Quick Hits

I am likely to be awake until 6:30 this morning.

• Two people who won't be President are running for President: Sen. Christopher Dodd on the Democratic side, Rep. Ron Paul on the Republican side. I actually like Chris Dodd, he's a solid liberal. He was wrong on the war, but he's also taken the lead on major issues like torture and credit card company predation. And his rhetorical style has always been somewhat inspiring to me. But he's not Presidential material, a loyal party member but not its standard-bearer.

• I really like the choice of Denver as the site of the 2008 DNC. Colorado is trending blue, and while conventions don't mean a whole lot in the country at large, they do generate a good deal of positive local coverage. And symbolically, it shows the Democrats' commitment to the Mountain West. I'm glad the issues (unions, mainly) were ironed out, and hopefully they can end up being a win-win, with more hotels in Denver unionized and this major event for the hotels themselves.

• Howie Klein has a good rundown of Republican reactions to the Bush escalation plan, as well as Condi Rice's embarrassing performance in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She had the gaul to try and call it an augmentation, not a surge (guess that word's poison now, too). And then this:

"It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work."

The Bush Administration: No Contingency Too Unimportant. No Stone Left Turned.

• The President is apparently going into negotiations over Social Security insisting that privatization be a part of any plan, despite it being rejected by just about everybody in 2005. Just in case you thought that he was only deluded about Iraq and not everything else.

• Great story in the New York Times about the practical application of the minimum wage debate, taking a look at two small towns on the Idaho/Washington border, one in a state where the minimum wage is the highest in the nation (WA), the other where the federal floor is still in effect (ID). Far from causing a mass migration of business, the little town in Washington is booming, as Idahoans are crossing the border in search of higher-paying jobs, forcing the little town in Idaho to raise wages. AND...

In fact, as a significant increase in the national minimum wage heads toward law, businesses here at the dividing line between two economies — a real-life laboratory for the debate — have found that raising prices to compensate for higher wages does not necessarily lead to losses in jobs and profits.

How many times does this have to be proven?

• Senators Boxer and Feinstein will present legislation allowing more farmworkers into the country under a kind of guest worker program. I suspect this will be met with quite a bit of resistance in the more Minutemen-influenced areas of this state, but the fact is that we lost a lot of crops this year because there was simply nobody to pick them. Just because Americans will do the jobs that many say they don't want to do, doesn't mean they're jumping at the chance.

• Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega, two banes of the right's existence were sworn in on the same day as leaders of their respective countries. Chavez, for his part, appears to be implementing a Castro-like socialist system, with fully nationalized industry and an elimination of many impediments to his being a ruler for life (media, term limits), something that Chavez supporters in this country often conveniently leave out of their hosannas.

• The stem cell research bill passed the House, but with far fewer votes than needed to override an expected second veto. House and Senate leaders say they have a plan to eventually get this passed. I was surprised that less Republicans crossed over to vote for this than did to vote for the minimum wage increase. Far less.

• Finally, I've been following this story about Spocko, a liberal blogger, and his battle with mighty Disney and their right-wing KSFO affiliate in the Bay Area. KSFO has been taking a ton of heat in the papers, and they decided to run a "mea culpa" show apologizing for past statements. Turns out that the host was caught astroturfing her own show.

Melanie Morgan has been caught red-handed astro-turfing her own mea culpa show. She sent an email to a list of sycophants asking them to call her show in support. (please click the link. Id've simply posted the text, but it wasn't forwarded to me - the person with the scoop deserves the traffic)

If my instincts are correct, KSFO is pre-empting their nationally syndicated show tomorrow to provide a time in which they can speak to their audience and advertisers in an ostensibly honest way. For Morgan to pull a stunt like this is a complete betrayal of the trust relationship she should have with her advertisers.

Hilarious.