Great News

John Howard's government has been defeated at the polls, and Kevin Rudd will be the next Prime Minister.

Rudd has named global warming as his top priority, and his signing of the Kyoto Protocol will leave the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it.

Rudd said he would withdraw Australia's 550 combat troops from Iraq, leaving twice that number in mostly security roles. Howard had said all the troops will stay as long as needed.

Good news for everyone, not just Australians.

Chris Hedges

Says The Corner:

Who is Chris Hedges? Not only was he a New York Times reporter for 15 years, he was its Middle East bureau chief in the 1990's. Yikes.

Adds Instapundit:

Yeah, kind of makes you wonder what's going on with their current reporting staff that we won't find out for years.

Yeah - for example, maybe we'll found out that Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper were neoconservatives working for the administration.

In general, I find it very funny when the Bush Right attack the NYT, as the Times has been such a friend of the hawks.

Kindle Sold Out

Apparently the Kindle sold out in less than six hours. This definitely seems like an intentional shortage, and Amazon isn't disclosing how many were actually prepared to sell as of the launch. But it seems unlikely that after three years of preparation they would inadvertently have a shortage immediately after the launch. My guess is that the engineered shortage is partly in response to all the negative coverage of the past few days. They're trying to change the optics and create a sense that it's a cool, must-have gadget.

Right-Wing Obsession

Via Eschaton and Sullivan, we see which Conservapedia pages are the most viewed:

Most viewed pages

1. Main Page‎ [1,903,406]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,548,733]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [516,892]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [420,349]
5. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [387,906]
6. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [354,376]
7. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [346,289]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [331,232]
9. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [279,922]
10. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [265,186]

Amazon Kindle

Amazon has launched its e-book reader, Kindle. While the electronic-paper technology looks very cool, and the Sprint partnership sounds like an interesting way of delivering the content, I just can't believe how ugly the thing looks. It's been getting grief in a lot of corners for not accepting pdf formats and for being generally expensive, but I just can't believe that somebody would design it to look like this. Now, Amazon is not Apple and doesn't have much experience with designing products like this, but they spent enough time and money that they should have got it right. It looks like something from another era. A lot of people wouldn't think about paying such a steep price if it were a flashy piece of kit, but in the iPod and iPhone age it's just plain hideous.

Pipe Dream

To the three bagpipers playing on the castle esplanade at 8 AM this morning: what the bloody hell were you thinking?

Ron Paul and War

When John Derbyshire has become the voice of reason over at The Corner, you know things there have become pretty dire.

Phones

It sounds like a Google phone announcement is imminent.

I'm sure Google's announcement is deliberately timed to steal some fire from the UK iPhone launch this week. Speaking of which, The Guardian has a piece about UK hackers preparing to unlock the iPhone as soon as it's released. Even though the iPhone has garnered plenty of rave reviews, I can't help but think that Apple has badly misstepped by creating a dynamic where hackers and tech-heads are allied against them. I'm not sure they'll be able to go back to being the geek's favourite brand very easily, especially if the Google phone is a lot more open.

Double-Standard on Troops

It's interesting that right-wingers who insist that any mention of those US troops denigrating the armed forces via illegal and immoral acts is somehow unpatriotic are the same folks who believe that any illegal and immoral acts by UN peace-keepers reveal the UN to be an evil institution. Apparently Glenn Reynolds thinks it's okay to disparage the entire institution if the institution is the UN, but not if it's the US. If the peace-keepers had been American soldiers, you can bet he wouldn't have posted on it.

The Week in Clinton

It's been interesting to see the sort of slow-burning change in perceptions of Hillary Clinton's performance in the last debate over the course of this week. The immediate response among most analysts seemed to be that she performed well and that Obama and Edwards missed an opportunity to really market themselves as distinct alternatives, and that she may have tripped a bit on the immigration question, but that overall she should've been happy. As the week went on, that characterization gave way to her having received a beat-down by her opponents and really seriously stumbled in the debate. I think this was partly due to bloggers and MSM writers wanting to liven up the race by making it seem as if Clinton was really on the ropes rather than firmly in the lead, but possibly also due to a poor choice of response by Clinton's team: trying to make her seem the victim of her Democratic opponents.

Now the consensus is that Obama actually did very well and that his tone in the debate was well-received by viewers. Maybe that's true, but it's just strange that the story has fundamentally changed over the course of a few days.

Chatter

So this is the talk of the political blogosphere at the moment. Keep refreshing that LA Times website.

Update: I have no idea what the scandal involves, but if you want to do some detective work on Ron Rosenbaum's teasing post, you can start here, here, and here.

Update II: A lot of the rumours are about the Clintons. I'm very skeptical of these, as the Clintons would be extremely stupid to be involved in such behaviour with Hillary aiming for the presidency, especially after everything they went through in the Lewinsky affair.

A Comfortable Fight

Obama had one good line:

Barack Obama had his own take on the situation: "Part of the reason that Republicans I think are obsessed with you, Hillary, is because that is a fight they're very comfortable having."

Unfortunately, he seems not to have done enough last night. He could've made himself more distinct, he could've attacked the GOP, he could've appeared tougher. At this point, Clinton seems to have walked away with it. I think that was the last chance for Edwards and Obama to do something dramatic, and it didn't happen. It looks like the MSM might try to hammer this driver's license question a bit in order to hurt Clinton somehow, but that'll pass. I don't think anyone can touch her now.

The advantage of her getting the nomination, of course, is that she is masterful at these kinds of debates, and is tough as nails in a way that Obama and Edwards aren't. As much as I want to like Obama, I would cringe to see him in a debate against someone like Giuliani or Romney, because I think he would just pull his punches.

Don't Mention the Other Guys

The Dems continue to avoid the real fray

Mukasey

From The Wall Street Journal:

Just when you thought someone might be confirmed in Washington without a partisan fight, Senate Democrats are suggesting they may not approve Michael Mukasey as Attorney General after all. The judge's offense is that he's declined to declare "illegal" an interrogation technique in the war on terror that Congress itself has never specifically banned.

Yes, damn those pesky partisan Democrats, always interfering in our torture regime. No, the Republicans are never partisan, nevermind that the AG position itself has been turned into the president's own personal advocate. And if the Dems do indeed stand against Mukasey, it'll basically be the first time they've even shown any spine.

The cutest thing is that the WSJ editorial is titled "Torturing Mukasey," as if he is truly the victim in all this sordid mess. Sick.

The Tar Sands

Aida Edemariam has a really interesting piece in The Guardian today on the Canadian tar sands, the boomtown of Fort McMurray and the huge environmental cost of extracting crude from the sands.

How the Right Sees the Left

Rudy says:

"This is the world we live in. It's not this happy, romantic-like world where we'll negotiate with this one, or we'll negotiate with that one and there will be no preconditions, and we'll invite (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad to the White House, we'll invite Osama (bin Laden) to the White House," Giuliani said.

"Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the inaugural ball," he added.

Via Sullivan. Which is kind of ironic, thinking back on Sullivan's infamous post-9/11 "fifth column" piece.

Then I read this from David Horowitz:

The week of October 22-26 witnessed the largest, most successful campus demonstrations by students not associated with the anti-American left in the history of campus protests. 114 college and university campuses participated in “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week...
In response, anti-American leftists and organizations supporting the Islamic jihad organized a national campaign of vitriol and hate that was almost unprecedented. This campaign revealed the lengths to which the anti-American left will go to prevent the public from discussing the nature of the holy war that has been declared on them.

High-profile Republicans are literally accusing the American left of supporting Muslim extremists. Is there anyone decent remaining on the right, and is there anyone with spine remaining on the left? Why don't Obama and Clinton take on Giuliani and his crew of neocon advisers? Why don't they point out that people like Horowitz, Podhoretz, and Pipes have been profoundly wrong about everything? Why don't they give Giuliani everything they've got? The far-right has begun framing the left as the enemy, and no one in power calls them on it. Disgraceful.

Krugman Book Club

Paul Krugman will be blogging all week at the TPM Bookclub regarding his new book, Conscience of a Liberal. Here's his first post.

The Fugitive

Rumsfeld is on the run:

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of “ordering and authorizing” torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military’s detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

US embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” for six years.

Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.

Old Clam

Scientists find oldest animal ever, kill it.

Via here.

Red Sox, World Champions

So the Red Sox won in 4 games. I'm happy for 'em. I couldn't catch any of the games because I've been very busy and was in Dublin for the weekend (not to mention the first pitches are around 1:00 AM GMT), but it sounds like an awfully boring Series in terms of competitive match-ups.