CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Hillary's Problem - Hillary Haters

The New York Times reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton faces a problem that has dogged her since her days as first lady: an entrenched bloc of voters simply do not like her:

One poll after another shows that roughly one of three New Yorkers has an unfavorable opinion of Mrs. Clinton, a statistic that has not changed since she took office in 2001.

Nationally, her standing is worse, even as her aides prepare for what is emerging as a possible bid for president in 2008. Roughly 4 of 10 Americans disapprove of her, according to a recent poll by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

The voters who disapprove of Mrs. Clinton are numerous and unshakable, and they have been around so long that they even have a name in political circles. Hillary haters.

Hillary may have nearly 100 percent name recognition, but at the same time she has consistently high negatives. If she is to have a chance in a national campaign she needs to find a way to put a dent in her negatives.

Hillary backers spin her consistent negatives - roughly one in three - in the 22 polls Quinnipiac University has conducted since 2001 as good news. They claim Quinnipiac's results demonstrate Hillary hasn't lost ground.

Hillary needs to think about running for Governor. We don't often elect sitting legislators to the presidency. Right Senator Kerry?

Thanks to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for the tip.

Find Any Plastic Explosive In Your Luggage?

This is the way French police use to train bomb sniffing dogs.

On Friday evening two dog-handlers placed a nearly five ounce bar of plastic explosive inside a random bag as it passed on a conveyor belt between check-in and the aircraft loading bays at Paris' Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

In a “momentary lack of surveillance” the bag was whisked off towards its destination. Trouble is no one knows whose bag it was or even which one of 90 flights the bag was placed on.

Even though the French police assure everyone the explosives are totally harmless, airlines, airports and police forces around the world have been alerted to watch for a piece of luggage:

"It is a small blue case between 50 and 60 centimetres long. It is quite possible that the person who owns it has still not found the explosives," said a spokesperson for the police at Charles-de-Gaulle airport.

KABC Channel 7 reports that when Flight 70, arrived at LAX nonstop from Paris last night, it was directed to the western edge of the tarmac at LAX, where the passengers were evacuated and the plane was searched.

The 362 passengers and crew members were taken to the International Terminal and screened, said Nancy Castles of Los Angeles World Airports. The search was completed by about 1:30 a.m., and no explosives were found, she said.

The Associated Press reports that three other airliners that had left Charles de Gaulle were searched at New York City's JFK airport.

It won't happen again. French police ended their practice of hiding plastic explosives in air passengers' luggage to train bomb-sniffing dogs on Sunday. France's Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin says the practice was "susceptible to making the relevant passenger run a risk in the eyes of foreign authorities when arriving in the destination country."

Ya think?

Dead Voters Still Eligible To Vote

The Chicago Tribune reports that its analysis of voter records more than 181,000 dead people were listed on the rolls in six states - Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota, and New Mexico.

Florida led the way with 64,889 registered voters who were also listed in a database of Social Security Administration death claims.

Michigan came in second with 50,051 dead voters registered.

5,000 dead people remained on the rolls on Election Day in New Mexico, which is especially bothersome in light of the fact that the presidential election in New Mexico was decided by 6,000 votes.

In Iowa 4,900 who died remained on the rolls.

This is not an easy problem to solve. In New Mexico election officials are required to purge the names of deceased voters. Health officials each month supply a list of recently deceased residents that the Secretary of State Rebecca uses to purge the voter rolls. But voters move and die in other jurisdictions and may never be a New Mexico death certificate.

This isn't that big of a deal. I haven't seen reports that the dead voted in the 2004 election. It just looks bad.

Iraqi Police, Multi-national Forces Foil Insurgent Attacks

United States Central Command posted this news release today:

MOSUL, Iraq -- Iraqi Security forces and Multi-National Forces decisively defeated anti-Iraqi insurgent attacks in western Mosul Dec. 3, thwarting attempts to seize police stations and destabilize the city.

Four Mosul police stations came under attack by indirect fire and small arms fire during coordinated attacks by insurgent fighters. The Iraqi Police at these stations successfully repelled these attacks preventing a reoccurrence of the events of Nov. 10 when many stations were abandoned and later looted.

Insurgents also attempted a large-scale ambush of a Stryker patrol along a 2 km. stretch of road with eight to 10 roadside bombs and an estimated 70 insurgent fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s and machine guns. A patrol from 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment quickly maneuvered to engage the insurgents and later broke contact to conduct a deliberate offensive operation to clear the ambush site of insurgent fighters.

Shortly thereafter, MNF and ISF executed a large scale offensive operation to restrict the freedom of movement of insurgent fighters and clear the pockets of resistance. While clearing the area, Soldiers received significant enemy fire from a nearby mosque. Iraqi Security Forces cleared the mosque eliminating the enemy while finding a large cache of weapons that consisted of RPG rounds, anti-tank grenades, and machine guns. Soldiers also engaged in multiple direct fire situations defeating the insurgent fighters each time.

The combined ISF and MNF offensive operation quickly reestablished security in the city.

At Blogs For Bush, Matt Margolis posts that we shouldn't expect to see this story in the main stream media. I wish Matt was right. Unfortunately, the New York Times did cover the story of the U.S. and Iraqi forces defeating the terrorist insurgents. The defeatist Times headlines the story about this victory - "27 Civilians Die in New Attacks by Iraq Rebels." What a disgrace.

By combining the Mosul story with the one about the bombing in Baghdad the Times is able to highlight the damage the terrorists did and downplay the victory in Mosul. Here is what the Times article reported about the defeat of the insurgents in Mosul:

In Mosul, insurgents struck at least three police stations, hit American bases with mortars and staged elaborate ambushes involving synchronized explosions of remote-controlled bombs. At least 22 insurgents were killed, while 7 American soldiers suffered minor wounds, according to American commanders.

The violence, coinciding with several smaller-scale attacks throughout the country, demonstrated the continued power of the insurgency here and the ferocity of the militants' campaign against the fledgling Iraqi security forces as the January elections approach.

Shortly after the police station attack, an Islamist Web site posted a message from the network of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claiming responsibility. The statement was impossible to verify. But it suggested that Mr. Zarqawi, who claimed responsibility last week for attacks in Mosul that left 17 Iraqi national guardsmen and an American soldier dead, may still be capable of planning attacks here.

American military officials have said that Mr. Zarqawi appears to be setting up new cells in the wake of the American-led offensive in Falluja last month, but that he has lost the ability to communicate effectively with cellphones and messengers.

[. . .]

In Mosul, United States officials had received intelligence that a major attack was being planned. Insurgents there had largely avoided direct confrontations with the Americans since the uprising three weeks ago, when more than 100 guerrillas were killed.

After the attacks began late in the morning, American troops shut down three of the five bridges over the Tigris River and sealed off much of western Mosul, as insurgents roamed the streets. Overhead, fighter jets and Apache attack helicopters swooped in.

The Mosul attacks appeared to have been planned well in advance, according to American commanders. "The terrorists told the civilians they were going to attack the Americans and to stay indoors," said Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, the commander of the First Battalion of the 24th Infantry, which controls much of western Mosul. Shops near the biggest ambush closed just before the attack, the commanders said.

The attacks started as a patrol of American Stryker armored vehicles chased insurgents who had fired mortars at an American base. Eight insurgents ambushed the patrol, and United States forces killed three.

Traveling back to its base, the patrol was attacked in what American officials described as a milelong ambush along a main thoroughfare in western Mosul. According to Maj. Doug Sims, the operations officer for the brigade that controls Mosul, as many as 35 insurgents lined up on either side of the road, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, Kalashnikov rifles and other weapons.

What made the ambush distinct was a string of very powerful bombs made from 152-millimeter artillery shells. At least 10 of the bombs were lined up 150 to 200 yards apart and detonated as the Americans drove past, according to Colonel Kurilla. The Stryker vehicles, which also received at least nine direct hits from rocket-propelled grenades, suffered only minor damage and were able to continue fighting, he said.

Later, troops returned and killed 15 insurgents along the same route, he said. Iraqi troops also stormed a partly built mosque where insurgents had fired at American soldiers. Inside, they found five rocket-propelled grenade launchers and seven Russian-made machine guns among other weapons, military officials said.

The Times' "27 Civilians Die in New Attacks by Iraq Rebels" headline provides no inkling of what happened in Mosul, or that the Terrorist insurgents were badly defeated by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

At Rantingprofs, Cori Dauber sums up the Times skewed perception:

Given everything we hear from Iraq over and over and over again, you could look at that headline and legitimately think that you hardly need to read the story: once again the (oh, excuse me, now they're rebels, have you noticed that in the effort to avoid using a negatively charged word, the words used to describe the enemy have gotten progressively less neutral until they're now actively charged with positive meaning?) have launched attacks and innocents have been killed.

Professor Dauber also points out that the Times' headline, besides being misleading is inaccurate.

The article only reports 15 civilians were killed when the terrorists, my word, detonated car bomb detonated outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad.

The Times has become worse than defeatist about the War On Terror, Articles like this make me wonder if the Times isn't rooting for the terrorists, or rebels as the Times now refers to the evil doers.

Ukraine High Court Calls For New Election

The Ukrainian Supreme Court has thrown out the results of last month's run-off election between Prime Minister Yanukovych opposition leader Yushchenko and called for a "repeat vote" to take in three weeks.

Reuters reports that this decision suggests that the "repeat vote will be would be a re-run of last month's run-off vote:

Chairman Anatoly Yarema, delivering the court's ruling after five days of deliberations, said a "repeat vote" was required.

He said this ballot should take place three weeks counting from Dec. 5 -- meaning Dec. 26 -- suggesting it would be a re-run of last month's run-off vote which opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko alleged was rigged by authorities.

Judges backed arguments by Yushchenko's camp, which have brought tens of thousands out on to the streets of the capital Kiev, that the vote had been subject to systematic fraud.

This is great news for the emerging democracy in Ukraine, but I am very worried about how Outgoing Ukrainian President Kuchma and Prime Minister Yanukovych will respond having failed to get the court to call for an entirely new election.

Yesterday Kuchma flew to Moscow and gained Russian President Vladimir Putin's backing yesterday against calls for a quick rerun of the last round of the disputed presidential election. According to the Washington Times, the move by the Russian leader underlines Kremlin fears that if Ukraine's opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko took power he would weaken links with Moscow and push Ukraine deeper into the West's embrace.

MosNews reports that both Zbigniew Brzezinski and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger are concerned about how Russia is responding to Ukraine's political crisis:

“If Ukrainian democracy prevails, Russia has no choice but to go to the West and to be a democracy,” Brzezinski said at an American Enterprise Institute event. “If Ukrainian democracy fails, Russia and imperial ambitions are awakened.”

“The stakes are of truly historic proportions,” he added.

Henry Kissinger also believes that Russia is still acting in the Soviet imperial manner, undeterred by the breakup of the USSR 15 years ago.

Putin has boxed himself into a bad spot. In a fair "repeat vote," Yushchenko will almost certainly win. There's a possibility that pro-Yanukovych regions in eastern Ukraine will refuse to accept Yushchenko as President, in which case Ukraine could split apart. Business Week quotes Nikolai Petrov, scholar-in-residence at Carnegie Moscow:

Putin has put himself into a corner. Now no outcome looks good for Russia

According to Business week, a divided Ukraine would lead to instability in a region where Russia has important economic interests 80 percent of the gas Russia exports to Europe goes through Ukraine. If the country remains united, Putin's goal of linking Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in a new economic union are history. If Kuchma and Yanukovych figure out a way to retain power unrest would continue over a deeply unpopular regime in Kiev would hardly be a stable partner for Russia. Another risk for Putin is that the Ukrainian revolution inspires democratic opposition movements in other former Soviet republics, perhaps even in Russia.

I am worried about the possibility that Russia may react like the Soviet Union did to the Prague Spring. Warsaw Pact forces rolled into Prague on the night of August 20-21, 1968 crushing the Czechoslovak experiment in "socialism with a human face."

The BBC reports that it is unlikely that Russia would intervene militarily in Ukraine.

The respected Russian defence analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer, thinks such a scenario is highly unlikely.

"Putin's Russia does not have the military power to send in the tanks and dominate foreign countries", says Mr Felgenhauer.

"We cannot even bring Chechnya into line. What could we hope to achieve in Ukraine, with its rebellious population of nearly 50 million?"

The U.S. and all the worlds democracies should endorse the Ukainian Supreme Court's call for a "repeat vote."

The Blogosphere hasn't gotten into full gear on this yet. Some initial reactions from the usual suspects include:

Art Captain's Quarters, Captain Ed agrees that unless Kuchma calls in the Russians, he and Prime Minister Yanukovych are toast.

At Wizbang, Kevin Aylward points out that most of the cheating was done via absentee ballots, and posts that we should take note because early, unsupervised absentee voting is one of the fastest growing election trends here.

At SCSU Scholars, King links to the Kyiv Post quotes these paragraphs validating the claims of fraud:

In its ruling, the court slammed Ukraine's CEC, citing massive lapses by the government in the run-up to the election and in the vote counting that followed.

Particular attention was paid in the ruling to the numerous documented cases of fraud brought by the opposition. Among them were the improper transportation and handling of ballots; improperly or inadequately compiled voters lists; abuse of administrative resources in favor of the government-backed candidate, and lack of equal media access for both candidates.

Dan Drezner is also wondering whether Putin will tolerate the blow to his reputation that would come with a Yushchenko victory.

TulipGirl posts that she is happy and amazed at how things are turning out.

At A Fistful of Euros, David posts that Maidan reports that outgoing President Kuchma vetoed the recently passed law invalidating “absentee ballots” for the re-run. These ballots allowed Ukrainians to vote in other than their home districts, and were, according to numerous reports by international observers, one of the main instruments of electoral fraud in the initial run-off.

UPDATE:
At Outside The Beltway James Joyner posts this result is not surprising given how everything seemed to be breaking opposition leader Yushchenko's way.

At The Moderate Voice, Joe Gandelman posts that the courts decision indicates the roots of democracy are perhaps as strong as many of us in the West had hoped.

Arms Inspectors Seek Access To Sites

The New York Times reports that international inspectors are requesting access to two secret ian military sites where intelligence suggests that Tehran's Ministry of Defense may be working on atomic weapons:

The inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency base their suspicions on a mix of satellite photographs indicating the testing of high explosives and procurement records showing the purchase of equipment that can be used for enriching uranium, the diplomats said. Both are critical steps in the development of nuclear arms.

The suspicions were aired here as an ian opposition group was preparing to release what it called new information that was secretly developing a nuclear-capable missile whose range is significantly greater than what the ians have publicly acknowledged to date.

[. . .]

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., said in an interview here on Wednesday that he had repeatedly asked for access to the two sites, but that it had not yet been granted.

"We are following every credible piece of information," he said. Understanding the exact significance of what is happening at the two military sites is "important," he added. "We still have work to do, a lot of work." He estimated that even with full ian cooperation, it would take at least two years to resolve all of the outstanding questions surrounding the country's nuclear program.

"We're not rushing," he said. "It takes time."

It's going to take so much time that the I.A.E.A. will only understand what is happening when tests an atomic weapon.

Ukraine Negotiators Settle On Some Form Of New Election

The Los Angeles Times reports that Ukraine's Government and opposition leaders on Wednesday agreed to work for a rerun of a presidential election:

Details of a revote remained sketchy, but it appeared to hinge on anticipation that Ukraine's Supreme Court would soon render invalid the official results of the Nov. 21 presidential runoff, which put Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych ahead by a slim margin.

After several hours of mediation at the presidential residence, Yanukovych, outgoing President Leonid D. Kuchma , opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko and European foreign policy chief Javier Solana announced that they had reached a broad agreement to resolve the crisis peacefully with some form of repeat election.

[. . .]

The court, which is hearing opposition allegations of election fraud, was not part of Wednesday's agreement. But Solana said it was "very unlikely" that judges would approve the disputed Central Election Commission tally.

Wednesday's deal meant the crisis would be solved "by voting," Solana said. The people of Ukraine "have shown their interest in free and fair elections, and this at the end of the day is what they're going to have," he said.

If the court quashes the election results, parliament would need to set the rules for repeat balloting.

The Ukraine's political crisis is truly an amazing story. The protester's patience and persistence, staying in the streets for ten days, in winter weather, is very inspiring.

Ukraine Deputies To Name New Prime Minister

Bloomberg reports that Ukraine's parliamentary groups are negotiating to choose a successor to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych after he lost a confidence vote prompted by the political crisis arising from disputed election:

There are "four or five" candidates for the premier's post, Valentina Semenyuk, a Socialist Party deputy for the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, said in an interview, without giving names. The talks began late yesterday, she said.

The Bloomberg report tells us that the no-confidence failed to pass at first. The no-confidence vote only succeeded after a proposal to hold a secret ballot was approved. Some deputies "hid their voting buttons with their other hand to conceal their vote, some with shaking hands," Semenyuk, 47, said in her parliamentary office:

The desire for secrecy among some lawmakers was prompted by threats "more against their families than against them," Semenyuk said. "I have sent my children out of Kiev," she said. Her party, headed by its founder, Oleksandr Moroz, has 20 members in the Verkhovna Rada, or parliament.

We take an awful lot for granted in our political process.

More Troops To Iraq

The Associated Press reports that elements of the 82nd Airborne will be sent to Iraq and the tours for some units already in Iraq will be extended to provide security for Iraq's January election.

The United States now has about 138,000 troops in Iraq. According to Reuters these moves will temporarily boost U.S. troop strength in Iraq to about 150,000.

Signs Of Compromise In Ukraine

The Associated Press reports that an agreement signed by Yushchenko; the declared official winner of the presidential runoff, Viktor Yanukovych; outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and European envoys requires Yushchenko supporters to lift their siege of government buildings:

The agreement also calls for talks on changes in the Ukrainian law to end the election crisis.

Participants in the talks emphasised the need to avoid the use of force and said the next round of talks would be held after the Supreme Court rules on the opposition's appeal against the official vote results.

Yushchenko and Yanukovych held face-to-face talks after the opposition showed its strength by bringing down Yanukovych's government with a no-confidence in parliament.

After the talks, Yushchenko proposed that a new run-off vote between him and Yanukovych be held December 19. Yushchenko said he would not accept a whole new election. That idea was suggested earlier by outgoing President Leonid Kuchma who denounced the idea of repeating just the run-off.

Ukraine's Supreme Court is meeting for a third day considering whether to annul the disputed election result. While Ukrainians wait for the court's decision , the political crisis is impacting Ukraine's economy.

The December 02, 2004 edition of the Christian Science Monitor reports on the economic stress caused by the continuing political crisis:

Monday, President Kuchma spoke darkly of the consequences of continued turmoil. "In a few more days, the financial system will fall apart like a house of sand and neither the president nor the government can be held responsible for that," he said.

An international economic analyst, speaking off the record, said panic must be nipped in the bud. "Unfortunately, Mr. Kuchma may have generated a self-fulfilling prophecy," he said.

"When the president of a country speaks of financial collapse, people run for the exits, and a run on the banks can be provoked," he continued. "Things are now on a knife edge. There could be a self-perpetuating downward economic spiral whose initial spark was political. There is a real danger that Kuchma might have provoked the very thing he was warning against."

Indeed, there were reports of people in industrial regions of the east lining up to make withdrawals from cash machines, fearing a collapse of Ukraine's banking system similar to the great crash and national default in Russia in 1998. There was no such panic in Kiev, but the US dollar was becoming harder to obtain in some downtown currency-exchange kiosks.

There are many encouraging signs that Ukraine's election crisis may be resolved by political compromise. Yushchenko and Yanukovych are willing and able to meet face-to-face and can even make agreements. The two sides are utilizing Ukraine's legal system. As long as the economy holds up, and the dialog continues things can be worked out peacefully.

UPDATE: At Captain's Quarters, Captain Ed links to this Agence France Presse article which reports that both Yushchenko and Yanukovych now concede the vote was mired in fraud. I wonder if both sides took that position before Ukraine's Supreme Court.

At Outside The Beltway, James Joyner posts that a new election isn't as good a solution as simply declaring Yushchenko the winner, it should avoid a violent outcome.