The media has waited with baited breath - and a volume of verbiage the world has rarely seen outside of coverage of Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears’ crotches - for Hillary to do her concession bit and for the two to hug and cry together. But they’re not giving that to us - at least, not yet. And either way, it’s OK.

I don’t want this to be a presidency driven solely by sound bytes and carefully crafted media images. I don’t expect two people who’ve fought so hard for their own campaigns (or the myriad thousands who’ve labored for them) to sudden love each other and make nice.

I don’t want Hillary Clinton named VP (and I think any announcement there will come much closer to the convention, if not at the convention itself in late August in Denver) simply because she was “the other candidate.” If there’s a better person for the Obama Democratic ticket, then I want that person considered. We’re not into legacies here, unless it’s the legacy for ALL of America, and not for a relatively privileged few (named Bush or Clinton or Kennedy, et al).

But what we need most of all is for the American people to unite in an understanding that the way ahead is tough regardless of how we go: that we may have to accept a period of increased hardship to try to get this nation - and the world that watches it - back on track. We’re already hurting; we can probably survive a little more.

And unlike the Bush-McCain technique, we need to take care of America’s working and middle classes through good education, job training, health care, and so much more. The Bush-McCain technique is to give and give to the wealthiest, and the rest have to wait til it trickles down the inner leg of the fatcat Republican peeing gold.

That the Bushies deliberated lied and “created” al Qaeda where it was not (Iraq) was bad enough; but Time tells us why this lie’s still rolling, still causing enormous problems short- and long-term.

Have you noticed?

Despite how obvious it was that the Pentagon and the Bush Administration, in their most recent assessment of Bush’s big escalation of war in early 2007, were lying about how “peachy” the situation in Iraq is, all the Republican talking heads on TV now note that the surge worked, that this is indisputable fact, and that the only people who would claim Iraq isn’t going well are hateful, God-ridiculing Democrats.

They’ll claim this even when we see GI deaths going up again, larger and larger suicide bombings, on days when “insurgents” nearly blew up the First Lady of Iraq and days when they just sit back and watch “the American saviors” unintentionally kill a slew of civilians due to “bad intelligence.”

The worst part of all this, however, is that some of the relatively non-partisan news anchors and reporters don’t challenge the GOPers when they make this outrageous claim. A Republican strategist will let loose with the pronouncement of how wonderful Iraq is and, even if the headlines just reported another big bombing, the anchor sits without uttering a single question or asking the basis for such a preposterous claim.

One of our readers recommends this piece at Garling Gauge in reference to my post about the House of Representatives (almost exclusively Democrats voted nay) and its vote to reject the latest blank check George Bush demands to wage more war in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Thank you, reader!)

I think such a refusal is not only politically viable, I think it’s K-I-S-S and would have the support of the vast majority of the American people (since even former Bush supporters notice that for all of Bush’s previous claims to need the money for the GIs, our GIs and vets aren’t getting jack poop).

No joke. With crude oil prices already well past the record $100/barrel that we used to treat as the great marker for “peak oil”, where was the price going to go but WAAAAY up when Bush does the following in the past week:

* More saber rattling at Iran with “evil” charges amounting to the same damned things the U.S. is doing in Iraq
* Goes to Israeli Knesset (their Congress), plants a huge wet kiss on PM Olmert, and manages to dis both Iran and Barack Obama in the same charge as he also indicts Muslims in general
* Only then does he go to Saudi Arabia to ask them to increase oil production, at which point the Sauds flipped him the bird and sent him home as gas prices jumped by as much as 30 cents in a 24-hour period in some locations
* Threatens our own Congress who stopped the record levels of oil reserves Bush has been spending a fortune in storing (waaay above what any other admin has done, and Bush increases the reserve everytime the price rises like he wants to just hand energy companies all the tax dollars not being spent on the Pentagon)

Oil just closed on the stock market at a record $133.17/barrel. Thanks, President Bush! What latest horror will you enact?

And this figure does not include the juveniles, some as young as 11 or 12, sent to Guantanamo Bay on specious, oft-never-filed charges:

The U.S. military is holding about 500 juveniles suspected of being “unlawful enemy combatants” in detention centers in Iraq and has about 10 detained in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations.

A total of 2,500 youths under the age of 18 have been detained, almost all in Iraq, for periods up to a year or more in President Bush’s anti-terrorism campaign since 2002, the United States reported last week to the U.N.’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Just how many McCain finance chairman, etc., have either had to step down or pretend they don’t hear the questions being asked about their participation in the ironically-entitled Straight Talk Express?

Far, far too many.

For Dems and perhaps for most of the country, the biggest enemy we face isn’t Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, maybe not even al Qaeda. It’s the threat of a McCain Administration that would continue the loathful, lousy work of the Bush Admin (aka Dewey, Cheatem, and How!).

President (I can never believe he bears this title) George W. Bush has done so many reprehensible things during his “administration” that it’s hard to find a new source of outrage. Yet he managed to provide just that when, in front of the Israel legislature today, he liked Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s desire to seek diplomatic solutions with Iran to the appeasement of Hitler and allowing the Holocaust to happen. Considering how much of the lawmakers in Israel are elected for their more extreme views, it was certainly pandering to a captive audience.

It’s no small irony here that the Bush family fortune - for those who don’t know - was cemented by Bush’s grandpappy, Prescott, who rose to become a U.S. senator AFTER his New York based bank became disgustingly rich laundering Nazi money. Nazi money. Prescott Bush was no underling at the bank; he was an architect of the laundering and he knew where the riches came from.

To my knowledge, Barack Obama never got rich off plundering the wealth of a people whom Hitler’s Nazi Party designated for genocide. But I know that many generations of Bushes have Hitler to thank. It paid for the embarrassingly worthless “college education” of the numbskull who thinks he’s president and helped pay for that cute little wedding in Crawford for Jenna Bush last weekend.

To accuse Obama of Nazi-like appeasement would be heinous anyway, given what we’ve seen with the Bush Admin’s famed lack of diplomacy. But for Bush to do it while he’s filled his larders with the money stolen from Jews and others who opposed the Third Reich is so far beyond the pale it defies description.

As early as tomorrow, the House will vote on Bush’s latest arrogant, insane demand for another blank check to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan - money that always ends up in the hands of ranking (and rank) Republicans and defense contractors.

Join me - and I just completed my call to Peter Welch’s office (D-VT) as the sole Congressman from my home state - in telling your reps NOT to authorize this. It’s NOT going to pay for our troops - just for more fat cat war profiteering.

Whether you call the nation Burma, as many of its citizens refer to it, or Myanmar, a name adopted by the militaristic crew leading it, this is a nation that was in one big hurt BEFORE the cyclone struck (and new predictions estimate at least 50,000 dead - or many factors more than died here on 9-11 in a very unnatural disaster). As Ricky Shambles notes here, it needs our attention.

I was absolutely appalled when First LeechWife (I’m not sure she rates being called a lady, all things considered - sorry) Laura Bush jumped up to offer “compassionate aid” that would mean the U.S. would give LESS THAN THE PRICE OF ONE of America’s many foreclosed-upon homes to help this devastated land. Given that the Bushes (just Dubya and Laura) got more than the pledged $250K back in tax rebates (pushed by Bush himself) on their 2007 income, Laura could write a check for that amount herself off her personal account.

Understand, too, that the Burma/Myanmar cyclone disaster will only increase the speed at which many countries run out of food. After Australia’s rice crop failures, the world depended more on the rice that would be harvested in this region. Except the rice fields - like tens of thousands of its citizens, homes, businesses, etc. - are gone there. This failure won’t just strike the Burmese but the entire world.

Prayers are fine. Whatever small donations you can afford to help the relief effort there are good, too. But we need to help Burma in a big way at the same time we pour energy into understanding the food shortages around the globe and do something about them. NOW.

From Think Progress:

Yesterday, two former employees of embattled contract company KBR told a congressional panel that some of their coworkers frequently stole money and artwork from Iraq. One said that “some of her American colleagues doing construction work in Iraqi palaces and municipal buildings took woodcarvings, tapestries and crystal ‘and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots.’” Another said that “a KBR foreman tried to take military equipment, including two rocket launchers, detonators and ammunition.” Two weeks ago, the firm was awarded a $150 million, 10-year contract for work with the U.S. Army.

This makes me ill in so many different ways. And John McCain’s nothing if not friendly to defense contractors.

Last week, I posted that Hillary Clinton had completely lost me when she said that if Iran did anything Israel didn’t like, she would have no trouble annihilating a country of tens of millions of people. Before that, I’ve been hopelessly deadlocked between both remaining challengers: Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

Well, I still utterly despise what she said. I’d like her to eat it, actually.

But as much as I wrestle with the decision - and I believe I am very right in thinking that to blow away another country is NOT any adequate foreign policy outside the Bush Administration - I still feel torn.

As Vermont’s junior Senator, Bernie Sanders (I-Socialist - no, really, he is), stated on The Colbert Report last Monday night, no matter which Democrat wins the party’s nomination, we simply MUST be far better off than if ANY of the Republicans won, and especially since it would be John McCain.

I can live with Hillary if she’s the candidate though I’ll ride her rump if she pulls any Bush tricks in office, the same as I would if Obama wins. But if the general election were tomorrow and I could only vote between Obama and Clinton, I just don’t know how I’d vote (and eeny-meeny-miney-mo and rock-paper-scissors just seem a bad way to choose).

Anyone else, like me, caught between Iraq… er… a rock and a hard place? Let me hear from you and what issues for you are causing the big divisions.

Last week, Jimmy Carter, ex-president and humanistic diplomat, visited the leaders of Hamas. The Right swooned: how dare he? This, of course, is because the American Government’s tongue is so far up the anal sphincter of Israel that to give Hamas a reach-around is just in bad taste.

Outrage could also be found directly spouting from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “The United States is not going to deal with Hamas and we had certainly told President Carter that we did not think meeting with Hamas was going to help.” And similarly: “We counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contact with Hamas.”

And then the Jimmy Carter center comes back with a left: “President Carter has the greatest respect for … Rice and believes her to be a truthful person. However, perhaps inadvertently, she is continuing to make a statement that is not true. No one in the State Department or any other department of the U.S. government ever asked him (Carter) to refrain from his recent visit to the Middle East or even suggested that he not meet with Syrian President (Bashar) Assad or leaders of Hamas.”

Ooh, snap! So who’s lying?

After some six weeks of discussion as to how Pennsylvania Democrats would vote today, Hillary Clinton has won the primary there, which many believe gives her enough momentum (never to be confused, pretty please, with JoeMentum, as in Karl Rove’s favorite in-name-only Dem Joe Lieberman) to continue her challenge with Barack Obama for the party’s presidential candidacy.

However, Hillary completely lost me. I’m not talking Bittergate or the talk that her campaign is in debt (like that’s unusual for a campaign) or the silly issues of whether or not she wears a flag pin (she does not) or the foolish Bosnia story.

No, Hillary completely shot my potential vote (and readers here and on my personal blog know that I’ve been deeply divided who I want to be the Dem challenger to McCain) when she said she would annihilate Iran if they made any kind of attack on Israel.

Her words were pure Bush. I’ve had ENOUGH Bush and Cheney. The entire world has.

I very much support the right of Israel to exist and feel, due to our meddling in the Middle East (and not to mention the years the U.S. allowed the Holocaust to continue without action), we should support that nation. But besides getting the majority of our financial aid (the tiny nation gets more aid from us than any other country on the earth, though it’s one of the least populated), we spend a ton on sending Israel military equipment they use with wild abandon on their enemies. We also help subsidize the illegal settlements Israel keeps building outside their own borders, on Palestinian land. THAT I don’t support.

Mrs. Clinton sure as hell did not threaten to annihilate Israel when they were threatening to strike Iranian nuclear reactors which would have the potential to kill tens of millions of Iranians. She didn’t say anything against Israel when the latest of Israeli officials said (and we’ve heard it from them before) it was time to launch a holocaust against Palestinians. (My God, who would toss about that suggestion, even thoughtlessly in anger, considering what Jews suffered in the 1930 and early 1940s?)

If I wanted nothing but more bloodshed and another billion or so people throughout the world hating us, I’d vote for (bleeping) McCain because he’s Bush III. While I still respect Hillary a lot and would like to see her continue to do what good she does in government service, I won’t vote for someone who uses Bush foreign policy to score votes. Un-uh.