Cull Day, because I have no words...

First and foremost: we're apparently STILL running a torture hole in Afghanistan.

The International Committee for the Red Cross says since August 2009 U.S. authorities have been providing the names of prisoners in a separate facility at Bagram Air Base, the BBC reports.

Nine former prisoners have told the BBC they were held in a separate building and subjected to abuse.

Now, aside from mentioning sleep deprivation, this short article doesn't mention specific abuses at Bagram. Nor does it say clearly that these abuses are ongoing, or ended with Obama's January 2009 order.

But the implication here is that Barack Obama has actively continued the Bush administration policy of torture, his own rhetoric notwithstanding. We do know that he explicitly blocked Bagram prisoners from seeking legal recourse such as writ of habeas corpus. We also know that Obama has actively and aggressively blocked any and all attempts to hold torturers and those who ordered torture accountable for their actions. This article does not quite come out and say that Obama has deliberately continued torture... but it does NOT look good for the President.

The fact that Obama has nominated a second Supreme Court justice who believes the President should be all-powerful and unrestricted makes it look even less good, quite frankly. I still say Obama is in all essentials a Republican president.

On this point the Kagan choice probably reflects the perspective of the man who made it, Barack Obama: not the Obama of the 2008 presidential campaign but rather the Obama who has governed since January 20, 2009—broadly continuing the strong executive posture of the Bush team in national security matters.

(BTW, Kagan supports late-term abortion bans- just so you know.)

More on Kagan from Andrew Sullivan:

Her life, so far as one can tell, is her career, and her career has been built by avoiding any tough or difficult political or moral positions, eschewing any rigorous intellectual debate in which she takes a clear stand one way or the other, pleasing every single authority figure she has encountered, and reveling in the approval of the First Class Car Acela Corridor elite. The NYT profile - which is superb apart from its editorial decision to excise any account of any non-trivial private life (she smokes cigars!) since high school - is chilling in its assessment of a human soul in steady, determined pursuit of approval and power.

. . .

Kagan strikes me as the Democratic elite's elitist: free of any conviction that is not caged in a web of Clintonian caution, punctiliously diligent in every aspect of her career, motivated by a desire never to offend those with power, and rewarded in turn by the protection and praise of these elites.

So, yeah. But enough of our Republican President Obama...

The pro-choice candidate for Bart Stupak's Congressional seat has been forced out of the race by the Democratic Party machine.

Democrat Connie Saltonstall, the abortion-rights advocate who challenged retiring Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) after he resisted a health-care overhaul because of his antiabortion stance, ended her campaign Monday after the party establishment closed ranks around another candidate.

. . .

"I am forced to do this because it has become apparent to my campaign that the leadership of the Michigan Democratic Party has preemptively anointed Gary McDowell as their Democratic candidate," Saltonstall said. "They are replacing Bart Stupak with another Upper Peninsula, anti-choice, anti-women's health-care rights candidate."

Want to know the difference between Democrats and Republicans? Republicans take a firm and unyielding stance defending things that are absolutely EVIL; Democrats refuse to take any stance to defend anything GOOD, preferring instead to pursue power for its own sake. The Democratic Party stands for NOTHING- especially not democracy, since they want to deny Yoopers of a choice of Democratic options in the primary.

And finally, evidence that Republican anti-drug and anti-gay positions are based solely on hate: a medical marijuana dispensary in Montana was firebombed, and a Republican state legislator in Iowa wants to deny "family" status to same-sex families using state camping parks.

I probably could- and should- make a long essay on each of these links... but, collectively, they're so depressing that I just don't have the words to do it.

God, but we need something besides the two corrupt parties (and multitude of incompetent third parties) we have now.

Ron Paul: the Entrance Polls Against

Ron Paul managed to meet, maybe even slightly exceed, his opinion polls in Iowa, coming away with about 10% of the vote. That, unfortunately for Rondroids, is about the only good news to come from Iowa for the Paul campaign. Paul finished fifth, ahead of only Rudy Giuliani (who had abandoned Iowa over a month ago) and Duncan Hunter (who has virtually no money and no campaign organization, and thus no votes).

CNN did entrance polls for the Iowa caucuses- a useful tool for dissecting Ron Paul's support, or lack thereof. Although Iowa is a battleground state, its Republican make-up matches that of the western "red states"- overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly evangelist. In this sense, Iowa will reflect well how Ron Paul can be expected to do in other primary states- or, more likely, the best he can expect to do.

First, let's look at the subsections of the entrance poll Ron Paul did best in: Bush-haters and independents. Ron Paul gets a clear majority of voters who are angry about the Bush administration. However, such voters only made up 5% of the turnout in Iowa. Voters who are only dissatisfied with Bush, about one-quarter of the Republican caucus voters, favored Huckabee, Romney, and McCain over Paul. Most important, though, two-thirds of Republican caucus voters were either satisfied or enthusiastic about Bush- which means two-thirds of the Republican Party is pretty much closed to Ron Paul's message.

(And let's pause a moment to think about what that means: two-thirds of Republicans support Guantanamo, support torture, support wars of aggression, and support the concept of president as elected monarch. Think about that with this article in mind. These are people who no longer see torture, indefinite imprisonment, the revocation of essential liberties, and the undermining of free government as wrong. Indeed, they see all these things as beneficial. If I refer to the GOP as the Party of Evil henceforth, you may now understand why.)

The other group Ron Paul won was independents- narrowly. Paul only got 29% of the independent vote, with John McCain following at 23%. What's more, independents and other non-Republicans only made up 14% of the total vote at the caucus. The other 86% was registered Republicans, of whom Ron Paul got only 7%. States which do not allow independents or crossover voting in their primaries and caucuses- like, for example, the Wyoming caucuses tomorrow- will eliminate Paul's independent support.

And if that wasn't bad enough... independents and et cetera were only 14% of about 110,000 Republican voters; call it 16,000 voters. On the other hand, the Democratic caucus had over 230,000 voters... one-quarter of whom were either independent or Republican. Call it 58,000.

That's a total of 74,000 independent voters, give or take a couple thousand... who are going 4-1 Democrat. That's four no-Republican-under-any-circumstances votes to each one Republican-who-may-or-may-not-be-Ron-Paul vote.

No, let's put it this way instead: out of 74,000 independent voters, Ron Paul only got about 4,000, or about 6%.

Which is slightly worse than his support among Republicans.

Now, let's look at some other categories the poll covered.

Ron Paul did very well among voters who thought recent events in Pakistan (Bhutto's assassination, the state of emergency, Musharif's purge of the supreme court) were unimportant... but he still finished behind Huckabee, 38-37%. Furthermore, only 4% of the caucus voters thought Pakistan unimportant. The more important people thought Pakistan was- and nearly half of the Republicans thought it very important indeed- the worse Ron Paul did.

Ron Paul was strongest among the youngest age group, 17-29, mostly first-time caucus goers. This was only 11% of the Republican field, though, as opposed to 22% on the Democratic side. (And, again, remember that more than twice as many Iowans voted Democrat as Republican.) Outside this group, Paul polled from 7% to 9%; inside it, he only polled 21%, beaten by both Romney and Huckabee.

Most interesting: the richer the voter, the less likely they were to support Ron Paul. Except for the very lowest income level, the poorer a voter is, the more likely he or she is to consider Ron Paul. The well-off ($100,000 and up) reject him pretty soundly... which may come as a surprise to people who call big-L Libertarians a bunch of rich greedy white people. In practice, Libertarians are generally not rich; they're poor or middle-class people deeply dissatisfied with how the system isn't working for them. The CNN poll supports this... and, at the same time, shows that the big money in the GOP itself is running like a rabbit away from him.

So, what's the lesson? First, Ron Paul's message is not selling inside the GOP itself, a supermajority of whom like all the things Paul opposes. Second, Paul is highly dependent on independent voters, but he's only getting a tiny fraction of them... in no small part because independents are voting Democratic overwhelmingly in 2008.

And finally... let's compare the Republican and Democrat poll returns in several key areas, shall we? Democrats outpolled Republicans over two to one, recruited young voters by two to one, and attracted independents by four to one. Republicans polled nearly 90% conservative, 10% moderate, no liberal (and Ron Paul's support was mainly moderates, despite his claims to be deeply conservative); Democrats polled only 54% liberal, 40% moderate, and 6% conservative, showing a broader base of support. Most telling, income levels among voters in both parties were roughly equal in proportion... meaning the GOP doesn't even hold the money advantage it had not all that long ago.

Not only does Ron Paul not have the support base required to win the nomination- or even win a single primary or caucus- but the party he continues to support doesn't have the support base to win the 2008 elections, should these trends continue. Ron Paul, and the Republicans, are doomed doomed doomed doomed DOOMED... and they have only themselves, and George W. Bush, to blame for it.

I expect similar polling in New Hampshire to show Democrats again overwhelmingly outpolling Republicans; the state's flipped back and forth the past few general elections.

My attention will be more on the polling for South Carolina, though. If the Democratic primaries get more votes than the Republicans there, in one of the reddest red states, then we can pretty safely expect a national landslide for the Democrats...

Iowa aftermath...

Fred Thompson did better than I expected. I still think his campaign is DOA, though.

Mitt Romney surpised me by failing by as much as he did. His campaign must now be considered as in Real Trouble. If he fails to win in New Hampshire, after dumping so much money both there and in Iowa, color him done.

Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, and Mike Gravel have dropped out of the race.

Clinton, as I predicted, finished third. Now they absolutely have to win New Hampshire, where Clinton has invested a great deal of time and money, if Hillary's going to regain frontrunner status. She's not reacting well, but she is reacting according to type, if this quote from an NBC newswoman is accurate:

"This room was, until about five or six minutes ago, completely empty. This is a manufactured 'celebration.' It really felt more like a funeral as people started strolling in from upstairs where they had obviously been gathered. This is unlike anything that I've ever seen, a completely empty, dirge-like event. ".

Edwards is done; he just doesn't know it yet.

Ron Paul still doesn't have a chance; he only beat a man even more looney than he is and a man who hadn't spent a dime in Iowa for six weeks. He might- MIGHT, but I doubt it- place third in New Hampshire, but that is as good as he'll do until and unless the Republican field thins out a LOT.

But for now, the Democratic field is down to Obama, Edwards, Clinton, Richardson and Kucinich. That makes my decision on which one to support for President quite a bit simpler, I think...