Horrors

Hillary Clinton teared up for about a quarter of a second. In related news, Ragnarok begins.

Is it just me, or did she look terrific? Everybody is screaming about it, and when I saw the video, I was astonished at a) how minor it was and b) how moving her little talk was.

If the thing is allowed to stand on its own, I think it helps her. Of course, after it gets through the media meat grinder, and they all tell us what we're supposed to think of it, it probably won't.

Here it is:

And here is her response to the national freakout:

(Let me know if you can see these videos. I can't. I'm cut off from youtube at work, and I'm taking it on faith that the html I've pasted will show the video.)

I can't take the stress

Some Brand-Name Bloggers Say Stress of Posting Is a Hazard to Their Health

Really.

Sitting around in your pajamas all day and getting cranky is pure hell.

Really.

When you're in a hole, keep digging

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (CNN) -- Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination was her own fault, the country's president, Pervez Musharraf, said in an interview on U.S. television.

"For standing up outside the car, I think it was she to blame alone -- nobody else. Responsibility is hers," the former general told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday.

No real surprise

What do you expect when the dollar keeps falling, the deficit keeps climbing, loan companies go bankrupt, and your pouring every cent into a foreign country?

In fact, it's just LIKE the housing bubble - they think it can just go on forever, now matter how foolish and irresponsible they are.

But remember - according to Bush, the economy is doing just great.

UK standard of living rises above that in America for the first time in a century

DAILY MAIL - For the first time in more than 100 years, British living standards have risen above those of Americans, a report has declared.

Increasing incomes, longer holidays and "free" healthcare have all contributed to making Britons better off than our friends across the Atlantic, according to the respected Oxford Economics consultancy.

GOP Candidates: Compare and contrast

Mitt Romney: Plastic.



Fred Thompson: Plastic that's been microwaved too long.

Huck the hillbilly

Here's Keith Olbermann and E.J. Dionne on Huckabee, and his opposition in his own party.

What a clown

Rudy Giuliani, when asked about his poor performance in Iowa:

"None of this worries me - Sept. 11, there were times I was worried."

Rudy is so out of touch that he doesn't realize that it's reached the point of pure parody.

Repeat the script. Rinse. Repeat.

From CBS:

Blog: Huckabee Win Helps Giuliani

A perfect example of a cardinal principle: WHATEVER the news is, it always reinforces the Media Villager's pre-conceived script. The Washington Press likes Giuliani: Therefore, a win for Huckabee is good news for Giuliani.

You won't see a thing on CBS claiming that a win for Huckabee is - well - good new for Huckabee.

Chris Dodd for Majority Leader

Now that he's withdrawn from the race.

From Senator Dodd:

I count the past year of campaigning for the presidency as one of the most rewarding in a career of public service.

Unfortunately, I am withdrawing from that campaign tonight.

But there is no reason to hang our heads this evening -- only the opportunity to look towards a continuation of the work we started last January: ending the Iraq War, restoring the Constitution, and putting a Democrat in the White House.

I know a lot of you came to this email list through a shared desire to return our nation to one that respects the rule of law, and I want to make one thing clear to all of you:

The fight to restore the Constitution and stop retroactive immunity does not end with my Presidential campaign. FISA will come back in a few weeks and my pledge to filibuster ANY bill that includes retroactive immunity remains operative.

You've been an invaluable ally in the battle, and I'll need you to stick by my side despite tonight's caucus results.

So, one more time, thank you for all of your efforts throughout the course of this entire Presidential campaign.

We made a real difference in shaping the debate, and we'll continue to do so in the coming days, weeks and years.

I'll never forget you, and what we've fought for, together, over the past year.

Chris Dodd

Obama and Huckabee

Ok - so Chris Dodd didn't win the Democratic primary. But the Republican primary was won by Some Nutjob, so that makes me 1 for 2.

Edwards came in third, which disappointed me. I thought he might pull it out in the last few days.

None of it is really a surprise. Unfortunately, I think Obama is the weakest national candidate - not because he's black, but because he's green - and he has really turned me off with his hard rightward veer in the closing days of the campaign.

Huckabee, of course, is a thoroughly insane clown, who (I hope) has no chance in a national election. I'm not all upset about it, because the Republican voters had no one BUT thoroughly insane clowns, and chose the one who speaks well. But the Beltway Villagers really hate Huckabee's guts - yes, he's repulsive, but he's not their sort of repulsive. I do expect them to jump all over him like rats on Willard's evil boss.

On to New Hampshire, and may the least repulsive win.

UPDATE: Edwards appears to have come in second, not third. The Mighty Hillary is third.

Mellencamp rallies 'God's Country' to Edwards' side

Rock star John Mellencamp performs during the last stop of Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards 36-hour bus tour around Iowa on Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2008 in West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

by John Chase

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa—Presidential hopeful John Edwards capped a 36-hour, 16-stop tour of Iowa on Wednesday by declaring at a rock concert that he was the only candidate who could fight corporate greed and represent the common American worker.

"Is this heaven?" "No - it's Iowa."

I herewith make an official prediction: either Obama, Hillary or Edwards will win Iowa.

Or not.

As for the Republican Primary, I can predict with confidence that it will be won by Some Nutjob.

Iowa has never been regarded as being as important as New Hampshire. Possibly because it's a thoroughly Byzantine system of choosing candidates; possibly just because it's Iowa.

Below is a listing of past winners of the Iowa Caucus (the first one was in 1972). You will note that Iowa doesn't seem to predict much in an open field. The winner of Iowa went on to win the primary when the primary was nearly a formality: an incumbent or a sitting Vice-President. The only exception is John Kerry's win just four years ago.

January 24, 1972 - "Uncommitted" (36%) and Edmund Muskie (36%). George McGovern was the nominee.
January 19, 1976 - "Uncommitted" (37%). Jimmy Carter - who was second behind the uncommitted vote (28%) - was the nominee
January 21, 1980 - Jimmy Carter (59%). Carter was the incumbent.
February 20, 1984 - Walter Mondale (49%). Mondale was veep.
February 8, 1988 - Richard Gephardt (31%). Who? Mike Dukakis (Who? again) was the nominee. He came in third.
February 10, 1992 - Tom Harkin (76%). Harkin is from Iowa, which explains it. But Clinton - the nominee, of course - came in fourth, with only 3% of the vote.
February 12, 1996 - Bill Clinton (unopposed).
January 24, 2000 - Al Gore (63%). Gore was veep.
January 19, 2004 - John Kerry (38%). Kerry won Iowa, and was indeed the nominee. Edwards was 2nd, with 32%.

I don't see much evidence that Iowa means much in a wide-open field, although I fear that that may have changed with the hyper-acceleration of the media cycle and that Kerry is evidence of that. I hope not. I hate the idea that Presidential candidates are pretty much chosen by two of the smallest states in the union.

Ok - I changed my mind. I predict that Chris Dodd will win Iowa.

Some Nutjob is still front-runner for the Republicans, though.

Criminal probe begun

The Justice Depatment is beginning a criminal inquiry into the destruction of the CIA tapes.

And the New York Times has an Op-Ed by the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission charging that the CIA obstructed their investigation. And their very clear concise timeline (at the link) leaves little doubt of it.

MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation....

What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.

Obstructing an investigation into a terrorist attack? An investigation whose purpose is to prevent future attacks?

Do they still have hanging offenses? Because if anything still constitutes a hanging offense, that's got to be ONE, doesn't it?

The Bush Administration's 10 Stupidest Legal Arguments of 2007.

Kucinich backs Obama

Kucinich says that if he doesn't meet the 15% threshold, Iowans second vote should go to Obama.

That's a fairly huge thing, since Kucinich is almost certain not to meet the 15% threshold.

Personally, I would have thought that Kucinich was more of an Edwards kind of guy. Especially with Obama veering pretty damned far to the right in an attempt to win.

Breaking News: Romney flip flops. Water is wet.

JOHNSTON, Iowa (Reuters) - Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said on Tuesday the Bush administration mismanaged the Iraq war, distancing himself from his party's unpopular president two days before Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential contest.

Wasn't it just a a couple of weeks ago that Romney attacked Huckabee for criticizing Bush on Iraq.

"Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."

Good God.

Mike Huckabee is defending the fact that he was stone ignorant about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (which was all over the papers at the time) by comparing it to news about Britney Spears.

DES MOINES — Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee defended his failure to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran in early December, joking in an interview Monday that President Bush didn’t read intelligence reports for four years.

“The point I’m trying to make is that, on the campaign trail, nobody’s going to be able, if they’ve been campaigning as hard as we have been, to keep up with every single thing, from what happened to Britney last night to who won ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ ”

How can even a bare-footed hillbilly at a revival meeting vote for this clown?