Subtle muscular adjustments can show, from left, wistfulness, determination, and unbridled

Obama has been working on his looking-off-into-the-future pose.

“A nod is acceptable,” Hosking said. “The American people respond well to nods.”

The organization, Scientists and Engineers for America have put together a questionnaire that they are sending to all candidates for the congressional elections in November.

1. Innovation. Science and technology have been responsible for half of the growth of the American economy since World War II. But several recent reports question America’s continued leadership in these vital areas. What policies would you support to ensure that America remains the world leader in innovation?
2. Climate Change. The Earth’s climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet. What is your position on the following measures that have been proposed to address global climate change—a cap-and-trade system, a carbon tax, increased fuel-economy standards, and research? Are there other policies you would support?
3. Energy. Many scientists and policymakers say energy security and sustainability are major problems facing the United States this century. What policies would you support to meet the demand for energy while ensuring an economically and environmentally sustainable future?
4. Education. A comparison of 15-year-olds in 30 wealthy nations found that average science scores among U.S. students ranked 17th, while average U.S. math scores ranked 24th. What role do you think the federal government should play in preparing K-12 students for the science and technology driven 21st Century?
5. Water. Thirty-nine states expect some level of water shortage over the next decade, and scientific studies suggest that a majority of our water resources are at risk. What policies would you support to meet demand for water resources?
6. Research. For many years, Congress has recognized the importance of science and engineering research to realizing our national goals. Given that the next Congress will likely face spending constraints, what priority would you give to investment in basic research in upcoming budgets?
7. Health. Americans are increasingly concerned with the cost, quality, and availability of health care. How do you see science, research, and technology contributing to improved health and quality of life?

You can search by district to see the responses from your congresspeople and senators as well as their voting records on matters relating to science and technology.

Catching up on my Tom Tomorrows. Haven’t read it for a while.

More here.

Roger Cohen has a devestating round-up of the Bush years in the NY Times.

When it’s dusk in America, the shadows spread wide.

Had a pleasant conversation with a friend last week about whether McCain intends to keep American forces in Iraq forever, or just indefinitely. I think we concluded (at least I did) that both McCain and Obama would, at some point, decide that enough Americans had died and that the political situation was not improving and that the best way to force the issue would be to start withdrawing troops.

Here’s McCain, from 1993 and 1994, on when America should “wave the white flag of surrender” and when the deadline for withdrawal should be set and on whom the responsibility would lie should more Americans die.

Brooks is good today.

More fundamentally, McCain’s problem is that his party is unfit to govern. As research from the Republican pollster David Winston has shown, any policy becomes less popular when people learn that Republicans are supporting it. If the G.O.P. sponsored the sunrise, voters would prefer gloom. Many Republicans are under the illusion that they are in trouble because they’ve betrayed their core principles. The sad truth is that if they’d been more conservative, they’d be even further behind.

Since early 2003, I have expected that the Bushies would be brought down by someone within the administration who was nauseated by the lies and the manipulation who would quit in a fit of righteousness. I thought it would be Powell. Or maybe Whitman. Or maybe the Republican Congress would declare Enough! Or the so-called conservative voters would say hey! wtf? Or Perle would say I knew they were cynical and corrupt, I don’t know they were bozos (or Wolfowitz or Bolton or Yoo or Garner or Bremer). Or the so-called conservative commentators would say hey! that’s not very conservative! Or the Main Stream Media would get bored with their he said she said bullshit and say hey! these people are liars!

I was close.

The Bushes weren’t brought down at all. No one quit. No one was righteous. Powell stayed quiet (Whitman whined a little bit as did Perle and Bremer). The Republican Congress didn’t wonder whether the brand might be damaged until the brand was in the toilet and they were no longer the Republican Congress. The so-called conservative voters kept voting for them and so-called conservative commentators kept cheering for them (except Andrew Sullivan). The Main Stream Media still continues with its on the other hand bullshit (although they do try to sneak in the occasional a member of the administration said X but there appears to be some evidence that Not X).

But finally. Finally! Finally, Scott McClellan has had enough. Several years after he was fired, he has fessed up that no, he wasn’t very happy at all. Disgruntled even.

The New Republic takes a humorous run at how his resignation speech might have sounded if he had realized that he was disgruntled at the time.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1, 2005–Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, yesterday became the first senior official to quit in protest over President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina.

At a hastily assembled press conference, McClellan said that Bush “spent most of the [past] week in a state of denial.

“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency,” he continued. “Katrina and the botched federal response to it [will] largely come to define Bush’s second term.”

and

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10, 2002–Hours before a scheduled Congressional vote that would authorize President Bush to use force against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a top aide to President Bush has criticized his own administration for what he says is a scheme to manipulate the nation into war.

“Over [this past summer],” McClellan said in an interview shortly after his resignation yesterday, “top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war. … In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage.”

In an unusual display of dissent from an ordinarily disciplined administration, McClellan said the president had “managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option.” He called the effort a “political propaganda campaign.”

as well as

Asked in an interview about the timing of his announcement, just days before the election, McClellan said he wanted to share his opinions now, when voters can act on them. He said he was not the sort of person who would wait years for a book contract before airing dirty laundry.*

and lots more like that at The New Republic.

Of course, those are all actual quotes from Scott McClellan’s book (written years after the opportunity for voters to act on them had passed).

I have two wishes.

1. I wish I had kept all those *political email debates with my friends about the ethics of the Bush administration during the Scott McClellan era.
2. I wish I had a TV so I could watch Jon Stewart.

* Oh! Wait! I did!

There’s an excellent 8 page article in today’s NY Times magazine that chronicles McCain’s stance on the Iraq War. It’s mostly positive - if you agree with McCain’s stance - and, since the liberal media is not doing it’s job and focussing on the negative, I’ll have to do it…

In his book, Chuck Hagel writes of listening to declassified tapes from the mid-1960s in which Lyndon Johnson admitted to advisers that Vietnam probably couldn’t be won but rued that withdrawal would make him the first American president to lose a war. “I wish someone had told me when I was sitting on a burning tank in a Vietnamese rice paddy that I was fighting for a lost cause just to save a president’s legacy,” Hagel observes acidly. Although McCain was held and tortured for the same cause, he never saw the situation the way Hagel did.

For the positive bits, you’ll have to go read the article.

I still don’t like Gail Collins, but this is pretty funny.

Meanwhile, to make up for the lost revenue, McCain says “all we need to do is cut out hundreds of millions and billions of dollars of pork-barrel projects.” These are presumably different pork-barrel projects from the ones McCain is going to cut in order to pay for $613 billion in permanent tax cuts.

Hillary Clinton, who jumped on the gas-tax holiday bandwagon posthaste, wants to pay for it with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. This makes her plan much more fiscally responsible. Not only does she balance the books, she turns a proposal that was unlikely to ever get passed into one that could not make it through the Senate if Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy both rose from the dead and hand-carried it there.

There are few things more satisfying than taking a strong stand in favor of something that is never going to happen. Free pander!