Marginal Utility

by Ken Houghton

And I guess that applies to James Wolcott and I as well.

Have Sarah Palin and George Jones ever been seen in the same place? And, collaterally, if 90% of life (or thereabouts) really is Just Showing Up, what does this say about the GOP vetting process?? (h/t Wonkette; headline NSFChildren). Or, as a certain NRO columnist would say:

For the rest of us, Ol' Possum got it closer with this one:

Labels: Politics, pop music, Republicans

by Ken Houghton

Unfortunate E-Mail Headline from The New Yorker's weekly update on items in their current issue:

Sarah Palin, the obesity epidemic.

Place hasn't been the same since Jay McInerney stopped working there. Or at least Terry McGarry.

Labels: Health Care, Politics

by Anonymous

As I write this, Stevens leads Begich in the race for Alaska senator. The race still hasn't been called, and in a small state in which half the population lives in one extremely red city, it may still flip. I couldn't find data about which precincts have already been counted.

BUT, the fact that Stevens is close at all made me wonder about the endogeneity of elections. Alaska represents something of an extreme case (as it does in most things): because of the time difference, national elections are often called by mid-afternoon local time. I wonder the extent to which Stevens' strong showing is a result of a significant number of Democrats staying home once they knew he [clarification: Obama!] had won and a significant number of Republicans turning out to prevent a Democrat sweep of both the white house and Congress.

Of course, it's another question altogether why so many Alaskan republicans, ostenstibly the party of "law-and-order" and "family values," would vote for a convicted felon. As a born-and-bred Alaskan, I have relatively little trouble telling plausible stories about this one. Alaskans fervently believe in their "frontier" image, and being skeptical of laws and judgments imposed on them by outsiders from the "lower 48" is part and parcel of this. After all, "lower 48" is both an observation about geography and an assessment of relative worth.

The other hypothesis is that Alaskans have grown giddy from being on the political map for a change, and it's completely clouded their judgment.

Labels: Alaska, Politics

by Ken Houghton

Labels: 2008, John McCain, Politics, Video

by Ken Houghton

No, not that one.

This one.

Jesse Walker (h/t Jim Henley), who can rationalize that Bob Barr was a good choice, is not happy:

But given the number of party activists who are wary of the former congressman, and given Barr's deficiencies on several issues, it would have made sense to round off the ticket with a more hardcore libertarian....Instead the delegates opted for another member of the party's conservative wing. Worse yet, the conservative they picked was Wayne Allyn Root, a man with the deportment of a Ronco pitchman with a squirrel in his pants.

They must think they're the Republican Party of eight years ago.

Labels: 2008, Columbia University, Politics

by Ken Houghton

As per the desires of the world, she attacks McCain without mentioning Obama:

"I believe saying no to the farm bill is saying no to rural America."

Bush and McCain both say the bill, which boosts farm subsidies and includes more money for food stamps, is fiscally irresponsible and too generous to wealthy corporate farmers.

"When Bear Stearns needed assistance, we stepped in with a $30 billion package. But when our farmers need help, all they get from Senator McCain and President Bush is a veto threat," Clinton said.

The $30 billion didn't help Bear Stearns (ask most of my former coworkers); it guarantees that the market remains stable while the Great Sucking Sound that is Bear fades.

And this is over the farm bill? The "Disgraceful" farm bill?

The bill includes the usual favors like the tax break for racehorse breeders pushed by Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader. But the greater and more embarrassing defect is that the bill perpetuates the old subsidies for agriculture at a time when the prices that farmers are getting for big row crops like corn, soybeans and wheat have never been better. Net farm income is up 50 percent [56% in the past two years, per the WSJ&,mdash;though it is on the Editorial page, and therefore needs a to be taken with a five-pound bag of salt].

The legislation preserves an indefensible program of direct payments amounting to about $5 billion a year that flow in good times and bad. It raises support levels for wheat and soybeans, while adding several new crops to the list in a way that will make it easier for farmers to raid the federal Treasury even when prices go up.

And this is, to be certain, a farm bill that targets the richest of the rich. From the WSJ:

A bigger scam is the new income limit to qualify for subsidies. Mr. Bush sought a $200,000 annual income cap, but Congress can't bring itself to go below $750,000. Even that is a farce, because it doesn't include loan programs and disaster payments, and it allows spouses to qualify for payments too. The White House and liberal reformers calculate that farm owners with clever accountants can have incomes of up to $2.5 million and still get a taxpayer handout.

I know Senior Managing Directors at Bear Stearns who didn't make $750K a year, let alone $2.5 million.

It's a good thing we have Barack Obama to speak against the bill, and for the "little people" who have financed his "grass roots" campaign.

Huh? Oh, wait.

"I applaud the Senate's passage today of the Farm Bill, which will provide America's hard-working farmers and ranchers with more support and more predictability."

"The bill places greater resources into renewable energy and conservation. And, during this time of rising food prices, the Farm Bill provides an additional $10 billion for critical nutrition programs. I am also pleased that the bill includes my proposal to help thousands of African-American farmers get their discrimination claims reviewed under the Pigford settlement."

(in best Emily Litella voice) Never mind.

Labels: 2008, Economics, Politics

by Tom Bozzo

That Obama's "bitter" remark is substantively wrong has evidently reached a height of liberal-opinion fashion. [*] I even agree that the partisan shift of the former Confederacy explains much of the Republican ascendancy. But would someone please then explain to me the ascendancy of God, guns, and gays politics? What do Karl Rove and minions not know that they think they know? Or, if it's just a new encoding of the "southern strategy"'s appeal to southern racism, why is it needed (or more effective)?


[*] I'd say "the," but Krugman's pronouncements are not so infallible when he's on the Clinton-v.-Obama beat.

Labels: ObamaNation, Politics

by Ken Houghton

But I can live with that, if Joe "I killed my intern and didn't get caught" Scarborough is calling this the standard:

Scarborough said: "You know Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it's a man, to be a real man." He added, "You get 150, you're a man, or a good woman," to which Geist replied, "Out of my president, I want a 150, at least." After guest Harold Ford Jr. said that Obama's bowling showed a "humble" and "human" side to him, Scarborough replied, "A very human side? A prissy side."

(via Dr. Black)

Labels: Journamalism, just life, Politics

by Ken Houghton

Here are some current members.

Click link here.

UPDATE: Oops. I see Dr. Black posted this Saturday night. So I'm not going to keep it embedded it here.

Labels: 2008, abject horror, Politics, Republican Party, Video

by Ken Houghton

Catching up from a week ago, this CSM story on the failure to achieve a global boycott of Myanmar/Burma dovetails into multiple issues. The CSM places an interesting emphasis on its story:

Who's buying? China, India, Singapore, and Thailand are scooping up Burma's stones. US first lady Laura Bush's efforts at a global boycott of Burma's gems seem to have done little to reduce China's appetite for Burmese jade to make trinkets and souvenirs to sell at the Summer Olympics.

At this recent auction, 281 foreigners attended, leaving behind much-needed foreign currency and generally turning the auction into a resounding success, according to the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Mrs. Bush – and human rights campaigners – would not be pleased.

The first lady has taken on the military regime in Burma (Myanmar), urging jewelers not to buy gems from a country where the undemocratic rulers and their cronies amass fortunes selling off the country's stones, as well as many of the county's other natural resources – such as minerals, timber, gold, oil, and gas – but keep Burma's citizens in abject poverty.

She has urged UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to act more forcibly on Burma and stood beside President Bush on several occasions recently as he announced the growing list of US sanctions on the country. And, on International Human Right's Day this past December, Mrs. Bush added her voice to those seeking a global boycott on gems from Burma.

"Consumers throughout the world should consider the implications of their purchase of Burmese gems," she said in a statement from the White House. "Every Burmese stone bought, cut, polished, and sold sustains an illegitimate, repressive regime."

Now we might just assume this is because the First Lady always talks about "women's and children's issues" (h/t Lance), but clearly the CSM believes that a lot of Laura Bush's political capital is centered on the issue. And since she's the smart one—the ex-librarian, not the failed businessman—and (as Brad DeLong noted) "even a weak president...is very powerful in foreign affairs," so her husband's popularity (or lack of same) shouldn't in itself have much of an effect. If Laura wants it done, and their marriage is the true partnership it is portrayed as being, then we should be able to assume that the aim of the United States is to limit such trade.*

And if we again stipulate that the United States is the one remaining superpower, then the Office of the President should be able to use its influence to keep countries from bidding. At least, our major trading partners, such as, say, "China, India, Singapore, and Thailand." After all, political capital is only useful if it can be used for the things about which a country cares, no?

At this January's auction in Rangoon, according to the New Light of Myanmar, 600 lots of jade were sold – a third more than at the last auction held in November. By some estimates, jade alone now accounts for about 10 percent of Burma's yearly export earnings.

Cutting off 10% of their export earnings should have a significant effect, no? Especially when most of that money is not getting to the people whose labor creates it, but rather to those who would control them.

Why haven't Western sanctions on Burma's gems – and the country's other products – been more effective, even after so many years?

"The only sanctions that would work would be Chinese," asserts Robert Rotberg, a professor of public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School. "The Chinese ... supply all the weapons and much of the investment [to Burma]."

But the Chinese are our friends, and 10% of Myanmar's exports probably doesn't cover the profits from the sales of China-made New York Yankee apparel. There must be something else...

"The role of gems is not huge ... compared with oil and gas, and opium smuggling," he says. Overall, China, Thailand, and India reportedly spend about $2 billion a year here on electricity, natural gas, oil and timber.

"China is the culprit here," explains Thai social critic and frequent Burma commentator Acharn Sulak Sivaraksa. "Burma is supported by China. End of story. We need to liberate that country not only from its own military junta but also from the imperialist Chinese."

The limits to growth are the limits to negotiating, or the use of political, power. And even if Operation Iraqi Liberation** had worked, $2 billion a year of valuable imports apparently buys a blind eye or two, even from our alleged allies.

Someone needs to figure out what the Elasticity of Demand for political capital is.

*This is also consistent with George W. Bush's public statements, example cited here. (Sarcastically, but it's my post, so what would you expect?)
**Tom Friedman originally liked this, until the fortieth or fiftieth e-mail suggesting it clued him in to the acronym. I'm thinking about calling it Operation Exogenous Democracy, but fear that the people in Oxford might object.

Labels: Democracy, FDI, Income Inequality, Politics

by Ken Houghton

The last time around, this may have worked. Can doubling-down pay off?

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman and Colorado Governor Roy Romer and former Republican National Committee Chairman and Bush White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman were the guests at Thursday's Monitor breakfast. Mr. Romer is chairman and Mr. Mehlman is a trustee of Strong American Schools. The organization describes itself as a nonpartisan campaign to make education a top national priority by making the subject a centerpiece of the 2008 election.

"This nation has been drifting back in comparison with the rest of the world for the last 20 years in education," Romer said. After serving as governor, Romer was superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District from 2001 to 2006. "Where we used to be No. 1 or No. 2, we are now, if you compare 15-year-olds," 21st among 30 industrial nations in science, he said. "The rest of the world has advanced very rapidly in education, and we have been making some advances but not nearly at the same pace," he argued.

Mehlman gets the history correct: the rise of the high school graduate, the G. I. Bill (which more than met the political goal of keeping the post-war unemployment rate lower), and the subsequent National Defense Education Act pretty much cover the pre-OPEC productivity booms. Romer pere puts it in terms even Congress can understand:

The US would profit economically if our educational system improved, Romer said. "There is an entirely different economic future that we are going to be living in and education is the key to that future," he said. If US students improved to where their test scores matched the midpoint of European student achievement, the US gross domestic product would grow an additional 5 percent over the next 30 years, producing trillions of dollars of added resources for the US, he said.

Is it more important than improving the health care system? I don't know, but it may just help to do that too.

More tomorrow.

Labels: education, human capital, Politics

by Ken Houghton

UPDATE: De Long responds, accurately, here. Though I'm still inclined to believe that, at best, the U.S. fallout would have been even worse, his scenario is at least plausible from the Cuban perspective.

Catching up on my skimming (in preparation for having a while with time for reading), I find this Adam Clymer op-ed on the Panama Canal:

THIRTY years ago tomorrow, the conservative movement lost a major battle on the way to winning a larger war. On March 16, 1978, the Senate approved — 68 to 32, with just a single vote to spare — the first of two treaties that transferred the Panama Canal to Panama. Conservatives lamented the result, saying it threatened national security and might put the canal in Communist hands.

But losing the canal led to important victories for conservatives. The transfer of the canal to Panama provided the margins for defeat of five Democratic senators in 1978 and 1980, enough to give Ronald Reagan a Republican majority when he took office in 1981. That majority was essential to Mr. Reagan’s legislative successes.

And I am reminded once again of Cuba, and Brad De Long's reply to Jessica (#5) when she noted that "once that die was cast, I don't see where Castro ever had a chance to switch directions without risking not only US invasion, but vindictive and brutal US invasion":

As to when Fidel could have switched to a eurocommunist or social-democratic model without immediately losing his head--well, 1968 with Dubcek, or 1975 with Sadat, or anytime in the Carter administration, certainly.

The man who barely had enough political capital to get rid of an aging, increasingly less valuable resource does not seem likely to have been able to repel the Cuban Mafia's Calls for a Takeover.

Labels: Brad DeLong, History, Politics

by Ken Houghton

In the Christian Science Monitor's piece today, "How will the Iraq war end?"* comes the most peculiar comment:

At least one US ally in the region remains grateful he is gone.

"Any Iraq will be better than Iraq under Saddam, because the Iraq of Saddam had the ability to threaten Israel," says Shlomo Brom, a senior fellow at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies and former head of the Israeli Defense Force's Strategic Planning Division.

Besides the revelation that we have more than one ally in the region, I was amazed to discover that Iraq was a direct threat to Israel. Indeed, the Holt, Rinehart, Winston world atlas confirms that "the ability to threaten Israel" would depend on going through Syria and/or Jordan.

The piece ends with this cheery thought:

Taking all these factors into account, success in Iraq at this point might be defined as a unified country that does not offer sanctuary to Islamic militants and is governed by a stable regime that is not under the influence of a hostile foreign power, such as Iran.

That, for example, is the bottom line of Andrew Krepinevich, a veteran Army planner and now president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Reaching this relatively stable state could take another three to five years – if it can be reached at all. Even then, the US might need to keep a substantial number of troops in the country – to keep Iraq's internal factions from going after one another and to protect the nation from its external enemies.

"A reasonable outcome would find something like 30,000 to 40,000 troops in Iraq for 25 to 50 years," says Dr. Krepinevich in an e-mail.

After all, the US has deployed troops in Germany and Japan for 63 years, and Korea for 57. Might Iraq, in the end, require a commensurate commitment?

I'm certain the troops in those three states are constantly on alert status as well. But at least Dr. Krepinevich is more optimistic than John McCain.

*Didn't it end on May 1st of 2003, with the "Mission Accomplished"/"I don't know how to wear a flight suit" speech? I'm so confused...

Labels: Iraq, Israel, Politics

by Ken Houghton

UPDATE: I see Tom embedded the video. (It really was a year or two in blogsphere time.) So I'm just going to repeat his link to the text here.)

So, several hours later (probably a year or two in blogsphere time), I finally find the actual text of the speech described below. And the "not only wrong but divisive" come very early in a very long speech* that continues as:

1. Obama makes clear his long-term relationship with Rev. Wright**:
   

   In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
   
   "People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."
   
   That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
   
   And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

   
   
2. He follows immediately by affirming his relationship with the Reverend
   

   I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
   
   These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

   
   
3. He gives the speech I was hoping for, and that was only hinted at in the NYT article:
   

   But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
   
   The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American....
   
   [W]e do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
   
   Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
   
   Legalized discrimination...meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
   
   A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

   
   
4. And puts it into a context:
   

   What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
   
   But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations....Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

   
   
5. Where I might wish he had cited white examples—G-d knows there are enough of them—he stays the course of discussing Black churches:
   

   And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.*** That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
   
   In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community.

The rest is a run-of-the-mill speech, with a large dosage of "a pox on both houses" and closing with the Obligatory Anecdote. But it was in its essence the same speech he gave on the 14th, not a repudiation of the man who has been central to his life for those twenty years.

*William Jefferson Clinton haters: if and when this man is inaugurated, go back to expecting 90+ minute States of the Union, as if that were a bad thing.
**Note to Tom: this is how I "professed to know" their relationship
***Most of the extant research shows, in fact, that whites go to Church for social networking reasons, while black church attendees are there to worship: different reasons lead to different structures.

Labels: 2008, ObamaNation, Politics, Religion

by Ken Houghton

UPDATE II: This post is superseded, to a large extent, by this one.

UPDATE: d at LG&M notes that it has begun.

After twenty years of attendance:

For nearly a week, Mr. Obama has struggled to distance himself from a series of controversial statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who characterized the United States as fundamentally racist and the government as corrupt and murderous. Mr. Obama concluded over the weekend that he had failed to resolve the questions, aides said, and told advisers he wanted to address the firestorm in a speech.

In his address here, delivered in an auditorium to an audience of about 200 elected officials and members of the clergy, Mr. Obama disavowed the remarks by Mr. Wright as “not only wrong, but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity.” But he did not wholly distance himself from his pastor or the church, Trinity United Church of Christ, on Chicago’s South Side.

Credit where due, he spreads the blame around:

“For some, nagging questions remain,” Mr. Obama said. “Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.” [emphasis mine]

Up until now, the case could be reasonably made—and it has been—that Obama was being singled-out. That no one knows or cares who Hillary's or John McCain's pastor is, and that this was either equivalent to a witch hunt or trivial at best.

And the case was correct, not matter how much Bill Kristol and/or Newsmax wanted it not to be.

And how the original response was enough. (Also correct.)

Now, Obama has declared that he spent twenty years going to a church and a pastor when he "strongly disagree[d] with with many of his political views."

I suspect what comes next will be ugly; uglier than it would have been, even, if Obama had stood up and supported his friend of twenty years instead of declaring him "not only wrong, but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity."

Obama still has his faith:

“It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years,” Mr. Obama said. “Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy — particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.”

but he just cast its rock adrift. And, unlike Samantha Power (with due respects, such as they are, to Brad De Long and Mark Lynch), Wright is not likely to be able to return after the general election.

And we have gone from being able to say that Obama was being singled out to making it legitimate to ask, "Why didn't you find another church, one more in keeping with what you say your beliefs are?"

It's a question that should never have been fair game, but Obama himself has made it so.

Labels: 2008, ObamaNation, Politics

by Ken Houghton

One of the points that kept suspicions high was that "Client #9" was named, but Clients 1-8 and 10 (including, it is strongly rumored, a prominent New York area judge) remained anonymous.

In short, it was (and is) difficult to believe that the most prominent name involved was Eliot Effing Spitzer.

But Client #6 has been revealed, and he's none other than Price William's godfather, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor. (Can you tell he's English?) And "Kristen" is much nicer about Spitzer than this:

Prostitute Zana Brazdek, then 26, described the 56-year-old Grosvenor as dull and demanding.

"I thought his conversation was quite boring," the Lithuanian woman told the newspaper. "He talked about the Army, going to Afghanistan and bin Laden. And he wanted unprotected sex. I refused."

Married, with four children.

Two down, eight to go.

Labels: homeland security, just life, Politics, Sex

by Ken Houghton

Wonder why Obama's Republican support came early? Wolcott lays it out.

Go. Read.

Tom Says: What Wayne Barrett (in the Village Voice article linked by Wolcott) shows is much more a concentration of fire on the front-runner than any outpouring of support for Obama from public wingnuts. That is, Obama is shown at most being damned with faint praise in the context of wingnut attacks on HRC. What I've looked at but Barrett seemingly hasn't is the excess of Republican crossover voting over 2004, which strongly suggests that the outpouring of Republican support for HRC is a phenomenon of McCain's locking up the Republican nomination.

Labels: 2008, ObamaNation, Politics

by Tom Bozzo

The Mississippi primary exit polling indicated that 13% of the voters on the Democratic side self-identified as Republicans, and they went 3-1 for Clinton. This is an even bigger swing than we previously saw in Ohio and Texas, and just about the mirror of the Obama crossover vote in the earlier contests. As I am wont to do, I checked the 2004 Democratic primary exit poll which showed only 6% of the participants to be Republicans.

There is a bit of evidence for strategic voting in the Mississippi results. With the other side done, the poll now includes a breakout of results by opinion of McCain. Of the respondents, 13% had a "strongly favorable" view of McCain and they voted for Hillary 70-25. Oh, to have a crosstab by party ID! Clinton also led among the additional 25% with "somewhat favorable" views of McCain 50-43. She also carried the "conservative" vote (24%) 53-43.

This leads me to amend my previous post by asking, "Republicans overwhelmingly for Hillary, are you totally f***ing nuts?"

Labels: Politics

by Ken Houghton

Ignore the Federal/State issues (fair enough), buy into the strange delusion that this is a "follow the money" issue, and ignore Larry Ribstein's points entirely (especially the ones here).

As of Monday, the New York State Governor will be a blind, black man.

Take that, Geraldine?

Labels: homeland security, Politics, Sex, the rule of law

by Ken Houghton

I get e-mail:

My Friends,

Last week, I was humbled to win the support of 1,191 delegates and officially become the presumptive nominee of our party. It was a great honor to also receive the endorsement of President Bush and visit the Republican National Committee to begin laying out our strategy for victory in November. We face a tough challenge, but I'm confident that together we will win....

The Democratic nominee will increase the size of the federal government, raise your taxes, and withdraw our armed forces from Iraq's front lines based on an arbitrary timetable. My commitment will be to cut taxes, reduce the size of government and bring the war to the swiftest possible conclusion without leaving the region in chaos, or an enemy emboldened to attack us elsewhere with weapons we dare not allow them to possess. [boldface his]

He's got my vote with that strategy. I just want to know: will he do it with mirrors (1980), or writing $200 million a day in hot checks (1988)?

Labels: 2008, Politics, Republican Party