Entries for January 2008

Contravening conventional wisdom once again, I take issue with this Associated Press report coming out of the Florida primary:

"Hillary Rodham Clinton finished Tuesday's Florida Democratic primary with more votes than any other Democrat, but the event drew no campaigning by any of her presidential rivals and awarded no delegates to the winner."

It's not that the story is wrong. It's that all mainstream media outlets are assuming Democratic delegates elected in Florida and Michigan will not be seated, per a fiery edict from the Democratic National Committee. In fact, that decision is set in peanut butter rather than in concrete and may not be finalized until the party convention in August.

It's been a wild ride on Wall Street these past few weeks and from where I sit if we're not in a recession already (it's a retrospective diagnosis, remember) we certainly seem to be heading for at least a mild one.

But one sector of the economy that seems to be thriving nonetheless is the philanthropic sector. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, "Twenty donors made gifts of $100 million or more last year, just shy of the record of 21 such gifts made in 2006, according to The Chronicle's annual ranking of the 50 most-generous Americans. And despite a turbulent economy, fundraisers seeking donations of $10 million or more predict another strong year of big gifts in 2008."

A day ahead of time, I feel reasonably comfortable doing something I never do: predicting the results of a state primary race. Barack Obama will win the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary. But his campaign will most likely incur a crippling blow on Super Duper Tuesday on February 5, when he loses the California primary.

Obama has a 13-point lead in a South Carolina Zogby poll released today.

The foes are the Bush administration's Fish and Wildlife Service. Why? The administration has been petitioned to list the polar bear as "threatened" as a first step toward protecting its habitat under the Endangered Species Act. That decision was supposed to be made earlier this year, and bureaucrats stalled for at least a month.

There's so much melting of polar ice, it's hardly a question among those in the know and those who care whether the bear is threatened or not: Of course it is! Some members of the House Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming ask whether "the delay [is] caused by a rush to sell the polar bears' habitat to oil companies for drilling first."

At the same time that the Democratic presidential candidates were calling a truce in their war of words this week, a Republican presidential wannabe was starting one of his own.

The national media paid a great deal of attention to the denouement between candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama:

As someone who has covered Washington politics for a long time, I am more than just a mite skeptical when a candidate for any office promises change, bipartisanship, and unity. Change can happen only if both sides really want it and are willing to compromise on important issues to get it. Congressional and even would-be-presidential Republicans have shown no propensity to compromise on any of their basic issues (guns, God, gays, and taxes). How can Barack Obama promise change unless he plans to give in to the GOP on all issues Democrats hold dear?

But what makes me even more skeptical he's no more capable of change than the next guy is the nasty give-and-take he's gotten into recently with Hillary Clinton. It got even nastier over the weekend, as Clinton went on NBC's Meet the Press and again accused Obama's campaign of peddling a misinterpretation of her comments about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. last week.

The Web is awash in media backlash explanations for Hillary Clinton's surprise New Hampshire victory this week.

The conventional wisdom is that she was widely disparaged by the mainstream media and pundits who derided her somewhat teary moment the day before the vote. In addition, noted male pundits were positively gleeful on air over the prospect of a Clinton defeat. So women took offense and voted for her in greater percentages in New Hampshire than they did in Iowa.