Gallup has Hillary ahead

I wrote earlier today about a Zogby poll that showed Hillary behind all the major GOP challengers. Well, Gallup's poll today has Hillary beating Giuliani, McCain, Romney and Thompson. In the same poll, Obama beats Romney and Thompson, and basically ties Giuliani and McCain. Read More......

Huge hole in universe may be alternate universe

Ok, this is pretty cool. Though I think I may have seen this in a few Star Trek episodes (back away from the hole slowly, Mr. Sulu...) First, read this from Space.com from this summer, then read this from ITWire.com.

So if there's an alternate universe, does that mean there's an alternate Ann Coulter with (or without) a goatee? Read More......

About that Trent Lott rumor

There's a story out there in the blogosphere, by Big Head DC, a blog I don't remember ever hearing of until today - a blog that has had a credibility problem in the past - about why GOP Senator and former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott is resigning. Because of that blog's past credibility problem, I'm not going to repeat the rumor about Lott here. You can find it all over the Net, if you like, and the fact that it's everywhere at this point made me less worried about somehow covertly pushing the story by even mentioning it obliquely here.

I will say this. When we published the story about far-right GOP White House reporter Jeff Gannon (aka James Guckert) being a male hooker we took four full days to confirm the story before publishing what we had. And maybe Big Head DC did the same in verifying their story - though, a friend of mine, who prefers to be known as "the BluEyeJew," alerted me to the fact that the sole source quoted for the story is now saying the entire story is a lie and made up of "falsely pieced-together quotes that serve no purpose other than to sensationalize a completely fabricated scoop."

I just don't like publishing stories that are that serious without being damn sure of my sources, or at least damn sure about the source I'm linking to. Earlier this year when Joe.My.God broke the Matt Sanchez story (the GOP gay-porn star who used to be loved by Hannity and the rest until we found out that he was a gay-porn star), I didn't link to the story for days because I just wasn't convinced that the story was true. In the end, Joe was right, and kudos to him for that, and we did link eventually. But that doesn't change the fact that the evidence I was seeing when the story first came out just didn't convince me - it seemed to me that there were still some potential holes in the story, and that doubt was enough for me to give Sanchez the benefit of the doubt, until proven otherwise.

With the past credibility problem of the Trent Lott blogger today, and now the outright blanket denial from the sole source, the same logic applies. I'm just not convinced. I'd love to be convinced, believe me. And trust me, there have been rumors for years about Trent Lott. But until I hear more, you're not going to read about those rumors here. Read More......

Rudy GiuliRomney: I voted for McGovern but I WANTED to vote for Nixon

Are Republican primary voters really that dumb?

"I had traditionally been a Democrat," Giuliani told me in a recent interview in Las Vegas. "It was almost like a reflex mode. I actually remember saying to myself, 'If I was a person really deciding who should be president right now, I'd probably vote for Nixon, because I think the country would be safer with Nixon.'"

So does Giuliani think Republicans who want to vote for him should really vote for a Democrat? And more importantly, how low can Giuliani go in terms of flip-flopping on every major issue he's ever had an opinion on? Bonus question: Who has now renounced more life-long views, Giuliani or Romney? Read More......

New Poll: Hillary would lose to all major GOP candidates

Okay, that's scary. And it's a big change from the same poll this summer, that showed Hillary beating them. From Agence France-Presse:

In the new survey, Clinton trailed Senator John McCain 42 percent to 38 percent, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani by 43 percent to 40 percent and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney by 43 percent to 40 percent.

She also lagged behind former Arkansas Republican governor Mike Huckabee by 44 to 39 percent, and former Senator Fred Thompson by 44 to 40 percent in hypothetical general election matchups.

Clinton's top Democratic challengers Barack Obama and John Edwards however would still beat their hypothetical Republican rivals in potential 2008 contests.

In July, Clinton held a five point lead in the same poll over Giuliani, edged out McCain by two points and had a clear lead over other contenders.

A Rasmussen poll last week had Clinton also falling behind Giuliani in a hypothetical matchup of the November 2008 general election, and narrowly beaten by McCain.

An average of all previous similar polls gives Clinton a narrow lead over possible Republican candidates.

Then again, the GOP candidates have all been beating up on Hillary the past few weeks, whereas the Democrats are still focused on beating each other. That may be part of her drop in the polls, a result of the constant beating. Interesting to note that while Democrats are discussing issues, the Republicans are discussing Hillary. Will this be yet another election the Republicans try to win by never discussing the issues, but rather focusing on "the enemy"? Read More......

Cheney is heading to the hospital -- again

Atrial Fibrillation is the diagnosis according to MSNBC. But, who knows? The Bush/Cheney staff lie about everything else, why not Cheney's health? Like we're supposed to believe the guy even has a heart. Read More......

Marriott reportedly blocking AMERICAblog because of word "lesbian"

This is becoming a serious problem (and it's also quite an interesting national news story, for any reporters out there).

I've gotten reports over the years that our blog has been blocked in numerous locations around the country (O'Hare) and world (China) because we are, supposedly, a porn site. This has happened in numerous airports, to me and my readers, and the most recent report is from a Marriott hotel in Park Ridge, New Jersey. In that instance, the hotel computer in the business center reportedly blocked access to AMERICAblog, explaining that the site contained the word "lesbian." Andrew Sullivan's blog, which contained the word "gay," was not blocked, per my reader. (I also received a report the other day that a DOD computer was blocking AMERICAblog as well).

[Let's put aside for a moment that for years Marriott has had no problem selling porn to its hotel customers. Maybe they think we're competition.]

In some cases, I suspect that these Internet filters at workplaces may be blocking blogs in general by blocking the Google Blogger address (blogspot.com) that many blogs use. But in our case, I know for a fact that we're being banned by some of these filters because we report on gay issues - I personally witnessed one computer in an airport tell me that our site was a "porn" site and thus banned. Other than gay issues, what political issue do we write about that could be perceived as "porn"?

As an aside, I wonder to what degree these filters are still banning discussions of breast cancer (they have before) and other topics that should be totally acceptable at a Marriott or an airport. Or to what degree they're banning one political party more than the other? This is the kind of issue that our gay groups should be jumping on. It's the kind of issue that doesn't just affect our blog, it affects every Web site that every writes about gays and lesbians. And it does so in a way that most of will never even know that it's being done, and in a way that we can never even hope to resolve since the services are so veiled in how they do what they do, and since there are so many of them. Kind of begs for federal regulation to guarantee free speech.

It's also an issue that could adversely affect the discussion of Democratic politics online, to the extent that these companies have any political allegiances.

Democrats, are you listening? Read More......

Military goals aren't separate from political goals

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the U.S. effort in Iraq is not one of military and political goals. The military is *a tool* for US political objectives. A highly trained, extremely competent tool, but one that is not somehow independent of our overall political strategy.

So when the NY Times reports that "American military successes [are] outpacing political gains in Iraq," the real translation should be something like, "Despite tactical victories, US strategy continues to fail." It's not the kind of thing where if we kill enough bad guys, we win -- we're not fighting to topple a government, and we're not fighting to take over territory, we're trying to establish a political system wherein the major groups are satisfied enough that they don't want to kill each other en masse. There have been security improvements in Iraq in recent months (though it's all relative, of course); the key, though, is that those improvements have not led to any significant political reconciliation. If anything, the main parties are more intransigent than ever.

So here's the bottom line: If the whole point of our military presence in Iraq is to establish "breathing space" for political compromise to end the raging internal political conflict, and there is now more breathing space than there's been some time, and yet there's still no political movement by Iraqis themselves . . . why are we still there?

It's not to prevent genocide (which largely occurs outside of the ability of US forces to stop), and it's not to quash al Qaeda (whose Iraq contingent is apparently vanquished and whose important members are elsewhere), so again: why are we still there?

It's hurting our national security. It's distracting us from global terrorist groups. It's killing and maiming tens of thousands of Americans. And now the Bush administration says the major political goal of the past year (four years, really) is no longer an immediate priority.

Well then. Read More......

How can Bush negotiate Mid-East peace when he spends all his time negotiating between Rice and Cheney?

No wonder Bush's foreign policy is such a disaster. From an article in today's NY Times, it sounds like Bush spends an inordinate amount of time negotiating peace between his Vice President and his Secretary of State, with whom he has an "unusually tight bond." Read More......

Former Bush speechwriter, now Washington Post columnist, won't provide comments about criticism to Washington Post

This is fun on several levels. First, there is a major cat fight brewing among former Bush speech writers. Several of them are trashing Michael Gerson, who is now a columnist for the Washington Post. It's pretty ugly. But the Washington Post can't get its own columnist, Michael Gerson, to respond to the criticism:

In a review of Gerson's new book, "Heroic Conservatism," Frum offers several examples of what he terms the author's self-aggrandizement, saying that Gerson inflated his role in the development of the president's AIDS initiative in Africa and in writing a potential concession speech for George W. Bush on Election Day 2000.

Gerson, now a Washington Post columnist and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, did not respond to requests for comment.

Maybe the Washington Post can pay him to write a column about the mess. Read More......

FCC pro-consumer efforts for cable industry collapsing

And it sounds as though it's a Democrat that is at the center of the problem. With friends like this...

The five-member commission is set to vote on Tuesday on a report, proposed by Kevin J. Martin, the agency’s chairman, that would give the commission expanded powers over the cable industry after making a formal finding that it had grown too big.

After news reports this month that Mr. Martin supported the finding — along with the commission’s two Democrats — the cable industry heavily lobbied the commission and allies in Congress to kill the proposal. Those efforts may be paying off.

One of the Democrats, Jonathan S. Adelstein, recently joined with one of the Republican opponents of the measure to try, unsuccessfully, to postpone the vote, commission officials said. Mr. Adelstein complained that Mr. Martin has been unfairly rushing other commissioners to complete the finding. Mr. Adelstein has told people involved in the proceeding that he was unsure whether there was an adequate basis for concluding that the cable companies had become too dominant. Without Mr. Adelstein’s support, Mr. Martin’s proposal could fail.

Uh huh, the cable industry is a delicate little flower that will wilt without unfair favoritism by government officials such as Adelstein.

The cable TV industry only acts this way because they know that once competition is opened up, they're finished. Here in France, cable has become "has-been" since they opened up the market to competition. The industry used to be just as bad until the ISP's started delivering TV content through the phone lines, at much cheaper rates. Today, the local cable industry only clings on to life by questionable business practices such as ignoring certified cancellation letters and sending threatening letters to departing customers. Who needs businesses like this? Read More......

Trent Lott is resigning from the Senate

The Republican's Assistant Minority Leader in the Senate, Trent Lott from Mississippi, is planning to resign by the end of the year, NBC's David Gregory just reported. He apparently wants to get out before new stricter lobbying rules take effect. Plus, it's probably no fun in the Senate without his good pal, Strom Thurmond.

Here's the Associated Press article on this breaking news. Read More......

Former Treasury secretary sees recession

When government fails to provide any oversight and ignores impending problems which then lead to costly economic and societal problems, how does that help "small government?" Does it help solve a problem or does it only help to destroy all mechanisms for oversight in the future? In this specific case, how did ignoring the greed on Wall Street help us? If the government has to face recession, home losses, billions of write-downs and job losses (which cut into taxes received), how does this benefit the nation and what will the costs be?

Whatever I may think about Summers on other issues, he's right about this.

Summers, who served in the Democratic administration of former president Bill Clinton, said the U.S. authorities needed to act urgently in avert long-lasting economic damage from the global credit crunch.

"Without stronger policy responses than have been observed to date ... there is the risk that the adverse impacts will be felt for the rest of the decade and beyond," Summers wrote in a column in the Financial Times on Monday.

Summers said the U.S. Federal Reserve should recognize that "levels of the fed funds rate that were neutral when the financial system was working normally are quite contractionary today."

The Fed has already cut the policy rate to 4.5 percent from 5.25 percent since the global crisis was triggered in August by defaults on U.S. mortgages, and financial markets expect further easing.

Summers said fiscal policy needed to be "on stand-by" to provide immediate temporary stimulus through spending or tax benefits for low and middle income families if the situation worsens.

The authorities also had to respond urgently to the contraction in credit, said Summers. "The time for worrying about imprudent lending is past. The priority has to be maintaining the flow of credit."

Read More......

Does this sound familiar?

Paragraph after paragraph in this Op-Ed reminds me of Bush and the American experience of recent years. A few pieces below, but follow the link and read it all if you have time. The perspective on incoming Rudd is very much worth reading.

Howard had promised that Australia would be relaxed and comfortable under his rule, yet this year Australians had become more fearful and suspicious of each other than ever, a state of affairs that Howard's government seemed happy to exploit.

Howard's divisiveness and his skilful manipulation of public opinion obscured the strange paradoxes of his era. If he flirted with racism, it was nevertheless under him that Australia ended up with the largest immigration programme in its history. His foreign policy was notoriously sycophantic to the Bush administration....

...Howard's seeming blandness disguised his ruthless determination radically to reshape Australia. His politicisation of the public service severely weakened that institution; his government's ceaseless and ferocious attacking of alternative points of opinion brought a disturbing conformity to Australian public life; and he stacked body after body with sycophants and far-right ideologues to prosecute his causes through society....

His condoning of the imprisonment of David Hicks at Guantánamo Bay without trial for five years, and the subsequent gagging of Hicks until after the election, suggested a growing contempt for human rights and the rule of law that was most frighteningly on display with his anti-terrorism legislation, much criticised for its provisions of secret trials and imprisonment...

Then something strange happened: history changed and the times no longer were his. His ever lonelier support for the Bush administration's adventurism looked increasingly foolish and possibly dangerous. The very climate of Australia was transformed. Every mainland capital city now has a water supply crisis so severe that people have been murdered by neighbours for watering gardens. Yet in the midst of a once-in-a-thousand-years drought, Howard remained until late last year a climate sceptic. His supporters dismissed global warming as they had so much else - more hysteria from the left. But it wasn't: it was the world and the world had changed.

Read More......