There is a man named Daniel Gilbert from North Carolina who believes himself to be running for the Republican presidential nomination as a true conservative. He has not previously held elective office and since 2002 he has owned a manufacturer of “electronic musical drums and percussion instruments.” He sends me e-mail. Lots of e-mail.

Today I will publish one, because I think it fairly represents a certain strain of far-right Christian thinking on Israel:

During a peace summit in Annapolis, MD next month, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has vowed to heavily pressure Israel to divide Jerusalem. Worse, Rice and the current administration are expected to blame Israel for the lack of peace in the region, according to a Palestinian negotiator who spoke to World Net Daily.

Blame Israel? Perhaps President Bush and his administration need a history and current events briefing.

Biblically and historically, what has been dubbed “Palestine” has always belonged to the Jewish people. Christians who have studied the Bible know that this land was promised by God to the Jews: “In that same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.”—Genesis 15:18, also Numbers 34….

Historically, “Palestine” was not the economical “prize” that it is, ideologically, today. Only when the increase in Jewish migration to the, now disputed, area transformed a once considered barren wasteland into a thriving community, did “Palestinians”, i.e. Arab refugees, follow and the historic battle began…..

The Democrats complain that the United States has lost many of its allies, particularly in Europe; but we are not fighting a war in Europe, we are fighting against Islamo-facists in the Middle East. Our main ally there is Israel. If the Democrats cannot realize the invaluable asset Israel is to our stake in the Middle East, surely President Bush and his administration should.

All Jews, Christians and Muslims should keep Genesis 13:14-17 in mind:
And Jehovah said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: So that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then may thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for unto thee will I give it. Genesis 13:14-17

I believe the US should not be involved in the process of giving away any fraction of the land given by God to the Jewish people. We see Biblical prophecies coming true nearly every week.

And such are the perspective of some who feel the president has betrayed conservative principles.

Atrios explains why Barack Obama‘s new line on Social Security looks like a snafu:

I imagine some readers who haven’t been hanging around these parts for all that long might have justifiably been puzzled at the reaction to Obama’s decision to try to make dealing with Social Security his signature attack on Clinton….

Beating back George Bush’s plan to kill social security was probably the first major victory for the broadly defined netroots movement. I say that not really knowing if things would have been different if blogs and the like didn’t exist, but it seemed like a victory. And while we never got together in a dark smoky room to plot our strategy, it basically ended up being a two-pronged one. The first was to beat back against the “social security crisis” frame much beloved by every very serious pundit in Washington….

Tt worked….George Bush’s social security monster was driven back into its cave….

So, anyway, having someone suggest that Social Security is a problem which needs to be dealt with by any serious candidate is like the bat signal for people like me. There is no problem with Social Security. None at all. Whatever broader fiscal time bombs exist have absolutely nothing to do with Social Security

See also, Matt Yglesias, 12/21/04:

Until very recently, I believed, as most of my generation still does, that Social Security was facing a crisis. Thanks to a declining birthrate and increasing longevity, at some point during my lifetime the program was going to go bankrupt and people my age were going to wind up with nothing after a lifetime of payroll taxes. I was — and the bulk of young people still are — the victim of a massive fraud, perpetrated by Social Security abolition advocates and unfortunately re-enforced from time to time by liberals seeking an argument against Republican tax cuts. This fraud, which is ongoing and in which a lazy media has been complicit, is crucial to understanding the politics of Social Security.

Democrats charge the president with submitting a plan that will cut benefits and force people to rely on the vicissitudes of the stock market to ensure a dignified retirement. This is true. But if you believe that Social Security is currently headed for self-destruction, it’s also irrelevant. Smaller benefits and an investment portfolio that may or may not pay off sound like an excellent deal compared with a pension plan that’s going to go bankrupt. It is only if you try to see the truth — that there is no crisis — that criticisms of the Bush plan become compelling.

TalkLeft, 02/01/05:

There were no WMD’s and there is no social security crisis.

Nathan Newman, 01/03/05:

Social Security: No Crisis

The biggest trap for progressives in challenging Bush on Social Security is buying into the idea that social security is a personal savings account or that there is a crisis at all. It’s not….

[D]espite all the talk of “crisis”, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect future workers to fully take care of future retirees. To imagine otherwise is to envision a collapsing future economy where the economy is not self-sustaining, where citizens collectively consume more than they can produce, and where they depend on money shipped from the past to the future.

Etc. etc. etc.

They don’t call Social Security the third rail of American politics for nothing. Obama must be imaging himself awfully special to think this is the battle he wants to take on, let alone use to take on Hillary Clinton. Millions of progressive dollars and countless person hours were spent in 2005 beating back the idea of the Social Security solvency problem that Obama is now putting forward, and effectively arguing the Clinton position on the issue.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall has more.

PNAS, if I recall correctly, is not the most respected of the scientific journals, but this new report isolating the origins of HIV’s entry into the U.S. seems compelling:

The AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a tragic epidemic, scientists said on Monday.

Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, said the 1969 U.S. entry date is earlier than some experts had believed.

The timeline laid out in the study led by Worobey indicates that HIV infections were occurring in the United States for roughly 12 years before AIDS was first recognized by scientists as a disease in 1981. Many people had died by that point.

“It is somehow chilling to know it was probably circulating for so long under our noses,” Worobey said in a telephone interview.

The researchers conducted a genetic analysis of stored blood samples from early AIDS patients to determine when the human immunodeficiency virus first entered the United States.

They found that HIV was brought to Haiti by an infected person from central Africa in about 1966, which matches earlier estimates, and then came to the United States in about 1969.

It’s all so sad.

The University of Miami’s Dr. Arthur Pitchenik, a co-author of the study, had seen Haitian immigrants in Miami as early as 1979 with a mystery illness that turned out to be AIDS. He knew the government long had stored some of their blood samples.

The researchers analyzed samples from five of these Haitian immigrants dating from 1982 and 1983. They also looked at genetic data from 117 more early AIDS patients from around the world.

This genetic analysis allowed the scientists to calibrate the molecular clock of the strain of HIV that has spread most widely, and calculated when it arrived first in Haiti from Africa and then in the United States.

The researchers virtually ruled out the possibility that HIV had come directly to the United States from Africa, setting a 99.8 percent probability that Haiti was the steppingstone.

“I think that it gives us more clear insight into the history of it (the AIDS epidemic) and what path the virus took — and hard objective evidence, not just armchair thinking,” Pitchenik said in a telephone interview.

Studies suggest the virus first entered the human population in about 1930 in central Africa, probably when people slaughtered infected chimpanzees for meat. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people and about 40 million others are infected with HIV.

This is an interesting discussion because it reveals just how little insight certain Republicans have into the thinking of the Democratic presidential candidates. It is the informed conventional wisdom of those who cover the campaigns that neither Clinton nor Obama will be seeking additional demographic diversity on their tickets, and instead will both most likely look for a white man from a swing state who can bring its electoral votes to the table with him. Hence, Dianne Feinstein would seem a highly unlikely pick for Obama. Safire‘s prediction that Clinton might choose Rahm Emanuel, while intriguing, would also seem unlikely, though in choosing him Clinton would gain a real brawler of a campaign partner — something that’s an absolute must for her.

Also, my understanding is that Wesley Clark would be an unlikely choice for Clinton, even though he’s got the right sort of demographic background — white, Southern, military, and from the potentially swingable (for a Clinton) state of Arkansas. His performance in 2004 has raised concerns about his skills and abilities as a campaigner that would need to be assuaged.

The names that come up most frequently in discussions of a possible Obama V.P. pick are Jim Webb and Mark Warner, two centrist Virginia Democrats from the one Southern state that’s previously elected an African-American to the governor’s mansion. Webb also has a military background. Marc Ambinder reported on the Obama-Warner possibility in June, and The Washington Post‘s report from yesterday morning on Webb’s efforts to stand up to Clinton within the Senate provide intriguing hints of what may be efforts on Webb’s part to prove himself a worthy partner for Obama. On the other hand, Webb has also co-sponsored legislation with Clinton, so he’s hardly foreclosing his options.

As for Gen. David Petraeus, I’d be surprised if he tossed his hat into the ring before 2012, should he ultimately decide to do so.

–Crossposted from Tapped.

Via Julian Sanchez:

The D.C. Police Department is adopting something called “the Rumbler,” a new form of siren that sends out low-frequency sounds waves that shake the ground and the mirrors of cars. This strikes me as a lawsuit waiting to happen. In a city of old Victorian buildings, passionate historic preservationists, and relatively high crime, it’s inevitable that someone’s slowly renovated masterpiece is going to sit on the pathway of a particularly police emergency route, and get rumbler-damaged from repeated sound-wave blasts.