It is fascinating, although not at all surprising, that the candidates for president almost never discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s not like it is some minor foreign policy issue. Ask Americans to name two or three of the most pressing foreign policy issues and they are bound to mention the Arab-Israeli conflict. How could they not? After Iraq, there is no other that is so extensively covered by the media nor is there another one of interest to as many voters.

Maybe so, but by any objective measure the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really not that major.

In terms of human rights? There are a dozen places around the world with more severe human rights problems from Darfur to the Congo.

In terms of global security? Certainly the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir, the Al-Quada problem on the Afgan-Pakistan border, the Kurdistan problem, and North Korea have greater potential to explode into wider conflict or involve real WMD.

In terms of US alliances? Yes, I keep hearing that Israel and the US are best of allies. But really now. When was the last time US and Israeli troops fought side-by-side in any conflict? Ever? Dozens and dozens of countries have done so multiple times over the past half-century. Israel? Never.

I, for one, 0ften find myself reaching a level of fatigue with the Israeli-Palestinian situation that I never reach with other issues. Yes the Israelis should have given the Palestinians a state long ago. Yes the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world should have grown up and accepted the reality of Israel long ago. Beyond that I just don't have much to say.

Posted at April 4, 2008 7:48 PM in response to The Next President and Israel

Anyway - Tell your wife another Texas female Democrat says: You rock!

Thanks.....and for what it's worth. The stereotypes don't necessarily hold in this thing. My wife is a a 30-something Latina and hard-core Obama supporter. In our precinct the biggest Clinton supporter is loud and pushy black woman who is our next door neighbor. According to my wife she was so loud and pushy that she managed to split the Clinton group in half which accounted for the Obama minority being able to ambush them and walk away with the delegate.

Posted at March 29, 2008 6:58 PM in response to Obama And Hillary Camps Battling In Today's Texas District Conventions

Although I'm an Obama supporter I would have no problem at all with Clinton staying in the race indefinitely if she was actually running an issue-based campaign and one targeted at McCain. If she decided to take the high road and focus on issues of concern to Democrats and spend a good deal of time going after McCain I would applaud her.

In fact, the model for her staying in the race is actually Huckabee who ran an energetic and positive campaign alongside McCain even when the numbers showed he didn't have much of a chance.

However, she seems to be doing the opposite. She's loosing track of the issues and lost sight of McCain while pissing around with silly negative attacks. Wading into the Wright nonsense in a chat with Richard Mellon Scaife of all people was really the last straw.

Posted at March 29, 2008 6:49 PM in response to "She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics."

Just got off the phone with my wife. She's on the way home from our county convention where she was an Obama delegate today. The primary vote in our county was almost exactly 50/50. Out of about 22,000 votes cast in the March 4 primary, Clinton won by 400 votes for a 50/49 advantage.

In this county, Clinton seemed to get a lot of Limbaugh-inspired crossover votes. She won heavily in the rural areas and a bunch of my wife's collegues (Republican doctors) all admitted voting for Clinton to mess up Democrats.

However, today at the caucus, Obama won 58/42 in terms of delegates to the state convention. My wife had a blast and says she applied her knowledge from watching survivor to win the precinct for Obama. Our own rural precinct voted 70/30 in favor of Clinton and the precinct caucus favored Clinton as well but not by such a wide margin. At today's convention our precinct had 7 Clinton delegates and 5 Obama delegates and were told that they were able to vote one delegate and one alternate to the state convention. My wife observed that the Clinton delegates were somewhat divided and several of them wanted to go to the Austin convention. So she got together with the other 4 Obama delegates and they schemed to put 2 names forward as delegate candidates but all agreed to only vote for just one candidate. So they held the precinct vote with 2 Clinton candidates and 2 Obama candidates and BAM... the two Clinton candidates split their vote 3-4 while all 5 Obama votes went to just one Obama candidate and despite being outnumbered 7-5 the Obama group managed to elect the single state delegate from their pecinct. The Clinton people never knew what hit them until the vote was over and then they were really pissed. They did manage to elect the alternate though.

My wife says she never would have thought of that strategy without watching survivor. So I guess you do learn something from TV.

Posted at March 29, 2008 6:18 PM in response to Obama And Hillary Camps Battling In Today's Texas District Conventions

Anyone else find it depressing that Clinton's only remaining claim to the nomination is that she can capture the uneducated white racist vote? Bottom line, that's what she's arguing in Ohio and PA. And she'll make a similar argument in MS.

In any event, the white vote in MS long ago gave up any role in Democratic politics.

Posted at March 10, 2008 10:15 AM in response to Rasmussen: Obama Ahead By 14 In Racially-Polarized Mississippi Primary

I just got back from my precinct caucus with my kids at 9:45 pm. Texas and the Texas Democratic party was completely unprepared for the turnout tonight. Having caucuses directly after a primary is a horrible idea. Here's how my evening went. But I saw no nefarious stuff and doubt the reports. There's no way to know who anyone is supporting at the door anyway.

My precinct is a exurban/rural area about 10 miles NW of Waco that is maybe 75% Anglo, 20% Hispanic, 5% black. It's a mix of upscale subdivisions mixed in with farm land and pretty poor rural areas (double-wides etc.).

I stopped by my precinct around 5 pm to vote after picking up my oldest daughter from elementary school so she could vote with me. My precinct is the local middle school library and at 5 pm the line was going out the door. Maybe 40 people were in line. We waited about 1/2 hour to vote which was shocking. In the 5 years I've lived here I've never had a line at the polls. Inside they were using eight e-slate voting machines. The line was not due to the machines but the two old ladies signing people in who couldn't keep up. They said there were lines all day with only about a 10 minute break in late morning.

My wife had early-voted last week and she picked up the little ones on the way home from work. We got home around 6 and quickly fed the kids and turned back around to caucus at about 6:55 pm. We arrived back at the middle school and there were perhaps 200 people there and a long line down the street. It was 7:10 and there were still over 150 people waiting in line to vote. That's how high the turnout was here. Lots of working folks on the way home from work used to being able to slip in to vote at the last minute.

Since the caucuses depend on the final list of Democratic voters they had to wait until every single voter had voted before even thinking about getting the caucus started. Although the polls closed at 7 pm it was 7:45 until the last voter had voted and the precinct workers could start preparing the caucus lists. Then the wait really started.

The precinct workers had to go back through their voting lists and highlight every name of a person that had voted in the Democratic primary. They had one precinct roll book that was the official sign-in book for primary voting and were going through it line by line and highlighting the names of Democratic voters in a second book that was the caucus book. Since they hadn't been doing this during the day it was a tedious process with just two precinct workers and it took them until about 8:45 to get that task done. Meanwhile there were probably 150 Democrats waiting around in the middle school library to caucus. Finally around 9 pm they were ready to start and people could start signing in on the caucus lists with their name and preference. My wife was there as an Obama precinct captain and busy working the lists. I was keeping track of our 3 daughters ages 1, 4, and 9 who were busy trashing the library and highly restless because we hadn't brought milk or supplies, not expecting to wait that long. Other parents were there with young kids also unprepared for the wait and elderly with no place to sit. Lots of frustrated people. But no partisan games at all. Everyone was friendly and neighborly and keeping their preferences pretty much to themselves.

Finally at 9:20 pm I was able to sign in again for Obama and take off with the kids to put them to bed an hour after their bedtime.

In our precinct there were definitely more Clinton supporters than Obama. I'm guessing maybe 100 Clinton supporters to perhaps 60 for Obama. My wife will have the final numbers when she finally gets home tonight. Lots of old ladies voting en mass for Clinton and quite a few older professional and construction contractor-type Hispanics who were also going for Clinton. The younger crowd and white men were going for Obama.

In any event, I've concluded the idea of having both a caucus and primary on the same day is beyond stupid. When there is heavy turnout it just becomes a mess. I can't imagine how things must have been in the large urban precincts with heavy Democratic turnout. My precinct is perhaps 70% Republican.

Oh yeah.... the Republicans were also holding their caucus. About 20 of them showed up and were able to fit into a small computer lab inside the library. Some Ron Paul and Huckabee signs and buttons on some folks. They were completely overwhelmed by the Democrats in what is a heavily Republican area.

Posted at March 4, 2008 11:21 PM in response to Texas Battle Heats Up: Clinton Camp Allleges Obama Caucusers Locking Out Hillary Backers

Actually with respect to the 2005 bankruptcy bill, the crucial vote in moving the legislation forward was the cloture vote. Both Clinton and Obama voted "Nay" along with the bulk of progressive Senators.

Once cloture passed the eventual passage of the bill was pretty much a forgone conclusion.

Posted at February 25, 2008 9:15 PM in response to Obama, Clinton, and the 2005 Bankruptcy Law

Any health insurance plan that lets anyone opt out will wind up costing us more. The ones most likely to opt out are young, healthy workers, and if healthy folks aren't contributing to the pot then the cost of healthcare will fall heavier on everyone else.

Perhaps so, but ask yourself is this fair? Young workers are generally the lowest paid workers in any profession. Why is it their responsibility to "subsidize" health care coverage for older workers and those with families who are probably earning much more money? At least with a single payer system the burden of subsidizing coverage for the older and infirm falls on those with the greatest ability to pay if it is funded with a payroll tax like social security or medicare.

Posted at February 24, 2008 6:33 PM in response to What's Wrong With Universal Access to Healthcare?

Here's a question for those who support the Clinton plan. I've gone over every bit of information on the Clinton web site and downloaded the .pdf document that is her plan and this question is not answered.

With regard to opening the Federal employees health plan to all Americans, does Clinton intend for the Federal government to provide the same subsidy that Federal employees get? Or is it simply unsubsidized access to the plan? The difference is enormous. For a typical family plan for Federal employees the employee cost is about $300/mo year whereas the total cost of the plan is about $1100/year with the Federal government kicking in the other $800/mo as an employee benefit.

Nothing I see on Clinton's web site suggests that she intends to provide a $800/mo subsidy to individuals who elect the Federal plan. Presumably they would either get no subsidy, or whatever their employer chose to subsidize.

Now the Clinton plan does talk about tax credits but there are absolutely no numbers. An $800/mo tax credit is a pretty hefty tax credit. Most middle class workers don't even pay that much in total taxes.

Posted at February 24, 2008 6:28 PM in response to What's Wrong With Universal Access to Healthcare?

You have claimed that the Clinton plan requires the employee to set aside 4K in an "IRA" type account each year, and that is categorically and emphatically wrong. It requires no such thing. The premium is collected from the paycheck EXACTLY like FICA, by the employer, each pay period - exactly like the premium paid by the employee for a private health plan is. It is automatically deducted from the paycheck. NO ONE has to HAS to hunt down a private insurance plan, pay the premium directly to the private insurer unless the person chooses to do so.

No, you misread my comment. The difference between an insurance premium and FICA is that FICA is a payroll tax that is a PERCENTAGE of income whereas an insurance premium is just that, a fixed premium based on whatever plan you are in and whether it is individual or family.

Let's talk about the Federal plan. If you are a federal employee your monthly premium is the same regardless of whether you are making $8,000 a year or $80,000 a year. In the instance I cited above, the premium would be $3800/year regardless of salary. By contrast, FICA is 7.6% of income. The employee earning $8,000 pays $608 of FICA tax annually and the employee earning $80,0000 pays $6,080 annually.

You pay FICA tax on every dollar you earn up to the current limit, just like you pay medicare tax on every dollar up to the limit. Whereas the proposal you are talking about is a lump sum deduction out of every paycheck regardless of how small that paycheck is. It is exactly the same as scrapping social security and requiring each employee to make a lump sum contribution to a personal IRA every paycheck. Call it an IRA, a mandatory 401(k) or whatever.

Posted at February 24, 2008 6:13 PM in response to "Voluntary" Social Security & Medicare