Coyote Gulch

Monday, February 5, 2007

War on terror
Bruce Schneier: "Excessive secrecy and security helps terrorists. I've said it, and now so has the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service."
"2008 pres"
6:06:18 PM

Coyote Gulch outage
Gulch Manor was without connectivity for a few hours this afternoon. That effects the resolution of www.coyotegulch.net. Things are looking good again. Comcast restored service in less than four hours.

4:13:11 PM

? for president?
TPM Cafe has more video from the Democratic National Committee Winter Meeting including, Biden (Who tries to stop kicking himself in the tonsils.), Richardson (Pushing his foreign policy creds.), Gravel (Who punches more than a few U.S. Senators in the mouth.), and Vilsack (No fear.).
"2008 pres"
10:17:29 AM

Economic Policy: Markets
Ed Cone: "Posts on government contractors and public healthcare reminded me of a column I wrote about five years ago, in which I surveyed the wreckage of the bubble-era economy and declared that 'America's near-religious faith in the magic of the market has been revealed as idol worship.'"
"2008 pres"
8:14:15 AM

Iraq
Political Wire: "The Washington Post: 'The historic showdown to begin today represents the first bipartisan confrontation between Congress and the White House over the Iraq war since the invasion nearly four years ago. While the resolution will test the mettle of every member of the chamber, none will be challenged more than Sen. John Sununu and the 19 other Senate Republicans facing reelection in 2008 -- many from states where voters are angry with Bush's war policy and want the troops to begin heading home.'"

Weekly Standard: "Giddy with joy at their sudden good fortune, the Democrats have set out to embarrass the president, pushing resolutions of less-than-no-confidence, clubbing his Iraq surge plan as it lies in its cradle, and declaring defeat in advance. In some sense, they have achieved their objectives: They have embarrassed Bush, exposed his weakness, and won over a cadre of frightened Republicans. But they have also painted themselves into a number of corners, from which they may find it hard to escape.

"If Iraq is stabilized this side of chaos, the congressional Democrats will be remembered as the people who fought to prevent it, who tried to kneecap the commander and demoralize the armed forces, and all in all make the mission more difficult. If, on the other hand, the surge is seen to fail, they will be the ones who made it more difficult, demoralized the armed forces, kneecapped the commander, and telegraphed to the enemy that our will was cracking, and we would shortly be leaving."

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link.

Captain's Quarters: "Both Shi'ite and Sunni Iraqi leaders want the US to accelerate the deployment for the new surge strategy in Baghdad. Shi'ites blame the US for not filling the power vacuum quickly enough after the Mahdi Army started to flee the capital, leaving them exposed for the Sunni bombing that killed 135 people this weekend. The Sunnis want the US in place to keep the situation from deteriorating even further."

Daily Kos: "Thankfully, the current crop of Democratic presidential candidates are far more attuned to 'sharpening their saws,' or whatever Covey would call it -- they're adopting pragmatic, reasonable timetables for the withdrawal of American forces. (I'd just call it common sense.) Today's Washington Post has an analysis of where some of the Dems are with regards to timelines; I thought that I'd expand on that, and check out each candidate's position on a simple, yet critical, question: Do you have a time table for complete withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq?"
"2008 pres"
7:52:54 AM

? for president?
Washington Post: "In the nearly three weeks since Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made his unofficial debut as a presidential candidate, his senior advisers have been holed up in a temporary office on Connecticut Avenue NW, feverishly working to translate the huge excitement about his candidacy into a political strategy. For all the buzz about his running, Obama did not enter the race with the conventional weapons of a presidential candidate -- a deep database of donors, a tactical road map for winning primaries or even a sign marking the entrance to his ad hoc campaign headquarters. Obama is only now starting to build a political infrastructure that matches his growing support. But the challenge for Obama is not just assembling the nuts and bolts of a national campaign on the fly. He must, his advisers believe, do so in a way that reflects the distinct, next-generation message of his candidacy, or at least avoids making him look like every other politician in the race. 'I would sooner lose the race than lose having him the way he is,' said David Axelrod, his chief media strategist."

Ed Cone: "NYT front-pager says John Edwards is trying to 'muscle his way past' Hillary and Obama and the rest of the pack, 'in part by staking out early and provocative positions on the big issues...He is campaigning as a harder-edged economic populist [than in 2004].' That includes his big healthcare plan, which would cover tens of millions of people and raise taxes on people making over $200K a year. The Times says healthcare is 'shaping up to be one of the biggest domestic issues of the presidential race.'"

Political Wire: "Sen. Hillary Clinton 'is firing up her first major fund-raiser in New York this week, launching a money marathon to underwrite what could be the most expensive presidential campaign ever,' the New York Daily News reports."

Captain's Quarters: "Ralph Nader has not gone quietly into that good night, and instead might consider another round of rage against the dying of the political light. He refused to rule out another run for the White House, and punctuated it with a pithy deconstruction of the current Democratic Party front-runner."

Daily Kos: "Appearing on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, it took John McCain less than a minute to flip flop on the escalation."
"2008 pres"
7:38:03 AM

Environment

Here's a long article about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from New York Magazine. From the article, "We'd been talking, on and off, for days, the last half-hour or so at the North Castle Diner in White Plains, up the road from the Pace University Environmental Litigation Clinic, where Kennedy is the supervising attorney training 'the youth of America to exercise their free-market rights to sue the pants off polluters so they don't steal what's left of the planet.' Kennedy, the third of his murdered father's eleven children and a man in no short supply of facts-on-hand (Tom DeLay started as a pesticide salesman!), a familiar alpha-male handsomeness, Eddie Bauer chinos, and everything else you'd expect from someone of his pedigree, had been far from shy in dispensing his views on the current state of the republic.

"For one thing, Kennedy, also the senior attorney for both the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Hudson Riverkeepers, doesn't need Al Gore -- whom he accuses of 'bailing out' on the environmental movement in the 2000 campaign -- to lecture him about global warming. Just a few unseasonably warm mornings before, buzzing up the Palisades Parkway in his dinged-up Toyota Prius with the pile of newspapers in the backseat, Kennedy, a world-class bird-watcher since growing up at Hickory Hill, the family manse outside of D.C., spied a black vulture. 'Those birds never went north of Virginia ... until now,' said Kennedy. 'Soon we'll be visiting the wilderness formerly known as Glacier National Park.'"

Read the whole article.
"2008 pres"
7:06:00 AM

Colorado Water Congress: 49th Annual Convention

Here's a report on last week's Colorado Water Congress from the Pueblo Chieftain. From the article, "Front Range residents favor Gov. Bill Ritter's water policies, the roundtable process and cooperative solutions to statewide water problems, according to recent polls. Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli shared his assessment of the state's mood on water issues at the recent Colorado Water Congress annual convention, relying heavily on surveys in the last year in Denver, Douglas County and Pueblo. 'We found strong support for cooperation,' Ciruli said. 'The public does not understand water wars.'

"Many at the Water Congress were struck by a change in attitude among the state's self-proclaimed 'water buffaloes,' who spent less time venerating the accomplishments of the past and more time focusing on new ideas and attitudes. While there were things like a presentation of a film of President John F. Kennedy's 1962 speech on the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, there were also workshops on a plan to bring a pipeline to the Front Range from Flaming Gorge Reservoir, the planned 'wrapping' of the Arkansas River by Christo and Jeanne-Claude and a wind-hydropower-storage idea by Colorado Springs developer Mark Morley."
"colorado water"
6:55:21 AM

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