Evidently 40% of those polled hang up (I am one of them) and we are getting called frequently. Under those circumstances all you can do is average as many polls as possible and hope for the best.

Early on I was called four times in one day. I have friends who have been called twice in a day. In the past week my wife and I have been called five times. In addition we get a giant post card a day from Edwards (after the third card he moved from second choice to 13th).

A long time ago in a galaxy far away it used to be fun to caucus in Iowa. It has not been fun for quite  awhile. We are all looking foreword to Jan 4th when all of the candidates, campaign staff and reporters leave Iowa.

The Pastoral Friends and the Conservative Friends differ in more ways than just having a pastor. The differences depend on the yearly meeting and some monthly meetings may differ from the yearly meeting.

When I was a member of a Conservative Friends meeting there was a huge fight among members of the Pastoral Friends over having a creed. My view is a creed is useful in keeping out troublemakers. If you don't have a creed you need a mechanism for ejecting such folks.

In the Conservative Friends it is theoretically possible to read someone out of the meeting and then appoint caretakers (bouncers) to make sure they don't attend. In practice this seldom happens.

I live in Iowa and have attended caucuses since 1968. I used to enjoy them but now they have already become a pain in the rear in July.

If this turns out to be the last Iowa caucus it would be a good thing because we would replace it with a primary where we get to vote for the candidate we want instead of trying to decide which of the viable candidates will cause the least harm.

I know folks who we very angry about the dirty tricks during the 2004 caucus who normally would have worked hard during the election but did nothing except vote. I don't know if they contributed anything or not. If that happens again the consequences may be pretty serious.

David Yepsen is right about both parties being greedy and ripping off the candidates.

I was there and it was a Tuesday and I was most impressed by the questions from the audience. Richardson did a very good job of answering the questions and I think people were very favorably impressed. See jdeeth,blogspot for John's real time transcript of the meeting. Another meeting was scheduled for the room at noon and Richardson asked if the library police were there at about 11:55 he finally stopped talking at 12:01 otherwise he probably would have gone on for another 30 minutes.

Tom Latham represents the 4th District which is mostly rural.  desmoinesdem is correct he is not well known outside his district which is L shaped and wraps around Polk County (Des Moines).

We are supposed to use an impartial process to draw district boundaries but it looks like a Republican stronghold to me.
He won easily in 2006 when he was opposed by Dr. Spencer a neurologist with no political experience.

It does not make any sense for the GOP to give up a safe seat in the house for a very long shot run for the senate.

I will make a choice because my vote counts. I live in Iowa so I  have more influence than I should in deciding who will be nominated (I don't like that anymore than you do).

I have heard Dodd speak and was favorably impressed, but after hearing Edwards speak I was not convinced  he had the horsepower to get the nomination.

No doubt I will have a chance to hear Obama and some of the others.

HRC always makes me think of the scene in the first Star Wars movie when the princess led the star warriors into the trash compactor.

I have more than six months to decide who I will support so I am militantly uncommitted at this stage. I was called four times by polls and candidate reps. yesterday. At the moment my plan is to give all my money to the candidate who does not call me.

were Independents we would have a very different government. At the moment Sen. Lieberman has a lot of clout because of the special case of a Senator who is recovering from a stroke and a Republican Vice President. If there were nine more independents deals would have to be made for anything to pass.

My take is that Edwards has a slight lead, Obama & Clinton are tied and Richardson is trailing which is not a new result. What has been
shaken up?

It appears that Clinton has screwed up her Iowa campaign and if so she will lose some support which I think is likely will move to Obama & Richardson. In other words I think Edwards may have peaked. If my guesses are correct the next set of polls will show Edwards & Obama tied and Clinton and Richardson tied.

If you are a prison warden keeping your job depends on the good behavior of others. If you are running for president getting the job depends on other people screwing up.

We have had high school students attend our caucus and if they will be old enough to vote at election time they can participate.

I am also surprised that there has not been a challenge by people who cannot leave work to participate in the caucus.

It used to be a trivial matter to bias a caucus (I did it for Gene McCarthy). Now that people take the caucus seriously everyone tries to bias the caucus. If you are registered and have attended your caucus in the past the candidates come after you like the hounds of hell. If I knew where the kept the robo-phones I would organize a mob with torches and pitchforks and take them out.

But if one of the top three self-destructs he is in a good position. Richardson has excellent foreign policy credentials that would appeal to some Iowa voters but he also screwed things up when he was Sec. of Energy. If it were not for that I would be more interested in him.

I heard Chris Dodd speak at a fund raiser for Dave Loebsack and was favorably impressed but evidently few other were.

I live in Iowa City and I don't detect much interest in people who I know will attend their caucus. Many of them think it is too early to select a candidate. They will turn out to hear a candidate but turnout does not translate into support. It appears that some of the local elected officials have committed early but some of them have very poor track records on early choices.

No doubt some of the candidates will do or say something that will take them out of the race. Immigration is a likely subject.

The problem for CBS is that they are now discriminating against a candidate because of his race. To avoid that they could cut off comments on all candidates or they could spend the money needed to filter out racist comments and ban further posting by that person. Some blogs will announce that a particular person has been banned and why they were banned.

salt. I was planning to send Tom a check and I will do so in case Yepsen is wrong again.

The medical aspects of drug use are complex because there are many types of drugs and the results when pure drugs are used with what appears to be the proper dosage can vary. For some drugs it is necessary to do repeated lab tests to get the correct dosage. The results with impure drugs and uncontrolled dosages  are unpredictable.

Drug treatment is involves abstention until the physical dependence in ended and support to help the patient continue to abstain. There is evidence that if the patient suffers a relapse the physical dependence can be restored fairly quickly and the entire treatment process has to start over. In other words drug treatment is slow and uncertain. The public is demanding a quick fix which the medical system is unable to provide. Incarceration is not a quick fix.

According to the 2005 survey of drug use by the Dept. of Health & Human Services there are about 9.6 million people in the 12 and older age range that use marijuana or hashish only, 15.8 million that use marijuana and some other drug and 4.3 that use some other drug and no marijuana for a total of 35.0 million. In my view this is proof by demonstration that the war on drugs is a failure. The DARE program does not appear to have made any difference but the cops like it because it gives them some extra money.

In 2005 there were 89,972 federal prisoners and 250,900 state prisoners where drugs was the most serious charge. About one for every 880 persons in the United States. This is an insane waste of public funds.