January 2008 Archives

Wanting to seem like ordinary folk, Mitt Romney stopped into a KFC while on the campaign trail in Florida today and, as you see, ordered a combo (white meat, according to the AP, which is no surprise). Video caught Romney proceeding to peel the skin and precious breading off the fried chicken (if you want healthy, um, order the Tender Roast), then eat it with a knife and fork.

All I can say is he'd better steer clear of Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles campaigning in L.A., or he's bound to get jumped by a bunch of purists.

The AP's tongue-in-cheek lede: "Mitt Romney's body is a temple..."

I've always had a soft spot for that lyin', cheatin' Bill Clinton. Yet I admit that he's horrified me with his shock tactics as Hillary's "running mate." The WSJ, ever the Clinton adversary, chimes in here.

I suppose the positive spin would be that he wouldn't be so passionate in campaigning for her if theirs was the stiff, lifeless marriage that detractors claimed it was. But I worry about how his intraparty fratricide is crippling Dems at precisely the moment that they need to stand up and be a viable national party.

On the third or fourth hand, he must be scaring the pants off GOP candidates who are used to being the thugs in national campaigns. If Barack wins the nomination, expect some Swift-boat tactics to hint that "Black Osama" is an unrepentant friend of terrorists. But if the Clintons win, expect them to bonk the GOP with a literal vengeance. It'll be entertaining, even if democracy is the first casualty.

As Bridget observes, Mike Huckabee has the endorsement of Chuck Norris, and now John McCain has picked up the backing of Sylvester Stallone. All of which has me wondering -- what candidates are the other action heroes of yore supporting? Some guesses:

• Jean Claude Van Damme -- John Kerry (he's French, you know)
  
• Arnold Schwarzenegger -- Mitt Romney (human who played a robot admires robot who can play a human)
• Steven Seagal -- John Edwards (it's the hair)
• Jackie Chan --- Hillary Clinton (it's the Norman Hsu connection)
• Sigourney Weaver -- Anyone but Kucinich (Sigourney hates aliens)
• Keanu Reeves -- Barack Obama (sympathy for people with un-spellable first names)
• Will Smith -- Al Gore (both stars of scary movies in which they pretend to save the earth)
• Lou Ferrigno -- also Al Gore (because big, angry green dudes gotta stick together)
• Harrison Ford -- Rudy Giuliani (both made a fortune through Patriot Games)
• Tom Cruise -- Ron Paul (both are creepy, yet have an inexplicably devoted fan base)

The hate-filled Westboro Baptist Church -- you know, that scruple-less group that stands outside soldiers' funerals with signs declaring that the deceased is in hell because America tolerates gays (I think that's the seven degrees of separation excuse, anyway) -- plans to protest Heath Ledger's funeral:

"Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., are trying to find out where the 28-year-old actor's funeral will be held and have already made signs to hold outside the Oscars that read 'God Hates Fags and Fag Enablers,' 'Heath in Hell' and 'Mourn for Your Sins,' Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of the church's controversial founder Pastor Fred Phelps, told ABCNEWS.com.

Though Ledger was not gay, the church believes he 'misused the giant megaphone given to him by God Almighty to speak the truth about fags,' Phelps-Roper said, and instead 'used his position of prominence to say God is a liar and that homosexuality is not an abomination.'"

Rumor has it the funeral will be held in Ledger's native Australia, so if the Westboros can figure out where that is in relation to Topeka, I hope they meet with a few well-aimed boomerangs.

More on Heath's death from our entertainment guru Greg Hernandez at Out in Hollywood...

From Australia's Daily Telegraph:

"A would-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say."

Here's the real miraculous Valley rainbow this morning, which I stole form href="http://la.curbed.com/">CurbedLA, which stole it from LoftLA, two fabulous blogs that will perhaps be mollified by gushing praise and links to their site.

You knew it had to happen. Someone was eventually going to trot out the "C" word against Hillary. And one of the O.G. GOP dirty trickers, Roger Stone, finally did with a brand new 527 called "Citizens United Not Timid." I'll let you figure out the acronym. Mainly they seem to exist to sell nasty t-shirts.

From the TPMuckraker blog:

In addition to this website being blast-emailed to hundreds of thousands of addresses that Stone and [another GOP operative] have accumulated over the years (working off over 170 different email lists of everyone from opinion-makers to political activists to industry associations), Stone is counting on T-shirt sales to further serve as "billboard education." He figures the whole thing will end up taking on a viral nature, thanks to the yuks factor....

"The more people go to the site, the more people buy the T-shirts," Stone explains.... "The more people buy the T-shirts, the more people wear the T-shirts. The more people wear the T-shirts, the more people are educated. Consequently, our mission has been achieved." Though neither the word itself nor even the acronym is ever mentioned, "it's one-word education. That's our mission. No issues. No policy groups. No position papers. This is a simple committee with an unfortunate acronym...."

The optimist side of me that believes that people are basically decent hopes that such naked misogyny will turn off Republican voters. But the cynical side of me, the side that has been the subject of lots of nasty comments from (mostly conservative) men who denigrate me on the basis of my gender rather than my crazy ideas and call me all sorts of names including the C word above, wonders if it's not just exposing a base sentiment shared by a good many of my fellow Americans. That would make me sad.

The price of politics: The above photo is of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and the unfortunately named Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of one of the oldest black churches in America, the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem. On Sunday, Butts provided Clinton with what could prove to be a key endorsement in an increasingly racially charged campaign. And, wouldn't you know it, Hillary has given a little something to Butts, too. As CNSNews reports:

The $555-billion FY 2008 omnibus spending bill approved last month by Congress included 11 appropriations bills with almost 1,000 earmarks. Clinton teamed with senior New York Sen. Charles Schumer and New York Rep. Charles Rangel, both Democrats, to provide three earmarks for the Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC).

The ADC is a separate non-profit community development organization chaired by Butts that focuses on increasing quality housing, delivering social services, and boosting economic and educational opportunities in Harlem.

Clinton backed an $839,000 earmark to the development corporation's programs for at-risk youth; $446,500 for the organization to expand youth after-school programs; and $146,000 for the group's social service work.

Now, it's possible that there's no connection between the earmarks and the endorsement -- possible, but, well, let's just say $1 million in taxpayer cash certainly didn't hurt Clinton's chances with Rev. Butts.

But that reminds me: Weren't the Democrats going to get rid of earmarks when they took over Congress? I thought "everything changed" in Novemeber '06. Didn't it?

A full rainbow over the westbound 101 in Sherman Oaks this morning. We all slowed to check it out and I didn't mind at all. I haven't smiled like that during a commute in a long time. Thank you Mother Nature.

* And, no, that's not an actual picture of it. I was driving, people!

From Michael Medved, actually, in his Saturday Townhall column making the case that South Carolina's big loser was talk radio:

"For more than a month, the leading conservative talkers in the country have broadcast identical messages in an effort to demonize Mike Huckabee and John McCain. If you’ve tuned in at all to Rush, Sean, Savage, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, and two dozen others you’ve heard a consistent drum beat of hostility toward Mac and Huck. As always, led by Rush Limbaugh (who because of talent and seniority continues to dominate the medium) the talk radio herd has ridden in precisely the same direction, insisting that McCain and Huckabee deserve no support because they’re not 'real conservatives.' A month ago, the angry right launched the slogan that Mike Huckabee is a 'pro-life liberal.' More recently, after McCain’s energizing victory in New Hampshire, they trotted out the mantra that the Arizona Senator (with a life-time rating for his Congressional voting record of 83% from the American Conservative Union) is a 'pro-war liberal.'

Well, the two alleged 'liberals,' McCain and Huckabee just swept a total of 63% of the Republican vote in deeply conservative South Carolina. Meanwhile, the two darlings of talk radio -- Mitt Romney and, to a lesser extent, Fred Thompson—combined for an anemic 31% of the vote.

...In other words, the talk radio jihad against Mac and Huck hasn’t destroyed or even visibly damaged those candidates. But it has damaged, and may help destroy, talk radio."

Amen to that. First of all, I never really got the talk-radio obsession. Listeners emerging and touting the host's opinion as gospel is never a good thing -- why not employ God-given critical thinking skills to arrive at political opinions and viewpoints on one's own? That being said, it appears that conservative voters are doing just that, which is a huge boon to the Republican Party.

On the other hand, it's just disturbing to see the irrational onslaught against those not anointed by the talk-radio gods. Someone earlier forwarded me Dennis Prager's column, "The Case for Giuliani," which would have better been titled, "The Case Against McCain." At least 50 percent of the column consisted of slams against McCain. Fine, make the case for Rudy, as the title states -- then please actually talk about Rudy!!

Another e-mail I just got, a completely unfounded, silly slam that NRO felt the need to post anyway:

"***** BREAKING NEWS!!! WORLD EXCLUSIVE!!!! *****

Anonymous sources say that John McCain will appoint Al Gore to be either UN Ambassador or Energy Secretary if elected president. Says McCain feels that global warming demands that the world's foremost global warming activist be given whatever he needs to not only confront global warming, but to assure the world that the US takes its role as world leader on this issue seriously.

There. Al Gore.

I said AL GORE!!!

Now you wanna vote McCain you squish republicans? Huh? Well, do ya?"

"I'm here, he's not."

That was Hillary Clinton's response last night, when Barack Obama noted that her husband has been talking smack about him. It was, in short: Don't hold me responsible for what he says.

This is just the latest example of a clever strategy Hillary has been using throughout her campaign, getting surrogates -- most prominently Bill -- to do her dirty work for her. The surrogate says something nasty, and it gets played all over the news, but Hillary is able to dodge all responsibility. (Remember when former NH Gov. Jean Shaheen gratuitously raised the issue of Obama's past drug use?)

So, for example, it's not Hillary who accused Obama of peddling a "fairy tale," or of playing the gender card in New Hampshire. Bill did it! Naughty, naughty, Bill -- we can never seem to get a handle on him (just ask the interns!). Hillary repeatedly offers some variation of, "Bill's not running, I am," but it's Bill who continually saves her bacon by cranking up his aw-shucks charm on the campaign trail.

No wonder this ruse is driving Obama bonkers. It's so utterly cynical, so incredibly transparent ... and so maddeningly effective.

Congratulations to Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Signal Hill (though filmed in Texas) oil saga "There Will Be Blood" snagged eight nods at the Oscar announcement this morning, which puts the film in a tie with the equally brilliant "No County for Old Men." I've been a fan of PTA's ever since the genius Valley saga "Boogie Nights," but while he was nominated for Oscars for that and "Magnolia" this is the first time he's been nominated for best director. "Blood" and "Country" are clearly the best films of the year, so it's nice to see the Academy respond accordingly. Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem were both amazing.

And this is a year that I've actually seen many of the films, including "Atonement," which should win for Hottest Scot in a Leading Role for smokin' James McAvoy. I saw "No Country" last week the perfect way -- in a one-screen, 1947 theater on Main Street in Seal Beach, with popcorn that had real butter drizzled over the top. Bardem's character was fascinating because Hollywood has been full of hitmen with scruples -- case in point, the likable Jules and Vincent in "Pulp Fiction" -- but Bardem's character has absolutely none.

Maybe, in Strikeland, there should be a new rule this year: If you don't show up to get your award, the Academy will go to envelope B...

What's most amazing about the current blood-letting within the parties (the GOP establishment goes ballistic on McCain and Huckabee; Hillary and Obama trade innumerable shots under the belt) is how all the animosity will somehow disappear in just a few months.

Mark my words, if McCain or Huckabee is running against Clinton in November, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, and the rest will forget all the awful things they said about these two heterodox Republicans. And, of course, should Hillary win the nomination, Obama will give a glowing speech at her convention -- minus the charges that she's a vicious, soulless liar, which are currently part of his daily talking points.

In politics, no conviction is set in stone -- and apparently, no hatred is, either.

The predictable happened again in the Democratic presidential debate at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama again got down and dirty with arch rival Hillary Clinton. And just as predictably the usual suspect Hillary Bashers blamed her. Obama’s sideswipe was the by now obligatory pound of Hillary for allegedly being a corporate flack. He cracked to her about sitting on the board of Wal Mart when I (Obama) was organizing poor people on Chicago’s Southside.

Obama’s low blow personal dig, as it was intended, punched the hot buttons—the hated Wal Mart symbol of flaming corporate greed, environmental rape, sweatshop labor practices, roughshod riding over small communities and businesses. It also allowed Obama to image himself as the noble defender of the poor, exploited, downtrodden, worker. This, of course, is pure fiction. And Clinton rightly hit back that his savior of the poor man image doesn’t square with his record of grabbing any and every corporate donation he can get his hands on, and that includes even some from real estate interests that deal in slum property. The problem with the Obama initiated low blow attacks is that this is not merely the typical, and expected, feisty exchange between two front running candidates that are in a dog fight of a race and each trying to rip each other’s jugular. That’s sadly what’s come to pass for campaign politics American style. But the Clinton slams have become part of an all too troubling Obama template. He tosses out barbs, personal innuendos, slurs, against Clinton, and lately hubby Bill, and then steps back and presents himself as the wronged victim who’s forced to hit back to defend his name, rep and record against the bullying and dirt dealing Clintons.

Talk about having it both ways. But he gets it yet another way. When Hillary defends herself and snaps backs at him he knows that the gaggle of talking head Hillary hating spin masters will hack up, mangle and twist every utterance from both Clintons, and shove Obama’s attacks back in their faces to paint them as the bad guys. The wasteful, lethal, and no-win Iraq war—what war? The shamble of Bush’s failed and flawed domestic polices—what flaws and failures? The mess of the economy---what mess?

No, the only thing that matters to Obama is hammering Clinton. The pity is that Obama didn’t start out as a campaign mud slinger. When he stood on the steps of the Old capitol building in Springfield, Illinois last February and announced his candidacy, millions were thrilled that a youthful, top flight intellectual and politically savvy, community grounded, bona fide African-American presidential candidate had stepped boldly onto the American political scene.

His drum beat slam of Bush’s polices, talk of substantial directional change in America for millions of dispossessed, and of challenging disaffected young voters to engage in the political process and to tackle the nation’s tormenting problems. But as the old line from legendary blues singer B.B King goes that thrill is long gone. No, worse, it’s in danger of being permanently drowned in the wallow of political garbage dumping. It’s not enough for the wise men and women of the Democratic Party to scream at Obama and Clinton to knock it off and get back to the business of spelling out what both are going to do about affordable health care, failing public schools, a bourgeoning housing bust, crippling poverty for thousands, job creation, immigration reform, and winding down the Iraq debacle.

They need to remind Obama first that his attacks may play well to the clinically obsessed anti-Hillary crowd, but the price for his snatch at one-upmanship over her will be to fracture relations, and increase polarization within the Democratic Party, and drive thousands more fence sitting independent voters to the GOP. That’s a terrible price to pay for getting down and dirty and then smugly sitting back and letting Hillary take the rap for it. Obama are you listening?

"The people of New York know better than anyone that Rudy is the bold and gutsy leader our country needs right now to tackle the tough challenges."

-- Rep. Peter King, R-NY., in an official statement on behalf of the Giuliani campaign responding to a WNBC/Marist poll that shows the former mayor losing in his home state.

Now, now, let's not take at face value the innuendo-laden smear against Mike Huckabee laid out by the hard-core lefties at The Nation. if you want to know what Huckabee thinks about race, consider this story from Newsweek:

A few years later [early 1980s], Huckabee took the pulpit of a small but growing church in Pine Bluff, Ark., and started a Christian radio and TV station, which aired his Sunday sermons. One day a listener contacted him. He was a black teenager and was interested in attending services at Huckabee's church, but worried he wouldn't be welcome; Immanuel Baptist Church had been all white since its inception in the 1890s. "Of course you can come, I told him," Huckabee recalls.

The minister prepared his flock. "I hope that nobody has anything except warm feelings," he recalls telling them. "In fact, if he is not welcome, I don't want to be here either." The speech didn't go over well among some church elders, who threatened to fire him. Several members quit in protest. But most of his parishioners stood with him, and in the years that followed, the church slowly integrated. "I grew up with a lot of people who really resisted integration," Huckabee tells NEWSWEEK. "The more I listened to them, the more I became convinced that racism was an incredible evil." Rex Nelson, who worked for Huckabee when he was governor, says his racial awareness "comes from being raised poor … He knew what it was like to look up at other people who were looking down on him." (Huckabee later carried these lessons to the statehouse, where he pushed to end racial disparity in drug sentencing and urged compassion for the children of illegal immigrants—a position that put him at odds with some in his party.)

Maybe that's why today -- Martin Luther King Day -- Huckabee got the endorsement of Rev. Bill Owens, leader of the Coalition of African American Pastors. According to news reports, Owens "cited Huckabee's strong track record as governor of Arkansas in promoting blacks to board posts and embracing racial reconciliation."

The Nation's hit piece is a cheap sort of dirty politics, whether it's waged at John McCain, Mike Hucakbee, or anyone else.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

I think this disturbing article from The Nation needs to be addressed by the candidate himself:

"...Huckabee nurtured a relationship with America's largest white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens. The extent of Huckabee's interaction with the racist group is unclear, but this much is known: he accepted an invitation to speak at the group's annual conference in 1993 and ultimately delivered a videotaped address that was 'extremely well received by the audience.'

Descended from the White Citizens Councils that battled integration in the Jim Crow South, including at Arkansas' Little Rock High School, the Council (or CofCC) has been designated a 'hate group' by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In its 'Statement of Principles,' the CofCC declares, 'We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.'"

The Nation article ends on these important points:

"The CofCC has since rebuked Huckabee for his insuffiently intolerant political behavior. Unfortunately, Huckabee has never rebuked the CofCC.

...Now here is a question for the Huckabee campaign: Will you release the full transcript of Huckabee's 'extremely well received' videotaped address to the CofCC?"

Did you REALLY expect this guy to keep the gloves ON?? Said Obama:

"I have to say just broadly, you know, the former president, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling. You know, he continues to make statements that aren't supported by the facts, whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq, or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas.

"You know, this has become a habit. And one of the things that I think we're going to have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he's not making statements that are factually accurate."

You know, if you can't take the Clintons...

Note to Huckabee: When your campaign-trail action star starts talking about how John McCain is too old, would age in dog years in the White House, and would probably keel over before his term was up, you might want to stomp on his foot to get him to shut up. Or at least make a serious statement about it and not a trademark quip.

After all, you want to win Florida, right? Huck won't come close now that his shadow has pissed off lots of old people -- and the Sunshine State is full of old people.

Kudos to Jonathan for his excellent post on identity politics. I think the distinction he makes between letting identity politics dictate whom we'll consider voting for -- as opposed to whom we'll vote against -- is key.

I can see why Mormons would be attracted to Romney, the way African-Americans may be attracted to Obama, or evangelicals to Huckabee, or even women to Hillary. Each of these groups believes -- rightly, to varying degrees -- that it has been kept on the fringes of society, disrespected or even discriminated against by the political establishment/mainstream/majority. For each group, the election of one of its own to the presidency would confer a sense of having "made it," and having overcome its outsider status.

No doubt, this attracted many Catholics to JFK. Surely it's what makes Antonio Villaraigosa so popular among Latinos. I even remember back in 1984, hearing Italian-American groups gush over Walter Mondale because he had named Geraldine Ferraro as a running-mate.

This is natural, and dare I say, not all bad. It's the melting pot in action. And it also tends to dissipate over time.

The real trouble, as Jonathan notes, is not when people want to see a member of their group succeed, but when they refuse to consider members of certain other groups due to their own bigotry. Romney, no doubt, has received this bigoted treatment from some evangelicals/fundamentalists. (Should he get the nomination, he can expect much more from various secular liberals.) But by far, the biggest victim of this negative kind of identity politics has been Huckabee. I have heard multiple intelligent, educated people say they would never vote for him because of his religion -- a statement that seldom arouses any controversy, but imagine if it were made about, oh, Mike Bloomberg or Keith Ellison.

The other dangerous side of identity politics is when it is used as a cheap campaign wedge. Think of the Clinton campaign's efforts to portray all criticisms of Hillary as sexist. Or think of the Obama Spanish-language radio ads that claim, "Hillary Clinton does not respect our people."

This is dangerous talk which poisons our democracy -- and it's far more destructive than members of a put-upon group pulling for one of their own.

Remember when Sen. "Macaca" Allen was hailed as the Reagan Second Coming and standard-bearer of the Republican Party, sure to be the GOP nominee for 2008? Remember that when you think that this year's crop isn't good enough. In a case of free association gone mad, the only thing that made me think of him was seeing machaca on the Mission Burrito menu this evening.

In other odd campaign observations, I noticed -- in what was actually aired of Duncan Hunter's goodbye speech -- that he had some sort of southern accent. He was born in Riverside, represents Alpine... where did the southern accent come from? Or is it a case of "when in South Carolina..."?

As Pogo pointed out, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Americans have other Americans in our sights. Apparently unable to learn the cautionary tale of the former Yugoslavia, the catastrophic fracturing of Iraq and the present mess in Kenya, we are rolling our way down hill on the road to ruin of identity politics. Bridget is all over this in her fine piece on Mormons and Romney.

More dangerous to our way of life than Sunni Al Qaeda, more toxic than Shiite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, more pernicious than Marxism is our voluntary decent into tribal identification. True, our tribes are not immutable and one can change, still the identification by race, ethnicity and religion are at least as dangerous as class warfare. I know that class is also a part of our tribalism, but it gets subsumed by other tribal markings.

This election cycle is showing some hopeful signs. We have a plausible candidate who identifies as African-American. We have a woman. We also have, as everyone knows, a Mormon. We had an Hispanic, and we may, if Bloomberg gets in, have a Jew. Wow! This is all great—but only up to a point.

In addition, we have the round up of the usual suspects—Baptists, Episcopalians, an Evangelical, some generic Protestants and a Catholic. All of these religious traditions speak well of us as a society—again, up to a point. That point is passed when we do not simply accept and celebrate the diversity, but the differences seem to become important, even overwhelming, factors in how we vote. That race, class, ethnicity and religion are factors is understandable and railing against them counting is like objecting to gravity. It should however disturb us when these categories pass being factors and become determiners.

I am less disturbed by taking these categories into consideration in terms of for whom we vote, though it is still disturbing, than as deal-breakers in deciding for whom we won’t vote.

That Evangelicals are attracted in greater numbers to Huckabee than Episcopalians, I get. That Mormons voted with near unanimity for Romney, I understand—even if I don’t like it. That African Americans will give Obama more serious consideration than they might believe his record warrants, I can see. And yes, I confess, I will take a look at Bloomberg if he runs because we share a common faith. But I would not vote for him based on our religion alone—or even make it a major factor. As politicians are fond of claiming about campaign contributors, “Yes, they do get special access, but they don’t get to decide.” This assertion is probably mostly not true, but it will serve as a metaphor for theoretically ethically acceptable role for religion and ethnicity to play in our, up till now, secular democracy. Joe Lieberman will never again get my vote.

Where it completely crosses the line is when race, religion and ethnicity are used to determine against whom we will vote. I believe that it is both wrong individually and dangerous societally when someone would not consider Huckabee because of his Evangelical faith, Romney for his Mormonism, Bloomberg for his Judaism, Obama for his African heritage or Hillary for her gender.

Identity politics, where we organize for or against by our tribal affiliations, is dangerous to our democracy. The record of the discord that ensues when our labels become, not simply markers, but seem intrinsically important, is clear. It is a clear path to ruin and the rending of the fabric of society.

...and would keel over in his first term, have you seen his 95-year-old mom? Roberta McCain was at the South Carolina victory rally, and hardly seems ready for the nursing home. Even Lindsey Graham is macking on her. Do McCain genes have as much longevity as the British royal family?

The Greeks had an idea that the tragic act was so great that it disturbed the universe and threw the world off balance. Only justice, retribution and sacrifice could set the world spinning smoothly. Once Oedipus finds the perpetrator of regicide—ironically himself—he removes himself from his ill-gotten throne (and bed). Only then does he drought end. Shakespeare picks up the theme. There is indeed “something rotten in the state of Denmark.” Hamlet’s killing of the usurper King Claudius is more than revenge; it is justice. Denmark is saved, though Hamlet is lost.

The world is always awaiting justice, and a small portion was delivered yesterday in South Carolina, when John McCain finally got his due. At the place of his previous and most grievous defeat, he found redemption. It was not John Kerry who was the first great victim of “Swiftboating.” Senator Max Cleland was sunk by vile lies before Kerry, and McCain before Cleland was destroyed by smears.

Across the political spectrum, we can all have a sense that part of the universe has been set aright. Even if I could never vote for McCain, I do admire his character, and I celebrate that he got the victory that was so long postponed. McCain truly would rather be right than be president—that’s part of why he literally stuck to his guns regarding the “surge.” This is so refreshing, when you consider that Romney is willing to be anything in order to be president.

However, we liberals believe that in 2000 McCain was not the only victim of the fiercely partisan Rove smear machine. We still believe that Al Gore was fairly and legally elected to the presidency and that Joe Lieberman should have been the Vice President.

There is a rumor circulating that John McCain might, if nominated, reach across the aisle and pick former Democrat (still caucusing with the Democrats) Joe Lieberman. It is a move, not likely to endear him to the hard right, but they already do not love him. In fact they tried to Swiftboat him again by sending out robocalls claiming that he had betrayed his fellow POWs in Vietnam. No lie is too outrageous for partisans on both sides.

However, as distrustful of McCain as the hard right is, they are probably too smart—and too afraid of Hillary—to run a serious third party candidate.

While the reach across the aisle would not much of a reach, the symbolic value would be enormous. I know that it would not satisfy or attract hardcore social liberals such as I; it would be a nice gesture and put a little bit more of the universe back into balance.

Hamlet must get his reward in heaven. Oedipus finds redemption at Colonus. McCain and Lieberman, while not my personal policy picks, would seem to embody certain kind of karmic justice.

Cheetah puppet says don't be a grump, Mr. Senator, because Mr. Huck gonna be playing the blues on his bass tonight! Cheetah puppet says we won South Carolina! Cheetah puppet is ready to grrrowwwwl at Mitt and Rudy in Florida!

* Can you imagine Bill and Hill being silly with a hand puppet?

I just wish there was a good explanation for this that doesn't indicate religion voting for religion:

"Mormons comprised 26 percent of those attending Nevada's GOP caucuses, and 95 percent voted for Romney. ... Half of Romney's overall vote in Nevada came from Mormons."

What's getting me -- and perhaps someone more familiar with Mormonism can offer insight into this -- is that Catholics don't just vote for Catholics (47 percent voted for John Kerry), Jews don't automatically vote for Jews (79 percent voted for Gore-Lieberman in 2000), and even just 22 percent of evangelicals in Nevada voted for Mike Huckabee. So I don't think I've ever seen such a religiously loyal vote like this.

NOTE: Over at the WaPo's The Trail blog, the mere mention of these stats has turned into a referendum on religious bigotry. *sigh*

Shame on L.A.! The Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday will be celebrated on Monday, January 21. Yet, more than two decades after it was declared a holiday, a new survey by BNA, a Washington DC based news and information service, found that the vast majority of private businesses, large and small, nationally and in Los Angeles still do not observe the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday.

These businesses do not allow employees to use their lunch hours to attend King tributes, post tributes or recognitions on bulletin boards, or make any mention of King’s contributions. King and the civil rights movement played a towering role in creating employment and business opportunities for minorities, promoting diversity in the workplace, and increasing minority spending power which markedly increased profits for businesses. Mr and Ms. L.A. businessperson do the right thing and acknowledge the King Holiday!

You can just hear the weariness in the voice of Associated Press Reporter Glen Johnson, who must listen to the campaign BS day in and day out. When Mitt was trying to cast himself as a political outsider yesterday at Staples and then said, "I don't have lobbyists running my campaign. I don't have lobbyists tied to my..." -- apparently Johnson couldn't take it anymore.

Take a listen. It's fun.

Notice how Mitt just can't let it go and then pursues the reporter to try and make him see the light.

On the same day, Bill Clinton takes an ABC reporter to school, using his best governessy voice to explain the lawsuit in Nevada. That's fun too.

Remember the way certain Democrats screamed bloody murder about "disenfranchisement" in Florida because a somewhat complicated ballot design may have befuddled the easily confused? Or how about Democratic protests of laws that require voters to show ID, or bar felons from voting, which, the party insists, somehow discriminate against minorities? Remember all the Democratic post-2000 sloganeering about making sure "every vote counts"?

Well, fast forward to 2008, and the Democratic Party is denying voters in Michigan (home of 1.5 million of African-Americans) and Florida (home of 3.6 million Latinos) a role in choosing its nominee. And its leading candidate just lost a lawsuit trying to make it harder for unionized casino workers to vote in Nevada.

The Democrats: Making sure every vote counts -- except when it doesn't. (Somebody call Dennis Kucinich ...)

On the 14th anniversary of the Northridge earthquake, Hillary Clinton brought her campaign to Cal State Northridge this afternoon. Accompanied by her new BFF Antonio Villaraigosa, she blew into Northridge and spent more than an hour talking with students and other assorted supporters. My favorite was the Iraqi immigrant who got more emotional than the Hill herself in the now-infamous "crying" event, and said he was her guy, then jumped up and kissed the mayor and then Hillary.

And for fun, some homemade endorsement signs spotted among the large overflow crowd outside in the hands of two young men:

"I'll be your Lewinsky'
"Iron my constitution"

Yesterday was Religious Freedom Day. You might have overlooked it, but President George W. Bush didn't. He even issued a Religious Freedom Day proclamation -- from that bastion of religious freedom, Saudi Arabia.

Another bad idea bites the dust, as California drops its plans to control the temperatures in our homes via remote control. Guess that means Sacramento's "if it's yellow let it mellow" monitor is going to have be shelved for a while, too ...

Call me old-fashioned, but I have a hard time accepting the ACLU's defense of Larry Craig -- that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy. As a parent, I like to think that when I take my kids into a public restroom, I have an expectation that I don't have to explain why all that groaning and huffing is coming from Stall #2, from which four legs are plainly visible under the door.

As the old saying goes, get a room. You're a senator, you can afford it.

If primary pressure is cracking up the GOP, it's also taking its toll on the Dems. David Brooks (second plug today) has a great column about how the Democrats have been falling prey to the very identity-politics attacks they have for so long used so skillfully against Republicans:

Both Clinton and Obama have eagerly donned the mantle of identity politics. A Clinton victory wouldn’t just be a victory for one woman, it would be a victory for little girls everywhere. An Obama victory would be about completing the dream, keeping the dream alive, and so on.

Fair enough. The problem is that both the feminist movement Clinton rides and the civil rights rhetoric Obama uses were constructed at a time when the enemy was the reactionary white male establishment. Today, they are not facing the white male establishment. They are facing each other.

All the rhetorical devices that have been a staple of identity politics are now being exploited by the Clinton and Obama campaigns against each other. They are competing to play the victim. They are both accusing each other of insensitivity. They are both deliberately misinterpreting each other’s comments in order to somehow imply that the other is morally retrograde....

Clinton’s fallback position is that neither she nor Obama should be judged as representatives of their out-groups. They should be judged as individuals.

But the entire theory of identity politics was that we are not mere individuals. We carry the perspectives of our group consciousness. Our social roles and loyalties are defined by race and gender. It’s a black or female thing. You wouldn’t understand.

Even in this moment of stress, Clinton wants to have it both ways. She wants to be emblematic of her gender and liberated from race and gender politics. As she told Tim Russert on Sunday: “You have a woman running to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling. I don’t think either of us wants to inject race or gender in this campaign. We’re running as individuals.”

Huh?

As they say, go read the whole thing. As Rob points out, these unusually competitive primaries are causing some partisans to start treating their own the way they usually only treat each other. It ain't pretty, but if we're lucky, maybe it will bring some more civility to our politics.

Wishful thinking, I know ...

Rob rightly notes that the old GOP coalition is coming up apart at the seams, in an increasingly ugly fashion. Count Rush Limbaugh among the Hugh Hewitt ABM (Anyone But McCain -- or Huckabee) crowd. As David Brooks reports:

Mitt Romney’s win pretty much guarantees a bitter fight for the nomination. If you doubt that, here is what Rush Limbaugh said about McCain and Huckabee on his program today: “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party, it’s going to change it forever, be the end of it.”

Wow, once again I find myself amazed at a GOP/conservative establishment that would be more at peace with a pro-abortion candidate (Giuliani) or pro-torture candidates (Giuliani and Romney) than with John McCain or Mike Huckabee because the two have the temerity to say comforting things to middle-class families.

As Ross Douthat observes, it's not even free-market ideology that fuels the anti-McCain, anti-Huck ire. After all, Romney's Michigan-winning pitch -- to send Washington into Detroit to turn the Big Three automakers around -- suggests far more government intervention into the economy than anything Mac or Huck has to say.

But that's different, apparently, because Mitt wants to take care of corporations -- while McCain and Huck want to take care of, shudder, people. And any deviation from corporatism, it turns out, seems to be the single unpardonable offense among the GOP's top dogs.

We can only hope Rush is right when he says a Huck or McCain victory would change the GOP forever -- because the party needs it.

My favorite thing about the Michigan primary, as reported by CNN:

Romney had 39 percent of the vote compared with Arizona Sen. John McCain's 30 percent. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee had 16 percent of the vote, followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 6 percent. Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson had 4 percent, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani trailed with 3 percent.

That's right, Rudy Giuliani came in sixth place -- behind not just the Big 3 of Romney, McCain, and Huckabee, but behind even Fred Thompson. Funnier still, Rudy came in behind Ron Paul -- for the second time!

Yes, I know, Giuliani is counting on a few big states to bail him out, and maybe they will. But at least from the vantage of this big state, things are looking bleak for "America's Mayor." The latest California poll shows Rudy in third place with just 14 percent -- and that's down from 25 percent in October and 35 percent in August.

Remember when everyone believed the GOP had to nominate Rudy because "he can win"? Me neither.

I agree with Chris that conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt "seems to have replaced his political and moral compass with sheer party calculation."

After all, in Hewitt's bestselling yet hysterical 2004 tome titled "If It's Not Close They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It," he quoted Disraeli thusly: "Damn your principles -- stick to your party."

Yet as Chris has also noted, Hewitt has now turned "his outwardly cordial, but ruthless-nonetheless attacks against other Republicans," as he does so here. In so doing, he violates Reagan's 11th commandment forbidding attacks on fellow Republicans.

Chris may prefer Huckabee to McCain and Romney and Giuliani on principle. But Hewitt, who relishes his role as a devout Christian, skewers Huckabee by taking the least charitable position on some of Huckabee's comments about religion in public life.

So McCain and Huckabee fans who once appreciated Hewitt's ability to cheerlead for the GOP are now coming to see what it's like when he hits under the belt, because now it's their own family jewels that are under attack.

This illustrates the unusual civil war brewing within the GOP, which as recently as 2003 seemed invincible.

For what it's worth, I would expect Bill Clinton to show some statesmanship in importing the 11th commandment to his party, but the smell of White House cooking seems to be making it too hard for him not to deflate Obama, their party's overall fortunes be damned. That's too bad.

While I wouldn't go far as Rob, and describe Hugh Hewitt as "America's least intellectually honest pundit" (only because there are so many others vying for that title), I have always found Hewitt to be as predictably partisan as anyone in the business. Hugh believes whatever the GOP believes; and any time a Republican and Democrat disagree on something -- even if it's only what to have for breakfast -- in Hugh's mind, the Republican is right, the Democrat is wrong. Hugh seems to have replaced his political and moral compass with sheer party calculation.

And that makes interesting this presidential primary season, where Hewitt now has to choose between Republicans. Naturally, he chooses the party establishment's candidate, Mitt Romney. And naturally, he turns his outwardly cordial, but ruthless-nonetheless attacks against other Republicans. His top target these days is John McCain, who may be leading the GOP primaries, but is decidedly not the party establishment's candidate.

So Hugh cheerleads about the "ABM Treaty" -- which stands for "Anyone But McCain." But this exposes how little his convictions matter compared to his partisan loyalties.

In fairness, I have my concerns about McCain, too -- any conservative would -- which is why I tend to prefer Huckabee. But are McCain's deviations from conservative orthodoxy really worse than Rudy Giuliani's affinity for abortion? Or Ron Paul's racist affiliations? Is it really in the party's interest to get anyone but McCain when such noxious characters are still in the race?

Hugh's ABM crowd gets downright loopy in its hatred for McCain, the skunk at the GOP lawn party. The other day, Hugh's show had on as a guest Rick Santorum leading the "ABM" chorus. Santorum says McCain is "very, very dangerous for Republicans..... There’s nothing worse than having a Democratic Congress and a Republican president who would act like a Democrat in matters that are important to conservatives.”

This, by the way, comes from the guy who went around Pennsylvania campaigning for Arlen Specter.

But this is how things work for Hugh and the ABM crowd. The Party comes first -- even before the ideals that supposedly animate it.

On second thought, maybe Rob's right about Hugh after all ...

In a place where Dems could vote in the Republican primary, left-wing powerhouse Kos rallied the troops to screw up the GOP race by voting for Mitt Romney (who, as pictured, apparently lets the press follow him into the bathroom). Sure, there's always a chance that a smooth-talking, creepy politico who pretends that his staffer's mom is just an ordinary Michigan mom who's fallen on hard times, for the benefit of a press photo op. But there was a classless moment tonight that Kos couldn't have orchestrated: John McCain was only about two sentences into his concession speech before Romney began his, knowing that the cameras would cut away from the very real McCain (who's ahead in future states) to focus on the Mitt doublespeak. It was likely as calculated as the snagging of McCain signs by Romney staffers in New Hampshire.

As my wife, The Fair Helenkela, lays in the recovery room, after receiving a new bionic knee, I am meditating (if in a somewhat agitated state) on the subject modern aging. I am also wondering why my wife, whose weight is appropriate, who works out three days a week, who has the heart of a 25 year-old has to contemplate a future with a hip replacement, hand surgery for arthritis and the other knee?

When I think of our parents’ generation, I am clear that we are in much better shape. We are not nearly as old as our parents were at our age. They were over weight, out of shape and in terrible cardio-vascular condition. Many were even dead.

We, on the other hand, have been into health for decades. Sometime after the excesses of the infamous 60s, when we turned 30, we gave up one set of drugs, stopped smoking cigarettes and started running—even without being prompted by cops with tear gas and batons. We went on hikes with the Sierra Club. We swam in Masters competitions. We joined gyms—and occasionally showed up, sometimes got past the café and actually worked out. We played golf, did aerobics, yoga and Tai Chi. We meditated. We got personal trainers.

We worked diligently at not becoming our parents. We went so far as to actually put on leotards. We bought Lycra for biking and skiing. We dressed, not in the grown up clothing of our successful elders, but in the style and fashion of our children. If any generation could fool mortality, it would be ours. Such was our vanity.

We gave up red meat. We force-fed ourselves fiber. We eschewed the chewing of fatty and deep fat fried foods. We are now buying organic. I do ask myself what an inorganic apple might be.

In order to follow up these healthy ways of trying to stay the aging process (which acts more like a processor—chewing us up) we got our faces lifted, our tummies tucked and our fat sucked.

The problem is that in trying to stay young and healthy, we’ve wrecked ourselves. Our moving parts aren’t moving so well and are in need of replacement. Part of the crisis in healthcare is that my cohort is worn out and out of warranty.

As one of the balladeers of my generation, Leonard Cohen, wrote/lamented, “Well my friends are gone and my head is gray. I ache in the places where I used to play.”

The philosopher Richard Cumberland wrote, “It is better to wear away than to rust out.” I think this is true. G-d knows we’re doing our best not to get rusty, but our maintenance and up-keep are becoming both fiscally expensive and physically painful. Still, my wife is looking forward to returning to the gym, getting back on our tandem bicycle and remaining active in life.

No, we won’t succeed in staying aging permanently. We will do our best to slow it down. Nor will we fool death with our beautiful bodies, youthfully lifted faces or even the inner health of aerobically exercised hearts and lungs. We will not live forever. We will, however, try our best to live fully as long as we’re alive.

Note: The Fair Helenkela came out of surgery wonderfully and is resting comfortably in the arms of Morpheus.

Yesterday, Bridget, Jonathan, and I had an interesting discussion on how relevant a candidate's religious views are -- or aren't -- to the campaign. Specifically, we were talking about Mike Huckabee, who alone among the presidential candidates is asked about the tenets of his faith, including such matters as who goes to heaven or hell, and what's a real Christian anyway?

Well, imagine if we learned that Huckabee currently attends a church where the following are preached:

• A commitment to a "White Value System"
• Pledge Allegiance to All White Leadership Who Espouse and Embrace the White Value System

And what's more, what if Huckabee's church had named, oh, David Duke as its man of the year for 2007, saying he "truly epitomized greatness," and praising him for his "integrity and honesty."

Think that would raise some public concern?

If so, then perhaps it's time everyone stopped asking Huckabee about his religious preferences, and instead turned their attention to Barack Obama. Those quotes above come not from Huckabee's church, which has a history of commitment to racial equality, but to Barack Obama's -- I just substituted the word "White" for "Black" and David Duke's name for Louis Farrakhan's.

As London's Spectator explains in this article, Obama's parish, Trinity United Church of Christ, and its pastor, spout some rather odious racialist rhetoric. And as Richard Cohen notes in his weekly column (which will appear in tomorrow's Daily News), Obama's church magazine recently honored Farrakahn, the rabid race-baiter and anti-Semite whose own church's theology holds that white people are a race of devils created by an evil scientist.

Now, in yesterday's discussion, Jonathan raised the remote possibility that someone who thinks members of X or Y religion won't be saved might, in public office, not treat those people very well. It's a fair point, in theory and in history, but as I responded, there's no evidence for that concern among modern American Baptist leaders. Moreover, who goes to heaven is not the president's decision to make -- so his opinion on the matter is irrelevant to our election.

A far more troubling concern, though, is a would-be president who belongs to a church that espouses arguably racist or anit-Semitic views. Obama claims to not share these views, and if presssed, he will no doubt explicitly distance himself from them. (He'll probably also condemn his pastor's visit, with Farrakhan, to Muammar el-Qaddafi in 1984.) But is that good enough, when he hasn't protested these odious views all the years he was sitting in the pews?

Would it be enough if Huckabee attended a similar, white church?

Or is it only conservative Christians whose religious preferences are scrutinized this way?

Hugh Hewitt, America's least intellectually honest pundit, has long fascinated me in the way that car wrecks fascinate me. It is now even more fascinating to see his fans "get" it. When Hewitt would lead the cheers against Dems, his staunchest fans saw him as witty, gracious and wise, despite the strong disagreement of those of a different political persuasion. Now he is so focused on leading cheers against anyone but Mitt Romney that large conservative swaths of the blogosphere have turned on him. As for Hugh's hero, Romney, he doesn't seem very intellectually honest either. Seems like a man-crush made in heaven....

This year's award for the above title will no doubt go to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who used to be against Prop. 93, saying he wouldn't support it unless it included redistricting reform. But not only has he flip-flopped on this issue, he's now actively shilling it. He explains his decision in an op-ed piece in the LA Times "written" by Schwarzenegger.

When Proposition 93 was first introduced, I said I would not support it without a companion redistricting measure. Though some progress was made last year on that issue, we have not been able to agree on a redistricting measure in the Legislature; I'm supporting a proposal that was drafted by reform allies including AARP, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters. But Proposition 93 is good public policy irrespective of redistricting, and on its own, it will go a long way toward improving the quality of state government in California

Wonder what Fabian and Don offered him for that change of heart?

Just read the groupthink justification going on in this screen capture from Sultan Knish...

From the AP:

"STEPHENVILLE, Texas - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.

Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it."

Hmm... just as Kucinich got his recount in New Hampshire. Coincidence, you say? And just as he could use a few extra loyal campaign workers to overtake HillObama. Coincidence?

Maybe his extraterrestial buddies are helping him round up the evangelical vote:

"'People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times,' said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. 'It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts.'"

I toyed with the idea of supporting democracy by taking a vacation day and being a pollworker -- until I looked at the hours. It's an 15-hour day for $105 (that's $7 an hour) At first, thought, that can't be. I'm reading the application wrong; there must be shifts. I called and, nope, it's a 15-hour day. Wow. It's not the money I would do it for, but I'm not able or willing to work a 15 hour day so 5 people can vote all for a few bucks. I guess I'm not that patriotic.

Perhaps the county registrar-recorders office ought to consider adding shorter shifts so more people -- those of us with lives and family responsibilities -- to participate.

** VOTING REMINDER: If you want to vote in the Feb. 5 primary, then your voter registration application must be postmarked by Jan. 22, which is a week from tomorrow.

ABC News has this interesting story about the friendship between John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Makes sense to me. What the two have in common is both are thoughtful, principled, free-thinking guys who don't worship at the altar of party fidelity. It's the trait I respect most about both of them, and what makes them the two most appealing -- and electable -- Republicans, IMO.

But the kid-glove treatment they are giving each other also makes me wonder if something else is afoot. As much as I find likable about Huckabee, there's no denying he's short on experience and policy depth. Serving for four years as vice president -- and, given McCain's age, it's quite possible we're only talking four years here -- could give him both. It could also help broaden his reputation beyond being, simply, the "evangelical candidate."

Meanwhile, Huckabee would bring some much-needed charm, southern appeal, warmth, social-conservative bona-fides, and youth to a McCain ticket. And unlike various political marriages of convenience (think Kerry and Edwards), this pairing would be based on mutual respect and shared values. It would be a powerful ticket, with McCain bringing the experience and Huckabee bringing the passion.

We'll see what comes of this, but seeing as Huckabee is one of the few Republicans who hasn't crossed swords with McCain at some point, this combo seems like a natural fit.

For months now I have been seeing on-line tests to take in order to find out for whom I should vote. This is the political version of on-line matchmaking, and points out the flaws in all on-line matchmaking.

Yes, being adventuresome I take the tests as offered by different TV stations, websites and, I suspect, stealthily specific campaign sponsored. I try honestly to answer the questions about my positions on various social, economic and international issues. I sometimes get surprising results, and sometimes results that are completely predictable. Often I can forecast the results by how the questions are phrased. Anyone who knows about polling and surveys understands that the form of the question—or the limited choices—can determine the result. Were the flaws in the methodology the greatest problem with these surveys, I would not bother to write about this.

The greater issue is that even given an honest attempt to line up neutral questions with the politicians’ positions and plans, these plans seldom have any relationship with what gets either proposed or implemented. For Hillary and Obama to argue about whose fantasy health plan covers more people is just silly. Neither plan would ever be proposed in reality as in a campaign, nor would any such plans be made into law as presented, in the unlikely event that they were proposed as now offered.

If I am going to take surveys based on dreams, I will vote for fairy tales. I’ll fill out my form to reflect my perfect vision and have it checked against the dreams, not realities, of the candidates, if indeed they represent their true dreams—a proposition I do not in fact assume. From this I will learn nothing of substance.

Recent dropout Bill Richardson promised to bring all the troops home in 6 months—an impossibility both politically and logistically. Huckabee promises to get Bin Laden, and while McCain pledges only to pursue him to the gates of hell, Huckabee promises to “follow him into hell with a squirt gun.”

Colorful, but these would seem to be pretty clear indications not to take any political promises literally. Some metaphor and poetic license may be assumed. Or, of course, they could just be lying—or as we some how believe is less harsh term: pandering.

Every politicians promises to make all our dreams come true by lowering our taxes, raising yours and being 100% true to all competing interest groups.

All of this naturally leads far beyond the on-line matchmaking, and takes us to how we process any of the candidate’s platforms, “white-papers” or promises.

Let us assume, for a moment, that none of the candidates is a foreign agent or hates America and wants to see us destroyed. Yes, I know for some this is a leap, but I take it to be true. Virtually all the candidates of both parties—and whatever Bloomberg is this week—make the same general promises.
They are all for:
1. A strong America
2. A balanced budget
3. Better access to medical care
4. More secure borders and comprehensive immigration reform

They are all against:
1. Terrorism
2. Inflation & recession
3. Fraud, waste and abuse
4. Americans dying needlessly in foreign wars

In fact, I believe these positive and negative assertions to be universally true. They may have variations of how they are intended and how we interpret them, but they do represent a national consensus.

There are also wedge issues where there are real differences of more than nuanced interpretation. We do not agree nationally on:
1. Gay marriage
2. Abortion
3. The meaning of “well regulated militia.”
4. The role of religion in politics and politics in religion.

So, the great question for each of us is this: Given our agreements and our differences, are the words, promises and stated positions of the candidates helpful in our deciding for whom to vote?

For me the promises serve only as a possible indication of future behavior and not, unfortunately, a contract with the American people.

This whole process is in fact a lot like dating. They are taking us out on a date and wooing us with promises of fairy tale endings, romance, roses and faithfulness. How can we believe they will respect us in the morning if their words show precious little respect for our intelligence today?

Well, we knew the earlier presidential primary would elevate California's importance in this year's elections, and now we're seeing the fruits. The California Nurses Association has been running this radio spot, ostensibly aimed at the Schwarzenegger-Nunez health plan, that just so happens to feature ... Barack Obama.

That's clever. The ad serves two purposes at the same time -- opposing the health-care reform and boosting the Illinois senator's presidential bid, yet the former purpose inoculates it from federal campaign-finance regulations. This way, the union can effectively make unlimited contributions to the Obama campaign. Smart.

Meanwhile, Obama has received the endorsement of State Sen. "One Bill" Gil Cedillo. Which is curious, seeing that Cedillo's singular concern is getting driver's licenses for illegal immigrants -- a policy Obama (says he) opposes. You'd think Cedillo would have backed Hillary, who supports the licenses, at least when she doesn't oppose them.

All the while, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is flitting around the state and the nation campaigning for Hillary. I guess the Clinton campaign figures between Hillary's appeal to put-upon women and Antonio's appeal to cheating men, they've got all their bases covered.

That's politics -- and we're about to get a massive dose of it.

The Obama camp did it again. They manufactured yet another issue out of a non issue when they pounded Hillary Clinton for supposedly defiling Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by minimizing his role in the civil rights struggle. Here’s Hillary’s terrible sin per the Obama campaign crowd. She said that Dr. King’s dream was realized when President Lyndon Johnson shoved the 1964 Civil Rights Bill through Congress. This was anything but a put down of King.

Hillary paid tribute to King for laying the groundwork for the civil rights bill and gave justifiable credit to Johnson for ramming the bill through a bickering, divided and very recalcitrant Congress. Her point was that presidents that have their public policy priorities screwed on right can make changes, monumental changes, for good.

If Hillary could be faulted for anything it’s that she didn’t go far enough. If Johnson hadn’t forcefully intervened and jawboned, prodded, arm twisted, and embarrassed the slew of wavering and hostile Congressmen to the bill into supporting the bill, or at least tempering their opposition to it, King’s dream would have remained just that, an empty dream. King recognized that. In a Playboy interview in 1965, he said this about Johnson: “He has demonstrated his wisdom and commitment in coming to grips with the problem (racial discrimination). My impression is that he will remain a strong president for civil rights.” History amply proved that, and Johnson despite his Vietnam War tumble from historical grace, still is regarded as the president that did more for civil rights than any other president.

But I’d go even further still. King gets much deserved praise and is much honored for igniting the national fervor for civil rights and galvanizing thousands to put their bodies on the line in the civil rights battles. Yet, there’s an ugly side and often forgotten note to that. The street marches and demonstrations also stirred the first tremors of white backlash. The George Wallace surge in the North, the open hostility of many Northern whites to housing and school integration, and the Republican reawakening in the South was a direct outcropping of the civil rights push. This stiffened the spines of Southern Democrats and conservative Northern Republicans who dug their heels in and flatly opposed the bill, piled amendment after crippling amendment onto the bill initially, and employed every legal and parliamentary dodge and stall tactic they could dredge up to delay a vote on it, if not to kill it outright.

King could do nothing about this. JFK who introduced the bill couldn’t do anything about it either. He was at his wits end after months and months of Congressional ducking and dodging on the bill about how to get it moving. By the time Johnson took office, following JFK’s murder, the bill was still born in Congress. There was every chance that it could be shelved. However, Johnson would have none of that. He was a Southerner and he knew the mood and temper of the South. From his decades in the Senate he knew where the political skeletons were buried and how to rattle them. He did what King and Kennedy didn’t have a prayer of doing, he got the sympathetic ear of enough Southerners to take some of the steam out of their vehement opposition to the bill. The rest of course is history. The Civil Rights Bill, not King’s marches and demonstrations, broke the back of legal segregation in America and became the watchword for progressive, visionary social legislation for decades to come.

King and all the top civil rights leaders knew that history had been made with the passage of the bill, and that the man that played the towering role in making that history was LBJ A t the signing ceremony for the bill, King and the other civil rights leaders beamed when Johnson handed them the pens after the signing. They effusively praised him for his tireless effort.

Hillary’s statement was a simple, honest, and respectful nod to Johnson for his indispensable part in making civil rights a legal fact and reality in America. This was the same nod that King and the civil rights leaders made more than four decades ago to him.

This is a nod that the Hillary haters have forgotten or deliberately distorted in their clinical obsession to smash mouth every Hillary utterance. This is a history lesson that Hillary got right about King and Johnson, and one that the Obama campaign flunked badly.

How to vie for evangelical votes: Hit the pulpit!

Mike Huckabee did so Sunday, delivering not a political message to one of those megachurches but a regular ol' sermon, returning to his preacher roots in hopes that pastors would tell their flocks to flock to the polls. His message? Being good ain't enough to get into heaven. From the AP:

"Asked by reporters later if he thinks only Christians will go to heaven, Huckabee refused to say. He often says that as a minister, he joked that he doesn't even believe all Baptists are going to heaven.

'I'm going to stick to the things that make it critical for me to be president of the United States,' Huckabee said Sunday. 'I have deep convictions about who goes and who doesn't, but as far as who makes that decision, it isn't me, it's God. I'm going to leave that up to him.'

He argued that the Constitution forbids a political candidate from being subjected to a religious litmus test. And he claimed to be the only candidate who gets asked about specific tenets of his faith."

A few thoughts:

• If you're going to stick to things that are critical to being president, pulpit preaching or salvation predictions ain't included.
  
• He's the only candidate being questioned on his faith? Is he SERIOUS??
  
• As long as he keeps bringing the faith up, I'd like to know if he thinks Catholics and Jews are damned. Sorry, but no man who tries to play casting director for the Pearly Gates would ever get my vote for president of the United States.
  

As long as Huckabee is using the pulpit as a campaign tool, then questions about how he'd view his potential constituents are fair game.

So Delta Dental originally refused to pay for my wisdom teeth removal, somehow suggesting that the experience was recreational and not absolutely completely necessary. My oral surgeon sent Delta x-rays and a narrative explaining that, yes, it was necessary. So Delta finally paid -- but only for the cost of removing the teeth. They didn't cover any anesthesia, which in my case was cheesy, inadequate novocaine because they couldn't find a vein on my zombie-esqe body to use IV sedation. Who knew that in the world of dental insurance we have to bring our own bottles of brandy to surgery to try to numb the pain?

For the first time since anyone there can remember, according to AccuWeather! Which makes for a perfect Feel-Good Photo Friday...

Why do the boomers hate on us Gen-Xers so much? They have all the money, the good jobs, the best property, social security, pensions, memories of the Free Love era and something about the freedom to take off their pants. And what do we get? Global warming. STDs. Subprime mortgages just to get a lousy condo. 401(k)s that are eaten half up in Wall Street fees. TV we got to pay for and, worst of all, possibly an extra trip to the DMV.

That's right. There's a fight brewing between homeland security and 17 states over the rules for the REAL ID, which is the new drivers license that is supposed to make us all safe again. Blah blah blah. (Read the Associated Press story here. But here's the part that bothers me: It will only affect those of us born in December 1964 or later (the first year of Gen-X, suspiciously) may have to go get new drivers licenses with added security checks. Why only the younger set? Can't boomer be terrorists too? Unabomber anyone?

Under the rules announced Friday, Americans born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get more secure driver's licenses in the next six years.

So why the discrimination? Clearly this is part of some grand Boomer plot to keep us younger folk down while they continue to plunder our country's resources. Is it not enough we're fighting and dying in the wars to keep them safe on their second home next to the golf course?

Not that I'm bitter, but the thought of another trip to the Canoga Park DMV just brings a girl down. Especially during cold and flu season.

Thank goodness for Dennis Kucinich!

The Ohio congressman who is, according to some reports, running for president, has blown the whistle on what might have been major fraud in the New Hampshire primary! Kucinich is demanding a hand recount throughout the state, citing "serious and credible reports, allegations and rumors” of voting irregularities, as well as the fishy fact that Hillary Clinton won even though the polls clearly said she would lose!

Gotta love Dennis -- at least he's consistent.

Unlike other Democratic nutballs, who allege voter fraud and demand recounts whenever a Republican stages an upset, Dennis has the decency to apply the same ridiculous standard to his own party.

Most of the Democrats who screamed bloody murder after the 2000 and 2004 general elections -- on the basis of "credible reports, allegations and rumors” (i.e., some drunk says he wasn't allowed to vote because he couldn't remember how to spell his last name) and erroneous polling -- have been remarkably quiet since Hillary's surprise win this week. But not Dennis. He knows the real truth -- about Diebold's machinations, about how cops in Portsmouth weren't letting hipsters vote, about how every election official in the state is really on the DLC pay roll ...

And you know what? I respect him for it.

There's something refreshing about an honest-to-goodness paranoiac -- as opposed to a dishonest-to-badness cynic who exploits paranoia to undermine the integrity of elections for nakedly partisan reasons.

You go, Dennis!

Perhaps my GOP buddies on this blog can explain to me why conservatives continue to refer to democrats as the "tax and spend" party when it seems to be Republican leaders doing all the taxing and spending these days, only they call them "fee increases" and "investments."

For example, the recent budget debacle has revealed that state government spending under California's republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has increased 10 percent a year. So much for all that waste in government he was trying to find. More amusing still is that, according to LA Times Sacramento columnist George Skelton, even that famous tax and spender Gray Davis only increased government spending at 7 percent a year.

And now its common knowledge that Bush the Second's administration has set 30-year records in government spending, thanks in large part to the war.

I thinks its time for both sides to agree that the country's two largest political parties are equally adept at liberating us from our money and spending it on their pet projects and pet wars.

"Today we set in motion events that will require far more difficult and painful decisions starting just five months from now in what is likely to be a much worse economy. I am afraid that with this vote, for the second time in a decade, this state is being driven to another Gray Davis-sized fiscal crisis that this vote makes inevitable for exactly the same reasons: Lack of restraint in good times combined with a lack of discipline in bad times."

Ron Paul and his backers can sail through the ceiling, scream foul until their lungs burst, and say that it’s all a big conspiracy by mainstream media hit artists, a Paul hating and fearful political establishment, and on the make Republican and Democrats to smear and slander their hero as a racist. But the one that has done more to fan charges that Paul is a closet bigot is Paul himself in writings and sentiments that express racist views that purportedly carried Paul’s stamp on them.

Paul is, of course, outraged every time those embarrassing newsletters written in the 1990s with racially front loaded inflammatory quips about and bash of blacks, and now as it turns out gays, keep publicly cropping up. They cropped up again recently on CNN. The Paul attributed digs and insults call blacks chronic welfare grifters, thugs, lousy parents, say they are inherently racist toward whites, and supposedly admonished whites to get their guns because the animals are coming. Paul vehemently denies that he said any of those things.

But there’s a colossal problem with his denial. The quips appeared in his officially approved newsletters. There is no evidence that he wrote a correction, issued a clarification, or if, as some Paul groupies claim, they were written by someone else, that he publicly disavowed and fired that someone else. Since Paul did none of those things it begs the question whether those views truly represent his feelings or not. He didn’t disown them at the time. He loudly protests them now because he has to. He has revved up a motley group of disaffected, disgruntled, naïve, wet behind the ear teenie boppers, and political malcontents who crave for someone, anyone, to snub their nose at the political establishment. But their mix of blind adulation and desperation translates out into more media and public scrutiny than Paul has ever gotten. And that in turn has meant that his past, or alleged past words, are now wide open for public dissection and accountability. That riles up Paul backers who go nuts over any hint that he is anything less than the second coming of St. Paul and Mother Teresa.

Even if Paul, as he claims, didn’t write or utter one of the offensive words, or hold the sentiments, that are attributed to him, his odd mish mash of ultra conservatism and libertarian spoutings marks him as suspect. The cornerstone of the jumble is his view of government and what it should or should not do about civil rights. Paul holds that government should have minimal or better still no role in civil rights laws and enforcement. The government passed and enforced civil rights laws, did nothing to solve the country’s racial ills, and worse, fueled even more racial polarization, he says. That old, worn, and thoroughly discredited view warms the hearts of the packs of closet bigots that pine for the old days when racial and gender discrimination was the American norm and government did little to protect black and gay rights.

Paul piles even more suspicion on his denial of racial bias when he even more absurdly tries to claim that he is pounded as a racist because more and more blacks cheer him for blasting the drug laws as biased and harmful to blacks. The disparities in drug law enforcement are gaping, and demand reform, but urging that they be totally scrapped is a far different matter.

The drug plague and the crime, violence, and family wreckage that has come with it has torn poor black communities and has caused much pain and suffering among African-Americans. The last thing that the majority of African-Americans want to see is open and unchecked illicit drug selling bizarres operating in their communities. Blacks have been among those that have shouted the loudest for crackdowns on crime and drugs.

Despite what Paul says, there is absolutely no evidence that he has gotten, or will get any traction, with black voters on the drug issue. He is a fringe candidate with white voters, and that includes GOP voters, and he is a complete non-entity with black voters.

The Paul newsletters are damning enough, and if any of the racist stuff in them is true, that instantly disqualifies him as fit to run for any national office. And those that defend those views should be branded as what they are, bigots and crackpots.

So here’s my challenge to Paul to prove that he didn't say or mean any of the racial jibes in the newsletters. Issue a clear and direct public statement, and that's not an off the cuff denial in a CNN interview, or on any other broadcast network, that says I fully support all civil rights laws, will work hard against racial and gender profiling, and will push government economic support initiatives to boost minorities and the poor. That's the challenge for Paul. Don't hold your breath waiting for him to accept it.

General George Patton is said to have remarked of war, “God help me. I love it.” This ambivalence of knowing that my love is perverse catches how I feel about elections. I love them, and I hate the bloodshed, the filth and the destruction of decent people.

I hate the gutter politics of personal destruction as practiced by all sides. No one who slings mud admits to it. They blandly say, “The people have a right to know where we differ. I’m against child molestation and you’ll have to ask my opponent…” Ugh!

Last week Hillary played the Osama card against Obama. It was deplorable. She told how in the first week that English Prime Minister Brown was in office there were two terrorist attempts and how we too could foresee being tested early in the next presidency. Frankly, Bin Laden would be happy to do something dramatic and destructive whenever he can. But by playing the fear card, she is following suit with George W. What kind of change is that?

Obama used one of his surrogates to play the race card. .On the Today Show Jesse Jackson Jr was asked about Hillary’s tears. He dismissed, what I take to be a genuine and unscripted moment by attacking. He commented that her tears were for herself, not others and wondered rhetorically where her tears were for the people of Katrina? The clear implication is she is selfish and doesn’t care about poor Black people. Despicable.

So far the Republicans have contended a bit cleaner, but this is likely to change as a front-runner emerges. Scrutiny is fair, but lies and distortions are not.

We ought to hold the candidates responsible for what they and their surrogates say and do. We will see attacks on Hillary’s character not policies, on Obama’s Muslim name, on McCain’s mental capabilities—both cognitively age-related and temperament. It is going to get ugly then uglier.

God help me. I love it.

In today's Daily News, Geri Jenkins of the California Nurses Association takes a page from John Edwards, and uses the death of Nataline Sarkisyan to make the case for socialized medicine:

Every politician who thinks the solution to our health-care crisis is to mandate everyone purchase insurance products should stop and think about Nataline Sarkisyan. Her family was "covered" and "insured." And it didn't matter. They were denied care in the interest of Cigna profits. They deserved health care but got Cigna-care.

The California Senate, which will consider the Schwarzenegger-Nuñez bill later this month, has a variety of serious issues to consider, including the uncertain funding for the bill at a time when the state is facing a $14 billion deficit and the administration is already talking about cuts in current health programs.

Still it's important to know there is an alternative bill, one that has already passed the Senate, and will be considered in the Assembly in the coming months: Senate Bill 840, authored by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles. It's similar to the system that exists in every other industrialized country and looks a lot like what we have with Medicare, only expanded and improved and covering everyone.

Under SB 840, doctors - not insurance companies - decide what medical treatment patients need. The profit motive to delay or deny is eliminated.

Isn't that the health-care system Nataline deserved and that all Californians should have?

Well, maybe, but it's not the health-care system SB 840 would deliver. Jenkins operates under the myth of the free lunch -- the erroneous belief that when a "single payer" (read every taxpayer in the state) is paying for health care, health care becomes unlimited, and every patient gets whatever treatment his or her doctor recommends.

But real-life socialized medicine doesn't work that way. Instead of insurance companies deciding who gets what care, government boards do it. (Indeed, when devising her national health plan, Hillary Clinton convened a whole panel of philosophers to discuss how best to ration medical treatment.) And in the place of the profit motive, we get the politics motive, the ideology motive, the special-interest motive, the inept bureaucracy motive, and the who-has-the-best-connections motive.

One can argue, I suppose, that this is an improvement over what we have now, but let's not pretend that scarcity, tough choices, and harsh denials would cease to exist under the socialized model. Far from it. In "every other industrialized country," there are also guidelines as to which treatments get covered, and which ones get denied, regardless of what the physician recommends. There are also often major shortages and long waits for basic medical treatment.

Horrific and tragic though the Nataline Sarkisyan story is, there's no guarantee that under a socialized system her liver transplant would have been approved. And even if it were, she likely wouldn't have survived the long wait for a surgeon.

When it comes to health care, there are no easy answers -- and there are always trade-offs.

Huckabee-Colbert '08.

I heard Laura Ingraham on the radio this morning, claiming that somehow it was beneath the dignity of something or another for a presidential candidate to appear on a gag show. Oh please. This is another reason why Huckabee has a shot -- he has a sense of humor, he doesn't take himself too seriously, and he can connect to real people.

And the GOP establishment can't stand him for it.

The media like to stick with the simple meme of "Huckabee: Evangelical candidate whose appeal is limited to religious nuts" because that conforms to their prejudices. But if you watch what's going on, Huck has run anything but a simple culture-war campaign. (For that, see Alan Keyes, who, in case you didn't notice, is decidedly not a contender.)

Yes, Huckabee is solid on the social issues, which is important to many Republicans (and, by the way, to many blue-collar and non-white Democrats, too). That makes him palatable to middle America in a way that Rudy Giuliani, or possibly even Mitt Romney or John McCain, may not be. But Huckabee also does something revolutionary for a Republican -- he speaks sincerely to middle-class concerns.

So we get the above ad, in which Huckabee sounds the themes of lost manufacturing jobs, the credit crunch, high fuel costs, and health-care uncertainty. Even if he is lacking in coherent policy prescriptions for these problems (and, indeed, he is), at least he takes them seriously. This is in stark contrast to most Republicans, who generally only deride as free-market apostates anyone who complains that just maybe our current market/financial system is occasionally destructive to family values.

Huckabee, if nothing else, understands that a party that purports to be pro-family needs to take such matters seriously. Moreover, he understands that a party that dismisses middle-class concerns is one destined for long-term minority status. So he's willing to buck some of the GOP's special interests, and make an appeal directly to the public.

Don't get me wrong: I am fully aware of his faults. But I wonder if these might be outweighed by the reality that Huckabee alone -- of all of both parties' candidates -- is capable of realigning politics in a way that could rock our current order. Pundits who write him off as little more than 2008's version of Pat Robertson are missing the bigger picture ... and might find themselves surprised.

I didn't even know that aerial hunting was practiced, let alone such a hot topic. But suddenly I'm getting all sorts of bulletins from the Defenders of Wildlife about the PAW Act working its way through Congress. Introduced by California Rep. George Miller, the Protect America's Wildlife Act would ban what sounds like an extremely unsportsman(and woman)like practice of knocking off animals from helicopters after chasing them around until they're exhausted and then shooting them as they pant in the snow or veldt or wherever they are. Or so I imagine it goes.

According to an interesting article on the Missoula (Mont.) Independent that's one of the ways that federal Wildlife Service hunters use to reducing unwanted animals such as wolves.

Using techniques including helicopter gunning, snares, poison and shooting, Wildlife Services targets specific animals that harass or kill livestock, but it also kills preemptively—coyotes in particular—to reduce populations before they have a chance to become a nuisance.

Clearly the bill won't stop people from killing animals, if that's the goal. But I suppose it does seem more sporting than gunning them down from a helicopter.

If this bill passes, then perhaps they can next focus on the sad "sport" of quail hunting as practiced by many including our Veep, in which a box of confused quail are taken out a field accompanied by some "hunters," dumped upside down, then shot as they try to figure out where they are.

Money and politics -- they go together like bread and cheese, burgers and fries, Laverne & Shirley. And now it's easy to see who is getting the green, and from whom. The Center for Public Integrity launched a fun site called The Buying of the President 2008 where you can, among other things, access the campaign finance records of the major presidential candidates, see who is handing out the big bucks, and read an anecdotal history of money in American politics called the Hannah Project.

Fun facts gleaned from the site:

In the general election campaign of Kennedy v. Nixon in 1960 both sides spent a combined $24 million, which would be the the equivalent of $160 million in today’s dollars.

Nearly $190,000 flowed into Republican Mike Huckabee’s war chest overnight after his victory in the Iowa caucuses, according to before-and-after tallies on the campaign’s website. (Guess it didn't help to get him New Hampshire.)

Mike Gravel has only three major campaign consultants and staffers to Obama's five gazillon. (That's hyperbole).

The site is a helpful clearinghouse of FEC filings of the campaign, but you do have to hunt around to find them. And I would have liked to see more on donors. As it was just a few of the biggies are listed.

With so many New Hampshire voters telling pollsters they'd vote for Barack Obama, but then voting for Hillary Clinton, various pundits are starting to wonder: Was Obama a victim of The Bradley Effect?

The Bradley Effect, lest you forget, is a term whose origins lie here in California, circa 1982. John Nichols at The Nation explains:

Tom Bradley, the popular mayor of Los Angeles, was the Democratic nominee for governor. Polls showed the African-American Democrat running well ahead of white Republican candidate George Deukmejian. Yet, when the votes were counted, Bradley lost by more than 50,000 votes.

The result made no sense. The gubernatorial election was one of the few Democratic losses in what was a good year for the party. Bradley was an able politician with a smooth style and a sound record. Analysts took a new look at the polls, which seemed sound.

It was then that they hit on the notion that white voters, not wanting to be thought to be prejudiced against an African-American candidate, had told pollsters they were for Bradley when they had always planned to vote for Deukmejian.

The phenomenon came to be referred to as "The Bradley Effect."

So did the same thing happen to Barack? Granite State whites wanted to look racially sensitive, so they told pollsters they had a crush on Obama, while really they were planning to indulge their old-time love for the ultimate white woman?

Maybe, but I doubt it.

For starters, if voters lied to pollsters before the election, presumably they would have also lied after the election -- that is, they would say they voted for Obama even though they pulled the lever for Clinton. After all, the desire to not look racist wouldn't have vanished overnight. But this isn't what's happened. In New Hampshire, the exit-polling results mirror the actual vote, suggesting that something else is at work here.

Remember that where the pollsters got New Hampshire most wrong was on the women's vote. They predicted women would narrowly break for Obama. In reality, women voted overwhelmingly for Clinton. So, if you believe that Obama got Bradley Effected, you also have to believe that New Hampshire's closet racists are overwhelmingly female.

That's possible, I suppose, but there's absolutely zero evidence to suggest it's the case. Meanwhile, Ockham's Razor points to a simpler explanation -- Clinton's last-minute campaign theatrics rallied her base of women support.

Race, far from being the albatross on the Obama campaign, is actually its greatest asset. Yes, the candidate is charming and inspiring, but those two traits alone wouldn't put a virtual political neophyte into frontrunner status. Race is a factor, too -- a positive one.

Obama connects precisely because he is African-American. Millions of American whites want to vote for a black man, to quell their own inner demons, perhaps, but also to demonstrate that, once and for all, America has gotten over its struggles with race. (Conversely, this is also why much of the traditional black American leadership has been reluctant to embrace Obama, because his success undermines the "America is inherently racist" narrative that sustains its political relevance.)

I don't doubt that there are some closet racists out there who secretly hope for Obama to lose. But I suspect they are vastly outnumbered by anti-racist whites who would love nothing more than to elect a black president -- one who can transcend race and lay identity politics to rest in favor of a polity in which the content of one's character truly reigns supreme.

Call it the Anti-Bradley Effect: Voters who say they are color-blind, but who are drawn to Obama in no small part because he's black.

It may sound funny, but in a very real way, this is progress.

It was a bad night for Hillary Clinton haters in New Hampshire. First, the woman that they love to loathe did what they dread most, she won. But that was just the start of their dismal night. She held two powerful constituencies together; older women voters and core Democrats. They, not the much overblown independents, are the true ticket to the Democratic presidential nomination and beyond that the White House. The night got even worse for them. The big smile on Clinton’s face told why. It wasn’t a gloat, or and I told you so, the smile was a visceral and defiant expression of a rejuvenated and even more ready to do battle Clinton. The night sunk finally into the pits for the haters who had glibly and gloatingly assured one and all that Barack Obama would steamroll Clinton in New Hampshire and beyond.

Predicting inevitability is a terrible burden to dump on the shoulders of a novice presidential contender who is still at the very front of the learning curve on foreign and national domestic policy issues, talks of hope and change but is vague on just what that hope and change will be, and is still pounding out a program on health care, education, tax policy, not to mention trying to figure out what and how to get us out of Iraq.

The Hillary haters got another hard lesson in American realpolitik in New Hampshire. It’s risky, no dangerous, to predict a knockout of a seasoned political fighter before the first bell even sounds. That was pretty much what they did. But they forgot many things about Clinton and the campaign. Obama had won a grand total of one state, Iowa, and even that was less than met the eye. Iowa is a mildly Democratic leaning state, with a strong independent, even contrarian tradition among many voters.

Nominations, let alone presidential contests, are seldom won based on a candidate’s showing in one state, or even a handful of early primary states. There have been countless examples in recent presidential campaigns where a candidate has won big in some states, and then lost the nomination. One example is Jesse Jackson. He, not Obama, has won more state primaries than any other black presidential candidate in 1988. Yet, Jackson’s candidacy ultimately floundered over the course of a long and grueling campaign. New Hampshire, not Iowa, was the first true primary state where the popular vote, party loyalties, and a candidate’s campaign savvy can be measured and tested.

Clinton knows what Obama has discovered, and her legion of loathers are to blind to see, and that's that elections are won not in early popularity polls, but in tough, gritty work in the state party caucuses, recruiting crack field organizers, and dedicated volunteers. Voters elect presidents that they feel will do three things: bring stability, strength, and experience to the top spot.

In every poll, and that includes the ones that have shown Obama gaping Clinton in popularity and likeability, voters give her top marks on experience and strength (They still give Obama short shrift on both.) That's another way of saying that they don't want someone in the White House that will stumble and bumble on policy issues. Bush was elected and re-elected precisely because voters got conned into thinking that they were putting a guy in and back in the White House who was tough and experienced and would not fall on his face on policy issues. They were terribly wrong. Core Democrats won’t make that mistake again.

Then there's the issue of constituency strength, or more particularly, who can do the best job in identifying where their strength is and corralling it. The 2008 presidential race will come down to a showdown in Florida, several of the key Western states, and the ability to unhinge one or two Southern states out of the GOP orbit. Victories in these states can seal the White House for the Democrats. Democrats won none of them in 2000 and 2004. The key to snaring those states require a big turnout from core Democrats, women, Latinos and blacks. Clinton divvies up the black vote with Obama and beats him handily with older women, core Democrats, and Latinos in those states.

Obama did well enough in New Hampshire. He handily won the independent vote and the youth vote (although they voted in far less numbers than expected, and that’s not a good sign either for the candidate that banks on riding the crest of young voters to the nomination). But it’s Democrats, lots of them, that seal nominations and potentially elect presidents. New Hampshire taught the Hillary haters that, and in the process tarnished the myth of Obama inevitability. It was truly a richly deserved bad night for Hillary haters in New Hampshire.

Results now in from New Hampshire indicate that we don’t actually know anything. We, and by “we” I mean pundits and analyzers, will examine and explain if the polls were wrong because of statistically flawed models, or if people lied to pollsters, or if maybe people in New Hampshire just like messing with our minds and the oxymoron of conventional wisdom. However, the bottom line is that the pundits got it wrong—way wrong.

Hillary’s obit was written. McCain’s epitaph was already carved in the headstone. Will anyone pay a price for our collective errors? Of course not. There is no accountability. Like fortune-tellers on the cover of the Enquirer, we only boast of our hits and bury our misses.

I for one will not explain it all away. I’ll own up to getting it wrong. I’ll pay the price, and give myself a time out. I promise to write nothing between right now 10:30 PM Tuesday and 8 AM tomorrow.

I'm not sure if it's appropriate to call a formerly "inevitable" candidate's surprise victory an "upset," but however you describe it, Hillary Clinton's remarkable (apparent) victory in New Hampshire is stunning. In a matter of days, she has gone from front-runner to has-been to front-runner again.

Credit the tears.

According to the AP's New Hampshire exit-polling, "nearly half of women voters favored Clinton, while Obama got only about a third." That's amazing, seeing how women broke strongly for Obama in Iowa, and were breaking for him in New Hampshire, too, according to pre-primary polls. So what happened?

We'll never know for sure, but I suspect the crying game had a lot to do with bringing out the girlfriend vote. That, and John Edwards provided a huge assist by suggesting that Hillary's weepiness meant she wasn't strong enough for the presidency. Suddenly Clinton became a sympathetic figure, the victim of sexist innuendo, and her campaign became a rallying point for women voters.

Which, if you want to be cynical about things, is probably exactly what the focus-group testing said would happen ...

Fox News just called the win for John McCain in New Hampshire, followed just now by the AP. It's still locked between Clinton with 38 percent and Obama with 36 percent.

The NY Times today has a brooding piece by Gloria Steinem about the challenges women face as leaders. Key line: "...sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was..."

She's right that there is no "nature" basis for saying that a woman can't lead as well as a man. But here's the sticky part: As many evolutionary biologists and neuroscientists have shown, nature has rigged it so that the human animal and many other animal tend to line up behind the aggressive, large male. This is an innate tendency of many species, even ours. As a 5'7", low-key person, I rue that some 6'2" guys will be seen as my superior by many people, even if I have better abilities in certain areas. But I accept reality, and adjust.

Yet these scientists' realism and empiricism gets blasted by ideologues on both the right and the left. If nature was misinterpreted in past times as a basis for wrongful actions, science has a duty to correct itself, and it eventually does, when left to itself. But if science corrects itself in a manner that offends the ideologues, they go nuts and they can destroy careers.

Science shows that the human brain responds to certain lower, reptilian, emotional signals, higher values be damned. A shorter, non-alpha-male guy like me has to figure out how to work this to my advantage. So does a female politician. Perhaps a woman who seeks office has to tap into a more maternal energy rather than attempting to impress them with her pantsuits and her maleness. I'm just saying....

I love this primary season. Yes, I know that much of the coverage is shallow and concentrates on the horse race aspect instead of substantive issues. Still, you have to love the energy and enthusiasm—particularly among the Democrats. They have run out of ballots in New Hampshire!

You also have to love how the experts and pundits have been so wrong so often. Obama caught fire against the expert opinion that had Hillary on a coronation tour. Giuliani held up longer than expected, despite having social policies anathema to social conservatives. And Huckabee is a legitimate phenom—coming from nowhere. (Who ever would think a governor from Hope Arkansas could be seriously considered for the presidency?)

McCain’s political obits seem to have been premature, and Romney, now marketing himself as an agent of change, for once is telling the truth. He is change personified.

The good news about America and the bad news are related. As the great writer Peter DeVries observed about a pretentious fellow, “He is profound only on the surface. Deep down he’s shallow.” We tend to make our choices based on strange and often shallow criteria. We vote not so much on ideology (this to me is good news, since it means we can come together from time to time). We vote on chemistry, on pheromones. We vote for people we find to be warm, attractive and want to see in our living rooms over the next 4 or 8 years.

Yes, the famous “beer test,” got George W elected over Gore. And yes, this is the open secret of Obama’s trouncing (so far) of Hillary. As shallow as this is as a process, the law of large numbers has a record of demonstrating a certain amount of collective wisdom.

As Bob Dole in the midst of his, well, doleful campaign remarked, “Charisma is unfair.” People are drawn to some candidates, repelled by others and worst of all indifferent to most. When Bill Clinton said yesterday that he “Couldn’t make Hillary taller, younger or male,” he was touching on this point. The idea of a woman is attractive to many, but Hillary as a presence, not so much.

Obama combines both the larger idea (We can get past race) with personal charisma. He is exciting young voters and re-awakening memories of Bobby Kennedy in oldsters. Today is about more than ideology or party. There is a movement and part of it is generational. The normal categories of union, socio-economic class and political philosophy are, for a day, being drowned by a new generation asserting its power. Against the common wisdom, the young people are showing up.

Huckabee too crosses lines of ideology and religion. He will appeal to groups far broader than just Evangelicals. People like him. He seems genuine. His gestures and tone are in sync with his words. He sounds more like Reagan than a Baptist preacher. Strangely, Obama sounds more like a Baptist preacher than Huckabee.

Neither Bob Dole nor Hillary, neither Romney nor Biden or Dodd could fake charisma. We are in the process of choosing a president, a companion and an ongoing presence in our lives. Sometimes we make strange and desperate choices—as if in a bar at 1:55 am—and wake up next to Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Most of the time we do the right thing and find the person who makes us feel good about our selves and our nation.

There are brilliant technocrats who cannot lead—Jimmy Carter comes to mind. There are also people with the magic to inspire us to be better than we think we can be. Reagan was surely one. Bill Clinton was nearly as gifted. And as for Obama? We’ll see.

Oh, how I love these ads for the No on Prop. 93 campaign -- not just because they smack down this bogus initiative, but because they also smack down its self-serving architects -- Fabian Nunez and Don Perata -- at the same time. And I love that no one can seem to say Nunez's name without uttering the phrase "Louis Vuitton."

These spots are a work of beauty, I tell you. The best few million Steve Poizner ever spent ...

A President Barack Obama will be the most scrutinized president since Abraham Lincoln. Ironically, the reason for this has less to do with race, though that will loom large in the lens of many, as it has to do with him. He’s lifted public passions and expectations to the clouds with his soaring rhetoric about hope and change; the man who can repair the shambles of Bush’s domestic and foreign policies.

That’s quite a cross for a Senator half way through his first term, with a wafer thin voting record, little experience with foreign policy matters, and whose still fuzzy, or to put it more charitably, with a still work-in-progress program on affordable health care, education, criminal justice system reform, tax policy, and the housing crisis. This is a crushing burden for a man who needs to pound consistency into his pronouncements that at times seem at odds with the other pronouncements he’s made on winding down the Iraq war and the terrorism fight.

The jury is still way out on just how many of those inflated expectations that he can fulfill. But there are glaring clues as to how much change he can or will even try to make. One is his record in the Illinois state legislature. At first glance, his votes and views during his days in the Illinois Senate on taxes, abortion, civil liberties, civil rights, law enforcement and on capital punishment give much comfort to those who crave for him to make the change he hints at. His stance on tax hikes marked him with some business and taxpayer interest groups as another tax and spend Democrat, and his views on social issues, marked him as an unabashed liberal.

He’s anything but that, and that’s another clue as to what to expect from an Obama White House. He’s a centrist Democrat who is fast replacing the Clinton’s with the Democratic Party’s shot callers as the consummate party insider; their new go to guy. Corporate donors, Hollywood moguls, and through the back door with him, fat cat lobbyists with the quiet nod of Democratic Party insiders have dumped millions into his campaign. They don’t shower money, favors, and promotional praise on a candidate unless they are comfortable that the candidate will not stray to far off the beaten political path and abandon the moderate, respectable approach to policy making.

In the White House, Obama will move cautiously and do everything he can to ensure that the tag “liberal” won’t be slapped on him. The majority of Congressional Democrats and Republicans are centrist to conservative to even ultra-conservative. They would instantly draw their line in the sand against him if he makes a quick push for big tax hikes for education and health care to a push for a quick withdrawal from Iraq which Obama does not favor.

He will do everything he can to escape the fate that befell Bill Clinton the instant he touched a toe in the White House. Republicans waged a gutter wallowing personal and political stealth, and at times, open war against him and his policies, and Clinton made no pretense of being a liberal Democrat. Their attack arsenal included everything from personal slander to stonewalling his judicial appointments and his stab at health care reform. That forced Clinton to tip toe even further to the right on the death penalty, beefing up police power, gay rights, welfare reform, and reining in bloated military spending, while assuring that the Democratic Party would not pander to minorities and the poor.

Obama’s pro choice and abortion rights defense in the Illinois legislature earned him a perfect rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council. And he was a major backer of legislation limiting police interrogations and requiring police to keep racial stats on unwarranted traffic stops, and he supported strict gun control. These are three hyper sensitive issues for conservatives. If Obama puts White House muscle into big reform fights on these issues, he will draw instant fire from right to life groups nationally, police unions, and the NRA.

It’s not likely he’ll risk that, it’s not his style anyway. He got high marks from Illinois Senate Republicans precisely for his willingness to horse trade, deal make, and compromise on the touchiest of issues for conservatives. They praised him as a flexible politician and consensus builder who listened to the views of his Republican opponents.

American politics demands that, especially of moderate Democrats. With Obama, corporations and lobbyists will be even more hawk like in guarding the legislative door to protect their interests, conservatives will tighter their perennial gate keeping against any effort to push abortion rights, and the defense industry will be even more vigilant against any effort at deep military slashes.

Any president that bucks these dominant special interests risks being branded anti-police, anti-business, pro abortion, pro labor, pro-gun control, and a dreaded tax and spend liberal Democrat. That fear more often than not translates into even the best intentioned president caving in when the battle is on for crucial political and social reforms. That will include even one who has made hope and change his ticket to the White House.

You may remember that French Prez Nicolas Sarkozy got a minute-divorce from his wife Cecelia (who didn't even vote for him) in mid-October, then two months later he was cavorting at Euro Disney with model/singer Carla Bruni. Now it seems the newsome twosome are headed down the aisle.

Here's the wager: The French president's term is five years. How many first ladies will France have in that time?

Meanwhile, conservative Muslim nations are asking Sarko to leave the canoodling at home. Apparently, they already raised ire among Egyptian officials for sharing a room on their pyramid sightseeing sojourn, and the Saudis have flat-out told Sarko to leave his honey at home.

All I can say about this video of Paulistinians chasing Sean Hannity is it reminds me of "28 Days Later"...

With each election we're told that the younger voters will become more and more powerful ("Rock the Vote," "Vote or Die," etc.). However, there's no guarantee that it will be deep, meaningful or informed, as in these two examples today:

From MTV News:

Like 25-year-old Cameron Audet, who showed up at the Huckaburger event hoping to meet, and be booted in the face by, Huckabee supporter Chuck Norris.

"I just came here to drink a beer and catch a roundhouse kick from Chuck," he laughed, bottle of Sam Adams in his hand. "Really, I've been getting calls from people asking for my vote, and I figured I couldn't vote for someone unless I got to sit down with them, so I came out for that too. But I also want people to go, 'Wow, how'd you get that black eye?' And I'd go, 'Oh, I got it from a Chuck Norris roundhouse.' "

And then this must-read from Slate on "Obama's Cocky Messianism":

After watching the speech, Matt Dibella, 20, from Nashua, said he was initially undecided. I asked who he’s for now. “Obama,” he said. “Because I just saw him.” That seems to be the way it works for many young people: To see him is to be for him.

Damn, that's sad...

Since Mitt Romney has developed verbal diarrhea with this phrase, claiming that a "Washington insider" can't change Washington, it's gotten me thinking. What is wrong with a president who knows the innermost workings of the Washington machine inside and out?

Think of it like this: Would a newspaper be best served by hiring a news-outsider as its editor? Or would it work better to have someone with experience, news judgment and libel knowledge, someone who knows how to work with reporters and publishers, someone who knows proper newspaper design and composing and can edit a page one story on the fly... well, you get the picture. You could bring in someone who, like Romney touts himself, is a good manager -- but they'd have to not only learn the business, but make the industry-wide connections that will enable them to be competitive, craft their dream newsroom team, etc.

So say that a "Washington outsider" is elected president. How much of his first term will be spent learning the intricate inner workings of D.C.? A year? Two? Will he know whom to trust, and who's bad news? Will he lean too much on advisers to get him through the days?

Because the much-hailed notion of Washington reform brings many a maverick to Capitol Hill -- where they learn how the town works before learning how to best fix the problems. Should such a newbie really start out in the Oval Office?

It's amazing what some university researchers think needs further examination. I can understand San Diego State examining obvious implications of college drinking, what with them having so many guineau pigs on campus, but shame on the University of Michigan researchers who got involved.

In the latest episode in the sordid, public spectacle that is Britney Spears' life, do we have the latest instance of celebrity justice -- Los Angeles style?

According to the Daily News' Greg Hernandez, the Friday-night standoff began when Spears "refused to turn over one of her sons to ex-husband Kevin Federline's bodyguards when her court-monitored visitation was over." The result was a three-hour standoff, which ended with Spears being taken away in ambulance to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

Now, do most Angelenos -- when refusing to honor a court order and entering into a hold-off with cops -- end up in Cedars Sinai? Or county jail?

Meanwhile, the biggest victims in all this, of course, are Spears' kids, whose lives know no semblance of normalcy. Imagine being picked up by dad's "bodyguards," while mom gets dragged away by the fire department, with paparazzi surrounding you -- and you're two years old.

Somehow I can't imagine these boys' fame or wealth provides much consolation. These poor children have a mother and a father, but -- best as I can tell -- not one parent. How incredibly sad.

Following up on my suggestion of 11 days ago, the San Francisco police are trying to take a look at the tiger-attack victims' cell phones. And wouldn't you know it, attorney-to-the-shameless Mark Geragos won't let them. Go figure.

I stand by my prediction of 12-27: These kids were trying to get on "Jackass," or at least YouTube, and Tatiana upset their plans. The proof, I suspect, is on those cell phones ...

Meanwhile, Geragos, when he's not suing the zoo, is also representing the family of Nataline Sarkisyan, the Northridge girl who died when her insurance company refused to pay for a liver transplant. Says Geragos, "If you're driving a car and you have an accident and you kill someone, you could be charged with murder. Why wouldn't the same happen with insurance companies?"

It's a strong-sounding argument, but seeing that Geragos spends his time trying to help actual killers (e.g. Scott Peterson) try to evade justice, he's the hardly the one to now be calling for the death penalty for an HMO.

Heres a question for Gergaos to ponder:

If you're driving a car and you have an accident and you kill someone, you could be charged with murder. Why shouldn't the same happen to men who kill their wives and unborn children?

... for Hillary Clinton, the subject of Earl's lamentation below. Earl would have us believe that poor Hillary is targeted by a "media driven vendetta" that is "unprecedented." Oh please.

Look, I make no apologies for the smears on Hillary, or on anyone else. But it is pathetic when the Clintons -- who have singularly perfected the politics of personal destruction -- or their supporters whine about dirty tricks. And Earl's attempt to pin any and all attacks on Barack Obama as the handiwork of "the Fox News Network, talk shock jocks, New York Times neo-liberal, Wall St. Journal neo-con columnists, and Christian Evangelical politicos" is either naive or selective.

Because if you want to know the real source of most anti-Obama dirt-digging these days, look no further than the Clinton campaign. Remember what the Clintonistas did to all of Bill's ex-girlfriends/victims -- these people can play just as nastily as anyone else in the game, and do.

The folks at Green Mountain Politics, aka Monday Morning Clacker, have been reporting on the New Hampshire primary from a home base in Manchester, N.H., since October '06. Today they have up this disquieting video (to quote the Concord Monitor's description of Romney!) of folks pulling out McCain signs and replacing them with Romney ones -- as a couple of news cameras watch. GMP believes the girl in the video is a Romney staffer.

Barack Obama Exposed! This provocative, better to say inflammatory, headline screamed from the website and a handful of other websites virtually from the moment that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama announced his “dream campaign” for presidency on the steps of the State Capitol at Springfield, Illinois last February. The website promised to reveal the “truth” about Obama, from his alleged role in corruption scandals to doubletalk on the issues. This was rightly laughed off as a typical smear and slander hit by one of the pack of ultra-conservative hit squads. The squad consists of the Fox News Network, talk shock jocks, New York Times neo-liberal, Wall St. Journal neo-con columnists, and Christian Evangelical politicos. In this case, the squad member doing the Obama hit was Human Events, a fringe, ultraconservative outfit.

The laughter at the Human Events attack was before Obama’s smash win in Iowa. That instantly marked him as the potential Democrat’s presidential go-to guy. It also set off alarm bells and whistles among the hit squads. With the exception of Human Event’s website, they have rapped Obama with the most tepid criticism or kept hands off.

There are two reasons. One is Hillary Clinton. The media driven vendetta against her has been unprecedented. It has matched, and at times exceeded, even the worst of the hit attacks on hubby, Bill. The thousands of Stop Hillary websites that sprouted up piled shrill personal attack on shrill attack on her. The second reason is the sneaky and sometimes open smugly expressed belief that an African-American had about as much chance of bagging the White House as a Martian. Legions of white voters in Iowa, one of the whitest, and most rural states, donned their color neutral lens and bought Obama’s much touted pitch that he’s a change agent and can repair the shambles reverse of Bush’s domestic and foreign policies shattered that belief.

Obama well knows the history of dirty political tricks against Democrats, especially liberals, black and women Democrats. If his surge becomes a tidal wave, the hit squads will load up on him as they have on countless others. It’s nasty and brutal, but sadly, it’s what passes for politics American style.

Seriously -- I just counted. And at times it was utterly shameless:

MR. GIULIANI: I think what the president had in mind is that at the core of leadership is knowing what you believe, standing for something. Ronald Reagan was my hero in that respect. I wrote about it in my book "Leadership."

...

MR. GIULIANI: What do I stand for? I laid out 12 commitments to the American people. I wrote them out. The first one is the most important -- keeping this country on offense in the Islamic terrorist war against us. The rest of them lay out what I believe this country has to do over the next four years. That would be my guidepost. If I'm elected president, I'll put that card on my desk, and every day I will try to accomplish it -- end illegal immigration, solve health care through private options, reduce taxes, reduce the size of government on the civilian side, expand the military, appoint strict constructionist judges. These will be the beliefs that I have, the way that Ronald Reagan got elected to increase the size of the military, to reduce taxes.

...

MR. GIULIANI: Charlie, that's the reason why you lay out the things that you believe in. There are beliefs that you have that you're not going to vary from, no matter what the winds of change bring about. There are some that you are going to change. Look at Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan had three prime goals: to increase the size of the military to win the cold war, to reduce taxes, and to reduce the deficit. He accomplished two of the three. The third one he wasn't able to accomplish, probably because the first two, in his view, were more important.

So you can't accomplish every single thing that you want. Over a period of time, your views on things are going to change. But if your essential philosophy stays the same, the way it did with Ronald Reagan, the way it did with our great president, that's what leadership is about.

...

MR. GIULIANI: You know, Ronald Reagan --

...

MR. GIULIANI: Charlie, if Ronald Reagan were here, who we all invoke, he would grab the microphone, say it's my microphone, I paid for it. And Ronald Reagan did amnesty. He actually did amnesty.

Ah, but nobody invokes him quite as much as you, Rudy!!

ROMNEY: Hahahahaa!! Bwahahahaa!! Money can't buy you everything, can it, baby? Neither can the way-too-early, rather unwise endorsement from National Review.

HUCKABEE: He won big. I had hoped he wouldn't become "the evangelical pick," because the GOP candidate needs to be a lot more than that. (And when I read that he signed a 1988 full-page USA Today ad saying that "a wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband," I wanted to scream.) I have a feeling that his foot-in-mouth syndrome will catch up to him soon, whether it's claiming that he spoke to John Bolton about foreign policy when Bolton confirmed that they never did, claiming the country is being overrun by illegal Pakistanis, or ... well, the rest should be left to Vodkapundit, who put the hilarious smackdown on Iowa voters today.

THOMPSON: Is he still running?

MCCAIN: Bring on New Hampshire! (And to those hammering him on immigration, know that I support some kind of compromise legislation, so I'm not going to nix him for that.)

PAUL: I know, I know, the only reason you lost is because the man (aka media) is keeping you down and that you're so deeply misunderstood among all of the voters bending over a barrel for the establishment, yadda yadda YADDA YADDA YADAAAAAAA...

OBAMA: Yes, the guy's a good orator. Yes, it would be great to have an African-American president. But an Oprah endorsement does not a president make. I kept reading messages last night from liberals saying they had tears in their eyes from his speech, etc. Heck, I'd have tears of frustration from being THIS FAR into the process and STILL not knowing exactly what his policies are. Talk all you want about "change" -- but change to what?? So that's what Dems need to worry about. Obama, meanwhile, needs to worry about the Clinton Machine going into full -- and not pretty -- attack mode.

Democratic presidential candidate proclaimed to cheering supporters in Iowa. It’s time for change and Americans want that change. Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee proclaimed the same thing to his cheering supporters. It’s time for change and Americans hunger for that change. That was lesson number one in the smash victory of Obama and Huckabee. Iowans and Americans want, no crave, change. They are fed up with the lies, deceit, corruption, cronyism, politics for sale, war mongering, political paralysis and bungling and the economic wreckage wreaked by Bush, Congress, and legions of on the make politicians. Obama and Huckabee, though neither could hardly be considered maverick, establishment challenging elected officials, at the very least, they are energetic, fresh, new faces on the national scene and they have been savvy enough to figure out how to talk the talk of change, and for now that’s enough for packs of voters.

That's even truer with John Edwards. His populist laced pitch to end poverty, bolster unions, and his rail at corporate pillaging resonated with millions and it puts him right in the thick of the White House hunt.

The second lesson of Iowa is that money can’t always buy a political win. Mitt Romney outspent Huckabee by more than six to one in the state. It didn’t help. In fact, it hurt the money candidates. It reinforced the notion that politicians and their corporate backers spread enough cash around they can buy anything. That repels millions of Americans. They repeatedly say that money and corruption go hand in hand and are twin political evils. Americans say that’s exactly why the political system is so screwed up. They are sick of watching the parade of fat cat lobbyists and corporate bigwigs buy and sell politicians and elections, and then watch as those bought and paid for politicians give away the company store to those same interests when they torpedo affordable health care, erode labor protections, pour billions into bloated defense spending, and shove through economy draining tax cuts for the super rich and corporations. Obama and Huckabee appear to many to be the candidates that will reverse this.

Lesson number three of Iowa is that race didn’t matter most. Iowa is one of the whitest and most rural states in the nation. Yet, white voters were able to strap on color blind lens and punch the ticket for Obama. This was historic. It’s a good sign that many more whites than ever are willing to truly look past race, and back up the promise they repeatedly make to interviewers and pollsters (but don't always keep) and that's that they will vote competence and qualifications not race. That’s not smoking gun proof that race still doesn’t matter in politics but it’s a good sign that it may no longer be the thing that matters most with more and more white voters.

Lesson number four is that the national media’s shameful and disgraceful hatchet job on Hillary Clinton paid off, and paid off big. The hate Hillary vendetta deeply imprinted within far too many voters that Hillary is a classic political pandering, corporate shill, and that a vote for her is a vote for the status. This again reaffirmed the power and dominance of big media and its dangerous ability to shade, massage and manipulate public opinion to suit its ends.

Lesson number five of Iowa was that the Christian evangelists are far from dead in the political water. They are desperately looking for someone to energize and mobilize them. They found that someone in Huckabee. If aroused they still pack a wallop in key states and Huckabee may just be the one they’ll step up to the plate for.

The election is far from over. There are more primaries ahead for the candidates, and more tough battles for them to win them. A slip, a misstep, or a scandal could be fatal to the two front runners. But for now Huckabee and Obama are the ones to beat. Stay tuned.

Literally, actually. Yesterday I had lunch with Pakistani Consul General Syed Ibne Abbas. On the way out of the house, I grabbed a pair of Anne Klein python sandals -- with thick rubber bottoms and a patent footrest -- that I'd bought about five years ago at the Saks outlet yet hadn't worn in about three years. As I sat in Abbas' office, chatting about all the cool issues of the day, the consul general suddenly picks up his phone and calls in his secretary. She rushes in; he points to a small pile of blackish debris on his pristine beige carpet. With horror, I looked down at my shoes -- both soles were cracked and crumbling. With additional horror, I looked over my shoulder to see I'd left a trail of shoe bits through his corner office, down the hallway, all the way out the door of the consulate.

Then, as we walked out of the Westwood building toward a restaurant for lunch, my soles completely came off. Who knew rubber disintegrated? Especially on Saks-quality shoes? I know now... (Many thanks to everyone at the consulate for being so understanding in my sole-shattering moments!)

America sometimes seems to be ridiculous. We often take certain traditions and beliefs as if they were self-evidently sensible and the incarnation of political/cultural wisdom. This is what comes from living the unexamined political life.

However from Mexico, where I am writing this, our traditions don’t make quite as much sense—except one, and I’ll return to our virtue at the end. As I write this, the Iowa Caucuses are underway. All week I’ve been asked about them. Have you ever thought about the caucus system or tried to explain them to a Mexican, Canadian, German or Brit? I now have, and let me tell you that this is an absurd way to select the leader of the nation. Sometimes you have either to stand outside the process or try to look at it closely enough to explain it, to see just how deeply flawed the process is.

After explaining that Iowa is important, not because it is a unique reflection of American society or values, not because it has a political, religious and ethnic mix that mirrors the rest of our society, not that Iowans are uniquely interested in politics (15% of Iowans actually going to the caucuses would be amazing); Iowa is important only by tradition. It is a state that is famous for being famous—the kind of state that wouldn’t even get to be the center square on the political version of Hollywood Squares.

Some try to rationalize all the time and energy expended there, and Iowa’s ridiculous influence on presidential selection, as a kind of training ground—an audition for the candidates before the big time, a minor league where you can make mistakes and learn. This is a rationalization. The influence of Iowa is criminally disproportionate to anything intrinsic and actually alters both foreign and domestic policy. The prime example is ethanol and what it does to the corn market. Only McCain—of either party—has the guts to say ethanol is a bad idea (which it is, but that’s another column).

Promises are made in Iowa, some candidates are eliminated in Iowa and others boosted—all based on who shows up, which is based on who has a big machine for turn out and how cold it is that night. No, the polls are not open from 7 AM to 10 PM but the caucus doors are closed at 6:30 PM. So, it is the willing, the driven (in both senses) and those without long commutes who do the culling of the field. It’s pretty crazy. But you skip it at your peril, as Rudy Giuliani is likely to find out.

Frankly, after explaining the process, with the small number exerting such influence and extorting so many promises, I would council declaring war on Iowa. But we won’t—and more about that too, at the end.

Meanwhile the politicians are trying to make it hard for us to fall in love with any of them. Edwards runs on “Two Americas” from the largest mansion in his state, coifed in $200 haircuts. No, it’s not wrong morally, just dumb politically and we don’t need dumb. Hillary cries foul when criticized and has the most ruthless surrogates sticking her knives into Obama (Wolfson makes Carvel seems like St. Francis.) And Obama’s platform is essentially about excitement and a new generation, not substance.

On the Republican side, Romney is transparently willing to firmly hold any principle he thinks the Republican voters want. There is a great Groucho quote that sums him up, “These are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.” Huckabee is funny, charming, doesn’t believe in evolution and actually got laughs out of the press corps by saying he was too fine a person to run a negative ad against Romney and to prove it, he showed the ad. Cynical or dumb? What a choice. Giuliani is running as the security guy who didn’t move emergency response head quarters from the Twin Towers—even though they had been previously attacked. He didn’t protect anybody from anything, but he was personally courageous in walking through the rubble of 9-11. McCain is running as the straight-talker with defense bona fides. That he is older than Reagan at this stage, has had melanoma, is anti-choice and very pro-military seems to bother relatively few people. Even some liberals like him because he is plausibly honest. He and Rudy are effectively skipping Iowa, thus showing some courage and judgment. Fred Thompson cannot be said to be running at all—just possibly shambling.

Iowa is not the only crazy part of American money-driven politics. We are also dynastically driven. George W is president because his daddy was president. No one can doubt that. Hillary may get the nomination because she is married to a former president. Her experience is largely observational and her fame name driven. Rodham is nowhere to be seen. Clinton is the brand. This is nothing new in our presidential politics. From John Adams father to John Q. Adams son. From Benjamin Harrison to nephew William Henry Harrison (or is it the other way around?), from Teddy Roosevelt to Franklin Delano we have been nearly as royally dynastic as England and may be approaching Pakistan—where Benazir Bhutto was the leader because her father had been and her 19-year-old son is the leader because he is her son. He just changed his last name to his mother’s and grandfather’s. He is now a Bhutto.

Mitt Romney is following in his father George’s ambitious footsteps. Kennedys keep trying to create a presidential dynasty but seem to be under the Curse of the House of Atreus. We may believe we run a meritocracy, but family and money distort our vision and limit our choices.

And yet (here’s the good part, twice promised earlier), we do a pretty amazing job of being a nation, of accepting the social contract and abiding by the election results—even when the results do not appear to be strictly kosher. Democrats complained (and believed) the 2000 election was stolen in Florida. Republicans believed the 1960 election was stolen in Chicago. But this is not Kenya or Pakistan. There were no riots, no civil wars. We understood that the losers would not be exterminated and other elections would follow. Power transferred peacefully, if grudgingly. America held together. We will hold together again, despite our foolishness, occasional shallowness and the capricious nature of weather in Iowa, New Hampshire and on Election Day in November.

Is this any way to run a great nation? Probably not. But like the bumblebee that shouldn’t be able to fly, our imperfect democracy survives.

The scariest thing about no hope GOP presidential contender Ron Paul is not his fringe, odd ball racial views. It’s not that he polls in single digits in all national polls and has zilch of a chance to get the nomination. It’s not that at times the GOP candidates sound just as racially isolationist as he does. It’s certainly not that he will wow a national audience with his trademark shoot-from-the-lip zingers even if ABC and Fox recants in a moment of compassion and dumps him back in a seat in their January 6 televised GOP New Hampshire presidential debate.

The scariest thing about Paul is that even though only a few hard core Paul backers will waste a vote on him, millions more seem to agree that his off beat views, especially on race matters, make sense. They even stand logic as high as it get can go on its head to defend their leader against all comers. That’s especially true when it comes to Paul’s views on race and ethnic politics. That’s not a small point given the open but more often sneaky role that race and ethnicity will increasingly play in the presidential derby. Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson have pulled out all stops to woo and court blacks, Latinos and Asian voters. They have made poverty, affordable health care, immigration reform, and job protections the linchpins of their campaigns.

Paul and the GOP candidates have done just the opposite. They duck, dodge, and deny racial issues. The only departure from their racial blind eye is to fan anti-immigrant flames. Paul has gone one better. In an ad, he demanded that students from alleged terrorist countries should be denied visas into the U.S. Paul offered not a shred of proof that there are hordes of students pouring into America to commit terrorist acts. The ad was more than just a cheap ploy to fan terrorism fears. This reinforced the worst in racial and religious stereotyping and negative typecasting. The stereotype is that any one in America with a non-white face and is a Muslim is a terrorist.

Paul’s views are a corn ball blend of libertarianism, know-nothing Americanism, and ultra conservative laissez faire limited government. This marks him as a type A American political quirk.

Now there’s the fourth reason not to laugh at Paul. And this is really what makes him scary. There are apparently millions that don’t see a darn thing wrong with any of this and pillory anyone who does. They are even scarier than him. Maybe ABC and Fox should let Paul crash the New Hampshire debate. It’s always good to see an extremist publicly confirm just how scary he and those that cheer him on really are.

Some weeks ago former Bush political operative Karl Rove put it bluntly to Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama; win Iowa or lose the Democratic nomination. A month before Rove’s admonition, Obama’s wife, Michelle, told her hubby pretty much the same thing; win Iowa or lose the nomination. Obama moved fast to distance himself from his wife’s blanket assertion about Iowa. He assured that Iowa is only one state and that a loss there wouldn’t spell doom for his campaign. But even as he downplayed his wife’s remark, and was publicly mute about Rove’s Iowa rejoinder, he knew better.

In fact, virtually from the moment he stood on the steps of the state capitol building in Springfield, Illinois last February and announced the launch of his “Dream campaign” he knew that Iowa was big, very big, so big that he dumped more money into his campaign there, opened more field offices there than Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, and virtually camped out in the state. A win there certainly gives a candidate a rocket launch boost in public and party standing, much media attention, and potentially piles of campaign money. Iowa did much for underdog John Kerry and sunk frontrunner Howard Dean in 2004. Kerry won Iowa and bagged the nomination, and Dean bungled it, he quickly became a laughingstock and a bare campaign 2004 footnote.

An Iowa win won’t do that for Obama, but to put it bluntly it will give a hint whether he can get a majority or at least a significant percent of whites to vote for him. Iowa is one of the whitest and most rural states in the union. White voters make up more than ninety percent of the state’s voters.

That poses a possibility and a pitfall. He will have to convince the voters that he can deliver on his promises on health care, revving up the economy, labor protections, can wind down the Iraq War, and wage a tough war on terrorism. He then must hope and pray that enough of them buy his message, and not succumb to the dread voting booth conversion on Election Day. That is the penchant for white voters to swear to pollsters and interviewers that they are absolutely color-blind when it comes to black candidates, and that the only thing they judge them on is their record and qualifications. And then once in the quiet and very private confines of the voting booth, develop collective amnesia and vote for the white candidate.

Voting booth conversion has spelled doom for legions of black candidates that were thought to be shoo-in winners in head to head contests against white opponents, and then go down to crashing defeat on Election Day. Polls have shown that Obama will either win Iowa or make a big showing there, and the odds are good that in this case the polls are accurate. He is riding what appears to be a genuine crest of public goodwill, and mixed with his likeability, personal appeal, charisma, and media fawning, that should be enough to convince enough white Iowa voters that he is a legitimate change agent and can bring the directional shift that millions of American voters say they desperately crave away from Bush’s disastrous domestic and foreign policies.

But while Iowa is important for Obama, it’s also an aberration among the heartland states. It is moderately Democratic leaning, has a mild populist tradition, and voters are known to be independent on candidates and issues. These are the exact opposite traits of the other heartland states which are traditionalist, deeply conservative, and rock solid Republican. No white Democratic presidential candidate has managed to crack them in recent elections, and that includes Bill Clinton. He won not one heartland state in 1996.

These states are a far better gauge of whether Obama can really convince millions of white voters, especially white male voters, who still make up nearly forty percent of the country’s voters and have been the path to the White House for Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr. Clinton who slightly dented the GOP lock on the South had to deftly pirouette and convince the voters there that he would not pander to special interest i.e. minorities and women.

Even if Obama is able to speak the language of white voters in Iowa, and convince them that he's not a black presidential candidate, but a color neutral presidential candidate, that won’t lift the clouds of suspicion about him in the other heartland states. A win or a big showing in Iowa will give Obama’s dream campaign an adrenalin shot, and may convince more of the Democratic Party shot callers that he, not Hillary, is the party’s go to candidate. That won’t dispel the doubts of the mass of heartland voters that he's still a political question mark, or the deeper fear that he’s too liberal, inexperienced, and an African-American. Iowa is a test for Obama. It’s by no means the final one.

This in today's New York Post:

"Two brothers who were injured when a tiger attacked them at the San Francisco Zoo had slingshots on them at the time, a source said.

An empty vodka bottle was also found in a car used by Amritpal Dhaliwal, 19, and his brother, Kulbir, 23, on the day of the mauling, which left 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. dead, according to the source.

The discoveries could be an indication that the brothers may have taunted the 350-pound Siberian tiger before it leapt from its grotto."

Apparently those brothers haven't been cooperative with police, and haven't even talked to Sousa's dad. But they have hired Mark Geragos to sue the zoo -- even though both brothers are due in court on Jan. 15 for public intoxication and resisting arrest charges in a separate incident. If those brothers fired stuff at the tiger with a slingshot, taunted it while drunk, etc., then I hope Geragos is about as successful as he was defending Scott Peterson.