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.