Obama and Hillary's call for Party's Unity have been cold shouldered by PUMA folks. On the other hand the Anybody But Clinton (ABC) and We hate Clintons (WHC) Folks are taking their Clinton hatred to new levels. During the primary, the Clinton supporters amongst African American community faced different explicit and implicit threats and hatred. Amongst the Black Caucus House of Representatives, there were explicit threats of primary opposition. Now ABC and WHC folks are carrying out their threats to reality. NYTimes is reporting :

Brooklyn's 10th Congressional District, home to more African-Americans than any other in New York, gave Senator Barack Obama his highest margin of victory in the state. But the district's longtime congressman, Edolphus Towns, did not share his constituency's preference for Mr. Obama. Now some of those voters are pushing to oust him.

Kevin Powell is challenging Mr. Towns for his seat. "His decision not to back Obama shows he is out of touch with his constituents," said N. Chandler, a former city corrections officer who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant and who had supported Mr. Towns in the past. "And I think the people of this district are ready for a change."

The tensions in the district echo those in a handful of races around the country as Democratic incumbents with large African-American constituencies try to soothe resentments and anger incited by their support for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Even after Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton embraced in Unity, N.H., on Friday and sought to put their divisions behind them, some strains are still evident closer to the ground.

In Georgia, Representative John Lewis, a prominent civil rights leader, is facing primary challenges from two black candidates who have been critical of him for backing Mrs. Clinton for months before shifting to Mr. Obama. To underscore the point, one of the challengers set up his headquarters in the same building that served as Mr. Obama's office for the primary. Nearby, in Savannah, Representative John Barrow, who is white but represents a district that is largely black, is under attack from a challenger who says Mr. Barrow was also late to endorse Mr. Obama.

Another New Yorker, Representative Gregory W. Meeks of Queens, faces a primary opponent who has sought to make an issue of Mr. Meeks's support of the Clinton campaign in a district, New York's 6th, where Mr. Obama drew nearly 56 percent of the vote.

The man seeking Mr. Meeks's seat is Ruben Wills, 36, a former chief of staff for State Senator Shirley L. Huntley and an organizer for Mr. Obama in southeast Queens. "I was on board with Obama from Day 1," Mr. Wills said. "Meeks had to be dragged across the line."

And Representative Yvette D. Clarke, of Flatbush, Brooklyn, is running unopposed but lost the endorsement of a vital organization, the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats, in part because she embraced Mrs. Clinton's candidacy.

Most of these seats are considered safely Democratic, leaving little incentive for the national Democratic Party, or its leaders, to get involved in the races.

Read more http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/us/pol itics/01dems.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Now for all the Party Unity threads in MyDD, I'm wondering what would you say if former Hillary supporters now put up candidates against Obama supporters like Kerry, Pelosi et al in retaliation of what is going to Hillary supporters in Congress. This action by the ABC crowd is going to have ripples within the Party. I sincerely hope Clinton helps folks who supported her through the primary.

The Party Unity responsibility lies on all which includes both Hillary and Obama's followers. Folks, primaries are over, get over it. Support Obama for the GE...

Finally Bush admin is serious about seeking out Bin Laden from his hideout in Pakistan. Atleast that's what one would think from the draft plan to authorize the Special Ops to launch operations to get Bin Laden and other Al Qaida leaders like Al-Zawahiri. However Special Ops are waiting for the green light from the Bush administration for the past 6 months. NYTimes and its international subsidiary IHT is reporting this news.

 Late last year, top Bush administration officials decided to take a step they had long resisted. They drafted a secret plan to authorize the Pentagon's Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda.

Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden's terror network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies.

The new plan, outlined in a highly classified Pentagon order, was designed to eliminate some of those battles. And it was meant to pave an easier path into the tribal areas for American commandos, who for years have bristled at what they see as Washington's risk-averse attitude toward Special Operations missions inside Pakistan. They also argue that catching Bin Laden will come only by capturing some of his senior lieutenants alive.

But more than six months later, the Special Operations forces are still waiting for the green light. The plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate. A senior Defense Department official said there was "mounting frustration" in the Pentagon at the continued delay.

For more follow these links.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/washin gton/30tribal.html?_r=1&hp=&adxn nl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1214795 217-ry2KEzh3N8qVpymUOus3WQ

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/30/a merica/30tribal.php

Drudge is reporting that Bush is furious with NYT for the Pentagon leak...umm maybe because it shows how incompetent Bush admin is...
http://www.drudge.com

On the other hand Seymour Hersh is reporting in New Yorker that Bush admin already had Special Ops conducting covert ops in Iran. This has great significance in coming years.  

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of "high-value targets" in the President's war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Please read Seymour Hersh's expose in the following link. It is a long article, but your patience in reading it would be rewarded with increasing awareness of what's going on around the World especially in Iran in terms of US policy.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/ 07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=al l

Move-on or another progressive organization should run a commercial that educates Americans on McCain's relationship with Hagee.   The media is so obsessed with the Wright narrative, that they failed to adequately describe the relationship between McCain and Hagee and a Moveon commercial would provide that needed publicity.We are going to have to run an agressive campaign this fall because we know who we are running against - a corrupt party and a passive press.

Just stumbled onto this infuriating item in Friday's NYTimes by Maureen Down pal and fellow Clinton hater Alessandra Stanley.
It's about Obama's The View appearance, and its title "Obama communicates, even without words" raised a red flag immediately.  In her first paragraph, Ms. Stanley opines:

"And if the fluttery response of the show five co-hosts is any harbinger, Mr. Obama will not have any trouble assuaging female voters if Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton drops out of the Democratic race for the White House."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/us/pol itics/29watch.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq alessandra+stanley&st=nyt&oref slogin

There are so many things wrong with this sentence that I had to go take my blood pressure meds.  OK, great, what a relief, all those BigBoyz club bullies waving their penises around on Harry "we will make it happen" Reid's orders, telling Clinton to drop dead, yeah, Dodd, Leahy, Casey.  No problem.  Millions and millions of Clinton's women supporters will take one whiff of Obama's pheromones and be assuaged.
Yes, Alessandra, we're too dumb and fluttery, too swayed by our desire to rub against some handsome dude, to have firm opinions, principles, loyalties, resolve, or dignity.  We're too shallow and stupid to have carefully and thoughtfully evaluated his experience, judgment and integrity and found them all lacking.  Our candidate has so little to offer except for gender identity that the mere physical presence of the dreamboat Obama will make us forget even that in an instant.

Bitches: Lock and Load!

click on Stanley's name on the byline to contact her directly
letters@nytimes.com
nytnews@nytimes.com

I was reading about the success of the Democrats passing a bill to reform ethics and lobbying, when I realized how small misleading statements could give someone false conclusions.  In the first paragraph of the article Senate Approves Tighter Rules on Ethics and Lobbying, the NYTimes write:

...with an overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats agreeing to better police the relationship between lawmakers and lobbyists.

I immediately thought that this was poor writing and poor storytelling.  Even though I knew it was a great moment for the Democrats, I got the impression that Republicans passed the bill and deserve the credit. By mentioning the Republicans first, the writer lets the reader think this was a republican success. In addition, by saying "an overwhelming majority" before saying Dem or Repub, one might come to the conclusion that this was a bipartisan effort and bipartisan deflection.

If i could correct the NYTimes, i would write:

... with Democrats and an overwhelming majority of Republicans agreeing to better police the relationship between lawmakers and lobbyists.

Doesnt that sound better?  Isn't that closer to the truth?  Am i crazy and over reacting, or is this the subtle bias that has plagued the Democrats for years?    

"My guess is that ..the forces that we liberated by invading Iraq were so powerful and so uncontrollable that virtually nothing the United States might have done,...would have effectively prevented this (present) disintegration." (JOHN BURNS)

History of Planning: The Generals were forbade from writing a comprehensive post war plan under threat of being fired. The State Department's 15 Volume post-war plan and analysis was effectively trashed.

Since day one of the Iraq fiasco my mind frequently offers up what I call the "Einstein Exception." All time is relative.
Whether the mission in Iraq was to install a friendly government by force thusly cementing a US presence in hydrocarbon central or to vanquish a threatening regime it makes no difference. What makes a difference is that the amount of time available to plan a successful liberation was in no way constrained.

The NYT has an intriguing (and depressing) story about how the number of casualties in the Iraq war has gone up.  This story is interesting in more ways than one.