Potential Good News For Obama
Up until now, Obama’s bid for the presidency has been a series of ups and downs. On one side, he has been blessed with abnormal buzz and poll support for a candidate who only has two years in the US Senate. He has thus far been a fundraising machine, packs in the crowds like no one else, and has even shown a marked improvement in debate performance each time he has stepped on the stage.
On the other hand, one would be dishonest if they said that his first three debates were anything even bordering on stellar, and his campaign performance early on was riddled with sloppiness and rookie mistakes.
Still, with everything seeming to tighten up around campaign Obama, one thing has still seemed to elude him; significant gains against Hillary Clinton in the polls.
This may be on the verge of changing. In a just released ARG poll, Obama still trails Clinton and Edwards in Iowa, but has drawn up to neck and neck with Hillary in New Hampshire, and has driven forward to take the lead in South Carolina.
Though this is great news for Obama supporters everywhere, this good news should be taken with a very healthy dose of skepticism.
Of course there is the ever-present argument that it is still very early for polls to mean much of anything, but there are other factors too. At the top of the list, there is a very likely probability that this is all statistical noise. In fact, there can be a decent argument made for this when you take into account the considerably wide shifts in numbers. In New Hampshire Obama jumped up by six points and Hillary dropped by three and in South Carolina, the shifts were even greater with Obama receiving a twelve point bump while Hillary takes an eight point dive.
These are vast swings that don’t necessarily gel with typical poll shifts.
Also, the other major argument I can think of when it comes to looking at these numbers is that this is good news according to the old wisdom, that success in the early states of New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina could turn the tide. Despite what pundits have said one way or another, no one can really predict what the effect of many states moving up their primaries will have on the old wisdom. It is, at this point, anyone’s guess as to whether these states will be as significant in choosing the next nominee as they have in the past.
But in looking to validate these polls, there is a solid argument that there is some fire to all the smoke. We have just come off of a full week that was dedicated to a substantive debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Centering on meeting foreign dictators, it looked as though Hillary had the early upper hand, but after a week of shots being fired, and stances clarified, it looks as though Obama ended up with a slight upper hand.
Essentially, the argument has been made that Obama and Clinton’s stances are largely similar, the entire week long feud stemming not necessarily from vast differences in policy so much as the confusion that can arise from trying to cram long policy points into the 60/30 second format of a debate answer. But while conservatives have lined up to defend Hillary, Obama’s answer has polled better.
Almost as important, the entire episode has shown that the rookie startup can most definitely hold his own with the seasoned veteran.
Still, for those who do support Obama, enjoy the good news, but don’t take it to heart. These numbers are, for the most part, worthless at least until a few more data points can be attained to verify their accuracy.
(Others covering this, courtesy memeorandum: Open Left, Liberal Values, Pollster.com, MyDD and Dean’s World)
Is This What They Mean By "Culture of Corruption"?
A year after Alaska state legislator offices and offices of the Veco oil services company were raided, officials have raided the home of Republican Senator Ted Stevens, presumably as a continuation of last year’s events.
With renovations to his home in question, and loads of undisclosed documents being siezed, it looks like the 83-year-old Senator, and possibly the most politically powerful man in the state, is in… ahem… hot water.
My oh my, what’s a Senator with possible legal and ethics issues to do? Why, block congressional ethics reform, of course! While Stevens told Republican insiders including Arch Chancelor Dick Cheney that the ethics bill would interfere with his travel back and forth from Alaska, one has to wonder if maybe Stevens, along with his colleagues, may have issue with perhaps the bill’s lack of loopholes for Republicans.
Admittedly, I haven’t been following this story too terribly closely; I think the whole Republican politician involved in illegal activities is starting to get a little passe. But you have to at least admire the sheer humor of someone who’s currently under investigation by the feds having much of anything to do with an ethics bill moving through congress. It’s almost as though he’s missing the little voice in his head that should be saying, “You should probably keep your trap shut on this one,” right about now.
(blogs posting on this courtesy memeorandum: The Carpetbagger Report, Sunlight Foundation blogs and The Debate Link along with: Sunlight Foundation blogs, TPMmuckraker, MyDD, Associated Press, About U.S. Politics, Reuters, New York Times, Shakespeare’s Sister, Firedoglake, Don Surber, Taegan Goddard’s …, DownWithTyranny!, Democratic National Committee and Washington Post
Mortality Salience, Democrats, and Perhaps Another GOP Whitehouse
I suppose it’s time to admit a dirty little secret to you, my dear readers. I’ve long since been a lot more worried about the presidential race than I’ve been letting on. In a normal world, a world that is not perfect, but by no means insane, after the past six years of Republican Leadership, rationality should dictate that there would be vast support for Democratic candidates, and if they too failed, then there would be the emergence of a third party to fill the vacuum left by this nation’s two dominant parties.
But what gives me nightmares at night is the fact that we live in something very very far from a rational nation. Confirmed by a recent Gallup Poll, the race is still much too close to call, and even worse, on two key issues, Republican frontrunners have the upper hand.
In the same country where people poll strongly in favor of a pull out, where people poll strongly that our invasion of Iraq was not justified and should not have happened, Rudy and McCain still manage to edge out Hillary and Obama on Iraq, and terrorism.
The terrorism thing is understandable. The Republican party has done a good job of flooding the market with its ideas, and considering that there has not been a major terrorist attack on our land since 9/11, this is often seen as undeniable proof that they got it right. Of course, this is a non starter; any number of tactics could have produced the same near results and the absence of terrorism could in their turn prove all of those tactics to be effective.
What is at first glance mind boggling, however, is that the continued and amplified presence of al Qaeda actually seems to increase trust in those whose core policies actually strengthen the organization as a whole. Study upon study has shown that our invasion of Iraq has actually increased terrorism throughout the world. Our presence in Iraq has created a brand spanking new al Qaeda, loosely affiliated with the main organization. Our failure to engage in actually effective anti-terrorism policies has actually led to the failure to capture the head of the organization and bring him to justice.
The long list of failures that Bush, and those Republicans that have backed his policies in some form or another is long, and could take me much of the day to list. But it all goes back to mortality salience and Terror Management Theory.
Going hand in hand with the GOP’s selling of their brand of anti-terrorism action is also a packaged patriotism and reenforcement of the American world view and culture. Listen carefully to the rhetoric of Giuliani and McCain and Bush. They eschew the concepts of moral relativity, and define everything in black and white, us and them. They seek to reaffirm who and what we are, which is the kind of presence people flock to when faced with the reality of their own death.
In other words, the more al Qaeda pops up, the more people tend to gravitate towards those who are poorly equipped to actually stop them. So the polls at least make sense here.
Where they almost completely and totally boggle is in Iraq. Even while much of the GOP has taken pains to distance themselves vocally from Bush, there is little substantive differentiation. Many of the policies put forth by the GOP field closely mirror that of the sitting president’s.
In fact, this policy gap is so narrow that the associated rhetoric is equally similar. Bush, in announcing the surge had finally admitted in a roundabout way that we had been pursuing a faulty plan in Iraq, but with the appointment of Patraeus and Gates to run things, we were on the right track.
But you hear nearly identical words from McCain during the debates; stronger in his criticism of the sitting administration, but with that criticism out of the way, he has said that we are now on the right track.
I blame this lag, muchly, on the Democratic candidates. One thing that has bothered me is that they have been strong in their criticism of Bush, but they must understand that they are not running against him. And while they pursue this tactic, this may excite the base, and may garner a good deal of support, they are still doomed to a very close general election.
There should be a shift in campaign messaging, and it should be now. Right now, Goppers are tap dancing like mad to distance themselves from Bush in name, while still championing those policies of his that receive support from the base.
Democrats can’t let them get away with this. They have to tell the full narrative. No, they aren’t running against Bush, but from the look of all but one of the Republican candidates announced or not, they may as well be.
They need to make the case, and start now, that a vote for the Republican ticket is exactly what it is; essentially a vote for a third term of a president that, at least in this one notion we are largely united, is terrible.
(others blogging about this courtesy Memeorandum: The Carpetbagger Report, Wake up America, Pollster.com, Donklephant, The Swamp, eyeon08.com and Mouth of the Potomac
I Just Could Not Resist
So I guess oral sex is out of the question?
Hat Tip to Memeorandum.
Bill O’Liely Gets His Comeuppance
Bill O’Reilly is a firm believer in the marketplace of ideas. That is, simply put, if you start spouting off at the mouth, and people find value in it, then you will be made rich beyond your wildest dreams.
To date, the market place of ideas has, indeed, been good to Billo; his highly rated news program and radio show a virtually irrefutable proof that the value of what comes out of your mouth can only be measured in dollars, cents, and sponsors.
Of course, one has no idea how he’ll react when the market place of ideas opts to bite Bill in the ass.
It began, with Bill waving his big, high up on a pedestal finger in the face of DailyKos, and those Democratic candidates that were planning on attending the annual convention associated with the blog. His concern was the negative hate speech that one could easily find on the site.
The problem, was the exact same kind of thing could be found on Bill’s very own site; thy name is Hypocrisy.
In retrospect, this is kind of funny. Kos, being a website, is not necessarily beholden to mass corporate sponsors. There are any number of advertising systems set up on the internet that will use your space regardless of content, so long as the traffic is there. Plus, with as wide a following as Kos gets, I’m sure the blog could get by with a little tightening of the belt, and living off of straight up donations.
Billo, being a television and radio personality primarily, has no such luck, and unfortunately for him, a tragic inability to see into the future. He should have known that when he pointed the finger at Kos, that very same finger would get shoved right back towards him and his site. If nothing else, bloggers are not known for pulling punches or playing nice.
Having researched enough to know that comments of this ilk were on Kos, he should have guessed that there might at least possibly be similar such comments on his own site as well. It’s not like he got Hillary death threats from authors, he got them from the free and open comment threads, threads that many websites have, and many don’t control, including his own.
And he should have known, especially following the Imus incident from earlier this year, that while internet sponsors are incredibly forgiving, corporations spending millions of dollars to buy air time on tv, aren’t. The first brick in the wall to come crumbling down was Lowes, and now, it would seem, has come Home Depot.
In the market place of ideas, what is supposed to happen is if an idea is put out that is odious, that idea will be punished with a lack of enterprise. Sponsors not will to accept the wrath of consumers against their own products, will not invest in the producer of unwanted ideas. Therefore, the producer has one of two options, come up with new ideas, or get exiled from the marketplace.
All of this is by no means a wholesale excising of Bill O’Liely from the market place of ideas. There will be new sponsors to replace the old. But unless Bill is very very stupid, this should come as a wake up call. The days of his hypocrisy and unwarranted high-mindedness are coming to an end.
The left is no longer a punching bag, and apparently, when we punch back, we can make it hurt.
Others blogging about this, courtesy memeorandum: Firedoglake, Taylor Marsh and The Democratic Daily
Bittersweet Victory
Iraq hasn’t had much to cheer about for a long time, its country ravaged by civil war, a third of its populace in need of emergency medical attention, a political establishment that seems uncapable of working together, and an infrastructure that is still woefully inadequate.
So when the Iraqi soccer team won the Asia Cup, it was a bright yet brief moment for the beleaguered Iraqis. There was a sense of unity, and for at least a short while, there seemed to a small reprieve from the violence.
But with any sports victory, this too has already passed. In America, superbowls are celebrated, and then relegated to the annals of sports history; printed on T-Shirts for fans to remember they watched it happen, and cut up into bite-sized clips for NFL films to be shown in documentaries and on ESPN.
I don’t know the fate of Iraq’s victory. I doubt they have a soccer hall of fame, and with many areas still only receiving intermittent electricity, I question how many people will be fondly watching replays during the weeks and months to come. They got to enjoy a beautiful moment, but that even seemed to be punctuated by a car bomb, killing six, and injuring about a dozen.
As if to put final rest to the long lasting healing effects of the victory, the captain of the team, the only person to score a goal in the final game, will not be going home to the country he represented.
His fear that anyone could kill him stands as a powerful counterpoint to the success of a team once terrorized by Saddam’s psychotic son Uday. There is a stark reality to his refusal to go home, like a runaway petrified to return to the home of abusive parents.
The team itself is a contradiction. It wears the colors of its nation, but the team’s actual home is outside of the country’s borders. Much of its equipment is provided not by Iraq, nor by America which has only exacerbated the ravages going on there, but by the English. They are icons, heroes who display hope for a nation that they will not enter.
And yet, Younis Mahmoud, the twenty-four-year-old captain, though he will not reenter his country as it stands now, still seems to speak with the voice of his people:
“I don’t want the Iraqi people to be angry with me,” he said. “But, if I go back with the team, anybody could kill me or try to hurt me.
“One of my closest friends, they (the authorities) came to arrest him and for one year neither me nor his family knew where he was.
“I want America to go out,” he said. “Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but out. I wish the American people didn’t invade Iraq and hopefully it will be over soon.”
I am thrilled for the Iraqi people. This victory is rightfully theirs, and more so, any respite from the nightmare that is day-to-day life for them is something I wish for them all the time. But this victory is bittersweet, riddled with reminders of reality, like a vacation you know you have to return from, a dream from which you know you are destined to wake.
I think I join many Iraqi’s when I wish for a day when they can have these victories not tinged with pain and reminders of the horrors they will have to face the next day. When their heroes can come home, and when the nightmares are only that, nightmares.
…But It Might Get Better Results
I’ve for a long time been something of a fan of the candidacy of of Representative Ron Paul. I wouldn’t vote for him in a million years, but I respect a lot of the things that he’s said so far, and I commend the man for unflinchingly taking on the jingoistic tirades of the “Mayor” during the few scant moments the GOP frontrunner has even bothered to look in Paul’s direction.
I don’t know, maybe it was the way he stood up and introduced himself in the first debate as a “Champion of the Constitution.” Maybe it was watching him accurately describe the circumstances surrounding the 9/11 attacks. But I’ve been rooting for the little guy, and strangely enough not for the same reason I’ve been rooting for Giuliani to win the nomination (of course because I think burying Rudy under his own failed, faulty, flawed and fictitious rhetoric would actually be kinda fun).
Unfortunately, Ron Paul has just recently opted to line himself up firmly in the wingnut demographic when he renewed his call to capture Osama bin Laden… by hiring bounty hunters.
Er… yeah.
And it wasn’t just Osama bin Laden. I would actually welcome a debate for catching him and him alone via this method I suppose. I could see haggling the specifics and giving some thought to it as opposed to dismissing it out of hand. No, what gets me touchy is the little anyone-that-has-anything-to-do-with-al Qaeda add on.
When you have language like that, it can get mighty easy to identify anyone as having ties to al Qaeda, especially when you have money on the line. If throwing an Arab in traditional dress and making up a little white lie could net you some cold hard cash, you’ll start seeing a whole bunch of Arabs, many innocent, stashed in people’s trunks.
Seriously, this is the kind of behavior that has a high probability of getting us in trouble, and feeds the fire that surrounds things like Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. Our treatment of detainees is one part of the equation, the fact that many of them are innocent… well, I’m sure you know how that goes in our PR battle for hearts and minds.
At best, such a policy would be ignorant, at worst, it is irresponsible; and I am not inclined to call Paul ignorant out of hand. He knows better, and if he doesn’t, he should.
And yet still… it might get better results than what we’ve seen so far… I mean, we still do care about capturing bin Laden, right? This is a focal part of this administration, dead or alive, and all that jazz? I suppose in a world of insanity, the least insane ideas might start sounding good.
Ceding The Point
When a considerably lucid Youtube questioner asked the Democratic candidates if they would be willing to meet without precondition some of the most notorious dictators of the world, and Obama answered he would, one has to wonder what was going on inside Hillary Clinton’s head.
Most likely, it was something to the tune of, ‘I got him!’
The two Democratic frontrunners had, until then, been shadowboxing and dancing around each other; there had been no major spats, no direct blows that survived more than one or two news cycles, no fireworks at all, really, despite this nagging feeling that the first shoe had to drop sometime.
And then she saw it, her opening. Hillary, put in a precarious position, has spent much of her time in national politics trying to put forth the appearance of being strong on foreign policy and national defense, but not overly hawkish so as to incur the ire of her base. This is undoubtedly the result of two things, the first being the stigmatism that Democrats are soft on defense, but also, as a woman, she had to be a better man than the men.
So she leapt into the fray, later calling Obama “irresponsible,” and “naive.”
Where there hadn’t been much more than sparks in the battle for the Democratic nomination between the frontrunners, there was now fireworks that engulfed a week’s worth of news. And, with right wing politicians and pundits lining up to support Hillary over Obama, along with a recent poll that showed Obama fairing a little better than Hillary on his answer among primary voters, it had looked like Hillary had overplayed her hand.
And now, perhaps ending this particularly chapter in the Epic of Barack vs. Hillary, it looks as though Bill Clinton is calling for a cease fire.
We can never know if the comments he made to the DLC were at Hillary’s bidding, or if she will have his balls (more than she already does) for it, but the distinction that the former president makes, that they are not all that far from each other in their stances, does have the ring of a sought after truce.
And if so, it would have to be a truce that also falls as a point ceded to the Obama camp.
For those who are not overly fond of horse race, the entire exchange should be heartening. While often times the feud took on the appearance of a mudslinger’s shootout, it was actually, believe it or not, about substantive policy, and not about a haircut or the family dog, or a raid coat.
For those who do follow horse race, I think this is an incredibly telling point in the primary race for the Democratic nomination. Now, Hillary is still poised to win, but we’ve seen three things in just the past week alone that shows her to be more vulnerable than the inevitability argument would have you believe.
1) Obama just stood up to one of the most cunning politicians on the national stage today, and arguably won the day.
2) His debate performance from last week was significantly improved over prior showings, and for the first time in four debates he clearly outshown most of the stage and even Hillary.
3) After hitting a plateau in poll tracking overall poll tracking this summer, following last weeks’ debate, Obama is again trending upwards. (Note: When I cite Pollster, it is important to know that the tracking you see is an amalgamation of many different polls, and due to the conservative calculations of the numbers, often times trend shifts are shown retroactively. In otherwords, while it looks as though Obama’s been trending upwards for a while now, this has only been confirmed within the last week).
We got a lot of time before voters hit the polls early next year, and if Obama can force the ex president into ceding a couple more points on behalf of his wife, it could look very good for the freshman senator.
Rep. Inslee To Take First Step In Gonzo Impeachment
Alberto Gonzales is someone I do not want to be right now. Of course, this all goes without saying if I were Gonzo, I would probably have resigned ages ago, I’m not dumb. The Senate has done more than giving Gonzo a courtesy warning shot across the brow; they’ve been putting up neon signs that read, “You should really resign before something bad happens.”
Given the rabid pitbull nature sometimes adopted by the legislative branch, I think the early signs would have been enough. And in case I was being particularly thick, maybe hearing Arlen Specter muse that he thinks I’ll resign before his colleagues vote on a “no-confidence” measure, I would probably choose then to start realizing that maybe my future no longer coincided with running the Department of Justice.
But oh no, not our man Gonzo. Instead of having a much wiser me in his shoes, he’s in his own, and it’s not working particularly well for him. Last week it was announced that the Senate would be pushing for a special investigation to decide whether or not the drowning Attorney General had committed perjury. This week, the House is going to look into finally forcing an end to this freak show by impeaching the guy.
Courtesy Think Progress, Congressman Jay Inslee will introduce legislation tomorrow for the House to investigate whether or not it’s time to impeach.
I think I need waste little space and time to tell you what side of that particular fence I fall on. The man most likely perjured himself, has zero credibility, has championed programs that are disturbingly dangerous towards our civil liberties, and has lost support of the men and women who serve under him. Further, his conduct in the Senate has result in one indellible effect that we will see should he manage to dodge both impeachment and criminal perjury charges; he will essentially be stonewalled by the senate on just about anything and everything. In other words, his continued employment as the head of the Department of Justice will result in all members of the DoJ being punished on his account.
But then, this pretty much falls in line with what appears to be the Bush administration’s credo, “We believe in accountability, so long as we aren’t being held to account.” At this point, it’s pretty obvious, Gonzo must be forced from office. He won’t leave voluntarily, no matter how many people suffer as a result.
America Thinks Government Cameras Are A-Okay
It’s kind of weird, I’m one part Democratic stalwart, one part bleeding heart liberal, and one part populist, so I’m often times confused. One thing that does confuse me that has little to do with my political leanings, however, is when we lefties swapped sides with the conservatives, particularly in the role that the government should be playing in our lives.
A great example is illustrated in a recently released poll that shows a strong majority of Americans actually favor an increase of surveillance cameras in public places used to reduce crime.
According to the old wisdom, this would be the cue for conservatives to get all riled up, to angrily bark about the government trying to pry into the lives of decent citizens, and the battle cry should be sounding from righties based on overreach. While those on the left who love us some big big big government and want to put in place the “nanny state” should be lauding the program with zeal.
But, the infamously conservative shill “Captain” Ed makes a stirring case for the program. Despite the inevitable mentions of George Orwell and 1984, he says, “… the American people have more sense in this instance.” He claims that it’s okay because we’re monitoring public places, and the people running the programs to be involved are totally trustworthy.
The Gun Toting Liberal, however, doesn’t think so.
I guarantee you there will be major crimes committed against Citizens by Government employees who WILL abuse their access to public surveillance cameras around the nation; it is only a matter of time, unfortunately. Some pervert is going to be zooming in on your little girl; some idiot is going to zoom in on your body parts and upload the photos to a MySpace blog; some terrorist is going to get a “Gub’mint” job behind those cameras — guaranteed — there’s no way around it.
While that may seem like a stretch, that is a chilling thought; for every tool such as this which is intended for good, there seems to be a broad latitude for misuse, which goes to the deeper argument of all these programs that we should be incredibly worried about.
From wiretapping to security cameras, these are all merely amoral tools that are only as beneficial to the American people as their users. With a warrantless wiretapping program used to catch terrorists, the slope is extremely slippery to start using the program against political rivals, a concept that isn’t too hard to conceive when you think that terrorists are essentially political rivals who employ extreme and violent methods.
So too can the cameras be misused, from some sicko trying to get a sweet job manning a camera at a popular teen hangout to government officials who use the cameras to increase police presence at peaceful and might I add still completely legal political protests.
But what also bothers me about the cameras is that they are only a band aid. We have a chronic crime problem in this country, but we are all too quick to label criminals as bad, prove the case against them, and lock them up with little effort expended towards reforming them to be the kind of citizen that contributes to society.
Not enough people, specifically policy makers, are looking at the shades of gray and nuances in dealing with the crime that is so endemic in this country. Make no mistake, I’m for stringent law enforcement; I’ve said this before that often times liberal ideas require strict enforcement. But I think it’s vital to understand that a majority of the crime in this country is a result of underlying factors that leads to what could be large populations of decent people to do indecent things.
Not all criminals do crime because they are evil; in fact I would wager that a very very small percentage of criminals are “born bad” as opposed to being, to some degree, a product of their environment.
So while we were spending billions of dollars to put in place a camera system that could be abused for ill only to catch crimes as they happen, we could be putting those funds and some energy into creating an environment in which crime itself is greatly reduced. The argument is an old one, focus on inner city poverty and economy, build up the schools, take epicenters of crime, and invest in them and you are liable to see crime drop.
No doubt this means stricter law enforcement, but let me tell you something. Strict law enforcement with nothing else, with no programs available for people to find a better life without crime, only fosters resentment and increased animosity. This is the illness that plagues many of our urban communities today. Lots of cops willing to lock you up and throw away the key, but not a whole lot of care or attention being tossed in that general area.
So let’s really roll up our sleeves and work to fix the problem instead of taking just another step down that slippery slope that really does look frighteningly close to Orwell’s dystopia.
$3 Million
Do I have your attention now? $3 million is, truth be told, an ambiguous sum of money when no qualifiers are attached to it. If you were to hand me three million dollars, I would probably spend the first little bit of it on a new pair of underwear and pants, having soiled the current set in sheer excitement.
Also, I’m sure that there are more than a few charities that would be awash with gratitude at receiving such a large sum.
On the other hand, compared to what we spend on the war in Iraq, that’s chump change, and might, just might buy you twenty fully armored humvees which is nice, but FAR FAR short of how many we should actually be having on hand.
But when you apply that three million dollar amount to the fundraising of a presidential hopeful for the second quarter, that amount is nigh on disastrous, which may be why some Republicans who have been looking at the former “Law&Order” star, Fred Thompson, are beginning to say he’s in serious danger of being a flop.
Allow me to put this in perspective. Barack Obama, not even the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination rose ten times that sum for the second quarter alone, which means that if we were to extrapolate this whole thing out, it would take Fred roughly two and a half years to raise what Barack has done in just three months.
Considering this is a time in the primaries where fundraising is arguably more important than polling numbers, things aren’t looking good for a Thompson White House, or even nomination.
The camp has asserted that they’re still in the “water testing phase” in defense of their disappointing totals, but let’s not get caught up in spin, shall we? From a pragmatic sense, the longer it takes Thompson to join the battle in an official sense, the more difficult it will be. First, you will see his poll numbers flatten out as his lack of participation in presidential debates and free news coverage will result in him peaking in the amount of people he can reach. Then, as people begin to lose faith based on his repetitive postponements of announcement, you will most likely see his polling numbers start to drop.
With this in mind, he’ll have a shorter amount of time to make up more ground against the flagging but still strong Rudy Giuliani. The primary vehicle for doing so as we get closer and closer to the polls is through TV and Radio buys… buys he will not be able to make with a scant three million dollars (or whatever low number he posts up assuming he is unable to really boost the money collecting machine).
But on the other hand, who’s kidding who? Fred Thompson may not have officially announced his candidacy, but he’s very far from being in the “water testing phase”. He’s been gladhanding and making policy speeches for much of the cycle, he’s just had the good fortune to avoide the Aimes straw poll, and the debates, etc. Aside from that, with two fully staffed offices dedicated to electing him president, he is a candidate in every way but name only, and therefore has no excuse for such a low number other than… perhaps a lack of actionable support.
But if this really just a water testing phase, I think the water is telling Thompson something; the water’s not fine, do not come on in.
.65 Degrees
For some reason Global Warming is still a bitterly contested phenomenon in American debate today. People just don’t think it exists I suppose, or if it does, it’s not a big deal, it won’t effect our way of life, and probably not our kids. Maybe our grandkids, but we’ll be dead through most of that so what’s the big fuss? They can fend for themselves.
Perhaps one of the most oft repeated arguments from he heel draggers on Global Warming sounds something like, “So what? What big deal does a few degrees make?”
It’s a good argument, we feel temperature changes all the time, and can tolerate actually pretty rapid and severe temperature changes, all things considered. But the Earth, and the complexity of its many varied systems can’t.
As reported today, a recent study has shown to link the increased number of hurricanes experienced through the year with Global Warming. But I really want to focus on one statistic, basically an increase in average sea temperature of .65 degrees, not even a full degree, has contributed an increase of about five hurricanes per year.
Now, I know that there’s some dissenting opinion here, and some of it has to do with how far back the data goes for this report, but the logic, I think, still stands. We know that a big factor for how hurricanes are formed in the first place is water temperature which is partly why hurricane season exists in summer time.
Plus, let’s look at Katrina. She had hit Florida pretty hard, but what allowed her to turn into the absolute monster that ravaged New Orleans was the fact that she went through the gulf of Mexico where the water is considerably warmer thereby feeding the storm to catastrophic levels. So even if you don’t buy into warmer water equalling more storms, one thing that you must understand is that warmer water equals much much stronger storms.
Now, let’s go back to that .65 degrees, and try to imagine how that would effect things if you cranked it up to a whole degree, or maybe two. Big difference just a little warming makes, isn’t it?
UPDATE: Big thanks to Real Clear Politics for linking in.
A War We Just Might (Not) Win
I love the smell of rose colored goggles and government kool-aid in the morning. Clears the sinuses.
Like most Monday mornings, the first thing I do is scoot the kids out the door, slump in front of my computer, and blearily check out what’s up on memeorandum. Right there at the top of the page, “A War We Just Might Win.”
Hmmm, I thought to myself, what war might that be? War on Drugs? War on Poverty? War on Terrorism? War on Global Warming?
Oh… War in Iraq. That’s the war we might just win, the war in… uh… Iraq. Penned by Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack, the two analysts go through great lengths to make a big fuss over how much better Iraq is now. More of the security is being provided by Iraqi forces, real Iraqi forces, and not just American soldiers. Some people are actually getting water and electricity, and sometimes, where the insurgents have left, they actually haven’t returned… yet. Rivers flow with chocolate and wine, children sing and dance and rainbows are everywhere! We are again being greeted with flowers and sweets.
Betsy, from Betsy’s Page is hopeful. “…this is the New York Times! Perhaps their editors read their own paper.” Er… this is so embarrassing, does anyone actually remember Judith Miller? Not that Betsy’s a liberal who prays at the leftist Mecca of the Times’ publishing headquarters. In fact, her zeal seems to come from what is perceived to be a liberal think tank, published in what is perceived to be a liberal pamphlet (with a very wide circulation). It’s almost like there’s a secret cabal of warmongering neocons off in some dark corner chuckling, “We got the liberals to bite… AGAIN!”
For, as The Big Tent Democrat points out, these guys have been cheerleading the way for the war for four years. Oh, and as the Christian Science Monitor contradicts, “We are frankly in the midst of the worst crisis.”
Now that’s more like it, just the way I prefer my liberal think tanks, fiendishly pessimistic.
What I find most disturbing about the NYT article is the lack of specifics, the lack of statistics. This is, largely, the same kind of anecdotal evidence that Bush used to make the case for things going well in Iraq in 04, and then again in 05, some more in 06, and I really haven’t heard him talk too terribly often about Iraq this year, other than to say we should keep fighting it.
It is disturbingly unspecific, and I’m sorry, but I’ve grown extremely callous to such evidence. There is a lack of context without taking these improvements and showing where on a measurable scale we are. There’s just been… improvement… in certain areas, but we’re not even going to tell you exactly how much.
And yet, through the obfuscation, all the authors seem willing to do is say we should continue the war through to the end of 08. That’s it? That’s all the article makes a case for after all the happy happy love love evidence. Despite the title that says we might win the war, the summation makes no such lofty claim. It is merely until the end of 08. Not until we win this thing, not until we have managed to provide stability throughout Iraq and not in select neighborhoods in select cities. Just through 08.
Which is funny because that’s how long we’re going to stay anyway assuming we don’t get up to 67 votes in the Senate.
Cynicism
Cynicism runs rampant in this business; a tragic side effect of following the course of political events so closely. Laymen and casual followers of current events grow cynical towards the government because the predominent news stories give only a glimpse into the political debate which must seem hysterical beyond comprehension to them.
For us, it’s worse because we know just how bad it gets.
I mention this because a few days ago I actually extended the olive branch towards one of the most prominent conservative bloggers right now, “Captain” Ed. After carrying water for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, he finally came to the reality of the matter, all be it grudgingly.
It would seem I spoke too soon, thereby allowing the cynicism with which I hold my conservative counterparts to fester. Coming on the heels of Ed’s reluctant admittance of Gonzo’s wrongdoing, he allowed himself to be made the White House’s butt boy, furthering its message that Gonzo, much like the villain of the movie Lethal Weapon 2, was above the law.
In so doing, he furthers a meme that seems less like any kind of will for good and justice to be done, and instead an excuse to avoid the prosecution of Gonzo, something that would inevitably be a dark and indellible stain on the modern GOP, and one that current Republican politicians would be incredibly hard pressed to avoid. That meme, of course, is that we shouldn’t because then it would solidify Executive Privelege.
What people tend to forget, however, is that one of the beautiful things about our government is that laws are not permanent, and boundaries of power are constantly capable of being redefined. And so it seems that the next portion of this political episode is defined.
As Think Progress shows us, even conservative politicians won’t go on their news network of choice, Fox, to defend Gonzales, or even the gross abuses of Executive Privelege which has prolonged the entire embarrassing tragedy that swirls around him.
In essence, it appears to be that the strategem is to deny opinions of rightor wrongdoing (there can be no good there to be had by Republicans), but instead to focus the debate on procedural issues and legalities. They know what Gonzo has done during his tenure is both wrong and most likely illegal in some cases, but that is beside the point. People, they are hoping, will not focus on that, but instead will focus on how ill-advised trying to “sue City Hall” will be.
Or more simply put, they are effectively melding their time tested tactic of bait and switch with that of ignore until it goes away.
Sadly, this has the promise of actually working, but even worse, it has shown that the Republicans actually partaking in this, and those conservative opinionators acting as enablers still don’t get it. They don’t get why putting the screws to Gonzo is important. They don’t get why we should care about warrantless wiretapping, or politically motivated firings of US Attorneys, or missteps taken in the run up to the Iraqi war or in the post war efforts. They don’t understand why the outing of an undercover CIA officer was a big deal, nor why Libby’s perjury and obstruction of justice should be punishable by prison time.
They don’t get it, probably too cynical to see beyond the political warmongering of their party’s foe. And yes, while I will admit that some of this is business as usual, at stake is something more than pure partisan politics. At stake is the soul of our government.
They don’t get that regardless of your ideological beliefs, the stewardship of our nation’s federal government has been taken down a dark and dangerous road. They don’t get that the balance of the three branches has been greviously thrown off track, nor that to put things right, extraordinary actions must be taken. They don’t even get that if Republicans worked with Democrats on this, not only would congressional approval rise, but the party’s own fortunes would too. People wouldn’t see congress as conducting business as usual, but instead holding to account an administration that no one save a small and stubborn percentage feels is doing the will of the people.
It is the sheer blinding cynicism towards politics and one’s political foes that seems to have blinded Republicans and their conservative constituents to this fact. If the fortunes of the political parties were the only thing that mattered here, then I wouldn’t mind. Go for it, Goppers, defend this Attorney General and this Administration at your peril.
But that’s not the case; so much more is at stake, and I think it’s about high time for these people to pull their heads out of their asses.
Report From Hell: Wii Madness
Heyo! I wanted to take this opportunity while I had the chance to give you guys a general report from Hell; Satan has just gone off to the local 7-Eleven to get a “Squishee” (You should hear him go on and on about the all the Simpsons items being sold at 7-Eleven right now. You’d think he’d never heard of a mass marketing campaign which is only made more ridiculous considering he’s come up with some of the most grevious ones in history: Chia-Pet, the Segway, Nordictrak, and iAnything. Satan’s been subcontracting for Steve Jobs for a while now), and while the Master’s out, figured I’d sneak off a little info for you guys.
You should know that he doesn’t know I write for a blog, and I’m more than a little worried about what he might do to me should he find out, especially if he knew I was posting some of Hell’s most nefarious secrets on the web free of charge. I mean, if he knew I wasn’t even charging money for this stuff, he’d probably skin me for a good two weeks (which actually isn’t so bad. I mean, the first few times are excruciatingly painful but after you get used to being skinned and having your pelt reattached with a blow torch and a set of hockey sticks, it kinda tickles).
Still, I don’t want him to find out so if you do happen to run into Lucifer, could you do me a favor and not mention this? He’s hard to miss, about ten feet tall, giant horns, cloven feet, and an obsession for “bling”. I swear the Lord of the Pit wears so much bling he’s got a permanent crater in his nightstand.
That out of the way, what’s happened this week? Well, first things first, Satan bought a Wii, and let me tell you, I had no idea how wicked awesome that was. Now I’m not sure if the American version comes with the “Fatal Negative Feedback” feature (FNF for short), but I really think that that is what adds to the enjoyability of the game and not the wireless remotes. Now… I would never intentionally win a game of anything against Satan, I’m not stupid, but once, “accidentally” I just managed to eke out a win in a game of Mario Party, and there is simply nothing funnier than watching a superior evil deity hop and twitch as ten thousand volts of raw, heart-stopping electricity are pumped through his body.
That was worth the twenty straight hours of Full House I was forced to watch, every G– Damn minute of it.
But the Wii can only keep you entertained for so long, so of course, Satan HAD to watch the news. Now, watching the news with Satan is never fun, he usually breaks things when he watches stories that he doesn’t like, and with the way things have gone lately, he’s been breaking a lot of things, usually my bones. Trust me, breaking bones in Hell is MUCH more pleasant than the process you have to go through to get them “repaired”.
I think it’s Bush’s fault. After so many years of Bush being “Da man,” Satan’s been getting pretty disappointed with how his “Shining hope” has been falling down on the job. That was exactly the case with this whole Gonzo-gate, ordeal.
“Son of an ANGEL!” Satan roared when the news first broke that Gonzo may have committed perjury. And his mood didn’t get much better when he found out that Bush was STILL standing behind the Attorney General. Not that Satan particularly hated Gonzo, but the man had his role to play and that has long since over and done with.
“If I’ve told him once, I told him a thousand times, he should have forced that little cloister-sucker to resign a year ago!” Satan rumbled as he hefted his bling around his tree-trunk neck and marched out of Hell, apparently to go have a little one on one with Bush.
When he came back, it was plain and clear, he got nowhere. “I don’t even think he’s listening,” Lucifer moaned in dismay. “It’s like trying to talk to a Tickle-Me-Elmo. No matter how hard I try to start a conversation it’s always, ‘Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha! Elmo likes being tickled’.”
He really doesn’t get some of the toys that are out nowadays.
But after a sponge bath and some very vigorous lufa-ing, Satan’s nerves had calmed down… just in time to learn that Senator Chuck Schumer had declared that he would attempt to stonewall any judge Bush attempted to put on the Supreme Court. “WHAT?!” he roared. He looked like he wanted to suck Chuck Schumer straight down into the Teletubbies room… a room, might I add, so heinous, so vicious, so simplistically evil that merely hearing the name sends shivers through my already torture riddled body.
“We were doing so well, too” he complained. “I just finished this shortlist for the next open seat on the bench. He’s a real winner, to, you should have met him, actually privately believed abortion clinics should be bombed!”
“Satan,” I said soothingly. “Relax. All we have to do is bribe Death a little and he’ll see to it that no one on the bench kicks it until the Republicans are back in the majority.”
This seemed to calm him down a little, though not much. Frankly, Death is an asshole, and no one down here likes dealing with him much. He’s the kinda guy who chain smokes, but never seems to have any cigarettes at about the same time you’re down to your last. That and he keeps charging higher and higher prices to keep people alive. Do you have any idea how much money it’s costing to keep Bob Novak up and ticking? It’s ridiculous, and the only reason Satan does it is he’s worried the old bastard might come down here and start telling jokes.
Trying to put a smile on Satan’s face, I mentioned, “Well, people are talking about Hillary’s breasts right now.”
“Why anyone would stare at her chest astounds me,” Satan said, shaking his head. “Now Thompson’s wife, that’s a LOOKER! Whooee, you know that man’s popping viagra and wearing prosthetics. Hey, what do ya think about rigging the next election in his favor? Just so we have one nice First Lady to look at?”
“No good, Master,” I said, cringing a little at the thought of delivering bad news. “She’s one of the reasons his campaign’s having so many problems.”
“Ah well. At least if everyone’s staring at Hillary’s breasts, they won’t be paying much attention to the issues, right? How good of a president do you think America’s going to get if they’re all worrying about her neckline?”
I had to cede the dark lord a point. Of course I cede to him every point, and freely let him claim all my own good ideas as his own. I remember Jeff. Damn soul or not, NO ONE should have to go through that again.
“Tell me some good news,” Satan said, obviously beaten, worn, and tired from a day frought with bad news about the administration he had such high hopes for crumbling away.
“There are still people who are carrying water for the Iraq war. That’s good, right?” I was getting desperate. When Satan issues you an order to cheer him up, you better do it, or it’s the Teletubby room.
I was relieved to hear him chuckle. “Dumbshits,” he guffawed. “When will they learn? Hopefully never, right?”
He laughed. I laughed too, not because I thought he said anything funny, but Lucifer’s got a funny laugh, like a school girl who just sucked in helium.
But the laughter soon died down, and the words I heard come out of Satan’s fanged mouth sent a chill down my spine. “That’s not going to do it this time. I’m still feeling down.”
Thinking quickly I said, “We got a Wii! Wanna play?”
“Alright, but if you win again, I’ll make you cover the next Republican debate… in person.”
I opted to lose. I’d rather suffer ten thousand volts than have to listen to another pissing contest over who’s more conservative ever again.
You know, sometimes Satan does know what he’s doing.
(thanks to memeorandum for the links)
Building A Case Against Obama With Un-Gaffes
Political headlines all week, when not focused on Alberto Gonzales, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers et al. legal woes, have gravitated around what started out as a couple of minutes of verbal sparring between the two front runners for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
During the now infamous Youtube debate, easily not the most interesting but quite possibly the most talked about, Obama had the first swing at a question that asked if he would meet without precondition with the leaders of anti-American states such as Iran, Syria, or Cuba.
He said yes, and that’s about where the world stopped.
Hillary Clinton, coming right back behind him made it pretty clear how naive such an approach would be, saying she wouldn’t not without significant groundwork being laid out long before.
The resultant barbs have been continuous, the stories non stop since those fateful few minutes. Hillary Clinton has been spending much of the week painting Obama as “naive” and ” irresponsible,” conversely, Obama has come back by illustrating Clinton as “Bush-Lite”. And throughout the entire ordeal, the blogosphere has been all abuzz trying to make a case that one of the candidates has clearly showed up the other.
From WaPo’s hawkish op ed columnist, Charles Krauthammer, this was “strike two. And this one was a right-down-the-middle question from a YouTuber in Monday night’s South Carolina debate.”
A big swing and and the freshman senator misses! This was, obviously, a gaffe of the highest order, proving that Obama simply doesn’t have the experience to lead our nation in foreign policy. When coupled with his apparent gaffe in a previous debate about a hypothetical attack on two American cities, Krauthammer writes:
The first occurred in another unscripted moment. During the April 26 South Carolina debate, Brian Williams asked what kind of change in the U.S. military posture abroad Obama would order in response to a hypothetical al-Qaeda strike on two American cities.
Obama’s answer: “Well, the first thing we’d have to do is make sure that we’ve got an effective emergency response — something that this administration failed to do when we had a hurricane in New Orleans.”
Asked to be commander in chief, Obama could only play first-responder in chief. Caught off guard, and without his advisers, he simply slipped into two automatic talking points: emergency response and its corollary — the obligatory Katrina Bush-bash.
Jeez! What’s this guy doing running for president? “First-responder in chief”?
Except, instead of doing like we always do and just engage in a knee jerk reaction deconstruction, let’s take a second look at the blatant first gaffe from Obama. During the real al Qaeda attack on September 11th of 2001, three thousand Americans died, a hole was ripped into the side of the Pentagon, and the twin towers came crashing down.
To be sure, a grievous crime was committed and should be punished (which has yet to happen, if you want to get technical), but before that, what’s happening? You are having lots of people in severe distress, rescue efforts must be coordinated, traffic redirected, fires put out, etc. When 9/11 occurred, the single number one priority was not capturing Osama bin Laden (not done yet, probably not that big of a priority I suppose) but seeing to the safety and well being of as many people as possible not already killed in the initial attack.
So, while Obama’s answer may not be warmongering enough for the likes of Krauthammer, it does speak volumes of the pragmatism offered by an Obama aministration: Why are we even thinking about waging war before we look to the safety of our own?
On to the topic at hand. Krauthammer goes through great lengths to make Hillary’s case for her, pointing out the naivity of Obama’s answer, and how wise Hillary’s was. Funnily enough, and I wonder if this was intended, Krauthammer actually goes to making Obama’s point as well:
Just to make sure no one missed how the grizzled veteran showed up the clueless rookie, the next day Clinton told the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa, that Obama’s comment “was irresponsible and frankly naive.”
To be on the same stage as the leader of the world’s greatest power is of course a prize. That is why the Chinese deemed it a slap in the face that President Bush last year denied President Hu Jintao the full state-visit treatment. The presence of an American president is a valued good to be rationed — and granted only in return for important considerations.
Did you catch it? If not, I’ll spell it out for you. What makes Clinton the “grizzled veteran” is that she would, in essence, engage in a foreign policy not unlike that put forth by President Bush… the current one… the one that Obama is accusing Hillary of emulating.
Hmmm… Of course, if I were running for president under the Democratic banner, I would probably start worrying if I were being cheered on by neocon such as Krauthammer in the first place. I mean? Haven’t we had enough of these guys already?
Okay, so maybe Krauthammer isn’t exactly the place to go looking for a solid opinion of Democratic values in the first place. One that is, on the other hand, may just be an old favorite of mine; Kevin Drum’s blog for the Washington Monthly.
Quoting Brian Beutler:
Certainly what you’re hearing from Clinton and Obama is a healthier debate than what you’re hearing from journalists. Clinton’s basic position is that Obama has, by announcing his intent to engage enemy leaders, proven that he’s too naive to set the country’s foreign policy. Obama, on the other hand, contends that Clinton’s foreign policy ideas are too similar to George Bush’s for comfort. As far as I’m concerned, I think Obama’s argument is basically correct and Hillary’s argument is totally nuts, but in any case both arguments are pretty close facsimiles to what the two candidates actually believe about foreign policy.
Kevin continues on his own:
Still, I take Brian’s point. It’s rare to have a discussion about foreign policy that actually revolves around a concrete point, and by foreign policy standards this one counts as at least a mud brick point. Basically, do you think the United States should, as a routine part of its foreign policy, say that it’s willing to talk to any country that’s willing to talk to us? That the mere act of talking isn’t a tacit capitulation to a rogue regime’s demands?
Here’s the deal. I’m not a foreign policy wonk, but I know this much. As a rule the United States either stonewalls foreign heads of state that are dictators, or, like with Saddam, we actually end up supporting them logistically and then kicking ourselves in the ass later on down the road.
That’s about when we end up having to make war on them, and then you have messes not unlike Iraq on your hands. Or al Qaeda. If anything, what we are seeing now should stand as glaring and blatant warning signs that what has been the conventional wisdom, what has been the status quo does not work.
Was Obama saying he was going to gather the world’s dictators into a group hug? No, but it was a clear call for a true change of course in foreign policy, one that might actually produce net positive results, as opposed to staying the neocon course, which as we have seen, produces net horrendous results.
Which is it going to be?
101st Assbound Keyboard Brigade, "Stay the Course"
As I pointed out last week, the conservative Hardy Boy/Nancy Drew crowd jumped all over TNR Diarist Scott Thomas in search of the ever-present liberal conspiracy. Sadly today, Scott Thomas revealed himself to be Scott Thomas Beauchamp shattering the career dreams of many a little nutjob and causing at least a couple to undoubtedly toss their secret decoder rings out the window.
But, as you can imagine, the story does not end here. Not a chance. These super sleuths have forgotten their claims that Beauchamp was actually Clifton Hicks or worse, no one at all and taken to seeking any way possible to beat this poor dead horse one last time. If it were not so disgusting it would be loads of fun to watch, wouldn’t it?
Hat tip to Jon Swift.
Donate to CFLF
Blogroll
Pennsylvania Blogs
The Liberal Media
Blogging Liberally
Advertising
Comments From Left Field is a member of...
Memeorandum
Archives
- 2010: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2009: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2008: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2007: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2006: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2005: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2004: J F M A M J J A S O N D
- 2003: J F M A M J J A S O N D
Blog Stuff
