2004 Presidential Transition
The AP via the Rocky Mountain News is reporting that Condoleezza Rice will be the next Secretary of State if confirmed [November 16, 2004, "Bush taps Rice to replace Powell"]. From the article, "President Bush turned to his most trusted foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to lead U.S. diplomacy during his second term, replacing Secretary of State Colin Powell, who often was out of step with more hawkish members of the administration's national security team...Rice, who is considered more of a foreign policy hard-liner than Powell, has been Bush's national security adviser for four years. But while she's known around the globe, her image on the world stage does not rival Powell's. The retired four-star general has higher popularity ratings than the president. Rice, 50, worked at the National Security Council in former President Bush's White House and went on to be provost of Stanford University in California before working in the current president's 2000 campaign. She was widely considered the president's first choice for the top diplomat's job, despite reports that she intended to return to California or was hoping to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary. Stephen Hadley, Bush's current deputy national security adviser, is expected to be promoted to replace Rice, the senior administration official said on condition of anonymity."
Here's a background piece about Condoleezza Rice, the former Denverite, from the Denver Post [November 16, 2004, "Colo., DU helped to shape Rice"]. From the article, "Condoleezza Rice was born in Alabama and moved to Denver in 1967, at age 13, when her father, John Rice, became a vice chancellor at the University of Denver. In 1974, Rice graduated from DU at 19 and went to Notre Dame for a master's degree. She returned to DU for her Ph.D., which she got in 1981. Her Ph.D. dissertation was on military organizations in Eastern Europe."
The Rocky is also reporting that Wellington Webb is considering a bid for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee [November 16, 2004, "Webb considers party's top job"]. From the article, "The party will choose a successor to Democratic National Committee chief Terry McAuliffe in February. On Monday, President George W. Bush appointed his campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, to succeed Ed Gillespie as head of the Republican National Committee. State Democratic chair Chris Gates said the state party's strong showing in Colorado, with Democrats taking a U.S. Senate and House seat formerly held by Republicans and gaining a majority in both houses of the legislature, strengthens Webb's standing for a national job."
More DNC gossip from the Daily Kos.
Electoral-vote.com: "The Libertarian and Green parties have collected the needed $113,600, so there will be a recount in Ohio. Ralph Nader is also asking for a recount in New Hampshire. If nothing else, these recounts will give us two data points for the popular vote in each state so we will be able to compute the standard deviations. We are all used to the concept of margin of error caused by the statistical sampling used in polls, but it may take some getting used to if there is a substantial statistical error in counting the actual votes."
"Exit polls showed that 7% of the voters have a cell phone but no landline. Among 18-29 year olds, the figure is 20% and growing. Furthermore, this group favored Kerry over Bush by 56% to 41%. Since pollsters are forbidden by law from calling cell phones, this age group was undersampled in the polls, but the pollsters were able to correct for the omission statistically. If the number of cell-only voters continues to grow rapidly, by 2008, the pollsters are going to have a big problem on their hands."
Juan Cole: "Colin Powell's resignation as secretary of state may be a more important development than meets the eye."
"It could be argued that he has been so marginalized and ineffective that he might as well resign, and that it makes no difference whether he is in office or not. Powell wanted to devote great energy to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after September 11, and for a brief moment seemed to have Bush's ear, but then Bush capitulated to hard line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Powell was never able to make any headway. At one point Bush even sent Condi out to meet with Middle East leaders, which one would have thought would be the job of the secretary of state, not of national security adviser."
"Powell was not enthusiastic about a war on Iraq, and his own doctrine called for the US to go in with massive force if it did go in. Instead, Rumsfeld sent in only 100,000 troops, laying the ground for the subsequent disaster. But you get no credit in Washington for having been right. You only get credit if you win the policy battle, regardless of how it turns out. Powell almost never did."
Update: Wired: "For the past four years, scientists have accused the Bush White House of ignoring widely accepted scientific studies in favor of fringe theories that support the administration's political agenda. Meanwhile, government officials say scientists are exploiting research for political purposes."
5:33:20 AM 
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