This traffic ticket might seem trivial but it could be very bad news for Christie.

Let me relate an anecdote. I was supporting a very strong candidate for the Ca Assembly that seemed to have a good lead over his primary opponent. During the campaign his car got the Denver boot for unpaid traffic tickets. We all thought it was funny. His opponent ran with that story for the last month of the campaign. On election night we all sat in shock as our candidate went down soundly.

Somehow in ways that none of us realized this issue had resonance with the voters.

If 10% of cc debt is destined to go into default (something I read recently) then the survivors would have to pay 12.5% just to cover those losses. Obviously, the solution is to avoid such debt and let the banks eat their losses.

I agree with what you say.  African borders are arbitrary and they have resulted in some terrible civil wars. But unfortunately there is nothing we can do to reverse what western colonialism left behind. The fact is anytime the US intervenes to 'correct' these historical errors, we are acting in our own selfish interests and not those of the affected peoples. Surely you don't think that we are going to become altruistic when dealing with Africa considering our action in Latin America over the last century.

Mr Lemas, thanks for your analysis. I agree with your feelings. I can't come up with a single military intervention by the US in the last century that benefitted the South and Central American people that benefitted her people -- the only winners were US corporations or the native military and upper class oligarchs.  

If you are Columbian you might not find this much consolation, but over the whole region there has been an improvement. Basically, the US is now so over-extended in its empire responsibilities, especially in the middle east, that we do not have the resources to intervene actively with our military down south.

However I have one question that seems inconsistant on your part. You wrote

The United States is stepping into my civil war. I'd rather you didn't. An American military presence will prolong Colombia's agony, not shorten it..

I agree completely. But a few posts ago you seemed to be saying that the west should become more active in resolving civil conflict in Africa.  I responded to that but that turned out to be thread of one. Did I misunderstand what you were saying?

The US has no business in rearranging the borders of any country in Africa or anywhere else. There are and have been terrible civil wars in Uganda, Rwanda, Congo and Sudan for the last 30 years. It is not Americas problem to solve. As arbitrary and unfortunate as many of those borders were that resulted from European colonialism, it is not in our interest to try to fix them today. The only rational position for the US is to recognize today's international borders and to offer humanitarian aid to those areas that are afflicted with natural or manmade calamities.  For us to to take sides in local civil wars in that region is totally insane.

Well we really, really did lose the Vietnam War. What you are trying to say is that we never lost a battle in that war. Both sides agree on that as that was acknowledged by military aids discussing the war during the Paris Peace Talks.

If we start with Clauswitz's axiom war is an extension of diplomacy by other means (and if you read that chapter) each war begins with a political objective. Part of the calculus in going to war is whether the objective is worth the cost of war. Once that objective is defined, then success or failure thereby defined. What happened to us in Vietnam is that in 1968 we, the US government and people, decided that our objective (saving the south from communist dominion) was not worth additional cost (in 1968 the decision was to add 200,000 more troops which would have meant mobilizing the reserves). The political will of America to continue the war was gone. Nixon was unable to reverse what happened in 1968. Hence we abandoned our objective. Hence we lost the war.

What you mean by we lost the PR war is that government propaganda lost its effectiveness in keeping the people mobilized behind the war. Much of that propaganda was revealed as outright lies. Also we did not lose the culture war, in fact, I feel we won, and by we I mean progressives and the antiwar movement working on behalf of the American people to reverse the political decision to go to war in the first place.

If the United States feels that "declaring victory" satisfies some sort of strategic imperative, that's truly myopic.

Not really, but it satisfies a political imperitive if we want to end that war. We never admitted that we were defeated in Vietnam, in fact the entire withdrawal process was called "peace with honor".  In fact many did acknowledge that we lost that war after 1975 and that set the stage for Regan to launch his political ascendancy by attacking 'defeatist' and those that 'betrayed' our troops.

I think we lost big time in Iraq but right now the important thing is to support people like Reese who can get us out of that mess.

This is a very good debate going on here. DailyKos is obviously dedicated to electing democrats and it has found that pushing a progressive agenda contributes to that goal. The IP issue has been avoided in the past because it has the potential to break party unity and hurt our electoral chances.  Right now there is a movement within progressive circles to have this debate on Israel. They are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams from just one year ago. The debate is happening. Maybe not yet on DailyKos, but stories like this cannot help their traffic numbers.  Once they realize they will have to pay a price to suppress this debate they will open up.

My heartfelt thanks to both of you for what you guys have helped build. I hope my prediction does not come to pass -- most likely not but passions are high right now.  

My first visit here since Mat and Chris left. Thought there must have been some political differences but didn't see what they were at the time. But my my.  Are they ever apparent now.  Poor Jerome this site will be toast once the primary is over. Of course the Obama supporters loyalties lie elsewhere but I suspect once the Hillary campaign dissolves her supporters here will move on to different tasks -- they don't strike me as the types that are interested in building a new democratic party.

Off topic but I have campaigning question.  I am looking for a study based on polling data.  I am involved in a local campaign and our candidate is leading in the polls and is ahead in a two way poll against the next strongest candidate.  There apparently is going to be a third candidate that will soon announce who has the same last name as our candidate.  My question: Is any one aware of any studies that examines this problem?  Obviously this situation cannot help but we have no idea about how the name confusion will lower our candidates vote.

I have googled around but have not found anything yet.

Five part multiple choice (strongly agree ...disagree)

I support the right to a jury trial for any American.

I support the right to a jurty trial for any person.

I support the right to a jury trial for pedophiles.

I support the right to a jury trial for terrorists.