Friday, June 23, 2006
17 down - 31 to go
Can't tell if the months are passing quicker or slower, but the lame duck meme will clearly still hold for the rest of the Bush presidency. In Iraq, the positive vibe from Zarqawi's death proved as transient as the vibes from Saddam's capture and the three elections last year.
Given this week's state-of-emergency, it's easy to surmise that our death toll (and that of the Iraqis) will not decrease anytime soon, and our troop levels will stay high for the next 31 months.
Haven't followed the budget or trade negotiations in any great detail recently, but given that the current trade negotiator has only been in her position for 2 months, and her predecessor only lasted 1 year I can't see any hope of Doha being approved even with a very scaled back agenda. I don't remember which right wing blogger was claiming that Bush had met his deficit cutting goal - the one based on a fictionally high annual deficit that was never going to exist - but the goal has to be based on the highest actual deficit (3.5% of GDP) and not some dishonest prognostication. When the deficit gets to 1.75% of GDP, that's success, but given the continued venality I doubt we'll see a deficit that low anytime soon.
My weakest wager (Mark Warner) received any uptick at the Kos convention "Mark Warner’s party was teh awesome. Packed full with people having a good time, and so many stations for food and drink that you never had to wait in line for a Blogarita. Best of all: free sushi. Infinite quantities of free sushi. " Infinite sushi - sounds presidential to me!
Final issue is the election just over 4 months away - some pollster said that he doesn't see the 16 possible House seats that the Dems could win, but his gut tells him they'll be there. My gut says the opposite and so far the Blogging Caesar agrees with me. Dems will nibble into the GOP lead, but that's it - no way do they take either branch of congress this election, but one can always hope for 2008 that they'll reclaim either the presidency or at a minimum one branch of Congress.
Given this week's state-of-emergency, it's easy to surmise that our death toll (and that of the Iraqis) will not decrease anytime soon, and our troop levels will stay high for the next 31 months.
Haven't followed the budget or trade negotiations in any great detail recently, but given that the current trade negotiator has only been in her position for 2 months, and her predecessor only lasted 1 year I can't see any hope of Doha being approved even with a very scaled back agenda. I don't remember which right wing blogger was claiming that Bush had met his deficit cutting goal - the one based on a fictionally high annual deficit that was never going to exist - but the goal has to be based on the highest actual deficit (3.5% of GDP) and not some dishonest prognostication. When the deficit gets to 1.75% of GDP, that's success, but given the continued venality I doubt we'll see a deficit that low anytime soon.
My weakest wager (Mark Warner) received any uptick at the Kos convention "Mark Warner’s party was teh awesome. Packed full with people having a good time, and so many stations for food and drink that you never had to wait in line for a Blogarita. Best of all: free sushi. Infinite quantities of free sushi. " Infinite sushi - sounds presidential to me!
Final issue is the election just over 4 months away - some pollster said that he doesn't see the 16 possible House seats that the Dems could win, but his gut tells him they'll be there. My gut says the opposite and so far the Blogging Caesar agrees with me. Dems will nibble into the GOP lead, but that's it - no way do they take either branch of congress this election, but one can always hope for 2008 that they'll reclaim either the presidency or at a minimum one branch of Congress.
