Hillary, Maureen Dowd, Glenn Beck -- and DIME bombs

As you know, I have problems with Hillary Clinton -- at least in her current incarnation.

In fact, fellow blogger Riverdaughter recently castigated me as a "subtle" sexist because I won't blind myself to the Hillary's latter-day segue toward neoconservatism and free market fundamentalism. Apparently, one must not sully an emotionally satisfying narrative with a discussion of mere policy. In a show of sisterly solidarity against the Penismonster battalions (which apparently include yours truly), another of RD's commenters decided to publish the entire lyrics to I Am Woman.

Despite this recitation of the Gospel According to Helen Reddy, I still cannot ignore Hillary's rightward lurch. Nevertheless, another female writer has reminded me of the virtues of House Clinton. That writer, of course, is Maureen Dowd.

When MoDo attacks someone, my sympathies always go to her target. If she were to speak against Charles Manson, my automatic response would be to list his good qualities (presuming I could think of any). 

MoDo's main target is actually Chelsea Clinton, whom she attacks for...well, for being a Clinton. MoDo congratulates herself and her fellow pundits for not going after Chelsea when she was a kid. All very civilized. Of course, now that the girl is a woman, one may toss hatchets at her freely.

So it’s strange to see her acting out in a sense now, joining her parents in cashing in to help feed the rapacious, gaping maw of Clinton Inc.

With her 1 percenter mother under fire for disingenuously calling herself “dead broke” when she left the White House, why would Chelsea want to open herself up to criticism that she is gobbling whopping paychecks not commensurate with her skills, experience or role in life?

First, that "dead broke" remark was quite accurate; the Clintons were in debt due to legal bills over Whitewater. Remember Whitewater? It was a steaming vat of bullshit whose bullshittiness was apparent to everyone except nitwits like MoDo.

Second, to describe what MoDo has done here, we need a new word -- one that combines the concepts of irony and hypocrisy. (Hypocrony? Irocrisy?) "Whopping paychecks not commensurate with her skills, experience or role in life"? Why, those exact words could serve as Maureen Dowd's epitaph, or perhaps as the subtitle to her autobiography.

Dowd gets paid to speak too. Although MoDo probably doesn't fetch the price that Chelsea gets, that's a matter decided by the free market, the workings of which have never bothered MoDo before. (I'm always amused by right-wing writers who turn Marxist when they contemplate the earnings of the Clintons or Al Gore or Michael Moore.) Question: If MoDo were to be offered a Clintonian-sized speaker's fee, would she donate the proceeds to charity?

Let me mention Riverdaughter again. Years ago, I used to hector her to write a book, because it bugged me that such a gifted writer would work for free while lesser talents got paid well for their scribblings. The "lesser talent" that came first to my mind was none other than Maureen Dowd.

Remember, MoDo is the same woman who once said that "Al Gore is so feminized that he's practically lactating." She also berated John Edwards for being insufficiently masculine -- a bizarre claim, given what we now know about him. If MoDo did not have female genitalia, everyone would see her as the most unsubtle sexist operating in the mainstream media.

Refugee Children. I've had recent disagreements with another blogger I came to respect deeply during the 2008 campaign. Dakinikat runs a (mostly) great site which she has sullied by publishing a lot of ignorant crap about Ed Snowden and the NSA scandal. Today, however, she published a superb compendium of information about the crisis of Central American refugee children in this country.

I didn't know that Glenn Beck, of all people, has shown surprising humanity on this issue:

Glenn Beck says he has come under fierce attack from some of his fellow conservatives for a grave transgression.

His crime? He announced plans to bring food, water, teddy bears and soccer balls to at least some of the tens of thousands of Central American children who have crossed the border into the United States.

“Through no fault of their own, they are caught in political crossfire,” Beck said. “Anyone, left or right, seeking political gain at the expense of these desperate, vulnerable, poor and suffering people are reprehensible.”

Beck, not averse to a certain grandiosity, let us know that “I’ve never taken a position more deadly to my career than this.” But assume he’s right — and he may well be. It’s one more sign of how the crisis at our border has brought out the very worst in our political system and a degree of plain nastiness that we should not be proud of as a nation.

I will be damned. Glenn freakin' Beck.

Welcome back to the real world, buddy! You were saying some mighty strange things when you were having those fever dreams...

Maybe there's hope for other denizens of the conspiratard subculture. Maybe they can get their noses out of the collected works of Cleon Skousen long enough to see the actual problems of this bleeding world.

DIME. The atrocities in Gaza will be discussed at greater length soon, but right now, let's look at the latest weapon in the Israeli arsenal (and the US aresenal): DIME bombs. DIME stands for Dense Inert Metal Explosives. Basically, it's a kind of chemical weapon.

Remember how, not long ago, we were all supposed to be outraged at Bashar al-Assad for his supposed use of chemical weapons?

The above link goes to a 2006 report by James Brooks regrding a previous attack on Gaza.

DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated “micro-shrapnel” of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic).[6-13] It is unfortunate that the US media have virtually blacked out the story of Israel’s new weapon, not least because our own military may soon be using it in Iraq and Afghanistan. The story might also have told us something about the grossly disproportionate brutality of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people—reason enough for the media to suppress it.

“There were usually entry and exit wounds,” Dr. Al-Saqqa reported. “When the wounds were explored no foreign material was found. There was tissue death, the extent of which was difficult to determine. A higher deep infection rate resulted with subsequent amputation. In spite of amputation there was a higher mortality.” The effects of the weapon seemed “radioactive”. [16][17]

According to Palestine News Network, Dr. Al-Saqqa “confirmed that there were dozens of wounded legs and arms. Many of them had been burned from the inside, and distorted to the point that they cannot return to life again.” [18]

“When the shrapnel hit[s] the body, it causes very strong burns that destroy the tissues
around the bones…it burns and destroys internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, and the spleen and other organs and makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon.”

These cancer-inducing chemical weapons are being used again in the latest attacks:

Dr. Erik Fosse told Press TV that the majority of patients hospitalized in Gaza are civilians injured in attacks on their homes and about thirty percent of them are children.

Dense Inert Metal Explosive, known as DIME, is an explosive device developed to minimize collateral damage in warfare.

Experts say it has a relatively small but effective blast radius and is believed to have strong biological effects on those who are hit by the bomb’s micro-shrapnel.

Fosse, a department head at a university hospital in Oslo, also says some Palestinian in the besieged enclave have been wounded by a new type of weapon that even doctors with previous experience in war zones do not recognize.

Israel also used depleted-uranium and white phosphorus shells in the besieged region during their previous assaults.