It's reprehensible enough when an American president puts soldiers in harm's way to make a political point.  But the GOP has placed American soldiers at the whim of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, turning our forces into pawns between political rivals.

Analysts say Maliki's decision to launch the Basra crackdown, instead of carrying through with a promised offensive against Sunni Islamist militants in the northern city of Mosul, lends weight to the Sadrist accusations of a political agenda.

The attacks have targeted the Mehdi Army while leaving two other powers in Basra, the Fadhila party and the militant Badr Organisation of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) -- which supports Maliki's Dawa Party -- largely untouched.

Our soldiers may never surrender, but the Bush administration, John McCain, and blind supporters of this war have been more than willing to surrender our forces to outside control. Coming right on the heels of Iraq visits from both McCain and Cheney, it's clear that Maliki knows the real situation.  He knows that he can strike openly at his enemies, and the US military will be forced to expend blood and dollars to back up his threats.  

But there is little prospect of a swift victory. The fighting has spread through southern regions, drew the U.S. forces and led to protests in Baghdad by followers of Sadr, who say Maliki is using force to weaken his political rivals.

As the US is increasingly forced to bear the cost of Maliki's political decisions, and Bush, Cheney, and McCain continue to sing of "progress," you have to wonder if any of these men has learned what Maliki clearly knows.

When the puppetmaster tries to control the puppet, the strings go both ways.  

A new report is out on the long term health of Social Security.  There's little change from last year's numbers, with the fund staying solvent through 2041, and a change in employee payroll deduction of less than 1% required to make the system solvent for at least 75 years.

The social security trust fund shows a 75 year actuarial deficit equal to 1.70 pct of taxable payroll, 0.26 percentage point smaller than last year's estimate.

Naturally, the media joined Republicans in calling this a grim report of a huge, looming crisis.

Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, said the report showed the looming crisis in entitlement programs “is not a phony issue, as some Democrats have stated, but a very real problem that is on our doorstep.”

$3 trillion war bill over the next ten years?  That's looking too far ahead.  Severe sea level rise in two decades?  Just a guess.  Social Security problem in 2041?  A very real problem that is on our doorstep.

But that's not how the Prince of Dumbness, Robert Novak, sees it.  Rather than making very minor increases in the payroll tax that would fix Social Security, Novak's advice to McCain is to cut payroll tax to win friends.

A major strategist in John McCain's campaign was asked privately this week whether his candidate might propose cutting the payroll tax. "Yes," came the reply. "No problem. Not a big deal." He was wrong on both scores. Cutting the payroll tax, which funds Social Security, would not be easy but would offer a rich economic prize in this lean Republican year. ... Neither McCain nor his advisers seem to realize the value of the political prize that they can grasp.

Yes, the value of cutting off the flow of money to Social Security.  That's sure to attract votes among the people who think Grandma thrives on a nice bowl of kibble.  And what about the problem with meeting that gap in Social Security?

The perceived need to offset losses in payroll tax revenue stems from a belief that the Social Security trust fund must be replenished. The truth is that there is no such fund, and the heavy payroll tax revenue resulting from the Greenspan Commission's 1983 "reform" not only provides enough money for Social Security but funds other programs, as well.

That paragraph is such a masterpiece of condensed obfuscation and idiocy, that I'd like to present: Robert Novak, the annotated edition.  

The perceived need to offset losses in payroll tax revenue stems from a belief that the Social Security trust fund must be replenished [There's this idea that people who have paid into Social Security expect to get something out]. The truth is that there is no such fund [But the fund is empty], and the heavy payroll tax revenue resulting from the Greenspan Commission's 1983 "reform" [despite a reform that would have kept it solvent for a century] not only provides enough money for Social Security but funds other programs, as well [because we've been paying for lots of things -- including Iraq -- using the money Social Security has brought in].

In Novakia, the fact that we've run the Social Security fund dry and are dependent on the influx of new funds to not only pay Social Security but fund other programs is a good thing.  It means we can safely cut payroll taxes because that would just... immediately wreck Social Security and lots of other programs.

As part of the Democratic obsession with making a progressive tax system still more progressive and redistributing income, Obama actually would raise the $102,000 cap on the payroll tax, and his tax credit would not change payroll tax withholding for employees or employers. There is an open field for John McCain, if he has the wit and will to enter it.

So, Obama's solution is to raise the cap on high earners, bringing more money into Social Security and keeping it stable.  Novak's suggestion is that McCain screw Social Security immediately.

It's an open field, Sen. McCain.  Please take that ball and run, run like the wind!

Don't you just hate it when people pick on John McCain by repeating what he actually said?  By God, the press sure does.

Within hours of uttering the phrase “maybe a hundred” years at a town-hall-style meeting in New Hampshire in January, Senator John McCain came under attack by Democrats and antiwar groups for promoting a seemingly endless troop presence in Iraq.

Well that's clearly not fair.  A hundred years isn't actually endless.

And in later clarifying his remarks, Mr. McCain took a long, if not limitless, view: "Could be 1,000. Could be 1,000 years or a million years." At another point, he said: "A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years."

And even ten million years is "not limitless."  That's especially true when you consider that, at current rates, in ten million years US losses alone would exceed the total population of the Earth.  So fighting is bound to end way sooner than that.

So treating it as if McCain said we would be there forever is just wrong.  In fact, using anything McCain said is wrong.

He offered those as possible timelines, but only hypothetically, to make his points that terrorism had rendered the region unstable and that he would support a continued troop presence if warranted. But the timetables, flippantly tossed out, have been condensed into sound bites by his Democratic opponents, turned into fund-raising appeals and mashed into YouTube parodies. ...  The original exchange began when a self-described Democrat, whom Mr. McCain jokingly referred to as Ernest Hemingway because of his resemblance to the author, said, "President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years —— "

"Maybe a hundred,” Mr. McCain interjected, almost cavalierly."

See there?  McCain was speaking hypothetically, he said it cavaleirly, and most importantly the person he was talking to was a "self-described Democrat."  So none of it counts.

According to the Pentagon, massive street protests and violence that's already led to more than a hundred deaths is just the kind of progress we wanted in Iraq.

The Pentagon says the fighting in Basra between government troops and Shiite militiamen is a good sign because it shows the Iraqi government's resolve and its newfound ability to take on its problems.

Other people might mistake days of chaos fought with the weapons we've provided to both sides as just another pulse in the Iraqi civil war.  You know, the one that will only happen if Democrats practice premature evacuation.  It's nice to know the smoke rising from the US embassy after days of mortar attacks is the desired result.

How can we know this is a success?  Because it means that the troop levels that we once defined as "the surge" will now become the baseline.

An increase in fighting would effectively rule out the chances of additional large-scale U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq this year. U.S. and Iraqi officials have credited Iraq's recent security gains to three distinct but related trends: the "surge" of 30,000 additional U.S. combat forces, the willingness of Sunni tribal fighters to turn against religious extremists, and a cease-fire by firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Few things of late have so highlighted the spectacular break between reality and the "news" as watching reporters talk about "the danger of the cease fire collapsing" against a backdrop of machine gun fire.  Clearly the spirit of Baghdad Bob survives.

For your handy reference, here's the Surge in Sixty Seconds.  

• US forces are expanded by over 30,000.
• The situation in Iraq moves from "insanely awful" to "oh my God it's hideous."
• We start paying and arming most of the people who were shooting at us to not shoot us
• The situation moves back to "insanely awful" but with a side of "now they all have better weapons."
• Media declares victory.
• People we armed decide to carry on their civil war without us -- back to "oh my God hideous."
• We now have to keep more troops in place, just to prevent the badometer from soaring to "10,000 nuns and orphans eaten by rats with a side of Hiroshima" bad.
• Win!

The surge worked so well, that we can never, ever "unsurge."

There's little doubt that the Rev. Wright's words, with 30 years of sermons trimmed down to a few three word phrases, was enough to cause trouble for Senator Obama.  

On March 18 - the day of Obama's speech - after clips of Wright's sermons had permeated the media, Clinton held a seven-point lead over Obama.

But after the speech?

The first major national poll taken since Sen. Barack Obama's speech on race in America shows Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in a virtual tie, reversing Obama's slide in the polls after the wide airing of controversial remarks made by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"It's hard to disentangle the impact of (Obama's) speech," Gallup Poll Editor in Chief Frank Newport said Tuesday. The latest Gallup Poll, taken March 22, showed the Illinois senator with 47 percent of the national Democratic vote and Clinton with 46.

Despite desperate efforts by the pundits to slice and dice Obama's speech into loose phonemes and reconstruct them in some way they could ridicule, it seems that a good percentage of people actually listened to the speech.

Hopefully this is not just a good sign for Barack Obama, but a good sign that the country is ready to engage in honest dialog over divisive issues.  So all the naysayers -- from Juan Williams to Pity-Pat Buchanan -- who declared that Obama should have instead thrown away all connection to his church and groveled for forgiveness, can now move on to their analysis of how the American people just don't get it.

NPR's On The Media can be as frustrating as the rest of the network's lineup.  They often offer amazing "behind the scenes" insights, but rarely do any of the facts presented there translate into a change in coverage -- even on NPR.  

After five years of the Iraq War, reporter Bob Garfield has created a retrospective of media failures; a "greatest misses" of the war that just won't end.  The string of Fourth Estate failures includes not simply failing to challenge the obvious misinformation in the run-up to the war, but actively participating in the creation of the Iraq is a Threat mythology.  The "best" of our media didn't just parrot what the administration said, it created an ouruboros of lies.

To support the case came the next gambit, leaking phony intelligence to key reporters, notably The New York Times' Judith Miller, in order that the independent media be seen as validating administration claims about Saddam's nuclear weaponry ambitions. Here's Vice-President Dick Cheney talking on Meet the Press about aluminum tubes.

VICE-PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: There's a story in The New York Times this morning that says – and I want to attribute The Times. I don't want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources.

Her eager participation in the deception has already earned Miller much deserved scorn (and her own category in the Opprobrium Awards).  But even this was just the warm up act.

BOB GARFIELD: But in terms of managing public opinion, this was mere prologue. The past five years have seen a perverse symbiosis – the yin of government deception joined with the yang of media credulousness. And it began quickly.

What did Media Santa bring us as the war began?

• Thrilling images of Sadaam's statue being toppled, all carefully cropped to make it look like a spontaneous demonstration when it was knowingly staged -- complete with Iraqis literally trucked into position and posed by a military psy-ops team.  The media knew from the moment it happened that this event was staged, but they not only went along, they expanded the lie.
• The daring rescue of Jessica Lynch, complete with dashing into a hospital under heavy fire and making off with a captive -- and photogenic -- soldier.  Though the truth started to appear long before the Movie of the Week made the screen, the media showed little interest in correcting the story.  And as NPR's own Brooke Gladstone explained "it's because the war is over."
• The war over?  Absolutely.  That was the week of Action Figure Bush, complete with flight suit and "Mission Accomplished" banner.  At the time, Garfield asked New York Times White House correspondent Elizabeth Bumiller about the media celebrating spectacle rather than trying to learn the truth.  Bumiller's reply?  

  BUMILLER: I don't perhaps think it's as dangerous as you think it is.

Garfield goes on to recount the "spontaneous" press conferences that were run from a script, the death of Pat Tillman, the... hell, the everything that came out their mouths of the last six years plus.

The invasion of Iraq is the single stupidest thing the United States has ever done as a nation, and not all the fault lies with Bush, or with the Senators who voted him authority.  A big, heaping, stinking, steaming load of blame goes to the media that tried to treat this as the next great news spectacular.  They spent more time picking theme songs and graphic designs, working out electronic maps and cool ways to use Google Earth, than they did trying to learn the truth.  

It's not the blogs that are a threat to the traditional media.  The fingers around their throats are their own.

But don't worry.  I'm sure new sets, more dramatic sound effects, spiffier graphics, and more screaming pundits will set things right.

Deaths.  Injuries.  Long tense days never knowing what might happen next. The Iraq Invasion sure is hard... on George W. Bush.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what effect the grim milestone of at least 4,000 U.S. deaths in the five-year Iraq war might have on the nation.

Noting the burden placed on military families, the vice president said the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush, who made the decision to commit US troops to war, and reminded the public that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.

If any one sentence could hold all the contempt that the Republicans feel for the military and for military families, this is the one. Who is this war hardest on? Poor ol' George. What about the 4,000+ who have died? Hey, they volunteered.

There may be greater dicks in this century, after all there are nine decades left, but Cheney has set a standard that will be hard to match.

"The president carries the biggest burden, obviously," Cheney said. "He's the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm's way for the rest of us."

Not me, actually.  But Virginia Foxx, Republican Congresswoman from the 5th Congressional District of North Carolina, doesn't believe you're scared enough.  

Rep. Virginia Foxx says she believes God will judge people for sins of omission as well as commission, so the Banner Elk Republican had a message she couldn't keep to herself.

"You should fear for your country," Foxx told a gathering of members of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.

The Democratic majority in Congress has become "bolder and bolder" with tax dollars and the rules of the House, she told the business leaders at their annual Washington meeting.

"I am trying to scare you to death," she said.

God will judge our country for its sins, and we should fear for our country?  Wait a second, the Congresswoman can't really think that God should damn America.  Otherwise, the story would be running 24/7 on her namesake network, right?

As for the two Democratic presidential candidates, Foxx pulled out her reserve can of fear.  

"I believe they are socialists, and if you look at their platforms you will see their plan is to take money from part of the population and give it to other people in the population," she said later, referring to their universal health care plans.

"I don't know the dictionary definition of socialism, but most people would see that as socialism."

Actually, I believe what you've defined is called taxes.  Not to worry, Republicans have proved that they can run a massive military on only the money made from our conquests and that the economy perks aloing peachy keen on nothing but the good will and selflessness of the investment community.

The folks from the Charlotte Chamber of Congress, who had listened to Foxx's call to More Fear, had the appropriate response.

After she left the room, a member of the Chamber joked about leading the group out to jump off a balcony.

I'd like to extend my thanks to Soren Dayton, the "suspended" aide to John McCain who pushed a video that interspersed images of Barack Obama, Rev. Wright, Malcolm X, and the black Olympians who raised a fist in protest.  I'd like to think right wing talk radio producer Lee Habeeb and his secret pals who produced the video.

I'd like to thank Fox News for their incessant running of clips of Wright, and their readiness to snip three words said by Obama and turn them into the subject of a day's programming.

And I'd like to thank Pat Buchanan, who's there to remind us of the senseless ingratitude that blacks bear for white Americans, even though we graciously arranged for them to be beaten, captured, chained, dragged across the sea, forced into service, and then released into poverty, abuse and discrimination.  

I'd like to thank them all for their frankness.  For their honesty.  For their rank admission.  For opening the door where the hoods are kept, and the sound of the whip biting into flesh still echos, and the smell of humanity crammed into tight and ugly confines lingers like sick perfume.

Just so we're clear: most people who do not support Barack Obama are not racist.  Not just most -- a vast, overwhelming majority.  I completely understand that people have many reasons not to support him as a candidate that have nothing to do with race.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said of Buchanan, or Habeeb, or Dayton, or the talking points relay team at Fox.  These are people who have proclaimed publicly that they are determined not to campaign against potential candidate Senator Obama, but to campaign against black men as a whole.  In the eyes of these men, blacks are not patriotic enough.  Not American enough.  Not grateful enough.  And in not being grateful, they're no less than traitors.

These are men who have made racism -- not just implied, but implicit -- the cornerstone of their beliefs.  And really, I am grateful that they've done so.  When the dirt is hidden in cracks, it's hard to clean.  Only when you get it out in the open, can it really be swept away.

Hillary Clinton has ended a recent drought in picking up new superdelegates by snagging the support of former Marine and vocal Iraq War critic, Congressman John Murtha. Murtha spoke favorably about both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama's plans for removing troops from Iraq, but gave the edge to Clinton on the experience issue.

But Murtha said Clinton's experience gave her an edge.

"Her experience and careful consideration of these issues convinced me that she is best qualified to lead our nation and to bring credibility back to the White House."

It doesn't seem that there has been much effect from endorsements in this election cycle, but getting the support of a well-known Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania can't hurt at this point.

Once there was A. E. Van Vogt.  Once there was Asimov, and Heinlein, and Clifford Simak.  Once there was Kurt Vonnegut.  

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but today the world is a little less magical.

An aide says science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has died.

Rohan De Silva says Clarke died early Wednesday after suffering from breathing problems. He was 90.

Clarke is the author of more than 100 books, including "2001: A Space Odyssey."

To paraphrase John Adams, "Bradbury survives."

WMDs.  Aluminum tubes.  The 9/11 connection.  The lies that were told in the warm up for the Iraq invasion are numerous and glaring.  

But as you prepare to celebrate five glorious years of liberation, long time Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn has some news to share -- everything that you've been told about what came after was also a lie -- a narrative created jointly by our government, our government's proxies in Iraq, and a press that's still willing to carry the administration's water in swimming pool sized containers.

The glorious, hard-fought invasion against battle-hardened troops?

The US and its allies never really understood the war they won that started on 19 March 2003. Their armies had an easy passage to Baghdad because the Iraqi army did not fight. Even the so-called elite Special Republican Guard units, well-paid, well-equipped and tribally linked to Saddam, went home. Television coverage and much of the newspaper coverage of the war was highly deceptive because it gave the impression of widespread fighting when there was none. I entered Mosul and Kirkuk, two northern cities, on the day they were captured with hardly a shot fired. Burnt-out Iraqi tanks littered the roads around Baghdad, giving the impression of heavy fighting, but almost all had been abandoned by their crews before they were hit.

That civil war that we were working so hard to prevent?

Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.... the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left. ... There is now an 80,000 strong Sunni militia, paid for and allied to the US but hostile to the Iraqi government. Five years after the American and British armies crossed into Iraq, the country has become a geographical expression.

And the prospect for a McCain Millenium in which Iraq becomes our home in the Middle East?

The war was too easy. Consciously or subconsciously, Americans came to believe it did not matter what Iraqis said or did. They were expected to behave like Germans or Japanese in 1945, though most of Iraqis did not think of themselves as having been defeated. ... There was a further misconception that grew up at this time. Most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein. He had been a cruel and catastrophically incompetent leader, who ruined his country. All Kurds and most Shia wanted him gone. But it did not follow that Iraqis of any description wanted to be occupied by a foreign power.

The Iraq we see on the news -- when the news bothers to show it at all -- is as mythical as Colin Powell's speech before the UN.  It's a collection of administration propaganda woven through with media narratives.

It's no wonder that Iraq is the first war where the movies and TV programs starting coming out while the bullets are still flying.  The Iraq we're being sold is a script, not a place.

Whenever there was an American soldier killed or wounded in Baghdad, I would drive there immediately. Always there were cheering crowds standing by the smoking remains of a Humvee or a dark bloodstain on the road. After one shooting of a soldier, a man told me: "I am a poor man but my family is going to celebrate what happened by cooking chicken." Yet this was the moment when President Bush and his Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, were saying that the insurgents were "remnants of the old regime" and "dead enders".

It looks like there will be no "do over" in Florida.  

After weeks of negotiations, the Florida Democratic Party said Monday it will not hold a second primary in the state.

State party leaders have been seeking a way to have Florida's delegation seated at the Democratic National Convention.

"We researched every potential alternative process -- from caucuses to county conventions to mail-in elections -- but no plan could come anywhere close to being viable in Florida," state party Chairwoman Karen Thurman said In an e-mail sent to Florida Democrats late Monday afternoon.

Charlie Crist and the Florida legislators who voted to move Florida's primary ahead of schedule took a long shot gamble, putting their constituents' votes on the line when both political parties had already warned of the consequences.  But Crist and Co. thought they'd get more media cash and influence by being at the front of the pack, when the irony is that they would have had much more effect if the vote in Florida had come later.  Oh yeah, and the votes would count.

But they rolled the dice and lost, costing their voters a say in the nominating process.  Now Crist and the rest will be pointing their fingers at the DNC, claiming it's the mean old rules that are at fault.

They'll probably have help.

Damn you rich!  You already have your compensation.

Damn you who are well-fed!  You will know hunger.

Damn you who laugh now!  You will weep and grieve.

Damn you when everybody speaks well of you!

A rant from a radical preacher?  Without a doubt.  Someone on the Obama campaign?  Well, Sen. Obama says so.  That's the Scholars Translation of Luke 6:24-26, and the speaker is Jesus of Nazareth.  

In the King James Version, the first part of Luke 6:24 reads "But woe unto you that are rich!"  That comes off as quaint and a lot less shocking to modern ears -- not the kind of preaching that nets you space on Fox News.  But Jesus meant his words to be shocking.  He meant them to strike against the status quo and shake up the comfortable.

God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.

God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.

That's Jeremiah Wright.

Is the vision of a pastor standing in his pulpit shouting "God damn America" shocking?  Yes.  But don't mistake Wright's (or Jesus') statement for what some drunk in a bar would mean using the same phrasing.  Wright isn't saying "FU America!" he's saying "these actions of America are worthy of God's condemnation."  He's just saying it in a way that cuts through the Sunday morning sleepiness and makes people sit up in their pew.

From Gandhi to King, it's in the nature of spiritual leaders to grab their audiences by the throat and their nations by the short hairs.  This was true at the time of the Civil War and during the Civil Rights movement.  Martyrs did not become martyrs by appealing to the status quo.  

Don't take this to mean that I agree with every word that Wright spoke (e.g. the United States did not create AIDS), but neither do I feel like his words require that "his church should lose it's tax exempt status" that he's a traitor, or that he's an embarrassment to his church or to Senator Obama -- all comments that have appeared on this site.  

Do I think that 9/11 was the "chickens coming home to roost?"  Yeah, I pretty much do.  Of course the terrorists bear the personal responsibility for their actions and the deaths that resulted.  But to pretend that decades of actions overseas had nothing to do with that terrible morning is far more delusional than anything said by Rev. Wright.  If you jab a stick into a hornet's nest and shake it for fifty years, the hornets might do the stinging, but you can't blame only the hornets.  Actions have consequences, and though we may pretend to both purity of motive and prescience about outcomes, the truth is that violence tends to generate violence in return.  Or, as that radical I quoted above said "those who take up the sword, will die by the sword."

The purpose of a good sermon isn't to placate, ease, and make people comfortable.  A dangerous religion isn't one that challenges people and makes them squirm.  Makes them angry.  A dangerous religion is one that is too amicable to what you already think, one that pats you on the head and sends you forth in assurance of your own righteousness.  If you want to search for "traitors" in the pulpit, turn your eye toward those who never find anything wrong in the actions of this nation.

I understand why Senator Obama finds it necessary to distance himself from Rev. Wright.  There were plenty of things in those sermons that I don't agree with, and I'm suspect many of the ideas that grate on my nerves also strike the Senator as either wrong or unsustainable politically.  These days, three isolated words on the news seem far more important than context or intent.  But I wish he didn't have to do so.  

Because getting your personal beliefs regularly challenged, rather than reinforced, is important.

In a brief interview conducted in the Senate chambers, Barack Obama responded to Hillary Clinton's contention that the Michigan primary was "fair."

"Look, we're going to abide by whatever the Democratic National Committee determines is fair," he says. "But the important point is ... that we agreed not to participate in this process. Not just me, but Sen. Clinton did as well. If you ask my 6-year-old, should that election count, she would probably be able to figure out that that's not fair."

Of course, while Sasha Obama may think all candidates need to be on the ballot in a fair election, it's not just Hillary Clinton who feels otherwise.  Iran has removed most of the reform candidates in their vote.  The recent Russian election  was held even though most opposition candidates weren't on the ballot.  One candidate elections are considered fair all over the world... in China, Burma, Syria, Turkmenistan, Cuba.  Excellent models all.

Why do candidates in all these places argue for the fairness of elections in which the opposition is excluded?  Because it serves their own self interest to do so.

Update [2008-3-14 23:27:17 by Devilstower]: For those suggesting (either gently or at knife point) that my analogy is over the top, I have to say... I agree with you.  It's not fair to compare Sen. Clinton's actions to those nations where other candidates are forcibly kept from the ballot.  It's a step too far, and I apologize.

That doesn't mean I don't think that Michigan was in any sense fair.

A new jobs report from the Labor Department, and the picture it paints is bleaker than expected.

...the Labor Department's February jobs report said U.S. payrolls fell 63,000 after a 22,000 net job loss reported in January.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com were forecasting a narrow 25,000 gain.

This is the first time we've had two straight months of decline since the first Iraq-powered downturn in the economy in 2003.  Jobs were not only lost in manufacturing and construction (a sector that singlehandedly has lost more than 300,000 jobs since housing started to slump) but across the board, including sectors where gains had been expected.  

Oddly enough, the unemployment rate actually fell this month.  Why?  Because the job situation has now become so tight that hundreds of thousands of people have given up even looking for a job.

The economy is now caught between a rock and an even harder rock.  On the one side, the housing market continues to crumble.  

Foreclosures are at a record high. Home equity is at a record low. The housing market is spiraling down with no end in sight — and taking people's sense of economic security with it.

That's putting tremendous pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and make more cash available.  And yet, even talk of lowering interest rates generates another problem.  

Oil traded near a record after the dollar fell to its lowest-ever level against the euro, prompting investors to buy commodities including crude. ... "Further weakness in the U.S. dollar should likely lift oil prices," said Commonwealth Bank's Moore. "There is a direct valuation effect associated with U.S. dollar depreciation and also you have people viewing commodities broadly as offering a hedge against dollar weakness."

Rising oil prices are directly visible at the pump, and more and more visible elsewhere.  For years, pro-globalization economists have been preaching the idea that shipping manufacturing to the country most willing to endure poverty and pollution provided a buffer against inflation.  No more.

Central bankers from the U.S. and Europe said globalization may no longer be cooling inflation, underscoring the risk of rising consumer prices even as the world economy slows.

Increased food and energy costs and greater demand from emerging markets such as China are pushing up prices after a period known as the "Great Moderation" in which growing trade and low-cost production from developing nations helped contain growth in consumer prices.

Even in normal times, such a confluence of economic ills would be a tough job for the nation to weather.  This time, it's going to be even harder, because every dime we might use to provide flexibility in dealing with this issue is being spent in Iraq.

It's not good to have spats with those you admire, those with whom you share so much, those you think of as your friends.  Recognizing this, Hillary has decided to reach out to her fellow candidate and aim her ire at their mutual menace.

"I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold," the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant's bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

"I believe that I've done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy," she said.

Yes, the reporters will have to show some respect to Barack Obama's candidacy, since it's clear that Hillary has none.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a "distinguished man with a great history of service to our country," Clinton said, "Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with."

Oh, Hillary has crossed a threshold, all right.  

Still, it's good to know that she won't let little things like jokes about her daughter being an ugly bastard keep her from kissing McCain's ass.

EPA head Stephen Johnson has finally released his official statement on why he denied California the emissions waiver needed to set tougher standards on cars. Prominent scientists at the EPA have been vocal in saying California had not only met the requirements to get the waiver, but that the law did not allow it to be blocked.

Johnson, already in the hot seat for overruling staff advice that he was legally required to grant California's requested waiver to regulate greenhouse gases, faces a litany of charges that he has also been duplicitous on an array of other scientific integrity, information suppression and workplace relations issues, said PEER.

So what was Johnson's justification for violating the law and -- for the first time in history -- not granting a waiver?  His reasoning comes down to things are bad all over.

But Johnson wrote: "While I find that the conditions related to global climate change in California are substantial, they are not sufficiently different from conditions in the nation as a whole to justify separate state standards."

In other words, because we face global warming everywhere, Johnson isn't going to allow it to be addressed anywhere, even though an internal study conducted by the EPA showed that California does suffer disproportionately from the effects of global warming. This is the same nonsense logic the Bush administration has applied to climate change in international treaties, maintaining that unless we get 100% of what we want from 100% of other nations, we won't give up 1% of our right to pollute.

To what extent did dictates from the White House convince Johnson to completely ignore the scientific and legal advice of the EPA staff?  He's not saying.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency refused to say Wednesday whether the White House sought to influence his decision denying California a waiver needed to implement a tailpipe emissions-reduction law.

Appearing before the U.S. Senate's environment committee, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson deflected repeated questions from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., about any White House role in the controversial decision last December blocking California and at least 16 other states from implementing the reductions.

Unlike Johnson, I think we can deduce the answer to this question by referring to the evidence, logic, and precedents. How much of his integrity did Johnson surrender for the Bush administration?  Every last ounce.