Al Qaeda: We're open to questions

(Dr. Phil should be so accessible!)

sez the headline to Sam Roberts' story in Monday's New York Times. (Yesterday, us local Times' subscribers saw this very intriguing story on the front of the Metro section: Bloomberg Seeks New Way to Decide Who Is Poor which among other things stresses how frustrating it is to deal with ancient Federal ways of doing things in helping the poor...hmmmm.) Dave Broder @ WaPo reports on the Bloomberg et. al. meeting with this more staid, less excited headline: Bipartisan Group Eyes Independent Bid/First, Main Candidates Urged To Plan 'Unity' Government.

Broder sums it up like this:

...Those who will be at the Jan. 7 session at the University of Oklahoma say that if the likely nominees of the two parties do not pledge to "go beyond tokenism" in building an administration that seeks national consensus, they will be prepared to back Bloomberg or someone else in a third-party campaign for president.

Conveners of the meeting include such prominent Democrats as former senators Sam Nunn (Ga.), Charles S. Robb (Va.) and David L. Boren (Okla.), and former presidential candidate Gary Hart. Republican organizers include Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.), former party chairman Bill Brock, former senator John Danforth (Mo.) and former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman.

Boren, who will host the meeting at the university, where he is president, said: "It is not a gathering to urge any one person to run for president or to say there necessarily ought to be an independent option. But if we don't see a refocusing of the campaign on a bipartisan approach, I would feel I would want to encourage an independent candidacy."....

I always suspected that this is what Bloomberg was up to all along--keeping a wild card aside to play if he didn't like what was being offered up in the campaigns.

"...In several cities across Kenya, witnesses said, gangs went house to house, dragging out people of certain tribes and clubbing them to death. 'It’s war,' said Hudson Chate, a mechanic here. 'Tribal war.' The dubious conclusion of the most fiercely fought election in Kenya’s history has pitched the country toward chaos..."continued @ the New York Times. Also see "Kenya Bans Live Media Broadcasts" @ Voice of America and the Kenya News page @ Allafrica.com.