Lots of chatter about who knows more about foreign policy among the Presidential candidates. Huckabee, in particular, is getting a lot of negative press. Edwards, however, turns the tide.
John Edwards & Foreign Policy
The NY Times’s Michael Gordon conducted a lengthy interview with John Edwards in Iowa, during a campaign stop. Here’s an excerpt of the transcript: Q. How did you go from a plan that emphasized the gradual reduction of forces and training of Iraqi forces to a plan that calls for removing all of the forces within [...]
Tags: Foreign Policy
Categories: 2008 Election · Edwards
Okay, fellow Arkansans, this one’s for you! Neighboring Texas gets nailed in this strong piece from “Signs of our Times”..
Texas: The Gulag Wasteland Bush Left Behind
The Texas Bush left behind leads the nation in crime, pollution and poverty. It trails the nation in education, quality of life, and the environment. Texas was once the largest state in the nation. Now –thanks to Bush –it is the largest disaster area outside of New Orleans [...]
Tags: Bush Administration, Texas
Categories: George W. Bush
Some really interesting “backstories” about Hillary Clinton in Iowa. How much do they say about the candidate? Quite a bit, when you’re dealing with reporters..
Reporters Agree: Hillary Is A Cold Fish…
You already knew this, but reporters really, really don’t like Hillary, as this account of an encounter between Hillary and the press today confirms yet again: ” Hillary stepped onto the parked press bus in Indianola for about 90 seconds to deliver bagels and coffee, and I’m not sure what this says about Clinton and the press — the chill, I think, comes from both sides — but it was a strange moment. She expressed [...]
Tags: Iowa Caucuses
Categories: 2008 Election · Clinton
Sometimes you stumble on something so unusual, that most people would simply gloss right over it. I love this article.
Dial-Tone Phreak
As a blind boy in the 1950s, Josef Engressia accidentally discovered he could place free long-distance calls by whistling into a phone at a frequency of exactly 2600 Hz. The adult Engressia became the first and greatest of the “phone phreaks,” legendary hackers of pre-digital phone systems. Engressia loved phones the way some boys love trains — they were the conduit to the perfect childhood he never [...]
Tags: Phone Phreak, Engressia
Categories: Uncategorized
I knew I should have gassed up earlier this week. Look where crude oil prices went today..
$100
…It’s obviously no surprise to regular readers of this space. The weather in the North Sea must have been terrible for the past half-decade, eh? In a perfect world, or at least one in which accountability mattered, Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, and certainly Alan Greenspan would be yanked in front of Congress immediately, put under some hot lights for a few days, and asked the following: [...]
Tags: Oil Prices, Economy
Categories: Bush Administration · Economy · Oil Prices
The Arkansas Times blog has folks following the candidates up in Iowa. They’ve posted an excellent explanation of how turnout impacts each candidate. It does much to demonstrate just how convoluted and confusing the caucus system is, particularly the democrat system.
The Iowa Turnout
Just follow the link at get educated. And Kos has some pretty succinct thoughts about it, too..
Iowa: What a crappy way to pick a winner
There’s an entire nation out there — 48 states plus D.C. — who have tired of this ridiculous calendar and undemocratic way of choosing our nominee. Iowa and New Hampshire will fight like hell to retain their lofty status — it’s worth prestige points and a crapload of money for those states. But no matter what those states may think, [...]
Iowa Predictions
Here are my broad predictions for the caucus … 1) Second choices will matter. I predict that the winner of the caucus won’t have the most raw voters who caucus on Thursday, but will be the candidate who converts the most second choice votes. 2) Entrance polls [...]
Abolish The Iowa Caucus
Abolish the Iowa Caucuses. They are a disgrace. They mean nothing, they contribute nothing, and they are worth nothing. In fact, they are worse than nothing. They actually detract from the political process. The Iowa Caucuses are not democracy at its finest. They are the political equivalent of the “Lord of the Flies,” anarchy running wild. Even [...]
Tags: Iowa Caucuses
Categories: 2008 Election
Kinda. Yours truly finally caught whatever crud has been floating around these parts, so I was stuck at home today, loading up on meds and tissues.
In between naps, I’ve kept an eye on the cable news folks. The big story seems to be that the Justic Department is launching an outside criminal probe into the CIA torture videotapes.
The U.S. Justice Department will launch a criminal investigation of the CIA’s destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. The official said the Justice Department would make a [...]
Obstruction
That’s the word Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton use to describe the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes: “In a lunch meeting on Dec. 23, 2003, George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, told us point blank that we would have no such access. During the meeting, we emphasized to him that the C.I.A. should provide any documents responsive to our requests, even if the commission had not specifically asked for them. Mr. Tenet replied by [...]
Tags: CIA
Categories: Bush Administration · Terrorism · Torture · Waterboarding
