Wednesday marked the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The storm devastated the city of New Orleans, along with many other places on the Gulf Coast. John Edwards used New Orleans to launch his 2008 presidential campaign, while fellow Democratic hopefuls Sen. Chris Dodd and Gov. Bill Richardson criticized the Bush administration's response to Katrina during the South Carolina debate. President Bush spoke in New Orleans on Wednesday and sounded encouraging, but the situation seems anything but. Much of the city is still devastated, and tax breaks tied to Katrina are helping investors develop luxury football condos near the University of Alabama. Bob and Susannah discuss Katrina in the latest "Running Gags"!

Merci to my muse for the idea...

Return with me if you will to the last time we had a slate of candidates running for the presidency in 2003-2004. There were many issues discussed. Some of them -- including he Iraq war -- are still issues. But perhaps the greatest issue was military service. Being on active duty meant you had a view on war that was more nuanced and righteous than those who did not.

George W. Bush was pilloried by the Kerry campaign, the media and the anti-war left because he did not get activated and sent to Vietnam. This triad sent near-daily press releases detailing John Kerry's 45-days of service as if he were Audie Murphy. The campaign made his Vietnam service the center-point of his campaign--a tactic that back-fired spectacularly once the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth went into action and dispelled the carefully crafted biography Kerry had laid out. The military issue was so prominent that a well-respected newsman--Dan Rather-- lost his job because of a falsified letter he presented as truthful was brilliantly picked apart by bloggers.

Fast-forward to the present; there's zero discussion of military service by either side. Why the sudden change in attitude about whether or not someone served? Simple, only a few have and none of them are Democrats.

Let's look at the candidates and see who did, who didn't and who plain came up with a reason not to serve in the greatest military in the world:

Democrats:

Delaware Sen. Joe Biden: None. Rejected for medical reasons, but would have been eligible in a national emergency.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: None.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd: Army Reserve (1969-75).

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards: None. Draft number was never called.

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich: None. Was rejected for military service because of a heart murmur.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama: None. Too young to have been drafted for the Vietnam War.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico: None. Received student and medical classifications. Draft number was never called.

• • •

Republicans:

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback: None. Came of age as draft was ending.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani: None. Received student and occupational deferments. Draft number was never called.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: None. Came of age as draft was ending.

California Rep. Duncan Hunter: Served as an Army paratrooper and Ranger in Vietnam (1969-71).

Arizona Sen. John McCain: Served in the Navy (1958-81); prisoner of war in Vietnam (1967-73).

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: None. Received a deferment as a Mormon missionary in France. Was eligible for the draft upon his return to the states but was never selected.

Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo: None. Received student deferments. Was available for military service in 1969. Reclassified in 1970 because of stress-related anxiety and could have been called up only during a pressing national emergency.

Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson: None. Gained deferment because he had children. (Note: Not on original list, added by author)

Texas Representative Ron Paul: Served in the Army as a Flight Surgeon (1963-1965); Air National Guard (1965-1968) Never served in Vietnam, served in South Korea, Iran, Ethiopia and Turkey. (Note: Not on original list, added by author as an update on 8/22/07 0857))

If we go by the criteria set-forth in 2004, the only candidates who would warrant any attention and would have authority to speak on Iraq are Sen. John McCain, Rep. Ron Paul and Rep. Duncan Hunter. In fact, Hunter's son is currently active duty and boots on the ground. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson would not be considered (however Thompson's exemption is more warranted than others). In fact, if we were to silence all who never served from talking about the war, the discussion would be pretty small.

I said it in 2004 and I'll say it again, the Founding Fathers believed strongly in the concept of civilian control of the military. There's a reason the Commander in Chief is the President and not a five star General or Admiral. The Democrats and liberals made it an issue because they had a candidate who had served in Vietnam and the GOP did not. Now that circumstances are different, the fact that their candidates have no service time is not even muttered and that is disengenuous at best.

If I were John McCain and Duncan Hunter, I'd make this a priority on their campaigns, however, most who served are too proud or humble to do that. Of course, John Kerry was neither and wore his like a badge of courage while John McCain -- a man beaten in a POW prison for years -- did not.

With the expected-sooner-or-later news that Tommy Thompson is bowing out of the GOP presidential primary, I've been wondering, who's next?

The top tier, those who are collecting money, support, or doing well in the polls will be in it to stay. Also in it for the long haul are those for whom the message is way more important than their position in money or polling, or even their own self-respect. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, I'm looking at you. It's the middle tier, those who are serious candidates, have great resumes, but are now facing the obvious. They will never get their party's nomination. At least, not in this cycle.

My vote on the GOP side is for Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. Despite placing third place in the Ames, Iowa Straw Poll, he lost to Mike Huckabee, who is competing for the exact same sets of conservative Christian voters, despite spending almost twice as much money. He's a senator, which is a weaker position than a governor, and there are still two governors or former governors in the race (plus a mayor who was the executive of a city with a bigger population than most of the states.). Basically he's redundant, and at some point he will face those facts, probably before January, long before January.

On the Democratic side, we have a close one between Joe Biden and Chris Dodd. Neither of them have a chance, most folks don't even know they are running. Obama is sucking up all the oxygen and whatever's left is going to Hillary and John Edwards. My bet is that Chris Dodd will bow out first because Joe Biden thinks very, very highly of himself, enough to overcome any feelings of inadequacy about scraping the bottom of the barrel in this contest. Chris Dodd is out before December?

What's your call? Who's out next and when?

This past weekend, I was in a Denny's for breakfast. (Bickford's was closed, and there were too many people at IHOP.) Later I would Wikipedia the franchise and read that, after a series of dismaying racial incidents, Denny's worked to improve its operations and drew praise for its efforts to include minorities in the workplace. (Online research seems to corroborate this.)

The Denny's turnaround indicates that people can make progress in race relations in this country. What are some of the 2008 presidential candidates saying about race?

Sen. Barack Obama has discussed how Americans can unite to overcome racial difficulties. "(Race) permeates our society," he said at the recent Democratic debate. "It is still a critical problem. But I do believe in the core decency of the American people, and I think they want to get beyond some of our racial divisions ... And as president of the United States, my commitment on issues like education, my commitment on issues like health care is to close the disparities and the gaps, because that's what's really going to solve the race problem in this country."

An impressive performance by Senator Chris Dodd on Bill O'Reilly's finger-pointing, blow-hard show. Oh, please protect us from the terrible DailyKos! It's shocking, shocking what gets posted on that site. Hateful! Shade your eyes. Hey, I don't always agree with the good people at DailyKos, but it's truly amusing to hear O'Reilly feign such a tender sensibility. To his credit, Dodd took him to town. Watch.

Leave it to the party of "inclusiveness" to hold a debate in which only a minority group is involved. From 365gay.com:

For the first time the leading candidates for the presidency will hold a televised debate devoted solely to LGBT issues.

The one-hour event will be held on August 9 and broadcast on gay network LOGO at 9:00 pm ET (6:00 pm PT) and through live streaming video at LOGOonline.com.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Chris Dodd have confirmed they will participate. Several other Democratic candidates also may join the debate.

Aren't these candidates running to represent all people? Suppose a debate was proposed devoted solely to white issues? There never will be because it would be considered bigoted to ignore other groups and those who argued such a point would be correct.

The issues facing America are not gay issues, they're not Hispanic, Asian or Black issues either, they're American issues. Homosexuals in America have some core issues they support such as gay unions and the ridiculous "don't ask, don't tell" policy that Bill Clinton thrust on the military. They are important issues that matter to that community, but are not of consequence in the bigger picture.

On the GOP side, the immigration issue is a three-ton anchor around John McCain's neck. He won the last poll and since then has dipped dramatically. For Barack Obama, he seems to have shored up the African-American vote and has assumed a nice lead over Hillary. The numbers are bleak for the second and third tier candidates:

With strong support from the African American community, Illinois Senator Obama has assumed a strong lead over New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. On the Republican side, Thompson zoomed to the top spot, slightly ahead of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, even though he hasn't yet announced his bid for the GOP nomination.

The Mason-Dixon poll, made available to McClatchy Newspapers and NBC News, offered disappointing news for two candidates who previously had been polling well in South Carolina. John Edwards, a South Carolina native who won the primary in 2004, was well behind Obama and Clinton on the Democratic side. Arizona Sen. John McCain, meanwhile, appeared to have lost many of his supporters to Thompson, and was far back in the GOP field.

Obama polled at 34% while Hillary was at 25%. The biggest news is that the hometown boy John Edwards only garnered 12%, a showing that is more dismal given that he has always had major support in the state.

On the Republican side, Fred Thompson beat Rudy Giuliani 25% to 21%, a good amount considering he hasn't even announced. Mitt Romney polled at 11% and McCain is in single digits at 7%.

This handy chart comes to us from the Chris Dodd campaign. Watching the debate, it did seem like Duncan Hunter got a lot of airtime. And Dodd's stopwatch confirms it. Sam Brownback was the second tier guy who had the most camera time, but Hunter seemed to leave a more lasting impact. Of the also-rans (like Mr. Dodd himself), who do you think helped himself the most?

How did the Democrats fare on Sunday night? The Dodd camp clocked their time too.

A few observations from the second Dem debate.

-Unlike Ron Paul, Democratic spoiler Mike Gravel could not keep up the entertaining hijinks from the first debate and looked rather bumbling all around.

-At times it felt as if John Edwards and Barack Obama were having a private conversation.

-Hillary Clinton continues to show that she's a polished candidate. She has an alert, articulate presence, and doesn't wither from attacks (be they from Dennis Kucinich or Edwards).

-If you assumed that each of the moderators' microphones would have been tested before the debate started, you would be wrong.

-Obama is damn good at thinking on his feet, and, of the big three, seemed to answer each question the most directly.

-Bill Richardson did well in stressing his experience, but tends to bite off more than he can chew. Why is Bill Clinton angry at him, and why do we keep worrying about what job the former president will be given?

-Whose bright idea was it to get rid of the podiums and tell them to sit down? And where's Oprah? Somehow I think she'd be better at this format than moderator Wolf Blitzer.

-Thanks to the Fox News Republican debate, it seems that idiotic hypothetical questions will now be a staple of all future debates.

-Joe Biden (whose delivery was, at times, the most impassioned) and Chris Dodd did pretty well but have no chance whatsoever.

-Kucinich and Gravel did poorly and have no chance whatsoever.

Bottom line. A fairly substantive, if not boring, debate.

Political insiders place Chris Dodd in the second tier of Democratic presidential hopefuls. But in his new TV commercial, the Connecticut senator says it's the front-runners that are following his lead.

Dodd's new spot calls out Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by name, saying that both had come around to support an Iraq funding amendment co-sponsored by Chris Dodd. Take a look:



AP reports that the spot will run in New Hampshire and Iowa, costing the Dodd camp about $120,000 in television time.

Let's face it, congressional Dems don't have a particularly strong hand to play in this round of Iraq war poker. Especially those who are running for president in 2008.

Given that their majority is much too slim to override a presidential veto, they are forced into the unenviable position of considering whether to hand over the funds to enbale President Bush to continue his war, despite the fact that nearly every metric out there tells us that things continue to head in the wrong direction, or be seen as depriving our soldiers the tools to fight and protect themselves. More than just a bumper-sticker philosophy, "supporting the troops" is a sticky issue indeed. There are some 160,000 of our own men and women on the ground in Iraq. To date nearly 3,500 have died, and over 26,000 have been wounded in what was supposed to have been a low-casualty, pay-for-itself repeat of the first Persian Gulf War. Here's Joe Biden:

"I believe as long as we have troops in the front line, we're going to have to protect them. We're going to have to fund them."

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have not signaled how they will vote. Chris Dodd will go against the funding bill. John Edwards is shouting on the sidelines for everyone to stand firm and just say no. What makes this moment doubly difficult is the sense that President Bush is simply running out the clock.

Tonight the Democratic candidates square off -- on the same stage, face to face -- at South Carolina State University in Orangesburg, S.C. for the first time in the race. About time! I mean, there are only nine months until we have to vote.

First, the debate rules: This thing lasts 90 minutes; The question order is at the discretion of moderator Brian Williams; each candidate gets 60 second to respond (ha!); and candidates are supposed to refrain from asking direct questions of each other (huh?). So, as one of our commenters pointed out, it's more of a Q&A then debate.

In the most welcome modification to the typical debate format, the candidates skip opening statements. Nor do they go through the usual niceties of thanking everyone. "Consider yourself thanked," deadpanned Williams.

8:30PM Update: And it's over. Though it was a rather civilized affair, with few fireworks and zingers, I have to admit that was a quick 90 minutes -- as far as debates go anyway.

My Quick Thoughts:
- Brian Williams did a good job keeping things moving along, even trying to vary the types of questions. I liked the hand-raising thing on the gun question;
- Good thing little-known Mike Gravel was on hand to supply some moxie. He made the most of the few questions directed at him, going directly after his rivals with a passion rarely displayed the rest of the night;
- Hillary Clinton came across as knowledgeable and likable, willingly offering up mistakes she's made in the past. The Wal-Mart answer was good too;
- Laugh out loud moment: Joe Biden, (in)famous for his "verbosity," was asked if he was capable of a brief answer. The Delaware senator succinctly replied, "Yes."
- Why isn't anyone looking more seriously at Bill Richardson? His candid reply to the Alberto Gonzales question, among others, was refreshing;
- John Edwards took a good ten of his precious 60 seconds to pause before taking on a question about who is his moral compass. It was odd for him, but apparently smart: his choices (his Lord, wife and father) might have been predictable, but the reply as a whole was genuine and compelling.
- The only "scuffle" of the evening was between Barack Obama and Dennis Kucinich, over security and Iran. It was oddly the most memorable debate moment for both men.

So what did you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Missed it? You can watch over at MSNBC. And don't worry: The candidates will be doing this for, oh, another nine months. Plus remember, up next week: the Republicans.

Imus is in trouble and Al Sharpton is not going to let him off easy. Just another opportunity for Sharpton to get himself into the headlines. Here's a guy that should not be casting stones. Imus is in trouble. He screwed up big time. His description of the Rutgers team was demeaning to a group of college women who are in control of their lives. They are good people who were described with a racial slur. Imus has freely disparaged people and has built a career on it.

This morning on the Today Show, Sharpton called for the presidential candidates to boycott the show. Senators McCain, Dodd and Kerry have been regular guests on the show. Many Congressman have been on the show. They come and idolize Imus. They donate to the non profit ranch that he lives on like a king. Will they obey Sharpton? To be specific, Sharpton said, "presidential candidates and other politicians should refrain from going on Imus' show in the future."

Today the Rutgers women's basketball team agreed to meet with Don Imus. In the end, I think we will learn that the only people involved in this entire controversy that have any class are these young women from Rutgers.

UPDATE: McCain will continue to appear on Imus show.

It is becoming a pattern. President Bush, just as he did with John Bolton, decided to give Congress the middle finger concerning the job of Belgian Ambassador. You see, your Commander-in-Chief, sensing that he didn't have the votes to get his nominee, Sam Fox, that crucial position, withdrew his nomination last Wednesday, waited until Congress was away on Spring Break, then slipped him in via recess appointment. Earlier I posted the incendiary exchange between Fox and John Kerry, which can be viewed here.

How'd the president's whacking of the Democratic hornet's nest go over?

Chris Dodd: "This is really now taking the recess appointment vehicle and abusing this beyond anyone's imagination. This is a travesty."

John Kerry: "It's sad but not surprising that this White House would abuse the power of the presidency to reward a donor over the objections of the Senate."

So why did Bush think that Fox was the most qualified man for the job so much so that he just had to have him in Brussels, despite Senate objections? Simple. "Fox has donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates and causes since the 1990's." Hooray! Long live cronyism!

I propose a challenge to every would-be presidential candidate. Watch the following YouTube video and come up with an education platform to address the challenges facing our country.

Any takers? Oh, and following through with that "if MySpace was a country" conjecture, I did a quick survey of the leading candidates' pages to see which has the most "friends." Here are the highly scientific results (as of this writing):

Dems.
Obama: 83,842 friends
Clinton: 31,993 friends
Edwards: 16,153 friends
Dodd: 511 friends

Repubs.
McCain: 2,860 friends
Romney: 2,732 friends
Giuliani: 1,540 friends
Thompson (unofficial site): 376

Seems clear that in MySpace-land young people are a tad more excited about Democrats than Republicans. Maybe it has something to do with the subject of that YouTube video.