McCain garnered four votes, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with two and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani with one.
Sen. Barack Obama, fresh off a victory in the Iowa caucuses, was a favorite among Dixville Notch Democrats, with seven votes. Former Sen. John Edwards won two votes, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson got one.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that Hillary Clinton’s national polling lead has collapsed. Before the Iowa caucuses, Clinton held a seventeen-point lead over Barack Obama. Today, that lead is down to four percentage points in a survey with a four-point margin of sampling error.That's the national poll.
Folks, this is so calculated, this is no different than the makeup... This is the sympathy play! This is the gender card again! I'm going to tell you exactly what this is. This is the latest version of invading my space. This is a reenactment with tears of the Rick Lazio moment, ladies and gentlemen. Should a man get away with bringing Mrs. Clinton to tears? Should a man, be it me, be it Obama, should a man get away with bringing Mrs. Clinton to tears?... This is purely calculated. This is Bill Clinton coaching her, "Look, don't bite your lower lip like I do, they'll accuse you of copying me, do some fake tears out there, show 'em you really care."
"It was interesting in the debate, Sen. Clinton saying 'don't feed the American people false hopes. Get a reality check, you know?' I mean, you can picture JFK saying, 'we can't go to the moon, it's a false hope. Let's get a reality check.' It's not, sort of, I think, what our tradition has been."
Facing a double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a sudden collapse in national polls and an expected fund-raising drought, Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?!It's only Drudge... but what do you imagine they are saying inside the campaign?
"She can't take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. "If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn't want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats."...
"I braked like crazy but there was just no way to stop," she said. Dietz Slavenas hit two cars in front of her. There were cars and trucks all over the road, some piled up and some separate, she said....I love Wisconsin too, and people are very nice here, but they do not know how to drive in fog, as I observed when I drove to Milwaukee a couple weeks ago:
"Most people were very nice and very calm," she said, adding that someone was handing out Christmas cookies. "You run into the nicest people in Wisconsin. I love Wisconsin."
... I'd driven over 100 miles on I-94, and the fog had been much worse. I think I was the only driver on the road who was constantly thinking: This is how 50-car pile-ups happen. I drove so I could stop without crashing if I saw an accident ahead, and no one else did. People are crazy.This is how 50-car pile-ups happen. This is how 100-car pile-ups happen.
Mr. Clinton’s practiced self-deflation on the stump reflects something of a split within the campaign over how best to use him, campaign advisers say. There is a feeling among one faction that he was overexposed in Iowa, and that his presence became a distraction.But he can't be willing the crowds to be smaller than the auditoriums where he deigns to appear.
I took over a city that had 1.1 million people on welfare. I left behind a city with 670,000 fewer people on welfare. I took over a city that had 10.5 percent unemployment. I left behind a city with less than five percent unemployment and I instituted a work fair [sic] program. As Republicans, we don’t do well, including me, all of us. We do not explain to the poor that our programs, our policies are the ladders out of poverty, that they are being denied, by a lot of the Democratic programs, a good job, a good education, the work ethic. So what I did with welfare immediately upon coming into office is I tied welfare to work for anybody who can work. It was called work fair [sic]. It was very controversial. People were very angry at me. The ACLU, I think, sued me, I don’t remember. They sued me a lot. I can’t remember all the times they sued me.(Can somebody tell Fox it's "workfare," not "work fair"?)
But I stood up and we fought the battle and we ended up with 670,000 fewer people on welfare, hundreds of thousands of people on welfare working, by allowing the basic principles that work in America of work, good education operate in the lives of poor people. And as Republicans, we need to go into the neighborhoods where there’s poverty and explain how our programs work. I would go into the neighborhoods where I was being castigated for work fair and I would say to them, “I’m doing work fair [sic] because I love you more. I care about you more. I care about you more than just being a statistic. I believe that if I can get you a job, I will keep you out of poverty and I will keep you with the dignity to be able to take care of your family.”
You’re not going to help the wage earner in America by attacking the wage payer in America. It’s an old saying. The truth of the matter is, it really is kind of offensive, I think, when I watch our Democrats, or anybody else, for that matter, attacking corporations that are creating jobs. I’ve spent 30 years in the private sector. I spent my time learning how to build a small business. I built a small business and grew it. I helped go back and turn around a company that was in trouble. I’m proud of the fact that some of the companies we invested in created a lot of jobs. I had some failures, too. I know what it’s like to have to make a tough decision. I’ve seen businesses go under. But I can tell you, I’ve been in the economy, I’ve been there in the real world, and we need a president who knows how the economy works, knows why jobs come and go, understands what the competition from China really means and how to stand up to it. We also need a president who knows how to shrink the federal government, and I know how to take out people that aren’t needed and how to take out programs that aren’t needed, and we need some of that in Washington.
[Olive Archer's] lonely death, of a stroke five days before Christmas, drew comparisons with Eleanor Rigby, the subject of a Beatles song about a woman who was "buried along with her name. Nobody came"....This should inspire new hope for all the lonely people... if they are beautiful.
The Rev Akasha Lonsdale, was so dismayed at the prospect of being the sole witness at the funeral on January 14 in Swindon, Wiltshire, she launched an appeal in her local newspaper on New Year's Eve.....
"The response to the campaign has been touching. I hope it can raise awareness of the plight of elderly people. There is a bigger question to be considered here in terms of social services provisions for the old."
Lonsdale's campaign gathered momentum when she found an old photograph of Archer at the home, when she had what she described as "film-star" looks.
I watched the video and didn’t think she came off too shrewish. A little incoherent, desperate sounding and clearly angry - she must so ticked off that she is finding herself in this position when she was pretty sure she was gliding to a coronation - and I think I read somewhere a while back that her claims about insuring National Guardsmen are a stretch, but stretching is what Clinton’s do, so no one will care. Perhaps it played worse in the context of the whole debate, but to me this video does not seem like the “moment of implosion” which many are waiting for. I think she’s going to get a lot angrier before that happens.
When the popular Fox News entertainer arrived at the Obama event in Nashua, people turned to him but not always approvingly. "Hey O'Reilly," yelled a man. When O'Reilly turned he got a single-finger salute. A few people approached Bill to shake his hand but the overwhelming sentiment was unfavorable. "O'Reilly hatemonger," yelled a woman. A few other people gave him the bird. "I hate you Bill," yelled a man. "You can't stop us Bill," yelled another. I thought someone might brain him with one of those Obama "Hope" signs.Irony. It's amusing. You mean, Obama hasn't actually called us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence? (I was going to write a post about Ezra Klein's goofball creative writing assignment, but it seems like everyone else already did, and I'm afraid it's too late now.)
A number of people shouted falafel, the word O'Reilly used in a racy set of telephone conversations with a young woman he was trying to seduce as he described a shower they might take together. He meant loofa, which is not a Middle Eastern delicacy but a bath item....Now, that's funny. Giving him the finger and shouting "I hate you" is only helping him, giving him the video to skewer you. (You kebab.) But yelling "falafel" — he can't use that. Nothing like a good personalized insult that's horrifying for you but not even a dirty word.
The first time was when she said she has always and will continue to work for "change for you.["] The audience, particularly from Obama supporters (they were waving Obama signs) let out a noise that sounded like a thousand people collectively groaning. The second time came a few minutes later when Clinton said: "The there [sic] are two big questions for voters in New Hampshire. One is: who will be ready to lead from day one? The second," and here Clinton was forced to pause as boos from the crowd mixed with cheers from her own supporters. "Is who can we nominate who will go the distance against the Republicans?”Could Time blog a little better? This piece fails to say when this dinner took place. And: "If the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s 100 Club dinner is any bell weather – Barack Obama will handily win here." Bell weather? One reason to avoid trite phrases is that you may have no idea what image you are invoking:
It is not entirely wrong to say bell weather, although it is certainly an archaism, "weather" having been used by Shakespeare and having died in the 19th century. It describes the sheep, usually a ram, castrated but hung (speaking of irony) with a bell to lead the flock.So if you meant to compare New Hampshire to a castrated ram with a bell around its neck, well then, fine. Perhaps you intended a reference to Shakespeare:
Of course, we prefer bellwether (and without a hyphen). Very well, we insist upon it. This is what our style guide says: "bellwether - sheep that leads the herd; customarily misspelt, misused, or both".
First, an intollerable fright, to be detected with a iealious rotten Bell-weather: Next to be compass'd like a good Bilbo in the circumference of a Pec ke, hilt to point, heele to head. And then to be stopt in like a strong distillation with stinking Cloathes, that fretted in their owne grease: thinke of that, a man of my Kidney; thinke of that, that am as subiect to heate as butter; a man of continuall dissolution, and thaw: it was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of this Bath (when I was more then halfe stew'd in grease (like a Dutch-dish) to be throwne into the Thames, and coold, glowing-hot, in that serge like a Horse-shoo; thinke of that; hissing hot: thinke of that (Master Broome.)If you were thinking of Shakespeare, well, then, I'm really iealious of your erudition.
Twenty-four hours after finishing their brawl in Iowa, the Democratic candidates are all in the same room together to speak at the New Hampshire Democratic party's 100 Club dinner....I was saying yesterday that it seems as though Hillary has already showed us every possible permutation and that there is no way now for her to come up with anything new. But getting booed — to her face, anyway — puts her in a new place. She might find some new way to play off that. You can build a reputation on booing.
There are 3,500 ticket-holders in attendance, theoretically from the full spectrum of party regulars. And whenever Obama's name is mentioned, they go insane--shouting, chanting, holding up small round "O" signs....
[Hillary Clinton] gets a long standing ovation to start.
But a few minutes into her speech she trots out her standard line about how "some people think you get change by demanding it and some people think you get change by hoping for it" (a dig at Edwards and Obama)--there's actually some booing. It throws her off. After starting the speech upbeat and sunny, she becomes a bit brittle. The response from the audience gets fainter with each applause line until you can actually see the Obama supporters sitting on their hands, their "O" signs resting on their laps.
"We have to pick a president who is ready on day one," she says, to muted applause from her small contingent. The Obama crowd then waves their signs and begins chanting "Obama! Obama!" while she keeps speaking. It's a tense moment and Clinton seems rattled by it.
Final count (viability was 38): O-184 (170), E-52 (38), C-7 (29), B-3 (9), Richardson-0 (4) Undeclared-4 (3). [Parenthetical numbers represent the initial declaration. A couple of people left before the final count; also, note that in the final count, the Clinton and Biden holdouts, along with the undeclareds, don't "count" under Dem rules].
These pix (sorry for their quality) focus primarily on the Obama group (which, obviously, was the largest). In the first picture, you can see some of the Edwards supporters way at the back to the left and to the right starting from the orange-shirted guy moving backwards.
In the second, the Edwards supporters start in the row behind the blue-shirted guy with his arms crossed, and then move backwards.
The final photo contains only caucus-goers from the Obama group. I wasn't in a good place to get a picture of the whole auditorium — unless I had leaped upon the stage and shoved aside the chairman, which, given what a crappy alderman he was with regard to my immediate neighborhood, I wouldn't have minded doing! ; )
I don't think my precinct is a particularly active one; in fact, I think it's one of those which tends to feel sort of disenfranchised, though my immediate neighborhood is an exception (more professionals, I guess — lots of lawyers, for example, though not wealthy ones). But out they came, for what was billed as potentially a three-hour or so event (we were out in less than half that time). At the caucus I was attending, they were expecting something like maybe 125 people, I'm given to understand. But attendance topped 250! So go figure.Thanks so much for sending the pictures and letting me post them. Reader_iam also participated in the comments here last night. It's one of the coolest things about blogging that I can connect like this to a place where something is happening.
I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours....
You wrote about how everyone watching the convention is imagining how the speeches will seem to someone else, even though it might be that none of those "someone elses" are actually watching the speeches. The same thing happened when Kerry won the primaries. Everyone was voting for him because they thought he would appeal to someone else. And those voters believed at the time that that was the politically savvy thing to do. But it was actually politically disastrous: if everyone was just voting for him because they thought someone else would like him, then NO ONE ACTUALLY LIKED HIM.Today, John reminds me of that old blog post and sends me this piece from The Plank by Jonathan Cohn:
One problem is that if you're trying to choose the most "electable" person, I would imagine that you'd be likely to do it by process of elimination -- by ruling out all the candidates with obvious political liabilities. I think this is the number-one reason why Kerry won the primaries: he was the only candidate who didn't seem to have anything particularly wrong with him. Edwards was too inexperienced; Clark was a poor campaigner; Dean seemed kind of insane; Gephardt was too liberal; Lieberman was too conservative. So they choose the one candidate who has no qualities that would really make anyone hate him. The problem is that he also has no qualities that would really make anyone like him either.
I'll leave the strategic implications of tonight's outcome to the professional speculators on television. But, as a supporter of progressive causes, I'm struck by how different this feels from the 2004 Iowa race — when the late implosion of the front-runner (Howard Dean) handed the contest to a candidate (John Kerry) whom almost everybody understood to be a severely limited politician and about whom almost nobody was actually enthusiastic.
You can't say that about what just transpired. Barack Obama has a great many people excited about his candidacy – many of them new to the political process or, at least, new to the Democratic Party. He won this race not because the caucus-goers found him the least objectionable alternative, but because they found him the most appealing. They liked his speeches. They liked his ideas. They liked him.
Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity — the primordial themes of the American experience.Huckabee won't be the nominee, Brooks assures us. The Huckabee earthquake will only shake up the Republicans and revitalize them in some way, before one of the more appropriate candidates takes over.
And Americans are not going to want to see this stopped. When an African-American man is leading a juggernaut to the White House, do you want to be the one to stand up and say No?...
On the Republican side, my message is: Be not afraid. Some people are going to tell you that Mike Huckabee’s victory last night in Iowa represents a triumph for the creationist crusaders. Wrong....
Demoninator?
Is Huck the foretold anti-Christ?
Look at their names: Huckabee and Obama. Both came from nowhere - from Arkansas and Hawaii. Both campaigned as human beings, not programmed campaign robots with messages honed in focus groups. Both faced powerful and monied establishments in both parties. And both are running two variants on the same message: change, uniting America again, saying goodbye to the bitterness of the polarized past, representing ordinary voters against the professionals....Is everyone high on hope this morning?
That hope is not just about their parties. It is about America. America's ability to move forward, to unite, to get past the bitter red-and-blue past. That's what the next generation wants. And they now seem motivated enough to get it.
I cringed when her chief strategist and my polling colleague, Mark Penn, wrote a 350-page memo several months ago declaring her to be inevitable as the next President of the United States. It was the wrong message for a number of reasons.And now she has come in third. What can she do now? It seems she's already tried everything. After getting dirty with the insinuations about drugs and religion and after using her husband the ex-President as much as he could be used, she faces an opponent who has never gone negative and has acquired a new and powerful aura. We've already seen every possible permutation of Hillary, haven't we?
First, it raised expectations way too high, so she was left running against herself and, secondly, it sounded horribly arrogant, which I still think it was. Number three, it misunderstood—then and now—the genuine anger that voters feel and their willingness to take it out on some of the best-known candidates. Finally, one thing I know about Iowa voters is that they don't like to be told whom they're going to vote for. It is not over, but let me restate here what I've been suggesting in columns, speeches, and media appearances for a couple of months—Sen. Clinton could come in third in Iowa. Thus, arguably the best-known presidential candidate in American history has a ceiling of 25% to 29% in Iowa. Not likely to bring those numbers up, she has tried to go negative at Obama to bring his numbers down. It seems to be backfiring on her.
Hillary's style was confident, aggressive, take-charge, and much more structured than Bill's. "All business," a colleague said. Her questions to students were tough and demanding. Bill almost never put his students on the spot; rather, he maintained an easy dialogue with them. His conversational approach often gave students the run of the class, and he let them filibuster.(Hmmm... she never mentions her work on the Nixon impeachment inquiry these days either. I wonder why.)
"If you were unprepared, she would rip you pretty good, but not in an unfair way," recalled Woody Bassett, who became good friends of both, and worked in many Clinton political campaigns. "She made you think. She challenged you. If she asked you a question about a case and you gave an answer, well then — here comes another question. Whereas in Bill Clinton's classes, it was much more laid-back." In class Hillary never mentioned her work on the impeachment inquiry."
Bill was far more open about discussing political issues with his students, whether Nixon's impeachment or Roe v. Wade, on which he spent several weeks. The subject of his constitutional law course more naturally lent itself to political questions than Hillary's.(She taught criminal law, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy.)
He was regarded as the easiest grader in the law school. Hillary's exams were tough, and her grading commensurate with what she expected law students to know. There was little doubt that she was the better teacher, possessed with "unusual ability to absorb a huge amount of facts and boil them down to the bottom line," Bassett thought. Clinton was more likely to go at a subject in a circular way, looking at it from every angle and sometimes never coming to a conclusion. But usually his was the more interesting class, because of the passion and knowledge with which he addressed legal questions related to everyday events.If you were going to be a law professor, which model would you choose, Bill or Hillary? Or is some blend of the two preferable? Assume you'd have to be the Bill-type professor or the Hillary — no blends! Which would you try to be? Is your choice based on what you think is better? What is easier? What will make you more popular? Or is it dictated by your ingrained personality?
Dreyfus, who had been ill for some time, died Wednesday evening from "respiratory failure relative to a heart issue" at his home in Waukesha, his son Lee Dreyfus Jr. said this morning.
Dreyfus died sometime in the half-hour preceding the 10 o'clock news, his son said. His wife, Joyce, came in to ask him what channel he wanted to watch, and Dreyfus did not respond.
[T]he author appears to have been an Internet prankster who calls himself Tonay, who chronicled the caper on a vulgarity-strewn bulletin board that tracks with the developments on the Facebook profile....I know. I got a fake page using my name taken down a while ago. Anyway, Facebook has now removied this, but not before it caused havoc. Don't you think the idea that it was real and its contents will remain alive on the internet? If Bilawal had an embarrassing page, don't you think it would have been taken down with assertions that it was fake?
The jocular quotes on Islam mentioned... and references to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” apparently had no point aside from sparking laughs from other bulletin board users searching the Web for more articles citing the Facebook page.
They also urged Tonay to “cause as much mayhem as you can before the world finds out! Hurry!!!”...
Of course, it is against Facebook policy to post phony profiles...
Gimme some ideas for what I should do! I'll change my religious views from 'muslim' to 'christian' soon. And join the group called 'Benazir Bhuto is sexy'. Couple of islamic extremists poked me too, scary...
I need to write a single response which I can send back to all the letters of condolence. Something sad, poignant, and then becoming weird and disturbing....
WOW, someone who works in the tv industry (I listed my fave tv shows as The WestWing, Simps, XF, Curb, awfultruth n bufffy) sent me this...
"I noticed some of your favorite programs are programs I have worked on... which was why I mentioned my profession. If there is anything I can do, autographs or something, let me know?"
The only one of those shows set in New York is The Awful Truth, so maybe she knows Michael Moore. Awesome, I'll see if I can get her to post his tits...
Maybe it's the ego talking but I'm fairly confident I can start rioting that'd kill thousands.
I mean, I know exactly what to say, how to say it and everything...it's just my annoying conscience stopping me. For fucks sake....
So far I got 1149 messages and about 2100 friend requests. No death threats so far, but then I guess Al qaeda haven't figured out how to set up a facebook profile yet. I want Osama himself to message me his death threat, that'd be wicked.
It's only when you read an honest reporter like Dan Balz that you appreciate the depth and extent of the fraud that is being practiced on us all. "In a primary," as he put it, "voters quietly fill out their ballots and leave. In the caucuses, they are required to come and stay for several hours, and there are no secret ballots. In the presence of friends, neighbors and occasionally strangers, Iowa Democrats vote with their feet, by raising their hands and moving to different parts of the room to signify their support for one candidate or another. … [F]or Democrats, it is not a one-person, one-vote system. … Inducements are allowed; bribes are not." One has to love that last sentence.Oh, the horror, that people should have to interact with each other in the flesh instead of pushing a button off by themselves. What is the fraud? That they do exactly what they say they do: caucus? Is it undemocratic? Hasn't Iowa democratically chosen to do things this way? Is it wrong that we focus on one state at a time? What could be more American (or, I should say, United Statesian)?
[T]he rest of the United States is a passive spectator while about half of 45 percent of 85,000 or so Republican caucus voters promote a provincial ignoramus and anti-Darwinian to the coveted status of "front-runner" or at least "contender."...
It is impossible that the Republican Party could be saddled with a clown like Huckabee if there were a serious primary in Iowa, let alone if the process were kicked off in Chicago or Los Angeles or Atlanta.
The Harvard Law impresario [Laurence Tribe] is downright inspired by Obama, who could have "written his ticket on Wall Street," but decided instead to "devote [his brilliance] to the community." This is something I can relate to. I dropped out of law school at Georgetown--where I could have learned how to become a highly paid attorney--but decided instead to devote my genius to critiquing ad campaigns. You're welcome, America; you are welcome.
The arrest created widespread anxiety among other Saudi bloggers and advocates....
“An incident like this has its effect,” [said Ahmad al-Omran, a blogger and a friend of Mr. Farhan.] “It’s intimidating to think you might be arrested for something on your blog. On the other hand, this means that these voices on the blogosphere are being heard. But it’s really sad that a blogger who is writing about important issues out in the open would get arrested, while there are extremists who call for violence and hate, and the government is not doing much.”
Follow Huckabee's lead. Update this post to include what you were going to post, to prove to us that it existed and to demonstrate what you won't be posting in order to be good.
Posts
