February 1, 2004
February, the month of love ... St. Valentine's Day, Cupid, and the like ... and so it's time to spread the link-love around the blogosphere a bit. The Commissar has discovered a new initiative from the Left: a deck of cards with the 52 most dangerous bloggers. Captain's Quarters has been assigned the ten of diamonds (I would have expected the two of clubs, myself). Every card is a clickable link to a dangerous right-wing blogger. I may ask the Commissar to send me over the graphic for my card, and I'll include it on my blogroll. Comrade Commissar continues to outdo himself ... Power Line has a great post on Churchill, one of my favorite historical figures as much for his failures as for his successes. Big Trunk notes the relationship between the BBC and Churchill and shows how the BBC has always taken the side of totalitarians in...
... because I do so well at predictions -- here's mine: Carolina Panthers 27, New England Patriots 24. BBD&O, 2 Clio nominations. I think I will be live-blogging the Super Bowl, mostly to review the ads. We'll see if that works out ......
The Post and Courier report that Edwards and Kerry are locked in a statistical dead heat -- and Dean has fallen far off the pace (free registration required): Edwards, a native of South Carolina and a senator in neighboring North Carolina, was at 21 percent. John Kerry was at 17 percent, Al Sharpton at 15 percent and Wesley Clark at 14 percent in an American Research Group poll. Howard Dean was at 9 percent, Joe Lieberman at 5 percent, Dennis Kucinich was at 1 percent and 18 percent were undecided. South Carolina will hold its primary Feb. 3, a week after New Hampshire's Tuesday primary. Edwards has come up from 12 points to take the thin lead, but the real story is Dean. He's tumbled from 16 percent and a contending position, or at least in a position to get some delegates. Now he's in fifth place, behind Al Sharpton,...
5:40 - How could Vinatieri blow a 31-yard field goal attempt? It looked like the snap came to the wrong side of the holder, and the timing got thrown off. Speaking of being off, the commercials so far are not impressive. The "monkey on the back" car commercial was exceedingly lame, and the Bud Light commercial was only good for a slight grin. They spend $2 million a minute for these? 5:45 - The Panthers can't get any offense going so far, and the second set of commercials is just as lame as the first. 5:49 - The First Mate liked the Bud bikini-wax commercial. I was cringing. Go figure. 5:55 - The H&R Block commerical with the Willie Nelson advice doll was the first really good commercial so far. The Don Zimmer moment was classic. 5:59 - The Panther's Wil Witherspoon just blew up a reverse better than I've...
7:38 - King suggests that "Saving Silverman" was better than the first half of the game. Well, maybe he's right; you don't get to see Neil Diamond on screen too often, and I don't think you'll ever see R. Lee Ermey play a gay football coach again. 7:43 - Streaker on the field before the kickoff. Who said there's no action in this game? 7:58 - The Bud Light chimp commercial was worth a chuckle. The Panthers were lucky that the second-down pass play was ruled incomplete. It was obviously a catch, and the fumble would have resulted in a New England touchdown. Like the two teams, the officiating has been mediocre during this game. 8:06 - Scariest line of the night: "Erections lasting longer than four hours require medical attention." Owwww. That ought to keep you from trying Cialis. What's with all of the E.D. commercials, anyway? 8:11 -...
February 2, 2004
During my live-blogging of the Super Bowl, I mentioned the Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake strip show that occurred at the end of the halftime show. Apparently, I was mistaken in my initial viewing of the scene, as the NFL, CBS, and MTV have apologized for an unplanned "wardrobe malfunction": CBS apologized on Sunday for an unexpectedly R-rated end to its Super Bowl halftime show, when singer Justin Timberlake tore off part of Janet Jackson's top, exposing her breast. ... The two singers were performing a flirtatious duet to end the halftime show, and at the song's finish, Timberlake reached across Jackson's leather gladiator outfit and pulled off the covering to her right breast. The network quickly cut away from the shot, and did not mention the incident on the air. But there was a sticker over the nipple, as I said during my live blog, and now that I've replayed it...
Norwegian legislator Jan Simonsen has nominated George Bush and Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to remove Saddam Hussein: Even though the five-member Norwegian awards committee keeps the nomination list secret, those making the nominations often announce their candidate. Norwegian lawmaker Jan Simonsen has nominated Bush and Blair several years in a row. Simonsen wrote that by removing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, they lessened the chance of a war. Look for this nomination to fail. Two years ago, the Nobel committee gave the award to Jimmy Carter for his work on the treaty with North Korea ... the one that allowed the Kim Jung-Il regime to arm itself with nuclear weapons, thanks to the toothless agreement that Carter championed. They also famously gave one to Yasser Arafat, the godfather of terrorism, for showing up in Oslo and not agreeing to much and eventually reneging on the...
Michael Ledeen at the National Review writes about the proposed trip to Iran by three US lawmakers, and wants to put a "Reserved" sign for them on the seventh level of Dante's Inferno: Sorry to say, I haven't reread Dante's "Inferno" for some years, but I still remember his description of a very low and extremely unpleasant level of hell that houses traitors. Surely abject appeasers of evil qualify for the same treatment, and we must note grimly that three prime candidates have recently come forward to swell the ranks of that overheated realm: Senator Joe Biden of Delaware (D.), Senator Arlen Specter (R.), of Pennsylvania, and Congressman Bob Ney of Nebraska (R.). All have undertaken to "improve relations" between the United States and the theocratic fascist regime of Iran. Specter announced over the weekend that congressional staffers would soon go to Tehran in the first stage of the appeasement...
Mitch Berg, my Northern Alliance comrade at A Shot in the Dark, asks us to blog on the question that may present George Bush his toughest political challenge in 2004 -- is Bush really a conservative, and if not, will the "true believers" bolt? While it's a time-worn principle for the media to call anyone to the right of Roger Moe a "Paleoconservative", Bush has clearly been no such thing at any point in his career. Oh, sure - he's a social conservative in all the ways that make the social conservative crowd happy; pro-death penalty, pro-life. There's nothing wrong with that - except the myopic notion that being socially conservative makes one conservative in any other way. He's also a conservative in the way that I expect any president to be; he favors a strong military (and acted on that belief even before September 11, thank God). But he,...
Tom Laughlin, the actor better known as Billy Jack, has thrown his snakeskin-banded hat into the ring for President: The 72-year-old actor, who lives in Camarillo, is one of 13 candidates running against President Bush in the Republican primary. Laughlin, who first ran for president as a Democrat in 1992, said he's campaigning to draw attention to a two-party system he deemed "so corrupt it can't function anymore." He described himself as a "messenger" candidate and said he wasn't disappointed by the New Hampshire primary, in which he earned 154 votes to Bush's nearly 34,000. For those of us who suffered through the terminally saccharine "Billy Jack", the thought of the New Age-ish Laughlin running as a Republican inspires chortles of incredulous glee. Why not run as a Democrat, like Laughlin did in 1992? I suppose the novelty wouldn't be noticed in a crowded Democratic primary, and he might have...
Germany, whose Chancellor acted as though he was married to French President Jacques Chirac, now regrets its diplomatic breach with Britain and the US and will start distancing itself from French foreign policy: Germany is seeking to distance itself from France's tight embrace and realign itself more closely to Britain and America, senior German officials signalled yesterday. They said the row with Washington over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had become "a prisoner" of President Jacques Chirac's campaign to oppose the war to topple Saddam Hussein last year. After two years of standing so close to France that the two leaders literally stood in for one another at EU conferences, the Germans have belatedly discovered the world doesn't love the French. Now that the Chirac administration is buried in scandal and especially since Germany found out that French opposition to the war in Iraq had...
February 3, 2004
John Kerry is poised to take five of the seven states going to the polls today and finish a strong second in the other two: After back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sen. John Kerry was hoping for a sweep in the biggest test yet for Democratic hopefuls, seven states holding primaries or caucuses. But the race's two Southerners were angling to slow the Massachusetts Democrat's gathering momentum. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was counting on a victory in South Carolina's first-in-the-South primary on Tuesday to keep his own campaign alive. And retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark of Arkansas hoped for a win in Oklahoma and a respectable showing in both Arizona and New Mexico to propel his campaign into the next round of contests. Howard Dean, of course, has already surrendered in these states, and has laid off even more campaign workers as his organization has burned...
Just in case anyone thought that the war on terror had ended, reality intruded overnight as the deadly poison ricin was found in the Senate complex: Following the discovery of the deadly toxin ricin in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, much of the Senate complex will be shut down Tuesday, the Senate Web site said. "The Capitol will be open for essential personnel only. All tours will be canceled until further notice. Senate office buildings will be closed today. This includes the Hart, Dirksen, and Russell Senate Office Buildings," according to a statement on the Web page. Tests on a white powdery substance found in the mailroom indicate the presence of ricin, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer and Frist said late Monday. Frist said he considers the incident a "terrorist activity." Of eight tests conducted throughout the day, six were positive for the toxin, with a...
I have learned an interesting lesson in cultural blogging today -- if you write about a really hot topic, especially involving sex, then you can expect to get a whole bunch of new readers via search engines. Captain's Quarters has recently been averaging between 50-70 page views an hour during prime time (around 40 unique visitors). Today, however, after writing about the Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake Boober Bowl halftime show, I have been receiving over 300 page views an hour from referrals from search engines. Don't get me wrong; I like getting new readers, and I hope that all of them take a longer look around the blog to see if they find any other interests here than a grainy picture of a 37-year-old's right breast (which is not posted on this site, but you can go here and tell them I said hello). I'd just hate to have...
As expected, Senator John Edwards has won South Carolina, by a good 15-point margin, 45%-30% for Kerry. With 48% of the precincts reporting, Howard Dean only received 5% of the overall vote in South Carolina, finishing fifth behind Al Sharpton and Wesley Clark. Dean is now on TV explaining that he will not withdraw, although he acknowledges that his supporters are going to have a "tough night" tonight. Right at the moment, he's saying that in order to keep jobs in America, we have to stop giving tax breaks to companies that move offshore -- even though he himself set up a crucial tax break in Vermont for those very same corporations. The energy and enthusiasm of his supporters, is way down, and it sure seems that regardless of Dean's message, it will be very difficult to light the spark again. I just don't see the passion any more. I...
With 8% of all precincts reporting, Clark is slightly edging Edwards 30%-29%, and Kerry is hanging in with 23%, leading to a situation where Oklahoma's thin delegate total will be almost evenly split between the three candidates. This will not be enough to keep Clark's supporters energized, especially since Clark isn't finishing in the money anywhere else so far (party rules require 15% of the vote before being assigned delegates). It's possible that Clark may finish better in Arizona, but that appears to be his only other hope, and he's unlikely to finish on top there. In Delaware, with 29% of the vote in, Kerry is the only one finishing above 15% (he's got 50% so far), meaning that he could capture all of Delaware's delegates. Lieberman actually is edging Edwards for second place at 11%, and Dean is just ahead of Clark for fourth place at 10%. Now Oklahoma...
CNN and Fox are both calling Arizona for John Kerry, even though neither have any precincts reporting at all. Fox is also reporting that Joe Lieberman is about to address his supporters, which means he's about to thank everyone before he joins Dick Gephardt in looking for an analyst position with one of the networks. Arizona was the other key state for Wes Clark. Normally conservative, you could have expected Arizonans to come out in support of the former four-star general. However, Clark's continuing gaffes and stumbles ripped the momentum away from his campaign and allowed Kerry and Edwards to marginalize Clark as a somewhat unstable and unwelcome presence in the race. Clark has pulled slightly ahead of Edwards in Oklahoma with 37% of all precincts reporting, but edging out a win by a few hundred votes simply isn't enough....
Senator Joe Lieberman, who had the most consistency between his policy statements and his record of any of the major candidates and who had the strongest credentials on foreign policy and national security in the Democratic candidates, announced his withdrawal from the primaries tonight. Chris Dodd spoke after Hadassah Lieberman's introduction, starting (oddly) with a chant of "Let's Go Joe!" Let's go where? Other than that, Dodd was an excellent speaker, staying optimistic while delivering a eulogy, no mean feat. Dodd seems pretty likable -- not his politics, certainly, but on the stump he's got charisma. Lieberman spoke next, graciously congratulating Edwards and Kerry on their victories, and then mentioning the rest of the candidates as well. He spoke about staying strong on defense and terror -- "we've been attacked by enemies who hate us more than they love life" -- an excellent line. He's standing by his centrism, and...
Oklahoma may be the Super Bowl of tonight's elections, with three candidates closing in on each other as more precincts come in. At the moment, 66% of the precincts have been counted, and Edwards is just ahead of Clark by 1200 votes. Kerry, who had been as much as 8% behind the two, has now closed to within 4% of the leaders. It's obvious that Clark did not get the big win he needed to continue, especially after almost emptying the magazines in New Hampshire. It certainly looks like the Democrats are about to nominate a Massachussets liberal to face off against the Texas centrist, although there's a lot more electoral battles left to fight, and Edwards may still carry some momentum if he wins Oklahoma; but if the margins remain the same, any win will only slightly change the delegate totals, and so Oklahoma may just be a wash....
Carl Cameron reports on Fox that Ted Kennedy, John Kerry's fellow Senator from Massachussets, intends to rally the Democratic mainstream to force Howard Dean out of the race so that he doesn't "sap enthusiasm" away from the front-runner. Kennedy and others -- probably the Clintonistas -- are concerned that Dean may be gathering his resources for one last two-week blast at John Kerry (and perhaps John Edwards) that will damage his/their chances in November. Pardon me, but if this is true, this has to be the stupidest campaign strategy so far in a year that has seen some very strange campaigning. Kennedy proposes to do what the first round of primaries could not: energize Dean's base and reverse his flagging momentum. Tonight's results have delivered a body blow to Dean's campaign -- he didn't win a single delegate so far, although he looks like he'll get some in New Mexico...
Arizona and New Mexico are finally reporting their first precincts, and so far they favor John Kerry. With 42% reporting, Kerry is leading Clark, 41%-26%, with Dean coming in at 17%, just above the threshold. New Mexico, with 15% reporting, Kerry is leading with 29% with Dean and Clark tied at 25%. CNN is also showing Kerry ahead in the North Dakota caucuses, at least on TV, although they haven't updated their website yet. Edwards is off the radar screen in these states, questioning his electoral stamina outside of the South (depending on how you define Oklahoma)....
The North Dakota caucuses are over, and with all precincts reporting, Kerry has taken half of the vote. Clark came in 26 points behind at 24%, and Dean came in a distant third at 12% and out of the money. Edwards finished just behind Dean, and while I don't think Edwards did a lot of campaigning in North Dakota, these results don't build confidence in his ability to have anything more than regional appeal. So far, Edwards has only won one state in his own backyard, South Carolina, and is running neck-and-neck with Clark in Oklahoma. Kerry has won in the mid-Atlantic region (Delaware), Midwest (Missouri), Upper Midwest (North Dakota), and Southwest (Arizona, possibly New Mexico). Outside the two states I mentioned and Missouri, Edwards hasn't finished better than third and is running fourth in Arizona, New Mexico, and North Dakota. No one seems to be talking about Kerry's national...
Wesley Clark finally did what Howard Dean has yet to do: he won a state primary. Clark just barely edged out Edwards in Oklahoma, Clark's so-called last stand, by less than 2,000 votes, and Kerry coming in three percentage points behind. Can we say recount? No need; the delegates will be split almost evenly between the three candidates, making Oklahoma a meaningless victory for Clark. The General needed to prove he could win a state outright after coming in third while focusing all his efforts in New Hampshire. He can point to this and claim victory, but in truth everyone knows that Clark cannot compete against Kerry nationally, or probably even Edwards regionally in the South. To emphasize this, he's coming in second in neighboring New Mexico, trailing Kerry 37%-23% and barely leading a dormant Dean by three percentage points. He's trailing Kerry in Arizona as well by a wider...
Now that the final speeches are over for the evening and the races are more or less decided, even if the eventual delegate splits may still be a bit murky, let's take stock of the results and try to make some sense of the numbers. The big winner: John Kerry, no matter what the fools at MS-NBC think. In the past two weeks, John Kerry has won in every contested area of the country except the South, unless you count Missouri as part of Dixie. Edwards won one state in his own backyard and came close to winning another thanks to the "Little Dixie" area of Oklahoma, as one pundit on CNN put it tonight. He had a distant second-place finish in Missouri, the biggest prize of the night. Otherwise, Edwards failed to resonate anywhere other than the South, and while we all know that the Democrats need some star...
February 4, 2004
My local police department has discovered that a state-patrol crash just before Christmas that supposedly resulted from a perp chase was actually caused by a speeding trooper giving another trooper a lift to a hockey game: A state trooper intent on getting an off-duty colleague to a hockey game allegedly used her squad car's lights and siren and reached speeds of up to 126 mph before crashing into a civilian car in Eagan in December. The trooper then told investigators she had been pursuing a violator when the accident took place, and told an Explorer Scout riding with her to lie about what happened, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday. ... According to the complaint: [Jennifer Lee] Schneider initially told a trooper investigating the accident that she was on her way to the Eagan Civic Arena to watch her husband — also a state trooper — play in a...
The Massachussets Supreme Court has ruled that civil unions are not adequate substitutes for marriage and has ordered the Commonwealth to recognize marriage for same-sex couples: The Massachusetts high court ruled Wednesday that only full, equal marriage rights for gay couples -- rather than civil unions -- would be constitutional, erasing any doubts that the nation's first same-sex marriages could take place in the state beginning in mid-May. The court issued the opinion in response to a request from the state Senate about whether Vermont-style civil unions, which convey the state benefits of marriage -- but not the title -- would meet constitutional muster. ... The much-anticipated opinion sets the stage for next Wednesday's constitutional convention, where the Legislature will consider an amendment that would legally define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Without the opinion, Senate President Robert Travaglini had said the vote would be...
The AP reports an "exclusive" on an apparent conflict of interest involving Senator John Kerry from four years ago, when he blocked legislation and later received cash from a beneficiary of his action: A Senate colleague was trying to close a loophole that allowed a major insurer to divert millions of federal dollars from the nation's most expensive construction project. John Kerry stepped in and blocked the legislation. Over the next two years, the insurer, American International Group, paid Kerry's way on a trip to Vermont and donated at least $30,000 to a tax-exempt group Kerry used to set up his presidential campaign. Company executives donated $18,000 to his Senate and presidential campaigns. The colleague was John McCain and the project involved was the Big Dig, a highway project often cited as an example of cost overruns and government inefficiency. McCain wanted some government funding of the Big Dig stopped...
February 5, 2004
The Howard Dean campaign, in an e-mail to his dwindling supporters, proclaimed the obvious and stated that Dean had to win in Wisconsin or it's all over: Howard Dean told supporters Thursday he will be out of the race for the Democratic nomination for president if he fails to win the Wisconsin primary, declaring "all that you have worked for these past months is on the line on a single day, in a single state." ... In the e-mail distributed in the early hours of Thursday, Dean wrote: "The entire race has come down to this: we must win Wisconsin. ... We will get a boost this weekend in Washington, Michigan, and Maine, but our true test will be the Wisconsin primary. A win there will carry us to the big states of March 2 and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything less will put us out of this...
February 6, 2004
In the middle of a winter punctuated with flight cancellations and delays due to heightened fears of terrorist attacks, the LAX security detail allowed a known felon to stroll past security and lodge himself onto an airplane without a ticket: Airport cameras captured it all: On a busy morning at Los Angeles International Airport last month, a convicted felon wearing a sweatshirt, sunglasses and gloves strolled unnoticed past two security checkpoints in Terminal 5 and walked onto a jumbo jet without a ticket. Kareem Thomas, a 19-year-old Decatur, Ga., resident on probation for burglary, was discovered hiding in an airplane restroom by passengers and was apprehended by police before takeoff. Thomas was unarmed and passed through the airport's metal detectors along with other travelers. But the ease with which he boarded the Jan. 15 Delta Airlines Flight 1972 to Atlanta — particularly at a time of heightened security at the...
In the midst of the outrage du jour -- outsourcing -- India responds with a big "so what": Most jobs going to India are in the high-technology and professional-services sector. Data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show, however, that U.S. job losses are taking place mainly in manufacturing and retail services. In the professional and business sectors, U.S. employers added workers in the last quarter. Although jobs did shrink — for many reasons, including a burst stock market bubble — employment in computer and mathematical occupations has grown since June last year by more than 150,000. According to the Information Technologies Assn. of America, only about 2% of 10 million computer-related jobs have gone abroad. In U.S. manufacturing, jobs have been declining, but they have been gradually doing so over two decades. Investments by U.S. companies in India's manufacturing are still quite modest. In India's fast-growing automobile...
Variety writes at length today about the continuing aftershocks in the entertainment industry from the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake breast-baring incident: The rehabilitation of Jackson has begun in earnest, and taking the lead is MTV sister network BET. The vehicle: a series of 10 30-second vignettes featuring a subdued, furrowed-brow Jackson, dressed almost dowdily in conservative black, speaking directly to cable viewers about dignified African-American personages ranging from Sidney Poitier and Harriet Tubman to Marion Anderson and Paul Robeson. Forget about what BET calls Jackson's "edgy and sexy persona," which exploded during the halftime of last week's Super Bowl game when Justin Timberlake ripped her costume, baring her right breast live before an estimated audience of 90 million people. In the BET spots, Jackson comes off like the mother superior of a nunnery. "Her tone is serious and focused," says a BET statement, and she takes on the "air and diction...
Tony Blair, America's staunch ally in the war on terror, may be heading for some electoral problems according to a story in tomorrow's Independent: Our poll puts the Conservatives, with 36 per cent, one point ahead of Labour, on 35 per cent. This is the first non-internet poll to put the Conservatives ahead since Michael Howard became leader last November. When NOP themselves last polled at the end of September, the Tories were on 29 per cent, nine points behind Labour. In contrast to his two predecessors, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, the new leader has made a favourable first impression on the electorate. As many as 47 per cent say he is doing a good job; only 15 per cent think he is doing a bad job. Perhaps just as importantly, only 13 per cent do not have a view about him. Mr Howard is evidently no "quiet...
February 7, 2004
Howard Dean's backers are engaging in a bit of eulogism these days, looking back at the wreck his campaign has become and asking themselves what went wrong, or if it ever was right in the first place. The Los Angeles times writes on one possible cause of the grand self-delusion that the Dean campaign became -- their vaunted Internet backbone: The loose-knit group of academics, software writers and online commentators have identified a range of factors responsible for the campaign's stumble, from the actions of Dean himself and former campaign manager Joe Trippi to those of the media establishment. But some are also blaming their own habitat, what they now describe as an "echo chamber" of Web diaries and Internet message boards that lulled activists into thinking they were winning votes for Dean merely by typing messages to one another. "We may have been too glued to our monitors to...
Howard Dean, who has staked what's left of his presidential campaign on Feb 17th's Wisconsin's primary, has acknowledged that he would consider a VP nomination: During a campaign interview for the February 17 Wisconsin primary, Howard Dean left open the possibility he would accept a vice presidential nomination on a Democratic presidential ticket. The former Vermont governor's comments came in an interview with a Milwaukee radio station on Friday. Asked by radio station WMCS whether he would accept the vice presidential slot, Dean replied, "I would, to the extent, do anything I could to get rid of President Bush. I'll do whatever is best for the party. Obviously, I'm running for president, but whatever's best is what I'll do. Anything." Dean's problem has been that he will say and do anything to win, leading him to odd reversals of previous policy beliefs and unusual statements. In this case, Dean's not...
With 21% of all precincts reporting, Washington caucusers are giving John Kerry a large lead but giving Howard Dean a small sliver of hope. Kerry leads Dean, 44%-28%, with Dennis Kucinich perhaps looking at his first pledged delegates in the race, coming in third with 15%. John Edwards is trailing at an embarassing fourth with 5%. Fox News reports Kerry at 52% and Kucinich and Edwards tied at 7%, with the same number of precincts. Assuming the numbers do not shift significantly, Washington demonstrates that Edwards still cannot carry anything outside of the South and in fact shows poorly in any state that doesn't drawl, as I said last Tuesday. Dean will get a significant number of delegates, but Kerry will continue to add to his lead as well as to the regions in the US where he has won. Michigan, which is extending its caucus hours in Detroit and...
As expected, with 11% of the precincts reporting, Kerry has a large lead over his competitors, taking in 56% of the votes counted in Michigan thus far. John Edwards, at 15%, barely edges out Howard Dean at 14%, although it's possible neither of them will be guaranteed pledged delegates. In related news, Dean's campaign took another body blow today when union giant AFSCME withdrew its endorsement of Dean, according to Democratic Party officials: Howard Dean (news - web sites), shut out in the primary season to date, suffered a fresh blow when the head of a major union decided to withdraw his support. Democratic officials said Gerald McEntee, head of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, delivered the news to the former front-runner during a meeting in Burlington, Vt. I'm not aware of any such withdrawal of an endorsement before; normally an endorsement of a losing candidate...
The Telegraph will disappoint many America-haters in the UK and around the world tomorrow by publishing the account of a teenager who spent 14 months at the controversial detention center in Guantanamo, where critics accuse the US of cruel treatment of its inmates: An Afghan boy whose 14-month detention by US authorities as a terrorist suspect in Cuba prompted an outcry from human rights campaigners said yesterday that he enjoyed his time in the camp. Mohammed Ismail Agha, 15, who until last week was held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, said that he was treated very well and particularly enjoyed learning to speak English. Oh, the horror! But if your fragile psyche can handle it, Agha details the tortures he survived at Camp Delta: "At first I was unhappy . . . For two or three days [after I arrived in Cuba] I was confused but later...
February 8, 2004
President Bush appeared on Meet the Press with Tim Russert this morning to discuss his decision to go to war in Iraq, intelligence failures, and the upcoming election. I had some qualms about Bush in an extemporaneous setting and at least in the first half of the show, my fears proved justified. The president appeared rattled during the entire span of Russert's questioning on the war and intelligence, stammering, leaning forward, repeating phrases time and again, and providing disjointed and borderline non-responsive responses. The inarticulate nature of George Bush is no campaign secret, although in prepared speeches he can often become inspiring. Even in press conferences, Bush usually presents a businesslike and efficient tone. In a one-on-one interview, however, he often has trouble forming complete sentences as he tries to organize his thoughts. You can almost see the wheels turning. He falls back on stock catchphrases, such as "Saddam was...