by Frank James
A quick guided tour of some of the morning's most important or interesting, or both, Washington-related stories.
Tensions rose between Turkey and Iraq after Kurdish guerillas ambushed Turkish soldiers, killing at least 12 Turkish troops and mounting domestic pressure on the Turkish government to strike back.
The Republican presidential candidates attacked each other with particular fercocity, focusing their barbs on GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani and the candidate they view as the likely Democratic nominee, Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Congressional Democrats have arrived at a strategy they believe will help them counter President Bush's threats to veto spending legislation and that is to highlight popular items like money for cancer research, hospitals and worker safety whose funding could be threatened if the president makes good on his threat.
In becoming the first Indian-American to be elected a governor in the U.S., Louisiana Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal, 36, demonstrated deft political skills but he takes over a state still struggling to rebuild two years after Hurricane Katrina and to move beyond its reputation for corruption.
Las Vegas and its casinos are the proving ground for a host of surveillance and data-mining technologies being used or contemplated by counterterrorism and homeland-security officials.
Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama is a key test of the usefulness of big celebrity-endorsements in politics where it appears they have less effect than they do when it comes to selling books or consumer goods.
Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign has learned to use the very popular Drudge Report as a way to drive the political news cycle, an irony since it was the very same website that added to her miseries during the Monica Lewinsky scandal during her husband's presidency.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, leads his fellow Republican rivals for the party's presidential nomination in the Iowa polls, largely because of the significant amount of advertising he's done but his rivals haven't really attacked him yet.
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Comments
Mississippi want to use Federal housing recovery funds from Katrina to enlarge the port of Gulfport. They estimate that each $460,000 spent will produce only one permanent job. Meanwhile tens of thousands of the people those funds are supposed to help still have not recieved any aid.
Previously the State had offered the funds to the automaker Kia to build a plant in an area that was not greatly affected by the storm.
Republican priorities are clear: corporate profits above individual needs.
Posted by: AJF | October 22, 2007 9:32 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/world/europe/23turkey.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Well, the you know what may be about to hit the fan re. Turkey/Kurdistan.
It will, of course be bad for all;
The US 'peace is at hand in Iraq' story line will collapse, it will be bad for the Kurds, of course. General war is always bad for you.
But I predict the worst disaster will fall on the Turkish army. They will be entering a area completely set up by perhaps 100K Kurdish fighters, on their own territory.
Remember USSR in Afg. USA in VN.
Colonial UK and Fr. All large militaries that took their hits pretty bad more than once.
And frankly, the Turkish military looks a little creaky to me. That tank on the carrier picture they keep showing us looks, well, pretty darned old.
So you read it here; If Turk invades Kurd, Turk gets @$$ kicked.
Posted by: C.Morris | October 22, 2007 12:18 PM
So no Swamp article about the big GOP win in the Lousiana election Saturday?
A Republican takes over a Democrat-held seat, this Republican, Oxford-educated Bobby Jindal, being the nation's first Indian-American governor, and the Swamp doesn't think it worthy of an article.
And the blurb above doesn't even mention that Gov.-elect Jindal is a Republican. Funny how the Swamp leaves out that vital fact.
The Swamp articles are a great political barometer. If the Liberal shills at the Swamp doesn't write up an election result, it's a sure thing that the Democrats have done poorly in the election. If the Swamp doesn't do an article on an upcoming election, it's a sure thing that the Democrats look to lose ground in that election.
Posted by: Bruce | October 22, 2007 2:41 PM
If anyone needed further proof that this Administration puts corporate profit above the needs and even the safety of it's citizens read this story:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/10/22/nasa.air.safety.ap/index.html
"Release of the requested data, which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey," Luedtke wrote in a final denial letter to the AP. NASA also cited pilot confidentiality as a reason, although no airlines were identified in the survey, nor were the identities of pilots, all of whom were promised anonymity."
NASA has ordered information about lapses in aircraft safety destroyed so as not to jeopordize airline profits.
United's profits are worth more than than the lives of the flying public to this adminidstration.
Posted by: AJF | October 22, 2007 3:29 PM
Bruce,
Why would the Tribune's Washington Bureau comment on Louisiana's election?
Posted by: jethro | October 22, 2007 3:36 PM