Lazy Summer Days

I truly have a hard time finding the motivation to post regularly on this blog. My hope was that it would encourage me to express my thoughts more effortlessly and improve my unrefined writing style, but thus far neither objective seems to have been achieved. Perhaps if I were to get in the habit of writing regularly I would find the flow of thought to arrive much more readily, cause at the moment it feels as though I have a logjam of thoughts that have built up unexpressed.

I've been reading a fair amount lately. Just finished Ron Suskind's book "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism." Overall I thought it was a good book. I particularly liked the way he uses individual characters to demonstrate how US foreign policy (the decisions of the few) can directly affect and in some instances afflict the lives of the many. Which is why we should be deeply concerned when the pretenses that our FP decisions are made on are, or in this case, later found to be, false. This is of course what is causing the most buzz in the media, but I think the underlying message of the book, of overcoming cultural boundaries and ideological differences, finding human and humane solutions between different people and citizens, should not be lost to the more immediate reaction of anger and general frustration that many feel towards how the Bush administration has completely and utterly disgraced and disregarded the values and principles that America was founded upon. It is sad that this administration continues to be incapable of accepting responsibility, admitting failures and past mistakes, and just being honest with the American people.

But politics aside, in the end Suskind's book offers a brief glimmer of hope. While his book may not answer all of the problems in the world, it at least attempts to start a global conversation.

It invokes the thought that perhaps we the people really can overcome these cultural clashes of differing world views and prescribed life-styles, if we simply engage in an ongoing dialogue based upon mutual understanding, respect, and most of all, tolerance.

It doesn't take a genius after all to realize that only when we put down our guns and open up our ears, our mouths, our hearts and our minds to one another will we finally enjoy lasting peace.

Congressional Hearings on Executive Power: To Impeach or Not to Impeach

Yesterday I tuned in and out of the House Judiciary Hearing on the limitation of executive power. Summary: long, partisan, and unproductive. Bush has clearly flouted many of our constitutional laws, continues to circumvent congress on a number of national security issues, but so far as I can tell he has not committed an impeachable offense.

Bruce Fein (who was perhaps the most impassioned witness at the hearing) did a diavlog with Firedoglake blogger Jane Hamsher on bloggingheads.tv recently where he overviews the President et al's crimes and why they should be impeached. Fein explains why the war on terror does not or at least should not classify as a true war by way of analogy, shares his hypothesis as to why the American public doesn't care, and proposes that we return to a constitutional government.

Also Rush Holt had a piece over at TPM cafe, though it seemed to gloss over much of the legal controversies.

Much of the news and discussion about this surveillance legislation has to do with immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that may have followed the President's request and overstepped the law. Generally, I believe that people and corporations should be held responsible for their actions. More important, though, is the other part of this legislation that would set the law for surveillance in the future.

Any change to FISA must strengthen our ability to gather reliable, verifiable, and actionable intelligence on real enemies versus imagined or assumed enemies. I am not aware of any historical examples where a "fishing expedition" approach to intelligence collection has made our country safer. To the contrary, fishing expeditions are sloppy intelligence. There is an age-old principle used to avoid imagining someone is an enemy or a danger to society. The people who would seize persons, papers, and communications are not the same people who determine that the target should be suspect. A court considers the particular facts and then issues a particular search warrant. Neither police, nor intelligence agents should decide who is suspect. It is an important principle that is part of what makes the United States of America what it is: the government does not regard any American with suspicion first. Only after a due process is a person treated with suspicion. No individual, no class, no religion, no immigrant is lesser in the eyes of the government.

One of the commenters had a pretty succinct post below the article where he/she writes:

With respect, any bill that is debated that includes retroactive immunity for telecoms make a mockery of our laws, our Constitution and our values and so everything else you have to say is really academic and serves only as a distraction. That is the issue and it is an easy call. I am horrified and outraged that the bill is even being allowed on the floor of the house for one minute let alone being debated! It is an abomination, a sellout, and yet another examply of the pathetic cowardice of the Democratic Party at a moment that demands courage.

We, the people, understand quite clearly that this administration (with Democrats aiding and abetting at every step of the way) has trampled our Constitution and used "fighting terror" as the cover story and excuse for it. Time and again have Democrats capitulated in the face of the intimidation and lies of that pack of criminals running the White House and the Republican Party. Democrats did so when authorizing the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq which is itself a Crime Against Peace--the worst of all war crimes! Democrats have done so repeatedly during the reign of terror presided over by Bush and his henchmen.

But the sad truth is that at almost every turn, the Democrats could have stood in the way of tyranny and the destruction of our most cherished Constitution. Frankly, I don't give a damn about the rest of the details of the bill you and your colleagues will debate tomorrow. If it contains retroactive immunity for telecoms in any form whatsoever it is an affront to respect for the laws and Constitution of the United States and no Democrat with any spine at all should be caught dead supporting it. We Democrats are supposed to believe in the rule of law! Giving the wealthy, powerful corporations yet another way to avoid responsibility for their criminal actions is reprehensible to say the least.

You make some good points here, but it is all beside the point if once again the Democrats demonstrate how weak and craven and calculating they are. I am so disgusted with Pelosi, Hoyer, Reid and Rockefeller that I can't even put into words how I loathe them and their failure to stand up to that criminal tyrant Bush!

This is not a close call Congressman. You don't need to read what the "compromise" language is in the bill. The bill is a total and complete capitulation. It is a disgrace! Don't dance on this: oppose it. It is the right thing to do for America. If you or any Democrat votes for this bill it will constitute an open and willing failure to uphold your oath to defend the laws and Constitution of the United States.

Link.

The Kentucky Derby: An Ominous Portent for Hillary Clinton?

Well after staying up late last night watching the results come in from the Lake County district of Indiana it seems the Kentucky Derby allegory is becoming more than metaphorical.

For all those who did not watch/are not familiar with the Kentucky Derby all you need to know is that a female horse, named eight belles, entered the race (not the usual sex of steed) and the day before the race Hillary, sharing a common sisterhood with the horse, decided to put money on her.

So the next day at the race Eight Belles ran an incredible race, came from behind, and ended up crossing the line in second place, behind Big Brown, a less experienced horse, who many said should not be in the race. Sadly, Eight Belles had to be euthanized because she broke both her ankles.

In other words, the best race that Eight Belles ever ran, would be the one that killed her.

Link.

Assessing the War on (t)error

So it seems the main conclusion of a recent GAO report entitled "Combating Terrorism: The United States lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federal Administered Tribal Areas" is:

7 years and 10.5 billion dollars later, the US hasn't removed the threat of al-Qaeda, so much as relocated it...

The NIE, The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland, also found that al-Qaeda had effectively found replacements for many of its senior operational planners over the years. The NIE stated that, in the past 2 years, al Qaeda’s central leadership regenerated the core operational capabilities needed to conduct attacks against the United States. It also found that al Qaeda’s central leadership, based in the border area of Pakistan, is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the United States.

The 2008 DNI Annual Threat Assessment and other sources have concluded that the resurgence of al Qaeda terrorists on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan now pose a preeminent threat to U.S. national security. The assessment also examines the impact of not meeting the national security goals. It states that al Qaeda is now using the Pakistani safe haven to put the last element necessary to launch another attack against America into place, including the identification, training, and positioning of Western operatives for an attack. It stated that al Qaeda is most likely using the FATA to plot terrorist attacks against political, economic, and infrastructure targets in America “designed to produce mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the population.”

Some Good News From Iraq?

Via the BBC:

Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has ordered his fighters off the streets of Basra and other cities in an effort to end clashes with security forces.

He said in a statement that his movement wanted the Iraqi people to stop the bloodshed and maintain the nation's independence and stability

. . .

Moqtada Sadr's statement said: "Because of the religious responsibility, and to stop Iraqi blood being shed, and to maintain the unity of Iraq and to put an end to this sedition that the occupiers and their followers want to spread among the Iraqi people, we call for an end to armed appearances in Basra and all other provinces.

"Anyone carrying a weapon and targeting government institutions will not be one of us."

The cleric also demanded that the government apply the general amnesty law, release detainees and stop what he called illegal raids.

Moqtada Sadr also told his followers to "work with Iraqi government offices to achieve security and to file charges against those who have committed crimes".

I smell a Zinger

Via David Corn:

Here's a good justification for war: you create the conditions for genocide and then you have to stick around to prevent that genocide. In a foreign policy speech on Wednesday, Senator John McCain said,

We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq. It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal.

What's At Stake in Basra

Fred Kaplan has a good piece in Slate explaining just why the fighting in Basra is so significant.

The fighting this week in Basra may be a prelude to the moratorium's collapse and, with it, the resumption of wide-scale sectarian violence—Shiite vs. Sunni and Shiite vs. Shiite.

Many Shiites believe—not unreasonably—that Maliki ordered the offensive in Basra now in order to destroy Sadr's base of support and thus keep his party from beating ISCI in the upcoming provincial elections.

Late last month, Iraq's three-man presidential council vetoed a bill calling for provincial elections, in large part because ISCI's leaders feared that Sadr's party would win in Basra. The Bush administration, which has (correctly) regarded provincial elections as key to Iraqi reconciliation, pressured Maliki to reverse his stance and let the bill go through. He did—at which point (was this just a coincidence?) planning began for the offensive that's raging now.

Also this suggestion of why the US supports ISCI--mysterious because it has stronger ties with Iran--would not surprise me if it is actually true:

The current fighting in Basra is a struggle for power and resources between those warlords. It's hard to say which faction is more alluring or less likely to fall under Iranian sway. Neither seems the sort of ally in freedom and democracy that our president conjures in his daydreams. (The lively blogger who calls himself Abu Muqawama speculates that Bush officials have embraced ISCI because, unlike Sadr, its leaders speak English.)

Bush's War

PBS has recently produced an incredibly informative and illuminating documentary on the Iraq War which I highly recommend watching. The first segment focuses on the important players and policies advancing a war with Iraq and the second segment focuses on the execution of the war and the perils that rapidly ensued. Make sure you check it out.

Link.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

was on fire this morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program with Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlosn, and daughter, Mika Brzezinski.

Revisiting the Possibility of War with Iran

Remember that mysterious bombing by Israeli jets on the box on the Euphrates in Syria?

Well I just recently came across this incredibly scary speculation...

Via US News:

Israel's airstrike deep in Syria last October was reported to have targeted a nuclear-related facility, but details have remained sketchy and some experts have been skeptical that Syria had a covert nuclear program. An alternative scenario floating in Israel and Lebanon is that the real purpose of the strike was to force Syria to switch on the targeting electronics for newly received Russian anti-aircraft defenses. The location of the strike is seen as on a likely flight path to Iran (also crossing the friendly Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq), and knowing the electronic signatures of the defensive systems is necessary to reduce the risks for warplanes heading to targets in Iran.

I am pretty confident that the US has been denuded of its ability to invade or, more likely, strike Iran by the NIE (although the recent dismissal of Adm. Fallon gives reason for pessimism), but an Israeli strike does not seem at all implausible. Though whether or not Israel has the capabilities to fly from the promised land to Iran and successfully destroy their designated targets is certainly questionable.

Then again, perhaps the plan in the works is for Israel to initiate a conflict with Iran by striking them first, provoking Iran to retaliate, at which point the US will gladly step in and do what it has been wanting to do for ages: overthrow the regime.

If this is indeed a plan in the works I can only hope that it doesn't get played, cause I think the results will be catastrophic.

The Other Side

Journalist Ali Abunimah has a good article on the apparent disparity between international reaction of sympathy and condolences to deaths suffered by Israeli citizens at the hands of Islamic radicals who are driven by political/ideological motives as opposed to indifference and apathy towards Palestinian civilians who are killed by Israeli forces, driven, paradoxically, by the same motives, though theirs are somehow deemed more legitimate. Thus, when an Israeli civilian is killed its considered tragic and an act of terrorism, but when a Palestinian civilian is killed by Israeli forces its considered to be merely collateral damage, an unfortunate result, which would preferably be avoided, but is decidedly not significant enough, no matter how big in number, to call into question the ongoing fight against terrorism (a fight which is to me so obviously unwinable through military means that I would go so far as to compare it to trying to fight dandruff with a comb).

Link.

Compared with the international silence that surrounded Israel's recent massacres of Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Gaza Strip, condemnation and condolences for the victims of the shooting attack that killed eight students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem have been swift.

"I have just spoken with [Israeli] Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert to extend my deepest condolences to the victims, their families, and to the people of Israel," US President George W. Bush said. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added his "condemnation" and "condolences," as did EU High Representative Javier Solana.

The day before the Jerusalem attack, Amira Abu 'Aser was buried in Gaza. She had lived just 20 days on this earth before being shot in the head by Israeli occupation forces who attacked the house of friends she and her family were visiting. Needless to say, she had not been firing rockets at Sderot when she was killed. One of the house's inhabitants was found the next day, shot dead and his head crushed by an army jeep, an apparent victim of an extrajudicial murder by Israeli forces.

But confirming their status in the eyes of the "international community" as less than complete human beings, neither Amira's killing, nor any of the dozens of Palestinian civilian victims of Israel's onslaught in Gaza have merited condemnation or condolences.

The fallacy that lies behind the differential concern for the lives of innocent Israelis and Palestinians is that the massacre in Jerusalem and the massacres in Gaza can be separated. Israeli deaths are "terrorism," while Palestinian deaths are merely an unfortunate consequence of the fight against "terrorism." But the two are intricately linked, and what happened in Jerusalem is a direct consequence of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades.

Hillary loses to Obama's Asymmetric Political Campaign Strategy

Frank Rich has a good piece in the NyTimes which assesses the outcome of the Democratic horse race between Obama and Clinton and offers a number of explanations for why the latter appears to have lost.

Link.

I found the allegory between the democratic race and the Iraq war to be pretty witty (tho perhaps a little snobbishly so):

The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.

That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn.

IAEA Report on Iran

Andy Grotto has an informative post over at Arms Control Wonk on the recently released IAEA report on Iran. Although the report itself is mildly comforting, the peculiar timing of the documents produced by Iran and, moreover, the past trend of Iranian behavior is still rather puzzling and therefore somewhat unsettling. There's a good discussion in the comments section and I think commenter Hass makes a very keen observation, which I largely agree with:

This isn't about nukes or nuclear power — if it was then the US would have accepted Iran's various proposals including the Iranian offer to suspend enrichment and the 2003 peace feeler. This is about regime change, and the nuclear issue presents a good pretext. The Iranians have come to believe that no matter what they do, even if they accept the UNSC suspension and even if the IAEA gives Iran a clean bill of health, something else will be ginned up. That's not an irrational conclusion.

The Militarization of Space: aka El Farce Supreme

Ashley Tellis is one of those people who has an inimitable knack for making informatively clarifying points which often illuminate particular aspects of issues that are vital to the United States' interests. That said, his recent article in the WSJ on the potentiality of a space arms race, can only be described as a penumbra on rational foreign policy making and diplomacy.

The introduction of weapons in space would be deleterious to global security. But the treaty unfurled by Messrs. Lavrov and Li would neither effectively prohibit their deployment, nor conclusively annul the threat of force against space objects. It would only produce the illusion of security, while doing nothing to eliminate the counterspace capabilities currently present in many countries, especially China.

So in the first sentence we have a suspicious admonition that weapons in space would be detrimental to global security (which certainly warrants a 'no shit sherlock'). Then Tellis explains why the US found the recently proposed treaty unappealing: the US is more concerned about the counterspace capabilities that states such as China and Russia wields, than it is with these two states' fears of the US expanding its military dominance--which the US undisputedly has in the realms of land, air, and sea--to the final dimension: space.

The biggest deficiency in the Russian-Chinese draft treaty is that it focuses on the wrong threat: weapons in space. There aren't any today, nor are there likely to be any in the immediate future. The threat to space assets is rather from weapons on earth -- the land- and sea-based kinetic, directed-energy and electromagnetic attack systems. The treaty entirely ignores these.

Now we have two conclusions--the deleterious nature of weaponizing space with regards to the global security environment and the lack thereof of weapons in space today and, logic permitting, ever--which seems to warrant my proposal: sign the damn treaty if it makes the Chinese and Russians happy (since based on our conclusions we have nothing to lose, besides ink) and by doing so, unless I am too young and naive to understand international dealings, effectively decrease their need for and development of counterspace capabilities by giving them their desired 'illusion of security'.

Not signing the treaty simply sends the message that the United States intends to keep the option of weaponizing space open. If that, indeed, is not our intent, than I see no need to send false signals. What can we hope to achieve with this stick, which pokes not only dangerously, but provocatively at the sleeping monster of potential disaster?

Are the Tides of America's Power Receeding?

Parag Khanna, of the New American Foundation thinks so. "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony"

Via the NYtimes Magazine:

At best, America's unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that was also a decade adrift. The post-cold-war "peace dividend" was never converted into a global liberal order under American leadership.

So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing -- and losing -- in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world's other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam embroiled in internal wars; and not India, lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic appetite. The Big Three make the rules -- their own rules -- without any one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors in this post-American world.

The more we appreciate the differences among the American, European and Chinese worldviews, the more we will see the planetary stakes of the new global game. Previous eras of balance of power have been among European powers sharing a common culture. The cold war, too, was not truly an "East-West" struggle; it remained essentially a contest over Europe. What we have today, for the first time in history, is a global, multicivilizational, multipolar battle.

Distant Friends

Mike Huckabee:

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”

It's always funny to observe just how much republicans and terrorists have in common. Terrorists want to institute shar'ia into their modern laws and Huckabee wants to institute what is essentially Christian shar'ia into ours...and this particular issue is not the only issue that both groups share a common ideology on. But it's certainly enough to make me scared of both.

Karl Rove On Why Hillary Clinton Won In New Hampshire

Via the Wall Street Journal:

Mrs. Clinton won a narrow victory in New Hampshire for four reasons. First, her campaign made a smart decision at its start to target women Democrats, especially single women. It has been made part of the warp and woof of her campaign everywhere. This focus didn't pay off in Iowa, but it did in New Hampshire.

Second, she had two powerful personal moments. The first came in the ABC debate on Saturday, when WMUR TV's Scott Spradling asked why voters were "hesitating on the likeability issue, where they seem to like Barack Obama more." Mrs. Clinton's self-deprecating response -- "Well, that hurts my feelings" -- was followed by a playful "But I'll try to go on."

You couldn't help but smile. It reminded Democrats what they occasionally like about her. Then Mr. Obama followed with a needless and dismissive, "You're likable enough, Hillary."Her remarks helped wash away the memory of her angry replies to attacks at the debate's start. His trash talking was an unattractive carryover from his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard, and capped a mediocre night.

The other personal moment came on Monday, when a woman in Portsmouth asked her "how do you do it?" Mrs. Clinton's emotional reply was powerful and warm. Voters rarely see her in such a spontaneous moment. It was humanizing and appealing. And unlike her often contrived and calculated attempts to appear down-to-earth, this was real.

Third, the Clintons began -- at first not very artfully -- to raise questions about the fitness for the Oval Office of a first-term senator with no real accomplishments or
experience.

Former President Bill Clinton hit a nerve by drawing attention to Mr. Obama's conflicting statements on Iraq. There's more -- and more powerful -- material available. Mr. Obama has failed to rise to leadership on a single major issue in the Senate. In the Illinois legislature, he had a habit of ducking major issues, voting "present" on bills important to many Democratic interest groups, like abortion-rights and gun-control advocates. He is often lazy, given to misstatements and exaggerations and, when he doesn't know the answer, too ready to try to bluff his way through.

For someone who talks about a new, positive style of politics and pledges to be true to his word, Mr. Obama too often practices the old style of politics, saying one thing and doing another. He won't escape criticism on all this easily. But the messenger and the message need to be better before the Clintons can get all this across. Hitting Mr. Obama on his elementary school essays won't cut it.

The fourth and biggest reason why Mrs. Clinton won two nights ago is that, while Mr. Obama can draw on the deep doubts of many Democrats about Mrs. Clinton, he can't close out the argument. Mr. Obama is an inspiring figure playing a historical role, but that's not enough to push aside the former First Lady and senator from New York. She's an historic figure, too. When it comes to making the case against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama comes across as a vitamin-starved Adlai Stevenson. His rhetoric, while eloquent and moving at times, has been too often light as air.

Continue reading op-ed here

Bush's Last Grab at Legacy

I was somewhat surprised to see that Bush has, now that he is soon to be leaving office with nothing to show for, trying to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict. I applaud his effort and while it is tempting to say it will all be in vain, since I gurantee he will accomplish little if anything at all, at least he is sort of setting the stage for the next incoming president.

Via the BBC:

US President George W Bush has said Israel must end occupation of Arab land taken in 1967 so that a viable Palestinian state can be created.

He also urged a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue which would involve paying compensation.

This is thought to be the first time Mr Bush has publicly pressed the Israelis to give up occupied land.

And here's a great quote showing that Bush says what he means and means what he says:

"I can press when there needs to be pressed; I can hold hands when there needs to be—hold hands."—on how he can contribute to the Middle East peace process, Washington, D.C., Jan. 4, 2008

Link

New Hampshire: The Double Upset

Well the results are in and everyone by now knows that Hillary Clinton and John McCain were the underdogs cum victors last night in New Hampshire. I wasn't at all surprised by the McCain win, since I saw that coming, but the Hiliary win took me by complete surprise and the unbelief that followed took a while to rid. I had a naive sense of optimism late in the night, hoping that the college town votes of Dartmouth and New Hampshire U would swing the votes in favor of Obama, but that surge never emerged...Most of the commentary right now in the media is focused on a)why the early polls were so wrong, as they suggested Obama was more popular by double digits and b)what was it that turned the tides for Hillary Clinton.

I think a number of things are worth mentioning. The first is the overhype that is often directed at and emerges from the Iowa caucauses. Perhaps because political wonks are so eager and excited about the upcoming presidential race they have a tendency to jump to conclusions too early and exaggerate where the candidates stand, (which I think happened with Obama in Iowa). The Iowa system (on the Democratic side) is very different from the rest of the country, so Obama was perhaps the more obvious winner, because independents who may have wanted to vote for someone else, ultimately felt a stronger attraction towards Obama, instead of Hillary. The second thing is that because everyone expected Obama to win in NH, and by big numbers, it is likely that he felt he had inherited the luxury of assurance, which is a dangerous luxury in a presidential race, because it usually means they don't try as hard and are less persasive and passionate in their speeches. Hillary on the other hand appeared to be an early wreck after the Iowa caucus and their was much talk of intercamp disputes and fissures in her camp, adding to the overall feeling that Obama would be the inevitable winner in NH. Another thing worth pointing out is that Iowa signifcantly changed Hillary's approach. She opened up and showed a much more personal side that she had previously been reserving or not exposing, and people responded, as the polls would show, quite positively to this new Hillary. Also the fact that McCain did so well in NH was bad news for Obama, since McCain's main strength came from independent votes which would have, in all likelihood, otherwise gone Obama--votes which he desperately needed to beat Hillary in NH.

Even though I'm biased in favor of Obama I still think his post vote results talk was better than Hillary's, because he seemed unphased by the setback, and turned the attention off of his loss almost effortlessly, and seemed eager to continue his campaign. Hillary was obviously very excited about her win, as would be expected, but I just wasn't...so her speech seemed to lack substance.

By the way, did you happen to notice that there were youthful looking teens in the background of Clinton's NH win speech? You have to assume that was for a political purpose: to make it appear that teens were behind Hillary in NH and not, as is usually the case, Obama.

Anyways this win in NH for Hillary means the race will stay neck and neck between Hillary and Barack for a long time, and it will be much harder to say who will be the victor early on...we're, unfortunately, going to have to be patient and watch what happens without any hints.

You Can't Stop Barack, Can't Stop Barack

Looks like Americans (or at least Iowans) prefer change over experience as Obama appears to be the winner on the Democratic side. I think this is a huge win for him, because NH will be an easy win, and most of the south, and certainly the West coast, will vote, I predict, even more decisively in favor of Obama, where as Hillary might win a few states on the eastern coast and in the mid-west, but not enough to put her ahead of Barack. As for the Republicans it looks like Huckabee will win Iowa, but it is doubtful that he will go on to win the republican nomination, I predict either a huge upset from underdog McCain or, more likely, the stronger candidate Mitt Romney to win it. But they will ultimately lose to Obama when we elect our president in '08.

Pumping fists in circular rowing motion:You can't stop Barack, can't stop Barack

(I sure hope he alters the Apollo Forty Four song to those lyrics for the remainder of his campaign).