some of my great preacher friends here that pray for a long time. But I prayed. And we ended with an embrace and a warm goodbye.

As ABC presenter Andrew West suggests, when an incumbent POTUS is “making sure everyone knows that he prayed with Billy Graham,” then the re-election game is decidedly on.

Hopefully Obama won’t get to the point where God starts telling him to do stuff... such as another misadventure in Mesopotamia, or Persia or somewhere.

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Stop Press: Abbott says lawbreakers should be prosecuted

I presume that the US government is going after the people who provided information to Assange. As for Assange, if he’s broken the law he should be prosecuted.

Thus opined Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott on the ABC’s Insiders program. Mr Abbott’s remaining statements on the topic of the Wikileaks controversy went on to drive home what he evidently considers a winning formula:

Well, as I said, if he’s broken the law he should be prosecuted. That’s what should happen. ... Well that’s up to the relevant authorities. If he's broken the law he should be prosecuted.

Well, it would be most unusual for a politician to profess that lawbreakers should not be prosecuted.

But Mr Abbott, like his opposite number Prime Minister Julia Gillard, was unable to say which law(s) Julian Assange is alleged to have broken, thus completing a deuce set of apparent cluelessness in Canberra.

Moreover, being in lock-step with US policy on the dreaded Wikileaks ‘threat,’ the Gillard-Abbott bipartisan chorus might also play well with US negotiators in Australia’s horse-trading for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

Readers may recall how, the last time an Australian government prostrated itself before US policy demands, forty US trade negotiators filed into Australia on the eve of the Iraq War to hammer out the vaunted Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, which in the end delivered bugger all of any real benefit to Australia.

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George W Bush leg-pull still a work in progress

An editorial today in The Australian opines that the “legacy” of George W. Bush’s presidency is “still a work in progress.”

That’s right on the money, if by that expression the Oz means that it will require a herculean effort to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

The Oz kicks off with the weasely admission that Bush “will never be top of any of the lists of best presidents Americans enjoy analysing.” The same was undoubtedly said of Richard M. Nixon, whose interment was respectfully attended by three former or current presidents. Such was the rehabilitation of a man whose criminal conduct brought the very presidency into disrepute, while his country teetered on a constitutional precipice.

According to the Oz, Dubya’s enduring achievements – aside from that Americans will “enjoy analysing” his presidency in only a very qualified sense – are to “have kept his country safe and created a new Muslim democracy.”

If the absence of any successful terrorist attacks on US soil since September 2001 is anything to speak of, then it is that Dubya’s presidency was not a failure of such epic proportions as generally thought.

“A new Muslim democracy”? Time will tell on that one. Prior to the ascendancy of Saddam, the Iraqis had a functioning secular democracy, but somehow managed to blow it. And the strongman Saddam was appeased and supported obscenely by successive US administrations including up to the period after his infamous Al Anfal campaign against the Kurds. But never mind, the bloodbath of the last seven years has put it all to rights.

What is missing, however, from much of the late apologia for Dubya, including the Oz’s little effort here, is any mention of the ‘Af’ word.

Alright, I’ll say it: Afghanistan.

The Dubya Administration’s dereliction of its ‘mission’ in Afghanistan – in order to pursue its Misadventure in Mesopotamia, which even the Oz piece admits was “badly blundered” – was a mistake for which ‘we’ will be paying in blood and angst for the next decade or possibly beyond.

Disgustingly, Dubya has been hitting the chat show circuit expressing his “disgust” over the conduct of some of the troops he sent to do his bidding at Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Does the moron not remember that, by the time he and Cheney had finished dog-whistling up and down their country for the dogs of war, around 65 per cent of the US population believed Saddam’s Iraq to be responsible for the September 11 attacks?

It was, for Dubya, a cultivated and convenient misapprehension that undoubtedly was mirrored in the hapless service personnel he sent, thus making the Abu Ghraib abuses virtually inevitable.

Still and all, I will confidently predict that Dubya’s interment will be respectfully attended by at least three former or current US presidents.

If by then my mushy-grey succumbs to the scourge of dementia, I’ll at least have the consolation of not having the presence of mind to register such a grotesque spectacle.

—READ MORE—

Obama a god-sent man?

McArthur McKinley is pastor of the Holly Grove Missionary Baptist Church in the tiny Mississippi Delta town of Sidon.

He isn’t particularly worried about the hateful vitriol hurled at President Obama by his critics because...

“When you’re doing good, someone is going to speak evil against you. They did Christ that way.”

Some among Pastor McKinley’s flock tend to agree, believing Obama to be “a God sent man.”

So, there are still a few people over there who take a quasi-messianic view of Obama, in stark contrast with the poisonous Obama Haters.

However, as an Australian cleric remarked around Easter last year...

“Poor President Obama has been described as the Hope of the World, but we only ever had one messiah that good and it’s a bit hard to live up to Jesus.”

My thoughts exactly! — well, sort of...

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Obama momentarily missteps (maybe) then quickly recovers footing

view at youtube

Despite being evidence of a confident and resilient President, this youtube video — ardently tagged “Obama falls on camera!” — seems to have become the delight of Obama Haters everywhere, from whom it inspires such comments as...

He wasn’t falling... He was stealing the hubcaps.

and...

Looks like hes [sic] dodging a bullet. One could only wish.

What a stupid, pathetic, ugly race US Americans can sometimes be.

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How to improve the US health system without killing Grandma

Lateline presenter Leigh Sales asks economics correspondent Stephen Long about the state of health care in the US:

In economic or social terms it’s a disaster... America’s got the most expensive healthcare system in the world. They’re the only rich nation in the world that doesn’t have universal healthcare coverage.

The healthcare in the US costs about 17 per cent of GDP... That is roughly double the cost here, and yet it doesn’t reflect in the health outcomes, which are poor.

For example, adult mortality rates in the US are about twice the rate here where we have half the health costs. And the US is one of the few advanced nations that actually registers a very significant, relatively high child mortality rate, and I could go on.

And Stephen does go on...

The fact that employers provide the healthcare undermines the mobility of labour because people stick in a firm and a region rather than moving on to areas where it might be more personally and broader economically useful, and it’s just a very, very flawed, ineffective system.

Will Obama’s health reforms be an improvement — even if it kills the occasional Grandma?

I’m highly sceptical that it will make much difference at all and I question the strategy. If you look at what they’re doing over there, the basic core of the healthcare reform being put up by President Obama is to subsidise people to take up private health insurance, to subsidise poor people and middle income earners to take up private health insurance.

And private health insurance is at the core of the problem. They’ve got private health insurers who have been gobbling up a whole lot of healthcare expenses in profits and administration so I don’t see that it’s necessarily going to lower costs by subsidising them to seek rents. And you’ve got a very concentrated industry amongst the big players.

So that’s the major structural design problem and it doesn’t deal with the fact that it’s still largely provided by employers and not a situation you want when you’ve got double digit unemployment rates. And more than that, it doesn’t really — although it tries to tackle it at the margins — deal with the lifestyle issues and demographic factors. I mean, you’ve got huge disparities by race and socio-economic status with healthcare outcomes.

Plus you’ve got terrible diet, high rates of smoking and the disease that goes with those sorts of problems.

Gee, that sounds something like the third-world health outcomes which beset the indigenous aboriginal population here in Australia, for which our Government is attempting wide-ranging initiatives to close the gap.

Is there an alternative to Obama’s reforms? Or, in other words, how can they effectively close the gap between health outcomes in mainstream Australia and that in the US?

Well, an alternative which is probably completely politically unrealistic in America but makes more sense is to have something more akin to what we have here with a socialised core system that provides for basic healthcare costs for everybody and allow insurance as a top up on top of that, and it would actually economically make a whole lot of sense to get the insurers out of the system in America and put the money that you’d save on the massive administration costs and profits to which the healthcare budget is diverted to into preventative medicine and try and put the $350 billion that you’d save on estimates I’ve seen into programs to actually prevent rather than try and cure after the event’s happened.

Yep, makes a whole lot more sense, but as Leigh Sales sums up...

I’m glad we’re sitting here talking about it rather than trying to do it.

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could’ve . . . should’ve . . .

The late Michael Crichton relates an anecdote from his years in Hollywood:

A friend of mine who was a director was doing a movie with Steve McQueen. And McQueen could be very forceful; he didn’t like this director.

So one day the director came to visit him in his trailer, where he was doing another movie. And in order to set the tone for the discussion, Steve McQueen took out his six gun and emptied it into one of the chairs in his trailer. Then he turned and looked at the director.

And the director said, “Don’t worry, Steve, if anybody asks me I’ll say the chair shot first.”

He [the director, presumably] was fired.

With such credentials, McQueen’s premature death in 1980 represented an inestimable loss to conservative politics in the US. He’d surely have been an ideal Republican candidate for Vice President, at the very least.

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Invisible wounds of war

Since October 2001, approximately 1.64 million U.S. troops have deployed as part of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF; Afghanistan) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF; Iraq). The pace of the deployments in these current conflicts is unprecedented in the history of the all-volunteer force. Not only is a higher proportion of the armed forces being deployed, but deployments have been longer, redeployment to combat has been common, and breaks between deployments have been infrequent.

At the same time, episodes of intense combat notwithstanding, these operations have employed smaller forces and have produced casualty rates of killed or wounded that are historically lower than in earlier prolonged wars, such as Vietnam and Korea. Advances in both medical technology and body armor mean that more servicemembers are surviving experiences that would have led to death in prior wars.

However, casualties of a different kind are beginning to emerge — invisible wounds, such as mental health conditions and cognitive impairments resulting from deployment experiences.

• Territa Nielian & Lisa H. Jaycox (eds.), Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery, RAND Corporation (Center for Military Health Policy Research), 2008

Thus is sketched the broad context of a study on psychological and cognitive injuries suffered by US service personnel as a result of deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.

The study focuses on three broad types of those ‘invisible wounds’ — post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder and depressive symptoms, and traumatic brain injury.

It seeks to explore the dimensions of prevalence of these injuries among returned personnel; the costs attendant upon these conditions “stemming from lost productivity and other consequences”; and provision — and, more to the point, gaps in provision — of the care system intended to meet the health-related needs of service personnel and veterans.

The authors also seek to make recommendations to address what they recognize will be a significant ongoing concern with continued mass-deployment of personnel to combat zones.

The work is constrained in its aims by a recognised paucity of “available data”. As a reviewer in The Lancet observed:

The lack of such data illustrates their point more clearly than any calculations could do — these are battle injuries that are underdiagnosed, poorly understood, and under-resourced.

• Piers Page, The Lancet, Vol 372, 15/11/2008, p. 1724 (subscription reqd.)

One troubling aspect identified in the study is that veterans are hampered in seeking and accessing care by institutional factors, such that it is perceived accessing services “will negatively affect employment and constrain military career prospects, thus deterring many of those who need or want help from seeking it.” The stigma of mental illness apparently yet persists in the “never explain, never complain” military culture of machismo.

The study, however, seems almost at pains to avoid being a controversial or polemical document. Indeed, the authors write almost glowingly of efforts at all levels of the US government “to study the issues ... quantify the problems, and formulate policy solutions.”

And they have acted swiftly to begin implementing the hundreds of recommendations that have emerged from various task forces and commissions. Policy changes and funding shifts are already occurring for military and veterans’ health care in general and for mental health care in particular.

Nor does this study essay into any broader questions about the conduct of US foreign policy and the “global war on terror”; on the contrary, it studiously avoids such matters.

Rather, the authors merely assert the US’s national “responsibility not only to recruit, prepare, and sustain a military force but also to address Service-connected injuries and disabilities.” Essentially, this is a commendable work of advocacy for and on behalf of US service personnel and veterans.

—READ MORE—

Imponderable juxtaposition pondered

Jonah Goldberg of The National Review seems to suggest here that the election of an African-American as President of the United States is as wondrous, more or less, as the fact that his ascendancy hasn’t sparked more assassination plots or even armed revolt:

It is a wonderful thing to have the first African-American president. It is a wonderful thing that, in a country where feelings are so intense, that power can be transferred so peacefully.

Now, each of the two propositions are true enough, I guess; but I’m having a slight difficulty getting my head around their being uttered in tandem, as it were, in the same breath.

Do go read the whole thing; it’s actually only a brief piece, but obviously the pedigree of the dilemma it tip-toes around is as old as the hills.

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CONGRATULATIONS OBAMA ! ! !

In comments on the previous post, our dear Father Park remarked:

Obama has little idea, I think, of what he’s done. The Everest of expectation is palpable...

And concluded:

... A vast constituency is expecting. Here’s hoping he can deliver.

Indeed, and of course accountability doesn’t just happen. The task of delivering on those expectations raised by Obama — loftily encapsulated in the catchphrases of ‘change’, ‘a new dawn’, etc. — is one that should properly be shouldered by all citizens.

A few are off to a good start already. For example, Ralph Nader has thankfully refrained from making another serious tilt at the Presidency, but instead been busy with the kind of contribution to public life at which he excels. In an open letter to Obama just a few days ago, Nader observed:

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama?

Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

Such scrutiny should rightly be the job of those who are duly elected to perform the function of ‘checks and balances’ in the world’s greatest democracy. But, while it’s tempting to think the Republican ‘opposition’ might pursue the kinds of concerns Nader has raised, in fact both parties perennially have resoundingly failed to halt the excess of corporate patronage that infests political power at all levels of the Republic.

Obama has rode to victory on a torrent of rhetoric about ‘change’, ‘renewal’, ‘a new dawn’, ad nauseam. But without sound public oversight of government of the people, by the people, for the people, those catchcries will prove as hollow as they now sound.

—READ MORE—

COME ON OBAMA ! ! !

I don’t want to seem biased, but then I also don’t want to seem apathetic about the outcome... so...

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Presidential election: Portent divined

Looks like it’s the kibosh for Barack Obama’s tilt for the US Presidency:

A local soccer team christened Obama FC was at the weekend beaten 1-0 in a derby held in a western Kenyan village of the US Democrat's kin.

The tournament, dubbed Obama Big Day Soccer Tournament, was organised by Barack Obama’s step-brother Malik Obama, in anticipation of the senator’s victory in the November 4 US presidential elections. ...

Originally called Kogelo FC — named after the village of Obama’s Kenyan father — it changed its name to Obama FC in 2004 when the Democrat first made headlines after giving an electrifying speech at the Democratic Party convention.

The news report says this is “an unenviable preamble for Obama ahead of Tuesday’s polls.”

Indeed, the parallels are uncanny!

—READ MORE—

Not a rap for Palin?

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone:

The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into a sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague — they were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation — at the Xcel gates.

“She totally reminds me of my cousin!” the delegate screeched. “She’s a real woman! The real thing!”

I stared at her open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here’s the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket.

I sorta feel Mr Taibbi is somehow holding back...

—READ MORE—

It's Convention time in the US of A...

DON HENLEY "Workin' It" (live)

Ah, it's open season here my friend
It always is; it always has been
Welcome, welcome to the U.S.A.
We're partying fools in the autumn of our heyday
And though we're running out of everything
We can't afford to quit
Before this binge is over
We've got to squeeze off one more hit
We're workin' it
Workin' it

Soon you will be dancing face-to-face
With the limits of ambition and the scars of the marketplace
Welcome to the land of flame and fizz
Where you will learn that packaging is all that heaven is

We got the little black car, the little black dress
Got the guru, the trainer, the full court press
We got the software, hard drive, CD-ROM
We got the exploitation.com
We got the pager, cell phone, bootleg methaqualone
The media, the message: you are what you own
We got the agent, lawyer, lapdog, voyeur
Talk show, book deal, round mouth, square meal

We're so busy covering our asses, we just can't commit
“Oh, back off, don't bother me, baby
Can't you see I'm workin' it”
Workin' it

It's plain to see Miss Liberty has not yet come of age
But, she loves to feed the animals as long as they're locked up in the cage
And everybody knows the girl's got balls of brass
Aw, kiss my ass

(Solo)
We've got a whole new class of opiates
To blunt the stench of discontent
In these corporation nation-states
Where the loudest live to trample on the least
They say it's just the predatory nature of the beast

But, the barons in the balcony are laughing
And pointing to the pit
They say, “Aw look, they've grown accustomed to the smell
Now, people love that shit
And we're workin' it.”
Workin' it

We got the short-term gain, the long-term mess
We got the suffocating, quarterly consciousness
Yes man, run like a thief

New York to Hollywood, hype and glory
Special effects, no story
Yes man, run like a thief

Workin' it
Workin' it

Well, you don't know who the enemy is
You don't know
You don't know who the enemy is

Company man
“Eight for me, one for you”
(Workin' it)
“Very fair”
Business as usual, business as usual.

—READ MORE—

Hooroo Hillary

Update...below.

Image SMH online

Hillary has spent the entire year to date telling anyone who'd listen - especially the superdelegates - that the only way that the Dems would get across the line in November was if she was the the party's candidate. Further, she has insisted that Obama, if elected as the party's candidate, cannot win. Whilst stridently proclaiming her near God-given status as a Democratic certainty she has insisted that there will be no surrender and that the fight will go down to the line.

In recent days she has insisted that she reserves the right to challenge the Rules Committee compromise on the Florida/Michigan traducing of the primary rules. More than once has she declared that she may pursue what she sees as her nomination to the floor of the convention. Ruinous though this may be for the Dems, it is tantalising theatre for a political junkie such as myself. A pity it won't happen. The bottom line has always been that Hillary - and only Hillary - can win the November contest for the Dems; no surrender, no compromise.

All the while nominating primary after primary and caucus after caucus highlighted what the wider community knew - and the Hillary campaign refused to see - to be an ever increasing certainty: that Obama would net the majority of delegates to the convention and thus, the nomination. Hillary, underwhelming on "super Tuesday" and with limp "victories" in Texas and Pennsylvania, was not ever possessed of a knockout punch. In this heavyweight contest she was reduced to scoring a victory on points. In such a contest the judges favour the title holder. This she was not and her campaign's continual leaning on the favours owed a former champion, Bubba, gained her no material benefit.

So here we are facing what, in the vernacular, is called the "vinegar stroke". Obama has superdelegates declaring on his behalf left, right and centre. The numbers for the final primaries will end up being of little consequence. And Hillary - fight to the death Hillary; take it to the convention floor Hillary; I'm the only possible winner just as sure as Obama can't win Hillary - what is Hillary to do? The NYT tells you:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has told supporters that she would agree to be Senator Barack Obama’s running mate if he offered her the vice presidential spot.
Mrs. Clinton made the remarks in an afternoon conference call with members of the New York Congressional delegation, according to two lawmakers who participated in the call.

Mrs. Clinton prefaced the remarks by noting that she would do “anything to make sure a Democrat would win'’ the presidential election in November, said Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Democrat from Long Island.

“If Senator Obama asked her to be the V.P., she certainly would accept that,'’ she said. “She has obviously given some thought to this.'’

Representative Nydia Velasquez of New York City recalled the call with Mrs. Clinton similarly, saying: “She said that if it’s offered, she would take it.'’

Of course, it was what she was always going to do: join a ticket led by the loser with limited appeal and who can't win. The graceless bint. It has been apparent since late March that her campaign could not and would not muster the required numbers. Just as apparent after Pennsylvania. Even more apparent was the need - if she had the style or grace - to throw it in and "do anything to make sure a Democrat would win". That Democrat being, of course, the race leader in Obama.

She was not ever that graceful.

It is, of course, what has to be done. Her arrogant presumption and intransigent obstinacy have driven divisions into the Democratic vote that will only be mended by her - and, a fortiori - her supporters' inclusion. A pity she couldn't see it when the rest of the world well knew it

Update: And so Obama claims the contest in St Paul:

“You chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears, but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations,” Mr. Obama said at a rally in St. Paul. “Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Because of you, tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States

And Hillary?

Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that her path to the nomination had closed, but she did not leave the race. “This has been a long campaign and I will be making no decisions tonight,"...

...In a combative speech, she again presented her case that she was the stronger candidate and argued that she had won the popular vote, a notion disputed by the Obama campaign.

“I want the 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected,”

I guess, by that last, she means that SHE should be respected either by being allowed go to the convention floor or, more likely, "where's the offer of the VP?? Offer and be bloody quick about it!!"

—READ MORE—

Cat liberated from bag again

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain has made a frank avowal about one of the primary drivers of US policy in the Middle East:

“My friends, I will have an energy policy which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East, that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”

While one may admire Senator McCain’s candour, it will be interesting to see whether his energy policy will involve significant reliance on biofuels, the impetus of which has had a disastrous effect on world food prices particularly in poorer countries.

—READ MORE—

Anniversary observed

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the USA... oh yes, and its cobbled-together Coalition of the Willing.

US Vice President Dick Cheney sums up these five long years thus:

“If you reflect back on those five years, it’s been a difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavour.”

I won’t reflect — yet again — on the fact that all the assumptions and projections made by the ‘architects’ in support of this appalling misadventure have been proved wrong, wrong, WRONG!

Personally, I’m sick to death of that whole futile ‘dialog’.

It’s quite evident that there is absolutely no set of circumstances that could possibly obtain, under which those nabobs could ever admit failure in this ‘endeavour’.

UPDATE: Australia’s former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer has imparted another load of his wisdom on the punters:

“Obviously mistakes have been made, from time to time, during the five years.”

Obviously this has only now occurred to him; otherwise he would have leveled with his fellow Australians and conveyed any misgivings he might have had at the time. Right?

“I think in particular the Americans should have had more troops on the ground earlier than they did.”

I seem to recall at least one semi-desperate request from the US for more troops from its Coalition partners. Alex and his boss then apparently thought they knew better.

“The surge has been successful recently but that was very late in the piece, and I think it would have been better to have those troops a lot earlier.”

You don’t say, genius! Blah blah yadda yadda...

Please enjoy your retirement, Alex. As soon as possible. It’s on us.

—READ MORE—

Perspective maintained

This week, another authoritative study “has found no evidence Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with al-Qaeda’s terrorist network.”

Trivia buffs will recall that Saddam’s supposed relationship with al-Qaeda was trumpeted by the Bush White House as a compelling subsidiary justification for the invasion of Iraq.

An invasion, incidentally, that former Under Secretary of Defense, Douglas Feith, has disclosed was already a done deal months before the weapons inspectors were to report on Saddam’s supposed mountains of WMD.

Such trivialities have gone righteously unremarked upon by the Muftim Tim Blair, who continues his relentless pursuit of those who peddle the Really Big Lie of the Iraq war — that fictitious plastic turkey.

Keep that Troooth a-comin’, O Great Muftim!

UPDATE

Although obviously not so important as the pursuit of troooth and purveyors of plastic-turkey-propaganda, Jack Robertson reviews the public contribution of Douglas Feith. While searingly analytical, it’s also a kind of performance-arty piece, a form which should be familiar to some readers here.

—READ MORE—

This train don't stop...

Apologies in advance to Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

The Hill and Bill for DC campaign train, its steam and whistles lacking oxygen and coal, has been handed a reprieve. Destined, after twelve successive losses, for the political Powerhouse Museum, it found coal enough and oxygen enough to survive for another round.

Hillary has triumphantly addressed supporters stating that "no candidate in recent history — Democratic or Republican — has won the White House without winning the Ohio primary".



This might well be true and she has, in fact, won Ohio well - something she was always expected to do. The problem is that this Democratic nominating season is all about history: either a black candidate or a female will take their party's nomination. History, I'm afraid, has no precedent and therefore Hillary's comforting embrace of it is somewhat irrelevant.

As well, the race in Texas, which will likely fall her way, is desperately close. At this writing (17:20 Thursday March 5) the primaries in the state are in her favour 50.8% to 47.4%; the caucuses are against her 53.9% to 46%. Whatever Hillary takes out of this Tuesday it will not be enough to overhaul Obama's delegate lead. She will still likely trail in delegate numbers. The mathematics of the remaining delegates though will no longer be an impossibility. this will have been the case had she lost either of today's large states by any significant margin.

And so the lot rolls on. On to the next big showdown: Pennsylvania. This will be the nutcracker for the nomination. If Obama wins here Hillary's campaign train is off to the Powerhouse Museum. Either way, given the fact that Hillary has edged Texas and not won it well (as polls had her doing so even a month ago), the all important superdelegates - the party honchos - are leaning to Obama. Any further Clinton losses will see that lean become slide across the lounge.



Any further Clinton losses and - a fortiori - a loss in Pennsylvania will see the Hillary express largely derailed. As far as the White House is concerned - to pinch Bernie Taupin's line - the Clinton "train don't stop there anymore".

—READ MORE—

Brief newslets

Turkish warplanes targeting Kurdish rebels bombed villages deep in northern Iraq today, killing one woman and forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes.

But it’s okay, because it was done “with the implicit approval of US occupying forces in Iraq.”

Hang on — no it’s not okay, because the US didn’t approve it at all. But it would’ve been okay if they had...

And singer and songsmith Dan Fogelberg has died of prostate cancer, aged 56.

Meanwhile another singer and songsmith almost as well-known as Dan, Chris de Burgh, will become the first Western artist to play a gig in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Incidentally, something about the chorus of Chris’s song, ‘Don’t Pay the Ferryman’, has always bothered me...

Don’t pay the ferryman!
Don’t even fix a price!
Don’t pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side

I mean, what halfway competent ferryman would even contemplate getting you to the other side before first fixing a price that reflects market realities? And would any rational agent even want to be ferried by a person so lacking in basic commonsense?

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