11 January 2008 a Friday

See, I thought they told me that Thompson couldn't possibly win because he waited until too long to enter the race, but if that was the truth then why does anyone even wonder about Bloomberg? Doesn't he have zero chance, too?

Sad news, of course, but disconcerting. If I guy sturdy enough to climb Mt Everest lasts only until 88, my chances are...? And isn't this item a bit foolish?

"Well, we've knocked the bastard off," an exhausted Hillary famously said upon his return from the apex.

The climbers were heralded as pioneers in the tradition of transatlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927 and moonwalker Neil Armstrong in 1969.

I sometimes think the NYT has to be deliberately dense. Bush is in the Mideast trying to broker a peace treaty and they say:

“I’m on a timetable,” he said when he met Mr. Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank, only minutes after saying he would not impose timetables on the negotiators for both sides. “I’ve got 12 months left in office.”

Read his lips. He didn't say he was imposing a timetable on anyone else, he noted that there was one imposed on himself. Oh. That. Who knew? I think what he was saying was fairly clear: you will get all the help that I can give you, take your time, but I'm going to run out of time even if you don't. If you want my help then there's your situation.

I like this part, though...consider these snippets from different locations in the item:

...having faced criticism for speaking of peace only in the broadest way, Mr. Bush publicly addressed what are known as the core issues, even if those remain subject to intense negotiations.

Mr. Bush did not offer specific detailed prescriptions for the core issues he addressed...

First we criticize him for not addressing the core issues, only speaking broadly. Then when he does address the core issues, we complain that he didn't offer detailed prescriptions. You know, like we could complain that an arrogant American president would do, if only Bush had. Gnash, gnash.

I think it's rather funny how the same people who complain about the imperial Bush also fault him when he doesn't deliver solutions to the world's problems. He should be able to "fix" Iran and North Korea, for instance, but do so in a nice diplomatic way. But if he doesn't spell out his specific detailed prescriptions for how they should do things, he's not doing his job. Yeah.

It is fitting that New Hampshire should have turned on a tear or an aside. The Democratic primary campaign has been breathtakingly empty. What passes for substance is an absurd contest of hopeful change (Obama) vs. experienced change (Clinton) vs. angry change (John Edwards playing Hugo Chavez in English).

One does not have to be sympathetic to the Clintons to understand their bewilderment at Obama's pre-New Hampshire canonization. The man comes from nowhere with a track record as thin as Chauncey Gardiner's. Yet, as Bill Clinton correctly, if clumsily, complained, Obama gets a free pass from the press.

It's not just that NBC admitted that "it's hard to stay objective covering this guy." Or that Newsweek had a cover article so adoring that one wonders what is left for coverage of the Second Coming.

Made me smile, and since I saw neither the cover nor the article I now don't need to.

The freest of all passes to Obama is the general neglect of the obvious central contradiction of his candidacy: The bipartisan uniter who would bring us together by transcending ideology is at every turn on every policy an unwavering, down-the-line, unreconstructed, uninteresting, liberal Democrat.

What liberals mean by "uniting" is the same thing that militant Islam means by "peace"; namely, you give up your views and embrace theirs.

On Iraq, of course he denigrates the surge. That's required of Democratic candidates. But he further claims that the Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda and joined us -- get this -- because of the Democratic victory in the 2006 midterm elections.

Obama has yet to have it pointed out to him by a mainstream interviewer that the Anbar Salvation Council was founded by Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha two months earlier. Obama has yet to be asked why any Sunni would choose to join up with the American invaders at precisely the time when Democrats would have them leaving -- and be left like the pro-American Vietnamese or the pro-French Algerians to be hunted and killed when their patrons were gone. That's suicide.

A cynic might well observe that Obama is, in fact, intelligent and well-read and does, in fact, know all of those things. The cynic would add that Obama figures that most of his adoring audience does not know these things, however, and thus will believe that he is delivering great wisdom to them. His followers would love to believe that whatever is happening to the good in Iraq, if anything at all, can somehow be tied to the Democrats, and Hillary revealed to us that she knows all about the willing suspension of disbelief. It's the reason why and how 'smoke-and-mirrors' works...people agree not to look too closely.

I'd venture to say that not one Democrat who thought Obama said a true thing was interested in fact-checking it. If the truth was otherwise, he didn't want to know.

And, says the cynic, Obama realizes this is so and takes advantage of it for political gain.

But is it really cynicism? Otherwise Obama doesn't know the truth and is therefore making an honest and understandable mistake...but now how qualified is he for the presidency?

...it might be worth stepping back from the business of predictions to ask some substantive questions of the Republican candidates.

McCain: There is little question that he is a genuine budget-cutter. But does he really embrace the theories of economic growth that have inspired the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan? In opposing the Bush tax cuts, McCain employed all the cliches of class warfare -- the reductions came "at the expense of middle-class Americans" and were "for the rich." These tax cuts, it turned out, helped produce six years of economic growth, more than 8 million new jobs and rising tax revenue that has dramatically reduced the deficit. Does McCain believe that the traditional Republican budget hawks were wrong on the Bush tax cuts?

I'm only a moderate political junkie and a mild McCain fan, at least so far, but even I know that question has already been asked and answered. Obviously, though, the event received so little publicity that a professional like Gerson doesn't seem to know that McCain agreed, now, that the tax cuts were in fact a very good thing. He still thinks they should have been accompanied by spending cuts, however, which would have dramatically reduced the deficit even more.

Once again I wonder...does Gerson truly not know that McCain said this and is he putting out a faux question before his readers in order to introduce some doubt about McCain for some reason? How can he possibly not have heard what McCain said recently?

Here's one of the rush-to-judgment guys, Jonathan Chait, owning up in the New Republic:

"A year ago, I wrote an article making the case that Hillary Clinton was not the inevitable Democratic nominee. Unfortunately, the link is not available. Then last week I wrote a blog post saying she's toast. Unfortunately, that one is available . . .

"The odds of a Republican presidency suddenly got a lot higher. There's really only one potential matchup that would give the GOP a better than even chance of winning: John McCain versus Hillary Clinton. McCain is a popular personality who can attract the support of voters who aren't inclined to support his party. Clinton is an unpopular personality who loses the support of voters who are otherwise inclined to support her party. If she wins the nomination, it will be because she's a polarizing figure who rallies Democrats as the object of Republican attacks."

I'm surprised, because I don't find myself agreeing with Chait very often. McCain's supposed weakness, the fact that the really conservative Republicans doubt his credentials, may be his greatest strength against Hillary, allowing a lot of moderate Democrats to abandon her in a situation where they would not if they had another candidate.

Actually, I realize now, the question is not one of conservatism, because Giuliani is not considered any more conservative as McCain, if as much, but one of polarization! Rudy and Hillary polarize the race in a way that McCain does not.

I'm of the opinion that Hillary will win and McCain will beat her...if only he can manage to become the nominee, somehow, and that isn't clear at all. I suspect the winner may well be Rudy, and in that event Hillary gets elected. Which, if you will cast back, is what was considered inevitable 'way back in the beginning of all of this.

At the Washington Monthly, though, Kevin Drum isn't losing sleep over McCain:

"There are two things that keep me from being worried about a Clinton vs. McCain matchup. The first is that this simply looks to be a Democratic year. Tick off the reasons: Americans don't like to keep a single political party in the White House for more than eight years (it's only happened once in the postwar era). The war in Iraq is unpopular. The economy is sinking. The 9/11 effect has worn off. Conservatives are tired and plainly lack new ideas.

"Second, I don't think McCain is nearly as attractive a candidate as a lot of people think. Again, tick off the reasons: He's 71 years old. He's a dead-ender for the war. (Do you think 'a million years in Iraq' will play well with moderates in November?) A lot of his independent cred has been shredded over the past couple of years . . .

"Press ardor for McCain will likely diminish as his campaign becomes less open, as it's bound to do."

I love Liberals and their ability to jump record distances to conclusions. What if the war in Iraq, which admittedly has run the gamut from originally popular to unpopular, is about to swing back to popular again as victory looks like Iraq will become a democracy? Well, to be sure, it already IS a democracy, but I mean one with ideals that Liberals set for all other democracies out there? But democracy is already a fact in Iraq, just as it is in England and the European Union, even if neither one of them has a written constitution and Iraq has.

What if the economy doesn't continue to sink? And isn't the argument that the economy is sinking a tacit recognition of the fact that it has been high? Uh, yes...

It's true that the 9/11 effect has worn off, but once again that is mainly as far as Liberals are concerned. Conservatives do seem dispirited...now...but will that last against a Clinton candidacy? Somehow I doubt it.

True, McCain is 71. But is he a dead-ender for the war or is he a man of honor and principle who refused to fold when confronted with insuperable odds, as he proved to be in Vietnam? If Democrats want Vietnam war heroes, McCain is indisputably one. If Democrats want to put down National Guard service as meaningless, they can't say that about McCain, a man whose purple hearts are still visible. As oil prices continue to remain high, how will moderates feel about a stable Iraq pumping increasing amounts of oil, thanks to an American presence? And isn't it funny to hear Drum now trying to convince himself that McCain isn't independent enough any more?

What if his campaign isn't, in fact, bound to become less open? So far there hasn't been much predictable about the McCain campaign except for his tenacity of purpose, which is unlikely to diminish.

Mr. Romney, who has put all of his effort into winning Michigan's primary on Tuesday, went right at Mr. McCain, the Arizona senator who is his biggest obstacle to winning that state. The former Massachusetts governor criticized Mr. McCain for saying some manufacturing jobs that Michigan has lost are never going to come back.

"I disagree — I'm going to fight for every single job," Mr. Romney said.

Mr. McCain responded that Mr. Romney's answer didn't meet the standard of "straight talk."

"One of the reasons why I won in New Hampshire is I went there and told them the truth," he said, adding that he stands by his evaluation that some jobs lost in Michigan and other states won't come back.

However unpalatable that sounds, it's true. The consumer is simply not going to pay the price goods manufactured in the US would require as long as the same quality can be obtained elsewhere much cheaper. In the end, it's the consumer's fault that those jobs are gone, and it's the consumer's fault that they aren't coming back.

I wonder if the manufacturing workers in Michigan realize that they only prove that point every time they go to Wal-Mart and buy cheaper manufactured goods from China, for example? No, they probably don't.

Mr. McCain also found himself on the defensive over his authorship of a plan to grant a path to citizenship to most illegal aliens. He said he now thinks that the borders should be secured first and 2 million criminals deported, but other illegal aliens should be handled "in a humane and compassionate fashion."

Mr. Romney said all of the candidates support secure borders, but the difference comes over how to handle the current illegal-alien population.

"We all agree that anybody who's committed a crime should be sent home, but I believe that the others who've come here illegally should stand in line with everybody else who wants to come to this country and should not be given a special pathway or a special privilege," he said, drawing applause.

A Romney dodge, however, because McCain did not say they should not stand in line. The question is: stand where, exactly? "In line" isn't very descriptive, nor does Romney intend it to be. Does Romney mean that people standing in line aren't being treated humanely and compassionately, in contrast with McCain's position? I doubt that, so the question remains...WHERE do they stand in line?

And this is the point Romney wants to dodge, because he doesn't want to deal with the nitty-gritty of how to round up and deport all of the illegal aliens (who haven't committed additional crimes, at least).

Apparently Ron Paul escaped questions about his newsletter, which isn't getting any play in the MSM that I can see.

Was what is called sexism part of the story? I suppose, and in a number of ways. When George Bush senior cries in public, it's considered moving. Ditto his moist-eyed son. But in fairness, they have tended to appear moved about things apart from themselves, apart from their own predicaments. Mrs. Clinton was weeping about Mrs. Clinton. If a man had uttered Mrs. Clinton's aria--if Mr. Obama had said, "And you know, this is very personal for me . . . as tired as I am . . . against the odds," and gotten choked--they would have laughed him out of town.

The night Mrs. Clinton won, she referred to the crying moment by saying she had now, with the help of New Hampshire, found her voice. After 60 years. "High five, fraudbot" was the reaction of the dizzy children at Wonkette, who had it about right. ... And if we are to believe the new voice will be a softer, more conciliatory and more engaging one, how to square that with what is going on at HillaryIs44.com, a Web site that is for all intents and purposes a back door to her war room? There you will see that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will soon "destroy" Barack Obama in a "scandal" involving an "indicted slumlord" who is Mr. Obama's "friend of 17 years" and with whom Mr. Obama has been involved in "shady deals."

This isn't a new voice, it is the old one, the one we know too well. The item was posted on Thursday, two days after Mrs. Clinton announced her new approach.

Between sobs she is going to try to destroy Mr. Obama. She is going to try to end him. She will pay a price for it--no one likes to see the end of a dream, no one likes a dream killer. But she will pay that price to win, and try to clean up the mess later.

Hard to argue against that one, either. She could always come out and 'apologize' for the fact that her website published a report that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerals will blah-blah-blah all the rest, in detailed apology.

Although analysts have missed it completely, the execution of Saddam Hussein helped, too: It took away the rallying figure for Sunni hardliners and made it easier for former insurgents to switch allegiance. The shock of Saddam's hanging jarred Iraq's Sunni Arabs back to reality: Big Daddy with the mustache wasn't coming back. ...

The military situation is well on the way to being under control. Now the question is whether Iraq's leaders, especially those from the newly empowered Shia, can put their country above their personal and parochial interests (something that we don't expect of our own politicians these days). ...

And a final note: The Post had over a week's advance warning of Operation Phantom Phoenix, but didn't publish it. We don't share our nation's secrets with our enemies.

Saddam's amazing disappearance from view was an essential requirement for the nation's survival as a nation, presume it does make it. And, yes, funny how our own politicians aren't held to the same standards we'd like to see Iraqis achieve in their first attempt. As for not publishing first, the NYTimes says we'll see that and raise you one: we won't publish anything about it at all.

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, said he was rethinking his neutral stance in his state’s presidential primary out of disappointment at comments by Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton that he saw as diminishing the historic role of civil rights activists.

Mr. Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement and a power in state Democratic politics, put himself on the sidelines more than a year ago to help secure an early primary for South Carolina, saying he wanted to encourage all candidates to take part. But he said recent remarks by the Clintons that he saw as distorting civil rights history could change his mind. ...

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Mrs. Clinton said in trying to make the case that her experience should mean more to voters than the uplifting words of Mr. Obama. “It took a president to get it done.” ...

Substantively, he has more of a case on Hillary than on Bill. According to Hillary, the civil rights movement made no progress before Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 bill. However, King and many others had already won significant progress before the landmark legislation, and they did so while putting their lives on the line. Some, like Medgar Evers, lost theirs in the struggle before 1964. And while Johnson did sign the legislation, it took a Republican effort in Congress to get the bill past a Democratic filibuster effort led by Robert Byrd, a fact that Hillary's narrative fails to address at all.

“Now, I had no doubt -- and I said at the time, when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence…I welcome the genuine reductions of violence that have taken place, although I would point out that much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar province -- Sunni tribes -- who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what, the Americans may be leaving soon, and we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shi'as. We should start negotiating now. That's how you change behavior.” -- Barack Obama on why he opposed the surge

If he had no doubt the surge would work, why did he oppose it? How's that again?

And the Anbar Awakening had nothing to do with the Shia. It was strictly Sunni vs al-Qaeda Sunni. There is no negotiating going on between the Sunni tribes and anyone else, only fighting. Anti-surge critics normally point out that the Anbar Awakening began before the surge did--and also BEFORE the elections Obama cites--meaning Obama's statements are foolish hype verging on lies at best, completely ignorant at worst. Really a poor performance by Obama.