CALIFORNIA YANKEE

New Hampshire Poll Show Race Tightening

Reuters reports that in a Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby poll released on Saturday, Kerry holds a nine-point lead over Howard Dean in New Hampshire but the race may be getting closer.

According to Reuters:

Kerry led Dean 31 percent to 22 percent in the latest three-day tracking poll, but the last day of polling showed Kerry with a much smaller margin over Dean while John Edwards and Joseph Lieberman both gained ground on the leaders.

"Kerry's lead is now nine points over three days, however he led only by 26 percent-22 percent over Dean in Friday polling alone, while Edwards and Lieberman each hit 10 percent," pollster John Zogby said.

"Dean's showing on Friday may suggest that he has bottomed out and may in fact be starting to increase," Zogby said. "Another day like this and Dean may be in striking distance again."

[. . .]

Dean, who held a more than 20-point lead over Kerry in New Hampshire in December, suggested on Friday that his campaign had "turned a corner" and was coming back up.

"We know New Hampshire always likes to change what Iowa does," Dean told campaign volunteers in Keene, New Hampshire. "The question is how hard everyone is willing to work to get to where we were before."

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, in third place, held steady at 14 percent. Edwards, a North Carolina senator, and Lieberman, a Connecticut senator, each gained one percentage point to 8 and 7 percent, respectively, over the course of the three days of polling.

This new poll is welcome news for Dean who has been dropping quickly in the polls since his Yowling "speech" after finishing third in Iowa. Perhaps the damage control interview Dean and his wife did with Diane Sawyer and Dean's appearance on Letterman were effective.

Steven Taylor, at PoliBlog, has doubts about single day movements in tracking polls. Having ignored the tracking polls in Iowa, resulting in my embarrassment, I will trust the New Hampshire tracking polls.

Steven also brings our attention to this Suffolk University poll which was posted by Dave Wissing, at The Hedgehog Report. The Suffolk University poll shows Kerry ascending and Dean descending. Note that the poll has a large margin of error, 7% compared to the Zogby poll's 4% margin of error.

Pre-New Hampshire Toast-O-Meter

Steven Taylor has the Pre-New Hampshire Toast-O-Meter up at PoliBlog.

The big news is Dean's Yowl and Kerry's move from burnt toast to French Bread.

I'm still waiting for Steven's New Hampshire prediction.

Bird Flu Spreads

The New York Times reports that two boys from different provinces of thailand have become infected with the bird flu, and six more people are suspected of having it. A Thai government's spokesman also admitted that the outbreak had been concealed for "a few weeks" to avoid panic.

Vietnam has already confirmed that the disease has killed five people near Hanoi, two more confirmed cases are reported in Ho Chi Minh City, and seven additional suspected cases are being tested in the country.

Chickens from South Korea and Japan, to Vietnam and Thailand, have been dying from the same disease.

According to the Times:

So far, the human cases have resulted from contact with live chickens or their waste. But the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency, has warned repeatedly that if someone becomes infected with the bird flu and the human flu at the same time, the viruses could swap genetic material, creating a new strain that could spread quickly among people.

[. . .]

The three largest influenza epidemics of the 20th century are believed to have started in birds. The A(H5N1) strain now killing chickens across East Asia and infecting humans in Southeast Asia appears to be especially lethal.

[. . .]

The A(H5N1) virus was first documented to have jumped to people in 1997, when sick chickens infected 18 people in Hong Kong, including previously healthy adults, killing 6. All 1.5 million chickens there were slaughtered within three days, a step some influenza experts have credited as preventing a global epidemic.

Two residents fell sick with the disease after visiting their nearby hometown in the main part of China last year, and one of them died. Again, flocks were destroyed.

Cambodia confirmed Friday that bird flu had been killing chickens there. Laos said earlier this week that it was investigating chicken deaths but believed them to be bird cholera. Agence France-Presse reported from the Indonesian island of Bali on Friday that a provincial official had acknowledged the death of thousands of chickens, but blamed it on the Newcastle virus.

There have been unconfirmed reports of chicken deaths in Myanmar as well; Mr. Penkair said that infected chickens had been found in "three or four" western provinces of Thailand, toward the Myanmar border.

China has continued to deny, most recently on Thursday, that it has any cases of bird flu. But Hong Kong officials said on Wednesday that they had found a dead peregrine falcon near the border with the rest of China that was infected with the disease.

There is some concern that because this strain of the bird flu is so adaptable it could combine with a human flu creating a dangerous mutant flu. World Health Organization officials, while calling for humans infected with the flu virus to be quarantined, caution that we need to keep the out break in perspective.

The Associated Press reports:

Scientists have reached no firm conclusions on why the flu is so contagious, but a leading theory is its adaptability. The WHO fears bird flu could combine with a human flu to create a dangerous mutant form.

Dr. Klaus Stohr, head of the U.N. agency's influenza program, recommended Friday that people with bird flu be quarantined to avoid contact with people with regular influenza.

Stohr said, however, that he sees no need for the kind of travel warnings WHO issued during last year's outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, a flu-like illness that killed nearly 800 people worldwide.

"We have to put things into perspective. There is a chance that something can go wrong but it looks if we act decisively now, then there still is a window of opportunity here to control the disease before it takes on global proportions."

Killing chickens in affected countries is "the key to the solution of the whole problem," Stohr added. "We do not have a problem of international spread by infected humans. We may have a problem of international spread by birds."

Cross-posted at The Command Post

Dean's Yowl Still Echoes

Caner Ozdemir, a Dean supporter and "busy college student," has created DeanGoesNuts.com. The site contains over forty remixes of Dean's infamous yowl.

Caner expected DeanGoesNuts to get 100 to 200 hits a day. To Caner's surprise, the site had 80,000 hits on Friday alone. If you like remixes of the yowl you should visit the site.

Sean Hackbarth, at The American Mind, posts about a practice session for Dean's yowl. Before dean's speech, he met with his staff and during the meeting loud crazy sounding screams were heard coming from the meeting room.

Like mtpolitics, I still don't think, that Dean's Yowl was that big of a deal. There is no doubt that the media and blogosphere have made it huge. Unlike Sean, I don't think the yowl will be the undoing of Dean. In the end it will be Dean's positions, not the yowl, that keep him from being president.

To Try Al-Qaeda Captives

Reuters reports that 's Foreign Minister, said that would put a dozen al-Qaeda suspects on trial.

According to Rueters:

The most important al Qaeda figure that Western intelligence agencies say may be in is Egyptian Saif al-Adel, the security chief of Osama bin Laden's network.

In addition, Saudi sources said last year that had detained Saad bin Laden, a son of Osama, as well as al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith and Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi. The latter has suspected al Qaeda ties and is accused of plotting the murder of a U.S. diplomat in Amman in 2002.

There have been numerous reports that was harboring al Qaeda militants who escaped Afghanistan after the U.S. overthrew Afghanistan's Taliban government after the September 11 attacks. has not identified any of the al-Qaeda suspects.

Cross-posted at The Command Post

Have Faith In The Jury System

You probably remember the news stories about the two passengers that claimed discrimination when a Southwest Airline flight attendant tried to encourage passengers to find a seat by using the plane's intercom to say:

"Eenie, meenie, minie, moe; pick a seat, we gotta go."

The offended passengers filed a discrimination suit over the incident. It took a federal jury less than one hour to decide there was no unlawful discrimination in the flight attendant's use of the rhyme. Thank Goodness!

The two offended passengers took the rhyme as a reference to an old, racist version in which the first line is followed by the words "catch a n——r by the toe."

According to the Associated Press, the offended passengers were not happy with the verdict, saying:

If we had jurors of our peers then we would have won the case today, and we should have won the case today, with all the evidence shown.

It's a shame that the jury pool we had to draw from did not have one black and not one minority. Something has to be done to make sure there is justice in America for blacks.

As the airline's attorney said in his closing argument, the flight attendant's remark was an innocent attempt at humor.

I would normally be upset with an attorney that brought a lawsuit like this one, but the offended passengers filed the suit without an attorney and an attorney was assigned to assist them. I'm fond of saying my profession has ruined the world. Unfortunately, in this case, I can only be upset with the complaining passengers for bringing a frivolous suit. People have to lighten up and learn to laugh a bit more.

In case you care, the flight attendant says she won't be using that rhyme again.

Mars News

NASA press release on Spirit:

Updated Mars Exploration Rover Mission Status
January 23, 2004

"The spacecraft sent limited data in a proper response to a ground command, and we're planning for commanding further communication sessions later today," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager Pete Theisinger at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

NASA's received data from Spirit in a communication session that lasted 20 minutes.

There are no reports of what NASA's expectation is at this point, but this sounds like good news. The hope is that the problem is software related. I find it difficult to troubleshoot computer problems from 12 inches, imagine trying to troublshoot from 100 million miles.

In other Mars news, Europe's Mars orbiter has confirmed the presence of water ice at the Martian south pole.

Opportunity, will arrive on Mars Saturday, at about 9:05 p.m. PST. Opportunity will land near the equator, on a plain known as Meridiani Planum, halfway around the planet from Gusev Crater, where its twin, Spirit is trying to phone home.

Feeling Groovy

The Daily Freeman reports that, Art Garfunkel, of the folk music duo Simon and Garfunkel, was charged with drug possession, on Wednesday, after his limousine was pulled over in upstate New York.

State police said Garfunkel had a small amount of marijuana in his jacket pocket and was charged with possession of marijuana, a violation equivalent to a traffic ticket.

Spirit Silenced On Mars

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Thursday that "a serious anomaly" occurred onboard the robot Spirit Wednesday.

While a signal has been received from the rover, no direct data had yet to be received from Spirit since early wednesday.

NASA welcomed Spirit's signal. The signal confirms that the rover had received a transmission from Earth.

Spirit appears to be in "fault mode. The robot is not transmitting enough information so that the engineers can determine what has happened.

Spirit had been gradually moving away from its landing pad, in the Gusev crater near the Martian equator. It has already sent back dozens of photographs and had begun exploring the soil of the red planet and digging into a rock named Adirondack.

Click for larger image.
NASA has named Spirit's landing site, the Columbia Memorial Station.
A plaque commemorating the astronauts who died in the tragic accident of the Space Shuttle Columbia is mounted on the back of the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's high-gain antenna.

Click for larger image.

According to Space.com spacecraft operators are used to glitches:

"I’ve never been on a flight project that didn’t have one of these. Every single one that I’ve been involved in has had an event like this, or worse than this," said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the overall Mars Exploration Rover (MER) program. Squyres works at Cornell University, which is collaborating with NASA on the project.

Even highly successful spacecraft missions, like Voyager and Magellan, have had technical woes that were eventually sorted out, Squyres said.

"The vehicle is up there. It is talking to us. It’s definitely responding to things that we do. So a lot of stuff is working right on this spacecraft," Squyres told SPACE.com. "I’ve got a huge amount of confidence in this team. This vehicle is very, very good at keeping itself alive."

Squyres said that his expectation is that the Spirit team will pull through this and have a long and successful mission. "But I might not sleep as well for the next few nights as I would have otherwise," he said.

I hope Squyres is right.

Meanwhile, Spirit's twin, Opportunity, is on target for landing on the opposite side of Mars Saturday night.

Your Name Can Be Sent To A Comet

Do you want to make an impact on a comet? If you act by January 31st, your name can be sent to comet Temple 1.

On July 4, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft will send a copper-tipped projectile about the size of a garbage can into the surface of comet Tempel 1. The impact should create a crater about the size of a football stadium. A CD containing the names of those who signed on board for this one-way trip to a celestial snowball will be literally obliterated along with the 370-kilogram (816 pound) projectile. It is hoped that the impact will allow scientist to learn more about the composition the early solar system.

Data about the collision will be sent Earth by the Deep Impact flyby spacecraft.

To include your name or the names of your family or friends visit NASA's "Send Your Name To A Comet! " page and submit your name. You will be able to print out a Participation Certificate.