No. She. Can't.

Somebody with a few more minutes to spare than I do does the math: At this point, it is statistically impossible for Hillary to win the Democratic nomination for President. Assuming an even split of superdelegates with Obama, Hillary must win 65% of Ohio and 65% of Texas, AND get all of the delegates from Florida and Michigan who were disqualified by the DNC to be counted as well in order to come close enough to Obama to make Pennsylvania meaningful.

Good job America. I think you're going to nominate and elect the right guy for these times and circumstances.

President Bush Will Cut Spending

Bush said he would cut or eliminate 151 "wasteful or bloated" government programs in his budget for 2009 -- cuts he said would total $18 billion of a budget that amounted to $3 trillion in 2008.

Hmm...

$3 trillion is the same as $3,000 billion. $18 billion of $3,000 billion is a 0.6% cut. Or, approximately the amount of money required to cover the cost of operating the war in Iraq for 2 weeks.

Now, I'm no fan of "wasteful or bloated" government operations, but when I think of "wasteful or bloated", my mind tends to wander towards the things the government does that cost $1 billion per day... not $1 billion per year.

Remember this, if you are an American: You currently owe $30,000 to the federal government in taxes above and beyond what you are paying already. You can either pay for it by paying higher taxes or by reducing government services by an equivalent amount. No: There is not a third choice.

Thanks George

I hear that George Bush is sending out orders to have the IRS mail me a check for $600 next year as a kind of "sorry the economy is screwed up" gift.

Well, for me, that $600 is just going to wind up in my bank account and get spent along with the rest of my cash... barely even noticed.

For the rest of you Americans though, I'm sure that $600 will come in very handy in getting your $250,000 house out of foreclosure.

My Simple View Of Things

At this point, it is down to three choices: We can elect a guy who is going to keep on doing pretty much the same stuff that George Bush has done, we can re-elect Bill Clinton, or we can vote for Obama.

My Prediction

John McCain will win the Republican nomination. He'll either beat Hillary Clinton in the election, or he'll lose to Barack Obama.

Peace Or War Coin Toss

I'm kind of torn here: I don't want America getting into another idiotic war, especially with a country as pointless and worthless and powerless as Iran. But then, the other half of me really really wants to see some beligerent pissants in blue speed boats get blown straight to kingdom come, damn the consequences.

I try hard to be consistent on this blog. Oh well. I'd rather be honest.

I know: Blow them to kingdom come, and then apologize, and pay a couple million bucks to Iran. Repeat as often as necessary... or as long as it is entertaining. Besides: What's Iran going to do that it isn't doing already? (What harm could it do to America's reputation that hasn't been done already?)

OK. Time to put war-monger Jil back in the closet.

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Update:

It looks like Glenn Greenwald agrees with JD from the comments section, and believes some of the video and story is fabricated. Point taken. However, Glenn and I also agree that Iranian speed boats harassing American Navy war vessels (which they did to at least some degree) is a stupid idea... just ask the passengers of the Iranian airliner shot down by the USS Vincennes back in 1988 about that.

My Lame Attempt At Liveblogging

9:00 p.m. McCain already won, which makes Romney winning the nomination much less likely.

9:01 p.m. Hillary is in the lead now, which is hardly what the polls predicted.

9:09 p.m. Ron Paul may actually beat Rudy Giuliani tonight. Oh how I hope. In other Ron Paul news, apparently "Ron Paul Newsletters" from 20 years ago were bile-filled racist screeds. Too bad the guy might be a bigoted jerk. Can you love the message and hate the messenger? I think I'll stop mentioning "Ron Paul" the man, and from now on just say "Ron Paul's ideas may actually beat Rudy Giuliani tonight. Oh how I hope." Can I do that?

9:16 p.m. Another thing to notice tonight is that once again, Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents outnumber Republicans at the voting booths by almost 2-to-1. If Democrats can expect 60% of voters to lean liberal this upcoming election — especially in a state where only 26% of people are registered Democrats, like New Hampshire — Republicans could be in the worst trouble they have ever seen in their 150-year history.

9:19 p.m. Voter turnout looks to be huge at greater than 50%. That's amazing for a primary.

9:34 p.m. Jeez. How am I supposed to get any work done when I'm hitting the refresh button every few minutes? Guess I better try.

10:14 p.m. Well, the only thing that I can think will bring about an Obama win at this late stage tonight is if the results from Grafton County (where Dartmouth — and 5,000 college students who tend to vote overwhelmingly for Obama — is located) swings heavily toward Obama.

10:57 p.m. Results are called for Hillary by CNN, 39% to Barrack's 36%.

10:58 p.m. The weird thing is that the vote numbers which I mentioned at 9:16 have shifted quite a bit: It is now 200K voting Democrat compared to 165K Republican... which is hardly as grand as the 2-to-1 ratio it was before. Don't know why it shifted: Democrats still outnumbered Republicans by quite a bit, especially considering the "normal" political makeup of New Hampshire, but not by the great numbers originally suspected.

1:25 a.m. A new term (for me; originated in 1982) is being thrown around tonight to explain the descrepancy in polls and actual voting numbers on the Democrat side: "The Bradley Effect", which is used to describe a situation where white people say they will vote for a black candidate (or say they are "undecided") so as not to appear racist in a poll, but then vote for the white candidate instead.

Good Websites For The Moment

Iowa caucuses, up-to-the-second, constantly-refreshed results.
Democrats
Republicans

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UPDATE:

Obama wins, which is cool. Huckabee wins, which is cool (for Democrats).

The most notable news this evening is that almost all the independents (one-third of Iowans) showed up at the Democrat's caucus: The number of people voting on the "D" side of the aisle almost doubled from turnout 4 years ago, while the number of Republicans turning out was only marginally improved since their last get-together. Twice as many people in Iowa voted for third-place Democrat finisher Hillary than voted for first place Republican winner Huckabee. More people cast votes for a generally unknown Democrat, Governor Bill Richardson, than for Rudy Giuliani.

It was obvious that the Republicans lost the independents back in the 2006 elections, and now it is obvious that they still haven't gotten them back... and apparently they plan on exacerbating the situation by putting up a highly-conservative, religious-right, Baptist preacher as their candidate for President.

So that's an exceptionally important thing to remember from tonight, if this trend holds true (and the reason Iowa is so important, is because that is usually the case): The one-third of America who call themselves independents are going to be leaning way over to the Democratic side this coming election. Republicans have done nothing so far to win them back.

I would guess that it is highly likely that the Democrats will win the White House, but the real question is how many more seats will Republicans lose in Congress this year? According to Cook Political Report, there are currently 22 Republican seats that Democrats could steal in the House of Representatives, and zero Democrat seats that the Republicans can conceivably win. In the Senate, up to 6 more Republican seats might fall to the Democrats this election. All the Republicans can do is keep losses to a minimum... and nominating the Reverend Huckabee for President is not a good start.

How About That Nuclear Option Now?

I love it when I'm right.

Two years ago, I talked about how Republicans would be stupid to use "the nuclear option" (i.e., their plan to do an end-run around the rules in Congress) to abolish filibusters, because one day they might be in the minority, and want to use the filibuster themselves.

(For those of you who don't remember, the Republicans were very, very upset that Democrats were using... no, actually just threatening to use... filibusters to stall judicial nominations and other legislation that they didn't like in Congress. You see, Republicans hated filibusters so much that they were just going to do away with them altogether.)

So who are the hypocrites now?

Oh... like you need to ask.

The Republican Senate minority today filibustered an omnibus budget bill, setting a modern-day record for blocking the most legislation during a congressional session. A new report released today by the Campaign for America's Future details the 62 times conservatives have used the filibuster to block legislation (or force modification of bills) in the first session of the 110th Congress. In just the first year of this two-year Congress, their use of the filibuster in the Senate topped the previous record, reached during the entire 107th Congress.

The hypocrisy meter will reach 100% when the Republicans start filibustering President Obama's judicial appointees.

You know: Now that I think about it, I'm almost bummed out that the Democrats never forced the Republicans to use "the nuclear option." The Democrats are such pussies that they need all the help they can get. If the Republicans had ended the filibuster back in 2005, then 62 pieces of Democratic legislation would have been passed this year that weren't.

I can't say whether or not that would actually have been a good thing, but it would be much more enjoyable to watch Republicans hoist on their own petard than just simply calling them hypocrites.

Well, maybe next year, the Democrats will put a "nuclear option" of their own on the table, and see what the Republicans have to say about that. Of course, such a move would require elephant-sized — not donkey sized — stones, so I'm not holding my breath.

How Long Can This Guy Last?

First, let's acknowledge the fact that Rudy Giuliani is a pro-gay, pro-immigrant, pro-choice, pro-gun-control, cross-dressing Catholic Republican with a vicious authoritarian streak. I mean, the guy is a mix between Caligula and Khomeini.

Right wingers shouldn't vote for him because of his liberal beliefs, and liberals shouldn't vote for him because of his right-wing behaviors. That in itself should have been enough to have deep-six'ed his candidacy, but it hasn't.

Then come the scandals:

First, Rudy Giuliani recommended a guy he knew was a soon-to-be-convicted criminal, Bernard Kerik, to President Bush as a nominee for the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Then, Rudy Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work for his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexual molestation. (The priest still works for him as well.)

Then, it was discovered that Rudy Giuliani was using New-York-City-tax-paid motorcades (i.e. police and vehicles) to chauffeur his mistress around the Tri-State area, and the costs of those trips were mixed in with other city government expenses to hide them.

Then, he tried to claim that he had spent as much... if not more... time at Ground Zero in Manhattan than most of the workers recovering bodies there, and that he was "exposed to the exact same things they were exposed to." (It was actually 29 hours lifetime total.)

On top of all of this... now we discover that his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, worked with a company which mines personal data on Americans, and received a commission for winning them a government contract, and receiving such a commission is eeee-legal in America.

And yet he is still hanging in there.

However.... we can all agree on three things:

• First: Nobody gets caught at everything.
• Second: The worse the thing you did, the better you hide it.
• Third, as corollary to first and second: The shit tends to hit the fan bigger and harder and smellier as time goes on (and it is usually safe to assume that the biggest and last turd is so bad, and so well-hidden that you never get to find out about it).

Therefore, the one thing that is likely is, people aren't going to have to make the hard decision of whether to vote for a Republican Robespierre-in-drag or a Democrat this year, because this guy is going to... has to... crater long before he wins the nomination.

(I'm just sorry that your other Republican choices... save one... barely qualify as an improvement.)

But seriously: I nominate Rudy Giuliani as the Worst Republican Presidential Candidate. Yes... even worse than Alan Keyes. Hell: You can even vote for Tom Tancredo before you vote for the Manhattan Mussolini for all I care.

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UPDATE:

I guess we now have our answer as to "how long can this guy last?": Giuliani has dropped dramatically to...

• third in Iowa polls, 30 points behind the leader,
• third in New Hampshire polls,
• fourth in South Carolina polls,
• third in Florida, and
• third in Michigan.

The lesson: People... even Republican primary voters... figure stuff out eventually. Giuliani is toast... thankfully.

Are You Angry Yet? (Episode 6,573)

A young American woman working for Halliburton/KBR in Iraq was repeatedly gang-raped by her fellow employees, while being held captive in a shipping container. She was only freed when she managed to get a phone call out to her father in Texas, who called his congressional represntative, who called the State Department, who called the American Embassy in Iraq, who went and rescued her.

Rape kit and evidence collected by the American military regarding the case have all dissappeared. No charges have been filed. No criminal investigation is currently being made.

Are You Angry Yet? (Episode 6,572)

You remember this guy, Abu Zubaydah? Abu Zubaydah was supposedly one of the highest-ranking Al Queada members whom America has captured so far in the war on terror.

You remember those interrogation tapes the CIA destroyed because after 2 years, they were deemed "of no intelligence value"? Turns out some of them were of Abu Zubaydah being interrogated.

You remember a couple of years ago when you heard about those terror plots on American soil against all manner of places including nuclear power stations, shopping malls, financial districts, bridges, et cetera? The information about those terror plots mostly came from Abu Zubaydah's mouth.

But you know, it's okay really: The tapes really were of "no intelligence value." It turns out the CIA knew that the threats this guy was talking about were false all the time. You see, this Zubaydah guy was completely worthless, crazy, and an Al Quaeda nobody... but they needed to torture the guy because President Bush didn't want his credibility damaged.

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be....Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics.

Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"

Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each...target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered." [emphasis mine]

That's right. Let me summarize this for you, so you can really take in the breathtaking audacity of what your government is doing.

1. The government painted this guy as a powerful terrorist mastermind, captured him, and made a big deal out of it.
2. The government then found out that he was worthless and crazy, but President Bush had already boasted so much about this man's capture that he couldn't allow the government to admit that the capture was actually worthless.
3. The government then tortured this guy until he started spouting terrorist plots just to make the torture stop.
4. The government then sent law enforcement agencies running around to check out the madman's threats, and even leaked the false threats to the news media, which helped fuel the fear and paranoia that has gripped America since 9/11.
5. The government then destroyed any evidence regarding this captive's interrogation.

So, are you angry yet?

Quotacious

A reader on Andrew Sullivan's website e-mails him:

A Hillary Clinton presidency would certainly moderate the policy platform in Washington. But as you point out, it would wildly inflame the so-called "Culture Wars". And then there is the horrible thought ... what could be worse than another four years of George Bush? It might very well be Rudy Giuliani. And, how do we get religious conservatives to vote for a Giuliani? Run him against Hillary.

Another of his readers writes:

For example, one word describes Obama’s effort: Change. For Edwards, it is economic justice and for Dodd, restoring the rule of law. For Biden, foreign policy experience in an increasingly dangerous world. I can’t give you a one word or simple explanation as to what a Clinton Presidency would mean. The reason we find this New Yorker moving from issue to issue is that she has yet to define it herself. We know she wants to be President, but we don’t know why.

I highly recommend Andrew Sullivan's blog for your daily dose of political commentary.

The Best Democratic Candidate Leads In Iowa

Sorry, but Hillary leaves that same cloying Nutrasweet taste in my mouth that her husband did. She's a smarmy politician who won't eat breakfast without consulting a poll on America's favorite brand of low-fat sausage.

So Obama takes the lead in Iowa. Good. I hope he wins the Democratic nomination; although I won't claim doom and gloom if Hillary wins. Either one of them would be better for the United States than Rudy Giulliani (who is essentially the same as Vice President Cheney, but just hides his Darth Vader vibes better), or Mitt Romney (who is essentially the same as President Bush, but just does the "I love Jesus and torturing Muslims" schtick better).

Of course, you now have Mike Huckabee, who is the mutant love child of Jerry Falwell and Ross Perot dressed up in a Jim Nabors likeability, leading in the Republican polls in Iowa. That's comforting.

Understanding Red State America

H.L. MenckenA twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, known as the "Sage of Baltimore". He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century., back in 1928, described the mindest of the denizens of rural, conservative America. Unfortunately for America, things haven't really changed that much since Mencken wrote the words below 80 years ago, which is why to this day Red State AmericaRed States and Blue States refer to those states whose residents predominantly vote for the Republican Party or Democratic Party presidential candidates, respectively. has such a tough time grasping why government spying and government monitoring and government control and government oversight (e.g. The Patriot Act) are bad things.

The yokel has scarcely any privacy at all. His neighbors know everything that is to be known about him, including what he eats and what he feeds his quadruped colleagues. His religious ideas are matters of public discussion; if he is recusant the village pastor prays for him by name. When his wife begins the biological process of giving him an heir, the news flies around. If he inherits $200 from an uncle in Idaho, everyone knows it instantly. If he skins his shin, or buys a new plow, or sees a ghost, or takes a bath it is a public event. Thus living like a goldfish in a glass globe, he acquires a large tolerance of snoutery, for if he resisted it his neighbors would set him down as an enemy of their happiness, and probably burn his barn. It seems natural and inevitable to him that everyone outside his house should be interested in what goes on inside, and that this interest should be accompanied by definite notions as to what is nice and what is not nice, supported by pressure. So he submits to government tyranny as he submits to the village inquisition, and when he hears that city men resist, it only confirms his general feeling that they are scoundrels. They are scoundrels because they have a better time than he has — the sempiternal human reason.

Now, if you happen to be a conservative-minded person living in a conservative area of the country yet think that the government generally shouldn't be taking an interest in what goes on in your law-abiding household, then you are not a Republican... or at least you haven't been for the better part of a decade. You are a libertarian (small L) now... like me. Vote for somebody like Ron Paul in the primaries, or vote for a third-party candidate, or vote Democrat until the Republicans figure out what the problem is, but whatever you do, stop voting like a yokel.

Hat tip.

Ha.

Hat tip. Source.

Another Story of Soldiers Getting Screwed

It's one of the great neo-McCarthyite accusations of our age: "You don't support the troops." Of course, it goes without saying that everybody in America supports the troops. It's the U.S. military which our soldiers work for that some of us have problems with.

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Can You See The Problem Here?

Remember how I sometimes mention that the right of habeus corpus has been suspended in America for people charged with terrorist-related activities, and why that is a bad thing? Call me overly-sensitive if you will, but I just don't feel that this loss of a basic legal right is generating the proper amount of outrage among Americans that it should.

I think that perhaps this comes from the nebulous and rather vague grasp that Americans have of this obscure legal concept with a incomprehensible Latin moniker.

So class, here is a slightly better example of what is going on in America's legal system these days. See if you can point out how the following undermines the "rule of law" in the United States.

In Boston and other cities in Massachusetts, motorists cannot challenge a $100 parking ticket in court without first paying a $275 court fee. If found innocent, the motorist does not receive a refund of the $275.

OK. Now do you understand? That's pretty infuriating if you are the person paying the fine. Imagine what it would feel like if instead, you were the person facing 20 years in jail.

No Respect

Glenn Greenwald makes a great point.

Allow me to summarize:

The Congressional Republicans are a bunch of bullies. The Congressional Democrats are a bunch of pussies. It is impossible for us to like the bullies, but we really don't care for the pussies much either, do we?

Aren't You Tired Of This America?

A foreign tourist... an old man... who spoke no English was riding alone on the Amtrak train between New York and Boston. Halfway to Boston, the train was stopped, the old man was removed from the train and taken into police custody.

His crime? He was taking photographs of the Connecticut scenery as he went by.

No... I'm not joking. Taking photographs on trains is now illegal in America.

Listen, I don't live in America anymore, so this kind of stuff only angers me on a practical level... but you, in America, how can you stand this? Where is your outrage that the land of the free and home of the brave is now the land of people who piss themselves at the sight of an old man with a camera, and take him into police custody?

I was thinking last night about the right and wrong way to decide whether "The terrorists are winning."

People with no common sense think that "the terrorists are winning" when terrorists cause explosions and kill people. To them, the terrorists are most definitely not winning in America... because of the alert American people who are brave enough to confront the potential terrorists riding our trains.

People with half a brain think that "the terrorists are winning", when terrorists change American values, cause the loss of freedom, and the loss of common sense. To them, the terrorists are definitely winning... because of the American people who are so petrified of terrorists that everywhere they look they see danger and suspicious behavior.

If Osama Bin Laden heard about this poor old man on the train, you know damn well he would be laughing his ass off, knowing that it all hapened because of him.