New Rules 3/28/08

Getting Mrs. Clinton

Getting Mrs. Clinton by Peggy Noonan

I think we've reached a signal point in the campaign. This is the point where, with Hillary Clinton, either you get it or you don't. There's no dodging now. You either understand the problem with her candidacy, or you don't. You either understand who she is, or not. And if you don't, after 16 years of watching Clintonian dramas, you probably never will.

That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual).

But either you get it now or you never will. That's the importance of the Bosnia tape.

Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves.

Not that her staff isn't policing them too. Mrs. Clinton's people are heavy-handed in that area, letting producers and correspondents know they're watching, weighing, may have to take this higher. There's too much of this in politics, but Hillary's campaign takes it to a new level.

It's not only the press. It's what I get as I walk around New York, which used to be thick with her people. I went to a Hillary fund-raiser at Hunter College about a month ago, paying for a seat in the balcony and being ushered up to fill the more expensive section on the floor, so frantic were they to fill seats.

I sat next to a woman, a New York Democrat who'd been for Hillary from the beginning and still was. She was here. But, she said, "It doesn't seem to be working." She shrugged, not like a brokenhearted person but a practical person who'd missed all the signs of something coming. She wasn't mad at the voters. But she was no longer so taken by the woman who soon took the stage and enacted joy.

The other day a bookseller told me he'd been reading the opinion pages of the papers and noting the anti-Hillary feeling. Two weeks ago he realized he wasn't for her anymore. It wasn't one incident, just an accumulation of things. His experience tracks this week's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showing Mrs. Clinton's disapproval numbers have risen to the highest level ever in the campaign, her highest in fact in seven years.

* * *

You'd think she'd pivot back to showing a likable side, chatting with women, weeping, wearing the bright yellows and reds that are thought to appeal to her core following, older women. Well, she's doing that. Yet at the same time, her campaign reveals new levels of thuggishness, though that's the wrong word, for thugs are often effective. This is mere heavy-handedness.

On Wednesday a group of Mrs. Clinton's top donors sent a letter to the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, warning her in language that they no doubt thought subtle but that reflected a kind of incompetent menace, that her statements on the presidential campaign may result in less money for Democratic candidates for the House. Ms. Pelosi had said that in her view the superdelegates should support the presidential candidate who wins the most pledged delegates in state contests. The letter urged her to "clarify" her position, which is "clearly untenable" and "runs counter" to the superdelegates' right to make "an informed, individual decision" about "who would be the party's strongest nominee." The signers, noting their past and huge financial support, suggested that Ms. Pelosi "reflect" on her comments and amend them to reflect "a more open view."

Barack Obama's campaign called it inappropriate and said Mrs. Clinton should "reject the insinuation." But why would she? All she has now is bluster. Her supporters put their threat in a letter, not in a private meeting. By threatening Ms. Pelosi publicly, they robbed her of room to maneuver. She has to defy them or back down. She has always struck me as rather grittier than her chic suits, high heels and unhidden enthusiasm may suggest. We'll see.

What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)

She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she's doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder. So that she ups the ante every day. She helped Ireland achieve peace. She tried to stop Nafta. She's been a leader for 35 years. She landed in Bosnia under siege and bravely dodged bullets. It was as if she'd watched the movie "Wag the Dog," with its fake footage of a terrified refugee woman running frantically from mortar fire, and found it not a cautionary tale about manipulation and politics, but an inspiration.

* * *

What struck me as the best commentary on the Bosnia story came from a poster called GI Joe who wrote in to a news blog: "Actually Mrs. Clinton was too modest. I was there and saw it all. When Mrs. Clinton got off the plane the tarmac came under mortar and machine gun fire. I was blown off my tank and exposed to enemy fire. Mrs. Clinton without regard to her own safety dragged me to safety, jumped on the tank and opened fire, killing 50 of the enemy." Soon a suicide bomber appeared, but Mrs. Clinton stopped the guards from opening fire. "She talked to the man in his own language and got him [to] surrender. She found that he had suffered terribly as a result of policies of George Bush. She defused the bomb vest herself." Then she turned to his wounds. "She stopped my bleeding and saved my life. Chelsea donated the blood."

Made me laugh. It was like the voice of the people answering back. This guy knows that what Mrs. Clinton said is sort of crazy. He seems to know her reputation for untruths. He seemed to be saying, "I get it."

Bosnia was a War Zone!

Ding!

Today is a milestone...only 300 more days of President Bush!

Audacity of Hopelessness

This idea is still floating around the media, but has yet to take a firm hold. I hope it grabs hold soon so this whole self-destructive process can be ended and the attention can be put on the November election. Obama v. McCain.

The Long Defeat

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 25, 2008
Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign.

Reactions From Around the WebFirst, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up.

Second, Obama’s lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes.

Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi’s judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they’re drifting away. Her lead among them has shrunk by about 60 in the past month, according to Avi Zenilman of Politico.com.

In short, Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance? Are leading Democrats so narcissistic that they would create bitter stagnation even if they were granted one-party rule?

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.

If she does the former, she would surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice. Her campaign would cruise along at a lower register until North Carolina, then use that as an occasion to withdraw. If she does not, she would soldier on doggedly, taking down as many allies as necessary.

Is it Worth it?

Iraq, $5,000 Per Second?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

The Iraq war is now going better than expected, for a change. Most critics of the war, myself included, blew it: we didn’t anticipate the improvements in security that are partly the result of last year’s “surge.”

Times Topics: Iraq Progress ReportsThe improvement is real but fragile and limited. Here’s what it amounts to: We’ve cut our casualty rates to the unacceptable levels that plagued us back in 2005, and we still don’t have any exit plan for years to come — all for a bill that is accumulating at the rate of almost $5,000 every second!

More important, while casualties in Baghdad are down, we’re beginning to take losses in Florida and California. The United States seems to have slipped into recession; Americans are losing their homes, jobs and health insurance; banks are struggling — and the Iraq war appears to have aggravated all these domestic woes.

“The present economic mess is very much related to the Iraq war,” says Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. “It was at least partially responsible for soaring oil prices. ...Moreover, money spent on Iraq did not stimulate the economy as much as the same dollars spent at home would have done. To cover up these weaknesses in the American economy, the Fed let forth a flood of liquidity; that, together with lax regulations, led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom.”

Not everyone agrees that the connection between Iraq and our economic hardships is so strong. Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International and author of a book on how America pays for wars, argues that the Iraq war is a negative for the economy but still only a minor factor in the present crisis.

“Is it a significant cause of the present downturn?” Mr. Hormats asked. “I’d say no, but could the money have been better utilized to strengthen our economy? The answer is yes.”

For all the disagreement, there appears to be at least a modest connection between spending in Iraq and the economic difficulties at home. So as we debate whether to bring our troops home, one central question should be whether Iraq is really the best place to invest $411 million every day in present spending alone.

I’ve argued that staying in Iraq indefinitely undermines our national security by empowering jihadis — just as we now know that our military presence in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s was, in fact, counterproductive by empowering Al Qaeda in its early days. On the other hand, supporters of the war argue that a withdrawal from Iraq would signal weakness and leave a vacuum that extremists would fill, and those are legitimate concerns.

But if you believe that staying in Iraq does more good than harm, you must answer the next question: Is that presence so valuable that it is worth undermining our economy?

Granted, the cost estimates are squishy and controversial, partly because the $12.5 billion a month that we’re now paying for Iraq is only a down payment. We’ll still be making disability payments to Iraq war veterans 50 years from now.

Professor Stiglitz calculates in a new book, written with Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, that the total costs, including the long-term bills we’re incurring, amount to about $25 billion a month. That’s $330 a month for a family of four.

A Congressional study by the Joint Economic Committee found that the sums spent on the Iraq war each day could enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start or give Pell Grants to 153,000 students to attend college. Or if we’re sure we want to invest in security, then a day’s Iraq spending would finance another 11,000 border patrol agents or 9,000 police officers.

Imagine the possibilities. We could hire more police and border patrol agents, expand Head Start and rehabilitate America’s image in the world by underwriting a global drive to slash maternal mortality, eradicate malaria and deworm every child in Africa.

All that would consume less than one month’s spending on the Iraq war.

Moreover, the Bush administration has financed this war in a way that undermines our national security — by borrowing. Forty percent of the increased debt will be held by China and other foreign countries.

“This is the first major war in American history where all the additional cost was paid for by borrowing,” Mr. Hormats notes. If the war backers believe that the Iraq war is so essential, then they should be willing to pay for it partly with taxes rather than charging it.

One way or another, now or later, we’ll have to pay the bill. Professor Stiglitz calculates that the eventual total cost of the war will be about $3 trillion. For a family of five like mine, that amounts to a bill of almost $50,000.

I don’t feel that I’m getting my money’s worth.

New Rules!

Thanks Again Mr. Bush

Since '01, Guarding Species Is Harder
Endangered Listings Drop Under Bush
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer

With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Controversies have occasionally flared over Interior Department officials who regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists' recommendations to list new species, but internal documents also suggest that pervasive bureaucratic obstacles were erected to limit the number of species protected under one of the nation's best-known environmental laws.

The documents show that personnel were barred from using information in agency files that might support new listings, and that senior officials repeatedly dismissed the views of scientific advisers as President Bush's appointees either rejected putting imperiled plants and animals on the list or sought to remove this federal protection.

Officials also changed the way species are evaluated under the 35-year-old law -- by considering only where they live now, as opposed to where they used to exist -- and put decisions on other species in limbo by blocking citizen petitions that create legal deadlines.

As a result, listings plummeted. During Bush's more than seven years as president, his administration has placed 59 domestic species on the endangered list, almost the exact number that his father listed during each of his four years in office. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago.

In a sign of how contentious the issue has become, the advocacy group WildEarth Guardians filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking a court order to protect 681 Western species all at once, on the grounds that further delay would violate the law. Among the species cited are tiny snails, vibrant butterflies, and a wide assortment of plants and other creatures.

"It's an urgent situation, and something has to be done," said Nicole Rosmarino, the group's conservation director. "This roadblock to listing under the Bush administration is criminal."

Developers, farmers and other business interests frequently resist decisions on listing because they require a complex regulatory process that can make it difficult to develop land that is home to protected species. Environmentalists have also sparred for years with federal officials over implementation of the law.

Nevertheless, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton added an average of 58 and 62 species to the list each year, respectively.

One consequence is that the current administration has the most emergency listings, which are issued when a species is on the very brink of extinction.

And some species have vanished. The Lake Sammamish kokanee, a landlocked sockeye salmon, went extinct in 2001 after being denied an emergency listing, and genetically pure Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits disappeared last year after Interior declined to protect critical habitat for the species.

Administration officials -- who estimate that more than 280 domestic species should be on the list but have been "precluded" because of more pressing priorities -- do not dispute that they have moved slowly, but they dispute the reasons.

Bush officials say they are struggling to cope with an onslaught of litigation, but internal documents and several court rulings have revealed steps the administration has taken to make it harder, and slower, to approve listings.

Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall said his agency, which decides on most proposed listings of endangered species and their critical habitat, has been hamstrung by a slew of lawsuits and has just begun to dig out. He told the House Appropriations interior subcommittee last month that his agency will make decisions about 71 species by Oct. 1 and an additional 21 species a year later.

"Lawsuits, starting in the early '90s, have really driven things," Hall said, adding that the administration has tried to keep species from declining to the point where they need to be listed. "I'm feeling pretty good we're back on track to do the job the way it's supposed to be done."

In court cases, however, a number of judges have rejected decisions made by Hall's agency and have criticized its slow pace. On March 5, a U.S. district judge in Phoenix ordered Interior to redesignate bald eagles in Arizona's Sonoran Desert as threatened after the agency delisted the entire species last summer.

Three weeks before Interior officials rejected a petition to keep the desert eagles listed, a scientific advisory panel it convened wrote that the population "appears to be less viable than populations in other parts of the country" because it had fewer than 50 nesting pairs. Survival usually requires 500 breeding pairs.

The Fish and Wildlife Service never released that report, along with internal agency documents showing "substantial" evidence that the Arizona eagles should be kept on the list: Both the report and the documents were unearthed under the Freedom of Information Act by the Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group.

In another case, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in late January that Interior violated the law when it did not act on 55 endangered and threatened foreign species that the department had described as qualified to be listed. The department has listed six foreign species during Bush's term.

"If the Service were allowed to continue at its current rate, it is hard to imagine anytime in the near or distant future when these species will be entitled to listing," the judge wrote. "Such delay hardly qualifies as 'expeditious progress' and conflicts with the purpose of the ESA to provide 'prompt action' [if there is] substantial scientific evidence that the species is endangered or threatened."

At NatureServe, a private nonprofit that does independent scientific assessments that the government often uses in crafting conservation policy, Vice President and Chief Scientist Bruce Stein said the decline in listings has been "dramatic. . . . It shows a shift in both funding and policy priorities."

In one such shift, senior Interior officials revised a longstanding policy that rated the threat to various species based primarily on their populations within U.S. borders. They then argued that species such as the wolverine and the jaguar do not need protection because they also exist in Canada or Mexico.

In another policy reversal, Interior's solicitor declared in a memo dated March 16, 2007, that when officials consider whether a significant portion of a species' range is in peril, that "phrase refers to the range in which a species currently exists, not to the historical range of the species where it once existed." The memo added that the Interior secretary "has broad discretion" in defining what is "significant."

For a two-year period, Fish and Wildlife also said that if the agency identified a species as a candidate for the list, citizens could not file petitions for that species, effectively eliminating any legal deadlines. The result, said Kieran Suckling, head of the Center for Biological Diversity, was to create "endangered species purgatory." In 2003, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton overturned the policy on the grounds that it allowed the agency to "avoid their mandatory, non-discretionary duties to issue findings" under the act.

In addition, the agency limited the information it used in ruling on the 90-day citizens' petitions that lead to most listings. In May 2005, Fish and Wildlife decreed that its files on proposed listings should include only evidence from the petitions and any information in agency records that could undercut, rather than support, a decision to list a species.

Unsigned notes handwritten on May 16, 2005, by an agency official, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, attributed the policy to Douglas Krofta, who heads the Endangered Species Program's listing branch. The notes said employees "can use info from files that refutes petitions but not anything that supports, per Doug."

Hall said the agency abandoned that policy in late 2006, but he issued a memo in June 2006 that mirrors elements of it, stating, "The information within the Service's files is not to be used to augment a 'weak' petition."

As listings have slowed, lawsuits challenging the administration's practices have skyrocketed, according to the biodiversity center, which specializes in endangered-species issues. There have been 369 listing-related suits against Bush, compared with 184 against Clinton. "The Bush administration has effectively killed the listing program," said Suckling, whose group's petitions and suits have driven 92 percent of the listings under Bush.

The Justice Department would not release figures on how the government has fared defending endangered species suits or how much it has cost taxpayers. Officials acknowledge they have not done well in the courts: Hall said he is frustrated that judges demand a higher burden of scientific proof to deny a listing or to take a species off the list than to list a species.

Since 2001, Jay Tutchton, general counsel for WildEarth Guardians, has filed 25 suits seeking listings and critical habitat designations for 45 species for several clients. He has won every time.

Pastor's rhetoric is just as bitter as U.S. race history
But don't tar Obama with the Rev. Wright's words

By STAFFORD H. BURNS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

And there it is. ... The 800-pound gorilla that is racial strife finally slings its poo against the political wall. Let me just say this: To me, the comments made by Sen. Barack Obama's spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are pretty innocuous. I say that knowing that they are offensive to white people, but the question has to be raised — why?

Wright said that Sen. Hillary Clinton does not know what it is like to be a black man in an America run by rich white people. She doesn't. If the bone of contention is that America is not run by rich white people, I will have to humbly but unequivocally disagree and ask you to see the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans. Omit the entertainers and athletes. Just how many people of color are left?

According to Forbes, all you have is Oprah Winfrey at No. 165 and, based on the earlier caveat, she is disqualified because she is an entertainer. So of the 399 richest people in America, 98 percent are white. So where was Rev. Wright wrong?

Wright also offered some conspiracy theories about how the U.S. government has wronged people of color in the past. I do not believe that the government engineered AIDS, but it did engineer the Tuskegee experiments in which young African-American men infected with syphilis were denied treatment for study. This was conducted from 1932 to 1972, well-documented and acknowledged by the U.S. government. I am sure Wright remembers this and many other racial injustices in his lifetime.

In fact, let's go over the past 100 years of the United States' "stellar" race/citizen relations: Japanese interment camps, American Indian reservations, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, late women's suffrage, the immigration debate, the proposed anti-gay marriage amendment, voter irregularities of the 2000 election, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans ...

I hate to break it to Americans, but women and people of color can be a bit paranoid when it comes to actions of the U.S. government. As are, at times, white Americans. White conservatives, especially, get angry. Commentators Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have jobs — and huge audiences — for a reason.

Let's face facts. Put the proverbial cards on the table.

A lot of people of color are angry. Ask the African-American who is profiled by the cops, the Hispanic who is automatically seen as an illegal immigrant, the Asian person who is stereotyped, the American Indian whose ancestors suffered genocidal forced relocations, or the American of Middle Eastern descent who is profiled as a terrorist.

I have been very fortunate. I spent my formative years in the suburbs of southwest Houston. I went to a racially mixed school. I had friends from all over the world, of all shades and colors. I have worked to carry myself with respect, heeding my father, who told me, When you are out, you represent all black people. I worked hard on my appearance, to speak without any discernible accent, to educate myself at one of Texas' best universities (Go Tech!), to carry myself with the pride and dignity of an American.

All this, only to be asked by a white patron where the toilet paper is when shopping at a local supermarket. All this, only to be stopped by police for DWB (driving while black) and asked what I am doing in this neighborhood. To have a knife pulled on me for talking to a white girl.

Now Obama, who I am sure has worked just as hard to be affable, professional and acceptable in America, is suffering the fate that many before him have and unfortunately many afterward will. As a person of color, he not only has to be good, he has to be the best. And if you are not the best, America will view you as just another — well, you insert the appropriate racial or gender slur.

It seems the main reason the Rev. Wright is in trouble is that he shouted, "God damn America!" from the pulpit. Funny, because when Americans debate gay marriage or abortion, white preachers all over the country say, "God will damn America!" Didn't Jerry Falwell blame "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America" for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks?

I guess if you damn America in the name of pro-life and heterosexual marriage you are OK, but if you do it based on government-sanctioned racial injustice, you are wrong. To quote [black comedian] Chris Rock, I suppose "it's all right, if it's all white!"

Take Sen. John McCain, who said point blank to reporters, "I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live." I can't necessarily blame him for feeling that way. If I had been placed in inhuman conditions for six years and had my arms pulled out of socket so often I couldn't lift them above my head, I would hate my captors. too. The problem is the language: "gooks." It is a derogatory term that equates to the dreaded "N-word." Now some of the same people that championed that line from McCain are offended by Wright's diatribe and tarring Obama with the fallout? I guess in America, guilt by association is more damning than actually doing or saying something yourself.

Let's not forget, however, that America is a country and not a deity. We have freedom of speech and religion.

People need to remember that and get over the idea that America is a pristine land of no wrong. This is a great country, but what good is it if you can't criticize it?

Quotes that led us to War

Iraq Retrospective: Read The Quotes That Sent Us to War
Thanks to Huffington Post
As the war in Iraq enters its sixth year, Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky have published a "definitive, footnoted, hilarious but depressing compilation of experts who were in error" about the war from the beginning. You can read more about the book -- "Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won The War In Iraq" -- here.

Below, an excerpt from the chapter titled "Their Finest Hour: America Readies Itself To Free The Iraqi People."

CAKEWALK!

"I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk."
- Kenneth Adelman, member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 2/13/02

"Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

"Desert Storm II would be in a walk in the park... The case for 'regime change' boils down to the huge benefits and modest costs of liberating Iraq."
- Kenneth Adelman, member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 8/29/02

"Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world's sole superpower."
- William Kristol, Weekly Standard editor, and Lawrence F. Kaplan, New Republic senior editor, 2/24/03

HOW MANY TROOPS WILL BE NEEDED?

"I would be surprised if we need anything like the 200,000 figure that is sometimes discussed in the press. A much smaller force, principally special operations forces, but backed up by some regular units, should be sufficient."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

"I don't believe that anything like a long-term commitment of 150,000 Americans would be necessary."
- Richard Perle, speaking at a conference on "Post-Saddam Iraq" sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, 10/3/02

"I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required."
- Gen. Eric Shinseki, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 2/25/03

"The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/27/03

"I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us keep [troop] requirements down. ... We can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark...wildly off the mark."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee, 2/27/03

"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to image."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee, 2/27/03

"If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave."
- President George W. Bush, 6/28/05

"The debate over troop levels will rage for years; it is...beside the point."
- Rich Lowry, conservative syndicated columnist, 4/19/06

WHAT ABOUT CASUALTIES?

"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."
- President George W. Bush, response attributed to him by the Reverend Pat Robertson, when Robertson warned the president to prepare the nation for "heavy casualties" in the event of an Iraq war, 3/2003

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
- Barbara Bush, former First Lady (and the current president's mother), on Good Morning America, 3/18/03

"I think the level of casualties is secondary... [A]ll the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war... What we hate is not casualties but losing."
- Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute, 3/25/03

HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?

"Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

"The likely economic effects [of the war in Iraq] would be relatively small... Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits."
- Lawrence Lindsey, White House Economic Advisor, 9/16/02

"It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars."
- Kenneth M. Pollack, former Director for Persian Gulf Affairs, U.S. National Security Council, 9/02

"The costs of any intervention would be very small."
- Glenn Hubbard, White House Economic Advisor, 10/4/02

"When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 3/27/03

"There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."
- Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, 3/27/03

"The United States is committed to helping Iraq recover from the conflict, but Iraq will not require sustained aid."
- Mitchell Daniels, Director, White House Office of Management and Budget, 4/21/03

"Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for ther own reconstruction."
- Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary, 2/18/03

HOW LONG WILL IT LAST?

"Now, it isn't gong to be over in 24 hours, but it isn't going to be months either."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

"The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 11/15/02

"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
- Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03

"It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could be six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/7/03

"It won't take weeks... Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
- Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03

"There is zero question that this military campaign...will be reasonably short. ... Like World War II for about five days."
- General Barry R. McCaffrey, national security and terrorism analyst for NBC News, 2/18/03

"The Iraq fight itself is probably going to go very, very fast. The shooting should be over within just a very few days from when it starts."
- David Frum, former Bush White House speechwriter, 2/24/03

"Our military superiority is so great -- it's far greater than it was in the Gulf War, and the Gulf War was over in 100 hours after we bombed for 43 days... Now they can bomb for a couple of days and then just roll into Baghdad... The odds are there's going to be a war and it's going to be not for very long."
- Former President Bill Clinton, 3/6/03

"I think it will go relatively quickly...weeks rather than months."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/16/03

Time to Stand Up

It's Time for The Superdelegates to End This Thing by Oliver Willis

The race between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama remains frozen in amber, with even an unlikely unprecedented string of lopsided victories between now and the end of the primary season unable to change the dominant dynamic: Senator Obama is the frontrunner. Both senators have motivated the base, energizing the party with unprecedented primary and caucus turnout. But now it must come to an end and a transition made to general election mode. Sen. McCain is his party's nominee and is currently consolidating the conservative base. While I feel he still has little chance of winning the general election, we are at a moment in which the Democratic party can march to a historic victory -- a repudiation of conservatism. The more the show of the primary season goes on, the less likely a major victory this fall (although even if the dang thing goes to the convention I still think the Dems will win).

The superdelegates have so far been content to sit on the sidelines and wait out the process, yet time is now of the essence. They need to vote their consciences now, reminded by Speaker Pelosi that they should take heed the will of the Democratic party's voices in 44 states.

Barack Obama most importantly leads in delegates, leads in amount of states won. Sen. Clinton has run a strong campaign, but Sen. Obama's has been stronger and that is why neither candidate can get to the nomination based solely on their primary/caucus performance. The superdelegates need to act. There are eight months until the general election. Eight months of voter mobilization, eight months of educating the voters about our nominee and the Republican nominee. Eight months of fundraising and coordination between the nominee and the national party to be done.

The Democratic Party has a chance to not only elect a Democrat but to deal a severe blow to conservatism. The way to get there is for the superdelegates to act.

Vote now. Follow the people. Choose a nominee. Win the election.

Fun with Ann

If Ann Coulter Had Live-Blogged the Gettysburg Address by Mark Kleiman

Old Abe is approaching the podium, looking even more like a badly-dressed and ill-proportioned scarecrow suffering from a depressive disorder than he usually does. I mean, if you're going to be an empty suit, couldn't you at least find a suit that fits?

And as usual, he's not wearing an American flag lapel pin. Too good for it, I suppose. Probably thinks it's tacky, and that "real patriotism" doesn't have to be displayed. Typical intellectual arrogance.

Unfortunately, duty has required me to get a seat up close, so I'm likely to be able to hear his annoyingly high, faint voice.

Of course, it's going to be hard to take anything he says seriously, since he's obviously just angling for votes in Pennsylvania. Notice that he didn't bother to give a speech at Antietam.

Okay, here we go. More "eloquence," no doubt.

Four score and seven years ago
"Fourscore and seven"? Puh-leeze! Couldn't you make it just a little more pompous? Only a moonbat could regard this guy as an orator.

our fathers brought forth on this continent,
Ummm ... didn't we have mothers, too? Well, maybe Lincoln didn't; he looks like he came out of a test tube marked "Failure." But somehow I doubt that the suffragette harpies who swoon over Father Abraham are going to be pleased by the omission.

Anyway, shouldn't someone as smart as Lincoln is supposed to be know that it's mothers who "bring forth"? That thing that fathers do is called "begetting." (I'd always wondered whether Mrs. Lincoln's brats were any kin to Old Ape.)

a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Ahhh...now he slips it to us! "Fourscore and seven," indeed! He's bringing us back to the Marxist rant of 1776, completely ignoring the Constitution of 1787 in rhetoric as he has in practice. I'll believe we're all equal when I'm as tall as Lincoln, or as ugly. And the slaves he's so fond of may be his equals, but I'm damned if they're mine.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
Right. As if Mr. Lincoln's victory over his sectional enemies on behalf of his black friends were the same as the survival of the nation. It all comes back to the cult of personality.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Well, no. It would be more "fitting and proper" to leave the dead in peace rather than to use them as a club with which to beat conservatives. But Lincoln, like all liberals, is completely shameless. Joshua is right: they're basically fascists.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground.
"A larger sense"? I defy anyone to find any sense whatever in this sentence, large or small. And does he think that "consecrate" and "hallow" really add anything to "dedicate"? More moonbat "eloquence," I guess.

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
As if Lincoln had any power to add anything to the bravery of our troops. Really, this is too much to take. And it's all about a battle fought on the Fourth of July, which Lincoln's buddy Fred Douglass says he and his fellow Africans shouldn't celebrate. If Lincoln had an ounce of real patriotism in him, he would have disowned a that rabid racist years ago. But of course doing so would have cost him black votes, and he didn't want to risk that. In Lincoln's world, courage is for other people.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
At last! Lincoln says something true! Stop the presses!

but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
Uh-oh! I see where this is going. Socialism. We should all be "dedicated" to whatever cause our politicians choose to assign us. Whatever happened to individualism? Or is that too American for Mr. Lincoln?

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain
... that is, that we should continue to throw good lives after bad just to make the left-wing radical abolitionists happy.

— that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Right. Amalgamation of the races. That would be a "new birth" of freedom. A monstrous birth, of course, but definitely new. And to a "progressive," anything new is good, right?

He's folding up his notes and starting to walk off the stage. Huh? Is that it? Two minutes? Three hundred words? For thousands of dead soldiers?

Seems that way. The crowd, stunned by the sheer triviality of it all, mostly sits on its hands.

What an insult. Talk about mailing it in! Why did he bother to come all the way from Washington if he didn't have anything to say?

And there you have it. Perfect Lincoln. Pretty words, as long as you don't try to find any meaning. No plan. No willingness to work hard. His inexperience continues to show through.

Unlike McClellan, a real fighter with real national-security credentials, this man simply does not pass the Commander-in-Chief threshold. If the Republicans re-nominate this skinny, funny-looking lawyer from Illinois, they're dead meat.

Great Minds think Alike...end the myth!

The Clinton Civil War by Kos

Al Giordano, on the laughable Clinton-supporters "strike" of this blog:

There was always something incongruous about the self-proclaimed “Hillary Bloggers” trying to use Daily Kos for their purposes. DKos has been defined as a meeting ground not for every Democrat, but for the kind that wants to change the party to be more grassroots oriented, adhere to a 50-state strategy, stop the war in Iraq, and blunt the influence of lobbyists, PACs and the neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). That’s the glue that has always held the DKos community together and made it so large and strong.

Given that candidate Clinton is a member of the DLC, voted to authorize the war, accepts federal lobbyist and PAC money, clearly thinks that a lot (if not most) states “don’t matter,” and epitomizes a 1990s style top-down form of doing politics, it’s no surprise that for all of 2007 Clinton never exceeded 11 percent support in the monthly Daily Kos users straw poll.

I would add one more item to the list above -- this site has also been hostile to the corrosive consultant class that gave us our timid and weak party until Howard Dean shook it up in 2004.

Now I'm willing to stipulate that on the consultant front, there's likely not much difference between the Obama and Clinton campaigns (I don't know if it's true, but I assume it is). But on everything else, Clinton fails the test of the guiding principles of this site, and of my first book, Crashing the Gate.

Clinton isn't just a member of the DLC, she's in their leadership. Obama, by the way, repudiated the organization three times (it's a great story, which I tell in my forthcoming book).

Clinton hasn't just rejected a 50-state strategy, she has openly attacked it. CTG has a great quote from former Virginia Governor and future senator Mark Warner on this very topic:

The Democratic Party is in the upswing in the Mountain West and the South, in places like Montana and Virginia, because Democrats there have made a serious effort to compete for votes everywhere, rather than make a nominal effort to be an "also-ran" outside the Democratic-density areas. As [former Virginia Gov. Mark] Warner asks, how many more times will the Democrats run presidential campaigns where they abandon thirty-three southern and western states and "launch a national campaign that goes after sixteen states and then hope that we can hit a triple bank shot to get to that seventeenth state?"

Well, given Obama's map-changing 50-state mindset, it's clear that the answer to Warner's question is "one more time" if Clinton is the nominee, and "never again" if Obama is the nominee.

Clinton didn't just vote for the Iraq war and refuse to apologize for it, she voted to give Bush the same authority on Iran.

And if we want to talk about which party is the most grassroots-oriented, it's no contest. We've seen it in the caucuses, we've seen it in the netroots, and we saw it in the Iowa county convention this Saturday. The party's activists are busting their butts for Obama, while Clinton's campaign is counting on low-information Democratic voters selecting Clinton based on little more than name ID.

But I could deal with all of that, really, if Clinton was headed toward victory. I see this as a long-term movement, and I've always expected setbacks along the way. Clinton isn't the most horrible person in the world. She's actually quite nice, despite all her flaws, and would make a fine enough president.

If she was winning.

But she's not, and that's the rub.

First of all, the only path to victory for Clinton is via coup by super delegate.

She knows this. That's why there's all the talk about poaching pledged delegates and spinning uncertainty around Michigan and Florida, and laying the case for super delegates to discard the popular will and stage a coup.

Yet a coup by super delegate would sunder the party in civil war.

Clinton knows this, it's her only path to victory, and she doesn't care. She is willing -- nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.

If the situations were reversed, and Obama was lagging in the delegates, popular vote, states won, money raised, and every other reasonable measure, then I'd feel the same way about Obama. (I pulled the plug early on Dean in 2004.) But that's not the case.

It is Clinton, with no reasonable chance of victory, who is fomenting civil war in order to overturn the will of the Democratic electorate. As such, as far as I'm concerned, she doesn't deserve "fairness" on this site. All sexist attacks will be dealt with -- those will never be acceptable. But otherwise, Clinton has set an inevitably divisive course and must be dealt with appropriately.

To reiterate, she cannot win without overturning the will of the national Democratic electorate and fomenting civil war, and she doesn't care.

That's why she has earned my enmity and that of so many others. That's why she is bleeding super delegates. That's why she's even bleeding her own caucus delegates (remember, she lost a delegate in Iowa on Saturday). That's why Keith Olbermann finally broke his neutrality. That's why Nancy Pelosi essentially cast her lot with Obama. That's why Democrats outside of the Beltway are hoping for the unifying Obama at the top of the ticket, and not a Clinton so divisive, she is actually working to split her own party.

Meanwhile, Clinton and her shrinking band of paranoid holdouts wail and scream about all those evil people who have "turned" on Clinton and are no longer "honest power brokers" or "respectable voices" or whatnot, wearing blinders to reality, talking about silly little "strikes" when in reality, Clinton is planning a far more drastic, destructive and dehabilitating civil war.

People like me have two choices -- look the other way while Clinton attempts to ignite her civil war, or fight back now, before we cross that dangerous line. Honestly, it wasn't a difficult choice. And it's clear, looking at where the super delegates, most bloggers, and people like Olbermann are lining up, that the mainstream of the progressive movement is making the same choice.

And the more super delegates see what is happening, and what Clinton has in store, the more imperative it is that they line up behind Obama and put an end to it before it's too late.

Democrats risk losing a generation by RON DZWONKOWSKI

If -- and it's still an if -- the numbers just don't add up for U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic presidential nominee, but the party, through its arcane rules and superdelegates process, gives it to her anyway, Democrats will pay dearly, for a generation or more.
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Instead of re-establishing themselves as the party in power for perhaps the next 20 years, Democrats could be effectively handing the White House to Republican John McCain and alienating up to 30 million young voters who have gotten engaged in politics this year for the first time because of Barack Obama. If these voters feel that Obama has been cheated out of a chance to run for president, they and the hordes more of them becoming eligible to vote in the years ahead, will not easily return to the Democratic fold. Even if they like the party's principles, they will distrust its processes.

In this scenario, Clinton mitigates the damage only somewhat by choosing Obama as her vice presidential candidate -- a role he has said he doesn't want anyway.

More likely, young voters sit out the election (as they have in the past) and McCain wins and Democrats dissolve again into their bickering, finger-pointing ways while an emerging generation that desperately wants to see a stronger, safer and better America backs out of the political system.

This is truly a nightmare scenario for the Democratic Party, which has on its hands a much closer battle for the presidential nomination than anyone, especially Clinton, expected when the race took shape last fall. It seems as if it can be avoided only if in the weeks ahead either Clinton or Obama emerges with an indisputable command of the contest and the loser delivers a strong, convincing endorsement of the victor. Given the way they've been going at each other for weeks, the convincing part may be difficult.

This Democratic dilemma came up this week in a conversation with two old-line party members who have written a new book on young voters. "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics." The book is all about the political potential of the so-called Millennial Generation, born from 1983-2003, and at 80 million strong, the largest generation in American history. It also is the most diverse and most technologically savvy and has been forecast to be America's next great generation, reshaping the nation to the same extent that the "GI Generation" did after World War II.

With its defining moment so far the 9/11 attacks, the Millennial Generation is concerned about security and is in constant communication via cell phones and the Internet. Thanks in part to Title IX and growing up with TV shows that melted down stereotypes, the generation has little sense of traditional roles for men and women, doesn't make much of racial or ethnic differences, and relies for advice largely on friends and peers. Millennials prefer "win-win" solutions to outright victories for one side, which means they have little use for politics as practiced in this country for the past 20 years or so.

Although, at 46, not part of the generation, Obama obviously is in tune with it. His campaign is the first to tap nationally into the online "social networking" that is an essential part of life for just about every Millennial.

"They don't see a black candidate; they see hope," said Morley Winograd, the former Michigan Democratic chairman and adviser to Vice President Al Gore who wrote the book with Michael Hais, a researcher and analyst who worked on campaigns for Michigan U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and former governor James Blanchard.

"They are not out to resist government authority, but for them that authority has not worked very well," Hais said of the coming generation of voters, who have only known presidents named Clinton or Bush. "They want to make it work better and don't see the current leadership doing that."

For them, Obama means change. And if he can claim the most votes or the most states going into the Democratic convention, that makes it pretty simple for Millennials to decide who should be the nominee.

Although McCain, at 71, is almost three generations removed from the voting-age Millennials, he still could appeal to them with his personal example of "serving a cause greater than yourself" -- a theme from his 2000 presidential run.

"The Republicans can take advantage of this," Hais said of the Democrats' dispute. "The partisanship among Millennials is not so firmly set that they couldn't lean Republican."

And the Democrats are not so forward-thinking that they couldn't screw up the chance to capture a generation.

YouTube Roundup

Another user made advertisement making a swipe at a certain someone:


Keith does it again, why does he get it and no one else?:


On a serious note Senator Obama:

I admire anyone who stands up and refuses to live in fear. Hopefully Hillary will watch this.

And finally a reminder of who our wonderful leader is, thanks republicans!:

Oil: The Real Problem

The Triumph of OPEC
By Robert Samuelson

WASHINGTON -- For much of its 47-year existence, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has been a cartel in name only. It could not control oil prices because many of its members regularly breached the production quotas that were intended to regulate the market. So OPEC followed oil prices up and down, as supply and demand shifted. But now OPEC may be the real deal: a cartel that works. If so, that's bad news for the rest of the world.

Look no further than last week's OPEC meeting in Vienna. Oil ministers declined to increase production despite a strong case for doing so. Not only were oil prices fluttering above $100 a barrel, but the United States is either in or near a recession and much of the rest of the world faces an economic slowdown.

What's wrong is that a fall of oil prices is one of the mechanisms by which a recession or economic slowdown corrects itself. Lower prices for gasoline, home heating oil and diesel fuel improve consumer purchasing power. They muffle inflation and increase confidence. In this sense, they're an important "automatic stabilizer" for a faltering economy.

Oil producers don't much care. High prices have been good to them. Since 1999, annual oil revenues for OPEC countries have more than quadrupled, to an estimated $670 billion in 2007, says energy economist Philip Verleger Jr. What's less clear is whether OPEC has merely benefited from tight oil markets or has acted as a true cartel, restricting output and raising prices. The right answer is: both.

Of tight markets, there's little doubt. Two massive oil miscalculations both aided OPEC. First was a widespread underestimate of world demand, especially from China. Since 1999, China's oil use has almost doubled, to 7.5 million barrels a day (mbd) in 2007. (In 2007, world oil use was 86 mbd, up 13 percent from 1999. American oil use was 20.8 mbd, up 7 percent.) Second was an overestimate of supply. War, civil strife and nationalization have depressed production in Iraq, Nigeria, Iran, Venezuela and elsewhere. Total global capacity might be 4.5 mbd higher without these setbacks, says the Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRINC).

But that's only the half of it. Go back to late 2006. Crude prices were slipping from about $70 a barrel in August toward $50 a barrel. A true cartel would cut production to prop up prices. That's what OPEC did. In two steps, it reduced oil output by about 800,000 barrels a day, notes economist Larry Goldstein of EPRINC. "By July, 125 million barrels of oil inventory had been wiped out," he says. At the end of 2007, inventories (measured by days of supply) were at their lowest point in three years. Prices rose.

OPEC's present market power dates to early 1999, says economist Verleger. Oil prices then were about $10 a barrel. The 1997-98 Asian financial crisis had cut demand; supply was essentially unregulated. Saudi Arabia undertook frantic negotiations with other major producers, including Iran, Kuwait, Venezuela and non-OPEC members Russia, Norway and Mexico. The result was an agreement to cut production sharply. Compliance with output quotas was surprisingly good; countries were terrified by the collapse of their oil revenues.

We are paying for past shortsightedness. Dependence on oil imports, now almost 60 percent of U.S. supply, is inevitable. But we could limit OPEC's market power by curbing our demand and increasing our supply. As the worldwide gap between supply and demand rises, it's harder for producers to control the market. More have spare capacity; more are tempted to increase production to raise revenues. Today's surplus is concentrated in a few countries, especially Saudi Arabia, which can adjust production to influence prices.

Americans rant at foreign producers on the silly presumption that they should subordinate their interests to ours. But we refuse to do much that would actually limit their freedom of action. It was only last year that Congress raised fuel-efficiency standards for new cars and light trucks. We have steadfastly rejected higher gasoline taxes to curb unnecessary driving and strengthen demand for fuel-efficient vehicles (better to tax ourselves than let foreigners tax us through higher prices). And we have consistently restricted oil drilling in Alaska and elsewhere.

By doing so little to check its own thirst for imports, the United States has contributed to OPEC's present triumph. The extent of that triumph will be tested this year and next. Non-OPEC oil supplies -- from Brazil, Canada and Kazakhstan, among other places -- will increase. Meanwhile, a weaker global economy may dampen demand. Even OPEC may be unable to hold prices at today's high levels. Whatever happens, the long-term threat of a global oil cartel will remain. We should be taking the hard steps to limit its power. Considering our past complacency, we probably won't.

Good Stuff for Huffpo

The False Assumptions In the "Electability" Arguments by David Sirota

It seems the longer the presidential nominating contest goes on between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the more idiotic the pontificating and candidate spinning -- especially when it comes to the so-called "electability" argument.

The Clinton campaign, as exemplified by surrogate Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA) this morning on Meet the Press when he said:

"She's clearly the strongest candidate in the states that Democrats must win to have a chance. Look, it's great that Barack Obama is doing wonderfully well in Wyoming and Utah and, and places like that, but there's no chance we're going to carry those states. Whether he gets 44 percent as opposed to 39 percent doesn't matter, but we're not going to carry those states. We do have a chance to carry the big four. We've got to in three of the big four. Hillary Clinton's the strongest candidate to do that. That's been proven by the voters in the -- those states and hopefully by Pennsylvania as well."

Let's put aside the fact that the Clinton campaign is insulting the importance of a huge swath of the American heartland -- a talking point that has been repeated throughout this campaign by Clinton surrogates. Let's just take a look at the two questionable assumptions inherent in this "electability" claim.

Assumption 1: The Map Can Never Dramatically Change

The first assumption relates to the topography of the national electoral map. In talking about states that are "significant" and "insignificant" based on how they voted in previous elections, the Clinton campaign is assuming the basic map of the last 16 years automatically has to stay the same, and that there cannot be a map-changing candidate. This argument comes despite periodic elections in our history that have seen such shifts. For example, take a look at this animated image derived from Wikipedia's maps - it shows how the national political map changed between the 1976 election and the 1980 election (note - on the maps, Dems are blue and Republicans are red):

Yes, those parts flashing between red and blue are the regions of the country that shifted in just one election cycle. Perhaps even more relevant to the Clinton argument today is the map change between 1988 and 1992 -- the year that one Bill Clinton benefited from a major map change:

So, in other words, Hillary Clinton -- the person who became First Lady because of a major map change - is nonetheless arguing the map can never change, and her campaign is making such an argument at the very moment one of history's most unpopular president is atop the Republican Party. The logic is positively ridiculous.

Assumption 2: Primary and Caucus Victories Directly Relate to General-Election Viability

The other assumption in the Clinton campaign's "electability" argument is that that because Clinton is winning Democratic primaries in big Democratic states like California, New York and New Jersey and other big states like Ohio, it means that she is the best candidate to win those states in the general election.

This rationale makes positively no sense at all, because it suggests that Obama in a general would do worse than Clinton in already Democratic states -- and there's no proof of that. Winning a Democratic primary among Democratic voters says almost nothing about the candidates' abilities to win general elections as we unfortunately saw in the Connecticut Senate race in 2006.

In fact, looking at what evidence we do have -- general election matchup polls -- we see that Obama would be a stronger general election candidate than Clinton, racking up more electoral college votes than Clinton. Though the polls show Obama losing Florida, New Jersey and Arkansas where Clinton would win, it shows Obama winning Nevada, Colorado, North Dakota and Michigan where Clinton would lose (the latter of which the Clinton campaign continues to hilariously insist it "won" in the primary, despite no other major candidate being on the Michigan ballot).

The differences, of course, go back to the underlying argument about maps. Right now, polls show Obama picks up electoral votes in states that the Clinton surrogates say "don't matter [because] we're not going to carry those states." And what's particularly absurd about the Clinton campaign making this argument is that former President Bill Clinton is insisting that in a general election Hillary Clinton can win back "the traditional rural areas that we lost when President Reagan was president." In other words, the Clinton campaign is arguing that the map has to remain the same as it has been for two decades -- with the same states in play and not in play -- at the same time they argue that Hillary Clinton is the candidate who can win back Reagan Democrats that created that map in the first place.

I never thought I'd see the day when someone could say with a straight face that Hillary Clinton was the Democrats' best candidate to win back the Reagan Democrats alienated from the Democratic Party by, among other things, a job-killing lobbyist-written trade policy that Hillary Clinton championed for a decade. It's just a ridiculous assertion on its face - and it's even more ridiculous when you look at what evidence we have, which is current public opinion polls.

More generally, the attempt to cite the geography of primary wins as proof of general election viability is straight-up silly. And yet, the whole meme has bled into almost every analysis of what is going on in the race. As I said to start, the longer the presidential nominating contest goes on between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the more idiotic the pontificating and candidate spinning.

Keith to the Rescue Again

Why is he the only reporter out there that seems to notice and put this type of stuff on the air?

November Electoral Maps

Courtesy of SurveyUSA:

Survey USA has released fifty-state polls for the general election. When looking at this data, keep in mind that about one in twenty polls is way, way off (there are 100 polls here). Here is the Clinton vs. McCain map, which is Clinton 276-262 McCain:


Solid Clinton--77 (eleven or more points): AR, DC, IL, MA, NY, RI
Lean Clinton--126 (six to ten points): CA, CT, FL, ME, MD, OH, VT
Toss Up--135 (five points or less): DE, HI, IA, MI, MN, MO, NJ, NM, OR, PA, TN, WA, WV, WI
Lean McCain--136 (six to ten points): AL, CO, KS, KY, LA, MS, NV, NH, NC, OK, SC, TX, VA
Solid McCain--65 (eleven or more points): AK, AZ, GA, ID, IN, MT, NE, ND, SD, UT, WY

And here is the Obama vs. McCain map, which is Obama 280-258 McCain:


Solid Obama--163 (eleven or more points): CA, CT, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, NY, RI, VT, WA, WI
Lean Obama--66 (six to ten points): CO, DE, MA, MN, NM, OH, OR
Toss-up--186: (five points or less): AK, FL, MI, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NC, ND, PA, TX, VA
Lean McCain--25 (six to ten points): IN, MO, MT
Solid McCain--98 (eleven or more points): AL, AZ, AR, GA, ID, KY, LA, MS, OK, TN, UT, WV, WY

Despite seemingly similarity in their performance against McCain, this breakdown shows real differences between Obama and Clinton in the general election. Against Obama, McCain's "solid" and "lean" states only add up to 123, while Obama's add up to 229. In a matchup against Clinton, the "solid" and "lean" states are of equal size: 201 for McCain, and 203 for Clinton. In other words, while McCain and Clinton appear evenly matched, McCain is only able to keep it close against Obama by running up a series of narrow wins in the toss-up states.

An important pro-Clinton caveat on these polls is that they were taken before Clinton's successful night on March 4th. Since whoever has the momentum in the primary tends to have the momentum in the general election, I expect her to start performing better against McCain after those victories. An important pro-Obama finding from these polls is just how utterly myopic and stupefying her campaign's argument about "states that don't matter" actually is. Obama puts a whole range of supposedly deep red states into play, such as Alaska, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, and even Texas (although Clinton doesn't do too bad in Texas herself). There are other ways to win outside of the 2000 and 2004 paradigm. To insist that there is no way to break out of the electoral maps of recent elections is not only depressing fatalistic about Democratic chances, but it actually reinforces the Obama campaign's assertion about Clinton not being able to break out of the political arguments of the past. A new map is clearly possible, as long as we put the effort into actually running a 50-state campaign. Heavy Democratic campaigning in Texas has even put that state into play (and heavy Democratic campaigning in Ohio has virtually put that state out of play). Over the next two months, I salivate over what heavy Democratic campaigning in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana can accomplish.

A New Low

My disgust for Hillary and her campaign is growing by the day. I can't believe how desperate she is becoming in her powergrab. Mathematically speaking if she doesn't do well tonight in Ohio and Texas(where i reside) ie:BLOWOUT she is done...the delegate math just doesn't add up...But if she wants to further destroy her reputation fine by me, just don't take the party down with you.

What She said:



Keith Olbermann's response:

Hillary's Campaign in a Nutshell

Hillary In Trouble

Why Barack Obama Has Already Won (and Hillary Has Become a Republican) by Joe Vogel

In spite of the Clinton campaign's latest outlandish claim that Barack Obama must win all four contests this Tuesday or he's in trouble, those of us still residing in a place called reality understand the actual picture is much different.

According to most major news networks, Barack Obama now has a 100 point total delegate lead. Among pledged delegates the lead is now over 150.

What does this mean? Barack Obama could lose every state this Tuesday and as long as he kept the contests reasonably close he would still maintain a commanding lead.

In this way, he has already won.

He is leading in all the latest polls in Texas by a margin of 2-6 points. He is blowing Clinton out in Vermont. And he has now drawn within two points in Ohio.

After these contests, there are simply not enough states or delegates for Hillary to catch up. The margin is now within 4 points in Pennsylvania.

Where else can she win and collect a total of 100 delegates? What big states can she rout by 20-30 points?

The answer is: she can't. She can draw this thing out, continue to make spurious attacks, continue to sell low expectations. But now that Obama has clearly established there won't be blowouts this Tuesday, SHE CANNOT WIN.

Meanwhile, before our very eyes, she is becoming a Republican. The latest example is this blatant manipulation of fear to convince voters that only she can make Americans safe.



Unbelievable. I pray Americans are smarter than this. Fear carried the day in 2000 and 2004. It's gotten us nothing but war, torture, corruption, secrecy, and abuse of power. Hillary might have different policies (though on foreign affairs I have serious questions), but her methods are really no different than the last eight years: she surrounds herself with bad people, she is a top down leader, she is resentful of the press, she is secretive, she can't admit mistakes, she uses fear and manipulation as weapons...

I think America is ready to turn the page. While Barack Obama technically doesn't need to win this Tuesday, one big state (like Texas) should be enough to close the deal. Then we can respond to the real Republicans' fearmongering and failed strategy in Iraq instead of this downward-spiraling, futile civil war.

Grassroots Video

I always like to see people put these together on their own, I wish I wasnt so lazy, lol. Anyway voting is coming up in Texas(where I live) and early voting has been phenomenal. So for whoever your thinking of voting I beg and pled please do it is vital to a healthy democracy. Ok ok enough preaching!

ps Sorry I haven't been updating as much, I have a real job too.