Friday, January 4, 2008
Heh
Will all the media people who swooned over McCain saying that negative ads don’t work last night notice that he’s… running a negative ad.
Kickin him when he’s down, how rude!
I’ll bet John thought Huckabee would lose like all the rest of the conventional whizdumbs.
It Ain’t Over Yet
A Fascinating Dynamic in New Hampshire
My guess at this point is that the controversy surrounding Huckabee will distract the independents and republicans who, in other circumstances, might have crossed party lines to vote for Obama. With Obama having to rely on a more traditional Democratic voter turnout, he may not sustain the momentum he picked up in Iowa. Let’s also not forget that the media, ever eager to crown a new messiah, will now turn on their messiah (Obama) and work on tearing him down. That’s what they do.
Just a reminder that Iowa wasn’t unanimous by any stretch, and there are serious qualms about Obama that will need to be addressed by his campaign as well. I didn’t hear him resign from the DLC last night, did you?
Obama need Iowa, too. If Clinton holds her ground in New Hampshire, her 19-point national lead could start to kick in, and Iowa could become old news very quickly.
I put this here to save on electrons.
SuCon This
And the Young Earth crowd thinks they have the GOP by the balls:
As the only Huck-supporting Redstate contributor, I thought it would be appropriate for me to offer a few thoughts on tonight’s victory.
First, Governor Huckabee’s win in Iowa sends a message to the GOP establishment that SoCons are not going to sit back and allow the party to be hijacked by those who don’t have our interests at heart. We are still the heart and soul of the party, and we’re not going anywhere. If you want the nomination, you’re going to have to deal with us and our concerns (i.e., “Culture of Life” issues).
Mr. Cole has a very interesting response to the Red State post, which I didn’t link because, you know, I’m an asshole.
Math
But by my calculations, 29% of 220,000 (Hillary’s results) is significantly more than 34% of 120,000 (Huck’s results), right? If my math is correct, we just elected three Presidents to one for the Republicans.
Arithmetic
The clock ticks for Iraq’s time bomb
It is unknown if Maliki was following, while in London, the numerous reports that came out regarding the 2007 death toll in Iraq. The highly reliable Iraqi Body Count said 24,000 civilians were killed. The Associated Press put the number at 18,610. Maliki’s own Ministry of Interior revealed 16,232 civilian deaths, 432 soldiers and 1,300 policemen. In 2006, the numbers had been 12,371 civilian deaths, 603 soldiers and 1,224 policemen.
Even by the AP’s figures things have been going down hill for Iraqis, whom the War Party is liberating from taxes and other earthly burdens.
It’s the Issues, Man
Let us take likely Democratic Primary voters in New Hampshire. As of mid-December, this is what Rasmussen found:
Eighty percent (80%) of Likely Democratic Primary Voters in New Hampshire say that Health Care is a Very Important voting issue. Seventy-five percent (75%) say the same about the economy, 71% attach the same importance to Government Ethics and Corruptions, and 70% say Iraq is a Very Important voting issue.
Pat Lang’s piece comes to mind when this all considered together, but I’m not to sure that the Village People are aware that it applies to them too.
Iraq, for all the rah-rahhing of the talking heads and Village People, is still a quagmire. The United States cannot “win” if the Iraqi government doesn’t do what needs to be done, they aren’t, and there isn’t anything anyone here in the US can do about it either. Whether you believe the “I’m more patriotic than you” flag wavers or the pragmatic analysis of the surges success and reasons thereof, the US is bogged down in Iraq. Simple as that.
The recession will be a hard landing, it is going to exacerbate the class anger not alleviate it. Those who are already struggling to make ends meet will be pushed further out towards the margin, and when they become ill or are hurt the emergency rooms will fill up with people who cannot afford medical care.
“When money talks, bullshit walks,” may take on a very new, and unwanted connotation this year for the Beltway boys.
Updated for links.
Crash and Burn
The combination of the worst housing recession ever getting worse, a severe liquidity and credit crunch being worse now than in August, oil close to $100, capex spending by the corporate sector falling for four months nows, commercial real estate being in serious trouble, the labor market beginning its slack (as initial claims and continuing claims are surging), and a shopped-out, saving-less and debt-burdened consumer having stopped its shopping spree this holiday season will all lead to a severe – rather than mild – recession in 2008.
Local being your wallet.
Mordor Still Smolders
U.S. Curtailing Bids to Expand Medicaid Rolls
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is imposing restrictions on the ability of states to expand eligibility for Medicaid, in an effort to prevent them from offering coverage to families of modest incomes who, the administration argues, may have access to private health insurance.
The restrictions mirror those the administration placed on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program in August after states tried to broaden eligibility for it as well.
Keep it up George, your like the undertow of a building wave.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
The Torch Is Passed
Other than disagreeing with this statement, “This is a very crude outline of what I believe is a coming generational conflict.”, I think this and this are about as accurate a summation as we will find tonight, and hopefully it will hold true in November as well.
On the other hand the populist message of Huckabee is also going to resonate with the younger people of Generation X and Y.
I say both things with some confidence because Huckabee’s, and more profoundly so with Obama’s, they resonate with me as well.
Perhaps with the passing of the darkness of the witches America is burying some warlocks too.
Thank You Iowa, See Ya in 2012
This really has been one of the most interesting and intense elections in a long time, for me anyway. Pretty cool.
Obama
Dramatic! Dramatic! I tell ya!
http://EZSmirkzz1_files/LBG4vxi9mtkrel0color10xd6d6d6color20xf0f0f0border0.swf
Pulling away is he.
Huckabee
Shocked! Shocked! I tell ya!
Given the endorsements of Romney in New England, he’s history.
http://EZSmirkzz1_files/jkYSDYDc8mErel0color10xd6d6d6color20xf0f0f0border0.swf
Thus endeth the Republican commentary.
The Power of Lucy’s Tree
Hillary and the mean kids on the bus
This was alluded to in the update below,
Identically, Digby recently cited a Bob Somerby post from several years ago, wherein Somerby quoted Time’s Margaret Carlson’s fond recollection that Bush, during the 2000 race, “bond[ed] with the goof-off in all of us” on the campaign plane. Carlson added that, for reporters, “a campaign is as close as an adult can get to duplicating college life.”
Reading the article, working class stiffs like myself have to wonder which is worse, the political process or the process of covering politics. Blogging is basically a reactive endeavor, I read books, magazines and newspapers, and lately, for a geezer like myself, the blogs, which can run the gamut from freewheeling like mine to serious scholars doing serious work and sharing it for free with the internet community. But for me it is reactive.
That doesn’t mean that the media isn’t feeding off of the blogs, because people like I basically do what the CIA does, gather information from hundreds of sources and then distill it into post of varying degrees of coherence and the media merely has to use someone else phone or computer to verify what is posted to turn it into a breaking story. Ultimately it just another web or network for obtaining information, which is the business they are in. A lot of it is really pretty ugly, (and I know you know what I mean,) including hacks and all that spook crap that everyone denies is going on, but I figure you have to go with the perverts that know you not the ones you want, so why whine?
The point to all of this is to remind, I suppose, one and all that the coin of the realm in the information age is information, and with so many folks turning info into cash one cannot really expect people in the press to not pursue both with the same vigour as their fellow citizens, cannot expect them to have better morals, greater levels of maturity, or any other superior or inferior ethics in their professional and daily lives than the people and culture they spring from and cover. I don’t think it is being realistic to expect them to be more moral, ethical, or mature than priests and pastors and the guy selling crack.
We can and should expect it from those who seek public office, and we have come to rely on these very human and fallible people to keep them so, a level of accountability which meets with the level of success that these people have obtained to as individuals. As these traits gain and loose in importance to individuals within the media, so goes the media, and the political system. Without our current media, we wouldn’t have George W Bush, and without George W. Bush we wouldn’t have the same media.
With the continuing breakdown of societal norms the inclination is usually, if not always, to blame someone else. The problem with power remains, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, because it is almost impossible not to use whatever power one has to advance ones own personal agenda and those agendas have no morality or ethics as they spring from a different level of being, and so there is the human development of individuals at play within a group, which usually sinks to the lowest common denominator of acceptable behavior as defined by that group. I don’t think there is any external pressure, short of the legal system, that can exert any pressure on these autonomous groups.
In the end we are dealing with herd mentalities that have scarcely evolved beyond those of the veld, even as the tools used by any particular herd have become more sophisticated and subtle. We humans may have evolved physically from Lucy days, but mentally and societally we are are not too far from Lucy’s trees and behaviors.
Note to CNN
“Countdown To Caucuses”
Could someone tell CNN that while the Republican caucuses are indeed 1:35 from now, the Democratic caucuses start in 65 minutes?
-Atrios 18:23
Updated for blockquote.
Tweety!
What a dumb ass. No wonder McCain’s dog never sniffs his butt.
Update: Maybe the arrogant, elitists are on the bus?
Rocky Mountain Oyster Time
Yeah, yeah, I can deal with any of the Democratic candidates, and come the general election, and barring Ron Paul paying me huge sums of money to be quiet if he wins the Republican nomination, I’ll be supporting the Democratic ticket. That’s the yada yada. If I were a citizen of Iowa I would go stand up for Edwards.
The caucus has one feature that I really like in making people stand up for the person they support in party gatherings. The more cerebral pundits and bloggers seem to forget that caucuses are internal party elections. On the other hand Iowans are entitled to select their delegates the way they see fit and it really isn’t anyone else in the country’s business. Don’t like it? Move to Iowa and change it. If I lived there I wouldn’t just hand off the bumber crop of corn from the media because people in New York and California didn’t like it.
Independents and Bipartisanship
Since some of the big dogs have weighed in, why not?
The Village People are the parade masters, and after the Democratic and Republican partisans have said their piece, then the Village People uncork the horses for Lou Dobbs.
Feed Your Head
Being slightly partisan myself, and less than impressed by the Waw on Terra than most, this is my favorite graff which shouldn’t be construed as a reason for you not to read the article and the links provided there, unless of course you prefer being ignorant and uninformed.
Pakistan’s Power Puzzle (With Corrections from Comments)
But what recent events demonstrate even more clearly is that the Bush administration’s policy of relying on a personal relationship with a megalomaniac manipulator like Musharraf to fight al-Qaida has strengthened that organization immeasurably and perhaps fatally damaged the U.S.’s ability to form the coalition it needs to isolate and destroy that organization.
Barnett Rubin’s most recent posting on Pakistan’s crisis and Bush administration policy is a college education all on its own. Read, and grow learned. It is also a sensitive and searching deconstruction of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terrorism’ rhetoric and its practical meaning for Pakistani and Afghan politics. And it is written by one of the world’s great experts on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who actually knows Afghanistan and Pakistan intimately.
Updated with edits!
US diplomats refused to accept that the deal was dead or that Musharraf may have double-crossed them. US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte traveled to Islamabad in late November, urging Bhutto to continue collaboration with Musharraf, insisting that the general was sincere about the deal. In a private conversation I had with Bhutto three weeks before her death, she made it clear that she trusted neither the military regime nor Musharraf, that evidence of rigging was everywhere. But the US applied immense pressure, with Negroponte ringing her frequently.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Lantos Signs Out
I just got a note in my inbox with a full press release from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos. Chairman Lantos is apparently battling cancer of the esophagus and will retire at the end of his term. For his years of service, his dedication to human rights and his thoughtful approach to foreign policy, Chairman Lantos deserves our gratitude and best wishes.
Agreed.
I thought I should add, that as with many of our politicians, we should praise the good that they do, and for whatever reason they have selected to do so, do our best to undo the bad. In the end, Rep. Lantos is a friend of the people, with whom I disagree from time to time.
From the Left — The Case For Ron Paul
The Left and Ron Paul By JEFF TAYLOR
You asked for a treatise to explain my support for the “lunatic” Ron Paul. Since you asked, I’ll send you some thoughts.
Why should Americans left-of-center–with commitments to peace, justice, and democracy–see Congressman Paul as a real option rather than as a right-wing wacko? That’s the question. Several years ago, I was hoping that Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) would run for president in 2008. He’s a principled statesman with a consistent record of opposition to war and empire, and support for democracy and civil liberties. He also has the potential to reach beyond his base of liberal Democrats to conservatives and libertarians with his stance on government frugality and bureaucratic waste. So, I was excited about a Feingold candidacy until he bowed out of the race.
Worth the read, IMHO, because it does raise the question of whom, ultimately, is the better democrat.
Song Sung Blue
We’re hearing this morning that as his campaign tanks, Rudy’s today falling back for the last Hail Mary pass, announcing a new plan to basically go to war with everyone, in order to salvage his flailing campaign. And that means it’s important to game out the full implications of Rudy’s now probable, eventual ignominious withdrawal from the race.
http://EZSmirkzz1_files/0Ag8J2NMYmcrel0color10xd6d6d6color20xf0f0f0border0.swf
Kudos to Congress
Bush signs the Open Government Act in semi-secrecy
George Bush has signed into law S. 2488, a bill that strengthens the Freedom of Information Act. There are a lot of signs that Bush did not much like this Open Government Act, so it’s significant that he didn’t veto it.
What are the signs of Bush’s displeasure? For one thing, the WH published a description of the new law that is terse and, rather glaringly, excludes most of its more important provisions. You’ll find these spelled out in some detail in the CRS summary of the bill.
If this Congress doesn’t do anything else…
Dooing The Lord’s Werk
DES MOINES _ Mike Huckabee held a little event here on Tuesday to thank the roughly 700 bloggers who, he said, were responsible for keeping his campaign alive. Because he had no money and initially got very little media attention, he said, he could not have kept going without their dedication.
Huckabee Commends Bloggers Supporting Him: ‘You’re Doing The Lord’s Work
Calling them his “secret weapon,” Huckabee urged the bloggers to “clog” up the wireless system in Des Moines so that reporters couldn’t file any more “bad” stories about him. He added that by blocking the free press from doing their jobs, bloggers were “doing the Lord’s work”:
The ball is in Maroni’s court.
Is anyone else noticing that the two Republican’t front runners are, how do you say, lunatics?
Updated for the link.
Updated Yet Again: According to national polls Sain’t McCain is a front runner and CNN reports that Goober Loserman is campaigning for him in New Hampshire. (This will be fun.)
More Gratuitous Brit Baiting
US colon cancer risk blamed on English couple
US researchers have identified a married couple who sailed from England to the US in around 1630 as the bearers of a genetic mutation which puts their numerous descendants at higher risk of a hereditary form of colon cancer.
Reuters explains that cancer researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Utah began to look into a local “family”, currently numbering about 5,000 people, “because its members had an unusually high risk of colon cancer”. Over 14 years they scoured detailed Mormon church records, in the process identifying another group in New York at similar risk. The genetic trail from both eventually led back to the British pair.
More from those pesky Mormons.
If 911 Only Had Tits
9/11 Commission: Our investigation was “obstructed”
The bi-partisan co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, jointly published an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times which contains some extremely emphatic and serious accusations against the CIA and the White House. The essence:
[T]he recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.
More strikingly still, they explicitly include the White House at the top of their list of guilty parties:
There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.
Why Oh Why Can’t We Have A Decent Press?
Stocking Stuffer Blues
2007: Cash Outperformed the Stock Market
The broad index of the US stock market, the S&P500, ended the year up a mediocre 3.5%: that is less than the inflation rate for the year (that was above 4%) and that is less than holding a money market fund or a basket of short-term US Treasuries.
And the year ended with a slew of poor macro news with more to come: new home sales plunged while the marginal increase on existing home sales was associated with falling prices of home (a direct signal that homes sales are going up only because the increased excess supply of homes is driving prices lower); defaults on insured mortgages were up a whopping 35%.
Also a report suggested that Q4 earnings will be very poor. Indeed as reported by Reuters:
So taking inflation into account the stock market is still not where it was before the dot com bust. Good job! George!, Allen!
Intelligence For Flatheads
You know, I’ll admit that despite the fact that I think “getting out” is the right approach I don’t personally have some comprehensive foolproof plan to do so. On the other hand, I have no idea why almost 5 years later the most important mission in Iraq appears to involve remedial education.
Because of the greatly improved situation in the counterinsurgency war in Iraq there will be a terrible temptation to think that Iraqis have now accepted a long term American military presence in their country. That would be a mistake.
I find it interesting that the same opinion can be held by so many different people from different places on the American political spectrum, excepting of course those who have staked their reputations and America’s on democratizing the world. Sadly, those flatheads have crapped in their own mess kits and the objective has been set back by decades, if not centuries.
Update: Presidential Debates Don’t Reflect American Views on Iraq by Tom Gallagher
According to the latest Rasmussen Reports poll, 25% of Americans favor immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. Yet, according to a study by NBC News political director Chuck Todd, the candidates advocating immediate withdrawal, Democrats Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich and Republican Ron Paul, have received 11% (167 minutes out of 1,460) of the speaking time on the eleven Democratic and ten Republican nationally televised debates. Rasmussen also found that another 38% of the country say they want all troops home within a year. However, the chart accompanying Todd’s December 28, New York Times opinion piece indicates that when the time allotted Democrat Bill Richardson, a candidate who advocates one-year withdrawal, is added to that of the above three candidates, a grand total of 19% of the network time has gone to candidates supporting positions held by 63% of the country.
And this mismatch is nothing new, by the way. Rasmussen has been conducting weekly polls in partnership with Fox Television Stations since August, and each one has found support for immediate withdrawal somewhere between 20% to 30% and total backing for withdrawal within a year ranging from 57 to 64%.
Of course the flatheads know if you stop breaking windows you can’t sell plate glass, and since the flatheads are heavily invested in sand…
As Kenya Dies
Kenya may not be on everyone’s radar, but it is symptomatic of the former British Empire’s colonies which America is meddling in. Perhaps Florida 2000 isn’t the message we should have sent to the world.
That my friends is just how stupid the neocon philo sophistry is.
Update: Bhutto’s Murder” Richard Sale
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Iraq in a Sack
The Army’s Other Crisis Why the best and brightest young officers are leaving By Andrew Tilghman
There isn’t any one thing to clipout of the article to entice you over to the link. It’s just one of those must reads. This is for those who support the institutions of the US military, and for those who are more inclined to supporting the personnel, in short, for those who are Democrats and those who are Republicans.
via OpenLeft via Teacherken, over at DKos via the left blogosphere at work.
Ron Paul – The Real Problem
“Alan Greenspan’s Continuing Legacy”
Robert Reich discusses the constraints that Alan Greenspan placed on our ability to address domestic problems and help the middle and lower classes improve their standard of living:
2008 and Beyond: Alan Greenspan’s Continuing Legacy, by Robert Reich: Alan Greenspan’s … libertarianism [is] based on his early interest in the philosopher and social critic, Ayn Rand. …
Greenspan’s worst legacy sprang from …[this] source. Ayn Rand had made virtues out of individualism and enlightened self-interest and was deeply suspicious of all collective effort. Greenspan grew to share Rand’s views. In particular, he was sceptical about efforts to help the less fortunate. “What attracted me to Reagan”, he explains, “was the clarity of his conservatism which was to say that tough love is good for the individual and good for society.” This “implies much less government support for the downtrodden”.
For those of you who think the war is the only issue, you’d better look again. More of this is what we’ll get.
Edwards is the only Democrats talking about these things, which is why he is being dissed in the press. HRC and Obama are not talking about them, but very aware of them which inclines me to believe that they are more calculating than Edwards, which gives them more options, should they gain power, to make a deal with the copperheads that created this mess.
I don’t think we should kid ourselves about the shape of the economy, and who is going to be hurt the most by the down turn. It is going to be the middle lower classes. All the hubba hubba from the Republicant’s on national security is just bullshit, and like TSA tooting the confiscation of cigarette lighters as proof of its’ effectiveness in stopping terrorism, just false flagging the rubes.
Edwards is at least being upfront, and that is why he is receiving the negative coverage from the on airheads. HRC and Obama are triangulating the hell out of the future.
David Gergen — Blagger
Thanks to dKos we now have proof that CNN doesn’t have spellin chuckers,
The Bloom, and that Huckleberry rose –David Gergen, 360 Contributor Monday, December 31, 2007
The more immediate question for me is whether the bloom is coming off the Huckleberry rose in Iowa. Polls show that he has slipped back into a dead heat with Romney there.
Here are two other spellins’ by Gorgon
Ed Rollins, his new campaign director, believes that a series of anti-Huckebee ads by Romney are taking their toll because Huckabee doesn’t have the money to answer them effectively on television.
I’m sure Anderson will do more blaggin when he wakes up two.
At any rate one has to wonder why Gargan doesn’t get his own blogspot blog so he can spare CNN the humiliation of being a fair and balanced, most trusted name in danews.
Oh yeah, cause no one would actually go read it.
Well Keep Him Away From The Outcroppings
Bush changes itinerary of Israel trip to fit in visit to Capernaum
United States President George W. Bush has changed the itinerary of his trip to Israel in order to fit in a visit to Capernaum, the Christian holy site.
Wouldn’t do to have him heaved over the edge in his quest for holydom.
(I should add that, having read the Bible on more than one occasion, I have never noted any “Holy” sites in the “Holy” lands, which to my mind means they are probably made so by people, not God.)
Odd, That
Has anyone else noticed that it is alright for newscasters/reporters/broadcasters/kneepaddersextodinaires to diss celebraties, bloggers, politicians, etc, etc, but not so cool when it comes back at ’em?
The Tautological Right
Tomorrow RWN returns to normal, but for today, here are some retro RWN posts related to the presidential campaign. Enjoy!
I’ll leave the link for you to dig up.
Is Your Smirkzz Bi-partisan?
I keep quoting and linking Republican, and conservatives, views on Iraq, albeit with some strong libertarian inclinations on their and my part.
There are, in fact, five Iraqs that must be dealt with by a singular American policy. The first is the Iraq of the Green Zone, and by that I mean the Iraqi government brought about by the “purple finger revolution” of January 2005.
I know you want to rush over and read Mr. Ritter, so go cat go. I’ll update.
I Would Be Remiss
Not to remind you of this.
When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.
Obviously, no longer American fortes.
Terraformed 