Is it a blog yet?: How stupid?

How stupid, indeed, do you have to be to believe the bilge the Obama campaign is handing out about their "big victories"?

In a column today in The New York Times titled "As Maine Goes … ?" we find this:

[T]urnout in Maine on Sunday set a record, with more than 45,000 people participating in the Democratic caucus; the previous record was 30,000, set in 1980.

“To blame it on the caucus is silly because turnout was so high,” Ms. Fried [Amy Fried, a political scientist at the University of Maine in Orono] said.

Ahem: in 2004, Maine produced roughly 400,000 votes for John Kerry (exactly 396,842, plus there were 8,069 for Nader). So those 45,000 caucus participants being touted as obviously representative account for scarcely over 11% of actual Democrats who vote in Maine presidential elections (not just registered Democrats). That is a triumphant vindication of the validity of the caucus process? Whatever was Ms. Fried smoking?

Mr. Obama still can't seem to understand why this nation needs to unite behind a universal health-care plan. Perhaps he should ask some doctors, and this would be a good time, inasmuch as physicians nationwide are up in arms over the latest insurance-company vileness:

Doctors across the country seethed with indignation Tuesday over a request by insurance giant Blue Cross to California physicians to report patients' pre-existing health conditions, possibly causing them to lose insurance coverage.

Here's a sample of quotations (in just that article) from physicians about the situation:

"This is outrageous," says Dr. Arthur Feldman, chairman of medicine at Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. "The 'Blues' are sitting on billions of dollars while most cannot afford health insurance and 46 million have no insurance. This will require congressional action."

"This so simply and succinctly exposes what health care 'insurance' in the United States is: a business," says Dr. Joanna Cain, director of the Center for Women's Health at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

Dr. Richard Frankenstein, president of the California Medical Association, said that the letter sent by the insurer asks doctors to "violate the sacred trust of patients to rat them out for medical information that patients would expect their doctors to handle with the utmost secrecy and confidentiality."

"Personally, I believe it is another corrupted concept by insurers," says Dr. Joel Saper, director of the Michigan Head Pain and Neurological Institute in Ann Arbor.

Dr. Sanjeev Saksena, professor of medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, stated that "One of these days our public will realize that not-for-profit payers are needed for health care and finally appreciate what all other Western nations know -- universal health care is needed and cannot be provided by the for-profit sector."

Listening, Mr. Obama?

Some other news notes:

From CNN: The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture. The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce. Just folks like you and me, except different.

From The New York Times: The electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday, effectively suspending executions in the only state that made sole use of the practice. . . . Gee: it's unusual, and it's cruel--does that make it "cruel and unusual"? I guess so.

Are military veterans knee-jerk Republican voters? Apparently not.

From Time: One billion people will die from tobacco-related causes by the end of the century if current consumption trends continue, according to a global report released Thursday by the World Health Organization (WHO). I think Mr. Darwin once coined a phrase that covers the ground.

Scientific American reminds us why we need a president who is not a grandstanding ignoramus about elementary science matters.

Again from The New York Times: Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded. That would be interesting news if it were news, but it's nothing people following this issue haven't known since Day One; but will that stop the parade of idiots and liars who march us "forward" into the age of biofuels?

Finally, if you want to keep an eye on Mr. Obama's roll toward a nomination that the Democratic Party will be ruing for at least a generation, the 2008 Democratic Convention Watch is as good a place as any to look.

Obama is, in essence, Ralph Nader grown to unmanageable size. Each offers the same basic formula: everything and everybody but me is vile and corrupt, we need C-H-A-N-G-E, elect me and we'll all live happily ever after, and never you mind how or why, angels will descend from heaven to fix it all for me because my heart is pure.

Worst of all, Obama, unlike Nader, might get nominated and elected. If you're a Democrat and a masochist--and apparently most Democrats are--you're going to have a really great next few years.

Bye, now.