New Year’s Resolutions: We all make them. Most get broken before the first week. Some survive. Others get modified.
Here at Capitol Hill Blue, we’ve made some New Year’s Resolutions of our own. It will be up to you – the readers – to tell us if we keep them. We plan to honor them. If we slip, we’re sure you will tell us when we do.
Our resolutions for 2008:
* Hillary Clinton
* Barack Obama
* John Edwards
* One of the other candidates
* Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn
Some 25 years ago, when I was young and stupid, I was swept off my feet by Jonathan Schell’s book “The Fate of the Earth.” Schell’s argument consisted of three propositions.
First, he set out to prove that a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union would be a very bad thing. It’s fair to say he succeeded.
Almost four decades ago, when the environmentalist movement was just being birthed, The Washington Post’s editorial page icon Meg Greenfield put it into perspective by observing that in her formative years, the only time anyone ever mentioned the word “environment” was after someone else had uttered the word “heredity.”
The Iowa presidential caucuses have become such an accepted part of the political calendar it’s easy to forget what bizarre rituals they are.
But on 6:30 Thursday, if turnout is as expected, 150,000 Iowa Democrats and 80,000 Republicans will gather in public libraries and church basements in 1,784 precincts to propel one or more of a dozen possible candidates to their party’s nomination. Or not. Some years, like 2004 and 2000, it works. Other times it doesn’t.
Democratic Presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton plans a “campaign-wide house cleaning” if she loses the opening primary season races in Iowa and New Hampshire,” sources within here beleaguered organization tell Capitol Hill Blue.
“Heads will roll,” says one campaign operative. “The word is out.”
Campaign sources say the one-time Democratic Presidential front runner is “clearly agitated and pissed off” at a seemingly unending string of screwups and gaffes by her once smooth-running organization and has expressed her “obvious displeasure” at what she sees as sloppiness within the election effort.
As America heads into a Presidential election year where Iraq is a central issue, mainstream media outlets plan massive cutbacks in war coverage and reductions in resources and personnel dedicated to reporting on the conflict.
Sources within both broadcast and print media organizations tell Capitol Hill Blue the Iraq war is now a “back burner” to primary election coverage and no longer worth the massive expenditures for coverage of the past three years.
“Americans are war weary,” says one media consultant. “The war doesn’t sell and this is a business.”
One can only hope that the holiday season brings good cheer to those who lost everything two years ago from the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, especially those who were at the mercy of charlatans who stole more than $500 million of government aid and the Lord only knows how much in relief funds donated by private citizens with big hearts and often small pocketbooks. That is $1 out of every $10 in government aid alone.