Black Box Report

Depsite numerous prior denials, Steve Clemons at the Washington Note says Condi's recent visit with conservative stalwart Grover Norquists Americans for Tax Reform is tell-tale sign she's preparing for the possibility of John McCain asking her to the dance:

At the semi-secret gatherings which Republican political hopefuls migrate to to get the blessing of not only Norquist but the diverse parts of the nation's conservative money and political machinery, Norquist gives everyone in the room 3 minutes to pitch their cause or issue...
As one major Republican operative told me yesterday:

Someone like Condi Rice doesn't go to Grover Norquist's den to talk about the Annapolis Middle East peace process. She's going to secure her future in Republican politics and to position herself as a 'potential' VP candidate on the McCain ticket.

Some rightwing bloggers, due to her unflinching loyalty to President Bush, are warming up to the idea of Condoleezza Rice as John McCain's #2. Certainly some of them like it from a gamesmanship point of view:

The Democrats would be faced with two choices: to ridicule Dr. Rice as unqualified…or try to trump the groundbreaking selection of an African-American woman for the vice-presidential nomination by closing ranks and nominating Obama for the presidency, with a woman (Sen. Clinton or otherwise) as the running-mate.

But other conservative blogs are less enthused. They don't like "identity politics", at least when they don't serve their purposes. From CPAC's Blogger of the Year, Ace of Spades:

1) Does McCain even actually need this additional advantage anymore?

2) Will Condi actually provide any advantage? She's a) not really very conservative, b) not really a politician and not exactly charismatic in a politican's way, and c) entirely untested in this field, and d) unlikely to actually induce any women to vote R if Hillary is the nominee or blacks to vote R if Obama is the nominee. How many votes does she actually deliver?

3) Can we really afford another liberalish moderate on the ticket?

4) Is she really all that? She's not exactly John Bolton even in her sphere of expertise. I think the idea of Condi > Condi.

5) Is this really who we want for our presumptive nominee in 2016 or even 2012?

From "Does McCain need this additional advantage?" to "What advantage?" in 15 words. I can see why CPAC liked him so much. And maybe I'm just out of touch, but saying that Condi Rice Rice is no John Bolton, you'd think that would be a positive in the general election. but then I'm not CPAC's Blogger of the Year.

Althought the idea of Republicans being faced with having to back a black woman for President in 2016 does make me smile.

And yes, Ace, your initial instinct was right. 2016.

Meanwhile, other rightwing blogs don't think concerns about Rice's qualifications are off-base, not to mention the whole Iraq thingy:

Four years ago? Sure. Today? No.

(You mean it would've been a better idea when she had less experience?)

What does she do for the ticket except drop another thousand pounds of Bush’s baggage on McCain’s back?...What does Condi bring to the table aside from giving Obama an easy answer when pressed on his inexperience about how she wasn’t too inexperienced to be NSA and then Secretary of State when her only training was as provost of Stanford and two years on the NSC?

There's that sudden contradiction again. Apparently the prospect of having a double-minority (and yes, I know, women are not a minority in the American electorate, just among those who actually hold office) is too much for the conservative brain to grasp before short-circuiting in a wisp of smoke and a puff of ozone. So maybe Vice President Rice isn't such a hot idea for them.

And besides, McCain's buddy Joe Lieberman would be SO disappointed

We recently passed another in a long series of bloody milestones in Iraq, but one no more - or less - important than the other 3,999 moments we didn't commemorate:

These kinds of milestones and the inevitable media infatuation with them make me somewhat queasy. It's as if the 4000th person killed there was more important than the 3,999th, or the 4,001st. To me, and I would say to most Americans, every American killed in Iraq, everyday, is of equal importance...What does the 4000-death mark mean to me? It means that today, like yesterday and tomorrow, we will lose some of the finest Americans we have. That is a harsh reminder that disastrous policy decisions have tragic consequences.

To President Bush and Dick Cheney, it may be just another comma in their open-ended war in Iraq, but to many others, 4000 dead US troops in Iraq ought to give one pause:

And to this, Dick Cheney says "So?"...The occupation of Iraq has taken a back seat during the presidential primary season and the media has all but forgotten the ongoing madness we created. Perhaps this sad milestone will ignite more passion, protest and attention to both forgotten battlefields where American, Iraqi and Afghani bodies continue to pile up.

Vet Voice notes another number that's not as big, but just as important. 25:

American forces have just experienced the most violent two-week period in Iraq since September 2007...We hear talk of attacks against Americans "ebbing," ceasefires holding, and of the situation in Iraq being "not that fragile," but this is all a bunch of happy-talk nonsense...The violence in Iraq is cyclical and will remain so until we remove the bulk of our forces. And with 25 dead in two weeks, we are not headed in the right direction.

Yesterday, our Vice President dismissed the consequence of his own actions, saying those 4000 dead volunteered, as if that somehow excuses the administration's disastrous policy. Yes, they volunteered, and they accept that death is a possible consequence. They also expect their elected leaders to have a plan before sending them off to war. It's a reasonable request.

And Dick Cheney is famous for his reasonable-ness. Also for his sensitivity, compassion, and generosity. Specifically, for having no discernable trace of any of those qualities. Washing his hands of the 4,000 dead, Cheney invoked 9/11 as the reason those men and women volunteered:

“A lot of men and women sign up because sometimes they will see developments. For example, 9/11 stimulated a lot of folks to volunteer for the military because they wanted to be involved in defending the country.”

I can only speak for myself here, but I reckon that many of the brave young men and women who volunteered after 9/11 did so with the expectation that they would be hunting down those that actually attacked us that day; not that they would be put in an impossible situation (in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack on us) where they are expected to mediate a religious civil war that has raged for thousands of years. In fact, it’s a disservice to their heroic sacrifice to expect them to do so.

And Dick "five draft deferments" Cheney knows so much about heroism and sacrifice. And to hear him tell it, so does the President, who Cheney says "bears the biggest Burden, obviously". Got that? Not the families of those 4,000 dead, but Bush. Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard, but despite the fact that he "sleeps a lot better than people assume," it's the president, not you, that bears the biggest burden. Perhaps we should shed a tear for him:

The Hubbards gave up two of their sons to the Iraq war, and the third had to see his brother's body pulled from the wreckage in which he died. Maybe, just maybe, they carry quite a burden themselves...Bush carries the responsibility for the lives of those boys, but their family carries the unbearable weight of their loss. The former is an abstraction; the second is a giant hole in one's heart.

I wish Mr. Cheney could acknowledge the difference-but I suppose having a heart is a prerequisite for understanding a broken one.

And generous? Dick is so generous he's giving our troops two, three even four tours of duty or more. And if that's a problem for them, well, Dick's just sorry there's nothing that can be done:

When asked about the toll multiple deployments have taken on U.S. military members, Cheney fired back with a question.

“Of course it is, Martha,” Cheney said. “So what would be the solution to that? I mean how would you deal with that?”

From Cheney’s perspective, you don’t deal with that at all. Withdrawal is out of the question, a draw-down is off the table, and the Webb Amendment about giving troops more down time after their deployments has been rejected by Republicans on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. So, to hear the VP tell it, there is no “solution” — the administration’s policy of multiple deployments will continue to take its toll on servicemen, servicewomen, and their families.

If they don’t like it, tough. They shouldn’t have volunteered to serve in the military in Bush’s America.

Remind me which side of the political divide is supposed to be more enthusiastically “pro-military”?

Generosity, sensitivity, compassion.

He makes Attila the Hun look like Mother Theresa.

In a flurry of activity that must come as a completely unfamiliar sensation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had a lot of apologizing to do today:

Barack Obama was so happy when the news about his passport breach came out yesterday -- that was worth at least 10 Unfair Victim Points for him, about 30 shy of the amount he needs to bury this Jeremiah Wright hoopla. Now, however, it appears that passport breaches are not unique to him, but yet another aspect of the Old Politics: Hillary Clinton and John McCain's passport files have also been breached! The State Department is racist, sexist and ageist.

Which brings up two important questions:

1) What the $%^*$#@! is going on over at State?

and

2) What's really going on here?

Another Watergate? The scheming of would-be plumbers searching for vulnerabilities in the possible Democratic presidential nominee's past?

Or three bored cube rats who were just looking out of "imprudent curiosity?"

When the news broke, some speculated it was the Clintons. Then Clinton's passport file was also found to have been breached - last year. This led to speculation that it was not Democrat-on-Democrat political violence, but the hand of the Bush administration. Then, with the revelation that McCain was also a victim, it became more apparent (although by far from sure) that this was a case of State Department contractors sticking their noses where they clearly did not belong, but not necessarily a Machiavellian scheme.

Although it does have a certain precedent:

If all of this has the ring of familiarity, recall that in 1992 a Republican appointee at State accessed Bill Clinton’s passport records. The reasons vary: Some people claimed at the time that it was an effort to see if the president-to-be had participated in antiwar demonstrations when he was going to school in England. Others said that it was to see whether he had visited Libya, and still others whether he had renounced his American citizenship.

Steven M. Moheban carried out that search in 1992 and resigned. He was an aide to Elizabeth M. Tamposi, the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, who was dismissed by President George H. W. Bush. And all that led to the mechanism that caught the current snoopers, whose names we still don't know:

The State Department seems much more solicitous of the privacy of these fired rule-breakers than the privacy of the president candidate(s) being snooped. State is still refusing to release the names of the snoopers or the contractors they worked for.

To bolster State's claim that this was just a case of "imprudent curiosity," there's not actually anything in your passport file of any use to someone doing some political opposition research, unless you count an unflattering passport photo (mine looks like I've been freshly whacked with a 2x4).

Which is not to say this isn't a big deal. This is no less than 5 separate violations of the Privacy Act. Against presidential candidates, no less. And it took months for those in charge to notify their superiors. That is kind of a big deal:

It is inconceivable that the breach of a private file belonging to a Presidential candidate could happen without an alert going immediately to…the State Department...The protection of Presidential candidates is a fundamental mission for any government, whether Republican or Democrat.

Apparently privacy and security aren't what they used to be at the State Department. Hotline: On Call has a suggestion:

Clearly the folks at State have too much time on their hands. I'd like to introduce them to Scrabulous or Texas Hold 'Em. Give them something else to do rather than violate the privacy rights of high-profile people (and what about the rest of us?) ...

And THIS is why you don't go giving an administration - especially this administration - unfettered access to Americans' private records with little to no oversight:

Incidents like the snooping into Obama's passport file are not the exception, and are not even merely the rule, but are the pervasive and inevitable outcome of allowing government officials to spy on Americans without real oversight.

Because if all three presidential candidates can't keep prying eyes out of their private records, what chance do the rest of us have?

Sunni...Shiite...Eh, what's the difference?

The war in Iraq and the deteriorating situation in the Middle East is the number one foreign policy issue of this election; of this decade; of this generation. As such, shouldn't presidential candidates who want to be in charge of that mess have some clue as to what's going on?

"And my friends, if we left, they (al-Qaida) wouldn't be establishing a base," McCain said Wednesday. "They'd be taking a country, and I'm not going to allow that to happen, my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to al-Qaida."

Taking a what, now? If we leave, al Qaeda will take over Iraq? You know a statement is stupid when even Joe Klein has to point it out:

Last time I checked, Iraq has a Shi'ite majority. McCain thinks the Shi'ites--the Mahdi Army, the Badr Corps (and yes, the Iranians)--would allow a small group of Sunni extremists to take over?...The vast majority of indigenous Iraqi Sunnis aren't too thrilled about the AQI presence in their country, either...The sadness here is that McCain knows better. He knows the complexities of the world, and the region. But I suspect he's overplaying his Iraq hand in order to win favor with the wingnuts in his party. That is extremely unfortunate.

And yet extremely unsurprising. After all, he's embracing Bush's war, Bush's foreign policy, and Bush's mistakes. Why not the stupidity as well?

This isn’t complicated. The president told the nation, “An emboldened al Qaeda with access to Iraq’s oil resources could pursue its ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction to attack America and other free nations.” The claim is absurd, and asked to defend it, the White House couldn’t. Indeed, if we take Bush’s words at face value, and consider them in context, we’re necessarily “missing the point,” as far as the president’s chief spokesperson is concerned.

It fascinates me that even now, as the war begins its sixth year, the White House is still struggling to come up with arguments that make sense and can withstand even cursory scrutiny.

Of course, Joe Klein notwithstanding, the media failed to notice these absurdities (press corps motto: "Listen. Repeat."), and so McCain was free to move on to his next fabulous statement. Not once. Not twice. Not three times...Well, you get the point:

(McCain) recently claimed, multiple times, that Iran is training al Qaeda elements from Iraq. Iran, of course, is a Shia theocracy, and al Qaeda a Sunni terrorist group. This is like claiming that the RNC is training Democratic congressional candidates.

It was bad enough when U.S. intelligence officials and even congressmen didn't know the difference between Sunni and Shiite muslims in Iraq. How can McCain answer that 3am call if he doesn't even know who's who?

That is not a gaffe. That is called believing something that isn't true. It is called being confused. And being confused about the differences between Shia and Sunni when claiming that you should be elected president of the United States on your foreign policy knowledge and experience, is simply not okay. This is a big deal.

Either he doesn't actually know what he's talking about, or he does, but he's intentionally blurring the line to confuse al Qaeda, al Qaeda in Iraq and Iran; three separate entities. So, our intrepid press corps is going to treat this like a big deal, right? NBC News' political director Chuck Todd explained how the press will handle this yesteday on MSNBC Live:

TODD: -- this was not a one-time slip and so, you know, this just shows you how much bank -- how much of the foreign policy experience stuff he's got in the bank, because had Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over, and would have absolutely hurt them politically......For now, McCain is showing the advantages of not having the media very focused on his candidacy right now.

Mr. Todd, with all due respect, you are the media. You were focused on the subject and talking about McCain's candidacy, and you're givcing him a pass because he's got too much stuff in his head?

God forbid McCain's foreign policy experience may not be as impressive as he told you it was on the bus.

Has it been 5 years already? How time flies when you're sacrificing blood and treasure. So much has happened. So let's recap:

No WMD's

No operational links between Iraq and al Qaeda

No al Qaeda in Iraq until after the invasion

No plan for post-war Iraq

A strategy of denial:

Each year of the war has been characterized by a central lie by the Bush propaganda machine.

Year 1: "There is no guerrilla war."
Year 2: "Iraq is a model democracy."
Year 3: "Zarqawi is causing all the trouble."
Year 4: "There is no Civil War."
Year 5: "Everything is calm now."

I also suggest that John McCain is pushing for:

Year 6: "Total victory is around the corner."

Making up stories about Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman

Disbanding the Iraq Army fueled the insurgency

So did Abu Ghraib

And we are still not greeted as liberators:

How can Cheney be greeted as a liberator if he only makes "surprise visits" to Baghdad? If things were going so well -- five years later -- why would Cheney need a surprise visit? Cheney was so confident about being greeted as a liberator, why does he sneak into Iraq? Why not announce the visit in advance so the Iraqis can plan the parade?

Insufficient armor for US troops

Military stretched to the breaking point

Mistreatment of vets here at home

Delusions of Romanticism:

“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.”

“It must be exciting for you…in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger.”

This is the chickenhawk worldview at its absolute purest: a guy who ducked out on his chance to actually go and fight in the war (romanticizing) the concept of other people fighting one, and rattling on about what an exciting, picaresque fantasy adventure it all must be.

Every living male in my family other than me has fought in a war — Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf or Iraq. None of them exactly regrets his service, and there’s a wide range of opinions among them about politics and the necessity of the various wars in which they fought. It’s not a homogeneous group by any means, with plenty of die-hard liberals and plenty of stone-ribbed conservatives. But not a #@*%!^$ one of them in a million years would describe their wartime experiences as “romantic.”

Rampant corruption among Iraqi police

Insurgency in its "last htroes" - in 2005

Basic services in Baghdad at lower-then pre-invasion levels

Iraqi oil profits have not paid for the war

Cost of oil has more than tripled, even as hundreds of thousands of barrels are stolen every day, also fueling the insurgency

America’s respect in the rest of the world, never mind the Middle East, greatly diminished

American contractors killing unarmed Iraqi civilians

Tens of thousands of Iraqis dead, millions more forced to leave their homes.

And other quality of life issues:

Countless Iraqi civilians are dead, maimed, missing family members, homes, and all that makes life normal. Women the Bush Administration claimed to have liberated from the spectre of Saddam Hussein's "rape rooms" are now resorting to prostitution to feed their children.

US presence in Iraq used as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda

Shiite dominated Iraqi government strengthens Iran

And some people still can't tell who's on whose side

Only 3 of 18 US mandated benchmarks have been met by the Iraqi government

The Surge is not working

Actual cost of the war is now ten times higher than the administration predicted

...And of course, nearly 4,000 American troops are dead.

Not that many people would know that

There's more, I'm sure, much more, but I'm out of time.

Maybe next anniversary.

Because some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you:

In a shocking deal reached on Sunday to save Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay a mere $2 a share to buy all of Bear — less than one-tenth the firm’s market price on Friday.

As part of the watershed deal, JPMorgan and the Federal Reserve will guarantee the huge trading obligations of the troubled firm, which was driven to the brink of bankruptcy by what amounted to a run on the bank.

$2 a share. $236 million. Bear Stearn's building in Manhattan costs more than that. Heck, A-Rod's contract with the Yankees cost more than that. Kevin Drum smells fraud:

For now, I won't argue with the Fed arranging this bailout. Maybe it had to happen, and maybe it will prevent some kind of larger systemic collapse. At the moment, that's more important than assigning blame. But I would like to know why, on Friday, investors thought Bear's financial assets were worth $3 billion, when, in fact, they were worth something closer to -$3 billion — something that the principals at Bear surely must have known for quite some time. If there's no fraud involved in that, then the word has pretty much lost all meaning.

Because Bear's assets were so worthless, the FED had to guarantee JP Morgan a $30 billion line of credit to make the deal go through. That's not an "orderly winding-up of business," it's not even a deal-sweetener; it's a bribe. That's your money, and mine, bailing out the Wizards of Wall Street:

If Bear Stearns screwed up big time - as it did - with huge leverage, reckless investments, lousy risk management and massive underestimation of liquidity risk why should the US taxpayer bail out this firm and its shareholders? First fully wipe out those shareholders, then fire all the senior management and have the government take over such a bankrupt institution before a penny of public money is wasted in bailing it out. Instead now the use of public money to bail out financial institutions is spreading from banking ones to non banking ones. The Fed should at least give a clear and public explanation of why such extremely exceptional - and almost never used - intervention was justified.

Unless public money is used on a very temporary basis to achieve an orderly wind-down or merger of Bear Stearns this is another case where profits are privatized and losses are socialized. By having thrown down the drain the decades old doctrine and rule that the Fed should not lend or bail out non-bank financial institutions the Fed has created an extremely dangerous precedent that seriously aggravates the moral hazard of its lender of last resort support role.

I anxiously await the free-market conservatives and libertarians to decry the government taking a heavy hand in interfering with the natural fluctuations of the market. The free market cures all!

[crickets]

No? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that, while watching Larry Kudlow's head explode would've been entertaining to watch, somebody had to do something, or else the whole Jenga tower comes crashing down. Or maybe all the arguments for a laissez-faire , hands-off approach, where "regulation" is a four-letter word, are just slightly dishonest. And isn't it time for some honesty from everyone involved, including the Fed?

Just last year Chairman Bernanke was telling us that the problems in the subprime market were likely to be contained. It is time that the Fed comes clean with both an honest assessment of the severity of the problem and increased transparency in its behind the scenes deals with the big banks.

There is something a bit obscene about billions of taxpayer dollars going to the country's richest people, when average workers can't afford health care for their kids.

Increases in food stamp benefits and extending unemployment insurance? Sorry. No safety net for you. But corporate welfare? No problem:

When people make the choice to buy groceries instead of health insurance and then develop cancer, the right shrugs, and says it was their fault...When an investment company chooses to put its money into unwise investments, triggering the firm's collapse...the right sends the Fed screaming to the rescue with $30 billion....

Conservatives profess to hate the safety net, but they're lying. They love the safety net -- when it applies to the rich. The rich, you see, deserve to be supported, deserve to be coddled, deserve to get handouts. Why, the Chairman of Bear Stearns might have had to miss last week's bridge tournament if he didn't know that the Fed would come to the rescue with taxpayer dollars.

A few years ago I was in a bar debate over the skyrocketing salaries of CEO's; particularly, but not exclusively, those of the Wall Street Ma$ter$ of the Univer$e. "They're worth it," I was told. "They Do the Hard Work and make a lot of money for their shareholders." "But what happens if they don't?" I replied, "They still get their golden parachute and everyone else gets left holding the bag. Where's the incentive?" Case in pont: Instead of keeping his company from tanking, Bear Stearns Chairman and welfare king Jimmy Cayne spent his tenure playing cards and golf, and netted $232 million in compensation for his (lack of) troubles. His employees? Not as fortunate:

There will be at least 10,000 firings since JP Morgan bought Bear Sterns for pennies on the dollar. That's the size of a small town. Ten thousand people who, like the Enron employees, held portfolios that were loaded with shares of the company where they worked. Ten thousand people, most of whom just wanted to show up to work, draw a paycheck, make ends meet, and enjoy their families and lives.

Yes, but they're the little people. Compared to the Welfare Kings of Wall Street, they don't count.

From the Department of Tell Us Something We Didn't Know:

An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

B-b-b-but...Dick Cheney said there was “overwhelming evidence?” Rumsfeld said that evidence was "bulletproof?" And President Bush supposedly put the whole issue to rest in 2004, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." What are we to make of this? They were lying misinformed lying?

Why on earth would they do that?

The Iraq-Al Qaeda link was cultivated through hundreds of the 935 false statements the Bush Administration made in the run-up to war. Without it, there would be no pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq, no case made to the public that both wars represented the same fight against terrorism.

Oh, right. That. So, where did this "evidence" come from? I'm sure you'll be waterboarded shocked to find out:

Intelligence failures had much to do with the atrocity of September 11, but those had nothing to do with a lack of torture. Let me be clear on one crucial point: it is the terrorists whom we won over with humane methods in the 1990s who continue to provide the most reliable intelligence we have in the fight against al-Qaeda. And it is the testimony of terrorists we tortured after 9/11 who have provided the most unreliable information, such as stories about a close connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.
......

Jack Cloonan, a twenty-five-year veteran of the FBI, was a special agent for the Bureau's Osama bin Laden unit from 1996 to 2002.

Hmmm. Torture provides unreliable information? You don't say. Next they'll be telling us smoking causes cancer, or some other nutty conspiracy theory. In the meantime, the Pentagon's report is a major black eye for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell...really, the entire right side of the American political spectrum going back to, say, Sept. 12, 2001:

The only ones who think that OBL and SH were working together, closely, are complete and utter fools. These two were enemies. Sure, Saddam used religion whenever useful, but he was basically a secular dictator, who didn't have a whole lot of patience with religious extremists. All the more so because they posed a threat to his regime.

Which is almost word for word what I was saying back in 2002 while the big wingnut meme of the day was MOHAMMED ATTA WAS IN PRAGUE!!!
(Note: This also turned out to be false)

The Pentagon was going to put the report online yesterday and then hold a press briefing with its authors. Then they abruptly cancelled the briefing and annouced the report would not be made available online; they wouldn't even email it to reporters. If you want to see it, they'll send you a DVD via snail mail. It's almost like someone doesn't want this report to get much attention:

If asked, I'm certain (Press Secretary) Dana Perino would insist, with a mostly straight face, that the White House never contacted the Pentagon about this, and it was solely the decision of military officials, who, for whatever reason, preferred to hide its own report.

And no one will believe her.

I hate to say I told you so, but......Wait, no I don't.

I told you so.

Hey! Did you hear the big news yesterday?

Tucker Carlson Out at MSNBC

No? Then you were probably all caught up in that little kerfuffle over

ZOMG!!!! ELIOT SPITZER IN PROSTITUTE SEX SCANDAL!!!!!!

Which would be understandable, because as far as newsworthy items go, this was kind of seismic.

Not to mention dumb.

Mind-boggling, jaw-dropping, head-scratching, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot kind of Space-Age Ultra-Dumb.

As a former New York State Attorney General, Spitzer carved out a reputation as a hard-nosed, straight-edged, Mr. Clean reformer of the first order, the "Sherrif of Wall Street," and parlayed that reputation into a sweeping election into the Governor's mansion. Spitzer had a promising political career ahead of him, even being spoken of as a future presidential candidate. And now, for the not low at all price of over $4000 and the company of a call girl, he threw it all away:

It's hard to believe brilliant people in positions of responsibility could be this stupid and this self-destructive. And yet, here we are.

Was it arrogance? Delusions of invincibility? Temporary brain stroke? We may never know. And, as is usually the case with these types of things, what did Spitzer in wasn't the crime, but the coverup:

The feds aren't usually in the business of busting prostitution -- a state crime -- unless there's organized crime ties or forced prostitution or some other more serious underlying federal offense. But even assuming they were involved in that kind of investigation, the time frame didn't seem plausible.

Spitzer's alleged call to the prostitution service came less than a month ago, Feb. 13. That would have meant the Public Integrity Section prosecutors were brought in, got up to speed on the case, and filed their complaint in less than a month. That's lightning fast, especially in a case where literally thousands of electronic communications were intercepted. Changing prosecutors midstream can delay a case by weeks or months.

In that sense, ABC's report that the investigation was triggered by suspicious money transfers by Spitzer and that it was handled by the Public Integrity Section from the outset is a lot more plausible than some scenario where Spitzer stumbled into a prostitution sting.

If ABC's account is accurate, the whole case is sort of anti-climactic. The feds start out thinking they have the New York governor on the hook for bribery -- and instead discover that he's just skulking around with high-priced call girls.

Not surprisingly, conservative bloggers are in overdrive calling on Spitzer to resign, a novel approach for them given their collective silence on a certain Louisiana Republican Senator's own prostitution scandal. From CPAC Blogger of the Year Ace of Spades:

I know what the liberals are asking: Why is this such a big deal, and Sen. David Vitter's previous experience with call girls isn't?

Shut up, that's why.

That air-tight logic aside, there are those who are arguing that Spitzer shouldn't resign, not for the least of reasons that David Vitter and Larry Craig haven't, but now is not the time to use Republican hypocrisy as an excuse for one's own:

If David Vitter can just say "this is between me and my wife and my Lord" and hang around for a while until the media forgets about it, there's no real reason Spitzer has to resign. However, I don't necessarily believe that the acceptable standard of conduct should be set by the likes of David Vitter.

Meanwhile, a little bird tells me that one surprising source is against Spitzer stepping down: his wife, Silda. While this will no doubt spark debate over whether or not Mrs. Spitzer should "stand by her man," newly-linked-to-this-blog Alicia Menendez says it's nunya beeswax:

There is clearly a much bigger conversation that needs to begin about sex and marriage, sexuality and marriage, and marriage itself, sex aside. In the last year we've seen this type of scandal manifest on the right side of the aisle, on the left side of the aisle, and in public restrooms. Infidelity knows no partisan boundaries. It's also wrong to think that it is confined to the rich and the powerful - they are simply the ones we watch get caught.
......
Regardless of the many marital contract points Eliot Spitzer ignored, there was Silda, holding up her end of the bargain in the face of shame and betrayal. Yell at your TV to leave him or encourage her to stand by her man - it doesn't really matter. It's not your or mine decision to make. Instead, we are left with no answers, and only more questions.

And so, while the giant collective let-down sets in among liberal bloggers, the emerging consensus is that, despite one's feelings about the illegality of prostitution, Spitzer's going to have to take his lumps on this one:

It's understandable that some Democrats right now are asking questions about why Eliot Spitzer was targeted, saying the investigation doesn't "pass the smell test." It's understandable that others point to David Vitter and Larry Craig, and wonder why Spitzer should have to resign. It's understandable, when someone you liked is proven to be fallible, to turn on the attackers, rather than admit that you were wrong about them.

But we must admit we were wrong about Eliot Spitzer.
......
He broke the laws of the state of New York, laws he swore to uphold. He also violated the trust of his wife and his children; that isn't a public failing, but it certainly is a moral one. He chose to try to lure a prostitute from New York City to Washington, D.C. He chose to launder money so his transactions couldn't be traced. He made those decisions. He just got caught.

Eliot Spitzer brought this on himself.

I only have one question: Spitzer had a prostitute from New York City exported to DC. You mean to tell me Spitzer couldn't find $1,000/hour prostitutes in Washington, DC? Seriously? They're everywhere! They're called lobbyists. And that's the kind of prostitutes you should've stuck with, Mr. Spitzer.

Ya big dummy.

And now all that's left is the political fallout. Spitzer has not yet resigned, but it's comforting to know that, by all accounts, Lt. Gov. David Paterson is an upstanding public servant in his own right (but aren't they all?), and would make a fine replacement. But how far will the ripples travel? Besides the likely loss of a Superdelegate when she can hardly afford it, what effect will the New York Governor's prostitution scandal have on New York Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign?

Some say none at all:

Whether one supports Clinton or not, it’s hard to see why Spitzer’s scandal hurts Clinton. Yes, he supports her campaign, but they haven’t campaigned together, and Spitzer has hardly been a high-profile advocate. Indeed, the two aren’t even personally close. Why would this undermine Clinton in any way? This mess really has nothing to do with her.

While others suggest bad news is in the works:

After the endorsement was secured, Spitzer first became a problem for Clinton when she struggled to defend and then distance herself from his proposal to make it easier for immigrants to obtain drivers' licenses. He is a much bigger problem now. It's not that Clinton is tied in any way to the governor's troubles. Rather, he is a distraction--the big player in her adopted home state who is now in big, big trouble.

In an ideal world where things like issues matter and C students don't run the country, I'd be inclined to go with the former; but it's not an ideal world, people are easily distracted and it's relatively simple - if totally unfair - to paint a larger group with broad strokes. After all, we are reminded that all politics is local:

As Spitzer twists in the wind -- and the media covers every jot and tittle of the story -- Democrats could experience a short-term brand problem as voters recoil in disgust. The more likely atmospheric impact is "a pox on both your houses" attitude from voters, as the electorate grows more and more frustrated with the actions of their elected officials.

While the story's echoes on the national level are likely to be soft, the scandal is like a sonic boom in the Empire State.

And right on schedule, the National Republican Congressional Committee is looking to make some hay out of this while the sun shines:

The NRCC, which is broke and in danger of sustaining more House losses, is grabbing at the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal like a lifeline, sending out e-mails about Dem incumbents with the following title:

"Will John Hall Return Spitzer's Sleazy Money?"

So far we've received five e-mails over at TPM: Three messages targeting freshman incumbents Michael Arcuri, Kirsten Gillibrand and John Hall, plus two against challengers Dan Maffei and Eric Massa, all of whom the NRCC says are now "ensnared" in Spitzer's scandal.

Where "ensnared" apparently means "lives in the same state." Sorry, but that smacks of desperation. Even the Corner is unimpressed:

Spitzer's moral turpitude has no bearing on the contributions he makes to candidates in his party. Unless the money was stolen, its return is a public relations exercise with no basis in moral reality. And to tie its recipients to Spitzer's behavior is a fallacious exercise in guilt by association.

The worst effect may be on the enthusiasm of the voters (Barack Obama take note), who are reminded that their Political Heroes of Righteousness and Change are mere mortals, just like the rest of us.

Some artists work in paints, others in clay and ceramics. Iowa Republican Steve King is an artist, and he works in stupid. He began his latest masterpiece saying he didn't want to disparage Barack Hussein Obama because of his race, ethnicity, name or whatever the religion of his father might have been...and then proceeded to do just that:

King's whole premise is an affront to the intelligence of all people. You are not less American simply by virtue of having a name that is Arabic in origin. Would King dare question the patriotism of Gen. Omar Bradley, Gen. John Abizaid, Rep. Darrell Issa, or Secretary Donna Shalala?

Well, of course not. None of them are Democratic presidential candidates.

King assumes the entire rest of the Muslim world is both a) terrorist-lovin' America-haters, and b) as stupid as he is. What might the Muslim world think of an American president with the middle name "Hussein?" Maybe that we all aren't the bunch of bigots that people like King have made them think we are.

Of course, none of this comes as a surprise. King is just trotting out the GOP's well-worn standard issue attack on Democrats:

Expect to see more of this. Lots more. The Republican party, faced with a minority candidate with an unusual name, will be even less able than usual to reign in their natural racist and culturually retarded impulses. If there is a crack about ethnicity, religion, or any derivation from the standard issue GOP robot to be made - they will make it. The irony is that nobody has done more to help and validate Al Qaeda than George W. Bush, and his anointed follower, John McCain is just more of the same.

And this is what sets a Master of Stupid like Steve King apart from the rest of the pack. His premise isn't just wrong, it's 180*, diametrically opposed from reality:

Why would al-Qaeda dance in the streets that a Christian of white Kansas and Kenyan heritage, who promised to bomb them in Pakistan, had become president?
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If the US public isn't supposed to vote for a US politician whose reelection would please "the world of Islam," then apparently it should not have voted for Bush.

As for al-Qaeda, it actively supported Bush's reelection, because it knew that the Iraq War is all that now keeps it from just disappearing.
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It seems pretty obvious that the "global war on terror" could be much more easily won if we stop being mired in a quagmire in Iraq, stop operating a machine for producing terrorists, stop spending trillions on Bush's buddies in the military-industrial complex, and instead do some good police work in finishing off al-Qaeda.

Which is what Obama wants to do. Al Qaeda needs the US involved in wars in the Middle East to remain relevant. They want chaos in the region; it's how they thrive. George W. Bush gave them exactly what they wanted. And then some. And all because people like King just don't know no better:

First, if this is the best smear right-wing voices can come up with, I’m unimpressed. Second, if King is sharp enough to tie his shoes in the morning, I’d be very impressed.

This is, after all, the same Steve King who:

* insists that “every child” in America’s public schools should be taught “the tenets of the Christian faith.”

* argues that the United States is “a Christian nation,” and called on Americans to “stand up” to “worship Christ.”

* compares immigrants to cattle.

* falsely argued that illegal immigrants murder 12 Americans a day.

* told reporters, “There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell [al Zarqawi is] at. And if there are, they probably all look like [White House correspondent] Helen Thomas.”

* described Joseph McCarthy as “a great American hero.”

* renamed S-CHIP the “Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents” bill.

* argued that the civilian violent death rate in Washington, D.C., is actually higher than it is in Iraq, and cited bogus data while making the case.

* told Newsweek that federal courts “have defied federal law,” and he has a plan to “put the courts back in their appropriate constitutional place,” though he wouldn’t say what the plan is.

* was one of only 11 lawmakers to vote against emergency relief funds for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Obama should wear this guy’s smear as a badge of honor.

Beacause being attacked by stupid can only make you look good.

King Bush King and Bush

When do political attacks go too far? How much is too much? Obama foreign policy advisor Susan Power found out the hard way when she called Hillary Clinton a "monster" to a Scottish reporter, thinking it was of the record. Obviously it wasn't:

Power clearly made an inappropriate and intemperate comment...(It) was inexcusable, so she had to go, which is a shame.

I’m reminded that Power isn’t a political professional, accustomed to the difficulties of dealing with political reporters. She has an accomplished academic background, but that doesn’t necessarily prepare someone for serving as a campaign surrogate with a reporter. Power is accustomed to speaking her mind — and that, regrettably, is rarely a quality rewarded during campaign work.

But I still have a nagging feeling that Power is facing a punishment that is too harsh.

Perhaps if Power were more politically schooled in the ins and outs of not just life on the campaign trail, but the idiosynchrasies of European journalism - where "off the record" is almost quaint in notion and blistering schoolyard attacks from one politician to another are far more common - she may have caught herself before dropping the "M" word. But The Scotsman is a conservative paper, and they were certainly not going to cut the advisor of a liberal American candidate any slack. And while calling a fellow pol a "monster" across the pond would provoke only yawns, in American politics, you just don't go there.

So, name calling? Too far. But what about tax returns? Obama has called for Clinton to release hers, and Clinton responded by accusing Obama of employing negative Ken Starr-like tactics. Which, given her non-stop attacks on Obama the last few weeks, is ironic to say the least:

They say irony is dead, but Hillary Clinton's campaign may be on a mission to prove that wrong. In a memo today, the Clinton camp went negative on Barack Obama for, yes, going negative on Clinton.
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Forget the inherent internal contradictions here; the Clinton campaign hasn't made any secret of its negative campaigning strategy over recent days. As a colleague observed -- correctly, we think -- the memo is sort of like starting a fight, then complaining when the other guy hits you back.

Not to mention that the Clintons either have no problem employing shameless hypocrisy or they have the collective memory of a sieve:

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Especially after it was Hillary who made "Mr. Lazio, release those tax returns" a key part of her 2000 Senate campaign against Republican Rick Lazio. Back then Hillary said it was "frankly disturbing" that a candidate would waffle over when they were going to release their returns. But now that she's the one waffling, saying she may release them "around" April 15 (if we're lucky), suddenly it's the Spanish Inquisition to expect her to be true to her previous word. (Obama released his returns a year ago.)

Was Hillary employing Ken Starr-like tactics then? I doubt she'd say so. But her playing the victim card is nothing compared to her latest strategy, criticizing Obama by saying John McCain would do a better job.

That's just not cricket:

It's one thing for Hillary Clinton to attack Barack Obama, the overwhelmingly likely Democratic nominee, in terms virtually identical to those used by John McCain, his presumed general-election opponent. It's another thing for her to do this while explicitly praising McCain relative to Obama.

There are certain lines that you do not cross in a primary campaign. And one of those is suggesting that your primary opponent, the likely nominee, is so unfit that that the Republican nominee might be preferable to him. This is spoiler territory, and Clinton should be ashamed.

The idea that Hillary and McCain have crossed some "threshold" due to their experience is questionable at best. Not to mention praising McCain's foreign policy creds won't help her with Democrats, independents or anyone outside Bush's 30%-ers:

Why does Hillary Clinton think McCain would be a better foreign policy leader than Obama? Now I expect millions of people around the country to agree with Clinton about that in November. Millions of people will, I think, decide that invading Iraq was a good idea, that staying in Iraq indefinitely is a good idea, that pushing the envelop of confrontation with North Korea and Iran is a good idea, that refusing to abide by any of our treaty commitments is a good idea, etc. Those people will, naturally, conclude that McCain would be the better commander in chief. That's inevitable. I expect those millions of Americans to be outnumbered by millions more who prefer Obama's approach and who want to see America pulled back from the brink and back toward something like the liberal internationalist tradition that's governed us at our best since the Second World War rather than to continue on the path of militarism and hegemonism that's been responsible for the bulk of our mistakes.

I had also taken it for granted that whatever Clinton did or said during the years 2002-2004 she wouldn't seriously be among the group of people who prefer McCain's approach. But is she? If not, why does she think he'll be such a good commander in chief?

If she thinks McCain's foreign policy ideas have carried him across the "threshold," then why is she running? Why wouldn't she just endorse McCain?

I don't think Obama attacking her on that would be too much at all.

Faced with weeks of questions over whether Hillary will drop out, Clinton supporters are understandably elated over her victories in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, ending her losing streak. Of course, Clinton had been expected to win all of these contests up until 2 weeks ago, but...Exciting! And blogger Taylor Marsh is more excited than most:

Eleven wins at Barack's back and he couldn't close it out; couldn't seal the deal.

In the opening stands Hillary Clinton. The first woman who ever had a chance to change the country and the world in one swoop. A woman with the U.S. military Armed Forces standing by her side and backing her up. Strength beyond wisdom, which comes through alliances gotten through years of hard work. A woman with a lifetime of experience applying for The Job.

A fighter, but not just to win. To lead. To change the world. A woman at the helm. It can happen. Believe.

Then it's on to Wyoming, and Mississippi, and Pennsylvania, and Guam! Yeeeaarrghh! I imagine if Taylor Marsh and Andrew Sullivan shared the same blog, it would lead to its utter annhiliation, much like mixing matter and antimatter.

Clinton's supporters can "believe" all they like, but the bottom line is the delegate spread has barely budged, and the math hasn't changed:

Clinton has changed the momentum of the race, and has clearly bought herself some more time on the campaign trail, but the cold, hard numbers haven't changed much at all. Indeed, in some ways, they're worse, given that Clinton is running out of time (and states) to catch Obama in the overall delegate count.

But she can't quit now, having just won 2 big contests...and Rhode Island...especially when her new strategy has just begun to work:

The Clinton campaign got rough and nasty over the last week-plus. And they got results. That may disgust you or it may inspire you with confidence in Hillary's abilities as a fighter. But wherever you come down on that question is secondary to the fact that that's how campaign's work. Opponents get nasty. And what we've seen over the last week is nothing compared to what Barack Obama would face this fall if he hangs on and wins the nomination.

So I think the big question is, can he fight back?

While the Obama campaign is to be commended for taking (mostly) the high road during this campaign, he'll almost have to fight back at some point, as Clinton's campaign is sounding more and more like the Rush Limbaugh dittoheads that assisted her win in Texas:

It's a similar story in Texas, where Limbaugh has the most listeners of any of these states. Obama won the Republican vote 52-47, but conservatives (22 percent of all voters...) went against Obama. For the first time since Super Tuesday, they were Clinton's best ideological group: She won them 53-43. And Clinton won 13 percent of the people who said Obama was the most electable candidate.

...Clinton won the Texas primary by about 98,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast. If the exits are right, about 252,000 of those voters were Republicans, and about 618,000 were conservatives. Clinton truly might have won the Texas primary on the backs of Rush Limbaugh listeners.

What's this mean? Psychologically it's hilarious: Every joke that's ever been told about how the right needs the Clintons to survive is true. Hillary Hatred is the gas, the ethanol, and the rocket fuel of the staggering GOP.

You would think that getting cheered on by those who have Democrats' worst interests at heart would make one think long and hard about a) what a protracted nomination does to the party's chances in November, and b) how low your lowball attacks really need to be. Now Hillary has to decide whether soldiering on is worth the destruction of her party:

She can't win. But she can ensure that Obama is so bloodied, to use Rush Limbaugh's description of the Clinton strategy, that Obama is damaged goods come the fall. After all, if Hillary can't get the nomination, then nobody should. While I respect the arguments that the lengthy primary process has skyrocketed Democratic turnout and organizing, it's also tearing us and our candidates apart. And get ready for Team Clinton to go even more negative after last night. That means more racism and more made-for-GOP-TV statements about how John McCain is the most experienced candidate for president.

At the very least, Team Clinton could stop with stuff like this:

They say irony is dead, but Hillary Clinton's campaign may be on a mission to prove that wrong. In a memo today, the Clinton camp went negative on Barack Obama for, yes, going negative on Clinton. "Senator Obama lost Ohio and Texas because voters had doubts about his ability to serve as Commander-in-Chief and steward of the economy. But instead of addressing those concerns, how is Senator Obama responding? By attacking Senator Clinton," the memo reads.

"With one of his top foreign policy advisers acknowledging yesterday that he is not ready to take the 3am call and one of his principal supporters in Texas unable to name a single legislative accomplishment, Senator Obama's time would be better spent making the case for why he can do the most important job in the world just three years out of the state senate."
......
Forget the inherent internal contradictions here; the Clinton campaign hasn't made any secret of its negative campaigning strategy over recent days. As a colleague observed -- correctly, we think -- the memo is sort of like starting a fight, then complaining when the other guy hits you back.

If Clintons didn't keep stooping to the kind of underhanded, bare-knuckle politics they complained for years were used against them, they might have had the nomination sewn up by now.

Like children, Florida and Michigan broke the rules of the house and threw tantrums about it, and DNC Poppa Howard Dean grounded them both. But they can't stay grounded if everyone is to attend the family reunion at the national convention in Denver. So what to do?

We're in the Democratic sandbox again, with the kiddies wrestling over the toys and their National Committee nannies telling them to play nice and follow the rules.

But Florida (Republican) Governor Charlie Krist and Michigan's Jennifer Granholm are being soccer moms asking for the scores to count, even if their little angels were a bit out of bounds. The Obamas are yelling foul, and the Clintons are in cheerleading mode.
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Now that Florida and Michigan have smashed their primary playthings, do we buy them new ones or send them to their rooms without dinner? What's the best way to teach them to share with others?

Howard Dean has finally given the kids an ultimatum: Hold a re-vote or let the DNC's credentials committee decide what to do with the delegates. An option Team Clinton won't like too much:

Howard Dean will not bend the party rules to grandfather in the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, the Democratic party chairman said in a statement today.

Instead, he put the state parties on notice: either they can wait and allow the credentials committee to decide whether to seat their delegates, or submit to a re-vote sanctioned under DNC rules. "We look forward to receiving their proposals should they decide to submit new delegate selection plans and will review those plans at that time," he said in the statement.

"Everyone seems to be asking what the DNC will do," a Democrat close to Dean said. "But the question is: what will the state parties do."

Dean's statement implies that he has no intention of changing the rules to accommodate any solution proposed by the candidates or the state parties. There has been some suggestion that the two remaining presidential candidates might try to broker a deal among themselves. His line in the sand narrows the options for Hillary Clinton's campaign because it is unlikely that a credentials committee would endorse a delegation congenial to her mathematical interests.

So it's looking like we'll get a couple of do-overs, but who will pay for them. The public? The DNC? The candidates? And will they be primaries, or caucuses?

The Florida Dems, especially, are in a pickle. A caucus would not only be expensive but…(would) exclude its large contingent of military members serving overseas - even in combat zones. But it's a mess of their own making.

And while the details get worked out, Democrats form the all-too familiar circular firing squad:

If the Democrats don’t lose this election, it won’t be for a lack of trying.
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The other problem, though, stems from infighting and a lack of party discipline that resulted in what seems in retrospect to be a very boneheaded maneuver; the decision not to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan. To be fair, all parties are at fault here. The state party establishments are at fault for deciding not to play by the rules. The national party establishment failed because they did not come to a more amenable solution; the DNC should have worked around the clock with all parties involved until they had a firm and fair solution before the primaries actually began. And the candidates themselves failed to a degree by standing by and letting it happen. Here it’s difficult not to fault Clinton more than the rest of her competitors at the time as it would be she who would attempt to then use the situation for her own political gain under the guise of seeing Democracy’s work done.

To be fair, it wouldn't be a Democratic contest without some sibling squabbling and inter-party chaos.

The resurrection of John McCain is now complete. He's no longer the "presumptive" GOP nominee, it's now official, and conservative blogs are offering their congratulations:

Lots of pundits crossed McCain off the list of contenders before the first votes were recorded...Most voters don't pick candidates by reviewing a checklist of issues. Most voters try to size up the candidate's character, temperament and stature, and are willing to vote for candidates across what we ideologues would consider a broad philosophical range...While I disagree with him on a number of issues, I'm not sorry to see him as our nominee.

In other words, "We ideologues tried our hardest to get a more hardcore, fringe-ier candidate nominated, but we failed because the electorate is more moderate than we'd like it to be. C'est la vie."

From being an under-funded and marginalized moderate just a few months ago, John McCain won the war of attrition with his party's base and is now the last man standing. And faced with that mathematical reality, Mike Huckabee has gone Hucka-bye, for now:

Huck drops out of the race and pledges to work with McCain in a kind of a love fest. Prediction: We've far from seen the last of Mike Huckabee -- in fact, I think he's a frontrunner for the nomination in 2012 if McCain doesn't win. History has shown how candidates keep running their way from the fringe to the mainstream -- remember Reagan? I think that's why Huck stayed in so long, for 2012.

And did I say McCain was the last man standing? Sorry, I almost forgot, technically, Ron Paul is still in this thing, even as he gets what will be his only victory this year:

Ron Paul has been re-elected to Congress in the Fourteenth District of Texas. No Democrat has filed to run against him, so winning the GOP nomination has assured him re-election.
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With Huckabee out and Bush endorsing McCain, how long will Paul stay in the GOP race? I've called the presidential campaign and have no answer yet, but obviously getting re-elected was the last real moment of truth in a now utterly Quixotic campaign. Paul is free, as Kucinich was in 2004, to stick around as long as he wants and hope that there are anti-McCain protest votes to be had in Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Indiana, etc and etc. Wracking up some delegates and speaking at the RNC: That's still a realistic goal.

And perhaps that's all he wanted in the first place, a little attention. But McCain's the official nominee now, and as such, gets the dubious honor of going to the White House and getting the endorsement of perhaps the most unpopular politician in the land:

One thing is clear. With McCain as the nominee, it's business as usual for the GOP. The event is a symbol that a McCain White House would be the same as the Bush White House.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

As the votes are being counted in Texas' open primary and the delegates are, uh, delegated, voter turnout could be even higher than the record turnout expected, due to an unlikely last-minute endorsement for Clinton. It seems Rush Limbaugh told his Texas listeners to vote for Hillary:

I want Hillary to stay in this...We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically, and it's obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don't have the stomach for it...I want our party to win. I want the Democrats to lose. They're in the midst of tearing themselves apart right now. It is fascinating to watch, and it's all going to stop if Hillary loses.

Shades of Democrats for Mitt!, except for two small differences: 1) While Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas urged Democrats to prolong the GOP nomination by voting for Romney in the open Michigan primary, organizing Democrats to do anything on what amounts to a whim is like herding cats, and the lark had predictable results - Democrats and independents voted overwhelmingly for McCain; and 2) Romney never had a legitimate shot at actually winning the nomination. As such, the conservative blog Outside the Beltway doesn't think this is the greatest idea:

While I subscribe to the conventional wisdom that Clinton would be the weaker opponent in the fall, we really don't know that with any certainty. Far better, it seems to me, to let the process play out fair and square. Certainly, Republicans wouldn't want to have any complicity in electing Hillary Clinton president.

(On a side note, if this actually happened, if Clinton won Texas due to the efforts of the dittoheads, and that sparked a legitimate "comeback" which led to her running the table, all the way through November and a Clinton presidency could be attributed to Rush and his listeners...well...Can schadenfreude be fatal?)

But even with the help of Rush's dittoheads, a close look at the math suggests how difficult Hillary's task will be from here out:

For Clinton to pull ahead, she will need to win 57% of the remaining pledged delegates. To keep that number from rising even higher, they of course need to win 57% of the delegates on Tuesday, which would mean getting at least 213 delegates to Obama's 161 -- a 52 delegate advantage. If they net anything below 52 delegates, they fall even further behind. This is the key number to keep in mind when watching the election returns.

And, of course, even netting 52 delegates is hardly a big win. The Clinton campaign picked Texas and Ohio as its battleground because those states are particularly Clinton-friendly. The remaining primary states include several -- like Mississippi, Oregon, and North Carolina -- where Obama is likely to rack up major wins. That means that Clinton needs to gain well over 57% of the delegates in the states that are better for her. The only way she could possibly do this would be to utterly destroy Obama's reputation, make him a radioactive figure, like Al Sharpton.

And even then, Clinton would have to rely on Superdelegates to push her over the finish line, a divisive and controversial move in itself. For all of these reasons, blogger Matthew Yglesias thinks, when push comes to shove, Hillary won't go there:

If Wednesday morning the only shot Clinton has at winning the nomination involves getting the superdelegates to overrule a large Obama lead in pledged delegates and/or somehow getting the Michigan and Florida delegations seated, then Clinton's chances of winning the nomination will still be extremely low, and the prospects of either person winning the general election would get quite a bit lower. Basically, Clinton would be completely burning years worth of goodwill built up by her and her husband in the progressive community and ending her shot at playing a leadership role in the Senate in exchange for a very marginal increase in the odds of her becoming president in January 2009. A choice like that would be bad for the country, bad for the party, and bad for Hillary Clinton. It would be good, primarily, for her campaign's highest-paid operatives who would keep getting their checks, and it would be good for John McCain.

I've thought about it, and I don't think she'll do it. I don't think she and Bill are that out of touch with reality, and I don't think that most of her key supporters are either. If her results today are good enough to give her a realistic shot at winning the nomination through winning primaries, then of course she'll stay in. But if the delegate math isn't there, then I think she'll get out.

And even if she does - and that's still an "if" at this point - there's at least the consolation prize: annoying Rush Limbaugh.

After the Nixon / Watergate scandals of the 70's, Americans learned the lesson of the dangers of an unchecked, out of control executive branch. It's where we got the FISA court, to prevent a president from spying on his political enemies. It's also where we got the Intelligence Oversight Board, created in 1976 in the wake of widespread abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies. And ever since, the ghost of Nixon's administration, in the corporeal form of Dick Cheney, has sought to undo any and all congressionally-imposed restrictions on executive power. Oversight? You know how this president feels about oversight:

Bush was successful for years in marginalizing the IOB, making it along with other internal review mechanisms "ineffective", in the words of Sen. Leahy. For the first two years of his presidency, Bush just left the Board vacant. Subsequently, he packed the IOB...with plenty of cronies and incompetents.
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It's possible, then, that last year (a) congressional report of IOB nonfeasance publicly humiliated the Board into starting to do its job again. That could cause problems for the Bush administration, especially if (as in 2007) the IOB planned during the spring of this year to forward a set of reports about legal violations, this time those dating from 2007. That might include any number of details related to warrantless wiretapping or potentially even the politicization of the Justice Department.

Whoa! Can't have that, now, can we? So Bush issued an Executive Order stripping the Board of most of its powers and duties, and giving the oversight responsibility to Bush's hand-picked Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell:

Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, an advocacy group, said the move appears to dilute the independent board's investigatory powers in favor of a member of the president's administration.

"It makes the new board subordinate to the (national intelligence director) in a way that the old board was not subordinate to the director of central intelligence," he said.

The White House disagrees.

"The (board) retains its independent authority to review intelligence community activities," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "It can, as appropriate, report matters to the president."

And thanks to Bush's EO, the procedure for doing so will be to...first report them to DNI McConnell. Who, obviously, is not independent, but a political appointee in an administration famous for being packed to the gills with yes-men, flunkies and sycophants.

So, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? No one. We're on the honor system now:

I can't wait to see how that's going to work. Bush's DNI and Bush's AG will check themselves for intelligence abuses, and then let Bush know if there are any problems.

What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, cooking up excuses to go to war, spying on Democrats, the possibilities are endless! And as a bonus, it's a ticking time bomb for the next president, provided they're a Democrat, of course:

To the extent that this is about his successor, my guess is that they figure that Congress will rediscover its interest in oversight and objections to presidential executive power overreach. The very powers Bush claimed will, for a Democratic president, be the foundation for impeachment. They aren't just masters of hypocrisy, they're masters of "distinctions without differences." That is, when President ClintonObama does it, it's somehow different when President BushMcCain does it.

It's OK for Republicans if Bush does it, but a Democrat? There will be blood.

And there's the rub. For years now, my biggest contention with those who advocated Bush's unchecked executive power has been this: If the shoe were on the other foot, would Republicans/conservatives/run-of-the-mill wingnuts be comfortable with President Hillary Clinton telling Congress to get stuffed on executive oversight? Spying on Americans? Politicizing the Justice Department? Really, anything the Bush administration has done over the last 7 years, imagine if President Hillary had done it. Would there be a hue and cry? Would there be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth and accusations of our president being mad with power and dangerously out of control?

Oh, heavens my, yes. Don't kid yourselves otherwise.

And yet, Republicans are only concerned with the here and now, while they hold power, the immediate political advantage. Nevermind that the ill-gotten powers are bad for the country as a whole. As long as there's a Republican in the White House, it's all good. Blogger Matthew Yglesias is on the same wavelength, but in this case, he thinks Bush is just being a generous guy:

Like everyone else, I sometimes wonder what conservatives are going to think about the Bush administration's headline executive power grabs when it's castrating harpy Hillary Clinton or Muslim black nationalist Barack Obama who's got the power to arbitrarily detain people, torture them, etc...

Bush waited pretty late into his lame duck period to pull this particular stunt, so it seems this is mostly a favor to his successor. He wants John McCain, Clinton, or Obama to be in a position to commit widespread abuses and not just hog all the glory for himself.

Awww, what a guy, but really Mr. President, you shouldn't have.

With the Democratic race in Texas and Ohio tightening by the day, for Hillary Clinton (to quote Elvis), it's now or never, and tomorrow can't come fast enough:

Clinton needs to get a solid win in one of these states (many analysts say both of the states) to announce that she’s back in a comeback. The history of these primaries so far indicate they’re filled with surprises for pundits and embarrassing days for pollsters. But from these numbers, at least, there could be close elections in each states — with the outcome depending on the get-out-the-vote “ground war” on election day.

And while Clinton has chosen to go the high-profile route in the final days before her March 4 line in the sand, appearing Saturday Night Live this weekend and the Daily Show tonight, the Obama campaign has taken a more grassroots approach, utilizing internet search engines and online advertising to, as they put it, grow the electorate:

Traditionally, at this point in a campaign, the get-out-the-vote effort is aimed only at already confirmed supporters…Winning campaigns find new voters, too. And, the Obama campaign keeps finding new voters. That's what adds to the numbers. It really is a new generation campaign.

So that's where "Obamacans" come from. I thought it was the stork.

Now, faced with a neck and neck race where there was none two weeks ago, the high-priced consultants from Clinton's old generation campaign have begun saying because Obama outspent Clinton in tomorrow's contests, it's trouble for his campaign if he doesn't win them all - decisively:

So if the candidate who's leading in delegates, national polls, fundraising, and states won can't sweep the March 4 primaries, then Clinton is the real winner? Maybe they should just go back to arguing that Texas doesn't count.

And once you start lowering expectations, it's not long before the finger-pointing begins:

Hillary Clinton hasn't even conceded defeat for the Democratic nomination, but top staffers are already publicly blaming each other for what has gone wrong in the campaign. And it seems to be degenerating into two camps: Chief pollster Mark Penn vs. everyone else.

If Hillary runs the table from here on out, these guys will look like geniuses (they clearly haven't been, but history is written by the victors). If not, well, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.