Who Now?

Now that John Edwards, my preferred candidate, is dropping out, I have a decision to make: who do I support now?

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing either Clinton or Obama win the nomination, but I'm seriously conflicted at this point. I like Obama's approach to foreign policy more; Clinton's got the better health care plan. Sometimes Obama doesn't seem ready for prime time when it comes to countering political attacks; Clinton would more likely unify and energize the fractured GOP base. Obama's ideas about the viability of bipartisanship as a change engine strike me as naive; Clinton's embrace of certain aspects of the current administration's grossly inflated concept of executive power leaves me cold.

Not that my opinion matters much — I don't even get to have a meaningful vote in the primaries, given that NC is one of the last states to vote. But if I got to vote tomorrow, I'd probably pull the lever for Obama, and not have any clearly articulable reason for doing so. So there you have it.

Let's Have a Beer

The one thing I've always hated about Bush defenders is the idea that, while you might disagree with his policies, you'd like to sit down and have a beer with him. You know, I can't really think of anything more unpleasant. In fact, in such an event, the first time he would smirk, I'd probably want to do something that might draw the attention of the Secret Service.

But this ad, I must say, makes me want to rethink the whole beer/politician calculus. I wouldn't mind having a brewski with Steve Novick:

Well done. Raise a pint.

Shorter State of the Union

"Let's do a bunch of small stuff that might not sound totally awful but that I don't really want to do and won't follow through on anyways. Oh yeah, and screw the Democrat Party."

That's what I'm hearing, anyways.

Bad Deportment

I saw an interesting story yesterday which reports on a study that shows that Immigration and Customs Control (ICE) has developed the bad habit of detaining and deporting American citizens. Lots of them — hundreds per year. Once you're in the ICE system, your legal rights drop to about zero, and if the government decides it doesn't particularly care about your citizen status, there are few recourses. End result — enjoy your free trip to Mexico.

Or Russia. In one case, ICE came within an inch of deporting a small-town drifter who doesn't speak a word of Russian, all because he once told local authorities after an arrest that he was a Russian army officer who got to America by jumping off a submarine and swimming to shore. Those same authorities confirmed his citizenship, but ICE didn't care. They held him for weeks. And he only avoided deportation because his sister refused to give up, and even contacted her Senator's office to get help with his case.

Asked how things like his can happen, an ICE spokesperson said, "The burden of proof is on the individual to show they're legally entitled to be here." Kind of hard to do when you're not provided with a lawyer, and held in detention until the case is resolved. "We have to careful we don't release the wrong person," said another spokesperson. That's exactly backwards: you have to be careful you don't detain and deport the wrong person. You're never going to eliminate error from the system, but ICE's attitude and approach guarantees a lot more bogus detentions and deportations will happen.

Dumb Talk Express

From today's New York Times:

In the interview, Mr. McCain said, referring to tax cuts, "Whether they actually pay for themselves dollar for dollar, obviously there are differences in opinion."

Very true, in the sense that serious economists and policy experts all say no, while those who know that it is political suicide in the modern GOP to break with this particular piece of baseless dogma all say yes.

I was a little surprised yesterday when the Times endorsed McCain in the Republican primary, based largely on his supposed steadfastness compared to Romney and Giuliani. But I can't think of one major issue — tax cuts, the war, immigration, etc. — where McCain hasn't changed his mind to conveniently mirror the positions held by the GOP base. That he manages to get away with it proves him to be an able politician, but that doesn't change the fact that he's no less of a panderer than any of his rivals.

Friday Ethereal Cat Blogging

You can't see me, I'm invisible!

They Never Learn

I think there are two lessons that we can take away from this story. First, you're going to sound ridiculous if you actually use the hackneyed expression "snotty-nosed little brat." Second, you're going to find yourself the flavor of the day on YouTube if you use that expression while leaving a minute-long harrangue on a kid's voice mail.

Seriously, did this woman learn nothing from Alec Baldwin?

"Mac is Back"

On the heels of McCain's narrow win in the SC primary, I feel compelled to direct your attention to the historical roots of the chant by the audience at his victory speech, namely, "Mac is Back." If SC voters knew about this, wouldn't more of them have voted for Confederates-Heart-Huckabee instead?

Happy Birthday to Me

Once a year, whether I like it or not, I have a birthday. And today is the day — I'm now 43. When I woke up this morning, I discovered that I was having a "White Birthday", just like the ones I used to know. Today it was just a little sleet and rain, but you take what winter weather you can get in the South.

My friend Julie pointed out that this is a prime number birthday, which is kind of cool. It's also the second such birthday for me in the last 3 years (41 is also prime). The last time this happened was 12 years ago (29 and 31); the next time, and probably the last, will be 18 years from now (59 and 61). If I get really lucky (or unlucky, depending), I'll see another shortly after I cross the century mark (101 and 103).

McCrory for Governer

Yesterday, Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory's campaign sent out an email announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination for Governor. In the email was an image of the campaign logo in which "Governor" was misspelled as "Governer". When asked about this by the press, you're supposed to say "Oops, thanks, we'll get that fixed," and make some self-deprecating joke about not having had enough coffee yet. That's not quite what happened.

"There's no way this was misspelled," said Victoria Smith, McCrory's campaign manager. She said a hacker had accessed the campaign's computer to alter the word. Smith said someone has been hacking McCrory's mayoral Web site for six months, though the campaign had not contacted authorities.

Then, a campaign spokeswoman, who was with McCrory as he announced his candidacy in Jamestown, said there was no hacker after all — that an overworked graphic designer had simply made a mistake when designing the logo.

That was not the end.

Smith, reached by phone, insisted the spokeswoman was wrong. The errant spelling — which had been fixed even as the e-mail sat in reporters' computers — was indeed the work of a hacker. She said the hacker must have re-hacked the campaign to fix the error.

Finally, McCrory himself weighed in. There was no hacker, he told a reporter. The campaign's designer spelled the word wrong.

This all should have been no big deal, a minor embarrassment at most, and not something that would get written up in the paper. But as they say, it's never the crime, it's the cover-up. And a very badly-handled cover-up as well.

Mary points out that going around and telling people that your IT security is nonexistent and that you haven't really done anything to fix it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the campaign. Certainly, it's a far worse approach than admitting to a simple typo. The fact that the campaign manager that McCrory hired was oblivious to this fact doesn't inspire much confidence, either. And then for that campaign manager to publicly bitch-slap the campaign spokesperson who tries to control the damage? Sheesh. I bet it's a fun day at campaign HQ.

The campaign's finance director must be thrilled with how this went down, too. I bet people will be lining up in droves to give online now that the campaign has used the "H" word.

My Backyard

The condo building that Mary and I live on sits right next to the Old Settlers' Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Charlotte. Since it was a nice day, I grabbed my camera and went out back to see if I could find anything interesting to shoot. Whether I did or not I'll leave for you to decide.

Who Knew?

After the Iowa Caucuses, I made the prediction that New Hampshire would be very close on the Democratic side. It turns out I was right — just 3 percentage points separated Clinton from Obama. But if you had asked me yesterday afternoon, I would have followed the polls and guessed that Clinton would lose by 10. Mary, of course, nailed it — she said the whole time that Clinton would win, so credit where credit is due.

The question of the day is, what happened with the polling? The GOP race was called mostly accurately, so why were the numbers for the Democrats so out of whack? There are lots of attempts at answers out there, but the most convincing explanation I've seen is this: it's not so much that the polls were wrong, it's that Clinton got an enormous bump at the very end — the vast majority of undecided voters broke for her. Obama and Edwards got roughly the percentages that the polls said they would, but Clinton surged ahead in the final 24 hours.

It will be interesting to see if anyone is able to figure out exactly why Clinton won the undecideds. Did it have something to do with that show of emotion that the cable nets couldn't stop replaying, either in favor of the "humanizing" moment or against the sexist reaction from the political pundits? Was it an instinctual no-you-don't reaction against Iowa? Was it the retooled stump speech? Her policy proposals? Something else? Maybe we'll never know. But on to Nevada!

It's Obama-Bee!

I don't think this will be the November match-up, but Obama and Huckabee both came out on top in the Iowa caucuses tonight. I'm not really surprised by either result, although I expected Romney to make the GOP race a bit tighter.

Looking ahead for the Democrats, I expect New Hampshire to be equally close, and I'm not going to bother to predict a winner there (my track record is abysmal enough as it is). The conventional wisdom now on the GOP side has McCain winning in New Hampshire, and getting his ass handed to him in SC by the Huckster. After that, who knows?

Who will be the Democratic nominee in the end? I'm lucky in that I'll be happy with any of the top three. For the Republicans, I just don't see any of them winning without throwing their party into a tailspin of doubt and self-loathing, and that's fine with me. I'm not above a little Schadenfreude now and then.

Out and About in London

What better way to kick off the New Year than to finish a project you should have completed two months ago. So here we have it — our last set of photos from our trip to London last October. In this episode, Mary and Eric wander around in the rain, seeking out art, architecture, and a dry place to get a glass of wine.