Quit whining and just pay for the damn election

Spare Change. Image originally uploaded by bullywhippet. (under creative commons license)

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Clinton supporter, told the Detroit Free Press that Clinton's victory in Ohio changes "the landscape a bit." She said it could open the door to a caucus, if it can be privately funded and both candidates agree.

[Florida Gov. Charlie] Crist told reporters at a news conference Tuesday that he does not support having another primary at taxpayer expense. He said he discussed the option with Sen. Bill Nelson, the state's senior Democrat. "He said the only way to consider the possibility of that is to have the Democratic National Committee pay for it," Crist said. The Florida Democratic Party said the state estimates the cost would be $25 million.

A revote in Michigan and Florida would be ideal, but for God's sake the states should find public funds for the election.

This isn't a charity raffle. Running elections is a government obligation and the only reason we're in this situation is that the elected leaders of Florida and Michigan flouted party rules and scheduled their elections ahead of the Super Tuesday contest. Crist and Granholm were active participants in that process. They gambled that putting their states ahead of other delegate rich contests would allow them to be kingmakers. They wouldn't have given a damn if the election had ended on January 29th - robbing voters in over 40 other states of having any say at all in the nomination. Now they're upset that they don't count.

And when you get down to it even $20-$30 million is a drop in the bucket compared to everything else they spend money on.

Here's Florida governor Crist's budget request for 2008 - which if I'm reading correctly comes out to about $69 billion.

And here's Michigan governor Granholm's request for 2009 - which totals almost $45 billion.

If it's worth being part of the process it's worth paying for. Stop acting pathetic.

Updated: Here's the inevitable outcome of the states being cheap:

As Rendell and Corzine modestly put it, "In the interest of providing assurance that the private funds necessary to finance a publicly administered election will indeed be available should the Michigan Legislature choose to proceed in this direction, we have taken the liberty of soliciting guarantors for such an effort."

Handled deftly, this might have been seen as an act of political altruism. Instead it smacks of an inside job. Rendell is a Clinton supporter. Corzine is a Clinton supporter. Granholm is a Clinton supporter. Perhaps coincidentally, the letter guaranteeing the money arrived on the day Clinton flew into the Michigan to ratchet up pressure on Obama and the legislature to support a new primary.

He who pays the piper calls the tune and you simply can't have backers of one campaign sponsoring an election.

The elections in Florida and Michigan are off and it's their own damn fault.

I suppose this means that Texas doesn't count, either

Chatwick Matlin of Slate explains why the results of the vote in Wyoming don't matter.

I thought this point was particularly puzzling:

The delegate margin will be small. Even if Obama blows Clinton out of the water in Wyoming, his delegate haul will be minimal. To come out with a six-delegate advantage, he’s going to have to win with a margin of 41 percent...

coupled with this:

Clinton will say Ohio and Texas are a lot bigger than Wyoming

That would be this Texas win:

Clinton won the primary with 51 percent of the popular vote to Obama's 47 percent, according to the Associated Press. Those results earned her 65 delegates to Obama's 61 delegates.

So Clinton netted +4 delegates in the primaries of the great state of Texas, which by Slate standards is apparently small.

And what about the results of the Texas caucuses?

The state Democratic Party estimates that Obama will come out ahead: 37 pledged delegated to Clinton's 30 delegates. But the official tally of the Texas caucus won't be ready for months.

So apparently, Obama will win Texas +3.

Guess who's insignificant now

"Pennsylvania is the new Iowa," - Clinton spokesman Doug Hattaway.

Voters of Wyoming and Mississippi. Sorry, you didn't make the cut.

BTW there are at least 267 "second class" superdelegates representing the states Clinton has relegated to insignificance.

Just so long as I'm the dictator.

Robert Farley from LGM compares Obama's call for unity with those of W in 2000:

Bush is an outstanding example of a candidate whose centrist direction (at least in 2000; I think Bowers is right about 2004) had no noticeable impact on governing strategy.

Centrist direction?

Contrary to popular opinion, George Bush never ran as a moderate and anybody who bothered to listen to the man during the 2000 election knew that he wasn't a centrist. He was running as a compassionate conservative and if the term "compassionate" confused you, well he told you exactly what he meant by that, too. Here's how Myron Magnet explained it in the WSJ in 1999:

The poor need the larger society's moral support; they need to hear the message of personal responsibility and self-reliance, the optimistic assurance that if they try – as they must – they will make it. They need to know, too, that they can't blame "the system" for their own wrongdoing.

In short, poor people need a pep squad, not a handout. Quit complaining about racism or children being born into poverty. Re-stigmatize illegitimacy, shame unwed mothers, get tough on public school teachers and show the poor how irresponsible they're being by not getting off their lazy asses.

This definition of compassionate conservatism wasn't kept secret. It was repeated again and again during the run-up to the election. Where the government was going to be involved was in "faith based" initiatives - tearing down the wall between church and state.

And if that involved tearing up anti-discrimination laws? Well whatever works:

Some religious groups do, however, follow exclusionary policies, and these point up the inherent -- and constitutional -- difficulties of church-state partnerships. A week ago Friday, Governor Bush toured the Haven of Rest Ministries, a homeless shelter in Akron, Ohio. Two years ago, ministry officials told a Jewish businessman that he couldn't join the board, citing their rule of employing only born-again Christians.

During his visit, Mr. Bush maintained that under his plan Haven of Rest's programs would be eligible for Government funds -- even though groups that accept Federal money must comply with anti-discrimination laws.

The only reason this seemed "centrist" was because the Democrats felt the need to jump on the faith-based bandwagon themselves.

Bush and Gore have enthusiastically endorsed a provision of the 1996 welfare-reform bill called charitable choice, which allows faith-based organizations to administer welfare programs with public funds, as long as there are secular alternatives. And then there is the explosive issue of publicly financed vouchers for parochial and secular private schools, which all of the Republican candidates have embraced. Although Gore opposes vouchers, his Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, provisionally supports them.

No, George Bush was all about "tax cuts so help me God!", eliminating the right of consumers to sue corporations, and deregulation of industry (back when Enron's Ken Lay was considered the smartest kid on the block).

His solution to environmental problems? Self-policing:

Although state regulators had been considering mandatory restrictions on polluters, state documents indicate that Mr. Bush thought the approach should be voluntary and essentially asked industry leaders to draft such a proposal, which they did in private meetings with state officials two years ago. No environmental groups or other public interest groups were invited, and they only learned about the meetings early this year.

His plan to get health care to the uninsured? Tax credits.

Under the plan he introduced here, Americans who have no health care coverage and are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid could receive a tax credit of up to $1,000 an individual or $2,000 a family to cover 90 percent of the cost of insurance.

Good luck paying for insurance with that. Especially if you're one of those lazy welfare queens.

As for his views on civil liberties, "there ought to be limits to freedom" was provoked by a web site making fun of his campaign. Bush's campaign threatened legal action.

And if we hadn't been so busy chuckling that Bush failed a reporter's pop quiz, we might have worried that the one person he did recognize had just overthrown a democratically elected Prime Minister - and George Bush approved wholeheartedly.

Mr. Bush also offered an assessment of the situation in Pakistan, where Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in a coup d'etat last month.

Mr. Bush, failing to name the general, said, "It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country, and I think that's good news for the subcontinent."

So you can fault George Bush for a lot of things, but lying about his goals as president isn't one of them. He told us of his plans to privatize Social Security, to nominate Scalia type justices, to gut social services, to increase military spending and tear up pesky treaties. He was running on unity, not compromise. He intended to get Democrats to agree to his plans, not to find common ground. (And he has been quite successful getting them to sign on to every harebrained idea he had).

Hell, if you believed what the man was telling you at the time, you'd have gotten a pretty good preview of the next 8 years. He even dropped hints about the second Gulf war.

At the Republican debate here on Thursday and at a news conference in nearby Bedford this morning, George W. Bush said that if he was commander in chief, any discovery that Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, was building weapons of mass destruction would touch off a swift and punishing response.

Mr. Bush seemed to say he would "take him out," indicating that he would forcibly remove Mr. Hussein from power or worse. But Mr. Bush said in a telephone interview this afternoon that the phrase, easily misinterpreted because of his Texas drawl, was "take 'em out," meaning the weapons.

As for his idea of bipartisanship, his most famous quote:

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

...He said that to a bipartisan group of Congressional leaders, one month before taking the oath of office.

Maybe they blame you for getting them into this mess

With the House Democrats’ refusal to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies — stalling the rewrite of the warrantless wiretapping program — GOP leadership aides are grumbling that their party isn’t getting more political money from the telecommunications industry.

h/t The Carpetbagger Report

If the president tells you to do it, that means it is not illegal

Or at least, that's the thinking of George Bush (channeling the ghost of Richard Nixon).

The government said to those who have alleged to have helped us that it is in our national interests and it’s legal. It’s in our national interests because we want to know who’s calling who from overseas into America. We need to know in order to protect the people.

It was legal.

Of course, they could have simply had their attorneys do a quick check of the law to see that it was illegal.

So on the one hand the civil liberties of our citizens are guaranteed by a lot of checks in the system, scrutinized by the United States Congress.

Right. Those checks are called laws. Like the FISA law. The one you violated. And you didn't bother informing Congress until you were worried they wouldn't rubber stamp your retroactive immunity bill.

As for whether the phone companies will help you monitor terrorist's phone calls -- Well, you could always get a warrant.

Image credit: Bell System Telephone by seychelles88

Did Catholic voters hate John Kerry in 2004?

Here's another article pushing the conventional wisdom that religious voters hate Democrats (although fortunately not Barack Obama).

From Newsweek's "On Faith" column:

Catholics and evangelicals don't hate Obama. In other words, he's no Kerry or Dukakis.

Wait a minute. Catholic voters hated John Kerry? Let's check those numbers again:

Bush 52% Kerry 47% - Catholic voters
Bush 51% Kerry 48% - All voters

So Catholic voters broke along virtually the same numbers as the country as a whole did. Where's the hatred in that?

What's the sound of the Clinton campaign imploding?

Yet another Clinton surrogate flips primary voters the bird:

[C]learly both candidates have excited and engaged the party’s membership — but, even so, turnout for primaries and caucuses is notoriously low. It would be shocking if 30 percent of registered Democrats have participated.If that is the case, we could end up with a nominee who has been actively supported by, at most, 15 percent of registered Democrats. That’s hardly a grassroots mandate.

More important, although many states like New York have closed primaries in which only enrolled Democrats are allowed to vote, in many other states Republicans and independents can make the difference by voting in Democratic primaries or caucuses.

He won his delegates fair and square, but those delegates represent the wishes not only of grassroots Democrats, but also Republicans and independents. If rank-and-file Democrats should decide who the party’s nominee is, each state should pass a rule allowing only people who have been registered in the Democratic Party for a given time — not nonmembers or day-of registrants — to vote for the party’s nominee.

Do they really consider this a winning strategy? Who are they trying to convince? The 20+ million Democratic primary voters who've broken turnout records across the country? The only thing crazier than believing this nonsense is that they think it's smart politics to argue it openly while voters in a dozen states are still preparing to go to the polls.

Candidates can throw mud at their opponent and be forgiven. But they cannot continually and publicly show contempt for the voters they'll need in the general election and survive.

Before Super Tuesday, it's safe to say most Obama supporters believed that Hillary would be the party's nominee and they were ready to come over and vote for her in the general election. But you can only smack people so many times and expect them to show up for you in November. If Obama wins the popular vote and the committed delegates, but party insiders overrule them, the Democrats will lose the presidency.

In the past few weeks the Clinton team have insulted party activists, African Americans, young people, small state Democrats, moderates, conservatives and liberals, together with Republicans and independents who've recently moved into the Democratic camp. They've even branded some superdelegates "second-class delegates". Combine that with her recent Abandon All Hope talking points and you've got an election platform to rival Walter Mondale's.

Bill Clinton might be forgiven his condescension to the black voters of South Carolina, Hillary excused for her clumsy comments after her Super Tuesday losses. Mark Penn can be condemned as a fool and a lousy strategist. But a campaign simply can't be caught publishing this kind of idiocy in the New York Times.

Clinton's team starts to attack Democratic voters directly

Speaking of plagiarism. Guess which of these is a line from a recent Hillary Clinton rally, and which is from the script of an RNC attack ad from the 2004 election:

Give me a break! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius- driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine. He's a poet, not a fighter.

"[He] should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ...body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to [his home state], where it belongs."

I'm not entirely sure who's going to be left to vote for Hillary if her superdelegate gambit pays off. After writing off the general election in more than a dozen states and having insulted Republicans, independents, and moderates ... now they're attacking liberal Democrats?

What's your hurry?

The Washington Post's Dan Balz, describes the mess that is the Democratic presidential election:

The rules of proportionality, which distribute delegates based on the percentage of vote won in a state or legislative district, make it more difficult for winners to gain a significant edge early in the process, or for trailing candidates to catch up late in the process. Winning, in other words, carries no special rewards unless the margins are more than 25 percentage points.

At the time that was written Hillary Clinton had won about 46% of the popular vote and 49% of the elected delegates. Obama had won 50% of the popular vote and 51% of the delegates.

Why is this considered a flaw in the system?

Apparently Dan is upset that the number of delegates you get is connected to the number of people who vote for you.

On the Democratic side there are two very popular candidates competing in a tight race for the nomination. We still haven't heard from the voters in 14 states. It's not a big surprise that we don't know the winner yet.

On the other side, John McCain was able to quickly dominate in a winner-take-all system despite deep hostility from members of his own party. He still has a hard time getting a majority of the vote against token opposition and has to worry about whether the base will show up in November. The Republican system is hardly more democratic, but it's faster, which I guess is what Dan Balz is looking for.

Unfortunately, he may actually have to wait until everyone gets a chance to vote.

Clinton advocate comes out in favor of smoke filled rooms

Lanny Davis (former special counsel and spokesman for Bill and strong supporter of Hillary's) repeats the assertion that states Obama wins simply don't count.

DAVIS: She has a majority of the United States senators who have endorsed her. She won in California and in Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry's backyard. And the states that you add up that Barack Obama won and give him credit, Idaho, Utah and North Dakota are not exactly states that are ever going to vote Democratic as opposed to California and we have the two senators in Washington.

You really need to kill this meme now, Hillary, before a smart Obama strategist starts running an ad with titles like this:

Hillary Clinton thinks some states are insignificant. Is yours one of them?

Worse yet, Davis, writing for The Hill, now literally argues that smoke-filled rooms are better at choosing candidates than Democratic voters are.

That data showed that in primary elections, the turnout among Democrats was often well below 50 percent. And in caucus states, where voters had to show up at a particular time and place and wait up to several hours before voting, the turn out was often as small as 10%-20% or often much less.

We were also reminded that before these reforms, the "smoke-filled rooms" of Democratic Party leaders had led to the nomination and election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. Not bad.

It's no surprise that this man, who once sat on DNC Executive Committee, authored the WSJ editorial entitled Liberal McCarthyism (attacking Democrats for voting against his favorite in a primary).

The Democratic base already believes that the 2000 election was stolen and would be furious if they believed their own party cheated to deny them their pick for the nomination.

If her people keep making these arguments, Senator Clinton risks being labeled as the candidate who says to hell with the voters, I'll win anyway possible. (The fact that Obama is currently winning the popular vote as well doesn't help her case.)


Update: Here we go again. These people really aren't helping you Hillary.

A top strategist to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Saturday countered the recent claims of some prominent Democrats that party elders would be wrong to override the will of their constituents in their choice for the Democratic presidential nominee.

In a phone call with reporters, Harold M. Ickes, argued that the 796 so-called superdelegates who could decide the party’s White House nominee were as much or “potentially more in touch” with the issues important to voters than the delegates amassed by the candidates through state primaries and caucuses.

In other words, party insiders understand the desires of voters better than the voters themselves. (Really, why do we bother to vote at all?)

Is Hillary Clinton running a 20-state strategy?

The nice thing about the Democrat's proportional nomination system is that it's worth fighting to come in a close second. It's far better to lose a state by 3% instead of by 30%. Every state is worth campaigning in, even if it's the opposition's home turf. Yet Senator Clinton has been taking states off the table ever since South Carolina - allowing Obama to defeat her by 20,30, even 50%. The only place Clinton has done as well is in her former home of Arkansas and neighboring Oklahoma.

And now we've got a collection of races that Hillary literally says are not worth winning. (I guess she's not an advocate of Howard Dean's 50-state strategy).

[Hillary Clinton] also downplayed many of Obama's Super Tuesday victories, describing them as states that Democrats should not expect to win in November.

"It is highly unlikely we will win Alaska or North Dakota or Idaho or Nebraska," she said, naming several of Obama's red state wins. "But we have to win Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida, Michigan … And we've got to be competitive in places like Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma."

Hillary apparently believes that there are solid Democratic states and solid Republican states that aren't even worth competing for during the general election. Instead she'll focus on a few "swing" states (don't ask me how Massachusetts and Texas got on that list).


The electoral vote map from 1964. Democrat Lyndon Johnson won the states in red (see if you can find Alaska, North Dakota, Idaho and Nebraska).

The map above is typical for American presidential elections. In 15 of the 25 elections since 1908, the winner of the presidency won over 75% of the states and over 75% of the delegates. The races in 2000 and 2004 weren't normal; they were aberrations.

This is what the map looked like 8 years before Johnson's win. 43 of 48 states switched sides. The country isn't nearly as polarized as strategists like to believe. "Democratic" states will vote for a Republican and vice versa, but you have to work for it.


The electoral vote map from 1956. Republican Dwight Eisenhower won the states in blue.

I would have given Hillary credit for making a clumsy remark, except her team keeps repeating the theme:

“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois?” Chief Strategist Mark Penn said. “That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”

Insignificant states apparently include Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia and Washington. Since the Clinton team has already run off to Texas, I'll assume Wisconsin and Hawaii make the list too. And considering what's already on the list, you can make a pretty good case that they believe Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming aren't worth their trouble either.

That's 30 insignificant states.

Is this how she's going to campaign in the general election? Ceding large swaths of "red" America before even starting. This should be a blowout year for the Democratic nominee yet she seems to be dreaming of a 271 electoral vote squeaker.

And to paraphrase the Clinton team, the last time anybody won the presidency with fewer than 20 states was 1888 - and there were only 36 states in the Union at the time.

Some voters count more than others

The number of Democrats (in thousands) who voted in each caucus or primary, so far. Voters in the red columns don't count according to DNC rules.

Clinton accuses Obama of working with a slumlord

This seems like an incredibly stupid accusation for the junior Senator from New York to throw around:

CLINTON: ... I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Resco, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago.
....
OBAMA: ... I was an associate at a law firm that represented a church group that had partnered with this individual to do a project and I did about five hours worth of work on this joint project. That's what she's referring to.

That's a pretty cheap shot from Hillary, who should know from personal experience that a candidate can't always vet every contributor that supports a campaign. After all, this was pretty big news a few months back:

A federal grand jury on Tuesday indicted Norman Hsu, a top Democratic fundraiser accused of cheating investors of at least $20 million and using some of the money to make illegal donations to political campaigns.

There's also this:

A Pakistani immigrant who hosted fundraisers in Southern California for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is being sought by the FBI on charges that he funneled illegal contributions to Clinton’s political action committee and Sen. Barbara Boxer’s 2004 reelection campaign. Authorities say Northridge businessman Abdul Rehman Jinnah, 56, fled the country after an indictment accused him of engineering more than $50,000 in illegal donations to the Democratic committees. A business associate charged as a co-conspirator has entered a guilty plea and is scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles next week.

And some people might think she should have had better control over her own staff:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's former finance director has been indicted on charges of filing fictitious reports that misstated contributions for a Hollywood fund-raising gala for the senator, the Justice Department said Friday.

Of course, her husband's administration was occasionally associated with unsavory characters as well:

A Federal grand jury today indicted a Thai businesswoman who worked as a Washington lobbyist on charges that she and her family funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign money to the Democratic Party to gain access for her clients to President Clinton and members of the Administration.

She's bound to remember this:

President Clinton's eleventh-hour pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich has sparked a firestorm of controversy, launching investigations in both houses of Congress and igniting fierce protest from both Democrats and Republicans.

[F]ederal prosecutors in New York officially opened a criminal investigation into whether Rich did indeed buy his pardon with his ex-wife Denise's pointed largesse to the First Couple and the Democratic party.

As for actually working for clients who were later indicted, Hillary fought off these accusations for the entire 8 years her husband was in the Oval Office:

Ms. Clinton and her attorney have stated publicly that the billing records confirm that, as an attorney at the Rose Firm in the mid-80's, she was not significantly involved in the representation of Jim McDougal's savings and loan, Madison Guaranty.

According to the Rose records, Hillary Clinton billed Madison for 60 hours of work over a 15 month period. Ms. Clinton's attorney argues that this represents a de minimus amount of work and includes billings for work performed by Rose Finn lawyers working for Hillary Clinton at the time.

That was the trigger for the investigation that led to Bill's impeachment in 1998.

Hillary may be gambling that Barack won't retaliate with dirt of his own. But Republicans will definitely remember during the general election. It'd be better if she didn't legitimize their attacks herself.

Messenger at Mercury

NASA's Messenger spacecraft passes over the horizon of Mercury (January 2008).
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Three Mercury flybys, each followed about two months later by a course correction maneuver, put MESSENGER in position to enter Mercury orbit in March 2011. During the flybys – set for January 2008, October 2008 and September 2009 – MESSENGER will map nearly the entire planet in color, image most of the areas unseen by Mariner 10, and measure the composition of the surface, atmosphere and magnetosphere. It will be the first new data from Mercury in more than 30 years – and invaluable for planning MESSENGER’s yearlong orbital mission.

Barack Obama and the bankruptcy bill of 2005

Denver, August 28th, 2008:

"Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses, and the time to protect Social Security for future generations."

From Senator Obama's floor statement on the Bankruptcy Abuse and Prevention Act of 2005 (S.256):

[T]his bill would take us from a system where judges weed out the abusers from the honest to a system where all the honest are presumed to be abusers. Where declaring Chapter 7 bankruptcy is made prohibitively expensive for people who already have suffered financial devastation. With this bill, it doesn't matter if you ran up your debt on a trip to Vegas or a trip to the Emergency Room, you're still treated the same under the law and you still face the possibility that you'll never get the chance to start over.

Now, it would be one thing if most people were abusing the system and falling into bankruptcy because they were irresponsible with their finances. But we know that's not the case. We know that most people fall into bankruptcy as a result of bad luck. And we know that a recent Harvard study showed that nearly half of all bankruptcies occur because of an illness that ends up sticking families with medical bills they just can't keep up with.

Take the case of Suzanne Gibbons. A few years back, Suzanne had a good job as a nurse and a home on Chicago's Northwest Side. Then she suffered a stroke that left her hospitalized for five-days. And even though she had health insurance through her job, it only covered $4,000 of her $53,000 hospital bill.

Because of her illness, she was soon forced to leave her full-time nursing job and take a temp job that paid less and didn't offer health insurance. Then the collection agencies started coming after her for hospital bills that she just couldn't keep up with. She lost her retirement savings, she lost her house, and eventually, she was forced to declare bankruptcy.

If this bill passes as written, Suzanne would be treated by the law the same as any scam artist who cheats the system. The decision about whether or not she can file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy would never take into account the fact that she fell into financial despair because of her illness. With all that debt, she would have had to hire a lawyer and pay hundreds of dollars more in increased paperwork. And after all that, she still may have been told that she was ineligible for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

And so, as much as we'd like to believe that the face of this bankruptcy crisis is credit card addicts who spend their way into debt, the truth is that it's the face of people like Suzanne Gibbons. It's the face of middle-class America.

S.256 passed the Senate 74-25.

The Republicans (including John McCain) were unanimous in their support for the bill. 18 Democrats and Independent Jim Jeffords voted with the majority. (Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter voted for the House version).

25 Democrats, including Barack Obama, voted against the bill.

Hillary Clinton was absent (on the day of Bill Clinton's heart surgery). However, she fought against it's passage in the days before the final vote.

"Success" in Iraq: de-de-Baathification

The Iraqi Parliament has finally done something that the Bush administration, and many others, considered essential to political progress in Iraq: it passed a law intended to open government jobs to former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. What should have been heralded as an accomplishment, however, may only serve to further reinforce the bumbling nature of President Bush’s ill-conceived adventure in Iraq.

Let's remember that the only reason the Iraqis have to pass an anti-anti-Baathification law in the first place is to undo the anti-Baathification law originally passed by Paul Bremer with the blessing of the Bush administration.

In an act that many saw as the original sin that led to Iraq's current turmoil, Bremer crippled Iraq's institutions of governance and security and created half a million angry and jobless people in the process. He has since said that there were legitimate grievances about the order but that it was necessary to bring oppressed Shiite Muslims and ethnic Kurds into the government.

Bremer's order affected 400,000 members of the armed forces and all civil servants and officials above the Baath Party's lowest rank-and-file level, a number estimated at 32,000 to 85,000.

Bremer now blames the Iraqis for screwing up his brilliant plan.

We then turned over the implementation of this carefully focused policy to Iraq's politicians. I was wrong here. The Iraqi leaders, many of them resentful of the old Sunni regime, broadened the decree's impact far beyond our original design. That led to such unintended results as the firing of several thousand teachers for being Baath Party members. We eventually fixed those excesses, but I should have made implementation the job of a judicial body, not a political one.

If at first you don't succeed...

... Just change the names.

Washington Post reporter Dan Balz proves that just because you're perpetually wrong, you don't have to stop speculating.

January 3, 2008: Obama may have to quit after Iowa

The only race that could (end in Iowa) is in the Democratic Party and only if Hillary Clinton wins a big victory. Iowa has proved resistant to the Clinton brand, and she has struggled there throughout the year. But her final days of campaigning have been solid, and a victory, no matter how narrow, would be a big boost for her.

January 7, 2008: Clinton may have to quit after New Hampshire

Obama's freight train for change has overrun the Clinton campaign. Top officials inside her campaign and alarmed allies outside are braced for a defeat on Tuesday. Five days is not enough, they have argued, to slow and reverse the momentum Obama has developed since Iowa.

For these Clinton loyalists, the hope is that the real campaign turnaround can begin after New Hampshire. "Whatever happens tomorrow, we're going on," Clinton told CBS's Harry Smith Monday morning. "And we're going to keep going until the end of the process on February 5th. But I've always felt that this is going to be a very tough, hard-fought election, and I'm ready for that."

But like Penn's memo from Saturday, that may be more wish than reality.

January 12, 2008: Edwards may have to quit after South Carolina

"I want to be absolutely clear to all of you who have been devoted to this cause," he said Tuesday night, "and I want to be clear to the 99 percent of Americans who have not yet had the chance to have their voices heard, that I am in this race to the convention, that I intend to be the nominee of my party."

That pledge notwithstanding, Edwards has two weeks to think about the future. He is certainly in the race through Nevada and South Carolina

I'm not suggesting you should put your money on Edwards in S.C., but so far betting against this guy's gut instinct is a better gamble than betting on the favorite in the election markets.

Voinovich accuses Obama of being inexperienced - like Bush

This is a funny criticism coming from a man who's rubber stamped every foreign policy initiative of the current president.

Ohio Sen. George Voinovich, a key moderate Republican in the Senate chamber and influential member of the Foreign Relations Committee, scoffed Tuesday when asked if Sen. Barack Obama has the foreign policy chops to be the next president.

It was bad management that got President Bush into trouble, said the Ohio senator, who at one point blocked confirmation of John Bolton, Bush's choice to become ambassador to the United Nations .

"People thought he'd be a much better manager than he was," Voinovich said of the president. "Even though he's dedicated himself to management, I think some of the screw-ups that have occurred have really hurt him. A lot of Republicans are disappointed because they frankly thought he'd be a better manager."

For all his complaints about George Bush's Iraq war strategy, and his fleeting opposition to John Bolton, Senator Voinovich apparently never took the president aside, explained just how he was jeopardizing the nation's defense and used his experience as a distinguished Republican Senator to keep us on the right path. In fact, Bush probably took Voinovich's repeated votes protecting him from oversight as a big thumbs up.

Note to the Senator: You're not a spectator. You helped get us into the mess we're in today. Put up, or shut up.

The polls were just wrong

Before everybody gets carried away trying to explain Barack Obama's loss to Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, just remember, there's a rule in science that says the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. And the simplest explanation is this:


There was no Iowa bounce for Obama and Clinton never rallied. The polls were just wrong.


Forget the Wilder effect. Forget the Bradley effect. Forget trying to explain the results as a women's revolt after Chris Matthews' condescending comments. The polls taken in the lead-up to the New Hampshire vote were all over the place. Zogby had Obama at 42. Fox had him at 32. And 20 other polls filled every point in between.

People scratching their heads questioning how Hillary won are basically asserting that all of those polls were correct. That Obama literally had a double-digit post Iowa surge and then Clinton rallied from behind - all in 5 days. The only way to believe that argument is to believe that the polls were measuring dynamic changes in support over a very short time period. Despite the fact that many of the polls were taken concurrently over several days, yet still didn't agree with one another.

This was true in the lead-up to the Iowa vote as well, though nobody seemed to notice. On election day, Zogby predicted Obama would win Iowa by 7, while ARG predicted he'd lose to Clinton by 9.

I guess some groups are more important than others

From CNN's political ticker:

Obama leads Clinton among key groups as returns come in

Mind you, this wasn't one of the pre-election polls that predicted a double-digit victory for Obama in NH. This was an exit poll. And it predicted a tie.

Hubble Captures Full View of Uranus's Rings on Edge.
Image courtesy NASA, ESA, SETI (M. Showalter)

Until Voyager 2 flew by Uranus in January 1986, the rings were only known from the way they temporarily blocked the light of stars passing behind the planet. Hubble provided some of the first images of the ring system as viewed from Earth's distance of approximately 2 billion miles. The advent of adaptive optics gave ground-based observers using large telescopes comparatively sharp views.

But they keep telling me Ron Paul is a bigot

From the January 5th debate:

Ron Paul's comments challenging the idea that we're in a war against the Muslim world - (and particularly Rudy Giuliani's inability to utter the word terrorist without the prefix Islamic.)

REP. PAUL: ...I'm as concerned about the nature of the threat of terrorism as anybody, if not more so. But they don't attack us because we're free and prosperous. And there are radicals in all elements in all religions that will resort to violence.

REP. PAUL: You paint all Islamics the same way.

REP. PAUL: What you're doing is damaging our relationship by destroying our relationship with all Muslims. That's what you're doing.

Great news about the real estate market!

Housing prices drop more than 6%.

I know it's hard for business journalists to believe, but for a lot of us, news of plummeting housing prices is fantastic news.

Reports of falling prices are always accompanied by words like grim, dire, anxiety, woe and meltdown (and it's unquestionably Bad News). In this fantasy world, everybody who's anybody already owns a house and that house is supposed to be their ticket to riches.

Take this article for instance:

Until recently, Seattle-area homeowners could bask in the knowledge that their houses would appreciate handsomely. Median home prices rose 16 percent in 2005 and 21 percent in 2006, a Seattle Times analysis found.

When this year's final numbers are tallied, the median annual increase will probably be more like 2 or 3 percent, Seattle real-estate economist Matthew Gardner says. That puts Seattle ahead of many cities; still, it's the lowest appreciation rate in roughly a decade.

So a person who bought a house in Seattle at the start of 2005 saw his home's "value" increase by over 40% in 2 years and can look forward to only another 2-3% increase this year. The title of that article? Real-estate anxiety: What's next in '08?

Keep that in mind that when you hear that home prices could fall 30% - in that nightmare scenario that Seattle homeowner would simply break even.

Still, it's true, the half of the market that are looking to buy want to buy low - or at least buy something affordable. This may seem greedy to people who expected double-digit markups year after year - but anybody who thought that prices could climb several times faster than wages forever needs a lesson in basic economics.

Which brings me to a comment from this article:

Housing Optimism - Why the year in real estate wasn't all bad news

[I]t's always wise to treat broker happy-talk skeptically, and that includes the NAR's prediction of a housing market rebound in 2008. But amid their blarney, the realtors do make some valid points about how much is right with the economics that support the buying and selling of homes. Unemployment remains low. Interest rates remain very attractive by historic standards. It may be a less-than-stellar time to sell a house, due to extraordinarily high inventory levels, but it sure is a great time to buy one. Since many homes are bought by first-timers, who needn't worry about selling a current house before they buy one, there is a pool of buyers who should stand ready to make offers.

It will be a great time to buy a house when the monthly mortgage is well under half your monthly income and it isn't cheaper to simply rent it. That time hasn't arrived - and no, getting an interest-only or adjustable rate mortgage doesn't cut it. Those contrivances are what helped drive up housing prices in the first place and are a big reason people are facing foreclosure today.

Everybody hates Ron Paul

At least all the partisans do.

It wasn't too surprising to see FOX news question Ron Paul's Republican credentials during the debates and later suggest he's taking orders from al Qaeda . Nor was it surprising to see any mention of him banned from the rightwing Redstate blog. Ron Paul is, after all, a staunch opponent of the Iraq war, of torture, of suspension of habeas corpus and expansion of presidential powers. In today's Republican party, that's pretty much heresy. The only thing that keeps John McCain out of the doghouse is his unwavering support for expanding the current war.

Ron Paul's supporters are regularly described as trolls, shills, Ronbots, and dysfunctional hacks who live in their mothers basements (regardless of the evidence that they exist in large numbers - and have jobs.)

It's more surprising to see the sheer vitriol leveled at Paul from the left. He and his supporters are generally regarded as a fringe extremists, and those are the nicer descriptions.

Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald took fire from the left after Andrew endorsed Paul for the Republican nomination and Glenn defended his record as a conservative defender of civil liberties:

In a speech last month, [Naomi] Wolf cited Paul's sponsorship of The American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007 -- which would restore habeas corpus, prohibit torture and rendition, bar warrantless surveillance, protect journalists from prosecution for reporting on classifed matters, outlaw the use of secret evidence, and compel Congress to sue to challenge the validity of signing statements -- as a measure necessary to "stabilize democracy long enough to take a breath."

Glenn was responding to Dana Goldstein's assault on Andrew. She claimed that Ron Paul's anti-abortion stance proved he was a hypocrite when it comes to civil liberties.

What is "freedom and toleration" without a woman's right to control her reproductive destiny? What is an "ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble" without the acknowledgment that unplanned pregnancy, and the havoc it brings, are features of human life that can not be eradicated? What candidate who stands against "Christian meddling" would strengthen the theocratic movement by allowing states, in the name of religion, to repeal women's rights over their own bodies? Sure, Paul's assessment of the Iraq war is correct. But his libertarianism is in name only when it comes to half of the population. That isn't so principled, and it isn't so exciting. Paul doesn't deserve the endorsement of any thinking person committed to individual rights.

But Paul doesn't become a hypocrite for failing to live up to a progressive caricature of libertarianism. He believes that human life starts at conception and to him arguing that a woman has a right to terminate a fetus is like arguing that a mother has the right to smother her newborn child. Disagreeing with Dana doesn't make him an unprincipled misogynist.

Greenwald's defense of Ron Paul earned him a rebuttal by Goldstein, in which she essentially claimed that Ron Paul's base was made up of little more than anti-semitic skinheads. Ezra Klein, Jeff Feck, and the Sideshow piled on, slamming Greenwald for his comments.

Here's Ezra's case against Paul:

[L]et's be clear: Paul wants to destroy the minimum wage, dissolve Medicare, end the Constitutional right to choice, prevent gay adoptions, preserve "Don't Ask/Don't Tell," undermine Social Security, dismantle public education, etc, etc.

Good point. You've just described the entire Republican field.

In fact all the attacks on Paul could easily be leveled at any of the Republicans running. Why Rudy Giuliani is typically described as a pro-choice social moderate after insisting that he'll nominate judges who'll abolish abortion rights is beyond me.

This goes double for Romney - declared by many of these same bloggers to be the least bad Republican despite his intention to push for constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and abortion and to wage war on Iran (not to mention his support for torture, suspension of civil liberties and his own regressive tax proposals). The belief apparently is that he couldn't possibly be serious.

Ron Paul is simply the only Republican in the race who agrees with progressives on anything. And for that he and his supporters are branded anti-semitic, misogynistic, racist wackos - by the very people who should be relieved that there are still some conservatives who believe in fundamental human rights.

Good luck with that, guys.

Senior Senate Republicans finessing their election-year message are emphasizing that their conference will need to take a more prominent role on healthcare to win sorely needed independent voters in their uphill bid to retake the majority in 2008.

This is the same group of Republicans that twice upheld the president's veto of children's health insurance and specifically attacked two children whose families lobbied for the bill.

Republicans were worried that too many middle class kids might get covered.

Chris Dodd: man of the hour

The 4th amendment. Image originally uploaded by wemeantdemocracy.

At least one of the Democrats running for president remembers that he already has a platform to fight back against President Bush's power grab.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) -- a presidential candidate who returned from Iowa Sunday night to fight the measure -- quickly claimed victory after the bill's withdrawal, and he again vowed to "utilize all the tools available" to block passage once Reid calls it up in January.

Reid, unfortunately, has done all he could to undermine his fellow Democrat and Dodd got little support from his colleagues. Only 10 Senators joined him in voting against moving the FISA bill forward. 35 of his fellow Democrats voted against him (those who think we simply need more Democrats in the Senate should keep that in mind).

Dodd took a significant risk against long odds in what has been one of the few victories against George Bush's assault on the rule of law.

Dodd has been an outspoken opponent of any measure that would offer retroactive immunity to telecom companies that participated with the Bush Administration in violating the civil liberties of millions of American. He announced in October he would put a hold on any bill that included retroactive immunity language. Although his hold was disregarded, he has remained a strong opponent to the bill. Dodd was prepared to offer an amendment that would strip the retroactive immunity provision of the bill and announced he would filibuster the bill if his amendment failed.

I consider it very strange that none of the other Democratic Senators running for president have taken advantage of their positions to prove their ability to lead on controversial issues. Bush's claims of presidential power cannot be defeated by the next president from within the White House. If Congress continues to capitulate to his whims, they no longer are a co-equal branch of government.

You're kidding right?

President Thompson discusses the Indian problem with Senator McConnell.

The previous great Republican hope takes on the new one.

We apologize for telling reporters that a BA in Biblical Studies from Ouachita Baptist University doesn’t, in fact, make Huckabee more qualified to fight the war on terror than say…Fred Thompson.

After all Fred is the only candidate who has been a Major General and an Admiral and director of the CIA. (He even has executive experience).

h/t James Joyner

The solution to all problems

Bill Would Give Tax Break to Exonerated Prisoners

Nice timing Pinnochio

Arlen Specter (right) has a chance encounter with Karl Rove on his way to the Senate. Image originally uploaded by nanotron.

12/05/07: Arlen Specter is furious at Harry Reid for calling him a puppet of George Bush

Specter, R-Pa., cried foul and declared that Reid had not only violated Senate Rule XIX, which prohibits the questioning of a senator’s integrity, but was just flat wrong.

12/06/07: Arlen Specter acts to protect Karl Rove from a Congressional subpoena

A Senate Judiciary Committee vote on contempt resolutions against Karl Rove and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten were postponed following an objection by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

h/t ThinkProgress

Why Michigan and Florida don't care about DNC threats

Vote Here. Image originally uploaded by cursedthing.

So the DNC attempted to halt the competition over who gets to vote first and ended up potentially alienating the voters in two must-win states in the process.

In August, the Democratic National Committee responded by stripping Florida of its convention delegates after the state scheduled its primary for Jan. 29. Yesterday in Vienna, the DNC's rules and bylaws committee issued the same penalty to Michigan for its Jan. 15 primary date.

If you're wondering why the DNC didn't short-circuit the problem by cracking down on Iowa and New Hampshire (whose insistence on being first is driving the race to the bottom), it's because Iowa and New Hampshire don't care about losing their delegates, they want to be kingmakers. These states not only demand that they go first, they demand that everyone else wait a week before voting. This way they are able to dictate the debate and compel the candidates to focus on local issues (like farm subsidies and small town "values") instead of federal ones.

Of course, every state thinks its own interests are the most important and the larger, more urban ones have been chafing at the idea that the list of candidates available to them has been culled by voters who have very different priorities.

So Michigan and Florida have taken the gamble. And does anyone believe that if Hillary Clinton wins those primaries by a 20-30 point margin the rest of us will even have Obama or Edwards to vote for come February 5th?

If they can decide the victor, they don't need any delegates.

George Bush: preparing for World War III

Sometimes you have to ask yourself, would you rather have a complete incompetent or a baldfaced liar as your president?

(Of course, there's no rule that says you can't have both)

BUSH: I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was John -- Mike McConnell came in and said we have some new information. He didn't tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.

So Mike McConnell comes strolling into the president's office, tells him we have new information concerning a country that's supposedly planning to nuke Israel (or Poland?) and Bush doesn't even ask for a quick summary. And he doesn't ask about it for 3 months!


video at ThinkProgress

Yes, Hugo Chavez is an autocrat

Here's a simple rule:

If you try to overthow the government in a military coup, disband the legislature, rewrite the Constitution, stack the courts, silence the media and politicize the military. Then you're an autocrat.

And it doesn't matter whether your name is Putin, Musharraf or Chavez.

h/t Matthew Yglesias

Mike Huckabee and the flight of the bumblebee

Humble Bumble. Image originally uploaded by Memotions

Mike Huckabee revives the old wives tale that scientists have proven that it's impossible for a bumblebee to fly:

"The bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts, goes ahead and flies anyway"

This is just another entry in the Republican habit of claiming that scientists are idiots. It doesn't actually matter that it isn't true, or that scientists figured out how a bumblebee flies years ago.

Don't confuse me with the facts

Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, explaining why it doesn't matter if Rudy keeps making things up.

“When he talks about New York, people see it,” Mr. Luntz said of Mr. Giuliani, “and they feel it, and if a number isn’t quite right, or is off by a small amount, nobody will care, because it rings true to them.”

Luntz is famous for teaching Republican candidates how to put lipstick on a pig. Here are some more of his words of wisdom:

A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.

The political risks of being right

Barack Obama in Austin. Image originally uploaded by That Other Paper.

Peter Beinart, arguing that Americans are too short-sighted to remember the start of the Iraq war, thinks that Obama has a problem:

Recent American history is littered with candidates who were right about war and weren't rewarded at election time.

Really? Is that right?

Lets see. What happened to the 23 Senators who voted against the Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Iraq?

• Paul Wellstone, died in a plane crash
• Jon Corzine got promoted to Governor of NJ and was replaced by a Democrat
  
• Paul Sarbanes retired and was replaced by a Democrat
• Mark Dayton retired and was replaced by a Democrat
• Bob Graham retired and was replaced by a Republican
• Lincoln Chafee (the only Republican) lost to a Democrat
  

So 1 lost his seat (the Republican, for siding with Bush too often - to an anti-war Democrat). All the rest are still in the Senate. That doesn't seem too bad for the group that were "right about the war".

How did the 77 who voted for the Iraq war fare?

• Democrats Carnahan and Cleland lost their bids for reelection a month after the vote. (They were accused of being soft on the terrorists). Both were replaced by Republicans.
  
• Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle lost his majority that November too, then lost his own seat to a Republican.
• Republicans Allen and Santorum lost their seats to anti-war Democrats in 2006.
• Joe Lieberman was kicked out of his party and almost lost his seat.
• Bill Frist lost the Republican majority and quit.
• John Edwards resigned and was replaced by a Republican
• Zell Miller resigned and was replaced by a Republican
• John Breaux resigned and was replaced by a Republican
• Fritz Hollings resigned and was replaced by a Republican
• Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell resigned and was replaced by a Democrat
• Republican Peter Fitzgerald resigned and was replaced by Barack Obama
• John Kerry lost his bid for the presidency - his famous last words "I voted for it before I voted against it".
  

So 11 of the Senators voting for the Iraq war ultimately lost their seats to a member of the opposite party. That doesn't seem like the electorate was rewarding anyone who was "wrong on the war".

Beinart cites the primary loss of Howard Dean in 2004 as proof of his point. But while Dean surged briefly in the polls, he was only 1 of 10 candidates for the nomination and was always considered a long-shot. Famously pro-war Joe Lieberman was the original front runner and ended up in "a 3-way tie for 3rd place" before he dropped out of the race. Edwards and Kerry weren't helped much by their votes for the war, either.

And of course Barack Obama, a man who spoke publicly against the war at a time when it was considered political suicide, was a rare ray of sunshine for the Democratic party in 2004.

Did I mention that he's the one Beinart thinks has a problem?

Chalk up another one for Al Gore

Polar Bear. Image originally uploaded by ironmanixs

You might remember that Al Gore was accused of alarmism, exaggeration, and even outright lying in his film "An Inconvenient Truth". Fox News and other right wing critics giddily published columns with titles like "Convenient Untruths" after a British judge decided there were 9 significant errors in the film.

The Washington Post's Fact Checker also focused on that decision on the day that it was announced that Gore had received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.

[T]he judge described Gore's film as "broadly accurate" in its presentation of climate change. At the same time he also listed nine significant errors in the movie which, he said, reflected a general context of "alarmism and exaggeration" surrounding climate change.

These 9 significant errors rapidly dropped to 3 errors or omissions once the Fact Checker bothered to ask people who actually understood the science.

By the Gore camp's own admission, some scenes in the movie have been over-simplified. As Kreider points out, science does not transfer easily to the big screen. Scientists sympathetic to Gore have effectively conceded several errors or omissions in the movie:

Among the remaining errors Fact Checker listed was this:

Drowning polar bears. Gore cited a scientific study showing that polar bears had drowned by "swimming long distances--up to 60 miles--to find the ice." According to Andrew Derocher, chair of the polar bear group at the World Conservation Union, studies show that there is a good chance that the polar bears died by drowning but no definitive proof. Storms and hypothermia are other major concerns.

Well the science is rapidly coming down on Gore's side of the argument:

A census of polar bears in Canada’s Hudson Bay has lent some hard numbers to the long-held fear that retreating sea ice is causing some bears to starve or drown.

Now, looking at 20 years of data from bears captured along the coast of Hudson Bay, a team of scientists from the United States and Canada has found that fewer of the youngest and oldest bears survived in years when the ice broke early.

“Survivorship has dropped in the cubs, subadults and very old animals and is directly related to the date of break-up,” says Ian Stirling, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Edmonton, Alberta, and an author on the report.

The Fact Checker's last column on the debate ended with this line:

In their zeal to draw attention to the cause, even Nobel peace prize laureates can make mistakes or shade the truth a little. I award Al Gore one Pinocchio.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether the Fact Checker was being too zealous in its attempt to be "evenhanded" in the global warming debate.

Remember, this is what we're fighting for in Iraq.

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

Bush spoke nearly three weeks after Musharraf declared emergency rule, sacked members of the Supreme Court and began a roundup of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Musharraf's government yesterday released about 3,000 political prisoners, although 2,000 remain in custody, according to the Interior Ministry.

Musharraf, you see, is a decider, and deciders decide in a democracy. Bush elaborated on this point during the interview:

we didn't necessarily agree with his decision, to impose emergency rule

He didn't necessarily disagree, either.

Let's face it, George Bush has supported Musharraf since he led a coup against the elected government of Pakistan 8 years ago. Musharraf has never been elected himself, and he is not a democrat.

He's had opposition leaders arrested, rivals exiled, had the country's constitution rewritten to his ends, censored the media, purged members of the Supreme Court for voting against him, placed them under house arrest, replaced them with his own lackeys and required those justices to sign an oath to military rule and to Musharraf himself. (All in the name of protecting the country against terrorists)

In other words, Musharraf is the president George Bush always dreamed he would be.

Success in Iraq?

This is apparently considered good news these days:

[P]ictures from Iraq show people returning to the streets as often as they show a new suicide bombing.

Don't forget to look up, occasionally

Composite color image of Comet Holmes (November 1, 2007) showing the concentric shells of dust surrounding the main body. A faint tail can be seen emanating at the bottom right. Image credit A. Dyer via ESA and NASA

The normally sedate Comet Holmes made a bright splash in the sky about two weeks ago, unexpectedly becoming a million times brighter than normal overnight and causing a stir among astronomers.

The comet and its expanding ball of dust have become the biggest object in the solar system, with a diameter appearing even bigger than the sun.

For the next few months, the comet will be in the constellation Perseus, near Cassiopeia. Check out these star maps if you're curious.

Anti-terror laws in Pakistan

Protesters in London demonstrating against Pakistan's "state of emergency". Image originally uploaded by Orhan

Not so great at catching actual terrorists, but very good for stifling dissent:

Another opposition figure contacted by Bhutto earlier in the week, cricket legend Imran Khan, was moved to Lahore's biggest prison early Thursday after being charged under anti-terror laws for protesting against emergency rule.

Musharraf said in a series of interviews that he would not consider quitting until the turmoil in the country was over, telling Sky News: "I am not a dictator, I want a democracy."

Anyone who thinks that we need to make a devil's bargain with Musharraf to avoid having the bomb fall into the hands of radicals should remember these points:

It was the Pakistani military, with the help of A.Q. Khan, that sold nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

It was the Pakistani military which backed the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11.

Musharraf signed a deal with the Taliban in September of 2006 that effectively gave them safe haven in Waziristan and has allowed them to relaunch attacks on Afghanistan. 2007 has been the most violent year in Afghanistan, since the 2001 invasion.

And while Musharraf has now disbanded his country's secular courts and turned his forces against protestors demanding a return to democracy, this is how the war against Pakistan's radical militants is going:

[I]n the last several days, the militants have extended their reach, capturing more territory in Pakistan’s settled areas and chasing away frightened policemen, local government officials said.

As inconspicuous as it might be in a nation of 160 million people, the takeover of the small Alpuri district headquarters this week was considered a particular embarrassment for General Musharraf. It showed how the militants could still thumb their noses at the Pakistani Army.

In fact, local officials and Western diplomats said, there is little evidence that the 12-day-old emergency decree has increased the government’s leverage in fighting the militants, or that General Musharraf has used the decree to take any extraordinary steps to combat them.

h/t John Cole

Who cares about planted questions?

"And I think this little flap in Iowa over did Hillary Clinton plant questions at her rallies, just is part of all that, who cares!" - Cokie Roberts on This Week

Who cares? Well, you're supposed to Cokie.

After 7 years of staged photo ops, invitation only town hall meetings, free-speech zones, columnists being paid to plant propaganda in their papers, not to mention the accusation that Washington's political journalists are nothing more than a pack of stenographers - well, you think you'd be a little sensitive to this sort of thing.

The only thing that prevents every politician from pulling these stunts is the fear of embarrassment.

A 5th planet is found orbiting another star.

The newest planet found orbiting 55 Cancri is a gas giant roughly half the size of Saturn (shown here in an image taken by the Cassini spacecraft). Image courtesy of NASA/JPL.

According to lead author Debra Fischer, assistant professor of astronomy at San Francisco State University, the fifth planet is within the star's habitable zone in which water could exist as a liquid. Though the planet is a giant ball of gas, liquid water could exist on the surface of a moon or on other, rocky planets that may yet be found within the zone. "Right now, we are looking at a gap between the 260-day orbit of the new planet and the 14-year orbit of another gas giant, and if you had to bet, you'd bet that there is more orbiting stuff there."

"We haven't found a twin of our solar system, because the four planets close to the star are all the size of Neptune or bigger," Marcy said, but he added that he's optimistic that continued observations will reveal a rocky planet within five years.

It's only been about 15 years since the first extra-solar planet was discovered. Since then over 200 have been found orbiting other stars. 55 Cancri is the first star (other than our own) known to have more than 4 planets.

La Niña forecasts continued drought in the Southern U.S.

Image of the the tropical Pacific Ocean in mid-October. Blue indicates colder waters (called La Niña). Image courtesy of NASA/JPL Ocean Surface Topography Team.

"After eight very dry years on the Colorado River watershed and a record-breaking dry winter in Southern California in 2006-2007, the situation in the American Southwest is dangerously dry," said oceanographer Bill Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This La Niña could deepen the drought in the already parched Southwest and Southeast United States."

Barack Obama: America can’t engage in piecemeal diplomacy

Q. The Bush administration has little influence on Iranian behavior in Iraq. How would you elicit cooperation from Iran and Syria that the Bush administration has failed to obtain? Would we offer assurances that we would not be engaged in a policy of regime change. What would you do?

A. You’ve got the Bush administration expecting Crocker to make progress on the very narrow issue of helping Shia militias at the same time as you’ve got Dick Cheney giving a speech saying it is very likely that we may engage in military action in Iran and the United States Senate passing a resolution, suggesting that our force structure inside Iraq is dependent in someway on blunting Iranian influence. You can’t engage in diplomacy in isolation. There’s got to be a broader strategic context to it.

The Iranians and the Syrians are acting irresponsibly inside Iraq. They perceive that it is a way to leverage or impact or weaken us at a time when they’re worried about United States action in a broader context. I’ve already said, I would meet directly with Iranian leaders. I would meet directly with Syrian leaders. We would engage in a level of aggressive personal diplomacy in which a whole host of issues are on the table. We’re not looking at Iraq, just in isolation. Iran and Syria would start changing their behavior if they started seeing that they had some incentives to do so, but right now the only incentive that exists is our president suggesting that if you do what we tell you, we may not blow you up.

My belief about the regional powers in the Middle East is that they don’t respond well to that kind of bluster. They haven’t in the past, there’s no reason to think they will in the future. On the other hand, what we know, is that, for example, in the early days of our Afghanistan offensive, the Iranians we’re willing to cooperate when we had more open lines of dialogue and we were able to identify interests that were compatible with theirs.”

Barack Obama would withdraw from Iraq over 16 months

Q. Following that up, what is your schedule for withdrawing forces from Iraq? How fast would these withdrawals be carried out? What time frame?

A. [W]e believe that you can get one to two brigades out a month. At that pace, the forces would be out in approximately 16 months from the time that we began. That would be the time frame that I would be setting up. That also gives us time to make sure that we are strengthening the Iraqi forces. Obviously, I would prefer that we start this process now, but let’s assume that there are 100,000 troops when I get there, that means that we’re talking 14 to 15 months from now.


During that 16 months, I’m engaging in very systematic, tough diplomacy, not just with the various factions in the region, but also with Iran, with Syria, the Saudis, Jordan, with the United Nationals Security Council program members. Once it’s clear that we are not intending to stay there for 10 years or 20 years, all these parties have an interest in figuring out how do we adjust in a way that stabilizes the situation. They’re all going to have a series of complex differences and we’re going to, obviously, have to monitor it carefully about what those interests are to make sure our interests are protected. But what I don’t want to do is to make our withdrawal contingent on the Iraqi government doing the right thing because that empowers them to make strategic decisions that should be made by the president of the United States.”