John Kerry endorsing Obama.
Late Update: Who will Ted Kennedy endorse?
Later Update: Watch the video of Kerry.
Remember the U.S. “benchmarks” for Iraq?
Now there’s a new catchphrase in town: “Iraqi solutions.”
I was going to write a post like this. But I’m glad someone else has done it better than I could (see this diary up at Daily Kos). In the wake of the stunning results out of New Hampshire on Tuesday night, I’ve gotten more emails than I care to admit claiming that the only reasonable explanation for the discrepancy between the polls and the results is that the voting machines were ‘hacked’.
There is so much screwed up about this reaction that it’s difficult to know what part of the perversity to grab on to. (For a discussion of the factual and logical errors behind the claims of hacking, see the post I linked to above.) First is the notion that public opinion surveys and even exit poll data is so reliable that any substantial discrepancy between those numbers and the official result is prima facie evidence of tampering. That is simply absurd.
There is also something perverse about the quick knee-jerk reaction to assume that any election that dramatically doesn’t go your way was stolen. It stems from the same fidelity to assumption and desire over fact that so many of us have excoriated in the present administration. There is a sullen childishness at work in this thinking that no robust political movement can ever be built on.
Now, before you write in, I too think that electronic voting machines with no paper trail are a big problem because they’re too insecure and they make confirmatory recounts impossible. But the possibility or danger of tampering is not a license to assume it or imagine it — in the absence of any evidence — any time the vote doesn’t go how we’d like.
I’m not sure I’m yet able to build up too big a head of steam about Mike Bloomberg’s ridiculous push to run for president this year. But please. Let’s not call it “Bloomberg for president movement.” I’m completely happy with him as my mayor. But to call yourself a ‘movement’ you at least need to go through the motions of hiring some astroturf groups to gin up some phony support.
Hugh Hewitt and Rick Santorum discuss how McCain is a phony conservative and Mitt Romney is still poised for victory.
Supporters of telecom immunity argue that the telecoms were doing their patriotic duty by caving to Administration requests for illegal wiretapping. That patriotism apparently has its limits: like when the government fails to pay the wiretapping phone bills.
Well, Tuesday night certainly didn’t turn out like we thought. So in today’s episode we take our stab at explaining what happened as well as expressing our complete bewilderment about what’s going on on the Republican side …
From Reuters:
Passing through a tiny “Door of Humility”, U.S. President George W. Bush made a pilgrimage to the traditional birthplace of Jesus on Thursday in the West Bank.
I’m probably not going to stun you by telling you that Karl Rove is using racial code words. But as long as we’re talking about Andrew Cuomo’s decision to stick his foot so far into his mouth that it’s coming out of his behind, you really must read Karl Rove’s piece on New Hampshire in today’s Journal oped page.
I’ll just pick out the highlights, but in the course of a single column Rove manages to flag Obama’s “trash talking”, “his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard”, and the alleged fact that “he is often lazy.”
It’s January. Obama’s five days as frontrunner are over, at least for the moment. So you can just imagine how dirty this is going to get.