Thanks for the Bailout, Now F@#! Off!

Mrs. Uneven and I currently are in the Midwest visiting the Uneven Parents. As folks out here are accustomed to doing, I went out to start the rental) car engine for a few minutes so that the car battery wouldn't die. Upon returning to the car to turn the engine off, I discovered to my chagrin that the Chrylser PT Cruiser automatically locks the car doors if the key is in the ignition. I consider this a minor design flaw, but nothing to get too upset about since most people, most of the time (i.e., non-Midwesterners and Midwesterners during warm months) don't leave their cars running for extended periods of time. What I am upset about is that Stu Hanson's Chrysler dealership in Des Moines, which has the ability to cut keys, refused to do so for me and in fact was quite rude about it. This comes despite the fact that Chrysler just received a boatload of my taxpayer dollars to stay in business.

Now, anyone paying attention to the U.S. auto industry should be aware that one of the industry's fundamental problems is that there are too many car dealerships and state franchise laws stop the Big 3 from reducing their number. Given the shabby treatment I received, it's no wonder the Big 3 are going under. When they finally go bankrupt, I'd like to see Stu Hanson's be one of the first dealerships closed.

2008 Commercial Soundtrack Playlist

Well, this is abbreviated and not up to my usual standards for these types of posts. I hope you've enjoyed the other ones. Here are the four songs in commercials that really stuck out at me recently (or on shows on my TiVo). I hope you find this minimally helpful.

"Colors" by Kira Wiley - Dell Commercial
"Bruises" by Chairlift - iPod Commercial
"Brand New Day" by Tim Myers - iPhone Commercial

"Silly Boy" by The Blue Van - Samsung Behold/T-Mobile Commercial

Obama is NOT the President-elect (Yet)

In point of fact, former Senator Obama has not been elected President yet. November 4, 2008 was merely the election of Presidential Electors. The new members of the Electoral College in turn will meet on December 15, 2008 in their respective State Capitals to cast their votes for President of the United States. The Senate will meet on January 8, 2009 to count the ballots. Whomever (99.999999999999% certain to be former Senator Obama)gets the most vote will then become the President-Elect for a whole 12 days before taking the oath of office as POTUS.

What should we call former Senator in the meantime? President-designate. Because the results of the November election clearly indicated that Americans wanted him to be the next President (i.e., we collectively designated him to be the next POTUS).

No one else probably cares about this, but I find it extremely irritating and further evidence the MSM is lazy and stupid.

Rosenberg's Accomplice Admits Their Guilt

Morton Sobell told The New York Times that he helped pass to the Soviet Union information about an aircraft gun during World War II when the Soviets were U.S. allies.

Sobell also implicated Julius Rosenberg in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information. He said Ethel Rosenberg was aware of her husband's espionage but did not actively participate. "She knew what he was doing," he said, "but what was she guilty of? Of being Julius' wife."

He said that information from Rosenberg was of little value to the Soviets, except to corroborate other reports. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.

Now I'm all for getting your husband's back, but there really are a few instances when you have to look into your soul and decide whether loyalty to your husband trumps his execrable treason against your nation. At least if you are in any way patriotic or care about your country and fellow Americans.

Step Down Mr. Young!

You have won your moral victory by winning the Alaska Republican primary today by fewer than 400 votes. But that is not the whole story. You and Lt. Gov. Parnell both received about 45% of the vote, and your other primary opponent won 9% of the vote. This means that 54% OF ALASKA REPUBLICANS DO NOT WANT YOU AS THE PARTY'S CONGRESSION NOMINEE OR TO REPRESENT THEM IN CONGRESS.

If 54% of your own party doesn't want you representing them any longer, do you really think that you have a shot in hell of winning the election in November? Please do your constituents, your party and your nation a favor and STEP DOWN. We have had enough of your corruption, venality, temper tantrums and pork barreling. And it is only a matter of time before you are indicted in the same corruption probe that ensnared Senator Stevens and his son. If you step down now you will be helping your party keep the Alaska Congressional seat, and maybe a small measure of whatever dignity you think you have left.

After all, you have already won the moral victory of technically becoming the party nominee even though more people voted against you than for you.

Apparently I'm a Cylon Infiltrator

I love Battlestar Gallactica. Best re-imagining of any TV series ever! Plus, it's chock full of conspiracies and aliens (ok evolved artificial intelligences) - two of my favorite things.

Actually went to the website and took the personality test. I'm a guerilla warrior resistance leader fighting for freedom. Pretty much the values I love and believe in - I would've loved to have fought in the Revolutionary War - establishing an entirely new government (New World Order - spooky!) unlike anything existing at the time and based on the innate nobility and equality of all men instead of divine right.

Though I wouldn't be a secret double agent unlike Sam or Gen. Arnold.

Snap Review: Virgin Festival

No - not the sacrificial kind. Though it does sound like a pro~abstinence rally.

STP rock the racetrack!
Iggy still Pops! Stooges not blind (from eye pokes)!
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

Testing Mobile Blogging

I'm going to take a crack at live-blogging the Virgin Music Festival. We,ll see how it goes. Yesterday Mrs. Uneven did it from her phone and it was pretty cool, so I,m setting up blogger email so I can try it.

Please excuse all typos. It's a tiny keyboard.

Get Your War On Gets Animated

Love it! One of the earliest dissenters against the Global War on Terror gets animated. Amazingly, the first episode translates the comic to its new medium with great verisimilitude. Check out the comic here, and the animation below:

In Memoriam: Tim Russert

From Today's Congressional Quarterly

Remembering Tim Russert
By Bruce Drake, CQ Staff

Tim Russert, who died of a heart attack today at 58, will long be remembered for becoming such a force in political journalism that when he declared the Democratic nomination battle over after the May 6 Indiana and North Carolina primaries, well, for many people, that made it official.

But I’ll remember Russert for something else, which is that he was one hell of an impersonator.

I found that out when I started out covering Congress in Washington for the New York Daily News and Russert was starting out as press secretary to the late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

I needed to get Moynihan on the phone one day for a story and a few hours after leaving a message, my phone rang and I heard Moynihan’s characteristic, “Uh . . . uh . . . Bruce . . . This is PAT Moynihan . . . (he always seemed to hit the “Pat” hard) . . . What can I do for you?”

He was right on time because we had a 4 p.m. first edition deadline for the Daily News “Night Owl” edition, which hit the streets in Manhattan at 7 p.m., and it was already 3:30 p.m.

I interviewed Moynihan for 10 minutes then said, “Gotta go, Senator. Deadline.”

“Go get ‘em,” Moynihan said.

O.K. You already know the punchline.

I had just interviewed Tim Russert for 10 minutes, completely fooled by the $%*#.

Now, I do have to say that all his answers were correct. They just didn’t come from Moynihan.

Which Tim was kind enough to call back five minutes before deadline and tell me.

I did exact some revenge. A few weeks later, when I knew Russert was out of town, I put in a call to Moynihan for another story, even though I didn’t really need him for it. He called back in about 10 minutes.

“Uh . . . uh . . . young Bruce, this is PAT Moynihan. What can I do for you?”

Remembering Tim Russert
I asked Moynihan where I could call him back. He seemed to be taken somewhat aback, not only at the idea I’d push off a call from a senator, but probably because he couldn’t figure out why I had to ask him for a number when he was in his office.

I called him back five minutes later and when he came to the phone, I said, “Sorry, Senator. I just needed to make sure it was you and not Russert.”

I think Moynihan thought it was funny. Maybe. Well, maybe not.

But Tim always had a way with his bosses. I don’t know 100 percent for sure that the following story is true, it sounds kind of apocryphal. But, still, it sounds like Tim.

Tim had gone on to work for New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and was with him around the time that Cuomo electrified audiences with his keynote speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, which was probably the high point of Cuomo’s career as far as the national stage.

The story goes this way: Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa was visiting New York, and was riding in a limousine with Cuomo.

As the two chatted, Tutu was said to have told Cuomo, “I met that delightful young man who works for you, who said he wrote your San Francisco speech.”

I never really knew Cuomo. I did know of his ego. I don’t think Cuomo thought it was funny.

So, maybe Tim liked to claim credit for some stuff. But he was never full of himself, and always open and outgoing whether you were a VIP or just someone standing next to him at the bar.

Speaking of standing next to him at the bar, I got a little taste of Tim’s liking to make sure that credit was paid where it was due.

Tim had been one of my references back in 1991 when National Public Radio hired me as senior Washington editor.

After I had moved up to be vice president of news at NPR in 2000, I bumped into Tim at Billy Martin’s Tavern in Georgetown.

He congratulated me on the promotion and said, “You know, I GOT you that job at NPR.”

Remembering Tim Russert
So, I bought the next round over his weak protests.

The Clash of the Alpha Females Comes Out of the Shadows (Part 3)

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally brought her subterannean campaign against U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton into the light today. In today's edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, Speaker Pelosi said "I will step in" if there is no resolution by late June regarding the seating of delegates from Florida and Michigan, the two states that defied party rules by holding early primaries.

Speaker Pelosi's now frontal assualt on Senator Clinton is being waged in the name of "Democratic Party Unity," but is really rooted in her own ambition.After all, "There can be only one" Alpha Female in town, and Pelosi desperately wants to avoid her historical moment as first female U.S. House Speaker not to be upstaged by the first female U.S. President.

When the Speaker "steps in," it will be to attempt to bum rush the remaining uncommitted (cowardly) Superdelegates into supporting Barack Obama. It's no secret that her more ardent supporters support Senator Obama and the remanining uncommitted superdelegates who are U.S. House Democrats are afraid to endorse Senator Clinton out of fear of the Speaker.

Speaker Pelosi will also try to use her influence and statements to undermine the argument that sexism is the root of Senator Clinton's failure to win the Democratic Nomination. This would be false for two reasons: (1) managing to get elected by a majority of the 230+ House Democrats to the most powerful Constitutional position does not actually mean sexism doesn't exist, it just means Pelosi's a smart Pol (i.e., a female Speaker does not equal a lack of national sexism); (2) Just because a powerful female comes out and engineers things to benefit a man, does not mean that the man did not previously benefit from sexism.

Those are are just logical flaws in Pelosi's attempts to undermine the sexism argument. They don't even address her hidden agenda, which I discussed above and earlier (click on the Alpha Female tag below)

You Always Lose the Debate When You Invoke Hitler

It's just a basic rule of political/philosophical discourse. Anytime you invoke a comparison to Hitler or his enabler's, you lose the debate. Period. End of discussion.

Even taking the Bush Administration at their word that they were really criticizing Carter's visit with Hamas (which I find contemptible due to their support of terrorist tactics, despite my support for the Palestinian cause), invoking Hitler was not politically smart. Hitler allusions are the last refuge of the intellectually weak who can't justify their positions/opinios without referencing one of the most evil men in history (Stalin and Mao killed more people indiscriminately and therefore arguably were more evil if you count simple bodies. However, the evil of Hitler's agenda, while banal, was well thought out, organized and rationally planned on a level of magnitude far different than the latter two).

To their credit, the Obama campaign was quick to use Bush's address to Knesset as a way of jump starting/ furbishing their weak foreign policy cred and taking the fight to the deeply (and deservedely) unpopular President. In doing so, they not only elevated themselves to the same level as the President by taking Bush on directly, but they further kept Hillary Clinton out of the news for another cycle, and possibly the weekend, thus hindering her campaign efforts in Oregon.

In short, Bush is a moron and Obama possesses a top-notch and savvy political team. Which really shouldn't be unexpected given that many of them were the Daschle Presidential campaign in waiting before John Thune beat him (barely) in 2004).

Another Step Down the Slippery Slope of Designer Babies & Transhumanism

AP reports that for the first time in known history researchers have aktered the genetic code of a human embryo. The entire story can be found here, but the money quote is:

The idea of designer babies is that someday, scientists may insert particular genes into embryos to produce babies with desired traits like intelligence or athletic ability. Some people find that notion repugnant, saying it turns children into designed objects, and would create an unequal society where some people are genetically enriched while others would be considered inferior.

The fear articulated above is completely legitimate. Afterall, no one really wants to live Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The article referenced above quotes a scientist from the Center for Genetics and Society that said these techniques could be used by others to make genetically modified people, "and they're doing it without any kind of public debate." I'm all for scientific advancement, but bioethical issues such as this deserve to be debate fully by our society. It's bad enough that we have a meritocracy which looks down on those who fail to climb up as far. Establihing a new caste system created because those Thomas Jefferson referred to as The Natural Aristocracy in his Notes on the State of Virginia have access to wealth and resources which allow them to further priviledge their offspring through genetic engineering threatens our entire national identity. It also would profoundly alter social dynamics throughout the world.

There is an alternative movement called transhumanism which embraces the concept of germline genetic engineering and human nuero-interfacing with computers etc. as a way of furthering human potential. It's an active movement with whom I don't have as much quarrel on the neuro-interfacing issue because those hardward based modifications won't permanently be encoded and passed down in our genes. However it embraces a philosophy which essentially believes that anything which can be done should and will be done. Unfortunately, this philosophy is a pretty close approximation of how technology is advancing on our planet. Anything which is abhorrent to Western Civilization or Judeo-Christian Values will likely just take root and advance in Asia which does not necessarily share the same moral/philosophical values.

Such a step actually makes the prospect of a new caste system even worse because it further limits access to these technologies to those rich enough to travel to Asia and stay long enough to have the procedures performed.

I'm not sure what the answer to this is. But it is another step down the slippery slope.

Obama Owes McCain an Apology (and is just plain weak)

First of all John McCain simply repeated what Ahmed Yousef, chief political adviser to the Prime Minister said when he said that Hamas preferred an Obama Presidency. Here's the quote in its entirety:

"We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election." This statement was made in an interview with Aaron Klein and John Batchelor interviewed on WABC.

Now we know why Obama was so sensitive to accusations that Hamas would prefer him as President - one of his advisors had been meeting with members of the radical terrorist group which wants to annilate Israel. The Washington Post piece on the meetings is here. Even Politifact.com - a non-partisan political fact checking website validates McCain's statement is "mostly true." You can find the entire analysis here.

Of course Chris Matthews and the liberal MSM won't discuss this on the Sunday morning shows - it would undermine their efforts to impose a liberal agenda on the nation. Anyone thinking Obama represents a restoration of Camelot misunderstands not only Obama's but also JFK's ideology. JFK was much more conservative than Nixon - an irony the left refuses to acknowledge and he aggressively fought Communism in every corner of the globe.

JFK confronted Communism throughout the Western Hemisphere, in Europe and in Asia. He backed at least one attempted coup against a Communist regime (Cuba) and a war to stop Communist insurgency in Southeast Asia (Vietnam). And he did these both without negotiating with our enemies.

Like it or not for the multi-culti left, Terrorism is the new Communism and the Global War on Terror is the new containment. Even Europe is beginning to wake up to the threats posed by the Iranian backed global terrorist movement (Hamas, Hezbollah and and has begun electing center-right governments which support taking the fight to the extremists before they bring it back here (again).

Obama's Victory Speech Demonstrates Ignorance of U.S. History

Two of the Presidents that Obama cited in his post-North Carolina victory speech as negotiating with U.S. enemies did no such thing. These would be FDR and JFK.

FDR negotiated with the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France in Yalta. However, at the time, the U.S. and Russia were allies against Germany, with whom the FDR did not negotiate, unlike the infamous appeaser Neville Chamberlin. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. did not become become adversaries until the post-World War II period, and the impetus for that actually was Roosevelt's Yalta concessions to Stalin which condemned half of Europe to Soviet Oppression for 50 years. If that's Sen. Obama's model for negotiating with our allies, he has no place in the Oval Office, let alone the U.S. Senate.

Additionally, the Soviet Union, while an adversary and competing power whose values we despised, was not an enemy, which is why the 1945-1991 period is called The Cold War. JFK's conversations/negotiations with them were aimed at preventing conflict and containing their ideology. He never negotiated with actual U.S. enemies such as Cuba's Fidel Castro (whom he tried to overthrow during the Bay of Pigs Invasion and then lost the cojones to call in U.S. air support to help our allies). In fact, JFK negotiated a secret treaty with Cuba promising not to invade in exchange for removal of the Soviet missiles - hardly a profile in courage. JFK also did not negotiate with our enemies in Vietnam, the war against whom he took over from the French.

If these are Senator Obama's models for negotiating with our enemies, I'd hate to see how he handles Iran, Hamas and Al Queda. He might as well just sell out Israel and abandon all hope of human rights and freedom East of the Mediterranen. And let's not forget that the real puppet masters of Hamas reside in Tehran.

Clash of the Alpha Females (pt.2)

From Time Magazine's piece on the End of the dem nomination contest:

All that could change after the last two states, South Dakota and Montana, vote on June 3. That's the time party chairman Howard Dean, Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are expected to tell the superdelegates — about 300 of the roughly 800 delegates overall who have yet to commit — that it is time to make up their minds. Pelosi in particular is key, as more than 70 of those uncommitted superdelegates are House members. For many, holding back now is more a matter of principle than preference. "They don't want to be perceived as telling voters how to vote," says former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, who is heading Obama's superdelegate effort.

Don't underestimate Pelosi's influence here. She'll come down hard for Obama for reasons I discussed here. Additionally, her position that the elected delegates should decide and the automatic delegatees shouldn't weigh in is completely slanted towards Obama, instead of being neutral as it is commonly portrayed.

The 70 uncommitted House Members mentioned above are all beholden to Speaker Pelosi for their House Committee assignments and leadership positions. Don't forget that Pelosi took Jane Harman's Intelligence Committee Chairmanship away from her because Harman disagreed with Pelosi on aspects of the War on Terror. ALL Democrats remember that and are afraid of that. For that reason, they won't go against Pelosi in order to stay in her good favor. The Obama supporters generally come from the rival pro-Hoyer (House Majority Leader) faction of the party.

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut

Ok, so Barack Obama doesn't have a bad haircut. But the rest of the P.J. O'Rourke quote stands. She's been around and knows how to play the game even if she's down. He thinks you can have reasonable conversations with people whose main mission in life is to kill you and your friends.

She's gonna pull this off. If not, Obama will get crushed in November by the Republicans.

Jericho & The False Flag Meme

I was watching the Jericho series finale again today (TiVo Rocks!) and realized that the "9/11 Truth Movement" has succeeded in firmly planing the "False Flag" meme in our popular culture. False Flag refers to covert intelligence/military operations undertaken by a government and designed to appear as if they were conducted by another government or outside group. Until the last decade or so many historians considered the explosion of the USS Maine in Cuba a false flag operation engineered by the McKinley Administration to justify war with Spain to take over/liberate Cuba (in the past decade or so additional research has shown that the Maine's boiler probably exploded on its own accord, but there is no evidence of Spanish of American sabotage).

In Jericho, the false flag operation is conducted by officials at the Department of Homeland Security and blamed on Iran and North Korea, justifying the further perpetration of nuclear holocaust on these two nations. This furthers the meme of the "neo-conservatives" or members of the Project for the New American Century as war mongers against those two nations. This meme is based somewhat on reality, as it well known that neo-conservatives are international realists instead of Wilsonian idealists and are very concerned about those two nations' relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and long range missle capability, (even to the point of entering space as Iran propose).

In the show, the shadow government's attack occurs in order to purge the government of the pervasive influence of Jennings & Rawl, an obvious proxy for Haliburton. This "Haliburton is evil and associated by Vice President Cheney" meme is very widespread throughout our culture, especially among the hard core left. It's amazing how sutbtly anti-Bush Jericho really is. After all, you'd expect that a show based on an American nuclear holocaust would really be more pro-killing terrorists.

Getting these memes (further) embedded in the mainstream culture is an enormous success for the 9/11 Truth Movement. It helps make people more receptive to their misguided conspiracy agenda.

Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement believe that elements inside the Bush Administration or federal government (or the Israeli government) engineered the 9/11 attacks. The typical motive for this alleged false flag operation frequently is attributed either to justifying a Middle East war over oil or changing the political issue matrix to benefit the Republican Party and ensure continued political dominance. Oh yeah, and to enrich the President's friends.

Now, the first reason is laughable. The Israelis are in a strong enough position to take care of themselves, and war is always an enormous drain on a nation no matter how necessary (WWII was a necessary war for example). The second motive is somewhat more plausible (though still absolute crap). Here's why: in late 2001 almost the entire political issue matrix was geared against the Republican party and its principles. Good economic times in the 1990s had produced not only a balanced budget, but one in large and growing surplus. People were happy and shifting their attention away from the international sphere and back to the domestic issues on which the Democratic Pary had an advantage. Additionally, a United States government able to pay back most of its outstanding debt and eventually pay it all off would prove economically damaging to the banking industry.

These facts provide a kernel of truth from which to grow an entirely ridiculs conspiracy theory based on any substantiated association or causality. The "theory" : the executive branch initiated treason against our nation in order to put its political party back in political advantage ensuring its own continued power and accumulating even more power by taking advantage of the extreme national culture shock of 9/11 to accumulate more power through the Patriot Act and other measures.

The History Channel showed a documentary last week called "The 9/11 Conspiracies" which explored the conspiracies and then offered rational responses to the execrable false flag charges.

These Truthers cling much to hard to the conspiracy meme of a "supercompetent federal government." We're talking about a bunch of guys who actually tried to kill Castro by giving him an exploding cigar. The same people who masterminded the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco in which they lost their nerve and declined to call in air support for the invastion, thus guaranteeing its failure. Plus there are enough potential whistleblowers in the government that any such conspiracy would have become exposed since it would have had to involve officials at multiple federal agencies. Even within the same Department, and especially within Homeland security due to the disjointed and spread out nature of its buildings, it is difficult to coordinate anything without the help of people lower down the food chanin than the "principals" (Administrators, Assistant Secretaries and their Deputies, Directors of Progams).

The Ks (our present decade)

I've always thought it odd that the pop culture didn't adopt "k" as a meme to refer to years in the first decade of the 21st Century. After all, we spent most of the 1990s hearing all about "the why [two] [kay] problem" (Y2K). After years of conceptually thinking about the year 2000 Anno Domini in abbreviated metric (2k= two thousand [duh]), why didn't we refer to 2001 as 2k1, 2002 as 2k2, etc?

I think we should. Every decade needs a name like "The Roaring Twenties." And even if "The Ks" isn't quite as glamorous, we still need something at least somewhat numerical to use as a reference for this, our current, first decade of the 21st Century. Sure as hell beats "The aughts."

Alicia Keys' Far Out Conspiracy Theorry on the Rap War

Now, I believe that the LAPD likely was involved with Tupac's death. I also believe that the East Coast-West Coast Rap War was much more serious than the mainstream media or federal government were willing to acknowledge. However, it is just plain far out to think the federal government conspired with the media to kill both Tupac and Biggie to stop the rise of a new black leader. If that was the goal, you could've just stopped at Tupac. Despite my admitted West Coast bias, I just don't see Biggie having the same ideology nor political upbringing that Tupac did.

Interestingly though, our nation has had a surge in prominent black leaders since the death of Biggie Smalls. James Clyburn is now the House Majority Whip (the #3 most powerful position in the U.S. House of Reps); Oprah's empire has flourished; Barack Obama became a U.S. Presidential Candidate and the second African-American Senator to be elected from Illinois within a 12 year period.

Alicia Keys conspiracy theory is below.

NEW YORK (AP) - There's another side to Alicia Keys: conspiracy theorist. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter tells Blender magazine: "'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. 'Gangsta rap' didn't exist."

Keys, 27, said she's read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck "to symbolize strength, power and killing 'em dead," according to an interview in the magazine's May issue, on newsstands Tuesday.

Another of her theories: That the bicoastal feud between slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. was fueled "by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing."

Keys' AK-47 jewelry came as a surprise to her mother, who is quoted as telling Blender: "She wears what? That doesn't sound like Alicia." Keys' publicist, Theola Borden, said Keys was on vacation and unavailable for comment.

Though she's known for her romantic tunes, she told Blender that she wants to write more political songs. If black leaders such as the late Black Panther Huey Newton "had the outlets our musicians have today, it'd be global. I have to figure out a way to do it myself," she said.

The multiplatinum songstress behind the hits "Fallin'" and "No One" most recently had success with her latest CD, "As I Am," which sold millions.

Clash of the Alpha Females, p.2: Hillary Strikes Back

The competition to be the Alpha Female is well under way. Speaker Pelosi is now under attack from the Clinton campaign for her repeated assertion that the remaining uncommitted automatic delegates should discard their right to vote for their first choice and instead vote for whomever has the largest number of elected delegates.
This position is such an irritant to Senator Clinton's Presidential aspirations that financial backers of Senator and former President Clinton sent a letter to the Speaker asking her to avoid further public pronouncements along these lines. Implied by the "shakedown letter," as it has become known, is that the donors will cut off fundraising for and donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of Speaker Pelosi's House Democrats.

The Speaker's position is inconvenient for the Senator because if heeded, it would serve to ensure that Barack Obama (see article inset below) becomes the nominee even if his delegate lead shrinks to an insignificant number. Despite the Speaker's constant since early February (find cite)her repeated public pronouncements of it

Pelosi's Delegate Stance Boosts Obama
By DAVID ESPO – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it would be damaging to the Democratic party for its leaders to buck the will of national convention delegates picked in primaries and caucuses, a declaration that gives a boost to Sen. Barack Obama.

"If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what's happened in the elections, it would be harmful to the Democratic party," Pelosi said in an interview taped Friday for broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

The California Democrat did not mention either Obama or his rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, by name. But her remarks seemed to suggest she was prepared to cast her ballot at the convention in favor of the candidate who emerges from the primary season with the most pledged delegates.

Obama leads Clinton by 142 pledged delegates — those delegates picked in nomination contests to date, in The Associated Press' count.

Barring an unlikely string of landslide victories by the former first lady in the remaining states, he will end the primary season with a delegate lead, but short of the 2025 needed to win the nomination.

That gives the balance of power to the so-called superdelegates, prominent Democrats who are automatically entitled to attend the convention because of their status as members of Congress or other leaders. Clinton leads Obama for their support in the AP count, 249-213.

Pelosi's comments could influence other House Democrats who are neutral in the presidential race and will attend the convention as superdelegates.

In her interview, Pelosi also said that even if one candidate winds up with a larger share of the popular vote than the delegate leader, the candidate who has more delegates should prevail.

"It's a delegate race," she said. "The way the system works is that the delegates choose the nominee."

More than 500 delegates remain to be picked in primaries beginning on April 22 in Pennsylvania, which has 158 at stake on April 22.

In addition, Democrats in Michigan and Florida are demanding to have their delegations seated, even though they moved up the dates of their primaries to January in defiance of Democratic National Committee rules.

Clinton said Saturday she supports an effort by Michigan Democratic leaders to hold a do-over primary in early June, but the Obama campaign has not yet said whether it will agree. A full delegation would give the state 128 pledged delegates, not counting superdelegates.

In Florida, a plan for a mail-in primary appears doomed, leaving two major possibilities if the state's Democrats are to participate in selecting a nominee.

One is for a full-scale primary.

The other is a negotiated agreement in which Obama and Clinton split the 185 pledged delegates that would have been awarded had the Jan. 29 primary counted.

One prominent official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there have been preliminary discussions among the state's House Democrats to see whether a compromise can be reached along those lines.

Clinton would have won 38 more delegates in the primary than Obama, had the primary results been used to award delegates, according to The Associated Press' calculations. Merely dividing the delegates evenly would leave Obama's delegate lead unchanged. Obama appeared to open the door to some sort of agreement earlier this week, when he spoke of a procedure "that doesn't advantage one candidate or another too much."

In Defense of Superdelegates: They Actually ARE Elected

It is a common meme in the MSM that superdelegates are unelected. That is not true.

First of all, the term superdelegate is a misnomer - they are more accuratey referred to as "automatic deleates." There are 796 superdelegates in the Democrat party. Approximately 230 of those are elected Members of the U.S. House of Representatives (I can't recall the exact make up right now), and another 50 are elected U.S. Senators. Therefore at least 280 of the 796 superdelegates are elected. They are just elected by their own states or Congressional Districts during federal elections.

Most of the remaining superdelegates are State Party National Committeemen, State Party National Committeewomen and State Party Chairs. These positions also are elected, abeit by the activist core of each state party. About the only "automatic delegates" who have never been elected to anything are the 54 Executive Directors of the state (and territorial) parties. The remaining automatic delegates are current and former party leaders in the U.S. House and Senate (i.e., Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt are both automatic delegates because they are previously elected leaders of their respective Congressional Caucuses), as well as a former Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. These last two categories are insignificant both percentage-wise and in absolute numbers.

Ergo, 742 of the so-called superdelegates actually are, elected to positions of leadership within their state parties, within the nation or within their respective Congressional caucuses. Given that over 90% of the automatic delegates ARE elected in some capacity, then the claims that they are somehow unrepresentative of the party is just plain B.S. (or lazy journalism).

Often overlooked is that the current presidential election cycle is the first time that the Republican Party has implemented automatic delegates. However, this number is limited to 200 some odd delegates consistin of the State Chairs, State Party National Committeemen, State Party National Committeewomen and State Party Executive Directors of the 54 states and territories. According to a GOP State National Committeewoman, the reason for this is that in the past these people, ironically, have sometimes not been elected as delegates due to their responsibilities within the state party interfering with their ability to compete for a delegate position.

The Coming Clash of the Alpha Females (Pelosi & Clinton)

Speaker Pelosi has already made history as the first female Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives since our founding. Little wonder that rumors persist that Speaker Pelosi will endorse Obama as the Democratic Party's Presidential Nominee. After all, why would she want to have her historical moment eclipsed by the first female President of the United States? Even The Hill notes that the two women have virtually no relationship, and why should the Speaker seek one anyway?

If Senator Clinton does become the next President, we can expect a below the radar struggle between the two of them for dominance in the Capitol. The Presidency has the bully pulpit, but the Speaker is the most powerful Constitutional Officer in the United States. As the saying goes, "Congress proposes, the President disposes." Speaker Pelosi will be able to win any power struggle between the two of them simply by ignoring President Clinton's agenda or requests, or outright opposing it.

President Clinton will have to be careful not to alienate Speaker Pelosi. The last time Senator Clinton was in charge of a domestic policy initiative (Hillarycare), also with a Democratic Congress, she thought she could put a package together inside the White House and ignore the relavant Congressional leaders (Senate Finance Chairman Moynihan, House Commerce Committee Chairman Dingell and House Ways & Means Chairman Rostenkowski) and simply present Congress her own package for them to rubber stamp. Any return to that type of attitude will raise the hackles of the Speaker and her Chairman. And a Speaker is not to be trifled with - remember, Jimmy Carter's Presidency was destroyed by Speaker O'Neill, not by minority Republicans.

2006-2008 TV & Commercial Soundtrack Play List

Once again, I am compiling a playlist of songs from television shows that have been in rotation during that past year. However, unlike previous playlists, this one also contains songs from commercials as well instead of segregating the two. Below is what I have so far:

Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears) - Kid Nation theme song
Come Anytime (Hoodoo Gurus) - Thank God You're Here theme song
I know, You Know (The Friendly Indians) - Psych theme song
Calling All Friends (Low Stars) - What About Brian? theme song
Hello Goodbye (The Beatles) - Target commerical
Blister in the Sun (Violent Femmes) - Burger King commercial
This is the Day (The Thes)- M&Ms commercial
It's a Jungle Out There (Randy Newman) - Monk theme song
Ice Cream ((New Young Pony Club)) - Intel commercial
Hockey Monkey (James Kochalka Superstar and the Zambonis) - The Loop theme song
God Only Knows(The Beach Boys)- Big Love theme song
We're Not Going To Take It (Twisted Sister) Yaz birth control commercial
Superman (R.E.M.) Toyota Sequoia commercial
The Part Where You Let Go (HEM) Liberty Mutual Insurance Company
Put A Little Love in Your Heart (Annie Lennox & Al Green/Jackie Desharm) Smart Balance fake butter commercial



I appreciate suggested additions.

The Yankee-Cowboy War Looks to Continue

After Tsunami Tuesday, it looks like the Big Mo is with Senators Clinton and McCain, thus setting up another battle in the Yankee-Cowboy War. The Yankee-Cowboy War is a way of conceptually understanding that the Post-World War II period produced a shift in the source of American ruling-class (oligarchic) power from the Northeast to the Southwest/West fueled by shifts in the sources of economic wealth.

The Southern Rim drawn from a line South of North Carolina across the nation to San Francisco (Cowboys) with its oil, natural resources and technology based sources of economic power has risen to challenge the banking and industrial power of the Eastern Establishment based in Chicago, New York, Boston, and the industrial states (Yankees). The Eastern Establishment ruled the country more or less unchecked,from our founding until the oil, aviation and aerospace (and later technology) industries matured and the Southwest (and West) became a rival source of economic power, producing its own social elite. It has dominated Presidential elections since 1960 (see below).

The Yankee-Cowboy War is essentially a post-Marxist conception of ruling class infighting between rival factions. It's important to note that the war is actually fought by political donors, corporate executives etc., and the actual politicians are not necessarily conscious (beyong their own class interests) of this ongoing war. Whether you agree with the premise or not, a look at our Presidents and Presidential contests post-Eisenhower shows that the fundamental battles for political control have been fought between representatives of these two establishments.

1960 - JFK v. Nixon - Yankee (JFK) Won
1963 - Cowboy (LBJ) comes to power in a putative coup engineered by his supporters.
1964 - LBJ v. Goldwater - Cowboy v. Cowboy, though LBJ had deep ties to the Yankee faction.
1968 - Nixon v. Humphrey - Cowboy (Nixon) won
1972 - Nixon v. McGovern - Cowboy (Nixon) won
1974 - Yankee (Ford) comes to power in a putative coup engineered by his supporters.
1976 - Ford v. Carter - Cowboy (Carter) won
1980 - Carter v. Reagan - Cowboy (Reagan) won
1984 - Reagan v. Mondale - Cowboy (Reagan) won
1988 - Bush 41 v. Dukakis - Cowboy (Bush 41) won
1992 - Bush 41 v. B. Clinton - Cowboy v. Cowboy. Bush 41 and Clinton both had deep ties to the Yankee faction through educational background and professional ties. In this case however, Clinton represented the interests of the Yankee faction and Bush's deep financial ties to the Cowboy (oil) establishment align him with their interests.
1996 - B. Clinton v. Dole - Yankee (Clinton) won - Georgetown, Yale and McGovern Presidenial Campaign experience make Clinton more of a Yankee representative than a Cowboy one.
2000 - Gore v. Bush 43 - Cowboy (Bush 43) won - Gore, though putatively from Tennessee spent his life growing up within the Eastern Establishment, even attending Harvard, and thus represented the Yankee establishment
2004 - Bush 43 v. Kerry - Cowboy (Bush 43) won - Bush's time in the Northeast seems not to have influenced him as much as it did Clinton despite his being a Yale Alum and member of the elite Skull & Bones Society
2008 - McCain v. H. Clinton - a classic showdown during which the Yankee faction may finally claw its way back to power. Despite spending time in Arkansas, Senator Clinton has alway been a Yankee, from growing up in the Chicago suburbs to attending hte elite Wellesley and Yale universities.

It's worth noting that in the elections from 1960 to present, the Cowboy faction has been dominant, winning 9 of 12 contests. In the cases where two putative members of the Cowboy faction competed against each other, the one more closely tied to the Eastern Establishment at the time has lost. Bill Clinton is the only President to be elected from the Yankee faction during this time, and the other two Yankee Presidents came to power through the death or political destruction of their Cowboy predecessors.

2008 Music Festivals

This the Second Annual Uneven Steven Music Festival list. Last year's list is here. I started doing this last year because I have far missed too many festivals by not knowing their exact dates until it was too late. Some of these are a bit off the beaten path, but should be well worth it.

Like last year, I would like for this list to be as comprehensive as possible, so please let me know (and include a link) about festivals left off this list, no matter where they are in the world. Thanks!

Additionally, please let me know if the Pixies or Garbage are playing near you, so I can figure out where I can see them play again. I will be eternally grateful.

2008 Music Festivals

January 7 - March 30 Emergenza Music Festival - (travelling music festival to discover new, unsigned talent)
February 26-March 2 Spark Music Festival of Electronic Music (University of Minnesota)
March 6-9 Langerado (Florida's Big Cypress Indian Reservation)
March 12-16 South x Southwest Music Festival (Austin, TX)
March 15 Shamrock Festival 2007 (Washington, DC - RFK Stadium)
March 20 - April 5 Savannah Music Festival
March 28-29 Ultra Music Festival (Bicentenniel Park - Miami, Florida)
April 18-19 Dewey Beach Pop Festival(Rehoboth,DE)
April 25-27 Coachella (Indio, CA)
April 25-27 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (New Orleans, LA)
May 1-4 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
(New Orleans, LA)
June 6-8 Rock im Ring (Nuremberg, Germany)
June 5-8 Chicago Blues Festival
June 13-15 The Download Festival (Donnington Park, Leceistershire, UK
June 20-21 Sierra Nevada World Music Festival (Booneville, CA)
June 27-29 Glastonbury Festival (U.K.)
Early July - TBD Pitchfork Music Festival (Chicago)
July 3-6 Roskilde Festival (Roskilde, Denmark)
July 4-6 Essence Music Festival (New Orleans, LA)
July 11-13 Vancouver Island Music Festival (Vancouver Island, Canada)
July 17-20 Festival Internacional de Benicassim (near Valencia, Spain with an excellent line-up)
July 23-26 10,000 Lakes Festival (Detroit Lakes, Minnesota)
August 1-4 Eclipe Outdoor Electronic Music Festival (Montreal, Candada)
August 1-3 Lollapallooza (Grant Park - Chicago, IL)
August 6-11 Shambhala (Canada)
August 16-17 V Festival (Hylands Park, Chelmsford & Weston Park, Staffordshire - UK)
August 22-24 Reading and Leeds Festival (U.K.)
August 25- September 1 Burning Man
August 28-31 Chicago Jazz Festival (Grant Park - Chicago, IL)
August 30- September 1 Bumbershoot Lineup to be announced in Spring 2008. (Washington State)

Festivals To Be Determined for 2008
TBD Virgin Festival 2008
TBD Goodstock (West Virginia)
TBD Ozzfest begins
TBD - Last year cancelled due to tornado Heineken Jammin' Festival (Italy)

OK GO New Orleans Benefit @ 9:30 Tonight - Want my tix?

I can't go to the show tonight. If anyone wants my tickets, please leave a comment with your email address. Below is an excerpt from the press release. The entire press release can be found here.

On February 2, OK Go and Bonerama will join forces for a benefit at Washington, D.C.’s 9:30 Club. The show is in support of You’re Not Alone, a digital EP the two bands put together after OK Go spent the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina recording with the New Orleans funk-soul band deep in the city’s Upper 9th Ward. One hundred percent of the proceeds from the EP - available exclusively at iTunes - will benefit Al “Carnival Time” Johnson and other members of New Orleans’ music community who are still struggling to rebuild their homes and their lives in the wake of Katrina. The five-song mini-album will be released on February 5 - Mardi Gras.

“New Orleans is one of the last places in America where music is truly a fundamental part of everyday life,” says OK Go’s Damian Kulash. “People get together on the weekends and parade through the streets just playing songs; 12-year-old-kids learn funk on the tuba; everyone actually dances. Life elsewhere in the world simply isn’t as awesome. If we allow the culture of New Orleans to die by leaving its musicians marooned around the country, it will be a terrible blow to American music.”

Hillary Clinton is a Disgrace to Feminists

I can't believe that Hillary Clinton wants the world to think that whenever she gets into political trouble, she's going to have her husband come roaring about, breaking furniture, sucking up oxygen, spewing carbon dioxide. My impression is that she's strong enough to defend herself--she certainly showed that in the recent Democratic debate. But apparently she's not strong enough to control Mr. Bill...and if that's the case, any sane voter would have to think twice before enabling this sort of circus act in the White House.

Maureen Dowd

I'm not one to generally agree with Ms. Dowd, but in this case she's on to something. Hillary Clinton should be out defending herself and not sending her husband to do it for her. And the "all the other spouses do it" doesn't apply for two reasons: (1) no other spouse's megaphone is as big as a former President's; and (2) Hillary is a woman. Having a man step up to defend her just undermines her claim to be a feminist icon and sets the women's movement back decades, unless fish really do need bicycles.

Additionally, the more she attacks Republicans the more she loses the residual good will built up by working in a bi-partisan way with her Republican colleagues. She is setting things up for a re-run of hte 1990s and we really don't need that. Additionally, no one in the Republican Coalition will refrain from dredging up all of Clinton's mis-deeds and mis-judgements from his post-Presidency from pardonning big donors to his investments with the sketchy Ron Burkle. They also have no interest in helping further the Bill Clinton legacy and will do everything they can to hang him like an albatross around Hillary's neck.

Well Yeah - There's Even Two Books about Elite Betrayal etc

The Raw Story | Old-line Republican warns 'something's in the works' to trigger a police state

One is Revolt of the Elites by Christopher Lasch. The other is The Irony of American Democracy by Dye and Ziglar.

The "Margin of Error" Does Not Mean What Journalists Think It Means

In the Princess Bride, the kidnapper Vizzini keeps using the word "inconceivable" to describe various events until Inigo Montoya states "That word, I do not think it means what you think it does." This is a good metaphor for the continual, repititous mis-use of the political polling "marging of error."

Polling is a branch of statistics which is mathematically sound in every way except when it comes to evaluating the relative positions of candidates vis a vis the voters. This is because to get an accurate sample for your poll, you have to know what the general population is. Gallup or Quinippiac or whomever can accurately poll the American people on anything but politics because the U.S. Census Bureau provides data on the entire U.S. population which allows them to accurately gauge the citizenry's preferences based on a small sample.

However, for political polling the population of voters is undefined until after the election and polling organizations have to make assumptions based on historical and other models of what the voting population will look like in order to draw a sample from which to poll. This is why political polling is as much art as science.

Now we get to the part where journalists continually demonstrate their poor educations. The size of the sample directly correlates with the poll's margin of error, e.g., the larger the sample size the smaller the margin of error. Generally any poll with a margin of error greater than 3.5% is worthless and there's no point really paying attention to it. Political campaigns use polls with larger margins of error (and smaller samples) because they are easier to obtain.

The "margin of error" in actuality is the percentage chance that the sample population is completely wrong on either side of the bell curve. So a margin of error of 3.5% means that the poll has a 1 in 30 chance of being COMPLETELY WRONG because the sample is off.

Reporters frequently report that if Candidate D beats Candidate R by 2% in a poll and the margin of error is 3% that "the candidates are statistically tied." That is in no way true. It means that Candidate D has 2% more support than candidate R, but that there is a 1 in 33 chance that the entire poll is wrong, meaning either candidate could be ahead by 10%, 20% or more. By constantly repeating this defective meme the mainstream media perpetuates a misunderstanding of polling by the general public as well as constantly reminds the educated among us that they are undereducated with no real understanding of what they are reporting on.

Jazzfest Lineup Announced

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has announced a partial line up (below). If you have never been, you really should go. It's a great opportunity to see loads of great music and is a complete blast. The official line-up is here.


Announced Line Up
Neville Brothers
Stevie Wonder
Billy Joel
Jimmy Buffett
Tim McGraw
Santana
Maze feat
Frankie Beverly
Sheryl Crow
Widespread Panic
Dr. John
Al Green
Diana Krall
Keyshia Cole
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss
The Raconteurs
Irma Thomas

And Thousands More Scheduled to Appear Fest

How Bush Fractured the GOP

I originaly blogged about the Democratic and Republican party crack ups here. While I said the crack up was coming, Peggy Noonan correctly points out in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that the Republcian party already is fractured and George W. Bush caused it. She is 100% correct, but doesn't detail his actions that caused this. Therefore below I have briefly outlined the actions of the Bush Administration which have torn the party asunder. You can read her op-ed below my comments or here.

First, in mid-2001 he alienated free traders by imposing anti-trade steel tariffs in a blatant attempt to buy votes in West Virginia. Then after after 9/11 he alienated civil libertarians by pushing through the Patriot Act (however, much of the Patriot Act simply gave the FBI the same legal authority that the DEA already had in terms of certain investigatory techniques) and then pushing for wireless warrant tapping and blatantly violating our civil rights. He alienate fiscal conservatives by creating the largest entitlement since LBJ - the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit - which is bankrupting the Medicare Trust Fund at an even faster rate than before. He further alienated this crucial block by increasing domestic spending at a faster rate even than LBJ. On that last point, I believe the President is only guilty of acquiescing to the actions and desires of former Republican Whip and Majority Leader Tom DeLay in his attempt to buy more House seats to preserve power for its own sake instead of to enact positive public policies.

Now to Peggy Noonan's Piece

DECLARATIONS

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
By PEGGY NOONAN
January 25, 2008; Page W14

We begin, as one always must now, again, with Bill Clinton. The past week he has traveled South Carolina, leaving discord in his wake. Barack Obama, that "fairytale," is low, sneaky. "He put out a hit job on me." The press is cruelly carrying Mr. Obama's counter-jabs. "You live for it."

In Dillon, S.C., according to the Associated Press, on Thursday Mr. Clinton "predicted that many voters will be guided mainly by gender and race loyalties" and suggested his wife may lose Saturday's primary because black voters will side with Mr. Obama. Who is raising race as an issue? Bill Clinton knows. It's the press, and Mr. Obama. "Shame on you," Mr. Clinton said to a CNN reporter. The same day the Web site believed to be the backdoor of the Clinton war room unveiled a new name for the senator from Illinois: "Sticky Fingers Obama."

Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red-faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment—this is a former president of the United States—is a civic embarrassment. It is also an education, and there is something heartening in this.

There are many serious and thoughtful liberals and Democrats who support Mr. Obama and John Edwards, and who are seeing Mr. Clinton in a new way and saying so. Here is William Greider in The Nation, the venerable left-liberal magazine. The Clintons are "high minded" on the surface but "smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard at the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four years."

That, again, is from one of the premier liberal journals in the United States. It is exactly what conservatives have been saying for a decade. This may mark a certain coming together of the thoughtful on both sides. The Clintons, uniters at last.

Mr. Obama takes the pummeling and preaches the high road. It's all windup with him, like a great pitcher more comfortable preparing to throw than throwing. Something in him resists aggression. He tends to be indirect in his language, feinting, only suggestive. I used to think he was being careful not to tear the party apart, and endanger his own future.

But the Clintons are tearing the party apart. It will not be the same after this. It will not be the same after its most famous leader, and probable ultimate victor, treated a proud and accomplished black man who is a U.S. senator as if he were nothing, a mere impediment to their plans. And to do it in a way that signals, to his supporters, How dare you have the temerity, the ingratitude, after all we've done for you?

Watch for the GOP to attempt swoop in after the November elections and make profit of the wreckage.

* * *

As for the Republicans, their slow civil war continues. The primary race itself is winnowing down and clarifying: It is John McCain versus Mitt Romney, period. At the same time the conservative journalistic world is convulsed by recrimination and attack. They're throwing each other out of the party. Republicans have become very good at that. David Brooks damns Rush Limbaugh who knocks Bill Kristol who anathematizes whoever is to be anathematized this week. This Web site opposes that magazine.


The rage is due to many things. A world is ending, the old world of conservative meaning, and ascendancy. Loss leads to resentment. (See Clinton, Bill.) Different pundits back different candidates. Some opportunistically discover new virtues in candidates who appear at the moment to be winning. Some feel they cannot be fully frank about causes and effects.

More on that in a moment.

I saw Mr. McCain this Tuesday in New York, at a fund-raiser at which a breathless aide shared, "We just made a million dollars." What a difference a few wins makes. There were a hundred people outside chanting, "Mac is back!" and perhaps a thousand people inside, crammed into a three-chandelier ballroom at the St. Regis. When I attended a fund-raiser in October there was none of this; perhaps 200 came, and people were directed to crowd around the candidate as if to show he had support. Now you had to fight your way through a three-ring cluster. (When I attended a Giuliani fund-raiser this summer I saw something I wish I'd noted: The audience was big but wasn't listening. They were all on their BlackBerrys. That should have told me something about his support.)

Mr. McCain is in the middle of a shift. Previous strategy: I'm John McCain and you know me, we've traveled through history together. New strategy: I'm the old vet who fought on the front lines of the Reagan-era front, and I am about to take on the mantle of the essentials of conservatism—lower spending, smaller government, strong in the world. He is going to strike the great Reagan gong, not in a way that is new but in a way that is new for him.

In this he is repositioning himself back to where he started 30 years ago: as a Southwestern American conservative veteran of the armed forces. That is, inherently if not showily, anti-establishment. That is, I am the best of the past.

Mr. Romney, on the other hand, is running as I Am Today. I am new and fresh, in fact I'm tomorrow, I know all about the international flow of money and the flatness of the world, I know what China is, I can see you through the turbulence just as I saw Bain to success.

It will all come down to: Whom do Republicans believe? Mr. Romney in spite of his past and now-disavowed liberal positions? Or Mr. McCain in spite of his forays, the past 10 years, into a kind of establishment mindset that has suggested that The Establishment Knows Best?

Do conservatives take inspiration from Mr. Romney's newness? Or do they take comfort and security from Mr. McCain's rugged ability to endure, and to remind?

It is along those lines the big decision will be made.

* * *

On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!"

This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.

Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.

And this needs saying, because if you don't know what broke the elephant you can't put it together again. The party cannot re-find itself if it can't trace back the moment at which it became lost. It cannot heal an illness whose origin is kept obscure.

I believe that some of the ferocity of the pundit wars is due to a certain amount of self-censorship. It's not in human nature to enjoy self-censorship. The truth will out, like steam from a kettle. It hurts to say something you supported didn't work. I would know. But I would say of these men (why, in the continuing age of Bill Clinton, does the emoting come from the men?) who are fighting one another as they resist naming the cause for the fight: Sack up, get serious, define. That's the way to help.

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on The Editorial Page.

Bill Clinton Shows He's Just Another Cracker

Bill Clinton's continual use of symbols and code words to inject race into the Democratic Presidential contest, not only to drive white voters away from Obama, but also to devalue Obama's South Carolina victory (such as comparing him to Jesse Jackson) shows that he fully understands exactly what he is doing. The fact that he would do this shows that the Clintons care more about retaining their own power and are willing to drive a racial wedge through the Democratic party to do it. The Clintons are still about the politics of personal destruction and nothing will change by putting them back into the White House.

If you don't believe me read this quote from President Bill Clinton, as reported here:

"They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender. That's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here," the former president said at one stop as he campaigned for his wife, strongly suggesting that blacks would not support a white alternative to Obama.

Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as "the black candidate," a tag that could hurt him outside the South.

The Coming Political Realignment

The fractious competition in both the Republican and Democratic presidential selection process threatens to tear asunder the coalitions that have undergirded both for years. The nomination of John McCain will alienate most supply siders and free speech libertarians. Rudy Giuliani's nomination will alienate the values voters, and Mike Huckabee's nomination will alienate non-evangelicals and non-christianists as well as all right thinking Americans who think it's an abomination that Southern States incorporated the Confederate Battle Flag into their state flags during the push to end segregation. Mitt Romney's nomination obviously will alienate the evangelicals and anyone who prizes ideological consistency.

The likely nomination of Senator Clinton will split the black vote along generational lines. The younger generation of black leaders already is questioning the unwavering support of the black community for the Democratic party, and the Clintonian savaging of Barack Obama will cause them to take a second look at the Republican Party. House Democratic Whip James Clyburn's recent acknowledgement that Republican Senate Leader Everett Dirksen did much to advance civil rights is one reason for this second look. Additionally, the black community likely will come to realize that the Clintons are pitting Hispanics against them and will resent that.

All of this means that parts of both parties will be alienated and up for grabs post the 2008 Presidential election regardless of which party wins. It's conceivable that Republicans could regain their share of the Hispanic vote and enlarge their share of the black vote, while Democrats would gain the allegiance of more social and fiscal libertarians (provided they keep to their DLC roots and don't revert to their big spending LBJ era ways).

A Little Intellectual Honesty from President Clinton (and many Republicans) Would Be Nice

Bill Clinton's recent attempts to burnish his record as President while simultaneously attempting to destroy the first viable black candidate for President (Senator Obama) are worth noting for their disengenousness. Especially the claims about the economic success and policies of the 1990s.

Now, I realize that Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992. I also know that Newt Gingrich and the Republicans seized the Majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1994 elections after Senator Clinton's disastrous health care plan and President Clinton's massive tax hikes. The first time in decades that federal spending declined year over year was fiscal year 1995. It's not a coincidence that this happened when Republicans controlled Congress.

The Clinton Presidency with the Republican Congress is the only functional government that has existed in my lifetime (except for President Clinton's self-destruction by cheating on Senator Clinton). The reason is simple: The Republican Congress wouldn't let the Democrat President increase spending as much as he wanted and was able to force through necessary legislation such as the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (Primarily written by Republican Ways & Means Chairman Bill Archer and Republican Finance Committee Chairman Bill Roth) and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (welfare reform)of 1996. And the Democrat President wouldn't let Republicans cut taxes as much as they wanted.

To claim that the budget would have been balanced with a Majority Democrat Congress is a flat out lie and intellectually dishonest. This is because President Clinton himself even said in 1993 that cutting the deficit through reduced spending wasn't a priority. He only changed tactics and triangulated his way to re-election (with the help of uber consultant Dick Morris, who BTW never misses a chance to take a cheat shot at Senator Clinton). While Bill Clinton is right that many good policy ideas in the 1990s did originate with the Democratic Leadership Council's think tank, he chose not to pursue many of those ideas and instead pushed through a series of small, targeted policies which only had peripheral impacts, but were hugely symbolic.

BTW, the DLC, which President Clinton Chaired, was founded because the Republicans DID have some of the best ideas of the 1980s and he, Senator Lieberman and Al From thought that the Democratic party needed to move away from the San Francisco Democrat fringe (so-named because of the site of the 1984 Democratic National Convention) and towards the middle - i.e., where the Republicans were. So a little intellectual honesty on that front would be nice.

Back to the main point - a Majority Democrat Congress in the 90s would've gone on a massive spending rampage just like the Republicans did when Tom Delay destroyed the Republican party by spending like sailors on shore leave in an attempt to buy more House seats to retain power for its own sake instead of to advance positive policy solutions. The Democrats just would've spent the money on different things.

The economic success of the 1990s wasn't due to politicians per se, it was due to divided government keeping both parties in check. Specifically a Democratic President and Republican Congress - we've seen too many times that the reverse never produced economic success of that enjoyed in the 1990s.

Therefore, President Clinton's attacks on Barack Obama are out right disengenous. But his relationship with the truth has always been worse than his relationship with his wife.

The Europeans Really Are Worthless Allies

In this story, U.S. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates states the obvious about our so-called European allies. Of course, he had to make nice and apologize to keep up decent trade relations, but that was just to let the Europeans save face.When the chips are down they are essentially useless.

This is because they spend virtually no money on their defence budgets. Of course, they are able to do this because they have enjoyed the U.S. Security Umbrella for 60 years. During which time, Western Europe has grown fat, happy and lazy. While we have bankrupted our society to defend Western Civilization, they have been happily free-riding and using the money they don't spend on defence to fund lavish social welfare states - little wonder unemployment is so high - there's really no incentive to work when the government gives you free money.

It's not just me or Secretary Gates who espouses this view. It's also shared by Distinguished Professor and U.S. foreign policy expert Graham Allison (perhaps best known for his 1969 essay "Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis "). During the terrifying and all to real Oil Shockwave simulation in Washington last November (featuring such luminaries as Carol Browner, Robert Rubin and Richard Armitage) I had the privilege of sitting next to him and asking his opinion on this very topic. His response was that Afghanistan had proven that our NATO allies were simply incapable of fighting alongside U.S. forces because they are undertrained and their governments don't buy equipment that works alongside U.S. high tech equipment - the so-called interoperability problem.

NATO originally was formed "To keep the Germans down, the Russians out, and the U.S. in." Well, the Russians are now in, the Germans are up and if it weren't for the fact that our Eastern European friends such as Poland and the Czech Republic need our protection we should be out. With the exception of our British cousins, the Europeans are useless. The Brits, Scots and Irish are the only Westerners who share our and the Eastern European values of freedom and democracy and know that they have to be fought for generation after generation to be maintained. "Old Europe" as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld termed it is even too tired to even manage to reproduce its population - with the exception of France which almost has a replacement rate population growth (fueled by Muslim immigrants), the entire continent can't even manage to get close to the 2.1 child per family reproduction replacement rate. It's dying and therefore not even worth defending the next time they're attacked.

The Downside of Anti-lobbyist Rhetoric by Obama and Edwards

The Politico has picked up on the "potential downside of being anti-lobbyist" meme, which I posted on 10 days ago. You can read my original post here. Their story even validates my point about how banning lobbyists from a Presidential Administration radically reduces the talent pool, and quotes no less an authority than Paul Light, formerly with the Brookings Institution. However, it does not go into the potential damage such an action would do to the Capitol Hill Democratic Leadership, which would have been nice follow through. Just goes to show how lazy reporters really are.

Imitation really is a nice form of flattery. The Politico story is below:


Anti-lobby pledges easier said than done
By: Jeanne Cummings
January 14, 2008 09:07 PM EST

John Edwards and Barack Obama are taking their bans on donations from Washington lobbyists one step further: pledging to limit the role of the persuasion class in their administrations.

Needless to say, this isn’t sitting too well with lobbyists here in town, and at least one expert wonders whether it makes much sense.

“It’s easier to say you are going to ban lobbyists from your administration than actually doing it,” said Paul C. Light, an expert on federal appointments and hiring.

“We know from past research, back to the Kennedy administration, that almost two-thirds of presidential appointees come from within the Washington standard metropolitan area — almost a three- or four-mile radius around the White House,” he added.

The pledges from both candidates are aimed at bolstering their argument that they can change the way Washington operates. Neither is proposing an all-out ban on lobbyists-turned-presidential-advisers, although that might actually be easier to implement than what they are planning.

If elected, Edwards says he wouldn’t hire or appoint Washington-registered corporate lobbyists or those who represent foreign governments.

“It is unrealistic to think that you can sit at a table with drug companies, insurance companies and oil companies and they are going to negotiate their power away,” he says on the campaign trail.

Obama is keeping the door open to hiring them. But any lobbyist who joins his administration wouldn’t be permitted to work on “any project, law or regulation related to their former employer.” And, upon leaving his service, the former appointee would be prohibited from lobbying the Obama administration for the duration of his term.

On the campaign trail, the Illinois senator vows to “challenge the money and influence that’s stood” in the way of major policy changes. He also reminds audiences that he co-sponsored sweeping ethics reform legislation passed last year. “I’ve gotten something done,” he says.

Certainly, there are reasons for any administration — and particularly a new one — to be cautious. The most obvious one: Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff, who was convicted in a bribery scheme involving members of Congress, never officially worked for the White House. But in 2001, he used his ties to the new Bush administration to promote the hiring of some of his allies in the Interior Department and the General Services Administration. Then he used those connections to advance the interests of his clients. (Some of his Bush administration allies ultimately were convicted, too.)

The Abramoff scandal was the subject of hearings chaired by Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The fallout tarnished Congress more than the White House. But it fed the story line of Bush critics who claim the administration has been too cozy with corporate interests and lobbyists.

While it makes sense for the Abramoff scandal to prompt a prospective president to raise his guard, cases such as his are pretty rare. Meanwhile, there are some downsides to the Obama and Edwards pledges.

Lobbyists, for all their baggage, also happen to represent some of the best-trained advocates in Washington. The community also is home to a slew of experts on policy ranging from health care to energy to foreign affairs.


The Edwards and Obama approaches could wind up excluding, or discouraging, an impressive pool of talent from assisting their White Houses.

“I just think it’s silly,” said Charlie Black, a longtime lobbyist who is now helping McCain’s campaign.
“There are a lot of CEOs who have to register as lobbyists and their executives who come to town to meet with members. It’s demonizing a group of people who are mostly honorable people and who are knowledgeable about how government works and public policy,” he added.

Indeed, the pool of registered lobbyists is expanding today under the ethics reform law pushed by Obama.

Ethics attorneys in Washington spent much of last year urging corporations to err on the side of caution by registering anyone who touches, or even confers about, a strategy for influencing Congress. That could shrink the potential employment pool under Edwards’ no-corporate-lobbyist rules.

The fine wording of Edwards’ hiring ban is also likely to lead to some predictably edgy headlines, warned Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Among the scrutiny the former North Carolina senator would face: questions about the fairness of hiring a former labor union lobbyist while shutting out any corporate advocates, or headlines that note an appointee had once been a registered lobbyist.

“It’s a nice promise to make, but the people who have to implement the rules could go crazy,” Light said.

The decision by both candidates to ban federal lobbyists — not state lobbyists — from their donor lists already has led to the same sort of technical attacks.

At a New Hampshire debate, Hillary Rodham Clinton noted that a high-ranking figure in Obama’s campaign is a lobbyist for a pharmaceutical company. Obama shook his head and muttered that the charge just wasn’t so. But the adviser is indeed a lobbyist, albeit at the state level.

Finally, the policies overlook some new realities: Many in Washington want to be, or wind up becoming, a lobbyist. Republicans have long used lobbying shops as a refuge while their party was out of power. In the Bush years, Democrats had begun to follow the same path. Democratic lobbyists’ ranks swelled significantly last year after their party took over the Congress, making them sought-after hires for groups that had lost touch with the once-minority party.

That phenomenon would not only limit Edwards’ personnel choices, but it could make Obama’s post-service rules unpalatable to many who would lose significant income if they lost their ability to lobby the administration.

“It’s hard to be in this town without doing some lobbying to get by,” Light concluded.

TM & © THE POLITICO & POLITICO.COM, a division of Allbritton Communications Company

Do the Old Civil Rights Guard Fear an Obama Presidency Will End Their Influence?

The seeming generational split among African American leaders between Obama and Clinton, raises a number of questions. The first among these is whether the older generation simply wants to "dance with the one that brung ya" by supporting those in the White Establishment who enabled their success. There is a very disrepectful term in the black community for African Americans of this ilk.

The second question is whether the older generation is so acclimated to perceived limits on their ability to achieve power beyond a certain level that they simply can't imagine one of their own ascending to the heights of power and are going with the safe bet? If so, this is cowardly.

The final question about those black leaders who support question is whether they're really concerned about preserving their own power. After all if Obama wins the Democratic Presidential Nomination, let alone the Presidency itself, wouldn't that effectively end the Civil Rights movement? All of a sudden there would be no need for the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton et al. These people would have to stop talking about how racist our society is and how we collectively keep the black man down if a black man actually wins the Presidency.

The last seems like the most likely, despite its inherent venality.

We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Conspiracy Culture Critique

Ok, so I've gotten away from it for a while, but I would like to make an observation on the 2007-2008 Television Season and its relationship with conspiracy culture.

It is worth noting that two successful television shows, Bones and NUMB3RS, have embraced conspiracy culture and the multiple episode story arc formula this year. Both of these shows are excellent in their own right, but apparently their writers/directors thought a little bit of conspiracy-related intrigue would jones up their shows.

Bones took the direct route of tying its season to a Templar-related conspiracy regarding a cult of people called Gorgothans or some such (can't remember right off hand). This story arc has surfaced in a handful of episodes this past season, and it looks to be starting off in a manner similar to the Smoking Man-related episodes of the X-Files. It's not clear if this story arc will be wrapped up in the current season (or I should say was intended to be wrapped up in the current season given the Writers' Strike) or whether it will continue for several seasons until it metastasizes into a a primary focus of the series.

NUMB3RS took a more convention approach to conspiracy media culture, firmly embedding their conspiracy in the realm of possiblility - counter espionage and mole hunting within the FBI. Agent Colby Granger was a triple agent - helping conduct an internal investigation of the FBI/Department of Justice for moles while posing as a double agent for the Chinese governement and feeding them false information. The show dealt credibly with the fallout of the Colby's exposure and subsequent rescue before being killed at the hands of the Chinese mole - his partner and team had serious reservations about him and conflicted loyalties after feeling they had been spied on by him. So far this conspiracy element is wrapped up and it looks like similar conspiracies won't surface again, at least for a while.

Interestingly, the NUMB3RS conspiracy arc started with the investigation of the murder of a Chinese consulate employee in what looked like a typical NUMB3RS episode. The conspiracy element was slow to emerge with Agent Colby Granger later appearing on a master "Janus List" of double agents in another seemingly typical NUMB3RS episode. I have to say that the NUMB3RS writers did an excellent job of introducing and weaving the conspiracy elements into the ongoing story arc. Well done.

She's Proved She Can Fake Sincerity, I Guess She Can Fake Anything

I realize this is a bit late to the Zeitgeist, but Hillary Clinton's "emotional breakdown" were a classic tactic learned from the master himself. Her husband. Funny how she was able to still launch right into her talking points even after being on the verge of tears.

A girl running for class president in my high school did the same thing in the 80s when she realized she was going to lose. It works like this: everyone feels sorry for the girl becuase she's so so distraught and figures that since the other guy has such a strong lead, their vote to demonstrate pity/moral support, won't detract from their first preference actually winning. I call it the "Niki Effect" after the girl for whom it worked.

Bill Clinton Undermining Hillary's Campaign

The continuing controversey around Bill Clinton's remarks about Senator Obama and the civil rights movement, as illustrated by the reaction of House Majority Whip and Civil Rights Leader Jame Clyburn, illustrate why he should shut the hell up and get out of his wife's way.

While I'm a Libertarian, I give credit where it's due. Bill Clinton was a much better President than Republicans gave him credit for, and Hillary Clinton was rated as one of the 100 best lawyers in America by Legal Times years before she became First Lady. She is smart, accomplished and completely able to run her own campaign and win without Bill's surrogate/public appearances and attendant media coverage. (Though she would be a fool not to take his advice behind closed doors as he is likely the greatest American politician since Lincoln).

Everytime Bill Clinton says or does anything on Hillary's behalf he becomes a news item. This detracts from news coverage of her and potentially damages her campaign. The lastest "fairy tale" quote being a perfect example. I believe his explanation and wathcing the video clip in its entirety validates it, though the statement itself was inartful and not the best example of Bill Clinton's exemplary speaking ability or rhetorical style. (I also believe what Senator Barack Obama said recently about not wanting to undercut John Kerry in 2004 by voicing an opinion on the Iraq War contrary to his own party's nominee - call me naive, but I like to take people at their word especially when they're not obviously dissembling - which doesn't mean to that I believed Bill Clinton in 1998 about Monica Lewinsky)

My point being that Bill Clinton's comments, miscontrued as they were, were broadcast widely and loudly throughout the media establishment. This sucked the oxygen out of the air for anything newsworthy Hillary did or wanted to do. Afterall, the media are only going to cover the Clinton's so much and it's either one or the other.

Additionally, Bill Clinton still evokes visceral hatred from Republicans and conservatives alike, which means that everytime he speaks on his wife's behalf conservative commentators have an opening to trash her more and the Republican base gets a bit more riled up against Hillary. She might have a fighting chance of getting some Republican votes if he'd shut up since most Republican opposition to her in the 90s was based on, to quote a friend, "the fact that no one elected her to do shit, and she was never confirmed by the Senate for anything." A lot of GOP angst about Hillary started to dissipate once she was elected to the Senate in her own right.

I have no doubt this is unconscious behavior. Professional women are often warned not to bring their husbands to business dinners because the husbands will subtley undercut them unconsciously. Bill Clinton is doing the same thing.

Hillary has showcased him enough. It's time for her campaign to ship him off to Antarctica where he won't be able to garner any media coverage. He is a distraction that hurts her whenever he opens his mouth.

Obama NH Campaign Victim of "David Duke Effect"

After his stunning upset in Iowa, the NH polls suddenly showed a giant uptick for Obama, which was not reflected in the outcome of tonight’s election. A large portion of this was undoubtedly due to the David Duke Effect. The David Duke Effect is named after a Senate candidate in Louisiana in the late 80s/early 90s named David Duke who was a Ku Klux Klan member. Polls of the race consistently showed him garnering the support of fewer than 10% of Louisianans. On Election Day he received substantially more votes than that. The general conclusion: racists didn’t want to admit they were supporting Duke and gave the “correct” answer.

Given my previous post, you likely know I believe the same thing happened in New Hampshire this year. People in NH didn’t want to admit they were not supporting Obama, but said they were anyway, because it was “the right answer” after his Iowa victory. The tragedy is that the Obama campaign believed the polls and discounted the David Duke Effect. Being ahead, especially after a hard fought victory like Iowa, his staff undoubtedly started believing their own press and unfortunately got complacent.

None of which to is to say that Hillary did anything untoward. The point is that while neither campaign knew it (and Hillary's almost imploded over it) Hillary Clinton was always ahead and winning, albeit narrowly. Therefore there really is no point in asking how she recovered. However, her near implosion and the Obama campaign's overrconfidence do betray a strong faith in America and our collective journey away from racism. That those at the heights of power believe this is both reassuring and comforting in some small way.

I wish them and their hardworking staffs the best of luck for the rest of the campaign season.