A Glimpse Into Rick Santorum's Mind

Former Senator Rick Santorum, the darling of social conservatives these days, has said that he's willing to endorse Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney or anyone else running for President over McCain because... "I don’t agree with him on hardly any issues."

Like what, Rick? McCain is pro-life, pro-troop-surge, anti-same-sex-marriage, pro-Intelligent Design, anti-pork (I like that one, myself), and he agrees with you on every social issue of significance to the religious right and its "values voters." Meanwhile, in the Republicans' breadbasket of votes, the pro-choice, gay-friendly Rudy Giuliani has a commanding lead thanks in part to the fact that Santorum and his ilk have found no candidate from within their own ranks who is even moderately marketable.

Of course, Santorum hasn't endorsed anyone yet. Instead, he's writing a book about the rising threat of militant Islamic terrorism, and declining lobbying jobs, because "I want to keep my political options open." Gee, what could that mean?

Party of Freedom

I thought more about Rudy’s phrase at lunch, even while talking politics at a variety of lower levels than the Presidential. I really like it. Sure, the Democrats will find ways to make fun of it and lampoon Republicans for being “anti-freedom” – but that’s kind of good in a way, because it will keep us honest about the policies we advocate.

The Gaffe

I went to bed early and haven’t really watched Letterman in years. So it’s not a surprise that I missed John McCain’s remark that American lives have been “wasted” in Iraq. Nor is it a surprise that McCain would be swift to retract his use of that word. Certainly it’s a bad thing to say to troops in the field that their brothers’ and sisters’ lives are being “wasted” and the deaths have pointless. (But it would be much worse to tell these young men and women that their lives are being risked, and in some cases lost, to provide domestic cover for the consequences of a reckless geopolitical gamble, which the most cynical among us would say is what is really going on.)

Still -- if you really think the war in Iraq is hopeless, that the country will never reach an acceptable level of civility and peace, that the country is doomed to Balkanize and at least portions of it turn hostile to the United States, then what word do you use to describe what’s happening to Americans over there? McCain, however, does not have the luxury of being able to ask that rhetorical question the way Barack Obama could have. Saying that a particular stratagem will “waste” lives or has “wasted” lives requires that you be a critic of the stratagem in the first place. Not only did McCain vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, he’s turned in to the President’s biggest cheerleader for the 20,000-troop “surge” that, as far as I can tell from reading the news, is not doing anything to pacify the near-daily acts of mindless religious violence in Baghdad.

You've Heard The Pitch, Now It's Time For The Theme

For some reason I can't find the story anywhere else but the New York Sun. But it's a good read -- Rudy Giuliani is trying to recast the Republican Party into the "Party of Freedom." Here's The Theme, articulated to leaders of the Hoover Institution:

On the economy, Giuliani says that Democrats will raise taxes to pay for (among other things) the war. "That shows a dividing line, and to me, a misunderstanding of how our economy works," adding that to him, it appears that Democrats "really believe, honest, that it is essentially a government economy." (Note: He's attacking Democrats here, not his primary opponents. Sounds like a front-runner for the nomination to me.)

Giuliani is also opposed to a universal health care system, at least one along the "single-payer" model proposed by Senator Clinton: "That would be a terrible, terrible mistake. There have to be free market solutions. They have to be a competitive system."

Regarding education, Giuliani pointed to school choice programs enacted under his leadership in New York, claiming that taking on the public school system is not the same thing as trying to dismantle it. This remains a controversial part of his legacy as mayor, of course, but it's probably about the most pro-active thing that can be done to reform an education system that, if not necessarily failing, is still leaving a lot of kids behind.

On the war: "We have to say to the rest of the world, 'America doesn't like war,' ... America is not a military country. We've never been a militaristic country." But then, he criticized the current administration as having committed an "analytical warp" by calling it the "war on terrorism" rather than a "war of the terrorists against us." See what he's doing there? If it were Bill Clinton, we'd call that "triangulation" -- thing is, this doesn't sound like bullshit the way it did when Clinton did it.

When challenged by a Hoover Overseer about his foreign policy credentials in a more general sense, a quick New York wit came into play: "What makes you think that the mayor of New York City doesn't need a foreign policy?" After referring to the tremendous diversity of the city and the need to deal with the diplomats who inhabit it, he then discussed his experience with Giuliani Partners doing security consulting around the world and a multiplicity of international trips related to his work after his service as Mayor of New York was complete. He claims as much foreign policy experience as anyone else running for President. While there may be exceptions, for the most part that's true.

Now, if any of this sounds like someone else who managed to take control of the Republican Party from its entrenched old-guard leadership, changed the direction of the party and excited the nation while doing it, and subsequently provided leadership that defined an era, well, that's all for the good, too. As the Sun further opines today, that old guard may be as much of a liability as an asset. Nevertheless, Rudy is trying to gracefully realign the coalition of interest groups that is the GOP -- while this faction may no longer be as prominent as it has been of late, it does seem that Rudy's going out of his way to remind them that even if they're not likely to call all the shots anymore after the Bush Administration ends, they'll still have a prominent place at the table if they're willing to be team players.

I'm excited about this candidacy like I haven't been excited about a politician for a very long time. And it's early, subject to a lot of change, and driven at this stage of the game by name recognition more than anything else, but the numbers are there to win it all -- for proof, check out this article in Time.

A Letter From Kabul

That is a picture of a refugee from Taliban warfare in Afghanistan. This is a letter from my friend who is on duty in Kabul. I normally would not include his name but he has offered this letter for publication in a variety of newspapers, so he has manifested a desire that the letter be circulated to the public.

Let’s Not Have Another Forgotten War.

I guess that it is more important to speculate as to whom the target might have been at the front gates of the Bagram Airport in Afghanistan versus what is really happening in this country. I am certainly happy that our Vice-President was not injured and of course it is always sad when so many are killed or injured.

The recent explosion on February 27 at the largest Afghanistan airport received an immense about of international press, due mostly because the Vice-President of the United States was in the vicinity. I am an Infantry Colonel serving in Afghanistan and I am disheartened to rarely hear in the news of the other plights befalling the peoples of Afghanistan. I understand why Iraq receives most of the news coverage. It has more political interest.

That fact of the matter is in Afghanistan the Taliban has the most presence of the two countries. If we keep saying that the good Muslims of the world are not our enemy, but the ‘militant’ Islamists are the true enemy, then who is more militant than the Taliban?

In Afghanistan the Coalition Forces are trying to rebuild a country that was totally devastated by years of invasions, wars, natural disasters and the Taliban rule. This country is land locked, has very little useful farm land and very limited natural resources. Almost everything used in this country must be imported.

Afghanistan, with its almost impassable mountains, was created many years ago to be a buffer state between Russia and the British ruled India. It was inhabited mostly by invaders who were crossing through it on their way to attack other countries. The peoples here are very tribal. Many of the daily activities look the same now as they did in the 14th Century. Afghans carry water from polluted rivers, ride horse drawn carts, and use crude tools with which to farm.

The children I see here are constantly covered in dirt. They cannot wash for weeks at a time. There is very little drinkable water, much less running water. When you look at the faces of teenagers you see the scares from bug bites and years of infected cuts. Added to that is the terrible cold wind at night and the brutal heat during the day. The unsanitary conditions here make the children look much older then actually they are. Their physical size is also deceiving. Because of the lack of good nutrition they are very much underdeveloped. And then there are the thousands of Russian landmines. They are everywhere. You see many Afghans who are mputees; victims of these landmines. Everyday we hear about explosions from either suicide bombers or landmines.

This is a country that has an average lifespan of only 43 years. That means that there are very few grandparents here. Can you imagine that when you graduated from college you parents would have already passed away? That is the situation here.

And now the Taliban is coming back and attempting to disrupt the reconstruction efforts provided by the international community. The Taliban knows, as did the Viet Cong, that you cannot defeat the American military on the battlefield. If you want the Americans to leave you must defeat them in the court of public opinion. The Taliban is attempting to just that by using suicide bombers. It is important to them to get as much publicity as possible.

For the uninformed, when violence occurs against the Coalition, the Taliban trumps it as a sign of weakness. When, in truth, the fact that a suicide bomber can come so close is actually a sign of compassion on the part of Coalition Forces. The Taliban uses all sorts of ruses to get close. They fake accidents, injuries, use children, and even animals. They play on the Western mentality towards helping their fellow man.

So violence gets the better press. A picture of a bunch of Afghanistan children reading for the first time won’t be on the front page of a newspaper. The press does not generally cover the literacy program conducted by the Coalition, the thousands of schools that have been built (although the Taliban has damaged over 400 of them already), the education of females and the generally improved health environment within this country.

If the security in Afghanistan was better then the reconstruction would go faster and the people would have a higher standard of living. And maybe the child in the refugee camp might actually live long enough to be able to learn to read or even be a grandparent.

This is my third war. Soldiers do not do this for the press coverage; we do it for that child. The public can forget about the war here, but do not forget the Afghan children.


Robert L. Klein
Colonel, Infantry
Kabul, Afghanistan
Feb 28, 2007

Come home soon, Klein.

Union!

Just saw this week's Battlestar Galactica.

Chief Tyrol will henceforce be called "Norma Rae."

That is all.

Another Leak

This time, the victim is Mitt Romney, and the leaked internal memo took the form of a 77-page powerpoint presentation concerning the former Massachusetts Governor's vulnerabilities. Most prominent among them is his record of flip-flopping on social issues, which have already earned him the distrust, if not antipathy, of some of the social conservatives whose support is thought of as critical to winning the nomination. Most amusing are the concerns that Romney's hair is too perfect.

Once again, no thoughtful person considering the advantages and disadvantages of a Romney candidacy would not have figured all of these things out on their own. I predict minimal harm to Romney's candidacy, although I think there's a fork in him as it is; some people just don't want to see it for what it is.

I notice that John McCain has not been the victim of such leaks yet. Hmm.

Left Behind

I've been talking about Rudy Giuliani's pitch to conservatives for some time now. The conundrum is how to reconcile a pro-choice, pro-gay-rights, pro-gun-control municipal leader to a religious right that has formed the backbone of the footsoldiers and mid- to low-level donors for the GOP for years.

As I've been noting, there are a significant number of values voters, religious conservatives, and the like who are reconciling themselves to Giuliani. But, as the Gray Lady reported recently, there are also those who are dissatisfied with their existing choices. The elite and influential among them gathered in Florida this weekend, including the likes of Tim LaHaye, Grover Norquist, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Wayne LaPierre, and Paul Weyrich.

There, they listened to speeches from the likes of Duncan Hunter, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum. And the verdict of these luminaries of the "movement"?

Apparently, they were unimpressed with the lot. They tried to draft Mark Sanford, the Governor of South Carolina, who no one has heard of other than these guys. Governor Sanford replied not just "no" but "hell, no, and don't ask again!"

So this all leaves the right wing no better off this week than it was before all of this -- with no identifiable standard bearer, and a choice of either accepting that they won't be calling all the shots next time around (and will have to be good members of the coalition as they've urged other GOP factions to be in the past in the name of party unity) or opting out altogether. Sometimes there just aren't any good choices, fellas, and you have to make the best of a series of less-than-perfect options.

Suck it up. Libertarian-slanted Republicans like me have been doing that for years.

Vegas Wedding

Today's comic suggests that there's something tawdry and shotgunnish about a Vegas wedding, albeit also romantic in its desparation. I'm here to tell you it isn't so. (At least, not necessarily.)

The Wife and I got married in Vegas and I still think it was one of the best decisions we've made. We were married at the Luxor, and everything about our experience was good. So based on that, I'll give you ten good reasons to do what The Wife and I did.

1. Nice Chapel. The chapel was attractive, and elevated away from the noisy casino floor. Nothing tacky about it; there were no Elvises (Elvii?) or showgirls in sight; no tacky cupids or gaudy hearts anywhere.

2. Good Minister. The hotel provided a minister, who wisely ignored our request for a secular ceremony and made all our our families comfortable and at ease. He presided over a very nice, dignified, and brief ceremony, and gracefully guided nervous newlyweds through the proceedings.

3. Photographer Included. Indeed, the photographer was professional, quick about his business, and produced some really good-looking pictures.

4. Special Treatment for Guests. There was a special escalator from the chapel down to the reception area so again, our guests didn't have to wade through the casino floor to get from point A to point B.

5. One-Stop Shopping for Catering. The catering department took care of everything but the D.J., and they helped me find a good one in spite of that. What they did do was arrange for decorations, the cake, and the food. The prices for the meals for our guests were quite reasonable (but we're still grateful for the help, Mom and Dad!) and the food was of good quality, considering what most banquet halls put out. They were also accomodating with my desire to have special wine served (I bought it specially from my favorite winery) and pleasant to work with.

6. Accomodating to Family Requests. When my family put together some special decorations for the reception, they were quite happy to give them access to help set up for the event.

7. Free Jacuzzi Suite. In a corner of the pyramid to boot. You can't beat that with a stick.

8. Everyone Likes Vegas. Almost no one invited to the wedding declined the invitation, and almost no one who accepted the invitation flaked. There is always something for everyone to do in Las Vegas. Some people gambled, some people hung out at the pool, some people went to shows, some people played golf, some people drank too much, some people got to spend some quality time at the spa, some people just sat back and enjoyed the spectacle that is Las Vegas. Some people, like us, spent all their time doing stuff for the wedding, too. But no one was bored. They all could get flights in and out of Las Vegas easily; they could all find hotel rooms within their budgets. And no one had to crash in our house.

9. Affordable. The whole package -- wedding ceremony, honorarium for the minister, fee for the D.J., reception hall rental, and catering -- cost somewhere between one-half to one-third of what we would have paid for the same thing would have cost us in the Los Angeles area. And we didn't have to book the reception hall a year and a half in advance -- about three months' notice was quite sufficient for them. Of course, if you want to spend more money on your wedding, there's places in Vegas that will help you do that, too.

10. Low Stress. There was not a great deal of stress in putting it all together; yes, there was some planning and some decisions to be made, but nothing particularly onerous. Much less complicated than putting a trial presentation together, that's for sure. Our wedding, at least, had little tackiness and it was neither tawdry nor desparate. Hopefully it was romantic (The Wife and I were both pretty happy) and enjoyable for everyone.

So that's my advice to young couples looking to get hitched, despite the implied joke of the comic strip today. If E-L-O-P-E can't be in your vocabulary for family-political reasons, the next-best word is V-E-G-A-S. Vegas rocks, especially for weddings.

Spirit In The Sky

Driving back from lunch today, I noticed that a B-2 bomber was doing test flights. It's a damned impressive thing to see one of these things in the sky.

I first noticed the plane when it took off, since the office is literally in the flightpath for the aircraft assembly plant. It banked, revealing itself as a huge black chevron, surreal and intimidating, dominating the entire sky over my head. Then it levelled to the ground, and became nearly invisible to the human eye -- if you already know where it is, and it's in front of a cloud, you can see what looks like a black smudge that might be a bird or something. Against a clear blue sky, there's less of that to see. What's even more eerie is that it's silent. No sounds of jetwash or anything. When the pilot turned on his landing lights, it was easier to track, but the plane was in flight, it was close to impossible to track.

Maybe it's not quite the thing for quelling a religiously-motivated urban insurgency in Baghdad. But it certainly is the thing for taking out an enemy's infrastructure. And I'm really glad we have it instead of someone else.

Modern Phobias

There are long names for various kinds of unusually intense and specific fears or aversions to things and it’s an exercise in (generally) one’s subliminal knowledge of Greek to test what these things are. For instance, common sorts of fears – claustrophobia, acrophobia, and agoraphobia are well-known and derived from the Greek words for “room,” “height,” and “market.” Or triskaidekaphobia from the Greek word for the number 13, and its close cousin, paraskavedekatriaphobia, which is fear of Friday the 13th. More challenging are words like erythrophobia (a fear of red lights), kakorrhaphiophobia (a fear of being defeated), and hellenologophobia (a fear of complex words derived from Greek, like the word “hellenologophobia”).

But not all of these abnormal fears have names yet and the modern world has given people so many other things to be irrationally afraid of that language has not caught up. For instance, a theophobe is afraid of gods or religion, but what about someone who is irrationally afraid of atheists? Atheophobia would be a fear that there is no god, which is a different fear than the state of being fearful of people whose world view is that there is no god; in other words, even if god exists, one might still be irrationally afraid of those who deny that god’s existence, and I can’t figure out what word one would attach to it.

Xenophobia is a fear of foreigners, but modern political irrationalities are a bit more discriminating than against foreigners generally. People commonly disparaged as xenophobes typically exclude from their aversion sub-fears like canadiphobia, an irrational fear of Canada or Canadians, and probably also excludes or at least downplays europhobia for the same reason. The fear is generally not of affluent foreigners, those who speak English well, or those who have fair skin; the general phobia seems directed at Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico and points south. But a fear of immigrants from south of the border presents another lexicological problem: mexophobia refers to Mexicans only, but those suffering from this condition also would likely suffer from salvadoraphobia and honduraphobia and other related conditions as well as a result of being unable to mentally distinguish between Mexico and other Central and South American nations. So what about latinoamericophobia (fear of people from Latin America) or hispanololaphobia (fear of people who speak Spanish)? Or perhaps more accurately, peniahispanololaphobia (fear of poor people who speak Spanish)?

Cyberphobia describes be a fear of computers in a general sense, but what name would be given to the more specific kind of abnormal fear that an inexperienced computer user experiences when first using a mouse or a particular operating system? What word would one use to describe an abnormal fear of having one’s nose hairs visibly protrude from one’s nostrils during a critical meeting? What about an irrational fear that homosexuals will convert one’s children to homosexuality? A fear of losing one’s passport while traveling abroad (I suffer from this) or of being made the victim of identity theft? What is a fear that one’s alarm clock will fail in the middle of the night, or a fear that the cheese will have grown moldy or the milk soured before it can be used?

Now, it’s not like there aren’t examples of very specific, contemporary kinds of fears; opiophobia is the fear a doctor experiences when prescribing narcotics or other painkilling drugs that the patient will become addicted and it will be the doctor’s fault. But as dynamic and interesting as the English language is, it doesn’t seem to have caught up with these vexing issues. Apparently, I'm suffering from a touch of alogophobia here myself.

Fantasy Baseball

I'm so busy these days I think I won't have time for fantasy baseball this year. Too bad, it's fun, but my puny human brain can only handle so much.

A Signal?

I don't think so -- if it had been, Cheney would have been in more danger. But maybe it's a sign that the surge isn't working and the wheels are starting to come off. It's not good, that's for sure. Nineteen people died and eleven more were wounded, after all. Not all of them get to be Vice-President, but they all have families and people who love them. And they're all in danger of once again living under Taliban rule.

Wages of Writing

I've mused in the past about being a professional writer; the idea seems very attractive but I've no illusions it would be anything but hard work producing product and then peddling it. So it's interesting to see the finances of one writer from the inside. It seems that if you produce something of decent quality and keep at it for a long time, you can make a decent living even if you're not Michael Chricton or J.K. Rowling.

Me, I don't think I can afford to quit my day job.

How To Light £18,000 On Fire

Is it a relief to see that fuzzy thinking and antiscience are not confined to the United States? No. No, it turns out to be only moderately less infuriating because my tax dollars were not wasted on this boondoggle. (They couldn't even get "real" psychics to participate, if you notice in paragraphs 6 and 7 of the BBC report.) But our friends in the UK ought to be really pissed despite the relatively low amounts of money involved. (£18,000 is $(US) 35,324.94 using today's currency rates.) As for me? I get to use two subject tags for this post that I never thought I'd have a chance to put together.

Urgent News Flash!

Anna Nicole Smith is still dead. Watch elsewhere for further developments.

Vilsack Bites The Dust

The first dropout of the Presidential race has happened already. Tom Vilsack, the former Governor of Iowa, is dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination for President.

Official duration of candidacy: November 30, 2006 - February 23, 2007 (2 months, 25 days).

Total funds raised: Unknown (no disclosures available on FEC website). But it can't have been much.

Internet Ads, Political Blogs, and the People Who Read Them

In an attempt to gather information about politics, I followed a link to an article on www.newsmax.com. I know that Newsmax is favored by some conservative readers for its red-meat-rich, right-wing slant on things. The article proved less informative than I had hoped, but I was really taken aback by the many colorful and flashing advertisements splashed all over the screen.

Now, normally, you can tell something about a website, television program, or magazine by looking at its advertisements. Usually, the content and the advertisements have some common theme that binds them together. Here were the ads that I saw on Newsmax:

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To be fair, I then decided to take a look at a left-wing site to see what kind of ads are offered there. Here’s what I found at www.DailyKos.com:

[Next to cartoon drawing of eight women talking to each other, some holding babies or playing with children] Mothertalkers: Visit a different kind of mom’s club – passion for politics – hope for social justice – disdain the mommy wars

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The Stump of Life. A personal blog wherein the truth is stated in the utmost terms.

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DailyKos Store. Shirts. Stickers. Bags. Etc….

Both sites have similar amounts of advertising; DailyKos has one more, but it is advertising itself, which is not quite the same thing. Both ads include demonization of the other side of the political spectrum (the DailyKos ads a little more so, I think) and both offer mate-finding services. The advertisements on DailyKos are longer in text and are more explicitly political in nature, mainly playing on liberal outrage that conservatives have been running the government for the past six years. The Newsmax advertisements are pretty much apolitical, except for the reference to the liberal media being somehow to blame for the readers’ lack of success with women, and focus mainly on money and physical fitness (which is a proxy for being sexually attractive to women).

Conclusion: Newsmax advertisers sell with greed and lust; DailyKos advertisers sell with flattery and outrage. Newsmax advertisers think that Newsmax readers are a bunch of greedy, overweight, paranoid, socially inept men. DailyKos advertisers think that DailyKos readers are a bunch of angry, self-righteous, and intellectually arrogant women with poor organizational skills, some of whom have trouble finding mates. Note that this is not necessary what the readers of these two sites really are, but it is an indication of what the people with advertising dollars think they are.

A Handsome Magnet

In a few months, a young man is going off to war. As a teenager, he got into the sorts of trouble that middle- and upper-class boys get in to, but he seems to have overcame his earlier troubles Pperhaps with some help from his family, he earned a spot in an military academy, from which he has recently graduated. All around, he seems like a pretty good guy. He's managed to become a junior officer in the military and has earned the respect of his superiors, if not necessary the men under his command yet -- they will likely wait and see how he does in the field before they form an opinion about him. Chances are, he'll do fine.

This is not an unusual story at all. But this young man is named Henry Charles Albert David Mountbatten-Windsor, and he is third in line to the throne of Great Britain. As a result, Prince Harry gets a good deal more publicity than the average junior officer or footsoldier and has lived nearly his entire life in the public eye. In either May or June of this year, he will be given command of a set of light reconnisance vehicles, what the U.S. military would call a Second Lieutenant in command of a cavalry unit. He will be stationed within the British zone of control, the southern provinces of Iraq, likely serving in and around the city of Basra.

Mostly but perhaps not entirely coincidentally, Prime Minister Blair is expected to soon announce a withdrawal timetable for the bulk of British troops in Iraq. Prince Harry will still rotate into service as the British draw down their presence, and I think that most Britons, including the Royals themselves, would agree that decisions about the deployment of the military should be made without regard to whether a member of the Royal family is slated to serve.

Unfortunately for him, Harry Windsor is a prominent and very publicly-visible symbol of his country, and that makes him a target. The British military will likely try to avoid putting him in a position where he might be, say, taken hostage. So that means he will get special treatment and probably kept out of harm's way to a greater degree than he would have been had he come from a less elite family back home. That's likely the last thing he wants and if so, that would be a sign of his good character. A soldier's job is to go where the bullets are, and while no one sane relishes the idea of being in combat, I've little doubt that if Sandhurst Academy made him into a real soldier, Prince Harry would want an opportunity to prove himself as well as to be treated just like any other grunt even though he is an officer and a Royal.

Can he really be like any other grunt, though? Of course not. All of the UK will feel like they are going to war along with him -- the uncertainty and fear, the pain of separation from his family and friends, the camraderie of his troops and fellow officers, and the relief at staying alive in a war zone. America felt similar things about Pat Tillman, the NFL player who became a Green Beret and was killed in Afghanistan. (Where there is still a pretty nasty war going on, it's surprisingly easy to forget.) One wonders how this will affect the already war-weary British population.

So good luck to you, Lieutenant Windsor, as we all would wish good luck to any other young man or woman headed off to war. In your case, though, the whole world is watching you and that's got to be some kind of pressure that hopefully you've learned to handle with some measure of grace. Serve your Queen and country well; the fact that the Queen in question is your own grandmother really isn't what it's all about.

National Primary

Thanks to Ovaloffice2008.com, it's very clear that by February 5, 2008, the Presidential primaries will be effectively over. On that day, it's very likely that Alabama (23), Arkansas (32), Arizona (16), California (1), Florida (4), Illinois (5), Missouri (18), North Carolina (10), New Jersey (11), New York (3), Texas (2), and Utah (34) will have primaries for both parties. Also, Republicans will also have primaries in North Dakota (48) and Oklahoma (28), and Democrats will have primaries in New Mexico (36) and Delaware (45).

The numbers are the ranks of population for each state. Thus, the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth most populous states in the nation will all have their primaries on the same day. The total number of people voting on February 5, 2008 will represent more than one-half of all Americans, and by extension, more than one-half of all the delegates needed for the successful candidates to earn their respective parties' nominations.

Also of interest is the fact that Iowa, jealous of its position as the first Presidential nomination contest of any consequence, is considering moving its caucuses back two or three weeks, which would mean that the first for-the-marbles contest of the 2008 election will take place in 2007, making the front-loading of the election season even greater and even sillier.

The effective national primary on February 5, 2008 will so powerfully dwarf the handful of delegates available in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries that they will lack much importance and the punditocracy will be unable to help getting around that. No disrespect to the good people of those states, but the new Super Tuesday is about the only contest that's going to really matter. This has made the primary season even more weighted to favor candidates with high name recognition, low negatives with party base voters, and the ability to raise big money, as if it weren't that way already.

Yet another reason why it's going to be Clinton versus Giuliani. Let the race to become their running mates begin!