Since Jon Chait started the ball rolling giving advice to the Obama campaign about song choices, let me quickly toss in my two cents.

Stomping around outside in the frigid weather before Obama's announcement in Springfield a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't paying much attention to the "pre-game" music coming out over the loud speakers. But one song did catch my ear.

So here's my advice to the Obama folks: for obvious reasons, you might want to rethink letting the DJ spin Brewer & Shipley's "One Toke Over the Line" at future campaign rallies.

Richard M. Daley rolled to a sixth term as Mayor of Chicago yesterday. If Daley finishes out his term he'll make history as the longest serving Mayor in the city's history, breaking the record currently held by his father, Richard J. Daley.

(Photo: Tom Cruze/Chicago Sun-Times)

If you have not watched the video of Barack Obama in 2002 discussing Iraq and the war vote, you should. Obama's warnings in regard to the difficulties the U.S. might face post-invasion appear remarkably prescient and while he was certainly not alone in raising these type of concerns, and in many ways these were the obvious post-invasion worries, the ease and comfort with which he discuses the relevant issues conveys to me a level of understanding and wisdom that is quite impressive. For a Democratic primary voter this video and his stance pre-war, juxtaposed against Hillary Clinton's dissembling and triangulating on Iraq, is just one more reason to make the switch from Clinton to Obama.

I delved in to some of Hillary's favorability problems earlier today, but the bottom line is Senator Clinton is increasingly losing her iron-grip on the Democratic nomination and this video is only going to make the situation worse for her campaign.

Update: The latest Keystone poll showing her trailing John McCain by 4 points and Rudy Giuliani by an incredible 16 points in Pennsylvania (a state both Kerry and Gore carried) is just more fuel for the anti-Hillary fire.

Both ABC News/Washington Post and Diageo/Hotline released major polls on the 2008 campaign yesterday. On balance the numbers were positive for Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani and mixed -- at best -- for Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

The favorable/unfavorable ratings of Giuliani versus Clinton in these two polls are striking. Rudy sports spreads of +36% in the ABC/WP (64/28) and +33% in Hotline (58/25) compared to Hillary's barely positive spreads of +1% in ABC/WP (49/48) and +3% in Hotline (49/46). The Giuliani/Clinton differential is over 30 points in Rudy's favor.

Giuliani's favorability ratings will only go lower as the campaign progresses and if he does win the Republican nomination, by Election Day there is no chance he will have favorable/unfavorable spreads over 30 points. However, the bigger unknown is where will Hillary Clinton's favorable/unfavorable rating head over the course of the campaign. Usually candidates' favorability ratings deteriorate as a campaign intensifies, which, given where Sen. Clinton stands today, does not bode well for her in both the primaries and the general election. The question is will the fact that she has been such a public and polarizing figure for over 15 years mute the historical tendency for candidates' unfavorable ratings to climb. In other words, does the public know all of Hillary's negatives?

To the degree Sen. Clinton remains the favorite and the likely Democratic nominee there is a floor for how low her favorability rating may fall. But if the shield of inevitability surrounding her continues to crack and Obama (or John Edwards or Al Gore) becomes a real alternative, then Democrats may begin to turn on Clinton. This of course would have serious implications on her ability to hold on to the nomination, but would also negatively affect her general election prospects.

As a point of reference the Final RCP Favorable/Unfavorable Averages going into the '04 election for President Bush and John Kerry were +7.4% for Bush and +1.2% for Kerry -- a differential of 6.2% for Bush. Today's Giuliani/Clinton differential is over 30 points in Rudy's favor. Clinton can potentially close that gap to single digits, if she is able to keep her favorability ratings even. But if her numbers go negative and stay negative, she could be digging herself (and Democrats) an insurmountable hole against a candidate like Giuliani, who today has plus 30% favorability ratings. Giuliani's ratings will fall, but if he is the Republican nominee they will almost assuredly be positive in the spring of 2008.

Democrats are certainly aware of Clinton's vulnerability in this regard, which makes Obama's strong favorability ratings of +23% in the ABC/WP (53/30) and +31% in Hotline (50/19) all the more attractive to Democrats looking for a general election winner. On the back of the Geffen imbroglio (which unquestionably hurt Hillary) the last thing the Clinton machine wants is a consensus to form that Obama would fare better in the general election. Zogby's head-to-head polls also out this week, which show Hillary trailing Giuliani and McCain by 7 and 8 points, while Obama leads both by 6 and 4, don't help in this regard.

McCain who is increasingly becoming the odd-man-out has some relatively good news in that his favorability remains quite strong -- +17% in ABC/WP (52/35) and +22% in Hotline (58/26), which bodes well for his general election prospects. However, his horserace numbers in the Republican field have to be troubling to his campaign as Giuliani beats him by 23 points and with Newt Gingrich out of the race by a whopping 30 points (53/23) in the ABC/WP poll. With sustained numbers like that, the general election is going to be irrelevant for McCain.

All the momentum continues to ride with Giuliani and Obama, while the long-time front-runners of McCain and Clinton flounder. McCain lost his front-runner status several weeks ago; we'll see about Hillary's over the next few months.

File this clip under "more trouble for Hillary Clinton." It's Illinois State Senator Barack Obama on a local public affairs television show in late November 2002 giving a pretty clear explanation of why he would have voted against the Iraq war authorization:

A quick aside on Obama's political skill. If you go to his web site, on the page titled "Plan to End the Iraq War" you'll find the text of remarks he gave at an antiwar rally in Chicago in October 2002. As you might expect, the tone of his remarks at the antiwar rally were fairly strident (he called members of the administration "armchair, weekend warriors" and singled out Karl Rove as a "political hack") and well suited to the crowd at the time and to the current base of the party. But a month later he was on television in the clip you just watched, speaking in thoughtful, measured tones about the war and how he would have voted. It's a testament to his political skill, his mastery of the medium of television, and why he's such a threat to Hillary.

If you thought the Clinton-Obama duel was hot, take a look at the McCain-Romney shootout in South Carolina.

The Politico's Jonathan Martin reveals how and where the battle lines are being drawn in the state GOP. The warring camps are led by their own generals: Richard Quinn, who is reprising his '00 role with Sen. John McCain and ex-George W. Bush consultant Warren Tompkins who now backs Mitt Romney. "Campaign allegiances aside, there is an unknown factor that complicates the 2000 redux storyline: Rudy Giuliani," Martin writes. But Giuliani has no organization and a McCain supporter said, "If Giuliani hadn't shoved it into higher gear, Romney may be out of single digits right now."

Tomorrow, Spartanburg, SC will hold its straw poll and even this small event is exhibiting the big fighting. The county's GOP chair is accused of "stacking the deck" for Romney and holding meetings in locations that aren't handicap-friendly. Still, all the candidates have worked feverishly to do well in the poll and create buzz even though the real primary is 11 months away. When it finally comes, McCain may utilize his new counsel who just resigned as SC's elections chief to join the campaign.

Meanwhile Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign is dealing with problems of its own creation after "inadvertently" omitting from her Senate ethics forms a family charity that's allowed Clinton and her husband to write off millions. Clinton's team is also trying to undo "days of harsh coverage" from two San Francisco-area Chinese-language newspapers that were not admitted to a fundraiser last week.

This weekend Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama will head to Selma, AL to commemorate 1965's Bloody Sunday civil rights march. Before Obama's trip, NPR asked him pointed questions about his experiences as a black presidential candidate, including if he talks the same way to black and white audiences, if he feels he has to prove himself to black leaders and if he has to dominate the black vote to win.

Soon enough all of these candidates will be talking about the immigration plans McCain and Sen. Ted Kennedy are taking up again in Washington today.

What else is flying through the political universe? Check our Politics and Elections page.

Mark Binelli profiles Keith Olbermann in the new issue of Rolling Stone, and though it's supposed to be flattering I'm not sure it comes across that way.

According to Binelli, Olberman's upswing began when he delivered this six-and-a-half minute rant against Don Rumsfeld last August. Binelli writes:

Audience response was positive, so Olbermann began hitting the Bush administration even harder. Scathing commentaries, directly inspired by broadcast legend Edward R. Murrow, became a regular feature on Countdown. As in Network, momentarily losing it seems to have paid off.

Later in the story Binelli briefly touches on Olbermann's history at ESPN, noting that after five years he left "under a cloud of stories about how he'd become a nightmare to work with." And then there's this:

Last June, the Daily News printed e-mail exchanges between Olbermann and hostile viewers. The host advised one correspondent to "go f*** your mother" and another to "kill yourself." He also told a fan that fellow MSNBC host Rita Cosby was "nice but dumber than a suitcase of rocks." Though the e-mails were meant to embarrass Olbermann, they only served to underline what people already know and like about him.

The pattern seems clear: Olbermann has pretty much always been an ass and a jerk in private, and now he's being celebrated by Arianna Huffington and others on the left for being that way in public.

The numbers from the latest Washington Post poll pretty much speak for themselves:

5. Who do you trust to do a better job handling (ITEM), (Bush) or (the Democrats in Congress)?
The situation in Iraq: Bush 34, Dems in Congress 54
The U.S. campaign against terrorism: Bush 39, Dems in Congress 52
The economy: Bush 36, Dems in Congress 56
The federal budget: Bush 32, Dems in Congress 59
Health care: Bush 25, Dems in Congress 62

Given the decided advantage Republicans have enjoyed on national security issues over the last 20 to 30 years, if someone had told you that five and a half years after September 11 the Republican President who shepherded America through the worst terrorist attack in her history would be running 13 points behind Democrats in Congress on the question of who can better handle the war on terror, you probably would have thought that to be very unlikely, if not a bit nuts. But that's where this President appears to be.

The real question is whether (or perhaps how much) the public's dismal view of President Bush is rubbing off on the Republican party in general, GOP members in Congress, and potentially the party's 2008 Presidential hopefuls as well.

Presidential candidates were mostly outside of the early primary states today, but they and their campaigns still made news - not all of it good.

The Boston Globe obtained a document explaining "Romney will define himself in part by focusing on and highlighting enemies and adversaries, such common political targets as 'jihadism,' the 'Washington establishment,' and taxes, but also Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, 'European-style socialism,' and, specifically, France." The campaign also anticipates a challenge on this front from Newt Gingrich, even though the former speaker and conservative icon has not yet announced his candidacy.

Elsewhere on the trail, Rep. Duncan Hunter's PAC may have broken campaign finance laws by using its money to advertise for him in New Hampshire. Down in South Carolina, Sen. Sam Brownback is calling on as many Republicans as he can before an upcoming straw poll.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side Illinois Sen. Barack Obama continued his tour of the Ohio River Valley yesterday by rallying 2,000 supporters in Cleveland. At home, Obama manages a complicated relationship with Chicago politicians, including Mayor Richard Daley, who faces reelection today. Sen. Hillary Clinton, not to be outshone by Al Gore's climate change popularity, called on the government to spend $50 billion on energy independence.

Outside of the presidential race, RNC Chair Sen. Mel Martinez said he's trying to build a consensus of Republicans around immigration reform, including his proposed "earned citizenship" plan that would require English proficiency, citizenship tests and fines or back taxes. The proposal is supported by the Bush administration and most Democrats.

In Washington, President Bush and governors traded pleas on their health care plans while five Western states did an end-run around Congress and the administration and signed an agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

You can find those stories and more at RCP's Politics and Elections page.

Unbelievable. MEMRI has a video clip of Iranian Majid Goudarzi offering the following bit of "political analysis" on Iranian TV on February 20:

I don't believe that a regime like the Zionist regime is legitimate, let alone that it will ever accept peace. Its very existence involves aggression, war, terrorism, and killing. It cannot stop these methods. This is even repeated in their Torah several times. In the Book of Exodus and the Book of Numbers, it is said several times that Moses called this people corrupt. They are genetically bloodthirsty and criminal, and therefore, they cannot give up their criminal character.

Ironic, don't you think, that the most influential paper in nation happens to be located in Hillary Clinton's home state and most of the columnists on the op-ed page seem hate her guts.

Today Bob Herbert joins in the fun, bashing the Clintons for raising an objection with Barack Obama over his supporter David Geffen's attack on the former First Couple:

If Bill and Hillary Clinton were the stars of a reality TV show, it would be a weekly series called "The Connivers." The Clintons, the most powerful of power couples, are always scheming at something, and they're good at it. [snip]

When Senator Obama talks about bringing a new kind of politics to the national scene, he's talking about something that would differ radically from the relentlessly vicious, sleazy, mendacious politics that have plagued the country throughout the Bush-Clinton years. Whether he can pull that off is an open question. But there's no doubt the Clintons want to stop him from succeeding.

The line of the Hillary haters (or Obama supporters, if you prefer) goes something like this: what Geffen said was more or less true, therefore it's not really an attack. Herbert writes this morning, "In all the uproar over Mr. Geffen's comments, hardly anyone has said they were wildly off the mark."

Yesterday Maureen Dowd went with something similar on Meet the Press:

I think that David Geffen gave voice to what a lot of Democratic donors and supporters had been secretly worried about, and, in fact, it's reflected in Hillary's own talking points for her supporters, which is the fact that she's polarizing, that she's calculating, that she's overscripted, and that her relationship with Bill could still cause problems. And, you know, he was bold enough to say that, and that sort of broke the dam of nervousness over that.

Two points. Obviously, there's a partisan double standard at play: if a Republican had said the same things about the Clintons as Geffen, we wouldn't be having a nuanced discussion about whether it was an "attack" or whether the person was merely "giving voice" to concerns held by a lot of Democrats. In fact, I don't recall any of that taking place when William Safire called Clinton a "congenital liar" way back when.

The second, and more important point is that Obama defenders have now established a sort of baseline which will serve as a helpful guideline: anything goes, even personal attacks, so long as it's true. So Bob Herbert won't be upset if a major Clinton supporter comes out in the press and starts talking about the fact that Obama did "a little blow" in his younger years, or that his wife sits on the board of a company whose biggest customer is Wal-Mart and paid it's CEO a ridiculous $26.2 million last year, or that the Obamas appear to be unbelievably savvy when it comes to buying real estate (though I can't believe the Clintons or their surrogates would want to go there).

Of course we all know that if a major Clinton donor came out and said any of these things, in all likelihood Bob Herbert (being the intellectually honest fellow he is) would be at the front of the line decrying it as a vicious, sleazy, and mendacious attack and calling in on the Clintons to disassociate themselves from the remarks - even though it's all true.

Good grief. Note to John McCain's campaign: if you're looking to mend fences and try to become the choice of conservative Republican primary voters, it's best not to go around trumpeting news of an endorsement by Senator John Warner of Virginia - especially after Warner just finished spearheading an effort in the Senate to rebuke the President and undermine his Iraq policy.

The endorsement game is really a bizarre phenomenon. I suppose, in the aggregate, endorsements offer a campaign the "aura of inevitability," but there's little evidence that individual endorsements (or newspaper endorsements, for that matter) really help, and I think this is an instance where an endorsement actually does more harm than good.

Apropos Mitt Romney's comments on Iran, the Associated Press reports some encouraging news:

TEHRAN, Iran - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced a new round of sharp criticism at home Monday after he said Iran's nuclear program is an unstoppable train without brakes. Reformers and conservatives said such tough talk only inflames the West as it considers further sanctions. The criticism came even as new signs have arisen that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is growing discontented with Ahmadinejad, whom he is believed to have supported in 2005 presidential elections.

The quote of the day (QOTD) comes from a WSJ interview with PJ O'Rourke from last month that I somehow missed at the time:

"I have no idea if some societies, anthropologically speaking, aren't really suited for democracy. I don't think that's true. But there certainly are societies that just love to fight. Northern Ireland, for instance. You couldn't stop that problem because they were having fun--they were really, really enjoying themselves. It would still be going on full-force today if the sons of bitches hadn't accidentally gotten rich. What happened was, more and more people started getting cars, and television sets, and got some vacation time down in Spain, and it wasn't that they wanted to stop fighting and killing each other and being lunatics, but they got busy and forgot."

As an aside, O'Rourke has been one of my favorite authors for as long as I can remember. Parliament of Whores is one of the best works of political humor ever, and the collection of essays in Republican Party Reptile is equally as funny while covering more ground. Though O'Rourke gained notoriety for "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink," my personal favorite has always been "High-Speed Performance Characteristics of Pick Up Trucks."

German economic growth ended 2006 on a high note. Real GDP grew 3.7% in 2006, the fastest growth rate in more than 15 years, more than twice as fast as the 1.7% growth rate of 2005, and significantly above the identically disappointing 0.2% real growth rates of 2002, 2003, and 2004.

The acceleration of growth in 2006 caused many forecasters to become more optimistic about Germany, and some even began to predict an economic renaissance in Continental Europe. After years of sub-par performance, this would be welcome.

But all this excitement appears misplaced. On January 1, 2007, the German VAT tax was raised from 16% to 19%, while the top marginal income tax rate increased to 45% from 42%.

The knowledge that these tax rates would rise in 2007 created an incentive to bring income and spending forward into the lower tax year. For Germany, this means that growth was stolen from 2007, which artificially boosted economic activity in 2006.

Early data for 2007 on consumer and business confidence show a reversal from the positive news of 2006. Both industrial production and factory orders fell in December, and January retail sales are weaker than at any time since early 2004.

While the consensus has settled on a German real GDP growth rate of 1.5% to 2.0% for 2007, we suspect that this is overly optimistic. The European Central Bank is running what we would call a neutral monetary policy and the German government is planning a reduction in corporate tax rates in 2008. In other words, there will be an incentive to push income and profits from 2007 forward into 2008.

Germany remains a very high tax economy. The top marginal income tax rate is 45%, social security taxes are 19.9%, health care payroll taxes are 14.3%, while unemployment insurance is 4.2%, and corporate tax rates are roughly 40% (when local taxes are included). These high tax rates suggest the surge in 2006 economic activity was nothing but one-year wonder.

The Libby jury loses a member.

Initial release: Bush job approval 36%, handling of Iraq at 31%, and Democrats hold a 20-point advantage (54 to 34) on who the public trusts to do a better job of handling Iraq.

As dismal as those numbers are, they all represent a slight improvement for the President over last month's survey.More results this evening.

I sat down with Governor Romney at this headquarters in Boston on Friday. I asked to record the interview and Governor Romney agreed without hesitation, and as I turn the recorder on Romney is in the middle of commenting on the fact that his every utterance these days is captured on tape in one way or another:

ROMNEY: You've got to be really careful about what you say and do anywhere you are. I actually had a dream about being in parking garage and having somebody in front of me taking too long to get their change and honking the horn and then yelling back, and getting out and yelling at each other and then seeing it on YouTube the next day. So I said 'OK', I've got to really be careful, you know, in my personal life.

RCP: So how's the campaign going for you so far? Is it what you expected?

ROMNEY: It's gotten going a lot faster than I would have expected. I saw George Stephanopoulos last week, he said he was hired on as the first Clinton campaign employee in what would be the equivalent of October of this year. And we have many tens of employees at this point. And even this early the response in states that really are early in the process: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, the response is really quite surprising. Large numbers of people, lots of questions, enthusiastic reaction.

RCP: What's the question you get asked most?

From Pat Buchanan's column yesterday:

NATO is packing it in as a world power. NATO is little more than a U.S. guarantee to pull Europe's chestnuts out of the fire if Europeans encounter a fight they cannot handle, like an insurgency in Bosnia or Kosovo. NATO has one breadwinner, and 25 dependents.

At the end of the Cold War, internationalists like Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana declared, "NATO must go out of area, or go out of business." What Lugar meant was, with the Soviet threat lifted from Europe, NATO must shoulder more of the global burden.

But the Balkan crises of the 1990s showed that Europeans are not even up to policing their own playground. The Americans had to come in, gently push them aside and do the job. The message Europe is today sending to America, with the withdrawals from Iraq and the refusal of Italy, Germany and France to fight in Afghanistan:

"We are not going out of area again. If you Americans want to play empire, go right ahead. We will not again send our sons overseas to fight in regions of the world from which we withdrew half a century ago. You're on your own."

Where does this leave NATO? This leaves NATO as little more than a U.S. guarantee to go to war for the nations of Europe, while Europeans can be freeloading critics of U.S. policy around the world.

NATO is an expensive proposition. We maintain dozens of bases and scores of thousands of troops from Norway to the Balkans, from Spain to the Baltic republics, from the Black Sea to the Irish Sea.

What do we get for this? Why do we tax ourselves to defend rich nations who refuse to defend themselves? Is the security of Europe more important to us than to Europe?

In the early years of World Wars I and II, Europeans implored us to come save them from the Germans. We did. In the early Cold War, Europeans welcomed returning GIs who stood guard in the Fulda Gap.

Now, with the threat gone, the gratitude is gone. Now, with their welfare states eating up their wealth, their peoples aging, their cities filling up with militant migrants, they want America to continue defending them, as they sit in moral judgment on how we go about it.

Don't be surprised if 90% of U.S. troops in Europe today are gone ten years from now.

When John Edwards announced his intention to run for president last year, he was immediately considered a top tier candidate in the Democratic field: He had already demonstrated considerable political skill and an ability to raise money in his strong 2004 showing. He also was seen as benefiting from an even more front-loaded primary schedule in 2008 that should work in his favor.

But for someone as smooth as Mr. Edwards, the first few months of his campaign have been anything but. While his two main rivals have been sucking up media oxygen with dueling announcements and maiden tours to early primary states, Mr. Edwards has managed to make only a few headlines -- none of them good.

First, he took flack from his base for giving a hawkish, saber-rattling speech on Iran, telling an Israeli audience that "all options" were on the table and that "under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons." Shortly thereafter, news broke that Mr. Edwards, whose central campaign theme is closing the economic gap between the "two Americas," is living in a newly constructed 28,000 square-foot estate outside Chapel Hill, N.C., worth an estimated $6 million.

The biggest embarrassment came two weeks ago when Mr. Edwards hired two left-wing feminist bloggers to run his campaign web site, only to have their history of writing vulgar and inflammatory posts revealed. After receiving extreme pressure from his left-wing base, Mr. Edwards at first kept the women but tried to distance himself from their remarks. Both resigned less than a week later.

The latest snag for the Edwards campaign is a story in Variety that quotes him as telling a Hollywood fundraising group that Israel bombing Iran's nuclear facilities is the "greatest threat to short-term world peace." Yesterday Mr. Edwards' campaign denied he made the remark, but Variety is standing by its reporting.

As you'd expect, the net results of Mr. Edwards' missteps is that he's losing ground in the polls. Nationally, he remains mired in third place, ten points behind Barack Obama and close to 30 points behind Hillary Clinton. More concerning, however, is that he appears to be slipping in Iowa, one of his strongholds and a place where he must finish well if he wants to have a shot at winning the nomination.

Two recent polls tell the tale: A new survey by Strategic Vision shows Mr. Edwards' lead has slipped to six points, down four points from the previous month. A Zogby poll released last week is even worse: The 11-point lead he held in January has completely evaporated.

With the Democratic hopefuls attending their first "candidate forum" Wednesday in Nevada, the race is only beginning, and there'll be plenty of time for Mr. Edwards to recover his mojo. But even at this early date, Democrats are searching the field looking for a winner. Mr. Edwards' bumbles have raised doubts about his political skills in a year when Democrats believe the presidency is theirs for the losing.

Dennis Johnson died yesterday of a heart attack at 52 years young. Most people remember Dennis as a freckle-faced veteran guard for the Boston Celtics who spent seven years playing alongside Bird, McHale and Ainge during their dominant run in the eighties. To give you an idea of the kind of player DJ was, all you have to know is that Larry Bird once called him "the best teammate I've ever played with."

Those of us who grew up in Seattle, however, remember Johnson as a fresh-faced rookie drafted out of Pepperdine by the Sonics in 1976 who became an integral part of the one (and still only) world championship in Seattle sports history.

I turned 10 the year the Sonics won the NBA Finals (DJ was named MVP, by the way), and I can still name almost every member of the team from memory. Somewhere, stuffed inside a box of memorabilia from my younger days, I have a picture of the '79 Sonics that I kept on my bedroom wall for years, along with trading cards of all the players.

There's one other thing in there, too. The year after the Sonics won the NBA Championship my dad, who was a pilot, arrived at a hotel in Boston for a layover. Sitting there in the lobby was Dennis Johnson and a teammate who were in town to play the Celtics. And so, ironically enough, in the entire universe of celebrities and sports heroes, DJ is among the very tiny group of people whose autographs I have in my possession; his name scrawled in pencil across a torn gray envelope bearing the United Airlines logo.

Rest in peace, DJ. You may have retired a Celtic, but you'll always be a Sonic to me.

UPDATE: Bill Simmons has an excellent column on why DJ should have already made the Hall of Fame. Steve Kelley writes an appreciation in the Seattle Times, and Jackie MacMullan has another in the Boston Globe.

(Photo: Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images)

In the days right after North Korea signed an agreement that would supposedly require its nuclear disarmament, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, made clear that he has no intention of giving up those weapons.

The consequences of that stance are likely to be far reaching. Politically, Presidents George W. Bush of the US and Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea, both having labeled the agreement a step toward getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear arms, will most likely be shown to have been naïve or, worse, deceptive.

Then, no political leaders anywhere appear to have begun figuring out what they will do when forced to accept North Korea into that small circle of nations with nuclear arms, which will change the dynamics in the balance of power in Asia.

Nor has anyone confronted the crack that a nuclear North Korea will cause in the nuclear non-proliferation regime that has stood for four decades, even though weakened in recent years when India and Pakistan went nuclear. In particular, the example of North Korea will undoubtedly complicate negotiations with Iran on a similar nuclear issue.

The agreement that North Korea signed in Beijing in what is known as the Six Party talks with China, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the US on Feb. 13 says Pyongyang "will shut down and seal for the purpose of eventual abandonment" its nuclear facilities and will provide the other five with "a list of all its nuclear programs."

On that same day, however, the North Koreans, through their official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), said Pyongyang had agreed only to a "temporary suspension of the operation of its nuclear facilities." Further, North Korea ignored most of the other provisions of the agreement, such as denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

That began a steady drum roll of belligerent statements asserting Pyongyang's right and need for nuclear arms. An official newspaper, Rodong Shinmun, charged that the US sought to dominate Asia "through preemptive nuclear attack."

KCNA said North Korea's "status of a full-fledged nuclear weapons state successfully realized the long-cherished desire of the Korean nation to have matchless national power." In another dispatch, KCNA said that "Kim Jong Il punctured the arrogance of the US imperialists with a powerful nuclear deterrent."

On Kim Jong Il's birthday, a national holiday on Feb. 16, a Communist Party committee lauded him: "You have turned the homeland of Juche (Self-reliance) into a power having nuclear deterrent for self-defense and made the Korean nation emerge a nuclear weapons nation which no force can ever provoke."

At a banquet that evening, which was aired by the Korean Central Broadcasting Station, the president of the Supreme People's Assembly, Kim Yong Nam, toasted Kim Jong Il for, among other things, for turning North Korea into "a military power that even possesses a self-defensive nuclear deterrent."

Still more: The North Koreans fell back on the time warn argument -- the Americans made us do it. Using North Korea's proper name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, KCNA asserted: "US policy compelled the DPRK to have access to nuclear deterrence for self-defense."

Some observers question the value of statements from Communist officials. Experience has shown, however, that Communist leaders, when addressing their home audiences as in this case, tell the public what they really want their people to believe.

A former foreign minister of South Korea, Han Sung Joo, has published an assessment of the reasons the North Koreans want nuclear arms. Writing in Time magazine, Han said:

* "Nuclear status is a political trophy for Kim Jong Il."

* "The nuclear program is intended to deter a possible external attack."

* "North Korea's nuclear capability gives it an upper hand in relation to the South."

* "The nuclear program is seen as a key to survival-a way to block and prevent any outside attempts at regime change."

* "Nuclear weapons represent a powerful bargaining tool."

Han was politically correct in contending that this agreement was "better than no deal at all," which kept him reasonably in line with his government's position. He went on, however, to demolish any thought that Kim Jong Il will move toward abandoning his nuclear arms.

Instead, he points to "what North Korea sees as compelling motives to possess nuclear weapons." He doubts that Kim Jong Il's regime will "agree to completely rid itself of nuclear equipment and material," including the 8 to 12 nuclear warheads it is thought to have already produced.

The personal saving rate was negative 1% in 2006 (equal to negative $92 billion), the second straight negative year and the lowest since at least 1947. What this means is that for every $100 in after-tax "income," US consumers spent $101. To some, this proves that Americans are living beyond their means and that calamity is virtually assured unless something changes.

We could not disagree more. The so-called personal saving rate is a highly misleading indicator of the consumer balance sheet. Other, much better measures show that the American consumer is in excellent financial health.

To calculate the personal saving rate, government statisticians subtract taxes and spending from personal income. Income includes wages, salaries, interest, dividends, rent received, small-business profits, and some government benefits. Excluded are withdrawals from IRAs and 401ks, as well as capital gains. This is inconsistent with how most people measure their private fiscal health.

For example, a retiree with no wage (or other) income, who withdraws $40,000 each year from her IRA to spend on living expenses, would drag down the savings rate. Or, as Bear Stearns economist David Malpass pointed out, the $30 billion in appreciated Berkshire Hathaway stock Warren Buffett has pledged to the Gates Foundation was never counted as income. But when that money eventually gets spent it will count as consumption and reduce "personal saving."

A basic problem with the often quoted personal saving rate is that it mixes together current workers with retirees who should be expected to spend much more than they earn. One academic economist has calculated that excluding retirees from the figures would add about 4 percentage points to the saving rate. Moreover, this error should grow over time as the US ages and healthcare costs (a major purchase for retirees) continue to grow.

Another problem with the saving rate is that when consumers buy durables - think cars, furniture and appliances - the spending is counted right away even though payments will be made over time. Amortizing these purchases would push up the saving rate another 2 percentage points. Interestingly, despite this treatment of durable goods, the government does subtract housing depreciation from income. And because home prices have climbed dramatically in recent years, depreciation has climbed. In 2006, this depreciation subtracted $226 billion from saving - it did not affect consumer cash flows, but pushed the "official" saving rate into negative territory.

In the end the saving rate, as it is currently calculated is a useless measure of household balance sheets. A much better measure of true savings is the net worth of households, a statistic calculated by the Federal Reserve. As of September 2006 (the latest data available) US households had $54 trillion more in assets than liabilities, an all-time high. Moreover, total net worth had increased by $3.5 trillion from the year before. If this $3.5 trillion increase in net worth were used as the appropriate measure of personal saving, the saving rate was 37% last year and has averaged 33% the past ten years, a far cry from the "negative saving rate" which so many pessimists decry.

Two weeks ago I mentioned that Brit Tim Montgomerie was spearheading an advertising campaign around the theme of "A World Without America" - a concept derived from this excellent Peter Brookes column last year. Well, the first ad just launched:

I'm interested to hear what people think of the ad. Email comments here.

Earlier today I posted the YouTube of McCain speaking about abortion that had been selectively edited and distributed (it appears)by an operative of a rival campaign. So, to be fair, here is the full, unedited clip of McCain's statement:

My, my, how quickly it starts. Last week I wrote about the perils of Barack Obama going negative:

As anyone not living in a cave surely knows, Obama launched his campaign for president last weekend by deriding the "smallness of our politics" and promising to change the tone of political discourse in America. But with Hillary Clinton leading Obama by an average of nearly 20 points in the six major polls taken so far this year, will Obama be able to close the gap over the coming year without playing hardball? And how can he attack Clinton without looking small himself and undermining the core rationale for his candidacy?

And now we have David Geffen, with a gleeful assist from Maureen Dowd, slicing and dicing the Clintons in the New York Times, just days after Obama once again denounced "slash and burn politics."

The Clinton camp jumped on the contradiction, as they will every time anyone associated with Obama's campaign says anything remotely negative about them.

I'm sure the left is willing to give Obama a pass, but you can see the inherent problem this poses for his candidacy. Obama's senior strategist, David Axelrod, has said that a positive campaign is "the only kind of campaign that he [Obama] really can run" and that they won't be engaging in a strategy to tear other people down. Given that Obama has made changing "smallness of our politics" the clarion call of his candidacy, he's almost obliged to denounce Geffen or else look like a hypocrite.

Obama's attacks, and those of his surrogates, have to stay focused on issues. I've been having a back and forth with a left-leaning reader on what those attacks might look like. Here is what he wrote:

I'm waiting for a version of this devastating remark from Obama to Hillary if it comes down to a one on one debate between them down the homestretch. It would come in response to her touting her supposed trump card over him: her "experience."

Senator, I think you're an able colleague, and an important leader of our Party. But let's recall that your "experience" hasn't helped you when you needed it most: In dealing with the most important domestic issue of our time, and the most important foreign policy issue of our time. When in President's Clinton's White House, you headed the administration's botched effort to bring all Americans national health insurance--that set back that project for 15 years. And, when faced with the fateful decision as to whether to give President Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq, you voted to do so. Senators can make those kinds of mistakes every so often, but I don't think the American people can afford to risk putting you and your "experience" in the Oval Office.

Nobody else in either party can do it. Edwards can't because he voted yes on the war, too. Richardson can't because he was part of the Clinton administration. Rudy and McCain can't because they presumably supported the war from the start. Only Obama could deliver this death blow to the Clinton campaign. Game, set, match--but does Mr. Nice guy have the guts to do it?

And here is my reply:

Yes, and I'm waiting to see how Hillary attacks Obama when he starts threatening her. It will have to be very well calibrated so as not to offend, but will also have to be a devastating indictment of his inexperience. I think I've hit on how it might happen: Bill Clinton will come out and say something to the effect that Barack Obama would make a very able cabinet secretary in a future administration. Maybe he'll say VP.

But Bubba is the one who will have to bring Obama down with a velvet hammer. He's got the skill to do it, and responding to the attack also poses a dilemma for Obama: does he really want to get in a pissing match with Bill Clinton? I don't think so.

It's going to be fascinating to watch this drama between Clinton and Obama continue to play out. And we haven't even gotten started talking about how vicious and dramatic the fight on the other side is going to be.

Merck puts on the brakes:

Bowing to pressure from parents, physicians and consumer advocates, drug manufacturer Merck and Co. said Tuesday that it would suspend its campaign to implement mandatory vaccination against cervical cancer with the use of its drug, Gardasil.

The aggressive campaign undertaken by Merck was intended to hone in sales of the Gardasil -the vaccine received approval from the Food and Drug Administration last year and launched the drug in June.

Dr. Richard M. Haupt, Merck's medical director for vaccines, told the AP, "Our goal is about cervical cancer prevention, and we want to reach as many females as possible with Gardasil."

He added, "We're concerned that our role in supporting school requirements is a distraction from that goal, and as such have suspended our lobbying efforts."

In a related story, the Washington Times questions whether the push for mandatory Gardasil vaccinations is targeting the wrong age group:

Lawmakers looking to force preteen girls to take Gardasil, a new vaccine against a virus that causes cervical cancer, are targeting the wrong age group, cancer data shows.

Middle-school girls inoculated with the breakthrough vaccine will be no older than 18 when they pass Gardasil's five-year window of proven effectiveness -- more than a decade before the typical cancer patient contracts the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV).

I received a fascinating email along similar lines a while ago but can't print it until I verify some of the specifics, which I hope to do in the very near future.

Quinnipiac is out with a new national poll on '08:

Democrats
Clinton 38
Obama 23
Gore 11
Edwards 6
Undecided 13

(Updated RCP Average on Dem Nomination here)

Republicans
Giuliani 40
McCain 18
Gingrich 10
Romney 7
Undecided 15

(Updated RCP Average on GOP nomination here)

Head to Head Match Ups
Giuliani 48 - Clinton 43
Giuliani 47 - Obama 40
Giuliani 48 - Edwards 40

McCain 46 - Clinton 44
McCain 43 - Obama 43
McCain 43 - Edwards 42

Romney 37 - Clinton 49
Romney 29 - Obama 49
Romney 32 - Edwards 48

(Updated RCP Averages on Head to Head Match Ups here)

You have to read all the way to the end of this Washington Post article on the Justice Department's willful neglect in handling the Sandy Berger case before being confronted with this astonishing quote by Berger's attorney, Lanny Breuer:

"It never ceases to amaze me how the most trivial things can be politicized. It is the height of unfairness . . . for this poor guy, who clearly made a mistake," Breuer said.

Stealing highly classified documents from the National Archives is "trivial?" You've got to be kidding.

This is one of the most brazen violations of classified material in our lifetimes: Bill Clinton's former National Security Advisor went into the Archives to review documents at the former President's request, stuffed a number of reports and memos with information of potential value to the 9/11 commission down his pants, took them home and shredded them, and he's now being defended by a lawyer from Clinton's White House Counsel office who tells us "it is the height of unfairness" to want to know the truth about what Berger took and why he took it.

Poor Sandy Berger. He had to pay a $50,000 fine and pick up some garbage on the side of the road in Virginia. Meanwhile, Scooter Libby had to face trial and might go to jail for, at worst, telling "a dumb lie" (to use the words of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald) about a non-crime.

Now it's McCain's turn to face a YouTube clip of himself talking about abortion:

This doesn't seem very damning to me, especially given that, as The Hotline reports, this clip omits a couple of very important sentences at the beginning where McCain says, "I believe this issue of the repeal of Roe v. Wade is important. I favor the ultimate repeal of Roe v. Wade." That seems fairly consistent with what he said the other day.

Of course, McCain's political problem on abortion, in so far as he has one, stems from his 1999 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in which he stated quite explicitly:

"But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations."

But this is old news. I though McCain put the issue to bed for the most part during the 2000 campaign and it seems he's been consistent ever since, so I don't know how opponents are going to get much mileage out of it this time around.

As a follow up to the post below about the framing of news of the withdrawal of British soldiers from Iraq, here is the reaction from our coalition partners down under, led by Prime Minister John Howard:

"A reduction has been in the wind (a while), and the reason I understand Mr Blair will give is that conditions have stabilised in Basra.

"I don't think it follows from that that there should be a reduction in our 550. I mean you have got to maintain a critical mass and to do the job according to our defence advice, you need that."

Australia is, in fact, bolstering its contribution in Iraq, sending up to 70 more non-combat military trainers within coming months.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson says the British move is a sign of progress in southern Iraq.

"Under no circumstances should anybody interpret the British (decision) ... as any kind of cut and run," he said.

Dr Nelson denied that the British policy was at odds with America's plan to send an extra 21,500 troops to Iraq, mainly to Baghdad.

"People ought to remember that 60 per cent of the violence comes from Baghdad and al-Anbar province, where al-Qaeda is particularly active," he told ABC Radio.

"The rest of Iraq is quite different".

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away another John, this one a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts and erstwhile presidential candidate, responded to the news this way:

"America's leading ally in Iraq has decided that a timetable for the phased redeployment of troops is the only responsible policy to help force Iraqis to stand up for Iraq. After years of touting Prime Minister Blair's resolve, the Administration should now pay attention to his new policy. This announcement makes it all the more inexplicable that the President and leading Republicans actually want to send more American troops into the middle of an Iraqi civil war."

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Tony Blair is preparing to announce a major reduction in British troops in Iraq as a result of a successful operation to improve security in the southern city of Basra.

Downing Street indicated tonight that Mr Blair could make his promised statement this week on Britain's future strategy in Iraq, He will be in the Commons tomorrow for his weekly Prime Minister's questions session

Reports circulating in Whitehall tonight suggested that Britain's 7,000 contingent in Iraq could be cut to around 4,000 by the early summer.

More from the BBC:

BBC political correspondent James Landale said: "We have been expecting an announcement for some time on this."

He said by Christmas a total of 3,000 troops were expected to have returned to the UK from Iraq.

However, he said reports that all troops will have returned home by the end of 2008 was "not a fair representation of what is true at the moment".

Our correspondent said senior Whitehall sources told him that the pullout was "slightly slower" than they had expected and "if conditions worsen this process could still slow up".

So according to the news reports this is a long-planned announcement that is also coming as a result of the improved security situation in Basra. But is that really what it is? Perhaps more importantly, how will this news be framed by the media and used by Congressional Democrats to try and influence the Iraq war debate here at home?