• Wind power generating capacity increased by 47% in 2007. A hopeful and impressive increase.
• Fareed Zakaria on Iraq:
  

  The Democrats are having the hardest time with the new reality. Every candidate is committed to “ending the war” and bringing our troops back home. The trouble is, the war has largely ended, and precisely because our troops are in the middle of it.

  Hmm. It seems if the war “has largely ended,” then we should be able to bring the troops home. No?

• A story I wish some good journalists would get to the bottom of: this Sibel Edmonds matter. Where is the American news media? I think we can peel a few reporters off the missing white women beat and cover this.
• Bill Gross:
  

  “It’s a sad testament to think the Fed has to cut interest rates eight days in front of a meeting to salvage the equity markets,” said Gross, the founder and chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., in a Bloomberg Television interview. “The U.S. economy is in a rather sad state of affairs in that it depends on housing and stock prices to keep going.”

  Indeed, the biggest rate cut in a quarter century–triggered by an emergency meeting, no less. Bonddad has graphs illustrating that over the past six years, when interest rates have been at their lowest levels in 40 years, household debt has been souring. So the ultimate solution to this mess is to slash interest rates again?

• A contrast in predictions:
  Merrill Lynch:

  Merrill Lynch forecasts nationwide U.S. home prices could decline 25% to 30% over the next three years, as new supply and weak demand weigh on the market. . . [David] Rosenberg added the S&P 500 may decline an additional 20% to 25% to breach the 1,100-point level if the market follows historical precedents at times when the U.S. economy is in recession.

  The Big Picture:

  Goldman Sachs’ Abby Joseph Cohen chief U.S. portfolio strategist continues to forecast a Dow return of 11% by year-end. She sees the Dow at 14,750 by year-end (Briefing.com)

  I report, you decide.

Yesterday I went out for a bike ride. It was 24F when I finished–my coldest ride to date. In fact, it’s the first ride I’ve done below 30F.
It was cold. Fortunately, the winds were fairly calm, or it would have been worse.
I survived 21 miles. Here’s what I wore:

• T-shirt
• Gore (brand) windbreaker jacket
• Performance (brand) windbreaker bib tights
• Two pairs of socks
• Plastic wrap on my feet
• Blaclava
• Warm gloves
• Sunglasses

(File photo of me in my cold weather outfit)
Most of my body stayed warm enough; in fact, I sweat a little in the mid-section. My feet were the weak link. I started feeling them after about 20 minutes and they got worse as time went on. I think they would really have bothered me had I gone on a 30-mile ride.
I’m glad we rarely have such frigid conditions in East Tennessee. I wouldn’t want to make a habit of that.
How much longer until spring?

It’s going to interesting seeing how the right-wing noise machine spins Senator McCain’s victory (and Governor Huckabee’s second-place finish) in the South Carolina primary.
As I’ve noted before, there’s a vocal block of the GOP media that can’t stand McCain. That became even more apparent this past week:

• Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay: “McCain has done more to hurt the Republican party than any elected official I know of.”
• Rush Limbaugh (on McCain and Huckabee): “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party, it’s going to change it forever, be the end of it.”

Today the GOP destroyers finished 1-2 in South Carolina. What gives?
Until now the McCain/Huckabee bashers had excuses to rationalize the two candidates’ victories. Huckabee won Iowa because it’s not a conservative Republican state. McCain won New Hampshire only because he had Democrats and independents crossing over to vote for him. In other words, neither won a contest of “real” Republican voters.
That case is now much harder to make. Although South Carolina does have an open primary, exit polling reveals that 80% of voters were Republican. More significantly, Huckabee (35%) and McCain (26%) finished first and second among self-identified conservative voters. The allegedly surging, conservative Fred Thompson failed to get 20%. So Huckabee and McCain have won the conservative vote in a conservative state.
So how will McCain’s victory be spun? I imagine, like this:

Tonight, he got 33% of the vote in a field where his top challengers–Romney and Giuliani–aren’t even running, and 135,000 actual votes. If just the same people who voted for McCain in 2000 had voted for him today, he would have won 50+% of the South Carolina vote. That would have been truly impressive.
Instead, John McCain LOST the support of 100,000 people–and he’s the winner?

The problem for McCain haters is that Romney appears to be the only viable “conservative” (and I use that term loosely) remaining. Are they going to be able to mobilize support for a default candidate? We’ll have a better answer after the Florida primary on January 29.

There’s something weird going on regarding the expectations of Governor Romney as a Republican party presidential nominee. On one hand you have people in the right-wing noise machine either explicitly or implicitly endorsing Romney as the most electable “conservative” candidate. [Apparently, McCain, Huckabee, and Guiliani are conservative enough, and they don’t see Thompson ever getting off the ground.]
On one hand you have a number of Democratic activists urging Democrats to vote for Romney, because they think Romney’s continued presence in the race will spawn Republican turmoil. Embedded in that view, however, is the assumption that Romney is either (1) not a significant threat to win the White House, or (2) a more acceptable GOP candidate that the other contenders.
So we’ve apparently got Republicans supporting Romney due to his political viability at the same time we’ve got Democrats routing for Romney because they think he is unelectable. Someone is misreading him.
I guess this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. One of Romney’s talents seems to be his ability cast his image differently depending on which audience he’s playing to.
For now that’s the conservative base. Should he win the GOP nomination, will he change his colors again and moderate his stances again? It beats me.
Due to this uncertainty, I don’t know what to make of Romney as a potential president. Moreover, apart from his flip flopping, I’m disturbed by Romney’s ability to make ridiculous statements with a straight face. Take this from a recent campaign advertisement:

Like his latest ad in Iowa, the new Granite State ad is positive, and it is more forward-looking than other Romney ads.
“No one votes for yesterday,” Romney says in the spot. “We vote for tomorrow. Every election is about the future. Many are pessimistic. I’m not. In the next ten years, we’ll see more progress, more change than the world has seen in the last ten centuries.
“Our next president must unleash the promise and innovation of the American people,” he continues. “I’m ready for the challenge. The future begins now.”

More change in the next 10 years than there was in the last 1,000 years? That’s absurd. In essence Romney is claiming that a person today would better relate to life in 1008 AD than he or she will with life in 2018 AD.
What’s odd is that Romney doesn’t need to make bizarre claims like this, or marching with ML King, Jr. or being a “lifelong hunter”–he could simply run on his record. But for some reason he’s compelled to go over the top to make a sell. That characteristic doesn’t fly for someone aspiring to stand on the world’s premier soapbox.

The one-year anniversary of the announcement of the surge in Iraq has renewed the debate on whether or not the military escalation is “working.” On one hand, war supporters claim it is a success because violence is down from its peak in 2006. On the other hand, war opponents declare it has failed because Iraq has not made significant progress toward political stability. In the middle, you’ve got the news media who doesn’t offer much insight into to what is happening in Iraq beyond reporting American casualties.
So, what do we make of the conflicting claims? I have a simple rule to assess military success:
The American military will have accomplished its ultimate objective when it can

• substantially leave Iraq (less than 30,000 troops remaining), without
• the country descending into violence or chaos

Until that happens, all we are doing is adjusting the occupation strategy.
From all appearances, we are still years away from the surge bringing about “success” in Iraq.
UPDATE: Here we go:

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.
. . .
Pentagon officials expressed no surprise at Mr. Qadir’s projections, which were even less optimistic than those he made last year.

The surge is working so well we’re going to have to be in Iraq even longer than was projected a year ago! A minimum of 10 more years of success awaits us.