This debate was unbelievably boring and anyone who says different don't believe them. The two were intolerably civil to each other, and neither said anything that struck me as remotely controversial. In fact, with each debate the orthodoxy of Obama's positions becomes more pronounced.

We spent the first 40 minutes on health care, and I thought Hillary clearly won that portion of the debate. She understands how difficult any change will be, and more important she understands that not everyone wants change--that those with health care may actually fear it. If Obama holds a similar position, I could not discern it from what he said.

On the war, they are both terrible. Hillary says, "we will end the war in Iraq and we will resolve the war in Afghanistan." The only rule for this debate seemed to be that neither candidate would dare use the word 'victory.' We know they want out of Iraq, but have we now conceded defeat in Afghanistan as well? Our conflict with the Taliban and al Qaeda is to be 'resolved'? When Tony Soprano says he's going to resolve a problem, we know what that means, but what on earth does it mean when Hillary says it?

The low point for Obama came when he said that the NIE on Iran had shown that engagement and talking could lead to the Iranians changing their behavior. This is as spurious a connection as his earlier claim that the 2006 elections led to the reductions in violence in Iraq. Even if one takes the estimate's conclusions at face value, the credible threat of the use of force is the only explanation for why the Iranians suspended their program. But once again, like his health care fix involving nothing so much as his presence and a few cameras from C-SPAN, the solution he offers to this country's decades long confrontation with Iran is all jaw jaw.

I'm not impervious to Obama's charm--he makes me feel all warm and fuzzy--but he lives in a fantasy world. Clinton refused to provide a date certain for withdrawal, making clear that there were scenarios that would demand the continued presence of U.S. troops and outcomes far worse that the status quo. This is the fundamental difference between the two--an acknowledgment of reality.

So while Clinton would be a far easier mark for Republicans in the general election, that doesn't change the fact that she appears more competent than Obama to confront the threats this country now faces. I'm inclined to say Republicans should prefer her because it is in their self-interest, their party's interest, and ultimately--if the worst happens and she actually wins--the national interest.

Vets for Freedom has just announced the launch of their National Heroes Tour, which will take several of the group's members on a coast to coast trip to bolster support for the troops and their mission. One of the guys going is David Bellavia, who was awarded the Silver Star and nominated for the Medal of Honor. I had the chance to speak with Bellavia a couple of months ago about his recently published memoir House to House.

Bellavia served in Iraq in 2004 before returning to co-found Vets for Freedom. He saw the worst of Iraq during his tour, describing his time there as 12 months of "gruesome, house-to-house combat." He was in Fallujah in November 2004, participating in the battle to retake that insurgent stronghold, when his unit walked into an ambush. The house they were clearing was filled with insurgents, but that only became apparent after several bursts of gunfire forced his comrades back onto the street, leaving him trapped in the house. Bellavia said of that day, "they started coming at me on at a time . . . it ended up in a hand-to-hand struggle." There were six terrorists in the house, and Bellavia lived to write the book. As for the bad guys, "72 virgins across the board," Bellavia said. He now sees himself as an "instigator and equalizer countering the doom and gloom" message of the antiwar crowd. "I pacified the jihadists . . . we carried the water, we did the worst of the fighting, and we're back with a positive message."

If you want to hear that message, you can find the tour dates here, and if you want to support these guys financially, which I'm sure would be much appreciated, click here. You can get a copy of Bellavia's book here.

The Senate always moves more slowly than the House, and that is proving true on reforming earmarks as well. But for advocates of fiscal reform, there is some movement on this front. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has appointed a working group to study earmarks and recommend reforms:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the fiscal reform working group would recommend ways for the Senate to bring about greater transparency and fiscal responsibility to government spending. The group will report findings to the Republican Conference by March 15.

McConnell appointed one of the Senate’s best-known foes of earmarks, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), but not Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a vocal opponent of lawmakers’ pet projects who has sometimes clashed with party leaders on the issue...

A GOP leadership aide, who said the task force would have a wide jurisdiction, noted it includes members from the Appropriations and Finance committees, as well as a top reformer in Coburn. The broad membership is intended to ensure the best recommendations on earmarks are provided.

And of course, whatever heartburn may be caused among conservatives about Senator McCain's status as the GOP frontrunner, one thing is certain: he's 'right' on pork-barrel spending. If McCain is the nominee, the Democratic candidate will have a hard time attacking him on spending issues, and on this issue at least, he's likely to have the full support of Congressional Republicans.

Reuters reports:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told a French magazine in an interview that if he wins office, he will hold a summit with Muslim countries to better the United States' image in the world.

"Once I'm elected, I want to organize a summit in the Muslim world, with all the heads of state, to have an honest discussion about ways to bridge the gap that grows every day between Muslims and the West," Thursday's edition of Paris Match quoted Obama as saying,

"I want to ask them to join our fight against terrorism. We must also listen to their concerns," Obama said in the French-language transcript.

This is pretty crackpot--and maybe an opening for Hillary in tonight's debate?

PS: Where exactly in the Muslim world would this summit take place? Not that anyone would want to get too bogged down with the details of such a ridiculous idea.

HT: Contentions

McCain is now trading at 83.8. Clinton, at her most inevitable, never traded above 75. Of course, the markets got New Hampshire wrong just as badly as the polls did.

A reader writes:

"Where Obama has campaigned (NOT Michigan and Florida), Senator Clinton's maximum victory margin was 6 percent (Nevada). Neither Obama nor his organization was active in Michigan or Florida, so counting them as Clinton 'victories' (at least by those margins) is deceptive. According to the latest polls, [Obama] is behind an average of only 6 points nationwide. Here in Massachusetts, it appears the margin has shrunk from 37 to seven points. Don't give up on Senator Obama yet."

The dust from the Jan. 29 airstrike is settling, and it appears a senior al Qaeda leader was killed in the attack in North Waziristan, Pakistan. Abu Laith al Libi was killed in the attack, according to a posting at a prominent jihadi website.

The Ekhlaas forum posted a banner praising the martyrdom of al Libi. "We ask God to accept and embrace Shahydna [martyrdom] Libyan Abu Zuhri," a well known poster stated in a thread at the forum.

Al Libi was a prominent al Qaeda leader, but he is not the third or fourth in command of al Qaeda, as CNN has reported. Saif al Adel is currently believed to be al Qaeda's third in command and strategic planner while Abu Ubdaydah al Masri and Matiur Rehman are believed to have split the roles of senior operational leader. Rehman also heads al Qaeda in Pakistan while al Masri commands al Qaeda forces in eastern Afghanistan.

Al Libi is a top-tier al Qaeda leader. He was the leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and also served as a chief spokesman for al Qaeda. Laith also commanded al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. As leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, he announced the terror group's merger with al Qaeda in November 2007.

"Today, Oklahoma Republican National Committeewoman Bunny Chambers announced her endorsement of Governor Mitt Romney."

Poor Mitt. This is getting very sad.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports:

Five F-117A Nighthawk jets left Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., on Tuesday bound for their original home at Nevada's Tonopah Test Range as part of an ongoing effort to retire the nation's first stealth jets and close a prominent chapter of aviation history.

Arlan Ponder, a spokesman for the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman, in Alamogordo, N.M., said the five jets that left Tuesday were preceded by five last week. Five more will arrive Friday at the Tonopah airfield, 140 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"We've gradually been sending them out," he said about the $45 million planes that, because of their still-classified nature, were spared going to the so-called "boneyard" at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base where rows and rows of outdated military aircraft bake in the Sonoran Desert sun near Tucson, Ariz.

One F-117 is headed to the Smithsonian, just in case you never got a chance to see one.

Bob Novak did some digging on reports last week that John McCain had privately expressed reservations about nominating a conservative like Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

I wrote on the subject here, and said, in relevant part:

John McCain came out early in support of Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. He worked behind the scenes to generate more support from his colleagues. He pointed to his 2000 campaign promise to appoint conservative judges as one reason he was pleased with the Alito nomination. He spoke on the Senate floor in favor of Alito's confirmation. He even spent several months campaigning for president telling people Samuel Alito was one of the 'finest justices ever appointed to the Supreme Court.'

The inescapable conclusion? A President McCain would not appoint Supreme Court Justices like Samuel Alito.

We know this because in the days before the potentially decisive Florida primary, someone (we don't know who) claimed to have heard McCain (we don't know where) say that he was concerned about Alito's conservatism (we don't know when)...

I called the subsequent firestorm about the report "scurrilous." A friend passed along Novak's column with a note. "Maybe it's not so scurrilous after all." It's at least less scurrilous, I'd say, with the additional sourcing.

Here is Novak, after noting that McCain had denied saying what was attributed to him:

I found what McCain could not remember: a private, informal chat with conservative Republican lawyers shortly after he announced his candidacy in April 2007. I talked to two lawyers who were present whom I have known for years and who have never misled me. One is neutral in the presidential race, and the other recently endorsed Mitt Romney. Both said they were not Fund's source, and neither knew I was talking to the other. They gave me nearly identical accounts, as follows:

'Wouldn't it be great if you get a chance to name somebody like Roberts and Alito?' one lawyer commented. McCain replied, 'Well, certainly Roberts.' Jaws were described as dropping. My sources cannot remember exactly what McCain said next, but their recollection is that he described Alito as too conservative.

Did he say it? Does it trump his campaigning on appointing justices like Alito, who he calls one of the "finest justices every appointed to the Supreme Court?" How you answer that second question is probably a good indication of how you would vote.

I had lunch today at an on-the-record foreign policy briefing sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. The panel consisted of Gideon Rose, the managing editor of Foreign Affairs; Council on Foreign Relations fellow, Weekly Standard contributing editor, and McCain adviser Max Boot; and Council on Foreign Relations fellow and author Peter Beinart.

One of Beinart's observations got me thinking. First, he noted that differences on foreign policy issues within the two parties "pale in comparison" with the differences between the two parties. Then he went on to note that the two parties see the world through different "prisms." For the Democrats, Beinart said, the prism remains what it was during Bill Clinton's presidency - globalization, how America deals with a globalized world, and the transnational security and economic threats that arise from it. For the Republicans, Beinart continued, the prism is the war on terror, how America deals with Islamic terrorism, and the potential for an axis (of evil) between terrorist groups and rogue states possessing weapons of mass destruction.

The problem with the Republican approach, Beinart said, is that it focuses almost excusively on national security issues, solutions to those issues that rely heavily on the use of armed force, and issues revolving around one region of the world. The advantage of the Democrats' approach, he said, is that, because it tries to understand the world globally, it can speak to a variety of concerns in a variety of places.

As Max Boot pointed out, just because the Republicans spend a lot of time discussing the challenge radical jihadism poses to the United States doesn't mean they don't have policies concerning the rest of the world. Besides which, Beinart's distinction doesn't take into account how terrorism is a consequence of globalization - Islamic terrorists operate throughout the globe, moving (semi) freely from country to country, just like commodities traded across borders, and using Internet technologies and viral media to communicate with supporters and plan attacks.

What struck me, however, was the extent to which, in Beinart's telling, the Democratic party has "moved on" from the war on terror. For the Democrats, it really is back to the 1990s, and the foreign policy challenges and concerns of that era. One of the overarching questions of election year 2008 is whether the country is ready to move on with them.

From Small Wars Journal: Changing the Organizational Culture, by Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell.

From Contentions: More in Afghanistan, by Max Boot.

From Real Clear Politics: Schwarzenegger, Giuliani and McCain Republicans, by John McIntyre.

From the Washington Times: Warning Light on Kosovo, by John Bolton, Larry Eagleburger & Peter Rodman.

From the New York Post: Uncle Sam's Latin Challenge, by Peter Brookes.

Richard Starr is even more right than he probably realizes in this post. The book review he cites to describe McCain's "guardian" characteristics puts it this way: "'Guardians' are modern versions of the raiders, warriors, and hunters who once made their livings through sorties into unknown or hostile territories."

The McCain campaign (and some of the reporters covering it) talk about the effort as "the McCain pirate ship." There are conflicting stories about who coined the phrase. McCain's New Hampshire Vice Chair is sometimes mentioned as it's originator. But Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to McCain who worked previously for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dick Cheney, is a more likely source. Schmidt recently finished reading Empire of Blue Water, a book about the famous Captain Morgan.

Mitt Romney's campaign, the thinking goes, runs with the precision of a venture capital firm. He is well-manicured, his staff is well-dressed, his campaign is well-ordered, well-organized, and well-funded. Romney's access to the press is occasional and tightly monitored.

The McCain campaign operates on an ad-hoc basis. Because McCain has been playing catch-up since this summer, it has no choice. As soon as a dollar is raised, it is spent (though Florida should ease the cash crunch a bit). There is little paid staff - some of the senior advisers on the road with McCain have not collected a paycheck for seven months - and the campaign's organization in Super Tuesday states is still being pieced together - sometimes hours before McCain is scheduled to arrive.

When Steve "Lobot" Schmidt arrived at the bar Tuesday night wearing a grey, pinstriped suit, his attire triggered several comments and some friendly mockery. Schmidt's defense - it was the only thing he had left that was clean - did little to diminish the badinage.

A friend sends along this link to John McCain's first-hand account of his imprisonment, first published in U.S. News and World Report's May 14, 1973, issue.

From the Tierney Lab:

[T]here’s one very hard piece of evidence that casts doubt on the doomsday predictions: a polar bear jawbone that appears to be at least 110,000 years old, meaning that polar bears have survived eras with considerably warmer temperatures than today.

My colleague Andy Revkin reported in December, at his Dot Earth blog, that the discoverers of the jawbone told him there was “no threat of outright extinction within a century or more” and that “this finding reinforces the idea that they can endure.”

More good news for the polar bears: sea ice extent has returned to "near normal" levels after last summer's "record" thaw, and the Northern Hemisphere has more snow cover right now than at any time in the last decade.

HT: Eastern Weather

That's what Spencer Ackerman reports, much to the delight of the lefty blogosphere. But the numbers he cites are stunning for their insignificance. Think Progress pulls out the two most compelling stats:

According to “Iraq security statistics over the past 13 weeks,” roadside bomb explosions in Baghdad “have ticked up slightly to 131 in January from 129 in December — and the last week of January is not included in these latest figures.” Additionally, “the week ending on January 25 saw seven suicide explosions Iraq-wide, the most since the week ending Dec. 21, 2007.”

So over the last two months, we've seen an uptick in roadside bombs of less than 2 percent? Here are the raw numbers. The number of ethno-sectarian deaths nationwide has dropped from 131 in the first three weeks of November to 76 in the most recent three weeks of January. In Baghdad, the numbers are even more impressive, from 72 in the first three weeks of November to just 18 in the last three weeks. Likewise, civilian deaths are down across the board--and in roughly the same proportions.

The left has ignored the trends of the last six months in favor of comparing December, the surge's most impressive month statistically, to January, which has seen something of a leveling off. But still, the violence is down dramatically--and this is a rather pathetic attempt to demonstrate otherwise.

Do Congressional Democrats believe this is the only thing they were elected for?

Liberal Democratic lawmakers will push House leaders to return the Iraq War to center stage as early as next week.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said late Tuesday she is preparing to reintroduce legislation calling for a troop withdrawal from Iraq and will urge leadership to move the measure in the wake of the economic stimulus package that has been the center of attention for several weeks...

“I don’t think it throws it [the agenda] off track,” the [Democratic leadership] aide said, and later added: “Nothing’s been absolutely decided yet.”

House and Senate lawmakers had not been expected to turn their attention back to Iraq until at least March — the fifth anniversary of the war is March 19 — and possibly into the summer months, when another supplemental spending request is expected from the White House.

Congress still needs to complete the funding for the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2008. The wise political strategy would be to avoid flaunting their ineffectiveness in opposing the war on terror. They have repeatedly caved and provided funding, and they will do so again. So why not quietly pass the measure? Instead, it seems that Democrats will once more raise the hopes of their antiwar base, only to cave.

This looks more and more like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, with Pelosi and Reid in the Lucy role.

Today's buzz is the showdown between John McCain and Mitt Romney at last night's Republican debate in California, and bloggers are sharply divided on the winner.

The two sparred over each other's conservative credentials and stances on Iraq. Live-blogging at Pajamas Media, Bridget Johnson reports on the evening's many "full-body slams." Chris Cillizza has the video of the Iraq showdown and says, "McCain insisted that Romney had supported a timetable for withdrawal, while Romney bitterly disagreed and accused McCain of 'the sort of dirty tricks Ronald Reagan would have found reprehensible.'" The showdown resulted in McCain's major jab at Romney -- that McCain led "for patriotism, not for profit." More on the "Simi Valley Showdown" from Stephen F. Hayes at the DAILY STANDARD.

Many right-wing bloggers say that this debate made McCain look bad. Hugh Hewitt chides McCain for "his display of bad temper and his rambling filibuster of his wrongful 'timetables' attack on Romney." Paul Mirengoff at Power Line agrees: "McCain not only persisted in his dishonest claim that Mitt Romney supported a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, he used one evasion after another to try to make it stick."

As for his patriotism/profit comment, Captain Ed says that this won't appeal to many conservatives: "The people McCain wants to lead as President often lead for profit, and won't appreciate the aspersion this phrase that McCain uses in every appearance casts on their own motives." Michelle Malkin agrees. At the Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez questioned McCain's leadership abilities, and Mark Steyn remarked, "Just because McCain can poke Mitt in the eye is no indication he'll be as effective with Putin." Ross Douthat adds that McCain "kept on behaving as if Romney were the front-runner, and he was the scrappy underdog who needed to bring his rival down a notch."

Still, many bloggers disagree. At the CAMPAIGN STANDARD, Richard Starr says that "this line of McCain's is more than a cheap shot; it actually illuminates a deep and important difference between the two GOP contenders." Scott Johnson at Power Line expands on this line of thought, noting that in today's world of "Vladimir Putins, Osama bin Ladens and Harry Reids," an experienced politician is preferable to an experienced businessman: "This is not a game for amateurs. I think we should recognize that professional politicians bring important experience and skills to the table, and that one of those skills is the ability to knee an opponent in the groin and get away with it."

These bloggers say that McCain was the clear winner of the debate--and is the clear frontrunner. At the Politico, Roger Simon wrote, "McCain stuck to his guns, knowing that, as long as the conversation is on the Iraq war and McCain’s unswerving support for that war, he probably will continue to do well. (Just as long as the war continues to go well, of course.) And when it came to his vulnerabilities, McCain learned how a front-runner handles those: He blows by them." And the bloggers at MSNBC's First Read say that even if McCain did use "dirty tricks," "it should also serve as a comfort to nervous Republicans about McCain's ability to play hardball in the general. McCain may seem like a guy who likes to reach across the aisle, but he's not afraid to get dirty." Daniel Casse says Romney "blew it," and Goldfarb wrote last night that "Romney missed his chance, and it's not clear that he'll get another."

Regardless of your thoughts on the candidates, it looks like the Republican nominee is emerging, and he won't be afraid to get tough with the Democrat.

David Broder:

"On the Democratic side, the battle is more even, but the advantage has shifted back to Barack Obama - thanks to a growing but largely unremarked tendency among Democratic leaders to reject Hillary Clinton and her husband, the former president."

This is true of Democratic and liberal-leaning elites who reside along the Northeast Corridor. But is it true of Democratic voters in general? Not really. Since the Iowa loss, Clinton has mobilized winning coalitions of voters in New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, and Florida. Yes, I know Michigan and Florida don't count (at least not until the Clinton campaign strong-arms the DNC into awarding those delegates). But won't Super Tuesday resemble, in some sense, the Michigan and Florida contests? That is, so many states will be voting, so quickly, that it is hard for any candidate to campaign effectively, difficult for the campaigns to build up additional grassroots support. So the results likely will turn on name identification and traditional coalitions of Democratic voters. That's a scenario which favors Clinton. Obama needs a game-changer if he is to score what would be one of the greatest upsets in the history of American politics.

I felt a curious sensation earlier this week when Edward Kennedy, standing before a roomful of shrieking undergraduates in Washington, endorsed Barack Obama for president. It was not the rush of emotion that David Brooks described in the next day's New York Times, or irritation at the standard Kennedy spectacle - although the requisite elements were all there: The red-nosed, Rabelaisian senator, his medicated offspring, and his niece, her grin immobilized by surgery.

No, the sensation was familiar, and took me back 40 years to the winter of 1967-68, when I was working as a student volunteer at Eugene McCarthy headquarters in downtown Washington. My primary task was to open mail, collate documents, and purchase jelly donuts to satisfy the appetite of the campaign's slovenly press secretary, Seymour Hersh.

At the time, it will be remembered, McCarthy had decided to run for president because the sentimental favorite of the antiwar Democrats, Robert Kennedy, could not stir himself to challenge Lyndon Johnson. More profile than courage, it was said at the time. And of course, it was only after McCarthy had come close to defeating LBJ in the New Hampshire primary - prompting Johnson, shortly thereafter, to withdraw from the race - that Kennedy "reassessed" his position and announced his own candidacy.

Among those McCarthy enthusiasts who had "come clean for Gene," and embarked on what had seemed like a suicidal venture (among whom I counted myself), Kennedy was held in considerable contempt: His cute disavowals of interest in running amused no one, and his swift appropriation of McCarthy's capital caused indignation. When Kennedy finally announced he was running in the Senate Caucus Room, with his miniskirted wife onstage and their dozen children crawling among the wires and cameras, it seemed less a political act than a chapter in celebrity melodrama.

Which, to his credit, Kennedy seemed to perceive. He is said to have complained to associates that McCarthy enjoyed the allegiance of the A students while he was left with the B students. Certainly, we campus McCarthyites saw it that way, and noticed that when Kennedy spoke in public he seemed to attract what we called "screamers" - the sort of girls who had greeted The Beatles at the airport, and their slightly bewildered boyfriends - whose interest in Bobby did not seem political. McCarthy was accompanied on the campaign trail by Robert Lowell; Kennedy enjoyed the company of Roosevelt Grier, and Sonny and Cher.

Whether this specimen of Democratic snobbery has any application to the current election cycle I cannot say. Just as Robert Kennedy's crowds were larger and louder than Eugene McCarthy's in 1968, it is undoubtedly true that the saga of the Kennedy family - especially in the half-century since the assassinations of John and Robert - resonates with a certain kind of Democrat in 2008. But it is difficult to say how deeply such emotions run, and whether the excitement of a televised rally translates into anything like political action, conviction, or allegiance.

Barack Obama's appeal, in theatrical terms, is evident enough, and he is lucky to be running against Hillary Clinton. But time passes, enthusiasm wanes, and excitement cannot be sustained indefinitely. Obama seems to inspire in his followers the same sensations that tied Kennedy to his fans. The question is whether this can be translated into millions of votes for president, or is something that can survive and adapt in the aftermath of unforeseen events.

John McCain repeated a line in the debate last night that has infuriated Romney backers more than any other, the one where he contrasts his "leadership" experience with Romney's "managerial" experience, by referring to his Navy service as something undertaken "for patriotism and not for profit."

I can see why a lot of people on the right hate hearing this. It does sound - and McCain may even mean it to sound - dismissive of and condescending towards archcapitalists like Romney. But this line of McCain's is more than a cheap shot; it actually illuminates a deep and important difference between the two GOP contenders. And the distinction McCain's soundbite points toward is one that needn't reflect badly on either of the two men.

McCain is close to being a pure exponent of what Jane Jacobs called the "guardian syndrome." And Romney, for his part, is an almost equally pure exponent of its counterpart, what Jacobs termed the "commercial syndrome." As I can't lay my hands on my copy of Jacobs's 1992 book, Systems of Survival, in which she elaborates in fascinating detail on these two modes of living, I will fall back on Mary Ann Glendon's review for First Things.

Jacobs, writes Glendon,

contends that human beings have developed two and only two basic 'systems of survival': a 'commercial syndrome' and a 'guardian syndrome.' Each of these survival strategies has arisen and persisted, she argues, because it promotes material success in the way of life with which it is associated.

Like the other animals, we find and pick up what we can use, and appropriate territories. But unlike the other animals, we also trade and produce for trade. Because we possess these two radically different ways of dealing with our needs, we also have two radically different systems of morals and values - both systems valid and necessary.

The 'commercial syndrome' has its principal home among peoples who trade or produce for trade (though it is not coextensive with, or limited to, the world of business). The linchpin of the commercial syndrome is honesty, for the very good reason that trading systems don't work without a good deal of trust, even among strangers. Because traders' prosperity depends on making reliable deals, they set great store by policies that tend to create or reinforce honesty and trust: respect contracts; come to voluntary agreements; shun force; be tolerant and courteous; collaborate easily with strangers. Because producers for trade thrive on improved products and methods they also value inventiveness, and attitudes that foster creativity, such as 'dissent for the sake of the task.'

'Guardians' are modern versions of the raiders, warriors, and hunters who once made their livings through sorties into unknown or hostile territories. Today's guardians (usually more concerned with administering or protecting territories than acquiring them) are found in governmental ministries and bureaucracies, legislatures, the armed forces, the police, business cartels, intelligence agencies, and many religious organizations. Guardians prize such qualities as discipline, obedience, prowess, respect for tradition and hierarchy, show of strength, ostentation, largesse, and 'deception for the sake of the task.' The bedrock of guardian systems is loyalty. It not only promotes their common objectives, but it keeps them from preying on one another. They are wary of, even hostile to, trade, for the reason that loyalty and secrets of the group must not be for sale.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that these two constellations of traits match up pretty neatly with what most people would agree are the distinctive virtues of Romney and McCain. Whether McCain's drawing attention to the distinction is ultimately a winning line in a commercial republic like ours is another question.

Ted Kennedy took to the virtual pages of the Daily Kos yesterday to pen an inspiring endorsement of Barack Obama. Showing a surprising facility with the intertubes, Massachusetts' senior senator even managed to embed a YouTube clip into his "diary.

But yesterday was a dark day at the Daily Kos, what with their hero, the lionhearted son of a mill worker named John Edwards, being driven from the race by the forces of greed. Thus, several disappointed Kossacks greeted Senator Kennedy's completely banal essay with a touch of anger.

Many community members noticed a major flaw that infected Kennedy’s endorsement. The second of the 720 comments chided Kennedy, “It would have been nice of you to mention John Edwards today. I'm sorry you did not.”

Another commenter lectured the senator,

“You should have waited until tomorrow to post this. Perhaps you were trying to reach out to all the Edwards supporters as they are most likely here today, but then you should have spoken about Edwards, at least acknowledged that he was dropping out, especially since his campaign has been focused on ending poverty.
I was disappointed that you didn't endorse Edwards, and now I am disappointed that you could be so insensitive today.”

Ted Kennedy insensitive? Now I’ve seen it all! Some were more angry than disappointed.

"John was every bit part of the future as Obama,” wrote ImpeachKingBushII (if that’s his real name). "'Yesterday's news'? Hardly. He didn't officially drop out until this afternoon!" A hair-splitting point for sure, but still a valid one.

"The part of this diary I didn't get," continued ImpeachKingBushII (if that's his real name), "is how presumptuous, pompous, and insensitive Obama supporters apparently are. Don't take our support for granted bucko. I'll use my acidic, razor-sharp tongue just as quickly on him as I have used it on Bush, IF I feel a coronation in the making. One 'His Majesty the King' under 8 years of this despotic Bush regime is more than quite enough for one lifetime. I won't suffer another one, regardless of party. The true test of character is how benevolent the victor is, and how quickly they seek to heal the wounds that divided us, not in how deep they can rub our noses into the bitter ashes of defeat."

Ted Kennedy failing a true test of character? Now I’m really shocked! And now poor Senator Obama, as a result of Senator Kennedy's clumsy insensitivity, will have to risk the wrath of the "acidic razor-sharp tongue" of ImpeachKingBushII (if that's his real name).

One wonders if the Obama campaign can survive this looming challenge.

Quick observations from the debate:

Huckabee was great. He's funny, he's engaging, and if he was at all qualified to serve as commander in chief, he might have won this thing. The self-aware pandering on highways, his first-strike against Anderson Cooper, and his refusal to dishonor Reagan in Reagan's house were all expert. And of course, he now benefits from being a marginal figure and a potential spoiler--no one is going after him.

Romney didn't do enough to change the fundamental dynamic of this race. He scrapped with McCain over the timetables question, but any time Romney spends talking about Iraq is bound to end up a draw at best. No one is under the impression that he now wants out of Iraq, but his statements from late 2006 and early 2007 do not evince strong leadership. And on the merits, I'm not convinced he won the argument. McCain responded that "timetables" was liberal code for retreat, and that Romney should have just said no. It was effective enough.

McCain improved as the evening wore on, and as the conversation shifted to national security. CNN's crack debate team tried repeatedly to push him into a corner, particularly on immigration and the Bush tax cuts. In each instance, he gave answers that were intended to appease his conservative critics. They may not have been terribly effective in that regard, but there was no damage done to him from the exchanges either. And on the issue of global warming--at least he didn't go out of his way to antagonize conservatives. He's committed to cap-and-trade, but in explaining why he emphasized the potential economic benefits of investing in green technologies, and he took great pains to make clear that he might be wrong about climate change.

McCain also got in a great dig in at Romney when he said that he'd led the largest squadron in the Navy and had "done it for patriotism and not for profit." Just seconds later he mentioned his time as a POW--a debate first, I think. John Podhoretz captures the result:

I know it is supposedly a great calling card that Romney ran the Salt Lake City Olympics, but saying it directly after John McCain talked about his time in the Hanoi Hilton might not be the best timing in the world.

In the end, Romney couldn't land the knock out punch. And he didn't say anything that will make it on to the local news tomorrow night. (One wonders just how many Republicans were really watching this affair? Anderson Cooper was insufferable, and Republicans don't like CNN to begin with. Many may have tuned out early.)

So the news tomorrow will be dominated not by debate coverage but by McCain's endorsements, from Rudy and Arnold, by the end of the Edwards campaign, and by the looming battle between Obama and Hillary. Romney missed his chance, and it's not clear that he'll get another.

Yesterdays airstrike against a purported Taliban safe house in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal agency resulted in 12 killed just as the Taliban and the government are prepared to sign a new peace accord. But the strike may have claimed a high value al Qaeda leader, ABC News reported today.

Pakistani intelligence sources say they believe a "high-value" al Qaeda target was killed in a missile strike yesterday in the country's tribal region bordering Afghanistan. U.S. officials said there was no indication that the target was Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al Zawahri, but one senior official told ABCNews.com the strike was aimed at one particular figure. "We don't know whether we got him yet, we are sorting through it," the official said, indicating the intended target was a top leader of the terror group.

While the Internet is abuzz with the possibility of Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri being killed, the likelihood, as ABC News noted, is low. A series of airstrikes in the tribal areas from earlier 2006 onward has yielded only two mid-level a Qaeda operatives: Imam Asad, the chief trainer of the Black Guard, and Mohsin Matawalli Atwa, one of the architects of the 1998 attacks on the U.S. Embassies in Eastern Africa.

Anonymous Pakistani intelligence officials have misled the U.S. officials about the deaths of high value al Qaeda targets in the past. The Pakistanis claimed six senior al Qaeda operatives were killed in a strike in January 2006. These leaders were: Midhat Mursi al Sayid Umar (Abu Khabab), al Qaeda's WMD expert; Abdul Rahman al Maghribi, Zawahiri's son-in-law and an al Qaeda commander; Abu Obaidah al Masri, the Kunar, Afghanistan operations chief; Marwan al Suri, the Waziristan operations chief; Khalid Habib, the commander of southeastern Afghanistan commander; and Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, a member of al Qaeda's military committee. The Washington Post reported almost two years later that they had, in fact, survived the attack. Abd al Hadi al Iraqi was captured while trying to enter Iraq in April 2007.

I noted yesterday that the strike may have been designed to derail the new peace talks, as happened in October 2006 in Bajaur agency. At that time, the government was negotiating with Faqir Mohammed and his local Taliban forces in Bajaur. The government leveled a Taliban training camp at the Chingai madrassa, killing more than 80 Taliban. The peace talks with the Taliban in Bajaur were sabotaged, but a deal was cut six months later in March 2007.

John McCormack does the math over at the Campaign Standard:

McCain's greatest advantage lies in the states that award all of their delegates - 373 in all - to the winner of the statewide popular vote: Arizona (53), Connecticut (30), Delaware (18), Missouri (58), Montana (25), New Jersey (52), New York (101), and Utah (36).

Polls have shown McCain leading in all of these states, except Utah where Romney is up big, Delaware where Giuliani was ahead, and Montana where caucusgoers haven't been polled. If the polls are right, and assuming McCain and Romney split the remaining delegates, McCain would be leading by at least 300 delegates after February 5. And a close look at the rest of the Super Tuesday states makes that a generous assumption in Romney's favor.

Go read the whole thing, he breaks it down even further. Unless something significant happens tonight, Romney isn't going to turn this thing around. And the McCain campaign is acutely aware of how little distance their is between them and the finish line. As Jonathan Martin reports:

NBC invited John McCain and Mitt Romney onto “Meet the Press” Sunday for a final debate before Super Tuesday. Romney, now the underdog and eager for opportunities to take on the frontrunner, immediately accepted. McCain, who appeared on the show last week and is looking to protect a lead, declined.

Sometimes playing not to lose is the prudent course of action.

Congressional Democrats remain unable to bring themselves to authorize intercepts of phone calls by terrorists into the United States. Instead, Congress has cleared legislation to extend such surveillance by just 15 days -- hoping that they can come to agreement on a long-term fix in that time. The only problem is that such a fix has eluded them for months.

The House on Tuesday passed a 15-day extension (HR 5104) of the temporary surveillance law (PL 110-55) by voice vote, with the goal of giving lawmakers in both chambers more time to work on a more comprehensive overhaul. The Senate cleared it by voice vote.

The extension would keep the current law in force until Feb. 16, the day before lawmakers are scheduled to begin their Presidents Day recess.

Bush is expected to sign the bill, after vowing to veto earlier Democratic proposals to enact a 30-day extension.

Do Democrats imagine that national security will not be an important issue in this year's presidential campaign?

Steve Forbes just appeared on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox. He sounded like he will follow his candidate, Rudy Giuliani, and become a McCain supporter, though nothing formal has been announced yet. Asked about Romney's claims that he is a tax cutter, Forbes responded that it depends on the meaning of tax cut. He went on to highlight Romney's record raising fees and implied that there's little difference between fees and taxes. (He's right, of course.)

Forbes said he's less concerned about McCain's votes on President Bush's tax cuts than he is favorably impressed by McCain's promises to cut taxes going forward. When Cavuto noted that he sounds like a McCain man, Forbes responded: "That's where I'm heading now."

For many of us, last night was full of disappointment. Nevertheless, it is not in my nature to wallow. Even when the clouds are darkest, I look resolutely look for silver linings (although my prose takes on an annoying, cliché ridden style).

1) John Edwards

has left the race. But just because he is gone doesn't mean he has left us without memories to cherish. Remember when he hired those ridiculously obscene bloggers? And remember when he fired them? And remember when he rehired them? And remember when he fired them once and for all, showing the kind of crisp executive decision making a credible presidential contender needs to have?

Good times. And whenever we're blue, we can always punch up that footage of him primping his hair for two minutes. And it's not like he's going away. He'll be back in 2012 or 2016.

2) Rudy Giuliani has left the race. I liked Rudy – he was my second choice - so I take no joy in his downfall. But I take considerable joy in his foolish campaign schemers getting their comeuppance. McCain stood and fought, and reaped the benefits. Rudy could have done the same, but his strategists decided to cut and run when the battle got toughest. Don't weep for them, though. If Bob Shrum could keep getting work after driving numerous presidential campaigns into the ditch, Rudy's advisors will have no problem getting future gigs. The political consultant industry is a sad victim of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

3) The New England Patriots will finish their quest for “ever” (as Pats linebacker Junior Seau calls it) on Sunday. Some people think Boston sports fans have been obnoxious in this, our era of serial triumphs. Sorry, but we Boston fans feel the right to celebrate after all that we have suffered. The Buckner loss was the most painful in the history of team sports. The Celtics got battered by multiple tragedies. The Patriots were a star-crossed franchise that didn’t manage to win its first playoff game until its 25th year of existence.

When you think about, it's sad that we live in a nation where so many people are unable to appreciate the greatest display of excellence in the history of team sports.

4) Back in my intemperate blogging days, I launched a McCain Campaign Dead Pool shortly after the McCain/Kennedy fiasco. While I continue my efforts to convince the McCain people that it was all just a very bad joke, one that I profoundly regret and not the kind of thing a potential president should be at all vindictive over, I can still console myself that at least I won't have to give out the promised prize to a winner.

5) My cleaning woman came today and excitedly asked if I was following the presidential election while she shooed me out of the den. I told her I was. She then proceeded to tell me how excited she was to vote next week. She's been in this country for many years, but this is the first election she'll be able to vote in. It will be her first time voting since she was in Brazil, where they force you to vote. She's torn between Clinton and McCain. I did my level best to convince her to vote for McCain. (Personal note to Team McCain: See? I'm a team player!)

Her excitement was contagious. Even when you don't particularly care for the results, Democracy is a pretty grand thing.

Edwards adviser Mudcat Saunders says he'll do anything in his power to prevent his boss, who dropped out of the race today, from endorsing Hillary Clinton. Here's the video:

Mudcat, of course, was the subject of this classic Matt Labash profile back in 2005.

(A tip of the homburg to Ben Smith.)

The wheel turns. In 2007, Giuliani led national polls for months and through the third quarter had raised more money from individual contributors than any of the candidates. Then a flurry of bad publicity, a stalled campaign in New Hampshire, and a turn to Florida wiped it all away. Jonathan Martin provides a well-reported assessment of what went wrong.

Thomas B. Edsall goes through the Florida exit poll numbers and concludes: "The Republican Party looks increasingly likely to pass the torch to a candidate powered by decidedly un-Republican constituencies: anti-Bush voters, the non-religious, supporters of abortion rights, and social-cultural moderates."

Another interesting number: McCain won 51 to 15 among Latino Republican voters.

One more tidbit from Edsall's piece: While Florida technically is a "closed" primary, meaning only registered party members can vote, political scientist Nolan McCartney points out that "17 percent of the Republican primary voters identify as independents and McCain carried them handily." It's not that difficult to change your registration in the days before a closed primary, in other words.

All in all, Romney probably will win more than a few states on Super Tuesday, places where traditionally conservative voters dominate. But probably it also won't be enough, as demographer William Frey points out, to counteract McCain's likely dominance in the large, coastal states.

Over at Contentions, here's Daniel Casse:

"If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, [some] will argue, persuasively, that Romney may have been a better GOP nominee. Against Obama, McCain is the old man versus the young man, the old way versus the new. Romney, at least, can make a much stronger argument against Obama’s soft-headed economics.

"But if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, then we really do have one of the great national contests on our hands - and the McCain haters will have no choice but to get on board."

This sounds about right to me, though Obama does have liabilities - his inexperience, and his liberalism - that may make him slightly less unstoppable than people think. The larger point here, though, is the amazing way in which McCain, after winning three out of five early contests with little money and tough opposition, gets absolutely no credit from a variety of pundits. On CNN last night, Bill Schneider was talking about the "hard road ahead" for McCain. Um, not quite.

People's Daily reports:

China is expected to become the world's second largest power in terms of objective national strength by 2030, a top think tank reported on Tuesday.

In its report "China's Modernization 2008" that was released on Monday, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said the country, currently number three globally in objective national strength, is expected to surpass Japan in 2030.

And earlier this week from the Strategy Page:

Expensive, and long term, efforts are being made to produce high tech items like jet engines, missiles and military electronics. At the current rate of progress, Chinese military technology will match that of the United States in a decade or so.

I think that second estimate is more than a little hysterical. The Chinese are putting Russian engines into fourth generation fighters while the United States operates the world's only fifth generation fighter, the F-22, and Boeing is even talking of a sixth generation fighter (though there's already some healthy skepticism at the Danger Room). Still, it sounds like the Chinese are doing a little sandbagging in the CASS study--it closes with this:

In its report, CASS also proposed the new concept of "Peace Dove Strategy" to stress its peaceful development policy.

The "Peace Dove, We Would Never Start a War Strategy"--who could worry?

RedState's Ben Domenech on the last action hero:

His support of the surge confounded the glitterati of the MSM, who gave him every opportunity to break with the president in a fashion that would’ve led to countless more cover appearances for the late-night self-pleasuring of pimply interns of the New Republic. And yet he could not be agreeable to them, as tempting as the doyennes and the cameras were: he rambled through, grousing yet triumphant, middle fingers raised to Rumsfeld on the right and the New York Times on the left. Even if you dislike McCain, you have to admit: It was a glorious moment for him.

Fantastic.

HT: Sullivan

Steve Hayes's point is dead on, I think - with the emphasis on dead: Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson murdered their own campaigns with a political strategy that declared themselves the ones who could transcend politics.

Of course, many candidates pose themselves this way: Teddy Roosevelt did, and Jimmy Carter did, and Barack Obama is hot at it even today. One of the weirdest things about the 1952 election is that the
Republican Eisenhower and the Democrat Stevenson both claimed to be breaking the mold of typical partisan politics. But the difference with Giuliani and Thompson is that their actual political strategies depended on their nonpolitical status.

If that sounds like a contradiction - a politics for nonpolitics - it's because that really was a contradiction. The successful candidates who pose at being outside normal politics do so with plenty of political activism and political strategy supporting them. You don't actually break the mold by missing the mold.

Steve Hayes reads the Giuliani and Thompson campaigns as misbegotten from the beginning: errors fathered by hubris and mothered by incompetence. And Steve is right - but there is, perhaps, a further
point to consider. The netroots, the Feiler Faster Thesis, the postmodern present, all things changed: The next time you read someone insisting that politics is different than ever before, remember Giuliani and Thompson. The next time you hear some claim that traditional political campaigns are dead, call Rudy and Fred back to mind. To turn the world upside down, it will take more than a late entry into the race or a campaign strategy that denies the importance of early primaries.

If buttercups buzz’d after the bee,
If boats were on land, churches on sea,
If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows,
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse,
If the mamas sold their babies
To the gypsies for half a crown;
If summer were spring and the other way round,
Then all the world would be upside down.

The Associated Press reports that John McCain is now leading Mitt Romney in delegates 93 to 59. Unless support for McCain dramatically drops in the next week, he's poised to amass a commanding delegate lead on Super Tuesday (a.k.a. Super Duper - Mega - Tsunami Tuesday), when 1,081 delegates are up for grabs.

McCain's greatest advantage lies in the states that award all of their delegates - 373 in all - to the winner of the statewide popular vote: Arizona (53), Connecticut (30), Delaware (18), Missouri (58), Montana (25), New Jersey (52), New York (101), and Utah (36).

Polls have shown McCain leading in all of these states, except Utah where Romney is up big, Delaware where Giuliani was ahead, and Montana where caucusgoers haven't been polled. If the polls are right, and assuming McCain and Romney split the remaining delegates, McCain would be leading by at least 300 delegates after February 5. And a close look at the rest of the Super Tuesday states makes that a generous assumption in Romney's favor.

Almost all of the delegates from California (173) and Illinois (70) will be elected winner-take-all by congressional district, with 3 delegates awarded per district.

Oklahoma (41), Georgia (72), and West Virginia (30) use a hybrid system that awards some delegates winner-take-all by congressional district and the rest to the statewide winner.

Delegates from Alaska (29) and Massachusetts (43) will be awarded proportionally, as will delegates from Alabama (48), Arkansas (34), North Dakota (26), and Tennessee (55). (However, Alabama and Arkansas would award all delegates to a candidate who amasses over 50 percent of the vote, and North Dakota and Tennessee have a similar conditional winner-take-all rule if a candidate wins more than 67 percent.) Colorado (46) and Minnesota (41), like the Iowa caucuses, will allocate delegates at state and congressional district conventions later this year.

If you factor in Huckabee siphoning off votes from Romney in the South and Giuliani boosting McCain in California and Illinois, then the total delegate count after Super Tuesday might be closer to 700 for McCain and 300 for Romney.

While McCain would be well short of the 1,191 delegates needed to win the nomination, it's hard to see how Romney could make a comeback at that point.

I just got this press release in my inbox, and the announcement is so absurd I have to wonder if it's even legit:

Topps, the iconic brand that has brought the love of baseball to hundreds of thousands of men, women and children across this country for decades has announced the Campaign Trading cards for both the Democratic and Republican parties. Each card states facts about the candidates, including, party affiliation and biographical information. The Campaign Trading cards, which contain 12 in the series, will be included in the 2008 Baseball set. Candidates even include those who have recently excited the race (cards which are sure to become collector’s items) such as Governor Bill Richardson, Senator Joseph Biden and former Senator Fred Thompson. Below please find some of the facts that can be found on the cards:

John Edwards was the first member of his family to attend college

John McCain was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart

Hillary Clinton was the first First Lady to hold a postgraduate degree

Mike Huckabee has supported Middle East peace efforts, taking several trips to Israel

Dennis Kucinich is a vegan

Ron Paul, a physician by training, has delivered more than 4,000 babies

A warning to all the little gold bugs on the playground: the company's just going to print more Ron Paul cards.

Aviation Week reports:

Boeing is touting an even newer version of its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet that, paired with an advanced sixth-generation fighter in the works at the company, would give customers what Boeing deems a better package of capabilities than Lockheed Martin's combination of the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The idea is that customers could buy 4.5 generation Super Hornets (perhaps 4.75 generation with the planned extra forward stealth and extra range of Block 3 aircraft) and then switch to a new, sixth generation faster than if they bought the fifth generation Joint Strike Fighter. To be available circa 2024, the sixth generation aircraft would feature a combat radius of more than 1,000 miles and stealth against a much wider spectrum of radars.

The Joint Strike Fighter isn't a done deal, and the leadership at the Pentagon seems dead set against buying anymore F-22s beyond the four they just ordered to keep the production line open past 2011. If Boeing can put something together that would offer a real leap beyond JSF--it isn't so far fetched that they could divide and conquer.

Ross Douthat writes that the only reason McCain got this far is luck:

But much of what's happened to make McCain the presumptive nominee has been luck, pure and simple. He was lucky, to begin with, that George W. Bush lacked an heir apparent – no Jeb, no Condi, no Dick Cheney – who could unite the movement establishment against him. He was lucky that Mitt Romney was a Mormon. He was lucky that Fred Thompson, a candidate who might have succeeded in rallying both social and economic conservatives against his various heresies, was out-campaigned by Mike Huckabee, whose appeal was ultimately too sectarian to make him a threat. He was lucky that Rudy Giuliani ran an inutterably lousy campaign. (More on this anon.) He was lucky that Mike Huckabee won Iowa; lucky that the media basically treated that win as a McCain victory (though obviously his skill in cultivating the press made a big difference, in that case and many others); lucky, as David Freddoso suggests, that Huckabee decided to campaign in New Hampshire and (taking my foolish advice) Michigan instead of going straight to South Carolina; lucky that Giuliani decided not to campaign in New Hampshire after Christmas; and lucky, finally, that Fred Thompson decided to go all in against Huckabee in South Carolina, thus delivering McCain the Palmetto State and with it Florida. And he was lucky, above all, that his strongest challenger was a guy that almost nobody liked – not the media, not his fellow candidates, and not enough of the voters, in the end.

He goes on and on like that. Immigration worked out just so, he got to play the scrappy underdog again, etc. And of course it's all true. Just like Hillary was lucky to meet Bill Clinton in law school, Barack Obama was lucky someone invited him to give a speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and John Edwards, well, he was just lucky to be born in the greatest and most litigious country on earth.

But McCain has always been luckier than most. He was sitting in the cockpit of an A-4 on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal when a missile was accidentally launched and hit the fully-loaded fuel tank on his aircraft. The fire killed 162 of the ship's crew. McCain survived. He later survived being shot down over Vietnam. And he survived a further five and a half years in a POW camp.

When Napoleon was asked what quality he most wanted in his generals, he replied "just one--that they be lucky." Presidential candidates are no different. But the other thing that got McCain this far was hard work. He was out their pressing the flesh in New Hampshire when Rudy and Fred couldn't be bothered. I traveled around with him in New Hampshire for a day--he knew everybody, and he just never stopped plugging away. Like Gary Player, the harder McCain worked, the luckier he got--and there's no doubt, it's better to be lucky than good.

The boss writes over at the Campaign Standard:

Reading this morning's analysis on line, I'm a little shocked by the number of people writing about the GOP race who think that "It's still competitive, it will go on a long time, they're really going to slug it out. ..." I think, to the contrary, that absent any dramatic developments this week, McCain is likely to put it away next Tuesday. It's true that he hasn't won more than 36 percent of the vote in any primary, so in principle there is a majority anti-McCain coalition available. But exit polls in Florida and elsewhere show the non-McCain and non-Romney vote splitting pretty evenly between McCain and Romney. Add that to Giuliani's endorsement (and Schwarzenegger's), the momentum that comes from winning three of the five major contests so far, and McCain's current strength in almost all of Tuesday's winne-take-all states--and he looks to be in very good shape. McCain isn't a prohibitive favorite, but he's a strong one.

The only thing that can stop him: a major revelation at tonight's debate. Also, Steve Hayes reports from Florida.

Reading this morning's analysis on line, I'm a little shocked by the number of people writing about the GOP race who think that "It's still competitive, it will go on a long time, they're really going to slug it out. ..." I think, to the contrary, that absent any dramatic developments this week, McCain is likely to put it away next Tuesday. It's true that he hasn't won more than 36 percent of the vote in any primary, so in principle there is a majority anti-McCain coalition available. But exit polls in Florida and elsewhere show the non-McCain and non-Romney vote splitting pretty evenly between McCain and Romney. Add that to Giuliani's endorsement (and Schwarzenegger's), the momentum that comes from winning three of the five major contests so far, and McCain's current strength in almost all of Tuesday's winner- take - all states - and he looks to be in very good shape. McCain isn't a prohibitive favorite, but he's a strong one.

What could change the situation? It's hard to believe paid advertising across 22 states (even if Romney's willing to splurge) could fundamentally change the dynamic. There could always be some sort of scandal, revelation, or gaffe, or course - though that would be far more likely if there were a new, suddenly-emerged frontrunner, than with the most veteran and best-known candidate in the field. So the most likely game-changer, if there were to be one, would be tonight's debate. It's likely to be Romney's last direct shot at McCain. If Romney were to land a really telling blow, it could shape the narrative for the rest of this week. If not, if this debate follows the course of almost all its predecessors and has no decisive moment, then all attention turns to Clinton-Obama, and McCain should have a pretty clear path.

The Romney camp has twelve hours to come up with a startling factoid, formulation, or revelation. The McCain camp has twelve hours to prepare for any such eventuality. If McCain does well tonight, he should be the GOP nominee.

Bill Kristol writes in from Fox News Channel:

"Three points:

"A well informed Democrat told me tonight that it was very doubtful that Al Gore would endorse Obama in the near future - but 'keep your eye on Jimmy Carter.'

"Most interesting statistic in the Democratic exit poll: Obama ran even with Clinton among voters who decided in the last week. That suggests that he has a more even playing field moving ahead toward Super Tuesday than past poll numbers would suggest.

"On the Republican side: About a third of the voters called themselves 'somewhat conservative.' McCain did as well with those 'somewhat conservative' voters as he did with the Republican primary electorate as a whole. Among the quarter or so of the voters who called themselves 'very conservative,' McCain lost to Romney by about 2 to 1, getting only 20 percent of those voters. This suggests to me that McCain's 'conservative problem' is not as dire among conservative voters as you would think listening to conservative elites. And in fact, among the very conservative Republican voters, it's quite possible that they prefer Romney or even Huckabee to McCain, but the fact that they prefer Romney or in some cases Huckabee to McCain doesn't mean that they view McCain as unacceptable.

"What's more, if you look at McCain's favorable/unfavorable rating, it's strong among all Republicans, including conservatives. So McCain has some work to do with more conservative Republicans, but not as much as you would think from listening to some talk radio or reading some conservative blogs.He'll have to figure out which conservative elites can be brought around - and which he'll have to go around."

"Leadership doesn't end with a single campaign." That was Rudy Giuliani tonight.

Mark Halperin has reported that Rudy Giuliani will endorse McCain as early as Wednesday. I think he's right, but the McCain team would prefer to have Giuliani at the debate in California. They believe Giuliani, who doesn't like Mitt Romney, will help deflect Romney's attacks on McCain.

On the bus on Sunday, McCain talked about his friendship with Giuliani. He said that it would be inappropriate to talk at length about a potential Giuliani endorsement of his candidacy, but noted that he and his wife, Cindy, are friends with top Giuliani adviser Tony Carbonetti and his wife. Carbonetti's wife, Carol, stayed with the McCain's at their home in Lake Powell a few years back.

That now according to Fox and the AP. And we also get word that Rudy Giuliani is set to endorse McCain tomorrow prior to the Republican debate. No one in either camp is disputing the report. Some interesting items from tonight...

John Podhoretz had some "ridiculous early analysis" speculating that McCain might get endorsements from nearly every other candidate in the field before the week is out. On Fox though, It sounds as if Huckabee is staying in. He just said on Fox that he'd "placed everywhere." Except Florida.

But as the Corner notes, Huckabee takes votes away from Romney. Giuliani takes votes away from McCain. Right now it looks like they're both going to do whatever it takes to help McCain and hurt Romney.

McCain's overcome a lot to get this far, and it finally looks like he's starting to get the breaks. In Florida he got three big endorsements--Martinez, Crist, and Stormin' Norman--over three days. Now he wins Florida and gets set for a few more high-profile endorsements. Heading into Super Tuesday, those events give him the kind of media exposure that even Romney can't buy. Which really leaves the debate as Romney's only chance to stem the tide.

Update: Continetti on Giuliani:

Mark Halperin has reported that Rudy Giuliani will endorse McCain as early as Wednesday. I think he's right, but the McCain team would prefer to have Giuliani at the debate in California. They believe Giuliani, who doesn't like Mitt Romney, will help deflect Romney's attacks on McCain.

Interesting report earlier tonight from Fox News Channel's Bill Hemmer. He said that advisers to Mitt Romney told him that their candidate would be going after John McCain on integrity, specifically focusing on McCain's comments last week on Romney and Iraq.

We saw this previewed yesterday. "I think Senator McCain is willing to say anything he has to say to get elected," Romney said. The Romney campaign also sent out a press release detailing accusations that McCain has problems with his temper.

It's a high-risk, high-reward strategy. By targeting McCain's strength, Romney could chip away at his favorable ratings. In my discussions with McCain supporters this week, many of them pointed to "integrity" and "character" as reasons they intended to vote for him. If Romney can successfully raise questions about these things, he could make voters very nervous about supporting McCain.

But the risk here is a big one. Ask most voters to name the first thing that comes to their minds when they hear John McCain and they will likely say "veteran" or "patriot" or "war hero." Will voters who might disagree with many of McCain's positions find him sympathetic if he is attacked on character? Depending on how it's done, that is possible, perhaps likely.

Last night during the State of the Union address, Barack Obama sat next to liberal lion Ted Kennedy who had endorsed him earlier in the day. The seating arrangement highlighted the merger of Camelot and Obama, something that Mark Steyn has labeled Obamalot.

Although the chatterers always pay a lot of attention to endorsements, I found the optics of Obama and Kennedy doing the political equivalent of cuddling during the State of the Union to be a little off. It somehow seemed wrong that Obama was rubbing his taut, lean elbow of the future with Ted Kennedy's flabby elbow of the past.

The Kennedy/Obama merger surely has energized a bunch of wheezing Baby Boom gasbags who never cease pining for a return to the glory days of their past. But precisely therein lies the problem. Obama is putting forth a new kind of politics, and yet is oddly wallowing in the imprimatur bestowed on him from one of the dinosaurs of the past. Obama preaches a politics of national unity, while there hasn’t been a more deliberately divisive political leader (not named Clinton) than Ted Kennedy over the past forty years.

It reminds me a bit of Al Gore endorsing Howard Dean. Dean enjoyed considerable success in 2003 as the maverick running against the national party’s power structure. But when Gore endorsed him and Dean ate it up, it appeared that the party collective had absorbed the formerly independent rabble-rouser.

Without exaggeration, Ted Kennedy's style of liberalism was exhausted while Obama was still in high school. What's more, Kennedy has always made a less-than-entirely reputable champion for his brand of politics. One of the exciting things about the Obama campaign is the way it offers hope that a new kind of politics might emerge. It's hard to see how Obama benefits by embracing the worst of the old kind of politics that so much of the country is so eager to leave behind.

That's the thinking behind this much-discussed op-ed on the value of F-22:

There are, of course, two wars going on, and the F-22 has yet to fly a single sortie over the skies of Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor has the Air Force announced any intention of sending the F-22 to either theater.

The Air Force is quite right to keep the F-22 as far as possible from either conflict. The airplane is irrelevant to both, and were it to appear in those skies, it almost certainly would set U.S. and allied forces back.

Not only would it impose an unwanted burden on the already overstretched support forces in the region, but its primary mission -- shooting down enemy aircraft -- has no meaning in 21st-century warfare.

Bill Sweetman's response is priceless:

I'm sure you'd have found people saying much the same thing about the 20th century, in 1908.

"I say, Carruthers, some dashed American chappies think they've invented a fwying machine! Like to see that go up against our cavalwy! Haw! Haw!"

Pakistan has finally admitted what many of us have been saying for years: the country is fighting a counterinsurgency campaign on its own soil. The Musharraf government recognizes “that they had a growing issue in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Agency] that could be described correctly as an insurgency and they seem now to be cueing up to take it on,” said General Dan McNeill, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, after a recent meeting with Musharraf and Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai. “I think they also know that they need a maximum adjustment in their force perhaps in training and equipping to be able to prosecute this fight the right way.”

That Musharraf is finally able to admit he is fighting a counterinsurgency campaign in the tribal areas is a good start, but the truth is the Taliban has branched out far beyond that area and into the greater Northwest Frontier Province. Peshawar, the provincial capital, has been buffeted by suicide attacks and a host of Taliban inspired violence and intimidation since late 2006. The Taliban have been active in Tank, Khyber, and Peshawar since early 2006. A government report stated that settled districts of Bannu, Lakki Marwat, and Swat were falling into a state of "Talibanisation, lawlessness and terrorism" in April 2007.

The Taliban overran Swat and Shangla in the fall of 2007 after signing a peace accord in the spring, and the Pakistani military has been waging intense battles since late November to dislodge the terrorists. Just yesterday in Bannu, "militants" took more than 250 children hostage. A Beslan-like situation was narrowly averted when a tribal committee stepped forward and secured free passage for the terrorists. The military recently fought a pitched three-day battle with the Taliban in Darra Adam Khel and Kohat, where the Taliban took over a tunnel on the Indus Highway.

This list is hardly comprehensive. Fighting is ongoing in Swat, Orakzai, and South Waziristan. Bajaur remains an al Qaeda command and control center. And the government is looking to cut yet another "peace accord" with the Taliban in North Waziristan. So while the Pakistani government is just now coming to terms with the insurgency in the tribal areas, the problem has already extended far beyond that. Until the government becomes serious about waging an intensive counterinsurgency campaign, the problem will only continue to grow.

Stars & Stripes reports that Tennessee Rep. Lincoln Davis is pushing to ban gambling at U.S. military bases overseas:

Davis, a Democrat, is behind a new congressional push to ban gambling at overseas military bases because of what he feels is its inherently addictive nature. The Southern Baptist admits that he opposes gambling on moral grounds, but insists that's not the issue behind his latest efforts.

"We've got research to show that 30,000 of our troops may be pathological gamblers, and we ought to be ashamed that we're adding to that," he said.

So they can be trusted with nuclear weapons but not with a roll of quarters? Davis does go on to say that this is more about government endorsing gambling than anything else, but it's not like they don't have a lottery in his home state. And while it doesn't seem like a terribly good idea to have slots on base (the article says the military operates some 5,400 machines around the world), soldiers are going to gamble, and the government really has no business acting in loco parentis. It's bad enough that the troops aren't able to have a beer in a combat zone, but at least there's a rationale for that restriction. This is just the nanny state extending its control into the military.

And we've seen it before, most recently when a coalition of anti-porn groups pushed for stricter enforcement of the Military Honor and Decency Act of 1996, which was supposed to ban the sale of skin mags at on-base stores. The move was widely ridiculed, and an unscientific poll from Military.com shows why--people want our troops to be treated like adults.

Davis does make one good point though. Officials warn that the machines are an important source of revenue (estimated at $130 million), financing internet access, youth sports, and renovations at morale and welfare centers. Davis rightly says it's "ludicrous" that soldiers have to pay for such things themselves. Perhaps we could redirect those funds towards free beer and porn for the troops.

There's been a lot of discussion about the effort of House Republicans to promote a one-year earmark moratorium, and of the president to force Congress to limit them. How seriously should we take this? Well, the lobbyists are scared:

After a year of grappling with new transparency standards and efforts by the House Democratic majority to chop earmarks in half, lobbyists returning to work are facing a fresh set of challenges, including Members who purposely are shifting their appropriation deadlines forward to decrease the number of requests...

One appropriations lobbyist described the situation as “pretty close” to a crisis for the industry. “There’s so much uncertainty across the board. Last year was tough, and the threat still continues...”

Another appropriations lobbyist, speaking on background, said leaner times could prove healthy for the business long term. “We were due for a shakeout,” this lobbyist said. “Lobbying has been growing tremendously in the past several years, with anyone thinking they could leave the Hill to put out a shingle. It’ll shake out and we’ll see who survives.”

Every once in a while you need to thin the herd, apparently.

Also worth reading is this post from Andrew Roth -- a list of all the Members who have gone cold-turkey on earmarks.

With Rudy Giuliani's campaign effectively over, it's worth spending a moment on his unusual demise. The conventional wisdom is that Giuliani's strategy of focusing on Florida was foolish. The truth, as it always seems to be, is a bit more complicated. Giuliani attempted to target New Hampshire, spending more than $2 million in ads there, and played quietly (mostly direct mail) in Iowa. Still, the basic point holds: Giuliani thought he could win by attempting to shape the primary calendar and focusing most of his attention on Florida.

It didn't work.

In that sense, Giuliani and Fred Thompson failed for similar reasons. Each man thought of himself as a larger-than-life presidential candidate and believed he could run a new kind of presidential race. So Thompson announced after Labor Day and resisted the advice of some advisers (on his campaign team and in the media) to get in as soon as he possibly could. Thompson toyed with the idea of getting in before the Ames, Iowa, straw poll on August 11. But he waited. And the longer he waited, the more his chances faded away. As one Thompson adviser told me: "It wasn't so much that he was lazy, as everybody says, but it was hubris."

Giuliani, for his part, never really seemed to engage on the campaign trail. We've seen Giuliani's effectiveness when he focused on the task at hand. He didn't do that here. His early speeches were little more than rambling versions of the paid speeches he'd been giving for years. "He was the Washington Speakers Bureau candidate," said one observer not affiliated with a campaign. He seemed to believe that because he was "America's Mayor" he would become America's president.

When will Giuliani endorse? Soon, I'd guess.

Another disagreement between John McCain and Mitt Romney: John Edwards. While they both agree that Edwards is finished, Romney seems happy about it and McCain wishes he'd stick around.

Romney, speaking this morning, ripped Edwards - "who I don't think we'll have to listen to too much longer" - for his "Two Americas" rhetoric.

McCain, on his bus this weekend, said he was confident that he could beat Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Then he caught himself. "Senator Edwards would be offended if I didn't mention his name. I feel confident against him, too," he said, laughing.

"I'm going to miss Senator Edwards because I always get to mention that he called it 'The McCain Surge.'" McCain waved his arms toward himself as if to beckon Edwards back. "Stay in, John!"

Senator Lieberman was on MSNBC today defending his buddy John McCain:

CARLSON: former governor Romney has come out as a strong defender of the war in Iraq, senator McCain has said he believes that position has changed that Romney at one point was for a pull-out but changed his mind on that. Are you with that analysis?

SEN. LIEBERMAN: I am totally with john McCain on that analysis. You got to go john McCain on that analysis and you have to go back to the moment and here is a place where Governor Romney plays too much to the political moment if I can be a straight-talker about it. This was April 2007 and things were tough in Iraq at that point. President Bush had decided to change strategies and be a new secretary of defense and a new commanding general Petraeus and send in troops. at that time, my, some of my colleagues here, democrats at capitol hill were saying it is a waste and foolish and the war is lost and we need a timetable to get the troops out of there.

Governor Romney in April of 2007 was asked, do you favor a timetable? and then he did something that, I think that was the point where there are two sides -- either for a timetable to withdraw or retreat and I am afraid create chaos or a victory for al Qaeda or stay with the troops and the surge, and Romney’s answer was cute, but dangerous. Of course, I am sure that president Bush and al Maliki are talking about a timetable, but it should be private. He sent a message and I think it a political message to people here in America, but unfortunately the kind of message that would also be heard by al Qaeda over there which is don't worry about the surge, because the Americans are getting ready to get out. At that time john McCain put his entire campaign for president on the political line and did something totally unpopular and said, we cannot abandon our troops in Iraq, and of course, thank god it has worked. Yeah, I think that senator McCain’s criticism of Romney is right on target.

I think this whole brouhaha must have helped McCain, and this despite the fact that it looked to be one of those rare moments where McCain's straight talk backfired on him. There's always a lot of talk about how McCain gets a free pass from the media, and yet on this particular issue, the press uniformly questioned the honesty of McCain's assault. And to an extent they were right--McCain had twisted Romney's words a bit. But now everyone's spent a couple days digging through Romney's statements on the war from early 2007 and there's little doubt that he was hedging on the surge at a time when its proponents needed all the help they could get.

And of course, Lieberman makes the perfectly reasonable point that secret timetables stop being so secret when they're discussed on national television. If Romney's intent was to convince al Qaeda they couldn't wait out U.S. forces...I don't see how he achieved that by saying secret timetables would be fine with him. McCain, on the other hand, has made a big show of saying that we may well be in Iraq for the next 100 years. True or not, it sends the right message to our enemies, and it does so at great risk to his own political fortunes.

Romney can't fight McCain over the war and expect to win on the merits--nobody can. But on the economy...

The brand new Tesla Roadster will soon start shipping, and the designers of what seems to be a pretty cool new electric car are giving test drives to publications like Automobile magazine. Autoblog Green beats them to the punch, with the first published review of the test drive (as far as I can tell). It seems as if the car looks cooler than it actually is. Alternately, it might just be that a site called 'Autoblog Green' just isn't the place to show off a car that goes from 0-60 in four seconds, nearly silently.

The Tesla Roadster is the product of the people who conceived it. Martin Eberhard wanted a really fast sports car that had no emissions. What they have wrought is a hard-edged sports car that fits like a pair of good leather driving gloves. It's not for everyone, even among the relatively few who can afford it. But for those who can and want it, it's a fine choice.

When (and if) electric cars begin to make headway in the domestic market, it will be more through cars like the Tesla than the Prius. The Prius has made headway through its distinctive look, as a symbol of environmental responsibility. But that market is limited. When green cars really capture the American imagination, it'll be because they look and act like the cars currently available with traditional internal combustion engines.

In fact, it sounds like the perfect car for me -- except that I'm 6'4". And have kids. And can't afford it at $100K. But apart from that...

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Bush's Priorities, by Fred Barnes.

From the Corner: Romney and the Surge, by Robert Kagan.

From Contentions: Cyberprotection, by Max Boot.

From the Washington Times: Gulf Provocations, by James Lyons.

From the New York Times: The Kennedy Mystique, by David Brooks.

Not likely an endorsement he'll be touting on the trail:

More than 80 volunteer lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees today endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama's presidential bid.

The attorneys said in a joint statement that they believed Obama was the best choice to roll back the Bush-Cheney administration's detention policies in the war on terrorism and thereby to "restore the rule of law, demonstrate our commitment to human rights, and repair our reputation in the world community."

If bet if al Qaeda put them on retainer they'd support Romney--double the Gitmo, double the billable hours.

HT: Hit & Run

Reuters reports:

Canada will pull its 2,500 troops out of Afghanistan early next year unless NATO sends in significant reinforcements, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday, signaling Ottawa has lost patience with what it sees as foot-dragging by allies.

The minority Conservative government wants the soldiers to stay beyond their current withdrawal date of February 2009 but in another potential threat to the mission, the main opposition Liberal Party expressed doubts about the idea of an extension.

Harper, who is exasperated at the refusal of many other NATO nations to commit more troops to Afghanistan, said the Alliance's failure to provide enough forces meant the whole future of the organization was under serious threat.

Early next year the United States will have a new president and our NATO allies may be more willing to buck up and support the mission in Afghanistan. And if not, Harper sounds like he's ready to destroy the alliance in order to save it. Good for him.

HT: Alex

A friend involved in national security policy writes:

"As you might have seen, Bob Kagan just sent a lengthy email to National Review about Romney and his lackluster, qualified, and conditional support of the surge through 2007. There's another part of the story, however, that hasn't yet come to light.

"Throughout 2006, Romney requested and received briefings on Iraq from the very same defense and security policy analysts who are the architects of the surge. They flew up to Boston and met with then-Governor Romney and talked to him at length about the situation in Iraq, and made the case for more troops and a proper counterinsurgency strategy. He sat on it.

"Either Romney didn't fully assimilate what these military experts were telling him, or he just decided that the political risks of embracing their ideas were simply too high. Either way, the notion that Romney was out of the loop on the arguments that folks like Fred Kagan were desperately making, at the top of their lungs, throughout 2006 - as he tried to suggest when asked for his opinion on Iraq in December 2006, as recently recounted by Steve Hayes - simply isn't true. He got the brief - and he chose to ignore it.

"McCain also got the brief - and in contrast to Romney, he understood it, embraced it, and then fought for it with every ounce of political capital he had at his disposal."

Before the assembled press horde, Patriot superstar Tom Brady, a.k.a. the best quarterback ever, urged people to be more responsible. But he wasn't just talking about sports stars. He urged everyone to go see Al Gore's tedious opus, "An Inconvenient Truth," because "it really is the truth." He then bragged about/confessed to driving a hybrid.

As a Patriot fan, I find this several times more disturbing than SpyGate.

Earlier in the day, I suggested the Republican campaign boiling down to two men and possibly becoming a referedum on McCain would be seriously bad news for the senator. Then again...

According to a mid-January Pew Poll, McCain did the best among all the candidates in favorable/unfavorable ratings among Republicans. As of January 15, McCain was cruising along with a 71-23 rating. Interestingly, that showed a twelve point improvement from last August, which suggests McCain's bettered his rankings by laying in the weeds for five months while the other candidates diminished themselves. In other words, McCain's lack of funds and unwished for obscurity proved surprisingly beneficial.

But even in August 2007, McCain's numbers weren't that bad - he showed a 61/25 rating, That doesn't look good next to Rudy's 74/15 and was a worse ratio than Romney's 48/16 at the time, but it does show that even at his depths, McCain had more support than you would figure from listening to his critics. Then again...

Perhaps favorable/unfavorable ratings are too crude an instrument to measure a figure like John McCain's presidential viability among Republicans. It's not hard to imagine a lot of Republicans who would have no desire to see John McCain as the party's nominee still giving him a "favorable" rating as a reward for his steadfastness on the war and his admirable life story.

Perhaps the most significant take-away from these numbers should be that even a referendum on McCain won't be a slam-dunk for the Romney campaign. Romney's supporters will have to make a painstaking case for their guy and against McCain, not necessarily in that order. Anything simplistic like shouting mindless imprecations like "Gang of 14" or "McCain/Feingold" (sort of the way McCain has taken to using the term "Rumsfeld") probably won't get the job done.

It's only been about 15 hours since President Bush delivered his final State of the Union address, and already it's old news. Still, bloggers had a lot to say about the speech and the president's audience.

As Fred Barnes noted on Fox News after the speech, Bush's line of the night was really funny and "something never heard before in a State of the Union":

Some in Washington argue that letting tax relief expire is not a tax increase. Try explaining that to 116 million American taxpayers who would see their taxes rise by an average of $1,800. Others have said they would personally be happy to pay higher taxes. I welcome their enthusiasm, and I am pleased to report that the IRS accepts both checks and money orders.

The economy and earmarks were the focus of the first half of the speech, and Republicans are clearly split over Bush's call for fiscal responsibility and his stimulus plan. John Bresnahan reported that "Republican appropriators didn't join into the overwhelming happiness over earmark reform." Andrew Roth at the Club For Growth's blog picked up on a might-have-missed-it joke: "Tonight after the State of the Union address, as President Bush was leaving the chamber, Republican Rep. Louis Gohmert (TX-01) told a joke to his fellow Texan. Gohmert said to Bush, 'How do you give a rebate to people who didn't put in bate in?'"

The second half of the speech focused on foreign affairs, particularly Iraq. Jimbo at Blackfive says that this was the line of the night: "Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among the terrorists there is no doubt. Al Qaida is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated." In his analysis of the speech, Power Line's Scott Johnson says, "President Bush took justifiable pride in the surge/counterinsurgency strategy that has produced incredible progress on the battlefield in the course of a year. In an act of magnanimity that his opponents will never reciprocate, he confined his derogation of the defeatists in the chamber with him to a single sentence: 'When we met last year, many said containing the violence was impossible.'"

Rich Lowry posts a note from McCain adviser and Weekly Standard contributing editor Robert Kagan on the senator, the governor, and the surge. Here's a taste:

"Everyone who was fighting for the surge in the early months of last year - and that was not a very large number of people back then - was desperately looking around Republican ranks for support. Most Republicans on the Hill were quiet. Most conservative commentators were not working up any enthusiasm, to say the least. And aside from McCain, the leading Republican presidential candidates at the time were being careful. "

If you are, like me, a Kagan fan, a two-paragraph email like this only makes you more excited to read The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

While the president last night touted the agreement among the White House and House leaders (both Republican and Democrat) on the framework of a stimulus package to be enacted quickly, it looks like the agreement may be delayed. That's because Senate Democrats are developing their own version:

Baucus’ $156 billion proposal would extend unemployment insurance for 13 more weeks beyond the usual 26 weeks. Workers in states with unemployment rates above 6 percent would receive an extra 13 weeks of benefits, for a total of up to 52 weeks...

Baucus’ plan would expand proposed payments to senior citizens, who would qualify based on their Social Security income. Some might not qualify under the House plan because they did not work in 2007 or did not pay income taxes...

Senators have suggested potential changes, including more-generous food-stamp payments, money for road resurfacing, energy tax breaks, low-income heating assistance and aid to states.

There seems ample room to improve the 'consensus' stimulus package that the House is preparing to pass. But it's not clear that the Baucus/Senate Democrat plan will be much more effective at boosting economic growth. Extending unemployment benefits and boosting home-heating aid are nice ideas, but they're unlikely to generate new jobs. And when a bill like this one is delayed, it increases the chances of collapsing under its own weight -- as happened to president Clinton's 1993 stimulus package.

Last night's State of the Union was remarkable in at least one respect: it may be the only speech you'll hear this year from a national politician that did not center on 'change.' And despite the significance of the president's goals of peace in the Middle East, tax reduction, entitlement reform, national security, and other issues, this image may be the most important take-away of the night.

It was widely noted that Senators Obama and Clinton refrained from exchanging greetings at the State of the Union last night. It wasn't a one-time thing either, as the Politico reports that they refused to acknowledge each other during Senate business earlier in the day.

Much attention has been paid to the divisions this election has exposed in the Republican party, but Democrats don't seem to be faring much better. They're divided by race, gender, and--most of all--the Clintons. Will the Democrats be able to put their party together again?

Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg sees an opportunity for the Republican candidate in the Democratic civil war:

Black voters aren’t likely to defect en masse to the GOP, but many might regard an Obama defeat as evidence that the Democratic establishment didn’t play fair and took whatever steps it needed to deny Obama the nomination. And you can pretty much bet that some high-profile black leader will comment that the Democratic Party is happy to get black votes but isn’t willing to nominate a black candidate...

This, of course, opens up another whole can of worms. Would Clinton need to ask Obama to join her as her running mate, even though the two camps seem increasingly hostile? And if Clinton is the nominee and seems to pander to African-Americans to keep them energized for a ticket without an African-American on it, would that create problems for the party among swing voters?

Clinton’s even bigger problem in a general election could be with independents, who might be put off by the former first lady’s tough tactics. Obama won a plurality of independents who participated in the Democratic contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

It's best not to read too much into this; it's a rare politician who can't be bought. We'll probably see the loser of this battle give a warm and smiling endorsement after getting concessions and promises from the winner. That might be especially true of Obama, who has a bright future ahead of him win or lose and is almost certain to get offered a spot on the ticket.

Still it's starting to seem that the composition of both major parties might be more in flux this year than it has been in a generation. The winner in 2008 may be the candidate who does a better job of figuring out which way the wind is blowing, and takes advantage of a new opportunity.

Politico's Jonathan Martin writes on Florida ads, following a report from Marc Ambinder that Romney has outspent McCain 8 to 1 on television"

"According to Neilsen, [Romney has] run 4,475 ads compared to John McCain's 470 through 1/22.
McCain did not run a single ad until January; Romney ran more ads in September than McCain has run to date."

Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser, said yesterday that his candidate had made a major push over the course of the last week, with 2000 points in all major media markets since last Monday. (In Miami, the ad buy was 1700 points). That means that the average television viewer would have seen the ad twenty times over the past week. The McCain campaign also bought $250,000 worth of radio ads across the state, some of that time going to a harsh critique of Romney. (See Martin here.)

If Romney wins here, he will doubtless spend vast sums of his personal fortune buying ads that will allow him to take advantage of the momentum a victory will give him. The big question, if he loses and McCain adds to his South Carolina momentum (and, presumably, his bank account), is how much Romney will spend leading up to Super Tuesday. As one Romney sympathizer told me: "Mitt is a businessman. He won't throw money away."

The mad geniuses at the Onion are at it again:

"In the midst of a fiercely competitive presidential race with no clear Republican front-runner in sight, an increasingly depressed Mitt Romney shocked political insiders Monday when he released a new national attack ad targeting himself. ...

"Running 60 seconds, including 15 full seconds of long, world-weary sighs, Romney's latest ad is reportedly his most ruthless. Blasting himself for a wide range of political shortcomings, from cutting back on education spending to being unable to remember the last time he took a shower, the Republican candidate is said to hold nothing back."

I wonder if it's running in Florida.

Tampa, Florida -- After days of intense fingerpointing between the two leading Republican candidates for president, Mitt Romney avoided any direct mention of John McCain during a twenty-minute speech at a rally here this morning. Romney's event at the Tampa Convention Center was held in the same room as a McCain rally yesterday evening. (I compared crowd sizes with another reporter who attended both events and our guess was that the Romney crowd was half the size of McCain's, perhaps owing to the fact that it took place during business hours.) Romney started thirty minutes late and the crowd grew a bit after a group of new citizens -- 700 of them were sworn in this morning just down the hall -- wandered over.

In the over-scripted world of political campaigns, the presence of the new Americans was genuinely moving, as they whooped and hollered after Romney recognized them and beamed when he later invited several of them on stage and introduced them as America's newest citizens. It was a good political moment for Romney and an emotional moment for many people watching. (The barista at the Starbucks in the building told me she had almost come to tears several times this morning watching the new Americans celebrate their citizenship with dozens of photographs and lots of hugs.)

Romney's was twice as long as McCain's last night and more enthusiastic. Unlike McCain, who spoke almost exclusively about national security (as Byron York notes here) Romney touched on several topics. One interesting contrast is his talk of strong families which, if I'm not mistaken, I've not heard McCain discuss once in the (perhaps) two dozens of his stump speeches I've attended over the past several months. I wasn't taping, but Romney said something close to this paraphrase: I want our kids to understand that they should be married before they have babies.

Romney promised to win the war in Iraq and chided Democrats for their answers in a recent debate when they suggested it was more important to withdraw than to win. But his comments about national security, which he got to after mentioning several other topics, felt more as if he were touching a base -- must mention the war -- than something that driving his campaign. And if we can determine campaign priorities through the exact science of sign observation, we know what Romney wants to emphasize. The two signs his campaign hung in the room read: "Washington is Broken" and "Economic Turnaround."

The toughest words for McCain came from State Rep. Trey Traviesa, who introduced Romney. His brief speech focused on the Arizona senator's record. After ticking off many issues where he said McCain had abandoned his principles and his party, Traveisa concluded: "On all these issues, McCain had the opportunity to lead and instead he took a left." (Interestingly, Romney's positions on several of these issues -- campaign finance, illegal immigration, the Bush tax cuts -- were at one time closer to McCain's than the one he has articulated on the campaign trail. No mention of that.)

Said Traviesa: "Too many times, Mccain has hugged a liberal Democrat."

Those words probably appealed to Al Watton, a 73-year-old Republican who lives just outside of Tampa, who told me before the event started that he was supporting Romney because he doesn't "like conservatives who cuddle up to Democrats." Watton, who called Romney "George" several times during in our chat, says Romney is the second choice for his wife and him. "We'd love to be for Huckabee, but I don't think he can be elected no matter how good he is."

So Romney it is.

Let's say for the sake of argument that Rudy Giuliani's supporters realize before they trundle off to the polls today that their hero's chances are as dead as disco. If they decide to wake up and smell the coffee/vote strategically, who benefits – McCain or Romney?

Scott Rasmussen provides the following analysis of Rudy's support and how it compares with the contenders' support:

'Data from the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that 63% of Giuliani voters nationwide are politically conservative and 37% are not. Fifty-three percent (53%) of McCain supporters are conservative, 47% are not. Romney's support is more solidly conservative—84% of his voters describe themselves in this way.”

Those figures would suggest a slight edge for McCain. All other things being equal, McCain should do roughly 10% better among Rudy supporters than Romney, which could be worth a point or two today. Given how close the polls are, a point or two could be significant.

Bu then again, are all other things in fact equal? With Fred officially gone, Huckabee making a play only for some delegates in the south and the Giuliani campaign about to be mercifully euthanized, it's now a two man race. That could concentrate the GOP's mind, and make today's primary and especially the ones that follow more a referendum on McCain than a competition between McCain and Romney.

In a party composed mostly of conservatives, McCain would likely prefer the latter.

Operatives hate election day. Unless you have a role in managing GOTV, there is nothing to do but sit and wait and worry. And call around to gossip about last minute news and, especially, polling rumors. I figure the loyal readers of the Campaign Standard deserve to live the life of a campaign operative for a day. So here is an only sightly fictionalized version of the latest Florida GOP chatter:

"Zogby is showing a last minute surge for McCain."

"The tracking for the property tax initiative campaign shows McCain way behind."

"People on the ground in Orlando say heavy turnout is expected. McCain needs it."

"The McCain people are very worried about the heavy turnout."

"Gov. Crist looks very worried."

"I've never seen Crist look so confident."

"Boss Lupo in Miami has switched to McCain from Rudy."

"Boss Lupo has a secret deal with Romney."

"Boss Lupo has already banked 117,000 Dade county votes for Rudy via early absentees from when Rudy has riding high in the polls."

Perhaps concerned by the impact of America Ferrera's constant cheerleading for Hillary Clinton, the Obama campaign announced today that Dule Hill will be leading two Obama rallies in North Dakota today. You may remember Hill from such roles as "Charlie" on The West Wing and "Gus" on Psych. But I'll always think of him as "Preston" in She's All That, a movie which featured Rachel Leigh Cook at her height, but did not allow Cook to smash eggs and/or kitchen appliances. The film was, obviously, the poorer for it. (Kevin Pollak, on the other hand, steals the movie. Next time you watch it, turn the sound up during his scenes to catch him giving hilarious non sequitur Jeopardy answers.)

Why's Hill campaigning in North Dakota, though? He's from Jersey originally and even went to Seton Hall. Shouldn't he be working the Garden State?

John McCain came out early in support of Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. He worked behind the scenes to generate more support from his colleagues. He pointed to his 2000 campaign promise to appoint conservative judges as one reason he was pleased with the Alito nomination. He spoke on the Senate floor in favor of Alito's confirmation. He even spent several months campaigning for president telling people Samuel Alito was one of the "finest justices ever appointed to the Supreme Court."

The inescapable conclusion? A President McCain would not appoint Supreme Court Justices like Samuel Alito.

We know this because in the days before the potentially decisive Florida primary, someone (we don't know who) claimed to have heard McCain (we don't know where) say that he was concerned about Alito's conservatism (we don't know when).

I understand the conservative objections to John McCain and I'm sympathetic to many of them, including his willing participation in the so-called Gang of 14.

But this is scurrilous.

Could Rudy Giuliani come in fourth? The New York Times previews the Florida contest here, with an ominous paragraph for Giuliani near the top:

Mr. Giuliani, former New York mayor, pledged that he would participate in a Republican presidential debate in California on Wednesday regardless of where he finished in Tuesday's voting here. Still, if Florida is not his last stand, it remains the place where he has all but staked his campaign. And as the hours before voting waned, that campaign had none of the feel of imminent victory. Though his organization chartered a Boeing 727 for a day of barnstorming on the eve of the primary, none of the rallies at airports in Sanford, Clearwater, Fort Myers or Fort Lauderdale drew even 100 supporters.

Tampa, Florida -- So who will win Florida? Ask twenty people -- half of them will tell you Mitt Romney and the other half will say John McCain.

McCain seems to have momentum. All day Monday, reporters and campaign advisers whispered about the latest tracking poll numbers -- some of them done by the campaigns, others private. The figure discussed most today was a private poll that had McCain up by four points heading into tomorrow, a quick reversal of fortunes since the same poll reportedly had him down two points late last week, before he won the endorsement of Florida Governor Charlie Crist. The Crist endorsement, and that of Senator Mel Martinez one day earlier, gave the McCain campaign a generous helping of "earned media" -- i.e. news coverage -- over the weekend and Monday. He could need the help to compensate for a relative lack of organization here, despite the efforts of his staff over the past few weeks. (McCain brochures available at a rally in Tampa yesterday evening had a tear-off form for would-be supporters to fill out and mail in. Judging from the address, those forms would be delivered to the McCain campaign headquarters ... in South Carolina.)

Romney early on won the support of many key supporters of former Governor Jeb Bush, and several people knowledgeable about Florida politics believe that he has a strong advantage on organization. Romney has dominated the airwaves here, too, as he has in other states. (McCain, however, has had a rather substantial television ad buy since early last week and is running $250,000 worth of radio ads around the state, too.)

At the low-key rally at the Tampa Convention Center early yesterday evening, McCain stuck to his basic stump speech, which is heavy on national security themes. The crowd of perhaps three hundred people seemed enthusiastic enough but there was nothing that would suggest a wave of energy not reflected in the polling that would sweep McCain to a big win. (Romney holds a rally in the same location this morning.)

It could be a late night.

The McCain camp sent out an email today announcing they'd be having another blogger call with the candidate just a half hour before the call was to take place. The scheduling was unusual. Given that McCain led by affirming his support for Justice Alito, saying that Alito "was a magnificent choice" and that he was proud of his role in pushing through the confirmation, it would seem the senator was attempting to minimize any damage from this piece by John Fund.

Fund quoted McCain as saying he would not nominate a justice like Alito because "he [wears] his conservatism on his sleeve." The quote was unsourced, and today McCain said he didn't remember making the statement. (Does anyone think McCain would lie just to avoid incurring the wrath of conservatives?) Further, he insisted he would appoint justices "along the lines of Roberts and Alito," and that he would "try to find clones" of the two if possible. He said he didn't "want to sound too defensive," but he that he was "astonished" by the charge that he had not done his best to support the confirmation.

McCain described endorsements from Charlie Crist, Mel Martinez, and Stormin' Norman as a "coup." When I asked for his view of the Democratic race, he punted before proclaiming his eagerness to debate the differences between himself and whichever candidate emerges from the Democratic primary to wave the white flag in Iraq.

McCain didn't downplay the importance of winning Florida--he said it was "critical"--but he also didn't call the state a must-win, which makes me think that the surprise call was more a case of jitters than outright panic. But unless McCain knows something we don't, the polls give him a better than 50-50 shot of winning in Florida tomorrow, and If he does win, I'll be surprised if he has much use for these blogger calls anymore.

More from Jennifer Rubin at Contentions and Jim Geraghty at the Campaign Spot.

Update: On the other issue of the day--whether McCain had mischaracterized Romney's position on timetables--Steve Hayes follows up on his earlier piece with this:

The biggest problem that some national security conservatives have with Romney -- not all of them McCain supporters -- is that he refused to take a position on the surge at its conception and did so in a pusillanimous manner. As the surge was first being discussed, Romney evaded the question, claiming he was not yet running for national office. It was a silly thing to say. Although Romney had not yet made his formal announcement, he was running hard at the time he dodged the question.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not Romney advocated secret timetables for withdrawal, but he was hardly unwavering in his support for the surge.

Read it over at the Campaign Standard

In what can be best described as an opinion piece published on its website, CJTF-82, the U.S. military command for eastern Afghanistan, has taken Dutch politician and filmmaker Geert Wilders to task for announcing the production of a short film on the Koran. CJTF-82 begins its piece, provocatively titled "Stirring the Hate," by questioning Wilder's motivations:

Ostensibly an exercise in the Party for Freedom’s right to free speech, Dutch politician Geert Wilders prepares to release a new anti-Islam film. Wilders will not comment on details of the movie but says it will show that Islam’s Holy Book, the Quran "is an inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror".

Wilders close political association with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and film maker Theo Van Gogh, sent Wilders into hiding after Van Gogh’s assassination by a Muslim extremist following the release of “Submission”, a film which criticized the treatment of women in Islamic society. The publication of the “Muhammad Cartoons” in September of 2005 caused protests and riots as over 200 people were killed by violence around the world. In Afghanistan there were protests in Maymana, Bagram, Kandahar, Mehtar-Lam and Kabul Violence in neighboring Pakistan was even worse. Wilders website was one of several that re-published the cartoons after the initial violent demonstrations had begun, citing a defense of freedom of speech and igniting further violence. Polls immediately following the Van Gogh assassination predicted the possibility of the Party for Freedom winning as many as 29 seats (of 150) in upcoming Dutch parliamentary elections. By October of 2005 the number had slipped to one, rising again to three following the “Muhammad Cartoons” controversy. While his party does favor immigration restrictions, especially from non-western countries; the corresponding surge in popularity provides a suspicious motive for his latest “exercise in free speech.” resulting in at least 5 deaths.

Leaving aside Wilders's motivation for making the film, one wonders why CJTF-82 posted this article on its website in the first place. Should CJTF-82, which is engaged in the fight in Afghanistan, be injecting itself into a debate over free speech in Holland, an allied nation with troops currently deployed in Afghanistan? Is it appropriate for the U.S. military to criticize the actions of a leader of a foreign political party? And has CJTF-82 officially determined that Wilders is responsible for "igniting further violence" by publishing the Muhammad cartoons?

We suspect the answers are no, no, and no. Fewer movie reviews and more like this, please.

Or is the war over the Iraq War over? At least for a time, it seems. This morning, after a panel discussion in Jacksonville, Florida, I asked John McCain for a response to claims that his criticism of Mitt Romney on Iraq has been "dishonest." He quietly -- and very briefly -- restated his basic position. "Everything I said today is backed up by facts as matter of record." (In fact, McCain hadn't discussed the issue at all, which may prompt further calls that he is being dishonest.)

And at a midday rally in Orlando, McCain accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of wanting "to wave the white flags of surrender," but made no mention of Romney's position.

We're ready to move on, too, after one final point. As this back-and-forth has unfolded between the campaigns and in the media, we have seen claims that Romney has always supported the surge. The most recent example comes from Time magazine's Michael Scherer, who has been blogging about the issue as it unfolded. (Scherer and Time's Ana Marie Cox had an interesting exchange about the issue here.)

Scherer, pointing to a New York Times story about Romney and Iraq, writes that the Times piece "makes clear that Romney had been unwavering in his stated support for the surge, even as he lacked McCain's enthusiasm."

But the Times piece doesn't make that clear. It merely cites unnamed Romney aides making that claim. That's different. One reason, perhaps, that the Times piece doesn't show Romney "unwavering" support for the surge is because Romney wavered in his support for the surge. The biggest problem that some national security conservatives have with Romney -- not all of them McCain supporters -- is that he refused to take a position on the surge at its conception and did so in a pusillanimous manner. As the surge was first being discussed, Romney evaded the question, claiming he was not yet running for national office. It was a silly thing to say. Although Romney had not yet made his formal announcement, he was running hard at the time he dodged the question. (See this piece for details.)

Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not Romney advocated secret timetables for withdrawal, but he was hardly "unwavering" in his support for the surge.

The Washington Post reports:

In November, the Democratic-led House spent about $89,000 on so-called carbon offsets. This purchase was supposed to cancel out greenhouse-gas emissions from House buildings -- including half of the U.S. Capitol -- by triggering an equal reduction in emissions elsewhere.

Some of the money went to farmers in North Dakota, for tilling practices that keep carbon buried in the soil. But some farmers were already doing this, for other reasons, before the House paid a cent.

Other funds went to Iowa, where a power plant had been temporarily rejiggered to burn more cleanly. But that test project had ended more than a year before the money arrived.

There was ample warning that the House leadership might be wasting taxpayer money. Republican leaders suggested waiting for the GAO to complete a report this spring on the effectiveness of carbon offsets. The House's Chief Administrative Officer -- Daniel Beard -- defended his decision to go ahead and spend the money anyway:

Beard argued that the plan has gone through all the required steps. Companies such as Ford and IBM use the Chicago Climate Exchange, he said, and he is confident that the money will go to beneficial projects.

“Why wait?” he said. “Global warming is not going to wait, why should we wait?”

It now turns out -- as seemed likely when the purchase was made -- that this 'investment' won't make a bit of difference toward reducing global warming.

Interestingly though, the directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange have made 15 contributions to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in the last year. All but one of those came from former Carter and Clinton White House official Stuart Eizenstat.

Polls show John McCain and Mitt Romney in a photo-finish race in Florida. But there's another way to know that we are now looking at a two-man race for the GOP nomination: attack emails. The emails are flying into my inbox, and none of them mention Giuliani or Huckabee. McCain is hitting Romney on Iraq and flip-flopping. Romney is hitting McCain on global warming and his lack of interest in economics. We'll find out tomorrow which attacks worked.

John McCain has responded to reports that he might not appoint judges like Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court because - and here I'm not sure whom the author of the report is quoting - Alito "wore his conservatism on his sleeve." McCain tells National Review's Byron York that

I've said a thousand times on this campaign trail, I've said as often as I can, that I want to find clones of Alito and Roberts. I worked as hard as anybody to get them confirmed. I look you in the eye and tell you I've said a thousand times that I wanted Alito and Roberts. I have told anybody who will listen. I flat-out tell you I will have people as close to Roberts and Alito [as possible], and I am proud of my record of working to get them confirmed, and people who worked to get them confirmed will tell you how hard I worked.

Sounds like he really wants to tell you that he likes Alito!

Blogger Former Spook wrote:

...the Thanksgiving intercept may have been an inadvertent gift from the Russians. The Air Force will use the mission as proof of an escalating threat, that must be met by state-of-the-art fighters like the F-22.

True. But we returned the favor. The Russians got what was presumably their first close-up inspection of the F-22. So while a Bear-Raptor aerial tango was inevitable, the timing of the resurgent bomber flights (coming around the same time as the F-22s deployment to Elmendorf) appears calculated.

Aside, but somewhat related: The Russians are currently developing a fifth-generation fighter, unofficially dubbed the "Raptor Killer." No doubt the Bear crew and the MiG's production team were talking shortly after the Thanksgiving intercept.

Check out the new journal edited by Lawrence Kaplan:

The new populism isn't necessarily a creature of left-wing petrocrats like Hugo Chavez. It may not be what folks like Lou Dobbs and Mike Huckabee are selling. In fact, it may be just the opposite. It may be that the new populism is the populism of ... the investor class.

Robert Samuelson was the first to suggest this intriguing historical parallel:

"Just as the late-19th-century populists, mostly farmers, wanted the government to provide cheap money and curb the railroads' power, today's financial populists think government should somehow guarantee that the economy always expands and stock prices always rise."

The populists wanted easy money. The investor class wants ... easy money. But both groups are playing a dangerous game. Here's Samuelson:

The Fed's first responsibility is to maintain a basic price stability - to keep inflation at low levels - because, without that, its other goals of maximum economic growth and low unemployment become impossible. We learned this lesson painfully in the 1960s and the 1970s. Political pressures then to avoid all recessions led the Fed to relax money and credit too much and too often. As inflation rose, the economy grew increasingly unstable. The perverse results were higher inflation, ultimately reaching double digits, and more frequent and harsher recessions. Annual inflation peaked at 13.3 percent in 1979 and annual unemployment at 9.7 percent in 1982.

Unlike financial populists, the Fed should focus on the economy's performance in the next six years, not the next six months. Some economists think that the Fed is already repeating its previous error, now prodded by 'market pressures' and the specter of financial panic. If the market constantly demands to be stimulated by lower interest rates and easier credit, and threatens to go into an uncontrolled tailspin if it isn't, then the Fed is in a treacherous position. What the Fed now does to make matters better may make them worse - possibly much worse - in a few years if it leads to higher inflation. This is a real, if easily overlooked, danger.

There are hundreds of millions of people around the globe who were either not yet born or too young to remember the economic crises of the late 1970s and early 1980s. I'm one of them. But the lessons are there in the history books for all of us to see.

Robert Farley finds an interesting example from the First World War:

Viribus Unitis was the first dreadnought of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. In October 1918, when it was becoming clear that the Central Powers would not prevail in the war, and that their navies would become subject to confiscation by the Allies, Emperor Karl I of Austria decided to turn over Viribus Unitis to the newly created Council of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs that would soon occupy formerly Austrian territories on the Adriatic. Italy, however, had designs on some of the Austrian territory that might be turned over to the Croats, and didn't like the idea of 3 modern dreadnoughts being in the possession of the Austrian successor state. Although the SCS declared that it was no longer at war with the Allies, this declaration was not immediately recognized. Accordingly, Italy dispatched a pair of young men named Raffaele--one a Lieutenant Paolucci, and the other a Major Rossetti--to infiltrate Pula Harbor on a modified torpedo and attach a bomb to the dreadnought's hull. This the Raffaeles succeeded in doing, but they were captured while escaping, and brought on board the Viribus Unitis.

The Italians told the ship's commander that there was a bomb affixed to the hull, but they would not say where. The commander decided not to torture the men, but neither did he evacuate the ship, deciding instead to try and minimize the damage. The result was that the ship sank with some 300 men on board. I'm not sure that this informs the current debate in any substantive way, but it's a great story.

A busy final Monday in the Sunshine state. McCain shivs Romney with a last minute attack ad. Romney swings the ugly stick back at "liberal" McCain in the last media cycle. Polls show some late movement to McCain off the Crist endorsement. It's close. McCain seems to have some Crist momentum, but the Romney organization is deeper. Rudy has banked some absentee voters, a chunk of whom probably wish they had their vote back to go to McCain as Rudy melts away.

One early tea leaf to watch tomorrow night: early Election Day vote returns in Hillsborough county. St. Pete is longtime Charlie Crist country. Romney has been doing well there. If returns show strength for McCain, it's an indicator that Gov. Charlie has had a potentially decisive impact. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign is making crafty attempt to drop in to Florida and claim a "win" in a nonbinding contest. But if the margin is closer for Obama than early polls predicted, say under 15 points, media may call it an Obama win.

Should be yet another interesting Election Day in Florida.

Senator Barack Obama’s ability to touch the better angels of America’s nature lies at the root of his candidacy and might become the defining framework of this year’s presidential race. It’s hard, even for his opponents, not to be moved by a candidate who calls us to transcend ourselves and believes that, as he said in his South Carolina victory speech, "while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people in three simple words. Yes. We. Can."

But when it comes to winning in the war in Iraq, Obama’s message has been and remains one of relentless despair; in that same South Carolina speech, he lamented "a war that should never have been authorized and never been waged." The Iraq "surge," he still insists, "has failed," and why we need to begin "not just talking to our friends but talking to our enemies, like Iran and Syria, to try to stabilize the situation there" by an American withdrawal. Indeed, Obama was among those who believed the surge a failure even before it began: he voted in March 2007 to remove all U.S. combat forces within a year.

Three simple words: No. We. Can’t.

When it comes to the fight for the future of Iraq and the Middle East, Obama’s sense of possibilities and beliefs in America’s goodness and greatness desert him. And that makes him, despite what Caroline Kennedy writes in the New York Times, fundamentally not like her father, President John Kennedy. It is almost impossible to imagine that staunch Cold Warrior and hero of PT 109 giving up the current fight in Iraq, particularly at a moment when victory again seems possible. John Kennedy’s "American Dream" was not simply of a just society at home but a more just international order and, crucially, of the exercise of American power, including military power, to make that dream a reality. "Let any nation know," Kennedy declared in his inaugural address, "whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." There won’t be any similar phrase in an Obama inaugural address.

But the fact is that only cynics and doubters can now discount the prospect of victory in Iraq. Only a mind shut tightly can have observed the changes of the past year and persist in the assertion that the war is lost. Obama argues, quite rightly, that this election is "a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we’re willing to work for it." But that battle is about American abroad as well as at home, and how hard we’re willing to work--and how hard we’re willing to fight--to secure our interests and advance our principles.

From THE DAILY STANDARD: The War Over the War, by Stephen F. Hayes.

From the Los Angeles Times: Iraq's Number 1 Problem, by Bing West and Max Boot.

From the New York Sun: Obama's Silly War on Fear, by Eli Lake.

From Middle East Journal: The Final Mission, by Michael J. Totten.

From the New York Post: Straight Talk on Pakistan, by Ralph Peters.

Is Hillary's campaign about to self-destruct? That's the buzz today. From calling for delegates to be reinstated in Michigan and Florida to the disguised smear of John McCain, the Clintons are playing dirty. And the cherry on top: Bill's racial remark in South Carolina.

Today in the New York Times, the boss discusses Bill Clinton's latest:

[O]n Saturday, in Columbia, pre-spinning his wife’s imminent defeat, Clinton reminded reporters out of the blue that "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in ’84 and ’88. And he ran a good campaign. And Senator Obama’s run a good campaign here. He’s run a good campaign everywhere."...

Clinton’s comment alludes to one thing, and to one thing only: Jackson and Obama are both black candidates. The silent premise of Clinton’s comment is that Obama’s victory in South Carolina doesn’t really count. Or, at least, Clinton is suggesting, it doesn’t mean any more than Jackson’s did…

So Bill Clinton has been playing the race card, and doing so clumsily. But why is he playing any cards? He wasn’t supposed to be in the game. But just as Hillary was supposed to be finding her own voice, Bill decided to barge in, and to do so with a vengeance. This has been no favor to Hillary.

Bloggers agree that Bill is hurting Hillary--and this statement doesn't help. At the Corner, Shannen Coffin notes, "But Bill didn't mention yesterday that he took nearly 70 percent of Democratic voters in the 1992 South Carolina primary (and ran unopposed in 1996). Did Bill feel it necessary to point out Jesse Jackson's success in the Palmetto State when he was cruising to victory in 1992?"

Captain Ed says, "As long as the Clintons remain on the national stage, this kind of politicking -- the smears, the lies, and the prevarications -- will also remain."

And Andrew Sullivan remarks, "Maybe the Clintons can bring the country together again - in revulsion at their expediency."

But what's more interesting is that left-wing pundits and bloggers are increasingly agreeing with their conservative colleagues. In Saturday's LA Times, Jonathan Chait displayed his growing distaste for Clinton politics, which he referred to as "lying and sleaze-mongering":

Something strange happened the other day. All these different people -- friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read -- kept saying the same thing: They've suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons.

Matthew Yglesias explains why: "It looks like Bill Clinton's heavy-handed attacks on Barack Obama didn't serve his wife well in South Carolina, with about sixty percent of voters saying Clinton's actions were a factor in their decision in what looks to have been a landslide win for Barack Obama."

North Korea's official press agency responds to Jay Lefkowitz's speech at AEI:

Some days ago, Lefkowitz, special envoy for North Korean human rights issue of the US, was impudent enough to poke his nose into the nuclear issue, only to bring shame to himself.

What he uttered is nothing but rubbish which admits of no argument as it only provoked wry laughter.

But what merits attention here is that some American guys who do not know even where they stand, to say nothing of the way the world goes, are watching for a chance to scuttle the processes to settle the nuclear issue and improve the DPRK-US relations, displeased with them....

It was in this context that Lefkowitz underlined the need to include the human rights issue in the agenda items of the six-party talks and complained that China and South Korea are not pressurizing [pressuring] North Korea at the American Enterprise Institute, a centre of conservatives.

It seems the North Koreans and Foggy Bottom agree on something. As Secretary Rice said last week:

"[Lefkowitz] doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks, and he certainly has no say on what American policy will be in the six-party talks."

Which translates roughly into 'don't be poking your nose into our negotiations.'

I missed this over the weekend, but Sen. Clinton is on the record arguing that the Michigan and Florida delegates should be seated at the Democratic National Convention. So, after agreeing to the rules, the Clinton campaign used its name power and machine - and uncontested ballot status - to win the Michigan "beauty pageant." But now, seeing its nomination in jeopardy, the campaign wants to turn back the clock and have Michigan count, even though Clinton ran against Mr. Uncommitted. The same is likely to happen if Clinton wins Florida tomorrow.

Class acts, those Clintons.

Daniel Casse:

"After Ted Kennedy's endorsement, the only question is when Al Gore will throw his support behind Barack Obama.

"Don't think for a moment that Gore isn't considering it. What happened this weekend was the most dramatic change of tenor we have seen since Iowa caucus night. A new front opened up in the Democratic primary race. Hillary Clinton is no longer just battling Obama. She is defending the legitimacy of the Clinton era against all those who know it and are sick of it. A Gore endorsement of the rival to the wife of the man who made him vice president would be an unprecedented blow."

It also makes perfect sense. Gore's endorsement of Dean in 2004 signaled his rejection of the Clintons and Clintonism. And Gore's embrace of transnational progressive issues like climate change, and of course his longstanding opposition to the war, puts him closer to Obama's foreign policy than Clinton's.

Beijing’s reaction to reports that Taiwan president Chen Shuibian may be visiting the Spratlys, known in Chinese as the Nansha Islands, has been restrained. Asked to articulate China’s position at a press briefing in Beijing last week, foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu gave a stock response:

"China possesses indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and its adjacent waters. We have the resolve and capability to safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity. We will continue to be devoted to peace and stability of the South China Sea."

Conspicuously missing was any specific criticism of the independence-leaning Chen for taking what Taiwan media referred to as a trip designed to proclaim sovereignty over the disputed islands.

Taiwan’s United Daily reported on January 20 that Chen’s visit would take place in the run-up to the March 22 presidential election. Chen’s spokesman refused to confirm the report, stating ambiguously that "the president visits various troop units before the Lunar New Year each year."

Taiwan has maintained troops on Taiping Islet (Itu Aba Island), the largest island in the Spratlys, for decades. Over the years they constructed, among other facilities, a radar station and a power plant on this atoll that measures a mere 1.4 kilometer in length and 400 meters in width. Construction of an airstrip began in 2006. And last Monday a Taiwan Air Force C-130 transport plane made a first-ever landing on the islet and returned to Taiwan the same day.

Last Thursday, as Vietnam voiced strong objections to the C-130 landing, Chinese media, which had been following the development closely, cited press reports as saying that Chen would take a C-130 to Taiping Islet in advance of the February 7 Chinese Lunar New Year. Chinese media reports on the possible visit were matter-of-fact and devoid of any personal attack on Chen.

By a curious coincidence, on the same day as Vietnam’s protest the website of the Beijing-backed Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong carried an article titled "Why are resources in the South China Sea being plundered in a reckless manner?"

First appearing in "Ordnance Knowledge," a bimonthly journal of the China Ordnance Society, the article accuses Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines of stepping up military activities in the area despite the fact that they are signatories to the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. It states further that these countries, along with Brunei and Indonesia, have reaped enormous economic benefits from oil and natural gas prospecting in the region at the expense of China. Other resources being "plundered" include the ocean’s marine life.

David Gergen is having fun in Davos:

I guess my invitation got lost in the mail.

(A dual tip of the homburg to Jeff Jarvis and John Podhoretz.)

This quote from the Orlando Sentinel's endorsement of John McCain irked me:

"Mr. Romney's evolution in recent years from a moderate to a conservative better aligned with GOP presidential primary voters raises doubts about his core beliefs and commitment to principle."

Say Romney decided to run for the Democratic presidential nomination and had flipped to more liberal positions on a host of issues. Would the Sentinel still raise questions about his "core beliefs and commitment to principle"? I somehow doubt it.

From today's Wall Street Journal:

Looking for some fresh momentum of her own, Mrs. Clinton has started calling attention to the largely ignored Democratic vote tomorrow in Florida, a state where a recent poll gave her a 48 percent to 28 percent edge. All the Democratic candidates have pledged not to campaign in Florida, which was stripped of all its delegates by the Democratic National Committee as punishment for moving its primary into January. Though the party forbade candidates from staging rallies there, it is allowing fund-raising visits; Mrs. Clinton has three scheduled today, in Sarasota and Miami. And she now plans to visit Florida after the polls close tomorrow night to 'thank her supporters.'

Something tells me the Clintons are turning up the pressure on the DNC to award those Michigan and Florida delegates. ...

John Hinderaker: "Barring a surprise in Florida, Republican primary voters and caucus-goers on mega-Tuesday will face a stark but classic political choice: do they go with Romney, whose views across a broad range of issues are more palatable to conservatives and whose economic expertise may be badly needed, or with McCain, who seems pretty clearly more likely to prevent the Clintons from re-inhabiting the White House? It's not an easy choice."

Look at it this way: McCain may have a conservative problem, but Romney has an independent problem. The question is whether Romney's ability to shift and attract independents in a general election is greater to or equal than McCain's ability to hold a majority of conservative voters in a general. That's a tough question to answer. We do know that Romney is able to change messages with ease in order to cater to different constituencies, however.

Click image to view the slideshow of the leadership of al Qaeda in the Caucasus.

This presentation looks at some of the major leaders in Caucasus jihad in the past and present. Chechnya served as one of the first battlegrounds outside of Afghanistan for al Qaeda in the early 1990s. Al Qaeda sent thousands of foreign fighters to Chechnya to fight alongside the domestic Chechen resistance to the Russians during the First and Second Chechen Wars. Al Qaeda also funneled large amounts of money to the fight in Chechnya and used the theater as a training ground as well as a propaganda and recruiting tool. The Chechen leadership became increasingly radicalized and the jihad expanded to the greater Caucasus. In the fall of 2007, Doku Umarov, the new leader of the Chechen jihadis, declared the Islamic Caucasus Emirate and imposed sharia law.

Nick Grace from ThreatsWatch.org contributed to this presentation.

An interesting piece ($) from Aviation Week on electronic warfare quotes BAE executive Rance Walleston on where the industry looks for talent:

“That’s because some of the best developers of attack tools are hackers that play around in the commercial environment,” Walleston says. “A standing industry joke is that we can’t hire the next batch of people because they’re not on parole yet.”

Walleston explains:

“Terrorists, nation-states and the U.S. government have something in common,” says Walleston. “They all shop at Best Buy [an electronics and appliances chain store], so that makes it critical that we understand the vulnerabilities of the [commercial] infrastructure we rely on.”

And nobody understands that commercial infrastructure as well as the people who go to jail for hacking it (except of course the ones that don't end up in jail). The piece describes a mobile "network laboratory" built by BAE to probe for weaknesses and try out new methods of electronic attack against the latest communications technologies. It's pretty cool stuff, but while our guys are practicing against the netwok lab, the Chinese are hacking into "anything and everything" the Department of Defense has online. So will a war with China be determined by which country has the best hackers?

Delicious irony in this new Clinton crack-up. First Hillary brilliantly creates a patina of "experience" around her candidacy based partially on solid work in the Senate, but mostly on having served eight years as somebody else's First Lady; an unelected position without specified authority. But Mrs. Clinton has claimed the credits of a co-presidency and is now running on them, citing her opponent's alleged "inexperience." This is quite a hat trick. (Nancy Reagan, call your office: a draft committee is being organized.)

But with Bill Clinton's egocentric Obama-smacking sparking a well deserved anti-Clinton rebellion across the Democratic party, it appears poetic justice is now at hand. Bill Clinton's reckless hunger to make every Clinton race about Bill Clinton leaves little room for a co-anything.

Daniel Gross reports from Davos on an intriguing panel concerning sovereign wealth funds - those "enormous pools of government-controlled capital that have recently vaulted to prominence." In summary: The sovereign wealth fund managers aren't concerned about the institutions with which they are associated. They just want to make money. Former Treasury secretary and Harvard president has concerns, however. And his concerns are worth nothing.

The lobbyist for the state of Pennsylvania in China makes the case for his client's lumber industry:

"Pennsylvania has very good hardwood resources, and the aboriginal people in the north Pennsylvania woods are good workers."

He's talking about the Amish.

The New York Times reports today that no one inside or outside the Clinton campaign has quite figured out what to do with former president Clinton. But evidence mounts that he may be uncontrollable. Consider this quote from Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson: "Bill Clinton is going to continue to campaign on behalf of his wife and tell her story and make his case about why she should be president."

But is that really what Clinton has been up to on the stump? Now consider the following, from yesterday's Times:

Mr. Clinton would open by discussing various issues for half an hour. Occasionally he would say, 'Hillary thinks this,' but their views are so similar, and he spoke for her so confidently, that he rarely bothered to say where he left off and she began.

The voters would then respectfully ask policy questions - about Mrs. Clinton's plans for health care, education and economic development. His detailed answers to a single question could run 15 minutes.

It's as though he's the candidate. Which may have helped Sen. Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada. But it certainly didn't help in South Carolina on Saturday.

Barack Obama’s shellacking of Hillary Clinton was obviously the big news of the weekend, and Obama showed up on This Week to discuss his victory, and Bill Clinton’s race baiting. In one of the Clinton campaign’s most naked references to Obama’s race, the former president tried to downplay an Obama victory in South Carolina by reminding reporters that “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in 1984 and 1988.” Obama let it roll off his back, sticking to the message of change his campaign adopted early on.

“Well, Jesse Jackson ran historic races in 1984 and 1988, and there’s no doubt that that set a precedent for African Americans running for the highest office in the land. But that was 20 years ago, George, and I think that what we saw in this election was a shift in South Carolina that I think speaks extraordinarily well not just for folks in the South but all across the country. I think people want change, I think they want to get beyond some of the racial politics that has been so dominant in the past.”

It should also be pointed out that Obama pulled in nearly a quarter of the white vote this weekend, a feat Jackson never got close to in ’84 or ’88.

Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor that he is, knows full well what the Clintons are capable of. “There are not two people who are better at street fighting politics than Bill and Hillary Clinton,” Huckabee told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, adding “I’ve been telling people a long time, ‘Don’t underestimate the scrappiness with which they’ll approach this race.’ So no, I’m not surprised. And in fact, I think the one thing you have to keep your eyes on is that tactics will change, but the goal will never, ever fade, and that is win, what it takes to do it.”

The website link here details the imminent and uncontrolled return to Earth of a 20,000 lb spy satellite that has lost power and can no longer be controlled. Fears are now that radioactive and other hazardous materials that are part of the satellite's configuration could cause serious problems depending on where the vehicle enters the atmosphere.

Pike, director of the defense research group GlobalSecurity.org, estimated that the spacecraft weighs about 20,000 pounds and is the size of a small bus. He said the satellite would create 10 times less debris than the Columbia space shuttle crash in 2003.

Another rumor has it that the object with a decaying orbit is a failed attempt by the Chinese to build an orbital deathstar--an effort that has failed due to their choice of Windows Vista as the primary operating system powering the vehicle's navigational array and the power management grid for the propulsion systems on board.

Given the choice between the two I see the second scenario as more likely.

"Send the fleet to the far side of Endor," was the quote from Chinese President Hu Jin Tao just prior to this announcement.

There are a few things that I've never understood about the “endorsement” process. Theoretically, I guess the way it's supposed to work is a candidate wins the endorsement of an individual voter's favorite politician, actor or talk show host, and the endorsement causes the voter to support the endorsed candidate.

It always seemed to me that this would only work for the most weak-minded and disengaged voters. If you're withholding your support waiting to see who gifted actor Viggo Mortensen goes with, odds are that you're neither a high-end news gatherer nor a particularly serious voter. (In case you're wondering, Mortensen endorsed Dennis Kucinich – cast your vote accordingly.)

So here’s the paradox –these endorsements are supposed to sway the most disengaged and frivolous of voters. But, thinking rationally, how are such people supposed to even learn of the endorsements in the first place? I don't imagine such voters sitting by their TVs on a Saturday night hoping that Charlie Crist will finally reveal his intentions. For instance, a rumor circulated last night that Crist would share Tim Russert's desk with McCain this morning. That’s all well and good, but disengaged voters don't watch Meet the Press.

Specifically regarding the Crist endorsement, I can only offer my perspective as a part-time Floridian. Crist is a popular governor. I've also heard some stuff about him trying to slash property tax rates by a percentage point, something that will surely win friends and influence people in the Sunshine State. Then again, our collapsing property values are already in the process of giving us some relief on that front. (You have to look on the bright side of things.)

Because of what I do, my friends and neighbors seek me out for horserace conversations somewhat frequently. Many of the Republicans I’ve spoke with in Florida have repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the field. But I've never heard anyone say, “You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to vote for whoever Charlie Crist tells me to.”

Don't get me wrong – I can understand the practical advantages of getting an endorsement. I guess Charlie Crist could unleash the massive Crist machine to do Senator McCain's bidding over these final frantic 48 hours. And an endorsement from Ted Kennedy might well win you an invitation to play touch football at Hyannisport. Lucky Obama! In a rare case, an endorser can become a particular campaign's perfect surrogate. Think Chuck Norris.

But what I don't understand is why so many people in the media hear about an endorsement of the Crist variety and burble, “This is huge!” It would be interesting to do a statistical analysis to see what correlation late-in-the-day,high-profile endorsements have with the eventual results. My money would be on slim to none.

I would even wager there’s an inverse correlation to winning late endorsements and winning elections since the very act of endorsement seeking sometimes reflects a campaign’s desperation.

On Friday, I noted the open border between Egypt and Gaza threatened not only Israel, but Egypt, allowing Islamists of all stripes to freely enter the country. Yesterday an Egyptian official explained the country's predicament to the Associated Press:

Cairo was now caught between the hammer and the anvil, the officials said. On the one hand, they said, Egypt did not want to use force against the Palestinians for fear of being accused by the Arabs of taking part in the blockade on the Gaza Strip; on the other hand, the Egyptians were very worried that Hamas and its allies would "occupy" the northern Sinai, turning it into a center for Islamist terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida.

The Egyptian authorities are now focusing their efforts on preventing Gazans from heading toward Cairo and other cities. Authorities also warned Egyptians not to allow Palestinians to stay with them.

Thirty-eight Egyptian border guards were wounded, several critically, during failed attempts to close the border. And tens of thousands of Palestinians are still pouring into the Sinai.

The breakdown of the Gaza border also exposes the rift between the moderate government in Cairo and the Palestinians. While Arab governments delight in Palestinian attacks on Israel, they are wary of the violence spilling over. The Kuwaitis despise the Palestinians for backing Saddam Hussein during the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Palestinians wore out their welcome in Baghdad after some were connected to terror attacks following the U.S. invasion in 2003. And the Palestinians in Lebanon are treated like third class citizens, unable to hold jobs outside the refugee camps. The Fatah al Islam uprising in the Nahr al Bared camp in northern Lebanon claimed the lives of 122 Lebanese troops while the Ein al Hilwah camp is essentially a no-go area for government forces.

Egypt will now need to deal with its own Palestinian problem. It must prevent terrorist groups that run Gaza from spreading within its own borders, and all while not appearing too harsh on the world's most favored victims.

Jonathan V. Last reports from South Carolina on Obama's victory:

[W]hat is troubling about tonight is that Obama was unwilling to tell people an obvious truth: that while white voters have supported him in great numbers (elsewhere, if not in South Carolina), black voters have so far been unwilling to support his white opponents. Again, that's not his fault; and it may not even mean anything significant.

But it surely means something that Obama was so bent on denying this fact that he turned his victory speech into an attempt to convince voters of something obviously untrue. One of Obama's frequent promises in his stump speech is that he is willing to tell voters hard truths, even if they don't want to hear it. That wasn't the case tonight.

More at the Campaign Standard from the Cardinal. I just watched the victory speech, too, and it did not give me "goose-pimples" as it did the female Democratic strategist on Fox. Jonathan says he didn't tell voters the hard truths tonight, and while he is referring specifically to the electoral politics of Obama's victory, I think that is true in a larger sense as well. Obama promised to give something to everybody and called it sacrifice. He's going to give you health care, help with your mortgage, and help to pay for college. He's going to bring the troops home so they can be with their children they've never seen before. And you can move this country beyond the racial problems that have plagued it since before its founding--just by voting Obama.

It's a striking contrast with the McCain campaign's message: your job's not coming back, we'll try and get you into a community college, and we're going to be in Iraq for the next hundred years. And yet McCain is out in front while Obama plays the underdog. Go figure.

Update: Another perspective on the Obama speech from Peter Wehner--but the same conclusion: Obama would be a much more formidable opponent in the general election.

St. Petersburg, Florida -- Charlie Crist, the popular Governor of Florida, endorsed Senator John McCain here tonight at the Pinellas County Republican Party's Lincoln Day dinner. Crist's endorsement had long been considered a major prize and, in recent days, his aides deliberately left open the possibility of a last-minute endorsement.

Crist called McCain a "true American hero" and a "great friend to Florida" before he offered his formal endorsement. "I have been thinking about it a lot. I don't think anybody would do better than the man who stands next to me right now. I'm happy to endorse John McCain."

Although endorsements typically don't matter much, this one could prove important, for two reasons: Crist has approval ratings near 60 percent and despite high early-voting totals, Republicans here expect that many Floridians will be late-deciders. Crist's endorsement comes one day after Florida Senator Mel Martinez backed McCain. With the latest Florida polls showing McCain in a tight race with Mitt Romney, both campaigns have been doing virtually everything conceivable to gain any advantage. McCain staffers learned of the endorsement only a short time before the dinner. Crist had been scheduled to introduce McCain but the endorsement came as a surprise to most everyone in the room.

About half of the dinner attendees stood and cheered loudly when Crist offered his backing. The others, presumably supporters of candidates other than McCain, applauded politely. McCain staffers exchanged hugs with football style back-claps that showed their exuberance.

No word yet how extensively Crist will campaign with McCain over the next two days.

UPDATE: Crist will accompany McCain to his appearance on "Meet the Press" tomorrow and will share the table with the Arizona senator. Crist will also be taping an ad touting his endorsement of McCain that will air statewide here in Florida. I asked Crist if his decision was influenced by North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, a staunch McCain supporter, a friend from their days playing football at Wake Forest. He said that while they did not speak directly about the endorsement. Crist told me that he decided earlier this week that he would vote for McCain and decided only this afternoon that he would make those intentions public.

UPDATE II: An NBC source says only McCain will appear on the show.

Tonight's results from South Carolina will bring forth the fun house mirror that is modern media spin. Das Hillary Apparat will attempt to pin a racial subtext on Obama no matter what the result. If he wins big, it will be about "record" black turnout. If he wins small, it will be that his appeal is "limited" to African Americans. Bill Clinton will jump in the media cycle tomorrow, grabbing some poor network embed by the lapels and unloading a purple-faced lecture to the whirring cameras about how the shameful media shall never, ever bait a true selfless hero of the civil rights movement such as himself into making Barack Obama's race an issue in this campaign, especially in the South, where race is such a big issue.

If you actually look at the results, the Clinton race spin is humbug. Obama has done well in white states; winning Iowa, coming close in New Hampshire; and winning the white rural areas of Nevada. Plus he obviously does well with African Americans; a group the Clinton campaign was spinning as "divided" by Obama just months ago. The candidate with the more limited demographic appeal is clearly Hillary Clinton, who so far has proven herself a rock star only to the Virginia Slims-'n'-menopause set and their sensible-shoe-wearing sisters in the upper middle classes.

The big question isn't Obama's race. What smart Democrats looking for a winner should be asking themselves is how a candidate with as limited appeal as Hillary Clinton could ever beat McCain or Romney in a general election.

We've been beating up the New York Times a bit over their report earlier this week of the first death of a U.S. soldier in an MRAP, the heavily-armored vehicles that offer increased protection against IEDs. See here, here, and here for background, but the problem with the Times report is that several soldiers had been killed, prior to this incident, in BAE's RG-31 MRAP and also in Force Protection's Buffalo MRAP.

The apparent contradiction stems from the fact that MNF-I, the source for the story, now claims that the BAE RG-31 is not an MRAP, causing considerable confusion here and at BAE, which clearly labels the truck as an MRAP on its website (requests for information from the company provided no further explanation). Stars & Stripes attempts to clarify:

“This is the first death resulting from an IED attack on an MRAP,” said Rear Adm. Greg Smith, a spokesman for Multi-National Force-Iraq, in a statement Tuesday.

However, servicemembers have been killed in older versions of MRAP vehicles before Saturday, said Michael Aldrich of Force Protection Industries, which makes MRAP vehicles.

In November 2006, three servicemembers were killed in an older version of an MRAP vehicle known as the Buffalo, and in the summer 2007, two servicemembers were killed when a Joint EOD Rapid Response Vehicle was hit by an explosively formed penetrator, Aldrich said Tuesday.

In May 2007, the Defense Department stood up an MRAP task force to send newer versions of the MRAP vehicle downrange as quickly as possible. Since then, 1,463 MRAP vehicles have been delivered to U.S. troops in Iraq, as of Jan. 16.

So anyone killed in an "old" version of MRAP, i.e. those delivered before June of last year, is not being counted by MNF-I? This seems like a pretty arbitrary distinction. I am told that later models of the RG-31 do have thicker side armor to provide greater protection, but apparently MNF-I does not consider any version of RG-31 to be an MRAP (see Update:x2 here).

Now a friend sends along this tidbit:

On page 53 of the 23 January 2008 Balcony Brief delivered to the Chief of Staff of the Army, it was noted that 50 + RG31 MK5 MRAPs were on their way from South Africa from Kuwait. ON the PAO page it noted the leading Army story was "First MRAP Death."

And of course, when the Army reports to Congress on the status of the high-profile program, it does include all MRAP vehicles in its tally. Secretary of the Army Pete Geren told Congress in November that "by the end of April 2008, we project that we will have fielded almost 4,100 MRAPs." It's all very confusing.

Tampa, Florida
Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, it was difficult to drive or walk anywhere in Iowa for more than one minute without seeing some evidence of the ongoing political campaign. Today in Tampa, Florida, two days before the increasingly important Florida Republican primary, it is hard to turn your head without seeing ... pirates.

Although Mitt Romney was here this morning and John McCain is here tonight, the presidential campaign is (temporarily) an afterthought in this town dominated by Gasparilla 2008. The festival - a little Mardi Gras, a little Pirates of the Caribbean - is named for Jose Gaspar, a pirate who tormented travelers near Tampa Bay back in the late 18th century. The modern version features lots of really drunk men wearing pirate costumes and lots of really drunk women wearing almost nothing. (Go here for history, and here for photos of this year's event.) The front pages of both the Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times feature coverage of Gasparilla, not the primary.

In the lobby of the Waterside Marriott, I'm sitting next to a pair of wenches - that's the technical term - wearing hats with large feathers, white off-the-shoulder shirts with poofy sleeves, short black skirts trimmed in gold and knee-high black leather boots. Across the lobby is a large group of
"Rough Riders" - men wearing black cowboy hats, blue uniforms with yellow trim and yellow handkerchiefs around their necks. They look like kids who couldn't decide whether to be cowboys or Webelos for Halloween, so they wore both. Everyone has a drink (or two, or in one case, four) and everyone is wearing colorful beads.

I asked Suzy Welsh, a chiropractor dressed in the festive garb of the St. Brigit Krewe, whether she planned to vote on Tuesday. She looked at me like I was a moron. Welsh considers herself a Republican and would have been a Fred Thompson had he not dropped out. She's not enthusiastic about the rest of the candidates. "Normally, I would say: 'I love this guy!' But not this year." Although she respects Mitt Romney for his intellect, she says she's a war on terror voter and will cast her ballot for John McCain. For what it's worth, she says that despite this weekend's distractions, virtually everyone she knows has voted (early or absentee) or plans to do so.

For Floridians elsewhere who care to pay attention, there is a robust debate taking place in ahead of Tuesday's vote. Earlier today, John McCain accused Mitt Romney (at first without naming him) of favoring a secret timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Talking to reporters afterward, McCain made the accusation directly. "If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Sen. Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Gov. Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher."

Romney, asked about McCain's comment, denied the accusation and demanded an apology from McCain. McCain, in a statement, then suggested Romney apologize to U.S. troops in Iraq for advocating their withdrawal. "The only people who are owed an apology are the men and women fighting for our country in Iraq, who have a right to expect their leaders to stand by them and their mission not just when it is easy, but when it matters most - when it is hard."

McCain has for the most part avoided making such direct attacks. That he is doing so now, has some reporters wondering if he is nervous about his prospects here on Tuesday. McCain advisers, for their part, say that their candidate has long wanted to challenge Romney on the issue and say he was moved to do so after Romney suggested that McCain would not be a strong leader.

Specifically, the assumption that areas in Iraq from which U.S. forces withdraw will continue to see improvements to security. Kimberly Kagan writes today in the Wall Street Journal:

Coalition and Iraqi forces have not finished clearing Ninevah province, Salah ad-Din and parts of Babil. Major operations continue against al Qaeda remnants in Ninevah, Salah-ad-Din, Diyala, Kirkuk and Wasit provinces. Fighting between Iraqi Security Forces (aided by coalition special forces and our Georgian, Polish and British allies) and Mahdi Army militias continues in the south.

The withdrawal to 15 brigades already assumes that these operations will be successful. It provides no cushion for unexpected developments or unforeseen enemy responses. There is thus no military basis at all at the present time to recommend additional reductions in 2008.

The irony here is that the greatest obstacle to consolidating the security gains of the last year may well be the security gains of the last year, as reduced levels of violence have only added to the pressure to reduce force levels. If the violence has subsided, the logic goes, we can begin bringing the troops home. But as Kagan says "We won more than we had hoped, and now we may need to defend it more than we had planned."

St. Helena Island, South Carolina
At the risk of picking nits, President Clinton was asked a question tonight about what role he would play in his wife's administration. Here's how he responded:

I will do everything I can to help her think through these problems. I will not be in her cabinet - it's not lawful. I will not [take a] job in the White House - it is not wise. You want the president to have a strong and independent team of people who can be free to do their job and don't feel like they're being big-footed. You want her to have a strong vice president and a strong secretary of state and a strong cabinet.

If I do anything else it should be something that comes out of our government's consensus that there's a problem XYZ somewhere in the world that I can be especially helpful with. Otherwise I am perfectly content to give her my advice and do what I'm asked to do and maybe help sell the domestic program.

So if those are the limits of what is wise to allow a First Spouse to do, then why was Hillary Clinton given - at least by his and her accounts - a role in the White House so enormous that it became the cornerstone of her résumé for the Senate and now the presidency?

The Hamas regime in Gaza scored a political coup when it destroyed the hated border wall that separated the Palestinian territory from Egypt. Established by the Israelis to halt the flow of weapons into Gaza, the wall stood as a symbol of Israeli occupation. Hamas did what Yasser Arafat, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority never could, and even Fatah members were quoted praising Hamas for the achievement.

But the destruction of the southern border wall between Egypt and Gaza threatens more than just the security of Israel, says Aaron Mannes at his blog Terror Wonk. While the Israelis have expressed some concern that the opening of the border will open the flow of weapons used against the Israeli state (this concern is tempered by the relative ease with which munitions had already flowed into the strip), the state of Egypt is now open to multiple terror threats:

Now, in Gaza, the enemies of the Egyptian regime finally have the secure base they have long sought. There are reports of Palestinian terror cells affiliating with al-Qaeda as well as international "volunteers" filtering in. However, al-Qaeda is not the gravest Gaza-based threat to Egypt. Hamas itself has proven to be a formidable organization. The destruction of the Gaza barrier was a formidable technical achievement that required months of careful preparation. But the political preparation was also carefully managed. Hamas successfully advanced its story of deprivation at the hands of an Israeli blockade (in fact, Israel consistently allowed necessities through and only cut off fuel in response to a barrage of rocket attacks)...

However, a new base of operations against Egypt could have vast geopolitical implications. Egypt has a fragile economy, frustrated populace with a large Islamist movement, and an aging leadership. There have already been terror attacks in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula with Gaza links. Even if the regime is not overthrown, HISH [the Hezbollah-Iran-Syria-Hamas axis] will acquire substantial leverage over Egypt, and further the penetration of radical Islam into the largest Arab state, while acquiring a staging ground into the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, and beyond.

Read the entire post at the Terror Wonk for more on the developing threat to Egypt. Egypt appears to be waking up to this reality and has begun to reseal the border. But will the Mubarak regime have the political will to crack down on Hamas and the Palestinians, keep the border closed, and police it as carefully as the Israelis had done?

The leading candidate to be elected to Germany’s Constitutional Court, Horst Dreier, has come under fierce criticism by left-wing media and the Green party for supporting the concept of "rescue torture" as a means of last resort to prevent imminent, large-scale terrorist attacks. In essence, this is the German version of the ticking time-bomb debate, and the political stakes are high. If confirmed, the 53-year old law professor would also take over as president of the Constitutional Court in 2010.

Dreier made the controversial case in favor of "rescue torture" in a law textbook that is required reading at most German law schools. Just two weeks ago, the incumbent top judge, Hans-Juergen Papier, made headlines when he came out strongly against current German government's plans to authorize the in extremis downing of hijacked civilian airliners.

Judge Papier has also made it clear that he strictly opposes all forms of torture, even when employed as a measure of last resort. To back up his point, Papier invokes Article 1 of the country’s Basic Law which states that "The dignity of man is untouchable."

The irony of all this is that Judge Papier is a member of the law-and-order conservative CSU party, whereas Horst Dreier belongs to the left-wing SPD party that also nominated him for the Constitutional Court. In Germany, judges for the country’s top court must be jointly confirmed by both legislative chambers, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. Traditionally, the judges are nominated on a rotating basis by the two biggest political party formations, the conservative CDU/CSU and the left-wing SPD. In the past, the nomination and confirmation of Germany’s top judges was never really controversial. Everything was worked out behind the scenes ahead of time.

This time, the Greens broke that tradition, knowing that they could score valuable political points in a debate where roughly 90 percent of the German population is strictly opposed to using any kind of torture, regardless of circumstance. It remains to be seen whether this politically inconvenient torture debate will make the SPD withdraw its Constitutional Court nominee before the vote set for February 15. Dreier, for his part, defended his controversial stance: "I wrote what I wrote and I stand by it."

For now at least, and from the sound of it until Bush leaves office:

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, will stay on the job there at least through late fall, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Jan. 24.

In a move to beat back rumors that Petraeus was being considered for other top military posts, Gates opened his Pentagon briefing with the stern disclaimer that President Bush has been "pretty clear that he wants General Petraeus to stay right where he is at least through late fall and maybe the end of the year."

So that gives our friends on the left a full year to figure out how to turn the American public against him, and with strategies like this, and this, they'll need all the time they can get.

Beaufort, South Carolina
With only 15 hours left until the polls open here, the Clinton campaign has unleashed a devastating one-two punch:

First, it seems that "fashion mogul, business entrepreneur, author, top model and mom Kimora Lee Simmons" has endorsed Hillary Clinton. I know what you're thinking - first the New York Times and now this! How will Obama respond? For the record, I didn't know who she was either, but she's rap impresario Russell Simmons's ex-wife. (You can see the mugshot from her 2004 drug arrest here.)

The other big endorsement from the celebrity world came from America Ferrera, the Ugly Betty star who campaigned with Clinton in Nevada. Ferrera reveals in a new email release that she's been campaigning with Chelsea and it is all so, like, amazing!

Ferrera also says that she's inspired by thinking about how, when Hillary was 27, she "was advocating on behalf of children with disabilities" and not out making big dollars as a corporate lawyer. This is a point Hillary (and Bill) make frequently on the stump.

One assumes, however, that there's nothing actually wrong with being young and making lots of money in Hollywood - or at a New York hedgefund - the way Ferrera and Chelsea do ...

An interview from Stars & Stripes with Col. Leonard Cosby, whose unit just left rotated out of Anbar after a 15 month tour:

“Things were not that good when we first got here, to say the least,” said Col. Leonard Cosby, 44, of Canton, Miss., the 92nd Military Police Battalion commander. “Over time, it got progressively worse as far as deaths and incidents. We basically were in the middle of all that as we struggled to conduct our [police transition team] missions. It was particularly rough.”...

“From our perspective, it’s been a 180-degree turnaround,” Cosby said. “It’s head and shoulders better than what it was.

“We’ve seen it at its worst. Now we’ve seen the improvement. Hopefully, it’s that irreversible momentum we talk about.”

The turnaround in Anbar is an impressive feat by any measure--and, of course, none of it would have been possible without the Democrats' victory in the 2006 elections.

Beaufort, South Carolina
It had occured to me that the Clinton campaign's sudden pushing of resources into South Carolina might mean that they knew (or believed) something contrary to the polls, which had Barack Obama as a heavy, double-digit favorite here.

Moments ago the Clinton campaign announced that the senator will be traveling to Nashville tomorrow evening. It doesn't say whether or not she intends to spend the evening there, or be back in South Carolina as the returns come in.

From THE DAILY STANDARD: The Magic Is Back! by Jonathan V. Last.

From the Hill: Boeing, Lockheed to Build New Bomber, by Roxana Tiron.

From the Washington Post: Losing Ugly, by Charles Krauthammer.

From the Wall Street Journal: Foggy Bottom Apostates, by the editors.

From the New York Times: Turning the Triple Play, by David Frum.

A friend writes:

"For my money the most revealing moment in last night's debate came when Ron Paul asked John McCain a question. The question was suffused in Paul's quasi-wacko, jittery-eyeball paranoia - it had to do with whether McCain would abolish something called the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, which Paul seems to think rivals the Trilateral Commission and Council of Foreign Relations for sinister nefariousness. Anyway, McCain didn't answer the question, at least not that question. But he did reveal a lot about the way his mind works when it comes to economic matters:

But I as president, as every other president, rely primarily on my secretary of the Treasury, on my Council of Economic Advisers, on the head of that. I would rely on the circle that I have developed over many years of people like Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm, Warren Rudman, Pete Peterson and the Concord group. I have a process of leadership, Ron, that is sort of an inclusive one that I have developed, a circle of acquaintances and people that are supporters and friends of mine who I have worked with for many, many years.

"Notice that phrase 'people like.' As if all these people had something in common! The list is interesting for its incoherence; it contains two diametrically opposite trends in economic thinking. Peterson, Rudman, and the Concord Group are all prune-faced, lemon-sucking balanced-budget obsessives who never met a tax hike they didn't like. Kemp wants to cut every tax on the books, both here and abroad, retroactively if possible (I exaggerate only slightly). He also thinks deficit spending is no big deal and wants to return to the gold standard. Gramm is somewhere in the middle, a budget hawk with a weakness for tax cuts.

"Let's stipulate that a president should seek advice from a wide assortment of advisers. It would be reassuring, though, if McCain showed some evidence of knowing that these guys are utterly different in their approach to economics. As it is, he just looks like he's reciting the names that pop into his head when someone raises the subject - people who've either endorsed him or consulted with him. If nothing else, the list might explain why McCain is all over the place in his own economic positions: once in favor of a flat tax, then opposed to the Bush tax cuts because they were too regressive, then in favor of the Bush tax cuts, in favor of the estate tax repeal, then against it ... It all depends, apparently, on who was the last guy he talked to."

Do lawyers understand why the profession is held in such low-esteem? How much nerve does it take to suggest that passengers in a plane crash bear responsibility for their own deaths, since they should have known better than to believe flying is safe. That's the contention of the attorney representing the pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 plane crash:

In response to questions from a plaintiff's lawyer, James Polehinke's lawyer asserted that the passengers killed in the Aug. 27, 2006, crash should have known that Blue Grass Airport was dangerous because of considerable media coverage of a massive runway construction project there. They should have known the air traffic control tower was understaffed, that airports in Louisville and Northern Kentucky are safer and that taking off in the dark is dangerous, wrote William E. Johnson, a well-known attorney from Frankfort.

That's going to be a tough sell at trial.

Jonathan Rauch has a provocative piece today at the Atlantic. The piece centers on the politics of the eventual Iraq withdrawal -- over whatever time span that occurs. He considers the outcome if Democrats control the White House and both Houses of Congress next year:

In 2009, a Democratic president might say something like this: “Every year of this administration, America will reduce its troop strength in Iraq. The downward path is nonnegotiable and ironclad. But the pace is not. If Iraqis try sincerely and strenuously to keep their country together, or if they decentralize enough to keep the peace, and if they produce results, we will help them, including militarily...

The bigger problem for a middle way out, I would guess, would be on the Democratic left. So far in the primary campaign, Democratic presidential candidates have had a hard time keeping the door open for any American forces to stay in Iraq. If the Democrats sweep the board this year, doves will say that the public has spoken and wants change. Why in the world should they pace the withdrawal from Iraq at a rate that suits the losing party?

Yet if the Democrats were to rush for the exit with Republicans unified against them, they would be blamed by Republicans for whatever subsequent disasters befell Iraq and, for that matter, the whole disaster-prone Middle East. For years, they would face charges of having “cut and run,” which could reinvigorate the debilitating stereotype of Democratic weakness...

In Rauch's view, control of the White House and Congress by the same party is a recipe for bitterness and recrimination. If each party controls one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a consensus approach becomes the likely outcome. Indeed, Democratic complaints to the contrary, that's largely what we have today.

If however, Democrats are running the show, and give in to their pacifist wing, they may well be blamed for any downturn in Iraq post-withdrawal. Ideally, Democrats would agree to support the president in negotiating a long-term agreement to promote a stable Iraq -- rather than trying to tie his hands. But in the heat of a contested primary, it seems unlikely that any Democrat wants to be seen as making a concession -- even if it's in the national interest.

Over at Contentions, Jennifer Rubin notes that John McCain leads Mitt Romney among Survey USA respondents who said the economy is the most important issue facing the country. "Could it be that Romney comes across as too corporate or too upscale and is now attempting a slight course correction?" Rubin asks. Maybe. If these numbers hold true, we may be seeing something similar to what happened in New Hampshire, when McCain won voters who strongly disapprove of the Iraq war. Which is to say: Romney is right to perceive that the primary electorate desires change. The problem may turn out to be that much of it does not see him as a change agent.

"We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president."

--from the New York Times's endorsement of John McCain, January 25, 2008

I just received this notice from House Republican Leader John Boehner:

Tonight House GOP leaders sent Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) a letter calling on her to join House Republicans in an immediate moratorium on earmarks and to appoint a bipartisan, bicameral joint committee to reform the earmark process and eliminate wasteful spending. GOP leaders asked Speaker Pelosi to respond to the request by February 1st, the end of the Democratic Caucus retreat, and outlined a series of earmark reform standards House Republicans will adopt immediately. Excerpts and the full text of the letter are below:

“We write to notify you tonight that House Republicans believe that the congressional earmark process should be brought to an immediate halt, and a bipartisan select committee should immediately be established for the purpose of identifying ways to bring fundamental change to the way in which Washington spends taxpayers’ money,” GOP leaders wrote to Pelosi.

“In the spirit of bipartisan cooperation fostered by our recent cooperation on a short-term economic growth package, we offer our hope that you and the members of the House Democratic Caucus will join House Republicans in supporting these steps, which are urgently needed to begin the process of fixing Washington’s broken spending practices and restoring trust between the American people and their elected leaders,” the letter continues. “We respectfully ask that you and your Caucus consider these urgently-needed actions and join us in supporting them by the conclusion of your Caucus retreat next week."

“In the interim, until a complete earmark moratorium is in place and a bipartisan panel is formed to identify ways to fix Washington’s wasteful pork-barrel spending habits, House Republicans will proceed with the adoption of a series of earmark reform standards we will insist that all House Republican members honor,” wrote the leaders.

It's ironic that Republicans in Congress are choosing to take a stand against earmarks at the same time that the president has evidently decided to back down from a confrontation with Congress over them. This move is bound to cheer fiscal conservatives, and it will help improve the image of Republicans as the party of fiscal responsibility.

This move evinces a strong interest among Congressional Republicans in changing their image, and being taken seriously as agents of reform. Most will hope that Democratic leaders ignore the request -- giving them an issue to run on.

E.J. Dionne's column today includes this observation: "In many ways, Obama is running the 2008 version of the 1992 Clinton campaign. You have the feeling that if Bill Clinton did not have another candidate in this contest, he'd be advising Obama and cheering him on."

There's one major difference between the two campaigns, however. In 1992 Bill Clinton was at odds with the liberal wing of his party on several issues, including free trade, welfare reform, and the death penalty. To my knowledge, there's not a single issue on which Obama deviates from the progressive policy line. For Obama truly to run as Clinton did, he would have to listen to Mickey Kaus and embrace, say, class-based rather than race-based affirmative action.

Colbert at his best:

This from from Defense Industry Daily, a trade magazine that doesn't normally take potshots at the Times and has no ideological axe to grind:

In fairness, the rest of the New York Times article is better than the title. Nevertheless, that title raises legitimate questions about the NY Times' journalistic practices. Especially coming as it does on the heels of their recent article "War Torn: Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles", which portrays US veterans as damaged and dangerous despite a murder rate that's actually considerably lower than the rate for equivalent US population as a whole. That NY Times article has also been sharply questioned by local papers who went out and did substantive research instead.

The New York Times' standards for reporting on the US military and the defense industry have become a legitimate news issue of their own, and a deserving subject of coverage. As DID's archives will attest, there are certainly more than enough legitimate controversies and debates in the USA that revolve around military procurement programs. There is no need to make them up.

The report also notes persistent and "persuasive" arguments against the Times's claim that this was "the first death resulting from an I.E.D. attack on an MRAP." We've been arguing the point all week, and have offered what I think is incontrovertible evidence that this is a bogus claim.

The Times needs to print a correction.

Krauthammer:

"It profits a man nothing to sell his soul for the whole world. But for four percent of the Nevada caucuses?"

Bloomberg reports:

Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and former deputy secretary of defense who was instrumental in the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003, has been named chairman of a panel that advises the State Department on arms-control issues.

Wolfowitz, now a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, will head Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's International Security Advisory Board, the State Department said yesterday in a statement.

"The ISAB provides the Department of State with a source of independent insight, advice, and innovation on all aspects of arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation, political-military issues, and international security and related aspects of public diplomacy," the State Department said.

At a time when Rice has all but abandoned the Bush doctrine, it is a bit curious that Wolfowitz would find himself appointed to this position. Which begs the question, whose idea was this? Somebody's making trouble, and we like it.

HT: ArmsControlWonk

John Podhoretz and I had the same reaction to last night's Not-Quite-A-Battle in Boca.

As Democrats count the gains they expect in the Senate on election day, one of their top targets is Norm Coleman (R-MN). The likely candidate against Coleman -- pending a primary challenge -- is one-time funnyman Al Franken.

Franken made an appearance at Carleton College the other day, and gained attention for mocking a college Republican who had the gall not to want his photo taken with Franken:

At that point, Franken reportedly began peppering Fritz with questions about supporting President George W. Bush and former President Ronald Reagan's tax hikes. Fritz told me he got tense and, as he does in those situations, started chewing the inside of his mouth, a gesture he said was mimicked by Franken; Fritz also thought his style of speech was mocked by Franken.

An aide eventually interrupted Franken's act, Fritz said, by announcing to the candidate that it was time to go.

Fritz told me Monday that he then stuck out his hand to shake Franken's. "Well, at least it's nice to meet you," the GOPer said he told Franken, who reportedly replied, I can't say the same.

This description of the incident is not disputed by Frankens' spokesman, who says Franken was tired that day. Further, it's corroborated by the head of the college Democrats, who was present at the time.

There's plenty of evidence of Franken's nasty temper even prior to this incident, as Captain Ed and Scott Johnson recount.

Coleman has to be praying that Franken manages to survive the primary.

Hat Tip: Conservative Grapevine

The recriminations over the security situation in Afghanistan continue, but from a new corner. Afghani President Hamid Karzai has criticized the British effort in the southern province of Helmand, where the Taliban have waged a violent campaign against NATO and Afghan forces.

“There was one part of the country where we suffered after the arrival of the British forces,” Mr. Karzai told a group of journalists at the Davos Economic Forum. “Before that we were fully in charge of Helmand. When our governor was there, we were fully in charge. They came and said, ‘Your governor is no good’. I said ‘All right, do we have a replacement for this governor; do you have enough forces?’. Both the American and the British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And when they came in, the Taliban came.”

Asked if he was blaming British failure for the return of the Taliban, he added: “I just described the situation of mistakes we made. The mistake was that we removed a local arrangement without having a replacement. We removed the police force. That was not good. The security forces were not in sufficient numbers or information about the province. That is why the Taliban came in. It took us a year and a half to take back Musa Qala. This was not failure but a mistake.”

The British, in a highly controversial move, negotiated with the Taliban in late 2006 to turn over Musa Qala to the Taliban. The district wasn't liberated from Taliban control until December 2007.

Karzai's jab at the Brits and the United States comes after infighting within NATO over commitments to the Afghan war. The British wrongly accused the United States of shying away from the hot zones in Afghanistan, while Secretary of Defense Gates questioned NATO countries' commitment to provide troops and their ability to wage a proper counterinsurgency campaign.

Boca Raton, Florida
This was the nice debate - reminiscent of the earliest debates in this cycle. The debate tonight was pretty low-key considering the stakes of the primary here next Tuesday. I expected that Rudy Giuliani would come out stronger against John McCain. He did not. I thought Giuliani had a better performance than he's had in a debate in some time. His answer on Tim Russert's question about whether the war in Iraq was worth it was the best of the group. He said, in part: "I was for it when six out of ten were for it. I'm for it now that six out of ten are against it." His answer on the New York Times editorial was simply outstanding. He is smart to label himself a "conservative Republican."

Mike Huckabee, too, chose not to challenge McCain. He gave a funny answer when he was asked about Chuck Norris's claim that McCain is too old to be president, and then took a pass on criticizing his new friend. "There may be other things I could pick on Senator McCain about," he said - and then raised exactly zero of them.

John McCain went out of his way to praise Rudy Giuliani immediately after the mayor was asked about the New York Times editorial criticizing him. He tossed a relative softball to Mike Huckabee on the Fair Tax. Even Mitt Romney mostly escaped criticism from McCain. In the course of his answer about Iraq, McCain said: "There were others that called for a phased or secret withdrawal." That was a reference to Romney, though few probably understood that.

One of McCain's best moments came when he twice proclaimed: "I'm proud to be a conservative." He then ticked off a list of examples of the times that he has challenged his own party, finishing by restating his commitment to put "my country above my party." This was effective. Now he needs to flip the formulation. McCain would do well to give a speech in which he reminds people of the issues on which he disagrees with his party, but speaks at some length about the many issues on which he agrees with conservatives. He would win points for "straight talk" and, at the same time, would reinforce his conservative credentials.

Romney did well. His answers on the economy seemed well-informed and the brief outline of the options for Social Security reform will sound reasonable to most voters. I don't think his answer on spending his own money will hurt him much, but it wasn't very good.

The nice debate will not likely move many voters in Florida.

And we can thank global warming for the chance to right one of the great accidents of history--that Canada didn't end up as part of the Union. This according to a new report by the Oxford Research Group on the threat to international security posed by climate change:

Climate change-related issues also have the potential to cause international legal disputes as the world map is redrawn. As coastlines retreat due to erosion and flooding, then maritime borders and the associated exclusive economic zones might also have to change, as a country’s ocean territory is legally determined by its land territory. Another possibility is that the evacuation or even physical disappearance of low-lying small island states – such as Tuvalu in the South Pacific – could result in challenges to sovereignty as the current qualifications defining the existence of a state include a permanent population and a defined territory.

Further disputes might also be expected as ice melting opens up viable shipping routes through the Arctic – for example the Northwest Passage, where there are already military tensions between Canada and the United States.

Yes, those simmering military tensions in the Beaufort Sea may erupt into unrestrained conflict at any moment. And in case this analysis doesn't entice you to read the report in its entirety, the authors have conveniently boiled down their assessment of the situation into this simple flow chart:

A world with civil unrest, intercommunal violence, and international instability? Can you imagine?

And lose a war:

Under no circumstances can Petraeus be fired....

Leaving Petraeus in Baghdad -- presuming that President Bush doesn't reassign him before leaving the White House -- isn't without risks, either...

That leaves an unconventional option. The president can give Petraeus a promotion he can't refuse...

This from Spencer Ackerman's latest on how the Democrats can destroy General Petraeus once they gain the White House in 2008, thus preventing the GOP from drafting the general for the 2012 election. The problem with Ackerman's conclusion, leaving aside the inherently creepy nature of the exercise, is that it is all wrong. Here's where Ackerman finally settles on a method for humiliating the man:

It would be shrewder to give Petraeus one of the two most prestigious command assignments in the military as the final assignment of his career. (The military would probably see that as more respectful move, as well.) Putting Petraeus at Central Command would have an added benefit for a Democratic president: he would be tasked with overseeing a plan to draw troops down from Iraq, thereby making him complicit in the undoing of his chief political advantage.

Put the man at CENTCOM. That will not destroy his reputation, and it may well allow the military to secure victory despite a Clinton administration. Which is why this is precisely the assignment supporters of the war favor for Petraeus. From there he could oversee the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, the mentality it takes to write a piece like this is a marvel.

The new ad:

No need to do a fact check on this one. It is true. But as Bryan writes at Hot Air:

McCain holds the distinction of being the only candidate who keeps members of both parties up at night — one side claims to fear going against him, and one side fears having to support him.

I'd say add al Qaeda to that list. McCain scares everybody! But perhaps conservatives should rethink their opposition.

OK, he wouldn't say he was pessimistic. Nevertheless, there are ample reason for Republicans to look forward to the election this year. The first is the significant fundraising advantage of the RNC over the Democratic National Committee:

On the fundraising front, [Mike] Duncan said that the RNC raised $83 million in calendar year 2007 from 800,000 donors. That is significantly lower than the $105.4 million that the RNC raised in all of 2005, when the party controlled Congress and Bush was just beginning the second term he had won in 2004. But Duncan said that he expects his organization to outraise the Democratic National Committee — which raised $50.5 million in the first 11 months of 2007 — by $30 million over the course of the entire year.

While this doesn't completely erase the advantage of the Democratic congressional campaign committees, it dramatically reduces it. Duncan also donwplays the significance of the fact that many more voters are participating in the Democratic primaries than in the Republican ones; he notes that that was true in 1980 and 1988 as well.

Lastly, it's not as if the Democratic candidate will be bulletproof. Rather, the fall campaign will feature a policy debate that may well favor the Republican candidate:

Duncan predicted a “spirited election in the fall” that would feature a stark contrast between the Republican and Democratic nominees — particularly, he said, on the federal government’s role to affect a change in the nation’s direction. He criticized both of the front-running candidates in the Democratic nominating contest, describing New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as a “lifelong liberal politician with some political baggage,” and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as lacking in sufficient experience to be commander-in-chief.

I doubt the omission of Edwards stems from the fact that Duncan considers him unbeatable.

Apparently it's not enough that NASA and many other federal, state and local government agencies are operating portals in the multi-massive online role playing game (MMORPG) Second Life, now NASA is seeking to create its own such game:

The day after Valentine’s Day, the space agency hopes to receive a pile of five-page proposals detailing how it should go about creating a synthetic online world and a multiplayer game within it. The goal is to lure more youngsters into science, technology, engineering and math professions that NASA needs to achieve its lofty plan to return to the Moon and to build a spacecraft to carry humans to Mars.

In its Jan. 16 request for information, NASA seeks the input of organizations that already operate immersive synthetic environments that would be interested in partnering to develop a new online world and educational role-playing game.

“A high quality synthetic gaming environment is a vital element of NASA’s educational cyberstructure,” according to the RFI. “This new synthetic world would be a collaborative work and meeting space as well as a game space of a kind familiar to increasing numbers of American students. Games and challenges in the [massively multiplayer online educational game] would engage students in a way that is both familiar and comfortable for them.”

I've been wondering lately why no Republican presidential contender is campaigning on the message that government is simply spending too much. Indeed: my dad always reminds me that you just need to look at where the marginal dollar is spent to determine whether government is consuming too much of your tax money. If NASA can afford its own MMORPG, it probably has too much money to play with.

And before you ask, yes -- I will play.

For more on MMORPG, see Jonathan V. Last's "Get a (Second) Life."

Both the House and Senate Republican conferences are meeting in separate retreats this week to chart a course for the year ahead. That includes identifying both political and policy strategies, and ensuring that members are on board to the greatest degree possible. As details emerge, it's interesting to see how different those strategies will be. According to Congressional Quarterly, House Republicans seem eager to draw clear distinctions with the Democratic leadership:

As a feisty, ambitious backbencher in the “Gang of Seven” in 1994, John A. Boehner worked with his top aide, Barry Jackson, to develop a list of conservative principles that would become the “Contract With America.”

Now House minority leader, Boehner has once again turned his attention to devising a conservative manifesto, with ending earmarks as its centerpiece. And again, there is input from Jackson, who is now a top political adviser to President Bush...

Boehner declined to discuss the details of the conversations but said he expects to develop a unified GOP position on earmarks in appropriations, tax and authorizing bills.

The Senate GOP appears to have decided on a moderate course centered on bipartisan achievements that can be taken to the voters:

According to internal Conference e-mails and participants in a daylong, closed-door Conference retreat at the Library of Congress, Senate Republicans will rely largely on supporting legislation that has garnered bipartisan support regardless of who the lead sponsor is...

Alexander and other lawmakers Wednesday outlined a series of bills and issues they hope to pursue this year in a handful of areas including entitlement reform, health insurance, the creation of a two-year budget cycle and legislative steps Congress could take to keep “jobs from going overseas,” according to the agenda.

There's little question which will excite conservative voters more. Erick Erickson of RedState has already launched a shot across the bow of the Senate Republican leadership, and there's word of dissension from Senate conservatives.

But the fortunes of Congressional Republicans will be influenced by what happens at the top of the ticket. If the presidential matchup is Clinton vs. McCain, many in Washington anticipate a decisive Republican victory that will produce coattails at the Congressional level. If that happens, the strategies that these senators and representatives decide on may matter very little.

Tierney has another good climate post up today. The peg is new research indicating "that snow accumulation has doubled since 1850 in the western Antarctic peninsula, and that the trend has accelerated in recent decades."

He also links to this analysis of the study:

So while we’ve heard recent reports about Antarctica losing ice, here we again find evidence to the contrary, and then some, at least in these locations. Not only is there no evidence of melting at the Gomez site, snow is accumulating there at an amazingly high rate. Clearly, this paper adds to the evidence that suggests that we simply, as of yet, do not have a firm grasp on the climate changes and their drivers that are effecting Antarctica, past, present, or, much less, future.

Smells like consensus.

Two interesting posts on recent developments in Pakistan:

Over at Contentions, Max Boot notes growing signs that the military establishment is losing confidence in Musharraf.

And at The Corner, Stanley Kurtz reports on what looks like another Pakistani military offensive against pro-Taliban tribes in Waziristan.

A substantive debate tonight would include time spent discussing the situation in Pakistan. But don't get your hopes up. "It's the economy, stupid!", remember?

A suicide bombing is a hazardous occupation by definition. The successful suicide bomber has a 100 percent chance of being killed on the job. But not all suicide bombers die while blowing themselves up in front of schools, inside mosques, at funerals, or during the recovery of victims of other bombings.

Occasionally suicide bombers meet their end from the occupational hazard known as premature detonation. In some quarters premature detonation is referred to as a "work accident."

The latest work accident occurred in Khost, Afghanistan, as the suicide bomber hopeful left his home. "Coming down the stairs, he fell down and exploded,” the Australian reported. “Two civilian women and a man were wounded." The bomber appears to have removed the trigger safety, if one ever existed, a bit early.

The bomber was targeting an opening ceremony at a mosque, of course.

Today's work accident was preceded by one two days earlier in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan. A suicide bomber there prematurely detonated his vest as he was putting it on. He killed himself, his two sons, and another unnamed person.

I was abroad during the Iowa caucuses, so I may have missed reports that Romney never called Huckabee to congratulate him on his victory. Ouch! I wonder how often that happens.

From THE DAILY STANDARD: The Truth About Talk Radio, by Dean Barnett.

From the Financial Times: Don't Give Up on Democracy, by Gideon Rachman.

From Michael Yon Online: Men of Valor, by Michael Yon.

From Siberian Light: The Battle That Shaped WWII, by Andy.

From Self-Promotion: Me and Blake Hounshell on Bloggingheads.

The report from Stars & Stripes:

Saturday marked the Marine Corps' first hostile death in Iraq in 103 days.

Lance Cpl. James M. Gluff, 20, was killed Jan. 19 while conducting combat operations in Anbar province, Iraq....

Marine Corps spokesman Eric Dent confirmed that the last Corps hostile death was on Oct. 8.

"I think this speaks volumes about the effects our Marines and our Iraqi partners are having in Anbar Province," Dent said in an e-mail Wednesday.

What a remarkable thing the Marines have done in Anbar. It is truly one of the great military success stories in American history, and while it is tragedy that Marines are still dying there at all, one can hardly expect to police an area of that size and take no casualties. But at this rate, we're looking at three or four deaths a year--amazing. And people feared the Awakening was going to collapse under the weight of al Qaeda attacks...we were wrong about that, it's only gotten stronger.

Writing in response to the Security Council's discussion on the situation in Gaza:

...The United States should oppose any UN statement or resolution that fails to condemn vociferously the terrorist tactics employed by Hamas, including its rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. For the Security Council to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza without reference to the Israeli security situation would constitute a failure of responsibility.

Hamas, which rules Gaza, has committed itself to the destruction of the Jewish state and has conducted hundreds of rocket attacks against Israel in recent days. After Israel resumed fuel supplies to the Gaza power plant yesterday and electricity was restored, rockets continued to fall on civilian areas in Israel.

The United Nations charter, which makes clear the inherent right of self-defense against armed attacks, applies to all states – including the State of Israel. In the face of continued violence by Hamas, Israel has taken steps to guarantee its security. I urge you to ensure that the Security Council recognizes Israel’s right to do so and condemns Hamas for its continued campaign of violence against innocent civilians.

That should play well in Boca. But this is the big McCain news of the day:

It looks like McCain has won it:

I could be wrong, but I think this beats Chuck Norris.

Air Force Times:

The democratic Republic of China, commonly called Taiwan — which America backs and the communist People’s Republic of China considers part of its territory — frequently irritates Chinese leaders with calls for greater independence from the mainland. But while the American military mulls its options, Chinese missiles hit runways, fuel lines, barracks and supply depots at U.S. Air Force bases in Japan and South Korea. Long-range warheads destroy American satellites, crippling Air Force surveillance and communication networks. A nuclear fireball erupts high above the Pacific Ocean, ionizing the atmosphere and scrambling radars and radio feeds.

This is China’s anti-U.S. sucker punch strategy.

The scenario comes from a RAND report which drew on Chinese military journals and other unclassified documents to construct a best guess of how a conflict between the U.S. and China would kick off. It's a lot of asymmetric type stuff, but real heart of any Chinese first-strike would, according to the authors, be rather conventional: hitting runways and taking out aircraft at U.S. air bases in the region. To which they offer some simple solutions like adding an extra layer of concrete to all the runways and storing fuel underground. They also recommend keeping American aircraft, including larger aircraft, in hardened shelters, which the report says "would be expensive and difficult but likely worth the cost."

Another interesting item, straight from the report this time:

Chinese analysts assess that even a small number of casualties is sufficient to spark strong popular opposition and erode domestic support for U.S. participation in a conflict. The U.S. experience in Somalia is usually cited in support of this assertion.

It's hard to gauge just how damaging Somalia was to American credibility. It's been much discussed that al Qaeda interpreted that retreat as a sign of U.S. weakness. (And of course, bin Laden claimed that it was al Qaeda trained affiliates that shot down the American helicopters in the Battle of Mogadish.) It seems the Chinese drew the same conclusion--Americans don't have the stomach for a fight. Which leads to the obvious question: how would the Chinese interpret an American withdraw from Iraq?

Also, doesn't this sound an awful lot like the attack on Pearl Harbor? Strike at the U.S. ability to project power across the Pacific, inflict a maximum amount of damage and casualties in a very short period of time, convince the American people to abandon the fight. At the very least the parallels extend beyond the geography of the conflict (Taiwan=Philippines?). But that wasn't a good strategy then, and I don't buy it now. I'm thinking this type of attack ends more like Tora! Tora! Tora! than Black Hawk Down.

In response to a misleading Clinton radio attack (the Clintons? Misleading? Never!), Obama fires back with a South Carolina radio spot of his own. It suggests that the Obama camp may be worried that the Clintons could erode what looks like Obama's substantial lead in South Carolina polling. The larger problem is, of course, that Obama has been solidly on defense since he lost New Hampshire. He needs a game-changer to win, and a South Carolina victory combined with a strong counterattack - the radio ad says Clinton will "say anything" to become president - may be exactly that.

Chuck Todd has an interesting rundown on the state of the Florida primary. Here he is on McCain's strengths:

On one hand, Florida should be a great state for McCain. It's not as much Southern as it is Sunbelt, like a really big Arizona.

In addition, the state boasts lots of veterans - mostly transplants - and Florida Republicans understand the idea of electability.

Add to that the information gathered from the South Carolina exit poll Saturday. Notice how well McCain did with his peer age group (65+)? He won the group by nearly 20 points.

Last time I checked, Florida had its share of those over 65. So a patch to 35 percent (the number any winner of this primary is going to need) seems pretty easy.

And here he is on McCain's vulnerabilities:

On the other hand, the Florida primary also could be the one that plays host to a very conservative electorate.

The primary is only open to registered Republicans and so far, John McCain has not fared well, according to the exits, among registered Republicans. He actually lost Republicans by a point in South Carolina (his margin among independents put him over the top).

And while he won Republicans narrowly in New Hampshire, again, it was independents that gave McCain his margin over Romney.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Democrats Abroad, an association for Democratic expats, plans to hold a global primary in which Americans abroad can cast votes for the Democrat they'd like to see nominated. A lot of the votes will be cast on the Internet, though there will be some actual polling places scattered throughout the world as well. According to the article, the global primary will select 22 delegates to the Democratic National Convention this August. It's a fascinating reminder of globalization's effect on American politics. You could even say the world is ... flat? (Hey, that's pretty catchy!)

(HT: Shanghaiist.)

This morning on Fox and Friends John McCain picked up on Hillary Clinton's comment the other night that she would rather withdraw from Iraq than win there. McCain's critique is forceful and passionate. It may be a preview of the general election campaign. Here's the clip:

Florida is looking tight on the GOP side. Romney is now 100 percent on his economy message, which has promise. McCain, Inc. cut a new spot to cover McCain's flank on the economy; a smart move and done just in time. McCain appears to have respectable TV buys in key I-4 markets: Tampa and Orlando. Romney is said to have more TV money at work over the entire state, and he's been up for several weeks. Two new polls show McCain with a very slight lead. Interestingly, one media poll (Rob Schroth) shows Rudy in a distant third place, which if accurate on Tuesday will prove once and for all that Rudy's victory-through-early-defeat strategy was as much a mistake for him as it was for John Connally in 1980.

As the Florida race rolls into its final days, a few key questions to watch out for:

1.) With Thompson out and his own campaign on life-support, will Mike Huckabee dream sweet dreams of Air Force Two and morph into an attack surrogate for McCain who just grinds on Romney? First hints will be clear at the debate tonight.

2.) Will Romney go negative on TV and try a final weekend chop on McCain?

3.) Will McCain strike first with a negative TV spot of his own? (A few sharp sticks and negative spots are already tucked away deep in the trunk of the Straight Talk Express.)

4.) Will Obama try to score in FL, despite the no-campaign deal there, if he surges after a South Carolina win on Saturday? A win there, even in a no-delegate beauty contest, would be a big momentum builder into Super Tuesday. (While your Cardinal is a believer in the loving purity that illuminates all men, the media stories I see reporting a surge in FL absentee votes leads me to suspect that somebody on the Democratic side is busy ignoring the no-campaign rule, and is trying to heist the election with a large subterranean paid program to bank absentee votes. Sneaky, sneaky. ...)

The Telegraph reports:

A prosthetic leg worn by war hero Douglas Bader is to be sold at auction.

It is one of 43 items belonging to the Second World War hero, who continued to fly for the RAF despite losing both his legs in a plane crash.

The auction house expects some $200,000 for that and a bunch of his other war memorabilia. Bader was one of the great heroes of the Second World War, but I didn't recall the story until I read the bit about the British dropping a new leg to him by parachute after he'd been captured by the Germans.

If you don't know the story, go read the whole thing (and more from Wikipedia here), but the rough outline is that Bader lost both his legs in 1931 a year after joining the RAF. When the war breaks out, he joins up again and shoots down 22 German aircraft before being shot down and captured. And then he started trying to escape...

Does it belong in the Imperial War Museum? You sort of hope there's a limey version of this guy waiting in the wings.

HT: Alert 5

Consensus:

Rising ocean temperatures linked to global warming could decrease the number of hurricanes hitting the United States, according to new research released on Wednesday.

The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, challenges recent research that suggests global warming could be contributing to an increase in the frequency and the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes.

At the same time, it reaffirmed earlier views that warmer sea waters might result in atmospheric instabilities that could prevent tropical storms from forming....

But the new study, by oceanographer Chunzai Wang of t