Wednesday, July 20, 2005
6 down - 42 to go
A bit too exhausted to put together the latest in my continuing 48 month series, so this is an edited version partly from the subsequent nights when I was a bit more coherent.
Actually a bit surprising how much momentum Bush lost this spring & how little he's regained it during the summer: Bolton's still not approved & Social Security's still dead in the water. Presently the attention's all on the Supreme Court nomination, which of course sucks out that much more legislative oxygen, which makes any of the reforms proposed that less likely.
Folks mention that a Supreme Court nominee is part of Bush's legacy, so for Roberts I'll guess that he will be another centrist as O'Connor & Kennedy are often called. Like Reason, I didn't care for his voting for the administration on the Gitmo detainees case, but the Supreme Court essentially gave a medium rebuke to the administration in the flurry of court cases, with the result being that a few more detainees including Hamdi were released, but as of today ~500 remain & only a few are being charged. Believe the bottom line if Roberts had been on the bench, would have been roughly the same including the chickenshit decision on Padilla.
Updating my metrics to judge Bush:
Actually a bit surprising how much momentum Bush lost this spring & how little he's regained it during the summer: Bolton's still not approved & Social Security's still dead in the water. Presently the attention's all on the Supreme Court nomination, which of course sucks out that much more legislative oxygen, which makes any of the reforms proposed that less likely.
Folks mention that a Supreme Court nominee is part of Bush's legacy, so for Roberts I'll guess that he will be another centrist as O'Connor & Kennedy are often called. Like Reason, I didn't care for his voting for the administration on the Gitmo detainees case, but the Supreme Court essentially gave a medium rebuke to the administration in the flurry of court cases, with the result being that a few more detainees including Hamdi were released, but as of today ~500 remain & only a few are being charged. Believe the bottom line if Roberts had been on the bench, would have been roughly the same including the chickenshit decision on Padilla.
Updating my metrics to judge Bush:
- Trade - CAFTA seems to be muddling along so believe that it will be approved in some fashion. Just can't believe that Bush will have the time, no, the political capital to gain approval for the Doha Round. It will cost him too much capital just to gain approval of CAFTA.
- Deficit - The WSJ estimates a decrease to roughly 2.7% of GDP which would be huge. Of course that was one of their editorial extolling Bush's tax cuts on capital gains, so will take with a grain of salt. Still the best odds of Bush's meeting one of my metrics.
- Iraq - the death toll decreased to maybe 40 this month, but the same decrease happened back in March & we know how long that decrease lasted, so will stick with using a 3 month moving average for my metric. Rumour (or memo) mentions a 40% cut next year, but just don't see how that is possible with so little security in Iraq.
Wagers: - 2 wagers that OBL will not be caught: maybe I should just ask BPT & jj to pay up today.
- 1 wager that the draft will not be renewed: still surprised that anyone would actually make this wager. I can understand Dems making this accusation during the election, but the election's over, so have not heard any rumblings to this effect.
- 1 wager that our troop level in Iraq will not go below 50,000 (see memo above). Next year should be tell tale. If our troop levels are still above 100,000, then this wager is safe.
- Mark Warner vs. Hillary. Washington Monthly had a cogent argument that Hillary could win. Their best point is how Kerry was nominated for being 'electable' so how good is the conventional wisdom. Still too early I guess, thinking back to 1997 - I guess that I knew "W" existed back then, but certainly would never have viewed him as the favourite to win even the GOP nomination, so perhaps some dark horse could win the nomination for the GOP in 3 years.
