For those in the Prop 8 doldrums - very interesting development in the fight against AIDS came out in on Nov. 7 - what seems to be a successful gene therapy transplant of AIDS immune bone marrow appears to have cleared a patient of all AIDS symptoms after 600 days.

Oddly enough, the German doctor is not an AIDS specialist, and the treatment was for leukemia, but he took the chance that perhaps a transplant from the 1% of people with an AIDS immune gene would work.

While bone marrow transplants aren’t exactly the simplest procedure to provide, compared to the alternative it’s certainly good news. Here’s hoping it’s not a fluke.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122602394113507555.html

PS - also, a new 50-state strategy for gay rights.

Stomping on my own post since it’s rather unseemly to write multiple Hillary posts - see the original below.

Alright, I hate to break it to you folks, but a 69-year-old woman is not going to be running for President in 2016.

There are so many reasons to make this an absurd longshot - that there would be no other interesting rising stars in the next 8 years, that Hillary will still be seen as having fresh enough ideas, that the Democrats will have successfully weathered the next 8 years to be in top position, that the public won’t be tired of a Democratic Administration already, that her health will hold up for that kind of 2 year campaigning starting at 67, that she’ll still have the needed endurance and enthusiasm at that point.

Hillary could have potentially been a candidate in 2012 had a Republican won. That one is gone, and there’s no way should could run in 2012 without alienating half the party as a conniving traitor, unless Obama turns out to be an unmitigated disaster (which wouldn’t say much for his Clintonite staff, and wouldn’t put Hillary in very good position to face someone like Jindal).

So just give it up. If Americans show reluctance to elect women, they show much much more reluctance to elect old people (especially on the Democratic side), so the combination is simply poison. Save your bets for something more sure, say Earth being hit by a Moon-sized asteroid or the United States being bought by China. And when you’re posting comments about Hillary, just leave that one off the table until the Enquirer verifies Elvis is really coming back. (He’d make a great VP for her, don’t you think?)

But a progression that is interesting and could fit nicely would be a possible future stint at the UN as Secretary-General. I’ve heard Bill advocated for the position before, but it never seemed quite right. But if Hillary pulls off a good job at State, why not? There’s no ridiculous campaigning to do, no big issue with age, would fit her style. And it’d be a first for the world, a precedent that didn’t have to be set at national level. Plus, after the current Secretary-General, we need a bit of excitement.

In any case, you read it here first (unless some bastard thought of it before me). Tell me what you think.

I’m getting the feeling from discussions going round these last 2 weeks is that many people view discrimination towards gays is basically about getting married and the inconvenience of having to stay in the closet.

And if losing your job and profession because you were outed was the only repercussion, I guess I would rank that as less severe than death and slavery. But only as a matter of proportions. Because losing your livelihood, your ability to work, is indeed a form of slavery. The Communists used this all the time - forcing intellectuals into back-breaking menial jobs to grind them down over the years (or simply as a slightly slower way to murder, as the Gulags offered).

And I think many of us know that Oscar Wilde spent a few years in jail for being gay, which had the result of ruining his health and sending him to an early grave. Of course he’s not the only gay to be imprisoned, and arbitrary extra-legal punishments by mob rule have been the norm for millenia. [I had a friend who suprised me by telling me about a gay guy who came onto him, and how he viciously beat the guy up and threw him in a dumpster. I never talked to him again, but I’m still amazed he would brag about such a thing.]

But the origins of the Pink Triangle bring greater shame. Not only did the Nazis round up gays, castrating some and sending others to jails and concentration camps (it’s hard to get the numbers right - only recently did Deutsche Welle up the estimates to 55,000 killed, while other estimates have from 20-40,000 dying at Auschwitz alone). But they were also abused by their fellow campmates, not just their guards. And then after the war they weren’t even eligible for reparations because they were still illegal “sodomites”, some sent back to jail for crimes brought up by the Nazis. Of course other gays had the good sense to flee in front of the Nazi onslaught when from a publicly gay population of over a million (Berlin was a flourishing cultural city of gays and Jews, a la Cabaret), some 100,000 ended up on Gestapo lists.

Just as it also took Gypsies 50 years to get full acceptance as victims of the Nazi holocaust, belated acknowledgement for gays has been slow in coming, and for most people the fate of the gay community in Germany and Poland remains just another unknown historical blind spot.

1) Fairly common in world politics to shuffle your enemies into the foreign sphere to keep them out of the more important domestic sphere. They may not be enemies at this point, but I wouldn’t call them completely rehabilitated trusting friends.

2) I’ve never felt that Hillary would get more power in the Senate from her candidacy, despite obviously a lot of voter support out there. A lot of Senators lined up against her, and I don’t think that will transform into political power come 2009.

3) Obama wants it his own way in the Senate. He’s not going to turn to Hillary over and over to do it “Obama-a-la-Clinton”, so he’ll find someone else to be rubber stamp and enforcer on his take of things. And there’s a good chance that Obama will get his back up more with Hillary’s pushback than others’.

4) Hillary’s a policy wonk and issues-motivated, which is why she wouldn’t make a Supreme Court Justice. Heading out on the world stage she can push her poverty, women’s rights and other initiatives as it segues right into meaningful work she and Bill have always done.

5) Hillary’s got street cred on military issues through her work on Armed Services, knows Gates well, etc. Her roll in smoothing a withdrawal from Iraq could be invaluable.

6) The foreign stage is a good place for a superstar, especially at a time when we need to mend one whole lot of bridges and take on some tough problems. Sending a known face allows us to hit the ground running, “Ready on Day One” so to speak.

Caveat: I don’t know how the Middle East sees her in context with her staunch support for Israel. Bill certainly gave Arafat prime time in his presidency, but the final deal still has a bitter taste as too slanted to the Israelis. But my guess is that everyone will be happy to have some chance of progress after 8 years of treating Muslims like crap.

PS: Too bad Larry Summers got axed from Treasury consideration just because of the Harvard women’s issues flare-up. I always thought he got a bum deal - he was at a Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce Conference trying to address why the lack of female participation might exist, in order to counteract it - in an academic studied fashion. The whole outrage seems way too PC to me, and the students supported him staying 3:1 at the end, and it was almost completely Liberal Arts faculty that had a beef with him (Harvard is more than Liberal Arts). But that people are bringing this up will ineveitably doom him.

Okay, this won't be a surprise to some of the more observant, but to a few who say called me a cunt and suggested my repeated postings on feminist topics were only driven by identity politics and my genital makeup (would that be L'Oreal or only Avon?), this may come as a bit of a surprise.

I'm a man. Not gay or a trannie (though God knows I've tried - I actually look - or looked - quite hot in a good fish-net dress, and have been chased through the streets of New Orleans by frat boys assuming too much from my purple tights - but I digress). Simply heterosexual male. Okay, scratch the "simply" if you like.

It's been odd here at how much I can talk about hockey and thrash music and engage in banter and expressions and topics that I would assume to be decidedly male, but because I champion some female issues, I've been shrouded in gender ambiguity. Well, I've always loved androgyny, from Bowie to Cure to Marilyn Manson, so bring it on, but still it strikes me as peculiar and a little too easy.

And I'm continually amazed by the attitudes I see around me. I wasn't raised among feminists like in the story I'll point to. I didn't have a seriously impressionistic childhood like Quinn. I simply made a few observations and reacted in what I thought was a rational manner. In college I met a very cute petite blond, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Her father had worked in the auto  business in Detroit for umpteen years, and she could strip down and rebuild an engine in about 2 hours. "Now that's clever", I thought to myself, "you don't need a beard or a beer belly to do that job after all". And that was it.

In one of my jobs I noticed all the big decisions were made on smoke breaks, so decided I better learn to smoke or pretend real good. And came to realize there weren't any women on these breaks either. "Funny, I wonder if that's how most companies work?" I thought. Well, not quite - it's also how politics and clubs work too.  And that was it.

I remember a female journalist who was a chatterbox, couldn't stop talking, quite wearing. And then one catastrophe happened, an earthquake, and she was the one who walked up to the police line, slipped under the tape, got into the sites and got the story. And after that I realized she was the one who got to work early and left very late. Even a week after her 2nd childbirth. And then she was fired. Some important guy that no one liked, who did little, and who only caused trouble wanted her slot. And that was it.

So it's rather odd to me that it would be unusual to look at the world and pick out patterns and notice imbalances and unfairness and to comment on it. If I look at the bailout or mortgage crisis, I look at who it affects, note where new black homeowners might be more affected, the poor in another, businesses in another. I put together a montage of impressions. And if that montage starts to show female qualities, would it be normal to lose interest, to dismiss it, to put it away, to say it's just a  "chick thing"? There have been studies of imbalances in schools, where girls were encouraged away from math, for example, and now it looks like the imbalance has swung more to bias against boys, including their energy and less focus. Should one side of the pendulum interest me more than the other?

I watch kids play with toys - some with blocks and cars, some with dolls and paints. Both are chattering away creating a variety of patterns, excited about their play. Should I find one more interesting than the other, or ignore that their choices of play toys differ significantly?

So it's rather odd to me that there's this assumption that a man wouldn't naturally want to identify with female issues, that straights couldn't have a natural interest in gays as people and a culture, that a white couldn't live in a black world without running into any obvious walls or requiring some heavy training to understand "the black experience".

If someone's beating someone in the street, is it normal to say, "oh, it's only a gay, just a gypsy, just a black, just a woman"?

A few weeks ago I mentioned the horrid war in the Congo - brutal, massive, and never-ending, but somehow overshadowed by the smaller (but not unimportant) events in Sudan. I noted the prominence of rape in the ethos there, to which one of my stalkers labelled my attitude, "ONLY WOMEN MATTER". Which I don't think was my specific point, but yes, there are occasions when what is happening to women matters more than what is happening to any other group. If it were happening to an ethnic group, we would call it "genocide" and be horrified. But if it happens to women, we call it "war" and take it in stride. Or at least some of us.

So I thank Zuzu at Shakesville for bringing up a speech by  Stephen Lewis (a Canuck, Quinn, you must have the most sensitive hockey players in the world up there) on the Millenium Goals. Should I say "failure of the Millenium Goals" (thanks, George). In which he mentioned the recent reporting of Eve Ensler - author of "The Vagina Monologues" - on entrenched rape in the Congo and expanded these to the reality of war and other typical behavior everywhere - that it always has a "sexicide" (my term) component, and this kind of inevitable lunacy towards half of the human race just can't continue while expecting significant progress anywhere else. If half the blacks were tortured somewhere, we'd scream bloody murder, if half of Christians were traumatized and marginalized we'd be withholding aid and contemplating invasion, even in Muslim Kosovo when presented with behavior a 10th as despicable we organized bombing raids and a takeover by the UN. But for the women of the Congo to be pawns in a sick game of rape and work slavery we simply pass by as Africa being Africa.

I'll let Stephen speak for a few sentences and then click on through for the rest (scroll down for the transcript).

I live in a feminist family, I love it. I believe to the end of my days that the feminist analysis of the exercise of male power is probably the most insightful analysis to explain much of what is wrong with much of this difficult world. And I must say that the more I've had the privilege of working in the international community, the more I have come to the conclusion that the struggle for gender equality is the single most important struggle on the planet. You cannot continue to marginalize 52% of the world's population and ever expect to achieve a degree of social justice and equity: it's just not possible.

And when you look at the damage that is done to the women, particularly of the developing world, through so many perverse realities whether it's international sexual trafficking or female genital mutilation or child brides or honor killings or an absence of inheritance rights or an absence of property rights or an absence or laws against rape and sexual violence or an absence of microcredit to give women some sense of economic autonomy or a lack of political representation - whatever the panoply of injustice, discrimination and stigma visited on women it seems to have no end, and it so profoundly compromises their existence.

And what has happened through the developing world latterly in many parts and which is so unsettling, unnerving, so profoundly compromising are the patterns of physical and sexual violence. The World Health Organization just did a quite astonishing study. It interviewed twenty-five thousand women in fourteen countries about physical and sexual violence. It found that the lowest levels of violence were in Japan at 14%, and the highest levels were in rural Ethiopia at 71%. And when they looked at the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada they found interim levels of 30-35%. So they saw that this was a pattern so deeply entrenched, whether it's marital rape or sexual violence from intimate partners or domestic abuse, these patterns are overwhelmingly entrenched.......... (transcript + audio).

And while people complain about "Identity Politics", identity politics makes a lot of sense when your identity is being erased and marginalized. Our identity is not just as individuals, but as an aggregate of different profiles we belong to. And if any of those profiles gets wiped out, we lose part of our identity as well. Just like those backwoods of my childhood that I can't go back to, or the bustling Jewish-enabled cultural boom of 1920's Berlin, it's erased from the human experience, from human possibility.

So here's hoping that over the coming years these obvious issues will stop being a chick thing, a black thing, a gay thing, a Muslim thing, a Christian thng, a white thing - and simply start being a human thing.

I wrote this back in February and then forgot all about it. Thought I’d dust off the cobwebs and see if it still applies.

---

My name is Kawali. I’m from a country you’ve never heard of, because no reporters come here. We have a war, but it’s not big enough to make news, and it’s mostly just soldiers who are lazy and drunk and like to come burn villages and steal from us and then it stops for a while. We have politicians who say they’ll end the war and will do something about the diseases and the lack of water and the long walk to the nearest town, but my sister’s sick now and no doctors come because we can’t afford them. My cousin lives in America and he says it will get better next year because all he hears about is saving the world. But last time I heard they were coming to save us they spent a lot of money on people in the big city and some man came here and asked me a lot of questions about our life here, and then I didn’t hear anything more after that, except our cow died, but I don’t think that had anything to do with it.

My name is Baskul, and I live in Europe, but my parents aren’t originally from here. I want to be a doctor, and I used to think I would go to America, but my brother is gay and said it’s too hard to get in (he got sick when I was little but he’s better now), and now I’m afraid they’ll see my skin and hear my name and think something bad about me too. I like American music and want to see my favorite band too, but for now I just watch them on TV.

My name is Ban Chen. I’m in the 9th grade and have a computer. My father has a computer shop near the center of the city, though I don’t get to see him much because he works long hours and the traffic makes it slow to get home from work. I like America, but he says don’t worry about it, that they all think we’re stealing their jobs. I try to find out more, but our internet only has sites inside the country. I’m learning English, but I’m too shy to speak. My uncle was an engineer in San Francisco, and he says it’s a lot like here but not as polluted and crowded. I think I’m smart enough to go to school there, but all my friends want to go there too, and I don’t think they’ll let us all in. My uncle says the schools here are just as good now, so I can stay here, but I would like to travel.

My name is Sergio. I live “south of the border”, but don’t worry, I’m not coming to your door. My father deals in mobile phone networks and call centers and my mother handles accounts for a shipping company. I’m in my second year of college majoring in business. My sister’s husband is from LA, and he says people in the US think we’re all maquiladoras and sweatshop operators here, which is funny for me, because my mom’s company is European and has these huge modern nicely painted ships coming in and out of harbor. I’ll probably do shipping as well but I want to do logistics for one of the US trucking companies here since they have the most money and nicest equipment. My brother-in-law also says Americans think everything is polluted down here, which is funny to him because 20 years ago LA was worse than my city.

My name is Peter. I’m from East Europe and I like to travel, but my brother paid almost $200 for a visa to the US last year and then got turned back at the airport for “insufficient funds”. We have relatives who moved there 40 years ago, but I guess that’s not enough. Now that we’re in the EU, I don’t know why they think we want to stay there - my aunt says they don’t even have health care, where here in one of the poorer countries of Europe everyone’s covered. I’d like to save up to see New York, Nashville and something out west like Montana, but I’ll probably fly to Egypt or Spain instead since it’s so much cheaper.

My name is Supomo. I’m from south Asia. My family used to be quite wealthy as my father worked with the government, but we lost everything when the tsunami hit. Lots of people gave money and things, but it didn’t rebuild the hotel we had near the beach, and now both my parents work, but not for much money. Some people here said its America’s fault, that they didn’t do enough, but I saw on TV that they had a hurricane too that destroyed a city and it never came back. I’d like to visit America but my father says I’m a dreamer. Still, I try to get good grades and hope some day I can.

My name is Oleg, and I’m from Russia. Americans think they beat us in the Cold War, but they only beat the old worn out guys from World War II. Nowadays kids would rather do computers unless they know someone in the government, then they go into business. Lots of money here, everything’s expensive, you have to pass money under the table to get anything done. People think America invaded Iraq to get the oil, but how come we got all the money? Oil’s over $100 a barrel and Putin’s a billionaire. Still, Bush invites him to Texas and people don’t think of us as drunks so much since Yeltsin is gone. My grandfather thinks it was a mistake to get rid of the Soviet Union, but I don’t really care. I’d rather visit Europe than any of the ‘stans. They make me think of old collective farms, and I’d rather hack computers. My friend taught me how to crack videos so we get movies here before they’re even released in Hollywood.

My name is Azita. I live in a slum. It feels nicer than the slums I see from America because it’s sunny here and we have a nice old walled city with light walls, but our water makes us sick and we don’t have sewage. My grandmother says we used to get along with America but now they think we’re “Evil” and all they talk about are nuclear weapons and Israel. I want to go to school but we don’t have the money for it, so instead I have to help in our store but I don’t earn anything for it. My grandmother was from the first generation where girls could go to school, but that’s stopped for now. I hope my children can go to school. I also hear that America doesn’t like our religion as well. I don’t understand that, because there’s one God for everyone, there or here. My mother says they should read more poetry, that it would calm their souls. We used to have the world’s greatest poet, but sometimes it seems no one has time for poetry anymore.

To all of you: Please remember us. You may think of us as an enemy or a friend or nothing, but you mean more to us than we mean to you. Most of what we know about you is from your movies, but at least you have movies about you. They say America votes its pocket book, but some of us have no pockets. And it feels like who you vote for affects us more than you. Many say it doesn’t matter, American life will go on. Out here, the world’s in turmoil. It does matter. Please think twice.

That didn’t take long.

Chris Bowers over at OpenLeft reports on the death of the Fifty State Strategy. Here’s your severance, ciao, later, see ya, thanks for all the fish and fond memories.

For those who don’t recall, 4 years ago all conventional wisdom was how religious and moral a nation we were, how we had red state and blue states and never the twain shall meet, how fringe blue-staters didn’t understand their red brethren (and presumably sestren). But there were a few, like Howard Dean and netroots, who said, “Don’t give up, it’s more about organization than ideology.” And in 2006 they proved right. They pushed states and districts that no one thought we could win in, found good candidates willing to run in potentially futile campaigns, and pushed. With not a lot of money but a whole lot of eagerness and energy. And in some cases they won - “safe” Repubicans got caught with their knickers down, support for the war plummeted, and in general, the renegades were ready for any opportunity. Sure there were some failures, but the whole operation had a snowball effect for next round as well.

And we know what that next round was. Campaign 2008. Not only did the extended Barack-Hillary fight pull out all the stops in those little back alley districts, it segued into the local efforts by all these volunteers and lowly paid organizers. And come November 2008, this 50-state organization turned huge swaths of the electoral map blue. Not just national candidates - Democratic grass roots efforts for all level - making sure we align our message at the local level, make sure we’re not completely out of sync with the dispersed and divergent needs of the populace.

But goodbye to all that. Like when Obama sidelined the 527’s, elections have consequences. And Rahm was no friend of the 50-state strategy. Some are saying Obama’s just replacing them with his own people, but first, they weren’t Dean’s people, they were locals and chosen locally, and second, there’s no transition and no more money. Bang. Game over. We’re back to micro-niche targeting, pandering to the fence-sitters, so we’ll return to our regularly scheduled program of battleground states and ignored states. Can someone pass me the remote control?

(He had a 2nd article on Dean’s resignation and related details here: http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9854 )

And here for your edification is what the local 50-staters were doing in North Carolina long before Obama showed up: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070813/moser - think that might have had any effect on the results a week ago? And what will it look like in 2 & 4 years when we stop funding it, when we stop trying? Hope and a prayer.

I was hanging out over at Billy’s crib having one of my typical wildass prognostications (you know, the really wild shah-man visionary trip like when Bootsy’s Rubber Band gets beamed up by the Mothership and they’re all jammin’ down together), when I realized I had to step back over here for a quick minute to axe a question - like serious shit and all - so if there be any Constitutional Scholars in the house, let me hear you say “yo” - or “aye” - depending on what you’re down with, but like riddle me this, rap stars:

Can Sarah Palin appoint herself Senator? Cause that’d be so thoroughly busted, think about it - more than just Mrs. Deeds goes to Washington - the Godzilla from Wasilla in Chinchilla? Woah, that’d be some stompified noise action there, out in Foggy Bottom eating up cars and shit, cue up “Swamp Thing”.

So check it out and clue me in on the fast tip - I know she does the hoops thing, but that’d be one mean-ass left hook all net - 6 year commute, no time off no good behavior, no weekend visits, wouldn’t wanta be in a cell with her. I hear she likes Blue Dogs the best. So take it to the street, homies, what’s the tip on that? Full court press or flea flicker, is this shit for real? If so we better bring on Gamera but quick, cause she be one bad Mothra fucker.

Okay, people - give it up for the Democrats! Fuck yeah! Time to use the M word, MANDATE, but hard, before the punditocrocacy pushes us down to “M is for Mediocrity”.

Remember the Reagan Revolution? Reagan 1980 won by a margin of 9.7%. Obama won by 6.5%. Not a lot of difference, and I’d easily handicap him 3.2% for being black. (George Bush lost the popular vote by 0.5% the first time, and won by only 2.4% the second.) Want to bicker about electoral votes? I’ll go to the House to assess real voter preference for party.

House Election Map

See at all that blue in the middle? Lower Rockies, Rio Grande, upper plains, middle Southern Cotton Belt? ‘Tweren’t there 4 years ago. Dems have risen from 202 to 255, while Reps have dropped - let’s say sunk like an anchor - from 232 to 177 during that time - a swing of 108 votes. Ain’t that a voter switch, a Mandate? Fuck yeah. Three of every five districts prefers us.

In the House we’re up to 255 seats, a 59.4% to 40.6% margin. The Republicans MAX in the last hundred years was 236 under the “Gingrich Revolution”, and most of the time they were skimming by just over 50%.We haven’t had this many seats since 1980, when we dropped from 277 to 242 with the Carter hangover.

The Senate? We’re at 55 plus 2 independents with 3 seats to be decided. The max the Republicans ever had? 55. And most of the time skinnying along at 49 or so. Give a few weeks, and we should have a blok of 59 to 41. Mandate? Fuck yeah.

Governors? A swing of 7 states in the last 3 years. Come January it’ll be 29 Democrat, 21 Republican. Almost 3 of every 5.

So say it proud: Democrats? Fuck Yeah! Mandate? Fuck Yeah! You bought it - Own it. Peace, outta here.