I'm a few days behind in reading the Sunday Times this week and this article stopped me in my tracks. I was still digesting the president's comments that troop reductions in Iraq were a possibility, when I came across this quote by Bush on Iraq from Robert Draper's new book:

"I'm playing for October-November." That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: "To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence," and, he said later, "stay longer."

So he tells the soldiers the end may be in sight but then mouths off to a reporter that he's "playing" the troops until election season. Is he just making this stuff up as he goes along or is he really so cynical? I guess it could be both.

And I can't help but wonder which presidential candidate he thinks will be the one to continue to play his FUBAR game in Iraq. After all, LBJ isn't running.

Looks like the GOP will have two more holes to plug in its leaky ship in '08. Larry Craig's resignation seems imminent, as pressure mounts from within his party. And now longtime Virgina senator John Warner has announced he won't be seeking reelection next year.

``I'm quietly going to step aside and clear the way for others,'' Warner, 80, said at a press conference in Charlottesville. ``I've done my best.'' ...

Replacing Warner next year will set off a heated battle as Republicans seek to overcome the Democrats' 51-49 majority control of the Senate.

Among the names already being bandied about to run for Warner's seat are former governor James Gilmore and Representative Tom Davis on the Republican side. The Dems may run former governor Mark Warner.

Virginia was a battleground in '06, with underdog Dem. Jim Webb coming from behind to beat the increasingly clueless George Allen, and now it's shaping up to be just as crucial next November.

GOP jailbird Bob Ney was replaced last year in Congress by Democrat Zack Space, who'll have to defend his seat next November. It's still early but Space is criss-crossing Ohio at a furious pace, running like it's October '08 and the polls are split down the middle. Why? Because the Republican Party is already breathing down his neck. The GOP has tapped this as one of the most important races in the county and set Space's defeat as one of its top goals.

many voters said they were preparing for one of the longest and most brutal Congressional campaigns they have ever seen. "The national Republican Party is going to dump a whole lot of money into this district," said Lynn Elliott, 59, a Republican and a dairy farmer.

Both parties see Mr. Space's seat as an important prize. The 18th Congressional District, which Mr. Space represents, is Republican territory; President Bush received 57 percent of the vote here in 2004. Winning the seat is essential for Republicans to regain control of the House next year, said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.

The GOP have an uphill fight with this one, mainly because Space is pretty darn popular, his fundraising rates are strong and even Republicans are saying he's doing a good job. And secondly because there's no clear Republican contender yet.

It won't be until after the primaries that the congressional races come into focus but you can be sure that Ohio's 18th district will be one that both parties will be keeping a close eye on.

It's been a good summer for Hillary Clinton. A new Field Poll has her 30 points ahead of Barack Obama in California. Whoa. That's a nearly ten point jump since May:

The New York senator held a commanding lead over the Democratic field, with 49 percent support to 19 percent for Obama and 10 percent for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

The poll's director, Mark DiCamillo, attributes the strong showing to Hillary's strength as a campaigner and debater. That was echoed in an NPR piece I heard yesterday that said Hillary was doing a good job of winning over married women. I was among Hillary's critics who grumbled that she's too cool and calculated to be able to connect with voters on a personal level. I guess I was wrong, at least thus far.

It's good to get out from behind the desk here in L.A. and find some perspective. I just spent a long weekend in southeast Texas, home of 100+ degree temperatures, finger-licking-good BBQ and...... Ron Paul. In the tiny town of Driftwood (population: a few hunnerd) there were a host of signs along the main drag touting the maverick Republican -- dozens of them, in numerous front yards, all hand-painted. One said: "Ron Paul will end the war." Throughout the Hill Country, there were tons of Paul bumper stickers on the backs of trucks. Nary a sign of support for Giuliani nor Romney. None of that surprised me too much though. After all, Paul is a Texas boy with a libertarian streak and it makes sense that the pickup-and-gun-rack crowd would rally behind him.

But I was really shocked during the time we spent in Austin -- an oasis of blue in one big red state. Yeah, there were a few Obama '08 t-shirts, some Hillary stickers. But not a lot. Then my friends started pointing out the Paul bumper stickers alongside the Nine Inch Nails and Queens of the Stone Age decals on the backs of beaters, presumably the cars of UT students. The owner of one old pickup truck had painted "What do you think of Ron Paul?" on the sides of his vehicle, along with Paul's web site address.

In a bar I spotted a dude -- tattoos, rocker haircut -- in a Ron Paul shirt with the sleeves ripped off. We chatted briefly and he told me he's never voted Republican in his life but is pulling for Paul because of his stated intention to yank U.S. troops from Iraq immediately. Wow.

Obviously all this is anecdotal and the random counting of bumper stickers is hardly scientific polling. But if Ron Paul is a fringe candidate, as he loves to say he is, he's got to be awfully pleased with his support on the fringes. Down there in Texas, the grassroots appear to be growing strong.

A move is afoot by Republicans here in California to change the way electoral votes are portioned out in the state. Right now in Cali, as in 48 other states, there is a winner-take-all system. In 2004 John Kerry won at the ballot box so he got all 55 electoral votes. What the GOP wants to do is rejigger the process (and quickly!) so those electoral votes would be sliced up by congressional district. Shades of gerrymandering, no?

The change could only come if it passes as a public initiative next June. And the GOP is firing up the money machine to make sure it gets on the ballot.

(Consultant Kevin) Eckery said the fundraising to begin this week is aimed at getting $300,000 to $500,000 for polling and other preliminary work before signature-gathering. Collecting the necessary 434,000 signatures could cost $2 million.

Proponents are optimistic that backers of the presidential candidates will ante up. Though there are federal limits to donations to candidates, California law places no bar on the amount donors can spend on initiatives.

Democrats, not surprisingly, are crying foul.

"This is all about rigging the system, fixing the system, to tilt the electoral college to the Republicans, all under the pretense of being a reform," (Democratic strategist Chris) Lehane said.

Though it's unclear whether the Dems are organizing a fight against the measure.

Extreme Makeover: Campaign Edition is a sad spectacle indeed. Few things are more pathetic than watching a politician twist in the wind as he or she tries to disown a past action or stance on a critical issue.

The once proud GOP moderate John McCain is paying for his wild swing to the right with sinking poll numbers and deflating coffers. Like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton's Achilles' heal is the disaster in Iraq; first she was for it, now she's against it. Or something, who knows, who cares. And Mr. Massachussetts Mitt Romney used to go on and on about protecting a woman's right to choose. Now he considers himself an anti-abortion "convert." Just in time for election season too!

Abortion is an issue that could dog Fred Thompson as well. Thompson is the former lobbyist who, according to his exploratory committee, wasn't really a lobbyist. Certainly the second coming of Reagan would never have gone to bat for a pro-choice organization, would he? Except that Fred would, and did:

Thompson was retained by National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association to lobby the administration of President George H.W. Bush to ease a regulation that prevented clinics that received federal money from offering any abortion counseling.

Thompson, a social conservative these days, says he "has no recollection" about that. Nope, can't remember a thing about it. Of course, Thompson's an actor. Maybe he'll be able to give a convincing performance to the religious right on the abortion issue when and if the curtain ever goes up on his campaign.

Yesterday Senator Pete Domenici joined the swelling ranks of Republicans coming to their senses on Iraq. This morning there's word that conservative California representative John Doolittle decided that he too doesn't need to wait on the president's report on the surge to see that, like the war itself, it is an abject failure.

he questioned whether the conflict was worth the loss of more American lives. He said U.S. troops should be pulled back from the front lines "as soon as possible" and the fighting turned over to Iraqi forces.

How soon is "as soon as possible"? Doolittle says the pullback should start as early as the end of the year. And, in a town hall meeting, he also dared to used the dreaded "Q" word, calling the situation in Iraq a "quagmire" and saying "we just can't continue to tolerate these kinds of losses" without showing any signs of progress.

I predict in the coming months many more Republicans in congress will wise up and realize that blind loyalty to a sinking lame duck president is no longer worth more than staying silent on the U.S. disaster in Iraq.

On Monday the Supreme Court eased rules on political ads targeting specific candidates in the weeks before an election (yet another blow that controversial campaign finance law President Bush signed while holding his nose). You can bet within minutes of the Supremes' decision, the NRA, Sierra Club, Emily's List and dozens of other advocacy groups were firing up their media machines.

The ruling will make it easier for them to jump into the political fray as an election nears without worrying that their ads could land them in prison, and the airwaves will almost certainly be more crowded with direct political appeals identifying politicians by name. ...

Indeed, said Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, if candidates made claims that angered his organization "within 60 days of an election, you can expect to have the NRA on the air, in their face, with an ad."

"On the air, in their face, with an ad." Sigh. It's gonna be a long election season....

You're not a real political candidate unless you've got a Political Action Committee behind you, throwing big money around and fighting your battles. (PACs are those private groups -- like the pro-choice Emily's List and the pro-gun NRA -- that exist only to elect politicians and influence legislation.) Well now Barack Obama is officially in the big leagues because he's become the first presidential hopeful to have an independent campaign committee in his corner.

The Obama PAC is called Vote Hope and was founded by a group of rich activists in, yes, San Francisco. The Sandler family, big money backers of left-tilting groups like MoveOn.org, are the major players. Their stated goal is to lineup a half million votes and three million bucks in time for the California primary in February.

(Attorney Steve) Phillips said his organization would not attack Obama's foes, and instead would focus on getting out the vote for the Illinois Democrat among minorities, the poor and students.

The Obama camp played down Vote Hope, but you can be sure there were some high-fives going around at the campaign HQ. What candidate wouldn't want a group of powerful billionaires on his or her side?

Even though I'm a political junkie, not to mention the fact that I get paid to follow the election, I still sometimes grow exasperated by grand pronouncements about a vote that's 17 months away. The landscape could very well be unrecognizable by the time November '08 finally rolls around. But does that stop me from making such predictions myself? Heck no! And it's not stopping the National Journal's John Mercurio, who has a piece out today listing "10 things that will surely have a decisive impact on the presidential race."

Most of them are no-brainers, like Iraq, the debates and the fact that Bush has become the lamest of lame ducks. Others, like the energy bill, seem unlikely to have a "decisive" impact, as far as I'm concerned.

I was most intrigued by this notion:

Bloomberg/Hagel/Unity '08?: Mike Bloomberg and Chuck Hagel generated buzz in early May when they dined together at the Palm restaurant. A few weeks later, Hagel drew a strong GOP primary challenger that could make a Senate re-election bid in Nebraska even less appealing. Will the two GOP mavericks team up to run as independents, perhaps under the "Unity '08" banner?

Hmmmm. Michael Bloomberg and Chuck Hagel. First I've heard of that. Verrrrry interesting.

Anyway, read the whole thing here... and then chime in. Do you agree with the list? What issues do you think will dominate as the election heats up?

Karl Rove's mission in life is securing and keeping a Republican majority forever and ever, amen. Things aren't exactly going to plan (see: election '06) and now the beleaguered Rove's dirty trade secrets are coming out, in the attorneys general kerfuffle, the recent e-mail flap and today in a brand-spanking new scandal.

The administrator of the General Services Administration, Lurita Alexis Doan, is under investigation for allegedly trying to use her agency to help GOP candidates. Which is, you know, against the law and stuff. The LATimes today has the lowdown on a new report:

The GSA administrator displayed no reservations in her willingness to commit GSA resources, including its human capital, to the Republican Party," the report says. "Her actions constitute an obvious misuse of her official authority and were made for the purpose of affecting the result of an election."

The report, which has not been released, focused on a meeting in which a White House political aide briefed Doan's staff after the 2006 congressional elections. At the January meeting, attended by about three dozen agency managers, Doan asked: "What can we do to help our candidates?"

Wherever would Doan get such an idea to illegally use government resources to further the GOP agenda? Possibly from Karl Rove's touring multimedia show:

The Los Angeles Times has reported that similar PowerPoint presentations were made by Rove and other White House officials at nearly every other Cabinet agency, except the Defense and Justice departments. During such presentations, employees said they got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans.

The Doan report isn't expected to be made public for another month so expect to hear more about it then.

Let's face it. Besides Barack Obama, are any of the current crop of presidential candidates generating heat on the campaign trail? The GOP lineup features one opportunistic stiff after another. Hillary's only selling point seems to be that a lot of people like her husband. And the luster of the golden boy Obama is likely to fade once people realize that, yes, he's just another party politician.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: what this race needs is some good old fashioned third party spoilers. And now it looks like we might have one. The Washington Times says Michael Bloomberg could be ready to throw his ridiculously expensive bespoke hat into the ring (or at least have a servant throw it in for him).

And the filthy rich mayor of New York is prepared to hurdle all that difficult, time-consuming grassroots organizing stuff by spending some of his own money on the campaign. How much? Oh, about a billion dollars worth, say his friends.

"Bloomberg is H. Ross Perot on steroids," said former Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner. "He could turn the political landscape of this election upside down, spend as much money as he wanted and proceed directly to the general election. He would have resources to hire an army of petition-gatherers in those states where thousands of petitions are required to qualify a third-party presidential candidate to be on the ballot."

Senior Republican officials -- including those supporting declared Republican presidential nomination contenders -- and several top Democrats told The Times they take the possibility of a Bloomberg candidacy as a serious threat in November 2008.

Why not run? What does he have to lose, besides a billion bucks? If he doesn't win he'll still have about $4 billion left over for incidentals.

"Taxation Without Representation" is the unofficial motto of Washington D.C., where residents pay their fair share to the IRS but have nobody standing up for them with a vote in Congress. Could the District's situation soon change? Maybe. A bill seeking to give D.C. a voting Representative has cleared the House and is being considered in the Senate. Sixty-one percent of Americans favor such a move, according to a new Washington Post poll.

One of the measure's sponsors, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), says the issue is bi-partisan:

"This is not a party issue, except to the insiders," Davis said. He noted that the poll found clear majorities of Republicans, as well as Democrats, supporting the broad idea of giving the District a full House vote. "Most Americans feel this ought to happen," he said.

Legal scholars have differed over the bill's constitutionality. Supporters say the Constitution gives Congress such sweeping power over the District that lawmakers can give the city a House representative.

Not surprisingly, Davis and his co-sponsor -- D.C.'s non-voting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) -- have mucked up their bill in the typical inane way: by attaching a less popular measure to it. The other half of the bill looks to add another Representative for Utah. That idea is not favored in Congress nor among Americans polled. Only 37 percent of respondents think it would be a good move. The Utah half of the bill could end up tanking the whole thing, which would set back the D.C. Vote movement yet again.

What do you think? Does D.C. deserve a voting voice in Congress?

Normally when you read about legislators and corporate leaders working together, it's about tax breaks for big business or no-bid contracts and the like. But today the LATimes has a fascinating story about a surprising political campaign undertaken by some of the nation's largest corporations. Their goal? Universal health care. Yes you read that right.

A total of 36 major companies -- like PepsiCo, General Mills, Safeway and Kroger, and even drug firms and insurers such as Eli Lilly, Aetna and Cigna -- are on board:

Such large firms already provide medical coverage to their employees and have become increasingly frustrated as premiums have increased over the years. That has made them more willing to look to the government for solutions.

"Looking to the government for solutions"? This can only be happening in California, right? Well, yeah, actually. This coalition is using as a model Governor Schwarzenegger's reform plan, which would require all citizens to get insurance, doctors to subsidize care for the poor, and companies to spend a set amount on employee healthcare.

Not surprisingly, the endeavour is already meeting resistance from some other, smaller business like restaurants and retailers. But when you've got major corporations and the leader of the world's fifth largest economy linked up, you're going to have a force to be reckoned with. Do you think health care reform might now have the momentum it's been lacking in recent decades?