Phil, I don't think doctors injected anyone with syphilis. They denied treatment to black men who already had syphilis in order to use them as a control group.

IAF Attacks Lebanese Targets; No Injuries Reported
20 Nissan 5768, 25 April 08 03:41by (IsraelNN.com)

Arab media have reported that IDF jets attacked several targets in southern Lebanon Wednesday, including the cities of Nebatiyeh, Tyre and the western Bekaa Valley. Lebanese anti-aircraft positions fired Israeli aircraft, but all IDF servicemen are believed to have returned safely to Israel.

The IDF will not comment on the incident.

Does Phil have kids or any regular exposure to these curiously odd creatures, these "the youth"? I'm guessing: not so much.

The comment by hlmeankin on the other hand represents what I and most educated, "leftist" youth think about Obama, Hillary, and the rest. They are at most figureheads for policies determined by much larger forces, dominantly structured by class. Of course I don't mean that we are a representative sample of anything–most American youth are painfully ignorant of history, politics, economics, monetary theory, thus without the requisite tools to digest a fatty mass media diet.

The masses of young people who are into Obama like he was Jesus, maybe Phil would like to consider himself one of them, are enamored with what they imagine he represents. They like the sound of his discourse, they like his relative youth and (rhetorical) separation from Washington D.C. I do, too.

But I would venture that 99% of them do not know who is funding Obama's campaign, and when asked, would probably reply, "It's all small donors." After all, that is the media line.

I haven't seen that mensch Chris Matthews, who received a first-rate education (Holy Cross & UNC-Chapel Hill), worked in the Congress, and is even considering a run for the Senate in 2010, mention anything about where Obama's real money is coming from. Has he?

I suppose that little detail is hardly as relevant as what Barack's one-time pastor thinks about a country half a world away. But so it goes in 21st century plutocratic America, where as Phil says, his people are the principals.

But Obama's "blackness," carefully cultivated by himself and now by the Washington media, is actually irrelevant to his qualifications for president. Had he been raised in Watts, or Detroit, then yes, his black experience would be noteworthy. However working with, or for, black people, even marrying a black person, having black children, would not make me or anyone else an actual black person, one who had lived the African-American experience continuously since birth. Obama has to an extent chosen his blackness, and it happened after he went to Harvard, and you know what? That's great–but I just don't really care; the man is running for president of the U.S.A., not Stokely Carmichael's old gig.

So as a member of Phil's younger audience, I wonder aloud: will our courageous lobby-slayer ever fix his laser on the audacity of all this hope, or: is there anything audacious about east coast establishment money calling itself "change"?

"In his 20s, Obama fell in love with a white woman but their relationship came apart partly because he took her to a black play in New York, full of anger. The girl said, I can't be black, I can't go into this culture."

*sigh*

Obama's "race speech" was so painfully sincere. Didn't Rev. Wright ever crack jokes in church? They both need to lighten up.

Preachers and politicians provide an endless mine of joke material. Here is one from Zora Neale Hurston's "Every Tongue Got To Confess: Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States." Hurston, a protegé of Columbia U. anthropologist Franz Boas, had both black and white ancestry. In 1927, driving through the Deep South by herself in a tin lizzie with a pistol tucked under the seat, she visited the lumber mills, flophouses and turpentine camps to collect folk tales. I dare you to tell this one, Barack:

In de old days when folks was seeking religion they went to a mourning-ground. There was a big old n****r name Ike used to lead all de mourners to de praying ground.

One right pretty gal wid long legs, she fell under conviction. So Ike didn't lead her, he thowed her crost his shoulder and toted her on down thew de swamp to de praying ground. It was getting on towards night and he wagged on thew de woods singing:

It'll take us all night long, baby
It'll take us all night long –
Drinking de wine

He laid her down when he got there and got down on his knees. He was looking from side to side as hard as he could to see who saw 'im whilst he was easing up her dress.

Another man was out there seeking and he spied old Ike. He hollered at 'im, say: "Whut're you doin there, Ike?"

Ike says: "I ain't doin a damn thing, but you fixin to go off and tell a damn lie."