Sending a message

The US "leaks" to the front page of the WaPo that there are contingency plans to strike in Pakistan if there's another Times Square type attack.

They want Pakistan to hear that so they will crack down on the militants themselves.

Liable

If you run a program where you're authorizing "inexperienced" drone crews 8,000 miles away to make decisions on whether to drop bombs on a target, you can't completely blame them when they screw up and accidentally kill civilians.

If you create that sort of situation where mistakes like that are reasonably possible, the program (and those who authorized and operated it) is partially liable as well.

I recognize it's more politically expedient to blame "a few bad apples," but, unless they're acting maliciously, it's pretty wrong to pin all the blame on the guys on the ground.

Approaching 9 years in Afghanistan

Measuring Vietnam from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Afghanistan has now become America's longest hot war.

Buying California

Looking at the latest Fiorina/Campbell/DeVore polling for California's Repub Senate primary, you have to marvel at the effect of advertising and money in a large state with so many media markets. Fiorina has had the money, and she's been the only one on the air, and you can see the effect in the polling, a twenty point swing in about 2 1/2 months.

It's different when you're in a small, one media market state where one newspaper and TV media market drives the narrative, but in California and Texas, it's all about money, and who can run the ads from Sacramento to San Diego.

Just an example of the obvious, I guess.

Immigration

In the other big California Primary for Governor (where both candidates are spending their own fortunes,) immigration seems to be a lever.

Immigration does seem to be an issue in the Republican primaries, (Look at McCain suddenly being all "tough on immigration) but how big a role will it play in the various general elections? We know Republican base voters are "nativist," but how does it play outside the base?

Related: FirstRead had an interesting post on immigration polling during my hiatus, showing that Republicans are rapidly losing Hispanic voters (semi-permanently?) and the gaps are even larger among young Hispanics.

Take a look at this on Latino party identification,

-- In 2004, Dems held a 22-point edge in party identification among Latinos (49%-27%)
-- In 2005, it was 24 points (48%-24%)
-- In 2006, it was 26 points (50%-22%)
-- In 2007, it was 30 points (52%-22%)
-- In 2008, it was 35 points (57%-22%)
-- In 2009, it was 31 points (50%-19%)
-- And so far in 2010, it has been 36 points (58%-22%).

Republicans are looking to win this election on immigration, but what's it going to cost them down the line among the largest growing demographic?

Could they possibly win and hold enough anti-immigration votes to hold out against this over the next decade?

I'm back

Well, everything has readjusted and resettled, and I'm finally back to blogging.

Let's see what's going on today....

Getting a life

Finally, after all these years, I'm getting a life.

Unfortunately, that tends to cut into blogging time.

Tons of stuff to do around here over the next few days, so, I'll be back to blogging Thursday, maybe Friday.

I want to apologize to those of you who are regulars, but when you have an opportunity at a happy life, maintaining the blog for a few days kinda slips down the priority list.

Mike.