National Geographic has always been a photo magazine of high quality. The focus in recent years has shifted from exotic people and locales to the health of the earth, still with incredible photography but now with reportage and science about the challenges being faced all over the world. It is good to see it recognized by the National Magazine Awards.

You will notice with some surprise perhaps other well-known magazine also being honored: Mother Jones; the Nation; the New Yorker…

As reported by the Portland Oregonian’s Matthew Preusch, the Clinton and Obama campaigns are generating more than partisan enthusiasm: “Around the corner from Clinton’s office, at the Jackson County Democrats’ headquarters, two books on Hillary Clinton were on display at a small lending library. Next to them was a sign reading, “All Obama books are currently checked out.”

“You won’t see a Clinton sign around here hardly at all,” said Paulie Brading, the county party chair. That’s partly because the campaign’s yard signs arrived only recently, she said.

She said Clinton should find an audience in the more rural part of the county, known for its fruit orchards, wineries and timber heritage. But, she added, in many parts of Medford and Ashland, where there are large numbers of Bay Area transplants, Obama signs are stuck in every third yard.

Regardless of who becomes the nominee, the ongoing primary battle has been a boon to local Democrats, said Brading, the county party chair.

In the 2004 election, Republicans outnumbered Democrats in Jackson County by about 10,000. Now that gap has closed to less than 4,000, Brading said.

“This fervor in both the Obama campaign and Clinton campaign has had remarkable benefits for us.”

Timber Rattler

The Charleston Gazette takes a day off from politics to contemplate the stupidity of a war that the Bush administration seems keen to fight: “In December, the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, assembled by all U.S. intelligence agencies, reported that Iran has no atomic bomb program. Nonetheless, the administration insists that Iranians are developing bombs. Bush and Cheney say Iran is arming Iraqi insurgents. Top military leaders have said there is no evidence to connect the arms to the Iranian government.

[Jay] Rockefeller should call hearings and ask all these questions. Whether or not he gets answers, airing the war threat in the light of day may prevent a disaster.”

Hearing Aid

Beirut’s Daily Star puts the blame for renewed street violence squarely on the inadequate leadership shown by both ruling and opposition parties: “The question is not whether these and other political leaders in Lebanon will ultimately agree on a comprehensive compromise that they can live with. That is as certain as the breeze. The unknown factor is only about how much more suffering, death and political mediocrity all Lebanon must suffer before the politicians actually make the compromises. Their commitment to the discipline of a purposeful and practical national dialogue remains unclear. Both major camps engaged in a fruitless dialogue two years ago, and there are few signs that they would do any better now.

Lebanon is a tortured and vulnerable land with mediocre leaders when it comes to consensus and stable, sensible governance. The two positions outlined Thursday offer a ray of hope. All Lebanese, meanwhile, hope that some responsible adult leaders might step forth now and act on that opening.”

Senior Moment

In the bloody months of November and December 2004 US and British forces drove through Falluja in operation Phantom Fury and laid it waste.

The city, once referred to as the “City of Mosques”, had 200+ pre-battle mosques of which 60 or so were destroyed in the fighting. Perhaps half the homes suffered at least some damage. Of the roughly 50,000 buildings in Fallujah, 7,000-10,000 were estimated to have been destroyed in the offensive and from half to two-thirds of the remaining buildings had notable damage.

While pre-offensive inhabitant figures are unreliable, the nominal population was assumed to have been 200,000–350,000. One report claims that both offensives, Operation Vigilant Resolve and Operation Phantom Fury, created 200,000 internally displaced persons who are still living elsewhere in Iraq. Reports claim that up to 6000 civilians died throughout the operation.

Reports of US forces using white phosphorus, prohibited by Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (1980), were initially denied and eventually claimed to have been only used on combatants.

In case any mistakes were left undone, the time has come to make them.

US forces and Iraqi government forces are laying waste to Sadr City, the vast –2.5 million souls– sprawling slum extending east from Baghdad.

Four hundred Iraqis, reportedly only 10% militia fighters, are estimated to have died in the onslaught on Sadr City alone.

American soldiers are also dying in and around Baghdad in elevated numbers. … In April, of the 51 American deaths in Iraq, more than twenty evidently took place in the ongoing battle for Sadr City or greater Baghdad

The civilians?

For the Iraqis of Sadr City, of course, this is a living hell. (”Sadr City right now is like a city of ghosts,” Abu Haider al-Bahadili, a Mahdi Army fighter told Amit R. Paley of the Washington Post. “It has turned from a city into a field of battle.”) As in all colonial wars, all wars on the peripheries, the “natives” always die in staggeringly higher numbers than the far better armed occupation or expeditionary forces.

This is no less true now, especially since the U.S. military has wheeled in its Abrams tanks, brought out its 200-pound guided rockets, and called in air power in a major way. Planes, helicopters, and Hellfire-missile-armed drones are now all regularly firing into the heavily populated urban neighborhoods of the east Baghdad slum.

Let Tom Englehardt tell you about it.

Entire sections of Baghdad’s embattled Sadr City district have been left nearly abandoned by civilians fleeing a U.S.-led showdown with Shiite militias and seeking aid after facing shortages of food and medicine, humanitarian groups said Wednesday.

Washington Post

No delegate count here, but a quick summary of the last 6 Dem primaries by Taegan Goddard

This is about the most interesting set of posts I’ve read in a long time. Tell me if you don’t think so.

The Obama Party?

dday at Hullabaloo

On Saturday, in over 100 locations across the country, the Obama Vote for Change campaign will roll out with kickoff events all over the country designed to register and mobilize voters. At the event I’ll be attending in South Los Angeles, the goal is to register 2,000 new voters in one afternoon. Multiply that out and you have 200,000 voters registered by one campaign in a single day. And that’s only the beginning. Marc Ambinder has caught on to just how seismic this summer has the potential of being.

The Obama campaign calls its “Vote for Change” voter registration drive a mere voter registration drive. Nothing to see here, folks, except for ordinary people helping ordinary people gain the franchise.

But it’s more than that. The Vote For Change program will lay the foundation for Obama’s general election get-out-the-vote efforts. Obama aides won’t say much more, but I gather that the campaign is constructing an incredibly elaborate online interface to allow its more than a million donors and volunteers to directly persuade their neighbors through a variety of media. Names gathered from the voter registration effort will be merged with names gathered through Obama’s primary efforts and the names off of the Democratic Party’s integrated voter file as well as lists purchased from outside vendors.

On election day, Obama might have more than a million individuals volunteering on his behalf. That should scare the beejeesus out of the McCain campaign and the RNC.

You may have heard that Cindy McCain will never, never, never release her Income Tax Returns.

Maybe the good old boys in the right wing who were so incensed that Teresa Heinz Kerry would only release a two page summary of hers haven’t heard. They hounded Heinz Kerry and husband plain old John until our ears fell off. It was the outrage of all outrages. I’m sure when they get the news about Cindy McCain they will find the the same undying principles once again.

Perrspectives: Bringing Light to Darkness

Obamamania on House Floor

“Sen. Barack Obama was mobbed on the House floor this morning as he hunted for superdelegates to lock up the Democratic nomination. Republicans, Clinton supporters, his own backers and more than a few undecided Democrats received the Illinois senator as if he were already the nominee.

… He headed over to the “Murtha” corner to visit with the Pennsylvania delegation. Sen. Jack Murtha, the dean of delegation, is a Clinton man, but Keystone state buddies Mike Doyle, Paul E. Kanjorski, Jason Altmire and Robert Brady remain uncommitted. Obama yucked it up with all of them, including Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri, another Clinton backer and Murtha friend.

The senator’s escorts included Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Steven Rothman (N.J.), an early defector from a pro-Clinton state, who hovered nearby for the entire 40-minute session, whispering names into Obama’s ear and beaming proudly. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (Calif.), a Clinton supporter, waited her turn to extend a warm handshake. Uncommitted Rep. Bart Stupak (Mich.) got a few minutes of quality schmooze time. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer bowed gallantly and gave Obama a big hug. The Maryland Democrat is neutral — officially at least.

Republicans lined up too: David Dreier (Calif.), Jerry Lewis (Calif.), Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.), and Roscoe Bartlett (Md.). Rep. Judy Biggert, from Obama’s homestate of Illinois, tapped him on the shoulder to say hi….”

Bonior Endorses Obama

Former Michigan Rep. David Bonior, who directed John Edwards’ presidential campaign, endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president Thursday, saying he’s the best candidate to fight for working people….

Clinton Says White Voters Turning Away from Obama

“Hillary Clinton suggested Wednesday that “White Americans” are increasingly turning away from Barack Obama’s candidacy. ”

Clinton rejected the notion her comments were racially divisive in any way….

Al Jazeera is providing regular updates on the escalating violence between Hezbollah and government forces: “Fears that the political conflict in Lebanon could escalate into sectarian conflict were heightened when Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, Lebanon’s Sunni grand mufti, spoke against Hezbollah for the fist time.

“Sunni Muslims in Lebanon have had enough,” Kabbani said in a televised address from his office.

The Sunni spiritual leader referred to Hezbollah as “armed gangs of outlaws that have carried out the ugliest attacks against the citizens and their safety.”

Yellow Alert

Kevin Phillips, once a conservative and now their scourge, writer [American Theocracy; American Dynasty and recently Bad Money] and thinker has a post at HuffingtonPost called “Washington’s Great No Inflation Hoax” If you keep track of your grocery bill, or clothing bill and wonder at the claims of little or no inflation pushed out by the statiticians you might want to read this.

Americans are now beginning to understand that this indicator [CPI - Consumer Price Index] has its own share of gimmicks not unlike a sub-prime mortgage or the six pages of fine print that accompanies your credit card agreement.

… the federal minimalization and misrepresentation of inflation, pursued statistically over the last 25 years, has been the main buttress of Washington’s over-favorable and self-serving portraiture of the U.S. economy.

Distortions aplenty have followed. Some of the most pernicious include the shortchanging of federal pension and Social Security obligations and cost of living increases, a parallel shortchanging of cost-of-living increases in wage contracts tied to the federal CPI, the suppression of equitable interest payments on bank accounts and certificates of deposit…

And of course, it’s not just about you.

…John Williams, who runs an organization called Shadow Statistics, contends that if Washington still used the CPI measurements applied back in the 1970s, inflation would be in the 10 percent range. My own analysis, set out in much more detail in an article in the May issue of Harper’s, comports with that of the cynical foreign investors.

Therein lies the danger. If the current inflation rate is really 6-9 percent instead of the 2-3 percent claimed by government and most U.S. money managers, then Washington’s official estimates that the economy still grew at a rate of some 0.6 percent in the first quarter of 2008 become nonsense. Subtracting a 6-9 percent inflation rate from nominal GDP growth would identify an economy that was deteriorating and shrinking, not growing. Concerned foreign dollar-holders would become even more concerned.

In theory, a vigilant Congress might want to hold hearings, but in practice I suspect not. Democratic presidents (notably Bill Clinton) have been involved in the numbers game along with Republican administrations. Neither party has clean hands. Far more likely that any serious investigation will be mounted clandestinely by central banks or sovereign wealth funds in places like China, Singapore and Saudi Arabia as part of their ongoing study of just how much longer they can continue to support a deteriorating U.S. dollar. It is not a happy prospect.