Actually, I consider myself a "Peak Boomer" (born 1957). The cecilbeanie handle comes from high school years. My name is Cecilia but the guys started calling me Cecil. I have a sister who was in h.s. with me and they called her Beanie. Hence, cecilbeanie. I remember that Cecil was a sea serpent but not the seasick part - but that makes sense because it is a great alliteration. Ironically, I don't get seasick. Even more ironic is that St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music - my singing sounds like the mewling of 100s of feral cats!

Anyway. I believe you are correct and Obama apprarently took the Clinton campaign at its word. So, as promised, I withdraw the photo flap as evidence of covert use of racism by the Clinton campaign. But I don't agree with your take on the photo release.

It would be risky for the Obama camp to release the photo to make Hillary look bad (i.e., paint her as someone who's willing to stir-up anti-Muslim sentiment to win). The folks were the most angry about the photo were already Obama supporters. Maybe it pulled in some undecideds who were offended by the Muslim=Bad, Barack=Muslim, Barack=Bad equation. But it could just as easily lose him votes because there are folks out there who may be uneasy about voting for Barack Hussein Obama and the photo just might have reinforced that unease.

I agree the photo made him look funny not scary (shades of Dukakis in the tank). But I do not think that embarassing Obama by releasing a photo where he looks silly was what whoever released the photo intended. No, it was to remind voters that he just might be a Muslim.

P.S. Hillary's latest TV ad should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that she is willing to use fear-mongering to win. When Hillary said that she was the better candidate to take on the Republicans maybe she misspoke maybe she meant to say that she was the candidate who would make herself most like the Republicans. Is this the real reason Karl Rove left the White House? This looks like his handi-work.

Just read your post - magnificent!! Thank you.

Your comments are spot on and I am including them in this post for those who might have missed them:

"The real problem with Hillary Clinton, the reason she can only occasionally "find her voice", is her utter lack of authenticity. As a rather vivid demonstration of this, I saw that yesterday, she suddenly began dropping her r's, noticeably talking down to her largely blue collar audience. Suddenly, our Wellesley and Yale educated candidate began to speak of Obama "runnin' " on such and such a platform and "toutin' " his policies. I was truly embarassed for her, this foray into the vernacular as awkward a spectacle as President Bush attempting an African tribal dance."

"Why seize on these seemingly unimportant moments? Because they're revelatory of a deep-seeded problem of integrity, the same issue that led her to vote to authorize war in Iraq so as not to appear weak (keeping in mind that she would, in the near future, be running for President); the same personal flaw that was revealed even earlier, in fact, when she suddenly appeared in New York with a Yankees cap and announced that she would be making a bid for the senate, that she had a Jewish grandparent, and so on."

Your post reminded me of a discussion with a woman I met in mid-January at an Obama fundraiser in D.C. She had been a Hillary supporter until shortly before this event. I asked her why she'd changed her mind. She said, "I read her book." It is telling that Hillary's true character (or lack thereof) came through even in a book designed to flatter and promote her!

This goes to Hillary's experience, judgment and leadership. Hillary claims that she should be President because of her "experience" including her 8 years in the White House where she claims was more "co-President" than First Lady.

Let me say up front that I am in no way blaming the Clinton administration for 9/11 - we all know there is plenty of blame to go around. The news in August 1998 was all-Monica, all the time. But something else much more important and more tragic happened that summer - our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by al Qaeda. That August Bill Clinton ordered air strikes on a target in Afghanistan (intelligence indicated that Osama bin Laden was there) and a factory in the Sudan (intelligence indiated that the factory was a biological weapons lab). The strike in Afghanistan failed. The strike in the Sudan was successful in that it severely damaged the facility but I can't remember if the biological weapons intelligence was confirmed. [All this can be googled.] Well, the Clinton haters began screaming that he was "wagging the dog" and that the whole thing was calculated to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In the face of all that screaming what did Clinton do - he backed down. He did not pursue al Qaeda any further. Clinton valued his political hide far more than he did protecting the U.S. and the world (cf. Rwanda and Somalia). This is cowardly. And if, as her claims to the co-Presidency might lead one to believe, Hillary was involved in the decision to back off from any further action against al Qaeda, well, paint her with the same brush. I know that I said I did not blame the Clinton administration but one can't help but wonder about what might have been if... .