What do do you when you’re a mainstream press reporter, and your narrative of doom and gloom in Iraq is made more laughable every day by General Petraeus and his new strategy? Well, you need a new narrative of course.
Via Greyhawk at The Mudville Gazette we just might be seeing the beginnings of that new narrative. Says Newsweek:
The Bush administration is starving for good news out of Iraq, and it may finally have some: new U.S. government statistics showing that violent attacks of all kinds are down to levels not seen since 2005. But until recently, the administration appears to have resisted acknowledging a key element of the new data, because it flies in the face of President George W. Bush’s ongoing rhetorical confrontation with Iran’s clerical regime.
Part of me wants to respond to this with a couple pictures of owls, one captioned ORLY? And another replying YARLY! But now, I will soldier on and give this a serious look.
Newsweek continues:
According to three senior U.S. officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, the decline in Iraq violence also includes a decrease in the number of attacks attributable to insurgents backed or armed by Iran. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell confirmed to NEWSWEEK that “there has indeed been a drop” in such attacks, but he added that “it’s not entirely clear what the reason for that is.”
Overall trends show a significant drop in violence over the last several months, according to previously unpublished military statistics obtained by NEWSWEEK. During a single week in mid-September, attacks in Iraq totaled about 900—down from about 1,700 a week in June. The number of attacks increased slightly in late September and early October during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. But according to the statistics, the just-ended Ramadan holiday was significantly less violent this year than in the previous two years.
I guess technically new reports of early October attacks would be “previously unpublished” because the dates in question would not have occurred previously, but let’s give NEWSWEEK a break. It sounds so much more interesting to refer to this research as the uncovering of “previously unpublished reports” than just saying “I went to a web page and looked up the new reports, then compared them with the old reports.”
It’s still a challenge though, when you’re faced with quotes like “murders in the area, which a year ago occurred more than 150 times each week, are down to an average of five a week,” to find a new narrative that serves the proper role of a Newsweek journalist, but Newsweek has found one. Seriously, this new narrative has all the check boxes filled in. Is something wrong? Is the Bush Administration responsible? Are the Neocons at the root it all? Undoubtedly when the truth about our inevitable victory in Iraq is being hidden by Bushie Neocons in order to further their plot to invade Iran and steal their oil, then the answer to all three is most assuredly yes.
Clearly for the last few years Newsweek, CNN, CBS, and all the rest have been dupes of Grandmaster Rove and his apprentices in the White House, reporting over and over about how “President Bush is stuck in this quagmire of an unpopular war,” while the administration clearly has been paying off former Republicans in deep cover to perpetuate this scam.
That, or we’re just winning and some desperate Bush haters posing as objective journalists are scrambling to find the dark cloud under the silver lining.
Consider this the baseline for Mike Huckabee’s Values Voter bounce, if any, as Rudy Giuliani falls back to Earth and the next round of the frontrunners’ sparring match makes ready to start.
I’m a pretty firm Fred Thompson supporter, and I hoped to see this surge of Giuliani’s taper off the same way Thompson’s sudden drop did, and it looks to me like that’s what’s happened, although with Giuliani with a long-term boost afterward. On October 5 it was Thompson 21, Giuliani 19, and now on October 21 it’s Thompson 21, Giuliani 24.
To me what should be interesting in the coming weeks is the effect of Mike Huckabee on the race. Between his favorable reviews in Washington this weekend, and the surge he seems likely to get from Sam Brownback’s supporters once the Senator pulls out of the race, I expect him to crack double digits.
As things stand now, Huckabee’s at eight percent according to Rasmussen, and isn’t even on the chart, but it seems to me that Rasmussen is going to have to start paying more attention to Huckabee now. John McCain is only at 11, putting him withing the MoE of Huckabee as it is.
It’s still a long race ahead. Between these top five candidates, 78% of the party is spoken for, leaving the undecideds and other candidate supporters with as much clout as the backers of either Giuliani or Thompson. It’s anybody’s race if these polls mean anything at all, and Huckabee’s probably going to make it all the messier before things shake out.
Oil just went over $90/barrel for the first time ever, and it’s not just because the dollar is down. According to Bloomberg, crude oil prices are up 35% this year in Euros as well.
This should be an opportunity for Republicans in most states, as well as nationally, to push for a tax cut on poor and middle class Americans.
Nationally we should repeal the federal gas tax of 18 cents per gallon. With the average price of gasoline in the US at $2.80 per gallon, this tax amounts to a 7% tax on the money all Americans, rich and poor, spend on the gasoline they need in their daily lives. Even those without cars of their own pay higher prices whenever they go shopping for food, clothing, or essentials, all of which must be shipped by truck.
In the states we should consider both repeals of state gas taxes (which in some states go over 30 cents per gallon) and exemptions of sales tax for gas (which itself threatens to go over 30 cents per gallon when gas exceeds $3.00/gallon in states with 8% sales tax).
All combined, this combination tax relief could save Americans seventy five cents on every gallon of gas. Now is the time to act to prevent this regressive taxation from putting any more strain on those Americans who can afford it least.
I thought I had it. When the final ball was rolling down… I thought I truly had it. Ugh.
I have the television on C-SPAN and muted, but I can see on screen that Speaker Pelosi is pointing to a graphic that attempts to rebut the charge that her S-CHIP plan would give aid to illegal aliens. Her visual aid claims that the plan gives “no federal funding to illegal aliens.”
That sounds nice until you realise that the S in S-CHIP stands for State, and that the wording of Ms. Pelosi’s graphic clearly allows for the states to shift state funds from Americans to illegal aliens, using the federal funds to make up the gap.
Dollars are fungible, and we all know it.
The voters of Johnnashville are having an election! All eleven voters will get to choose who the next mayor will be. With ten voters, it should be easy to determine who’s going to win right? Not exactly. It all depends on who’s on the ballot.
Because you see, Johnnashville is funny. The law actually requires that all voters vote for the candidate whose views most represent their own, and they are not allowed at all to consider electability. Failure to comply opens up a trap door leading to a pool of acid (with no saving throw), and nobody wants that.
Let’s consider one case a lot of expecting to happen. With two candidates on the ballot, candidates C and G, it’s expected that candidate G will squeak by on a 6-5 vote, snagging voters 1-6 while losing voters 7-11. Let’s write that down, the preferences of the voters:
- G < C
- G < C
- G < C
- G < C
- G < C
- G < C
- C < G
- C < G
- C < G
- C < G
- C < G
However candidate L has been making noises about running. That messes everything up; in that case, candidate C wins on a 5-4-2 vote:
- L < G < C
- L < G < C
- G < L < C
- G < L < C
- G < L < C
- G < L < C
- C < G < L
- C < G < L
- C < G < L
- C < G < L
- C < G < L
Looking at the preference chart, all the voters who hate candidate C shook their heads and sighed. “If only we could avoid this law where we have to vote our preferences!” they moaned, until one came up with an idea: “Let’s form a political party! That way we can beat C and L and win!”
Candidate L even upped the stakes: “Hey, that’s great! If you guys nominate one of these other guys”, pointing to candidates M and T, “then I won’t even run, and victory is assured!”
The low-digit voters of Johnnashville loved this idea, and immediately got to work planning their low digit primary. Candidates T, G, and M were on the ballot, and the winner was… G?
- L < M < T < G < C
- L < T < M < G < C
- G < T < M < L < C
- G < T < M < L < C
- G < M < T < L < C
- G < M < T < L < C
Realizing that they were doomed, the finger pointing began. “One and two, it’s all your fault! You people need to get right in the head and not vote L! And L, you need to not run because we all hate C!” But one and two countered with just as much anger: “It’s not our fault that’s how the system works! You guys need to get over G because he just can’t win!”
Three through six then got red in the face “You people, one and two, you need to break the law and vote tacticially in the general! The fact that you won’t shows you secretly WANT C to win anyway!” One and two countered, spittle flying, “You all need to vote tactically in the primary so we can band together in the general! If anyone wants C to win, it is you!”
Then they all thought in unison: “If only we could unite behind M or T, because together we all prefer either of them to C, and know that’s the only way to win. Curse this system that doesn’t let us vote tactically in the primary or the general election! Why on why can’t we follow the advice of our town’s namesake?”
If the iPod Death Clock is to be believed, I have 449 days until I need to have a replacement lined up for my iPod Nano. I hope that’s a conservative estimate, because I’ve beeen poking around and I’m having a hard time finding a non-Apple player that plays AAC.
Why not just buy Apple again? I don’t want to. Apple is at that stage of the iPod’s life that they still have market power, but they know it’s about to dwindle, so they’re starting to tighten the grip just like Grand Moff Tarkin, squeezing out every last dollar they can by taking control of the user as tightly as they can. And I’m just not interested in being completely locked down, thank you.
Larry Craig now claims he was entrapped into making moves that signaled his interest in anonymous gay sex in an airport bathroom.
The man has as many lies for what happened that day, as he has lies for when he will leave office, it seems.
Five days ago I hoped that Fred Thompson’s precipitous drop in the Rasmussen tracking poll was a trough, and it looks like it was. However Thompson’s recovery has not come at the expense of Rudy Giuliani’s surge.
Based on my crude eyeballing of the trends, lacking any of the in-depth data I’m sure Rasmussen subscribers get, I have to susepct that McCain and Romney briefly benefited from voters shifting from Thompson and Giuliani, but then Thompson rebounded after the debate, while Giuliani took off with some previously undecided voters.
It makes me wonder if the leading issues here are fears of Hillary Clinton combined with the belief that Rudy Giuliani is best equipped to defeat her in the general election, rather than Republicans actually picking a candidate they want, because except for the latest fundraising news, I don’t understand what could be driving this trend.
And of course, all this could be just rationalized nonsense derived from noise in a public opinion poll.
It’s not often that California has a race for conservative Republicans to get excited about, not when the statewide elections are dominated by Democrats in LA County and the SF Bay Area, and local elections are boring thanks to the lockdown gerrymander in place here.
But with Eric Egland stepping up fundraising for his challenge to Rep. John Doolittle in the Republican primary, we now have a race to watch. So here’s a look at California’s District Four, as background information to tell us what we call can expect from this part of the state.
Geographically, District four is a large district in the far northeast corner of the state. It is a relatively un-gerrymandered district, containing all of Modoc, Lassen, Plumas, Sierra, Nevada, Placer, and El Dorado counties, as well as as portions of Butte and Sacramento counties. This is mostly undeveloped country, looking far more like Oregon or Nevada than anything most are used to seeing in California. It borders Reno and Lake Tahoe in Nevada, and some national forests in Oregon.
Here are some vote percentages for this district that speak volumes:
| Race | Republican | Democratic | Libertarian | Green |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| House 2006 | John Doolittle 49.1% | Charlie Brown 45.9% | Dan Warren 5.0% | – |
| Governor 2006 | Arnold Schwarzenegger 72.2% | Phil Angelides 22.8% | Art Olivier 1.1% | Peter Camejo 2.6% |
| Senator 2006 | Dick Mountjoy 50.2% | Dianne Feinstein 44.3% | Michael S. Metti 1.9% | Todd Chretien 1.4% |
| House 2004 | John Doolittle 65.4% | David I. Winters 34.6% | – | – |
| President 2004 | George W. Bush 61.3% | John Kerry 37.4% | Michael Badnarik 0.4% | David Cobb 0.3% |
| Senate 2004 | Bill Jones 55.6% | Barbara Boxer 40.1% | Jim Gray 1.7% | Don Grundmann 0.7% |
| House 2002 | John Doolittle 64.8% | Mark Norbert 31.9% | Allen Roberts 3.2% | – |
| Governor 2002 | Bill Simon 58.5% | Gray Davis 30.6% | Gary Copeland 2.1% | Peter Camejo 5.6% |
Yes, those third parties are capable of making a difference in this district, as seen by the defections from Doolittle versus other Republicans. That’s in part because the district contains part of the not-so-sovereign State of Jefferson, a long time home of libertarian activism.
However as seen by other races, especially in 2004, this district is capable of coming together when it is motivated for the right Republican.
In addition, that cuts both ways. Democrat Charlie Brown also has to watch his back for Libertarian Dan Warren if he runs again, because Warren runs as sort of a fusion Green/California Libertarian: anti-war, anti-illegal immigration, anti-tax, anti-global warming, pro-public financing of elections, all while quoting Ronald Reagan at every opportunity.
But Doolittle’s support is fading, that much is clear, even as support for other Republicans remains. Of all the races above, only Doolittle in 2006 failed to crack 50%, and Charlie Brown in that year was the only Democrat to get within 5 points of the Republican (in a district Doolittle previously won by 33 and 31 points, Schwarzenegger and Simon won by 50 and 28 points, and Bush took by 24 points.
This is Republican country, but it’s not Doolittle country anymore. In a Presidential year, in this district, we should get our pick of Republicans, and that’s why California Republicans need Eric Egland to be our standard bearer in this district come next November, or we risk losing a seat that’s ours by all rights.