I have been struggling for almost a year now in the primary season that never ends to decide how to cast my primary vote.   My general election vote has never been in doubt- I will vote, donate and campaign for the candidate who emerges from the selection process.  Frankly, I never believed my vote would matter that much.  In 1960 the West Virginia Primary led to John F. Kennedy's nomination, but we have been late and irrelevant for quite some time.  

So finally, I have decided to vote for Barack Obama in the primary.  My reason for doing so is ultimately his electability.  Hillary Clinton is now unelectable vs. McCain, so I will throw my one vote to Obama, to stave off the landslide for Clinton which will emerge from West Virginia. Obama's failure to convince West Virginia voters is foreshadowing the very real difficulties he will have in winning the presidency. I will discuss the issues which are swaying voters in my State towards Clinton.

For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, used wire transfers to funnel money out of the NRCC and into other political committees he controlled, then shifted the funds into his own personal accounts

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Thats right- our big Democratic Party Scandals concern people who pay their own money for prostitutes, pay them a living wage and then have the good sense to be embarassed about their sexual habits and try and take the business out of town.

Every night like five million other people world wide, I take Vytorin- at least until tonight.  My cholesterol is high and my family history is one of cardiovascular problems.  I control my blood pressure with generic medications (a low dose diuretic and beta blocker, both generic), work on losing weight and blog to reduce some stress.  

Tonight the article published an article indicating that Vytorin has been shown to not reduce plaque formation in arteries, and may even marginally increase the plaque formation.  I am contacting my physician about this and maybe you should too.

Headline Charleston WV
More Coal Miners Developing Black Lung according to a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) expert's testimony to a WV legislative committee.

Today was sort of a down day for me- on "vacation" this week with lots of things to do and no interest in getting anything done.  I turned on Music TV after the news was just too depressing.  Children in Iraq blown up after getting toys from soldiers, people dying in typhoons and the entire rice crop of Bangladesh being destroyed, people dying because they didn't wear seatbelts, houses being foreclosed on- generally bad news.  

M-TV had an astonishing video on.  Absolutely blew me away.  An odd darkhaired bearded man singing in an operatic fashion with children in a game parlor fighting war.  The video had the children acting out the war in Iraq and the images were chilling.  Playing war including a carbomb nad children left dead on the street.  The song was "Empty Walls" from a new release called "Elect the Dead" by Serg Tankian.

November 10 is celebrated around the world as the US Marine Corps Birthday.  On this day in 1775 the Marine Corps was founded in the Tun Tavern Philadelphia when the Second Continental Congress voted to raise two battalions of Marines.  

On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress commissioned Samuel Nicholas to raise two Battalions of Marines.  That very day, Nicholas set up shop in Tun Tavern.  He appointed Robert Mullan, then the proprietor of the tavern, to the job of chief Marine Recruiter -- serving, of course, from his place of business at Tun Tavern.  Prospective recruits flocked to the tavern, lured by (1) cold beer and (2) the opportunity to serve in the new Corps of Marines.  So, yes, the U.S. Marine Corps was indeed born in Tun Tavern.  Needless to say, both the Marine Corps and the tavern thrived during this new relationship.

There have been several diaries on the devastating floods in Mexico in  Tabasco link, link.  mariachi mama and mango on Ask a Kossak, community members in Mexico, have written asking for us to help but warned us to be cautious where to send money.  mango personally collected funds to redistribute in a regional flood in her area recently and many of her diaries were recommended.  This was great, but we can't be sure that this will be as effective in a flood of this magnitude, with a million people displaced.  At that level, you need volunteers AND organizations that know what they are doing.  Over a million people are displaced, 40% children.  Many will have lost everything they own as well as their crops for this year.  

Every now and then an individual comes along who challenges all the paradigms and shifts the way we think about science.  One such individual was Washoe, the chimpanzee, who passed away at 42 on Wednesday October 30.  Washoe was remarkable since she learned over 250 words of sign language, and taught sign language to three other, younger chimps who survive her: Tatu, 31, Loulis, 29, and Dar, 31.

Before Washoe, chimpanzees used to appear on morning TV shows and in circuses in demeaning costumes.  Usually these were young animals, adorable and not as dangerous as a strong adult chimp with canines and incredible musculature.  Washoe was central to a project intiated by Allen and Beatrix Gardener and continued by Roger and Debra Fouts at the University of Central Washington.  

Today Condeleeza Rice announced sanctions against Iran.  

The Washington Post reports:

The Bush administration plans to roll out an unprecedented package of unilateral sanctions against Iran today, including the long-awaited designations of its Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and of the elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism, according to senior administration officials.

The package, scheduled to be announced jointly by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., marks the first time that the United States has tried to isolate or punish another country's military. It is the broadest set of punitive measures imposed on Tehran since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy, the officials said.

Yesterday I was one of 200 people who gathered to walk in memory of friends and family who died by suicide.  Those walking were part of a community walk in my small city called "Out of the Darkness" that was organized by The American Society for Suicide Prevention.   Yesterday’s walk was spearheaded by Rebecca Wells in loving memory of her beloved husband, Greg Wells.  On March 9, 2006, Greg took his life after a private eight year struggle with severe depression. Stay with this diary to the end, to learn about important legislation pending in Congress to provide better Mental Health care and help prevent suicide; and ways you can reduce suicide as a public health problem.  

Lawyers are taught one important rule- never ask a witness a question on the stand unless you already know the answer.  Could this be why the Department of Education has decided to sit this one out instead of having a sample of USA advanced Math and Science students take the 2008 Advanced version of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.  This news is reported in the September 28 2007 edition of the journal Science.

The Washington Post has an article this morning that was bizarrely interesting to me.  General Petraeus has sponsored a 19 year old Princeton ROTC student, Wesley Morgan, to spend his summer embedded in Iraq as a blogger with reporters credentials.  

The good news is that bloggers are now recognized by the military as journalists, especially if they come from the same Ivy League school where Petraeus received his Ph.D. in military history. Mr. Morgan was given the call sign "Harry Potter" presumably so he could be "the boy who lived."  

Our young black men are dying in America in an epidemic of interpersonal violence which has gripped our nation since the 1980s.  The tide has risen and fallen and now is once again on the rise.   On August 9 the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report detailing the toll.  Five days ealier, on August 4th, we were reminded of the risk of being a young black man in America when Terrence Aeriel, Dashon Harvey and Ofemi Hightower were executed in a Newark Schoolyard and Natasha Aeriel survived with a gunshot to her head.

According to the report,

Black Americans accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2005 but were the victims of about 15 percent of all of the nonfatal violent crime and about 49 percent of all homicides.

Bob Herbert has written a powerful essay on violence in America, unfortunately hidden behind the firewall of the New York Times Op Ed page.  If you have a subscription, read it.  If you don't, I am summarizing some of his points.

I have written two diaries about this topic over this weekend: Murder in America Murder in America and Murder in America: Drive-by shootings Murder in America: Drive-by shootings.  Fellow kossack RickWn weighed in the main point of these diaries:

local crime is just as important to a citizen's safety and security as is international terrorism

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I am concerned about the rising tide of violence in America.  Yesterday I wrote a diary I titled Murder in America.  In this diary I analyzed the presidential candidates positions on crime and drugs.  I was shocked at how few candidates offer positions and real responses to these problems.  I doing the research for that diary, I came across an interesting study on drive-By shootings published by the Violence Policy Center.  

One commenter responded with a very succinct rephrasing of this diary:

Local crime is just as important to a citizen's safety and security as is international terrorism.

Does America really still believe the Republicans will keep us safer?  

There have been two terrible triple homicides in America in the last month with one severely injured victim surviving in each case.  The first was the brutal home invasion of the Petit family in Cheshire Connecticut.  From all reports, this was a horrific crime perpetrated upon a wonderful family.  Dr. Petit was a renowned endocrinologist and his wife was a nurse.  They had two lovely daughters, the oldest set to attend Brown in the fall.  They were attacked by a 26 year old and 40 year old criminals living in a half-way house.  Both used drugs and had committed numerous crimes.  Both were white.  The community is rising up, asking why these men were granted parole with their records.  The state says it was because the parole board didn’t have the sentencing information (required by statute) because they didn’t have the budget for photocopying.

Well, now I really am afraid for when Snow Country decides to escape to WV on Friday for a biology trek down the Ohio River.  She is on some sort of watch list as an ecoterrorist (which she isn’t!) because she flew while wearing a Peace on Earth T-shirt.  She tries to get to the airport two hours early in case she is needed to sit in a room with her pants off link.

But now there is a watch out for terrorists doing “dry runs” to test whether the TSA are alert enough to catch bombs. There is a leaked bulletin described on CNN that is very scary- if you are from a dairy state.  The bulletin is titled "Incidents at U.S. Airports May Suggest Possible Pre-Attack Probing."   Is this the latest effort to scare us, or should we pay a little more attention to what is going on when we travel.  Join me for a discussion of the latest in TSA below the fold, with a funny poll on taking the wrong stuff on the airlines and its consequences.

I despise guns.  This attitude is sometimes mistaken for ignorance by gun lovers.  So be it. This is not a call-out diary- just another perspective.

Sunday July 15, 2007 column in The New York Times by Bob Herbert- unlinkable since it is behind their firewall.  An excerpt is below the fold: