Obama blows it

I just do not get the strategy here. Obama has is surrogate asking why Hillary did not cry during Katrina.

Voter's don't want a President who goes weepy in response to events like Katrina. They want the President to care deeply but be capable of holding it all together.

This now gives Clinton an opportunity to come back and point out that the appropriate response to the Bush administration efforts during Katrina would be anger, outrage and not that on the whole she is greatly relieved that her response is not being shown continuously on cable news.

The tears are certainly powerful for Clinton, so why do Obama's advisers want to remind everyone about them for a second news cycle? Ignore it and hope it dies.

Clinton wins

If you have not seen the video of Clinton 'tearing up' you should. Reports are vastly misleading. It was without a doubt what won it for her in my mind.

The Clinton campaign had been failing for much the same reason the Gore and Kerry campaigns failed: the voters never got to feel that the highly scripted, risk averse picture of the candidate that the professional consultants were trying to project was authentic. When the mask splipped and the voters got a glimpse of what was behind it they connected with it.



It is also likely that Clinton did benefit from the backlash against the sexist reports in the press. Several Edwards leaning bloggers said his response 'made it easy for them to let go'. Everyone expected the media to be playing the hysterical woman story. They were visibly piling on. Folk who were thinking about a punt on Obama as against racism switched to Hilary.

Clinton was 'teary' and did demonstrate 'emotion' but she was not in tears and she was not emotional. Any candidate out on the trail, whether they have a vagina or not would have been pleased to deliver that performance. But for Hillary it was even more powerful because it completely shattered the press story that she is a cold, calculating, robot. She made the authentic emotional connection to her audience that Gore and Kerry never managed to do.

H/T Talking Points Memo

Worlds worst victory speech

It might just be me but McCain's victory speech seemed to be the worst ever.

Empty platitude after empty platitude. Tired, empty rhetoric, including that perenial favorite of voing to change and fix broken Washington politics. A promise made by every US politician since they moved the capital to the Potomac.

Just why do the campaigns think that this is helping them? If you have something to say, say it. But always the golden rule is thou shalt not bore.

The dangers of amateur red teaming

The BBC reports that Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson was stung after bank prank.

In the aftermath of the recent data breach of two Inland Revenue CD-ROMs containing the bank account details of 23 million UK citizens, Clarkson thought that people should stop the panic. You are perfectly safe, said Clarkson, see here is my own bank account number to prove it.

Oops.

500 quid the poorer due to an unauthorized direct debit from his account to a charity Clarkson is now saying he has learned his lesson, unfortunately though I think he has learned the wrong one.

The lesson people should draw from this is that it is a very bad idea to red team security measures of other people's systems. In the wake of 9/11 the number of people testing the security of airport scanners became a serious nuisance. Red teaming the security of bank security systems with your own money is a very bad idea.

But designing bank security systems that are proof against Jeremy Clarkson is a very good idea. If you can build something so secure that Clarkson cannot break it you are doing something right. Here is a video of Clarkson and friends taking their car to a car wash and, well, setting light to it in the process.



In this video we see the results of Clarkson taking a caravan holiday.



Barclays should consider themselves very lucky that Clarkson did not burn them down.

Depressing

Was there ever an occasion when the governments of two countries were each as keen for the other to initiate a war that would be so catastrophic for both. It appears that Iran is attempting to provoke the US Navy.

The most innocent explanation of this is that Iran considers $100 to be too cheap for a barrel of oil.

It appears that both sides believe that they would win a military confrontation but the loss of life on both sides would be huge.

Huckabee comes in fourth in Iowa

So, turns out my prediction for Huckabee was wrong, he came fourth. That's if you count the total vote:

24.5% Obama
20.5% Edwards
19.8% Clinton
11.4% Huckabee (R)

(h/t Making Light)

Genlock attack

In the very early days of www.whitehouse.gov a major security concern the Whitehouse staff raised was the possibility that the site might be taken over by hackers. The typical coup plot of the 1970s made capture of the TV station the first priority. Control the news and you control the government.

So the recent case in which a group of Czech hackers inserted a nuclear mushroom cloud burst into a weather forecast should be considered a pretty big deal.

The attack itself was a prank. The hackers climbed a mast carrying a fixed camera that provides a panoramic shot in the daily forecast. A computer was spliced into the picture feed from the camera. When the shot appeared on TV the hackers activated a genlock system that spliced in footage of a nuclear mushroom cloud burst.

As such efforts go: simple but effective.

TV companies have been using similar technology for years. In one infamous incident one TV company used a genlock attack to replace rival Fox News advertising signs in a Times Square broadcast.

We have not yet seen a major cyberwarfare attack, but this is the most likely scenario should one occur: splice either deliberate disinformation (mushroom cloud) into the TV stream or hard hitting propaganda of the type Hamas and Hezbollah supporters regularly splice into hacked Israeli Web sites.

Journamalism and the Pack

TPM posts the AP story that Dodd drops presidential bid after failure to break from Democratic pack

'Failure to break from the pack'?

Dodd did not fail to break from the pack, he scored 0.02%. That is not failing to break from the pack, Dodd never came close to reaching the pack. He barely managed to cross the starting line.

Biden is also out but Richards and Thompson are both staying in the race. I don't expect Richards to last much longer but as with Kucinich it does not much matter whether he is in or out. Hopefully the TV stations start only inviting candidates who have either polled 5% or more in the primaries to date or are curently polling above 5% nationally. ABC is almost doing that, but they made the mistake of inviting candidates who place in the top four spots in Iowa or 5% in NH or national polls, that makes little sense when the difference between third and fourth in Iowa was 30% to 2%.

Thompson staying in the GOP race is much more significant, if he had left there could well have been a mass exodous. Instead it looks like the six pack will stick together through Super-Tuesday. That could well mean an acrimonious brokered convention for the GOP.

If the Obama surge continues and Edwards stays in contention we might in theory see a brokered convention for the Democrats as well. I don't think this is likely though. The race will start to tip and when it does there will be a deal.

The biggest loser on the GOP side however was Fox news. It is going to be really hard to see why Paul should be excluded from the Fox news debate when he trounced Giuliani in the actual vote in Iowa, is running far ahead of Thompson in the polls and out-raised the rest of the field in the last quarter. From now on its not only going to be liberals referring to Fox as Faux News.

Does Giuliani's cyberwar make any sense?

According to TPM Giuliani has unveiled a new campaign platform: more war. In particular, cyberwar. According to the The New York Sun:

Specifically, Mr. Giuliani will call for a new military surge in Afghanistan, a change in the way America's spies are promoted so that officers are rewarded for finding actionable intelligence and not just the number of agents they recruit, and a new war on Al Qaeda's intricate network of Web sites, sites used both to communicate with its agents in the field and to recruit new jihadis.

Does this make sense?

The Internet is certainly used by terrorist groups just as it is also used by opposition groups that Western governments would like to encourage. Terrorists use the Internet in three main ways:

1) Distributing propaganda
2) Fundraising
3) Perpetrating attacks

Blocking propaganda is a fools errand as a number of Israeli hackers discovered after they targeted pro-Hamas sites on the Web. Pro-Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah hackers retaliated against Israeli Web sites. The result was far short of a stalemate however. Propaganda distribution through the Internet is not vulnerable to a denial of service attack: supporters will find alternative outlets. But an Internet business is highly vulnerable; no service means no business. Within a very short time the Israeli atackers had run out of targets while their opponents worked their way through the .il zone in alphabetical order. today the original Israeli hackers are expensive consultants to companies being attacked in the cyberwar they provoked.

So the prospects for blocking propaganda? Very poor. Improvements in technology favor defense.

The prospects for blocking fundraising are considerably better. Blocking the flow of funds is by far the most reliable means of bringing a terrorist campaign to an end. The Bader-Meinhof gang spent far more time robbing banks than thinking about politics. The Provisional IRA was able to sustain its campaign for far longer than any other European terrorist group and kill more people because its source of funds from the US was far more reliable than those available to Bader-Meinhof, Action Direkt or even Eta. When the NORAID fund line was finally severed in the aftermath of 9/11 the IRA quickly agreed to a permanent end to hostilities.

Blocking fundraising means proofing the banking infrastructure against the profitable forms of Internet crime. It is an important task that I lay a detailed plan for in The dotCrime Manifesto which became available today.

But nobody should suggest that blocking Internet Crime is going to seriously affect the fundraising capabilities of Al Qaeda which grew rich off the profits from the Afghanistan opium trade. so prospects for blocking Al Qaeda using this approach? Very poor.

That only leaves the use of the Internet to perpetrate attacks. Use of the Internet to intercept and disrupt Al Qaeda communication capabilities is certainly feasible and has been taking place since before 9/11. Giuliani is presenting his ideas as a departure from existing policy. If this is something new rather than a cynical repackaging of existing practice it must mean perpetrating cyber-attacks on Al Qaeda.

Again the there is an asymmetry: the US presents far more targets for the cyber-terrorist than the cyber-terrorist presents to the US. Cyber-defense should be considered a vital national priority. But anyone who imagines that the US can use this as a weapon against Al Qaeda has a profound lack of understanding of the field. We might as well try to use submarine warfare to eliminate Al Qaeda's non-existent fleet than use cyberwarfare against their non-existent Internet infrastructure.

Unless Al Qaeda establishes an infrastructure worth attack the prosepects for this type of cyber-warfare against them is again very poor.

In short, this new speach does not make sense unless either Giuliani does not understand what he is talking about or is trying to work out how to drum up new business for Giuliani Partners when he returns.

Fatasy Cacusing

Novak predicts the Iowa Cacuses. As ever with the douchebag of liberty it is necessary to take his prognostications with more than a pinch of skepticism, particularly on the Democratic side.

His prediction for the GOP:

1st Place: Mitt Romney
2nd Place: Mike Huckabee
3rd Place: Fred Thompson
4th Place: John McCain

I don't think this is right. Thompson has been running well below Paul in the national polls and its not clear that he offers anything more than a face to put to 'none of the above'. McCain is polling above him and I think Paul could beat both. Huckabee has been outpolling Romney in Iowa and the state that nominated Pat Robertson must be his best shot. I would say:

1st Place: Mike Huckabee
2nd Place: Mitt Romney
3rd Place: Ron Paul
4th Place: John McCain

Admittedly Novak does hedge somewhat and admit that a Paul outcome is a possibility but if you allow for all his hedges and such there are very few plausible outcomes Novak excludes. We do both agree that Giuliani comes fifth and is thus unlikely to place at all.

Needless to say, if Paul places in the top four it will become impossible for Faux News to keep him out of the New Hampshire debate. Paul, Giuliani and Huckabee are in a statistical tie in New Hampshire at 8, 11 and 10 percent.

His prediction for the Democrats:

1st Place: Barack Obama
2nd Place: John Edwards
3rd Place: Hillary Clinton
4th Place: Bill Richardson

Again he hedges, essentially allowing any of the top three candidates to place in any order. I think that he is reading his own hatred of Hilary when he suggests that hardball tactics against Obama may have hurt her. The Democrats are looking for the candidate who can beat the GOP. Barack's biggest liability amongst Democrats is that he is too centrist, too willing to compromise, too willing to capitulate to movement conservative veto threats on every issue.

What it really comes down to in Iowa is organization. Clinton and Edwards have been through Iowa before, Clinton has the longest history and a strong ground game. While some Democrats may be nervous about voting for Clinton thinking what the GOP might attempt to do to her they also know that any Democratic candidate will get the same treatment, if they can call a war hero a coward while running a cocaine snorting draft dodger they can smear anyone. I can't see someone who thinks a woman is unelectable thinking that a black male would be any more electable. So I recon that Clinton and Obama should be reversed:

1st Place: Hillary Clinton
2nd Place: John Edwards
3rd Place: Barack Obama
4th Place: Bill Richardson

Again Novak hedges by remembering the Dean crash, but you can't back every horse.

I think that the more interesting question is for which candidates Iowa represents a 'must win state' and which ones can afford a loss. Romney and Huckabee both need a strong result, neither can afford to do any worse than second, but the pressure is greatest on Romney whose campaign strategy was to win Iowa so convincingly that he looked unbeatable.

Clinton can probably afford to lose Iowa as its not considered part of the Democratic heartland or the battleground states. Obama on the other hand has created a strong expectation of a win. He has to do well to maintain credibility,.

Any candidate that fails to place in Iowa is going to face questions as to whether they are viable. All can survive for the time being but anyone who comes fifth or worse in Iowa and New Hampshire can expect credibility questions. Thompson is currently polling at 2.5% in NH and might well drop out before the poll. That will notch up the pressure on Giuliani who is barely ahead of Huckabee and Paul in New Hampshire. There might even be some folk crossing over to support Paul with a view to dropping Rudy and/or Romney out of the race.

If there are going to be any upsets in either Iowa or NH they are going to come from either Paul or McCain on the positive side (i.e. exceeding expectations) Clinton or Obama on the negative side (i.e. falling far short of expectations).

The bigger bet then is which candidates will still be considered viable by the establishment media after NH. It is quite possible, likely even that Clinton will be the only viable Democrat comming out of NH. I expect that Biden and Richardson will have folded. On the Republican side it is quite likely that Thompson, and Romney will both be out and Giuliani's campaign will be on life support. Admittedly the same has been said of McCain before now, but there is a big difference between polls and real votes. These are real votes.