Reed Hastings on Netflix

Good interview with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings about the future of his business. Wal-Mart and Blockbuster are both trying to kill him (not literally) and short interest is half the float (it's usually about 2-4 percent), but what Reed worry? He's built a great company.

Will Deano Go Negative?

Q. If you were managing the Dean campaign, what Clark momentum-killing TV spot for New Hampshire would be instantly available to you?

A. When asked in September his opinion of Clark, (former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh) Shelton said, "I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues." -- Elizabeth Drew, The New York Review of Books.

Kaus on Dean

Mr. Kaus reveals the darkest secret of the Deano campaign; the candidate is a bore.

Department of Self Promotion

I have a piece in The Los Angeles Times today about what Lee Atwater used to call the "issue context" of the 2004 election.

Iowa Uber Alles

Reports that Senator John Kerry is sinking like a stone in New Hampshire are apparently true. So his entire campaign now rides on defeating Dick Gephardt in Iowa. Gephardt's entire campaign rides on defeating Dean there. The winnowing out process takes no prisoners.

Bin Hidin'.

Stratfor's analysis of the most recent bin Laden tape is the lead item of today's round-up of terrorism news by the ABC News I-Team. It is well worth reading. Click here.

Deano on Foreign Policy

From the New Yorker via Andrew Sullivan:

One professor who made a big impression was Wolfgang Leonhard, who taught Russian history. He'd been a Party official in East Germany and had defected. A fantastic lecturer. He once told us, 'Pravda lies in such a way that not even the opposite is so.' That really hit home. I felt he wasn't just referring to the Soviet government but to our own at the time. You knew it from some of the things Nixon talked about — denying the bombing of Cambodia — or from Kissinger’s 'Peace is at hand' statement, when clearly peace wasn't at hand. They said these things just to get reëlected. I think there are some similarities between George Bush’s Administration and Richard Nixon's Administration: a tremendous cynicism about the future of the country; a lack of ability to instill hope in the American people; a war which doesn't have clear principles behind it; and a group of people around the President whose main allegiance is to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States.

Two points. First, Dean must have missed the last lecture of the semester, during which Professor Leonhard heaped scorn on the notion that the US system and the Soviet system were politically or morally equivalent. He was emphatic that the Soviet system was geniunely evil and that the US system, flawed though it was, was not.

Second, who are these shadowy people "around the president" whose allegiance is "to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States?" I suppose he means Paul Wolfowitz and other members of the Dreaded Jewish Neocon Cabal (DJNC). It's possible though, that he knows the real truth; about the Double Secret Shadow Government (DSSG) that dares not speak its name. I could tell you about the DSSG, but if I did, I'd have to kill you.

Code Orange

The big concern, all along, has been that Al Qaeda would use a dirty bomb. According to a Washington Post report today, this was a specific threat over the holiday and remains so today.

Dollar Hoarding

If the value of the USD is declining on global money markets, why are Asian countries accumulating suplus USDs? David Ignatius has a good column on the dynamics of Asian dollar hoarding.

M2K4

The first pictures are in from Mars. And they are spectacular, to say the least.

Leaving Las Vegas

I'm going to go way out on a limb and speculate that alcohol was involved here.

The Special Forces Community

A friend vouches for the accuracy and insight of this Washington Post article about the Special Forces community. It's well worth reading.

Specialist James Kiehl

He died in Iraq. This site captures the day he was buried in Center Point, Texas. (link via Andrew Sullivan).

P.S. Wendy C. emails from Dallas: Another interesting thing about Spc. Kiehl is that just 2-3 days before major combat started in Iraq (and, as it turned out, just days before he was killed), he was the subject of a story on our local CBS news affiliate Channel 11 in Dallas. It was a piece about 2 soldiers who wanted their army chaplain to baptize them. He was one of the soldiers. He spoke of his baby who was just a month away from being born. They showed his make-shift baptism and I was touched beyond belief.

Because of that story, I will never forget Spc. James Kiehl and all who serve and sacrifice. And I will never forget the families they leave behind.

Poll Question

Mr. Kaus asks the following question: Given all the good news at President Bush's back, why is he only leading former Governor Howard Dean by 51%-46% in the latest Time/CNN poll? The more relevant question is this: Given that President Bush now leads Gov. Dean (and all the other Democratic presidential candidates) by wide margins in New Hampshire (30 point lead), Texas (35 point lead), Florida (12 point lead), Ohio (double digit lead), Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, etcetera, etcetera, how is it possible that he only leads former Governor Dean by 5 percentage points nationally? Maybe one or two of these private polls in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Tennessee, Missouri et alia are wrong. But they can't all be wrong.

The political situation reminds me of Reagan-Carter 1980. The national polls said it would be close. The state-by-state polling pointed toward a 10 percentage point win and an electoral college landslide.