With 63 days left before Iowa, Gravel was simply not serious. He isn’t really campaigning except for showing up at debates, he’s raised next to no money, he’s not traveling to the Iowa or New Hampshire, and his poll numbers are pathetic.
Two snaps up.
He’s going after Hillary Clinton’s character. There are a number of reasons that this might be a winner.
That being said, with 63 days until the Iowa caucuses, I think that the best tack might be to make sure that everyone there is well organized. A very small percentage of Iowa Dems go to the caucuses, and it’s all about organization, organization, organization, and organization.
Then again, it might be too bloody late for anyone to stop her.
Here.
Clearly this is a big deal.
Once again, the Republicans are ditching another black debate forum, this one on Fox News.
When you consider how prominent the racist vote is in the Republican Party, Evangelicals as a movement developed from rulings that forbade tax exempt status whites only religious schools, not Roe v. Wade, this comes as no surprise.
The party of Abraham Lincoln is now the party of Jefferson Davis.
It to just one case in Mississippi, but effectively it means a stay on lethal injection executions for a few months.
Considering the 3rd world level of jurisprudence in states that are heavily into the death penalty *cough* Texas *cough*, this is a good thing.
Well, the economy logged a brisk 3.9 growth rate, which is pretty stellar, particularly since it would have been about 1% higher if the housing market were not tanking, but still, the Fed cuts rates by 25 basis points.
Maybe they know that there is some level of bullsh&% in the figures that they cannot trust.
In response, the dollar tumbled. The Canadian dollar bought more than $1.06 for the first time since 1957, the Euro broke the $1.45 barrier, going to $1.4503:1.0000€, and the Sterling is now $2.0813:£1.0000.
I said that the dollar would break through $1.50:1.00€ before year’s end, and I stand by that.
As to the Chinese Yuan, it doesn’t move as much, as it it still partially pegged to the dollar,
but it has risen by about 10 % since it became more loosely pegged about 27 months ago.
I expect a run on the US dollar sooner, rather than later, perhaps before the 2008 elections.
It turns out that the Smiler* had an offer from his master George W. Bush to stay out of the war, but he rejected it. Apparently, he thought that it would look “pathetic”, as if being bush’s poodle was not already the height of pathos.
At least Blair isn’t covered by American laws regarding the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
*Tony Blair
Karen Hughes is leaving the State Deptepartment.
Thinking of her, and the Hague court, I am reminded that in the Nuremburg trials, the publisher of Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher, was executed, and there is also the precedents regarding RTLM in Rwanda, and it’s principals, Ferdinand Nahimana, and Jean Bosco Barayagwiza.
This chain of thought applies to Karl Rove too.
It appears that Democrats are considering this a potential pickup. If this is a Democratic Pickup, I’m Hillary Clinton.
While Mississippi might potentially be driven in a Democratic direction in the right year and with the right candidate, the fact is that the Democratic fund raising apparatus in that state was destroyed by political prosecutions.
Attorneys do not donate money to Mississippi Dems any more, because they know that if they do, they will suffer the fate of Paul Minor, and be in jail for the next decade or so.
Well, there has now been a plea in the Fort Dix “terrorism” case. It’s Agron Abdullahu, and he was charged with weapons violations, not a direct involvement in the planning or execution of the event.
The more I look at what various “home grown” terrorists appear to have been planning, the more that it is clear that hese guys are serious wannabes, and they remind me less of terrorists than they do of the pseudo trekkies who referred to episodes by number in that Saturday Night Live sketch with William Shatner.
Remember these guys? They decided that they wanted to attack a military installation, and settled on Fort Dix, because one of them knew the lay of the base from delivering pizzas there.
The FBI learned of the plot when the men went to a Circuit City store and asked a clerk to transfer a jihad training video of themselves onto a DVD..
Which are they more like, this guy, 
, or this Guy? 
My money is on comic book guy.
You find the same thing with the “Seas of David” morons. You know, the ones who were “planning to bomb the Sears Tower”, but needed to get some groundwork out of the way, so they, like, you know, went down to the local 7-11 to find supporters, and combat with paintball.
Let’s be fair. While I have met some serious lamers at Science Fiction Conventions, and this is not limited to Trek, none of them are this lame. These guys make that 45 year old virgin arguing about continuity in Lost in Space look like Pierce Brosnan.
This guy just won the lottery, and intends to start a Wiccan religious school. Seeing as how my wife* has a special ed practice, and when people start schools, they frequently forget that there are special education needs in their community, I’ve just given her a heads up on this.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
This is from Kevin Drum, who I read regularly, “I guess I’m sympathetic toward Hillary but really, really wishing that Obama would give me a good reason to change my mind and support him instead.”
Let me make this clear, Obama is now at the bottom of my list. I believe that he engaged in gay baiting in an attempt to get votes in South Carolina, but for those who are not so convinced, think about this, if the “it politician” of the 2004 convention can’t sell you, the one who was touted as the future of the party and the nation, how can he sell the rest of the country.
My conclusion, he got lucky in 2004. His primary challengers self destructed, and then his general challenger did, after which he faced Alan Keys, against whom I could win.
Until he shows that he can do something about that luck beside mouth platitudes, he will not make this sale.
I guess that this turn around should be real soon now.
I have mixed feelings about this happening.
It is a good thing, but when the agencies of our Iraqi puppet regime are responding more competently, pro-actively, and responsibly than our government, I wonder how long it is until Washington, DC begins to look like Baghdad.
Barack Obama has chosen the meme that social security is in crisis as his first line of attack against Hillary Clinton. The fact that we have “only 40 years” or so to fix it is something that we need to act upon RIGHT NOW DAMMIT!!!!
I have to go with Chris Bowers’ analysis:
Obama made it clear he would not run as either a partisan Democrat or a partisan progressive from the start.
Back on Sunday, playing on the whole “what happened to the Obama of 2004” theme, the Carpetbagger Report notes we should have seen that Obama was not going to run as a partisan from the start……
We should have seen that Obama wouldn’t run as either an ideological or Democratic partisan from the start. His 2004 convention speech made that perfectly clear. We should also have seen that a bruised and battered Democratic activist base, after years of defeat, being called traitors, and inability to get Republican to compromise on anything at all, wasn’t exactly willing to just throw their hands up in the air and say to Republicans:
…..
That wasn’t going to happen, even though it would have helped Obama if it had. Democrats, especially the under 50 progressive creative class portion of the party, don’t just want conservatives to finally stop attacking them so everyone can finally all hold hands. Instead, for once, they actually want to win. Unfortunately for Obama, he offered them milquetoast unity instead.
Now, in reaction to being pushed by the progressive base on McClurkin, Atrios notes the many ways that Obama lashes out against progressives:
Aside from the adoption of right wing frames, this kind of statement is incredibly insulting to both the LGBT community who are apparently “hermetically sealed from the faith community” and to the “faith community” which is apparently defined as nothing more than a bunch of anti-gay bigots. Not to mention the Democratic Party, which apparently includes no actual religious people.
It’s really just insulting to everyone, with a touch of “shut the hell up I know best.”
This isn’t new. Obama has done this before. In fact, during 2006, he repeatedly engaged in the long-standing practice of chastising progressives for not being nice to people of faith:
…..
Obama has long criticized the left for being hostile to Americans of faith whenever he was pushed on this topic. In fact, he often made such criticisms without even being pushed. As such, there was no reason to expect that his reaction to criticism of choosing McClurkin, or really his reaction to any progressive criticism, would be any different. If Democrats and progressives criticized anything in his campaign that had to do with faith, those same Democrats and progressives would simply be told that they aren’t properly reaching out to people of faith. At the same time, he has consistently failed to offer progressives and Democrats any red meat, no matter what Republicans would do or say. This is a clear pattern for Obama. We should have seen it coming.
(emphasis mine)
Obama is well spoken, but for whatever reason, and my guess would be his loss to Bobby Rush early in his career, it is clear that he holds liberals in disdain, and it is clear that he wants to be considered one of Washington, DC’s “very serious people”.
The problem is that Washington, DC’s “very serious people” are always wrong. They were wrong on Iraq, they were wrong on social security, they are wrong on Iran and tax cuts, and they continue to be wrong when they say that the adults will take charge in the Bush White House.
The NAS is calling for a move slow approach on the Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Program, which among other things, calls for civilian nuclear power to move wholesale into a Plutonium economy, with the US reprocessing spent fuel, and reactors to burn the extracted Plutonium.
Their arguments are not about the potential safety and terrorism issues of a Plutonium economy, but rather that this program is insufficiently mature, and that funds should go toward getting new, more conventional, commercial plants online in the US, so they are not anti-nuke by inclination.
To quote the NAS press release, “The research and development component of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a program that aims to reprocess spent nuclear fuel which could then be shared with partner countries, should not go forward at its current pace, says a new report from the National Research Council. DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, of which GNEP is a part, should instead assign the highest priority to facilitating the startup of new commercial nuclear power plants, a program that is currently falling behind schedule due to funding gaps.”
What is going on here is that be is doing everything in its power to make sure that nuclear power plants are a fact on the ground before they leave office out of ideological fervor, not a realistic assessment of the technology.
Chen Shui-bian has promised not to develop nuclear weapons.
There is some interesting history and law here. The history is that they did have an active nuclear weapons program in the 1970s, but Jimmy Carter shut it down.
The law is that the NNPT applies to nations, and not governments, so a strict reading would say that Taiwan, official name Republic of China, could be considered to have the right to develop and deploy weapons, as it is, according to the UN, China.
On a more pragmatic side, if Taiwan were developing nukes, and China found out, all hell would break loose, though if Taiwan actually had deployed nukes on delivery vehicles before it became known, it would stabilize the situation by forestalling potential PRC invasions.
Generally, I subscribe to the old adage, no nukes is good nukes.
I think that you are a bit late to the game, dude. It’s been clear for years that not only are these guys supportive of torture when necessary, but that they see it as an independent good. They support torture for its own sake.
Matthew Padilla on his Mortgage Insider Blog, has this little gem:
|
Location |
% of Interest Only Loans in in 1st 3 Months of 2007 |
|
|
58.6% |
|
|
66.6% |
|
|
59.2% |
|
|
59.2% |
|
|
52.8% |