PSoTD

Okay, so the other Dem candidates hit her a little harder than they have been last night. Good for them. So the issue of her possible "unelectability" came up as a theme last night. Good. I see that Scarecrow at Firedoglake argues that going negative on Hillary is a mistake. I disagree.

Here's why - that issue is one of the biggest issues about her right now, and it has to do with her history and her positions on recent events. That's all fair play, and open game. And frankly, if she can't do better than she did last night in the debate, then voters deserve to know that now, instead of September of 2008 in a debate against the Republican nominee.

Ignoring this issue doesn't help the Democrats. If she's going to succeed to being the nominee, it should be because she successfully refuted her opponents' efforts to define her, not because she was able to run out the clock. There's not going to be a "running out the clock" option in 2008, so the time to get this heavy lifting done is now.

I don't prefer Clinton as the candidate. Then again, I don't like the fact that there are so many candidates, or that the media primarily only gives attention to two of them, or that most of them seem pretty mediocre. But it is what it is. It's going to get negative for a few months until things play out, that's the reality. If Clinton can push forward through this, she'll have earned the nomination. If not, it should be a new race.

I wonder how much money this will generate for Iowa to make it worth being a butt of jokes?

The Iowa Department of Revenue is taxing jack-o'-lanterns this Halloween. The new department policy was implemented after officials decided that pumpkins are used primarily for Halloween decorations, not food, and should be taxed, said Renee Mulvey, the department's spokeswoman.

"We made the change because we wanted the sales tax law to match what we thought the predominant use was," Mulvey said. "We thought the predominant use was for decorations or jack-o'-lanterns."

Previously, pumpkins had been considered an edible squash and exempted from the tax. The department ruled this year that pumpkins are taxable — with some exceptions — if they are advertised for use as jack-'o-lanterns or decorations.

Iowans planning to eat pumpkins can still get a tax exemption if they fill out a form.

There's a place down the street with me that has been selling pumpkins for Halloween, and they still probably have a couple of hundred sitting out. What do they - and everyone else with overstock - do with their pumpkins after Halloween? Is it garbage, or can they be used for something beneficial?

I wonder whatever happened to the concept that a candidate needed to look and act "Presidential". Oh, I know, all this time with the current White House resident has diminished our future preferences to "coherent".

If the old standard of looking and acting Presidential was in place (not that I recommend we go back to selection by statue bust), then it's pretty clear that Giuliani does not come close to measuring up. Whenever he gives one of those freaking no-blink stares into the camera it reminds me of a imitation of a psychotic Harold Lloyd just realizing he shit instead of farted in his pants. It's a VERY DISTURBING look.

Then there's the sourpuss who hates kids, puppies, candy, and the concept of friends.

Sometimes he looks like he's morphing into one of the characters from Hellraiser.

I always saw "looking Presidential" as a Republican Party obsession, which makes Giuliani's lead in the polls even more ironic. And as for acting Presidential? Giuliani hasn't shown any of that since he's been a candidate.

Banner days for bungling in the nation's capital!

FEMA tries to demonstrate their integrity with a fake news conference...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 2 official apologized yesterday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday in which FEMA employees posed as reporters while real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions.

"We are reviewing our press procedures and will make the changes necessary to ensure that all of our communications are straight forward and transparent," Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA's deputy administrator, said in a four-paragraph statement.

"We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment," Johnson said, a view repeated yesterday by press officers at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, who criticized the event.

FEMA announced the news conference at its Southwest Washington headquarters about 15 minutes before it was to begin Tuesday afternoon, making it unlikely that reporters could attend. Instead, FEMA set up a telephone conference line so reporters could listen.

In the briefing, parts of which were televised live by cable news channels, Johnson stood behind a lectern, called on questioners who did not disclose that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his agency's response to this week's California wildfires was far better than its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

"It was absolutely a bad decision. I regret it happened. Certainly . . . I should have stopped it," said John P. "Pat" Philbin, FEMA's director of external affairs. "I hope readers understand we're working very hard to establish credibility and integrity, and I would hope this does not undermine it."

Don't sweat it, "Pat". You have no credibility to undermine.

Meanwhile in Congress, John Conyers' House Judiciary Committee badly botches their whistleblower operation (and likely destroys a few careers)...

This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an effort to collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department. The U.S. attorney firings scandal had shown that much was amiss in the Department, and with the danger of retaliation very real, the committee had set up a form on the committee's website for people to blow the whistle privately about abuses there. Although the panel said it would not accept anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity would be held in the "strictest confidence."

But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the "to:" field — instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or "bcc:".

It's enough to turn you into a libertarian! Or an anarchist. Can I get a refund?

Americans are eagerly anticipating the end of an error!

In addition to Pozono's backwardsbush.com, there are sites like www.bushslastday.com, which sells its own countdown clocks, 01-20-09 golf balls, drinking glasses with 01-20-09 on the front and "But Who's Counting" on the back, and Fire Bush hot sauce (use liberally, its instructions say).

"It's a cottage industry," said Bryan Coonerty, the Democratic vice mayor of Santa Cruz, Calif., and vice president of Bookshop Santa Cruz, which sells anti-Bush items on nationalnightmare.com. "It's the cornerstone of our business. We've sold between 35,000 to 40,000 clocks."

But Coonerty and others realize that their Bush-bashing business is approaching its term-limited end. Ponzo said that he's frequently asked by customers whether their clocks will chime or make noise when they count down to zero.

"No," he tells them. "You get a new president."

Coonerty said 01-20-09 will be a mixed blessing for him and his business.

"Personally, I'll be ecstatic not having Bush in the White House, but our business will fall off a bit," he said. "It's a price I'm willing to pay."

Why doesn't one of the major polling companies ask this political question:

Which do you think has been George W. Bush's personal impact over the past 7 years on the chances of the Republican Party winning Presidential and Congressional elections in the next ten years?

1 - He has hurt the Republican Party's chances
2 - He has had no impact on the Republican Party's chances
3 - He has helped the Republican Party's chances

I'd particularly like to see the Republican poll result of that.

It didn't take long for somebody to make a little game out of the incident.

I caught the last 5-7 minutes of Stephen Colbert on Meet the Press yesterday, and I hate to admit - I really hate to admit - I'm disappointed by what I saw. I'm sure that could be turned around in later events - this is comedy by campaign, and it's probably by the campaign and not by the event that this should be judged by. Since it is a campaign, the nuance of humor might stand out a lot more after 2 or 3 similar events, especially for someone as slow as I might have been on a Sunday morning after our daughter's sleepover. What disappointed me didn't have to do with the jokes or the throw-off lines, it was the premise - the premise that Tim Russert should be included as one in on the "inside joke" of making fun of Presidential campaign politics. I just completely disagree, I think Tim Russert is a good sized component of the kind of thing that makes Presidential politics a joke, and he belongs on the outside, receiving the zings, and not on the inside, setting them up.

Yeah, I'm no fan of Tim Russert. Probably it taints my view of the humor.

Now there's still room for hope, I suppose, and I will hold onto that for now. That hope is that by using Russert so early in this "campaign", he plans to make fun of the experience after this point. We shall see. Here is, from what I saw, the best point made by Colbert on MTP:

MR. RUSSERT: But you would like to be a cult leader?

MR. COLBERT: I, I did, at the time, want to be a cult leader. I find that being a TV pundit is, is much more powerful, and you have to be less reliable.

I honestly hadn't considered the guy at all before now. Conventional Wisdom didn't give him a chance. But if Dodd's gonna act on his principles instead of "triangulating", that will certainly differentiate him from HRC and Obama.

Maybe if we bump Dodd up the polls the rest of the field will get the message. I'm giving him a serious look. Action talks ...

The S-CHIP veto override fails.

A furious campaign to persuade Republicans to change their votes on the $35 billion expansion of the government children's health insurance program fell 13 votes short today when the House failed to overturn President Bush's veto of the legislation.

...

The unsuccessful veto override immediately triggered calls for the next round of negotiations to decide the fate of the 10-year-old children's health program. The vetoed bill would have expanded the $5 billion-a-year program by an average of $7 billion a year over the next five years, for total funding of $60 billion over the period. That would be enough to boost enrollment to 10 million, up from 6.6 million, and dramatically reduce the number of uninsured children in the country, currently about 9 million, supporters say.

Bush has indicated he is not willing to accept a bill that goes beyond his initial $5 billion expansion over five years. The president and GOP leaders say the vetoed measure would have pushed millions of children already covered by private health insurance into publicly financed health care. They say it would also create an "entitlement" whose costs would outstrip the money raised by the bill's 61-cent increase in the federal tobacco tax.

Having stood with Bush against a bill that had overwhelming public support, GOP leaders urged Democrats to come to the table with a scaled-down version. But Democratic leaders were leaning toward a new version that would give Republicans face-saving alterations but no substantive change.

Pelosi said she is determined to provide the resources to ensure that 10 million more children would be added to the rolls.

That's right, Nancy. This fight better just be starting.

If the leaders of the Democratic Congress can't find a way around Bush on a bill that 75 percent of Americans support, then it's time for new Democratic leaders.

Why is it that we don't have parties that specifically orient themselves to socioeconomics? For example, why isn't there a "Middle Class Party" that would push candidates that support policies that cater particularly to the interests and desires of the middle class? If it's really about branding of candidates and positions, why not stake out the largest segment of the voting marketplace?

Not surprisingly, those with experience say no.

I have yet to speak with an experienced, successful interrogator who advocates mistreating their subjects. As personally satisfying as it may seem to beat the hell out of detainees, it doesn't usually get you what you want -- accurate, reliable information that you can trust and upon which you can act.

In Vietnam the Provincial Interrogation Centers routinely used skilled Vietnamese interrogators to obtain accurate, detailed information on the organization, personnel and structure of the Vietnamese Communist Infrastructure -- exactly the type of information Guantanamo should be producing by the pound on radical Islamic terrorism.

I think we make a major strategic error when we support such would-be macho men as we see in this administration showing their supposed toughness by advocating torture, when we know it doesn't work.

- Retired Army Lt. Col. Terry Daly, a veteran of military intelligence operations in the Vietnam War.

Andrew summarizes neatly ...

Or to put it another way: President Bush has a weak person's idea of what strength is; and a dumb person's idea of what intelligence is.

Be prepared when the right wingers lie out their butts in the coming health care wars. This FactCheck.org article is a must read.

President Bush gave a false description of proposed legislation to expand the 10-year-old federal program to provide health insurance for children in low-income working families.

He said it "would result" in covering children in families with incomes up to $83,000 per year, which isn't true. The Urban Institute estimated that 70 percent of children who would gain coverage are in families earning half that amount, and the bill contains no requirement for setting income eligibility caps any higher than what's in the current law. (The compromise bill that was released a few days after Bush's press conference does rescind an administration effort to block New York state from increasing its eligibility cap to that level.)

He also said the program was "meant to help poor children," when in fact Congress stated that it was meant to expand insurance coverage beyond the poor and to cover millions of "low-income" children who were well above the poverty line. Under current law most states cover children at twice or even three times the official poverty level.

The president also says Congress' expansion is a step toward government-run health care for all. It's true that some children and families with private insurance are expected to shift to the government program. But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that such a shift is relatively low considering the number of uninsured these bills would reach.

Honestly, Idaho Republicans should be beyond incredibly embarrassed about the Larry Craig disaster - and getting angry about it. He shouldn't have any credibility left with them - he's been deceitful in this bathroom case ever since it came to public light. Didn't understand what he was doing when he plead guilty. Would quit if he wasn't cleared by the end of September. Why is anything that comes out of Larry Craig's mouth on this story believable at this time?

It's not. It's too late for Larry Craig to "clear his name", he sealed the deal when he plead guilty. His choice, his result.

I can envision a time when Idaho Republicans, no matter what office they may be running for, will run into chants of "Larry Craig" by the opposition whenever they say something unbelievable. Rather than clearing his name, Larry Craig is on the road of having his name clear a room.

Maybe it's time to drop out.

Sen. Joe Biden not only has his work cut out for him nationally as he seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, he also is way behind in Delaware, a poll of state Democrats shows.

A sampling of local voters for Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll shows that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is the choice of 41 percent of Delaware Democrats, with Biden second with 19 percent, just ahead of Sen. Barack Obama at 17 percent.

Biden's showing seems to indicate that Delaware Democrats think he can't win the nomination.

Only 4 percent of voters polled rated his prospects for capturing the nomination as “excellent,” and 50% thought his chances were “poor,” up from 39% in February.

And teachers' aides have to be able to deal with it without punching holes in their heads.

A fourth-grade teacher’s aide resigned after he was accused of trying to staple a piece of paper to a student’s forehead.

Plymouth school district Supt. John Hill would not identify the aide or the class at Jefferson Elementary School.

“We’re just sorry that it happened,” Hill said Wednesday night. “We don’t expect our people to behave in that manner. That person is no longer employed by the school corporation.”

Principal Bob Remenih said he could not comment on a student or personnel matter. But Natalie Wilson, the fourth-grader’s mother, told the South Bend Tribune that the principal called her shortly before her daughter got on the school bus Monday, more than three hours after the incident occurred.

“I should have been told immediately,” Wilson told the newspaper.

Wilson said her daughter told her she had picked up a Post-It note from the floor and stuck it to her forehead. The aide told her to remove the paper from her forehead or he would staple it there permanently. When the student failed to remove the paper, the aide approached her with a stapler and pushed it against her forehead, Wilson said.

I'm starting to think that newspapers need to put some sort of intelligence test as part of the comment process, something similar to the visual code that is sometimes required to be repeated to avoid comment spam. Maybe something like a picture of a cow, a horse, a pig, and a computer, with the question of "which item is not like the others?" It could prevent such brilliant comments that followed this story such as:

I do not agree with what the aide has done but why did the girl disobey in the first place? The same reason that all children do not obey adults anymore, there is NO DISCIPLINE. I have read about kids shooting, and not listening to authority. This morning I read about a kid pushing the principle...OH MY GOD, we would have got our butts beat by the principle then again by our parents when we got home. I definately do not think this guy should have done that but kids are little brats anymore, something needs done!!

and

Crybaby.

Next time use a nail gun.....

Dick Morris, Fear Peddler.

Honestly, do his relatives even admit they're related to him? Where does he go for Thanksgiving? Who would want such a national shame showing up at family celebrations?

Perhaps Dick Morris should be given an hour long program on a national broadcast network with no limitations on what he can speak about. It may be the only way we can unite our nation towards a future in which such disgusting human being practices are mocked and ignored.

Interesting read.

We have war criminals in the White House.

Crowds at antiwar rallies in Washington have dwindled even as U.S. opinion has turned against the war in Iraq, as organizers feud and participants question the effectiveness of the street protests.

Honestly, I think the protest "industry" could use a big shakeup and heavy dose of new creativity. The idea that people need to band together in one place, at one time, to listen to speakers say the same thing we're all thinking, seems to be one of diminishing returns. We're no longer looking for solidarity. We're looking for results. Do protest gatherings stop the war? Not yet...

The idea that we have to do "something" is only the first step toward doing something "effective". We've passed the "doing something" stage. It's time to be effective.

This infusion of creativity ought to focus on punishment and reward in the economic sense, and ought to collaborate with the power of the individual at their home location. Make it easy for protesters to protest. Make it easy for protesters to share their message.

Remember peace signs, both the circular and the two finger salute? Remember how they became symbols for ending the Vietnam War, that when somebody wore it, you knew where they stood, and it wasn't about winning or losing the war, but about seeking peace? Where is that symbolism now? Where is the new imagery for seeking the greater good by the protest community, imagery that can be worn and waved and commercialized and spread throughout the country in ways far more effective than protest days?

We have to get our heads around to win the peace here in the United States. We can fight a war we can't possibly finish with anything clearly defined as "victory", or we can find the peace in our nation, and by example, return to sharing that knowledge with other nations, including Iraq.

Wouldn't that make a great song title?

Why would a group pay Ann Coulter $30,000 for a luncheon speech to less than 500 people? You could probably buy each person 3 or more of her books instead, and they'd all at least have some campfire starter.

Why would anyone trust anyone in that group to ever make any economic decisions in government? They clearly do not know how to maximize the use of a dollar.