Signs of disarray on the verge of January 3, via The Page:

Response to Huckabee Event from Romney Campaign

From Spokesman Kevin Madden:

Good afternoon, folks-

For those of you who saw it with your own eyes, there’s no need for me to describe how bizarre it was.

But for those of you who didn’t, The Politico has a report of Mike Huckabee’s meltdown at a campaign press conference today where he displayed a negative TV ad attacking Governor Romney, at the same time he said he was running a “positive” campaign.

The Key Quote from The Politico:

“It’s the sort of gambit that will instantly trigger cynicism among the political class, especially given the confusion that surrounded the move.””

Here’s the full report:

WHAT THE…??!!

Huckabee won’t air negative ads

POLITICO
Jonathan Martin
http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1207/Huckabee_wont_air_negative_ads.html

In a surprise move, Mike Huckabee said today that he won’t air negative ads against Mitt Romney.

Claiming that he changed this mind this morning, Huckabee told reporters gathered in anticipation of seeing the spots that he would no longer attack Romney off the air, either.

But Huckabee still aired the ad he cut yesterday in which he criticized Romney on fiscal matters, gun control, law and order and abortion.

Additionally, Huckabee spoke surrounded by five placards on easels leveling the same attacks in print on Romney.

Asked to explain the pledge to stay positive with his decision to still show the ad and display the oppo, Huckabee said his staff hadn’t known of his decision until minutes before the event and that he only showed the negative spot to prove that he had actually cut one and had made this decision.

It’s the sort of gambit that will instantly trigger cynicism among the political class, especially given the confusion that surrounded the move.

Charmaine Yoest, a top aide to the former governor, said after the press conference that she didn’t know until Huckabee’s decision to not air the ads until shortly before the event and that there hadn’t been time to take down the signs.

But, surrounded by reporters in a hallway outside the conference room, she wouldn’t say exactly when she found out about the decision.

“This is an evolving strategy,” Yoest admitted.

The ProJo's Sunday Money & Business section closes the year, sadly, without any staff-written content on the section front, although there is a useful Associated Press piece on the second page about the so-called XO laptop (previously described in the New York Times), a cheap (under $200) computer that is helping to bring poor children into the contemporary age:

Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago.

These offspring of peasant families whose monthly earnings rarely exceed the cost of one of the $188 laptops people who can ill afford pencil and paper much less books can't get enough of their "XO" laptops.

At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines.

"It's really the kind of conditions that we designed for," Walter Bender, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff, said of this agrarian backwater up a precarious dirt road.

Founded in 2005 by former MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte, the One Laptop program has retreated from early boasts that developing-world governments would snap up millions of the pint-sized laptops at $100 each.

In a backhanded tribute, One Laptop now faces homegrown competitors everywhere from Brazil to India and a full-court press from Intel Corp.'s more power-hungry Classmate.

But no competitor approaches the XO in innovation. It is hard drive-free, runs on the Linux operating system and stretches wireless networks with "mesh" technology that lets each computer in a village relay data to the others.

Mass production began last month and Negroponte, brother of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, says he expects at least 1.5 million machines to be sold by next November. Even that would be far less than Negroponte originally envisioned. The higher-than-initially-advertised price and a lack of the Windows operating system, still being tested for the XO, have dissuaded many potential government buyers.

Courtesy of Scott MacKay, master of the juxtaposition:

State government is broke, Rhode Island was one of only two states to lose population in 2007, the schools lag those of its New England neighbors, college grads tend to flee the day they earn their degrees, our bridges are crumbling, some pols are in cahoots with crooked businessmen, and a felon hosts a show on the state’s biggest talk radio station.

Despite this grim combo, the ProJo scribe, in his year in review story today, finds a mixed outlook:

State leaders were AWOL during a December snowstorm. Traffic snarled from Pawcatuck to Pawtucket. Governor Carcieri was in Iraq. Nobody told Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts he was going.

Yet 2007 wasn’t all traffic jams, layoffs and plea bargains.

Rhode Island colleges and universities were rated among the most prestigious in the United States, our health-care system is one of the nation’s tops, and philanthropist Warren Alpert left Brown University’s medical school $100 million.

Providence continued its rebirth as a hip center of culture, entertainment, hospitality, medicine and culinary excellence. The state’s violent crime rate, already one of the nation’s lowest, went down, childhood poverty dropped, and the once-threatened piping plovers made a comeback on Rhode Island’s sandy southern coast.

The billowing majesty of the Tall Ships filled Newport Harbor under a shimmering June sun. Our theater groups were among the region’s best. In a country that lives by the 21st-century religion of velocity and worship of the new, we venerate the past and dwell in cozy neighborhoods in houses from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Sports fans from New York to Los Angeles are envious of the success of our beloved New England franchises — the Sox, Pats, Celts, Bruins, PawSox and P-Bruins.

Looking back at 2007 in Rhode Island is like going to a family reunion: you recognize everybody but notice they have changed. Your view of the event is shaped by whether you see the eggnog bowl as half full or half empty.

* Common spelling among the ink-stained.

The Warwick City Council might have done Mayor Scott Avedisian a favor by forcing his hand in the firing of the city's crossing guards. While the cause-and-effect is clear, it removes a bugaboo that had become a source for criticism and jibes with the current environment of austerity and diminished public funds.

Still, if Avedisian runs in the Republican primary for governor in 2010, we can count on Steve Laffey to remind us that it was the city council that precipitated this action.

Meanwhile, in another expression of the current moment, the ProJo's editorial board today comes down on Paul Doughty.

Mr. Doughty said that he saw nothing wrong in charging the taxpayers for no work done on their behalf. That’s just the way it works. Such arrogance and sense of entitlement is all too common in some public-employee union chiefs in Rhode Island.

The case raises several issues the public should pursue:

• Did Mr. Doughty break any laws, such as those involving fraud, in collecting paychecks while failing to show up for work for three years? Did his supervisors break any laws or regulations in failing to keep an eye on this practice? The union contract lets the president take time off for union business, but it does not specify how much. Can he demonstrate that he was, in fact, working on union business every hour of that time? Can anyone prove that he was not?

• Mayor Cicilline is ultimately responsible for making sure Providence taxpayers get their money’s worth. Is he on top of this problem?

• Was Mr. Doughty, in fact, eligible for expensive overtime if he was not working for the public during the time he claimed to be doing union business?

• Why do those who supposedly represent the citizens — in this case, former Mayor Vincent Cianci, before he went to jail for running City Hall as a criminal conspiracy — negotiate contracts that force taxpayers to pay for union activity that often directly conflicts with taxpayers’ own interests? That practice must be stopped, not only in public safety, but also in public education.

• The public must be kept better informed about what is being negotiated in contracts. To that end, all public-employee union contracts, by law, should be posted on the Internet and made readily accessible to citizens. Meanwhile, citizens have a duty, too: to study those contracts closely to learn just what the taxpayers are funding, and demand that contracts serve the public’s interest.

As things now stand, Rhode Island pays an inordinate amount for fire protection, while dealing with great difficulties in affording local services and facing massive state deficits. The arrogant behavior exemplified by Mr. Doughty, in collecting his paycheck while providing little of value to the taxpayers, needs to be squeezed out of the system.

Steven J. Coaty of Middletown Newport, the latest of that rare species -- Republican legislators in Rhode Island -- is slated to be sworn into office during a ceremony in the House chamber at 5 today. The perfect timing to bury the news before New Year's, or a good send-off into the holiday weekend? Since Speaker William J. Murphy is hosting a reception afterwards, we'll say the latter.

Earlier this week, Ed Achorn conveniently overlooked Democrat Frank Ferri's special election victory in Warwick in ascribing seismic importance to Coaty's GOP triumph over former Democratic senator Clement "Bud" Cicilline. Special elections tend to be a breed apart, and Dems say that Cicilline's ground campaign was weak. Still, the way in which Ferri beat an endorsed Dem in the primary suggests a possible openness among voters to anti-establishment candidates.

Charlie Bakst wrote yesterday about the newest Republican legislator:

Coaty is a smooth talker, with a wink that may charm you, but his message has bite. He says of his district’s residents, “People were frustrated and very tired of a Democratic-dominated Assembly. They were, obviously, concerned about corruption, and they thought those two went together. And they were very, very concerned about taxes and the deficit. I mean, I heard that over and over … They communicated to me that they greatly appreciated the fact I was running … People are really anxious and eager for new blood.”

What a freshman Republican can achieve in a sea of Democrats is anyone’s guess. “The first thing I think I’m going to tell them is that the time for partisan bickering is over. I think Rhode Islanders are sick of the stalemates.”

Coaty campaigned against tax hikes and said he’d cut spending, but I reminded him last week that when specific cuts are proposed, the lobbyists and interest groups from his district will howl that reduced service will hurt people. What will he do then? “A decent society will take care of the neediest, but has to be efficient,” he said. “The days when you can say, ‘Not in my backyard,’ or ‘Don’t touch my rice bowl,’ are over. I would think everybody’s going to have to sacrifice.”

Yet even with a $450 million budget deficit, population shrinkage, and other problems, Rhode Island remains tough terrain for the GOP, and Republicans face an uphill battle in Rhode Island. So we'll have to wait to see just how well Gio Cicione and his allies do next November in storming Smith Hill.

Denise Parrillo of Clean Water Action sends this along:

Providence, RI—Today the Environment Council of Rhode Island, a coalition of over 60 RI organizations, released its annual list of desired policy and law changes that will protect and enhance the environment. This list highlights the changes the Council will work for during the upcoming legislative session. 

 

This year, the Environment Council will focus on:

 

➢      Fighting global warming. RI needs 80% reductions in global warming pollution by the year 2050. These are the reductions that scientists say are necessary to avert the worst impacts of global warming in our state.

 

➢      Protecting our waters and water supply. RI needs to protect and manage our natural resources to ensure wise use and to accommodate future growth. 

 

➢      Promoting clean energy.  RI needs clean, renewable sources of energy so we can maintain our way of life, protect the environment, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and promote new technologies.

 

➢      Managing solid waste responsibly. RI needs to guard against the pollution caused by the improper disposal of electronic waste and plastic bags and the incineration of trash at Central Landfill.  

 

➢      Promoting clean transportation. RI needs to clean up large, polluting diesel vehicles and promote public transit, safe pedestrian passage, and adequate routes for bicycling. 

 

➢      Preserving open spaces. RI needs to continue to invest in open space programs so that we have beautiful places for future generations to enjoy. 

 

➢      Promoting toxic-free communities. RI needs to make polluters pay to clean up the toxins they impose on our communities and protect children from harmful pesticides on school grounds.

Phoenix contributing illustrator Steve Brosnihan has long raved about breakfasts at The Barn, in the Adamsville section of Little Compton, and Bill Rodriguez this week helps to explain why:

What also intrigued me were their four interesting variations on eggs Benedict ($8.25-$10.95), in addition to the regular one, which included one with lobster and asparagus. There were no eggs Florentine. Instead, the spinach version was eggs Sardou, with artichoke hearts, roasted garlic, and creamed spinach under the hollandaise sauce. That last one Johnnie especially appreciated when she was here before. (The other item she sampled and liked then was “Adamsville jonnycakes” [$3.95], done East Bay-style, thin, crisp, and pancake size.)

However, the version they call “Eggs on the Bayou” ($9.95) is now my absolute favorite, bar none. The poached eggs on the English muffin halves are over crab cakes and under a Creole hollandaise sauce. The yoke and crab and just-hot-enough lemony sauce perfectly complement one another. Exquisite. And the chunks of home fries, by the way, are nicely herbed with rosemary. A small wedge of watermelon is a quirky and refreshing touch.

Click here for the whole review.

You can't make this stuff up.

I'd already heard about this happening at one Southern metro daily, and the AP (h/t Romenesko) has more details:

The Miami Herald is outsourcing some of its advertising production work to India, the newspaper's editor said Thursday.

Starting in January, copyediting and design in a weekly section of Broward County community news and other special advertising sections will be outsourced to Mindworks, based in New Delhi.

The project is still in the testing phase, so it was not clear if or how employment in South Florida will be affected, Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said.

Mindworks will also monitor reader comments posted to online stories, he said.

Earlier this month, The Sacramento Bee, also owned by the McClatchy Co., announced it would outsource some of its advertising production work to India.

In May, news Web site, pasadenanow.com, was widely criticized after editors hired two reporters in India to cover the Los Angeles suburb.

Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano of North Providence joined guest host Tim White and myself for a taping this morning of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers, steering wide of answering specific questions about Operation Dollar Bill and offering few details about how the General Assembly will help the state to curb its $450 million budget deficit.

Asked by White whether he has been called before a grand jury probing Dollar Bill, Montalbano basically declined to comment. In terms of seeing his name linked to the Dollar Bill probe by the Providence Journal, the legislative leader responded, "I said from the beginning that I am going to defend my integrity to the death." Without getting specific, Montalbano accused the ProJo of engaging in "misreporting."

Although 2007 was a somewhat tough year for Montalbano -- with considerable media attention focusing on Senators Daniel Daponte and Stephen Alves, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, not to mention his own issues with the state Ethics Commission -- there hasn't been so much of a whisper about a challenge to the Senate president when the General Assembly resumes business next Tuesday.

For his part, Montalbano expressed satisfaction that the Ethics Commission did not find a conflict of interest as part of his $12,000 settlement over his previously undisclosed legal work for town of West Warwick. (And as Charlie Bakst previously reported, he still harbors hope of landing a state judgeship.) In response to my question about how long he hopes to remain Senate president, the 19-year senator said for at least one more term. (Speaker William J. Murphy has suggested a self-imposed eight-year term limit for himself.)

Despite Steven Coaty's win in Newport (and that of Frank Ferri in Warwick, who didn't gain the official Democratic imprimatur in his primary), Montalbano says 2008 will not see broad gains in the General Assembly by Republican candidates.

In terms of the state budget deficit, Montalbano said the state should seek to be more efficient. He had some kind words for Governor Carcieri, and in response to a question about strained relations between Carcieri and the Democrat-controlled legislature, he said his door remains open.

The show will be broadcast Sunday, at 5:30 am on Channel 12 and at 10 am on Fox 64.

Matt Bai had a timely and penetrating story in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, looking at how Democrats' dueling fondness for Bill Clinton and their dislike for "Clintonism" will impact the upcoming presidential race.

Many of those who support Obama, of course, do so because they prefer the contrast that he represents to the establishment personified by Hillary Clinton. 

So Bai wonders about Bill Clinton's legacy: 

I found it hard not to wonder why so many of the challenges facing the next president were almost identical to those he vowed to address in 1992. Why, after Clinton’s two terms in office, were we still thinking about tomorrow? In some areas, most notably health care, Clinton tried gamely to leave behind lasting change, and he failed. In many more areas, though, the progress that was made under Clinton — almost 23 million new jobs, reductions in poverty, lower crime and higher wages — had been reversed or wiped away entirely in a remarkably short time. Clinton’s presidency seems now to have been oddly ephemeral, his record etched in chalk and left out in the rain.

Supporters of the Clintons see an obvious reason for this, of course — that George W. Bush and his Republican Party have, for the past seven years, undertaken a ferocious and unbending assault on Clinton’s progressive legacy. As Clinton points out in his speeches, Bush and the Republicans abandoned balanced budgets to fight the war in Iraq, widened income inequality by cutting taxes on the wealthy and scaled back social programs. ....

Some Democrats, though, and especially those who are apt to call themselves “progressives,” offer a more complicated and less charitable explanation. In their view, Clinton failed to seize his moment and create a more enduring, more progressive legacy — not just because of the personal travails and Republican attacks that hobbled his presidency, but because his centrist, “third way” political strategy, his strategy of “triangulating” to find some middle point in every argument, sapped the party of its core principles. By this thinking, Clinton and his friends at the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist think tank that served as a platform for his bid for national office, were so desperate to woo back moderate Southern voters that they accepted conservative assertions about government (that it was too big and unwieldy, that what was good for business was good for workers) and thus opened the door wide for Bush to come along and enact his extremist agenda with only token opposition. In other words, they say, he was less a victim of Bush’s radicalism than he was its enabler.

Bai goes on to say that "the discussion of Clintonism among party activists -- and especially online -- often displays a stunning lack of historical perspective."

For a lot of younger Democrats, in particular, whose political consciousness dates back only as far as 1994 or even to the more recent days of Clinton’s impeachment, the origins of Clintonism have become not only murky but also irrelevant. “Clintonism” is, in much of the Democratic activist universe, a synonym for spinelessly appeasing Republicans in order to win, an establishment philosophy assumed to comprise no inherent principles of its own.

Lost in all this is the fact that, back in the day, Clinton and his New Democrats were themselves the outsiders taking on the ruling interest groups of the Democratic establishment the analog to bloggers and MoveOn.org activists, albeit from a different ideological direction. And it took no small amount of courage, at the end of the Reagan era, to argue inside the Democratic Party that the liberal orthodoxies of the New Deal and the Great Society, as well as the culture of the antiwar and civil rights movements, had become excessive and inflexible. Not only were Democratic attitudes toward government electorally problematic, Clinton argued; they were just plain wrong for the time.

Immediately after assuming the chairmanship of the D.L.C. in 1990, Clinton issued something called the New Orleans Declaration, which laid out the D.L.C.’s attack on old liberalism in a series of 15 core principles. By today’s standards, these principles don’t amount to much more than typical Clintonian rhetoric, but at the time, they seemed like a good way for a young Democratic governor to permanently marginalize himself in a party dominated by Big Labor, civil rights leaders and Northeastern liberals.

Bringing it into the present, "triangulation" has become a euphemistic bad word on the campaign trail when used by other Dems:

Edwards and Obama have tried, often subtly, to trash Clintonism without criticizing the former president himself. The first might be called the triangulation story line. Edwards unsheathed the word like a poison-tipped arrow at the same YouTube debate where Hillary Clinton declined to be called a liberal. “Do you believe that compromise, triangulation, will bring about big change?” he asked the audience. “I don’t.” Thwang. Since then, Edwards has at every opportunity tried to encourage liberal voters in their view that the Clinton era was a time of craven calculation and surrender to the conservative movement. In October, after Clinton was asked in a debate if she supported a New York State plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants — and after she tried to twist her way out of answering with such tenacity that she nearly invented a new yoga position — the Edwards campaign released a video titled “The Politics of Parsing,” which showed Clinton contradicting herself on other issues too. The subtext was clear: Do you really want to go through all that again?

Obama, who once vowed to adhere to the “new politics” of genial campaigning, has picked up on this same triangulation theme with evident enthusiasm in recent months. In Spartanburg, S.C., last month, he said that Clinton had been running a “textbook” campaign — whose textbook wasn’t hard to discern — that “encourages vague, calculated answers to suit the politics of the moment, instead of clear, consistent principles about how you would lead America.” Later in the month, at a dinner for leading Iowa Democrats, Obama used the dreaded epithet itself. “Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we’re worried about what Mitt or Rudy might say about us just won’t do,” he said, as Hillary Clinton sat a few feet away.

Yet Bai ultimately comes down with the view that Bill Clinton played a pivotal role not just in modernizing the Democratic Party, but in influencing virtually all of the party's current presidential candidates, with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich:

Obama can rail about poll-tested positions and partisanship if he wants, but some of his most memorable speeches since being elected to the Senate have baldly echoed Clintonian themes and language. He has repeatedly called on poor African-Americans to take more responsibility for their parenting and their children’s education, and he has been skeptical of centralized federal programs for the poor, advocating a partnership between government and new kinds of community-based nonprofits. He has railed against “a mass-media culture that saturates our airwaves with a steady stream of sex, violence and materialism.” Such “values” stances were far outside the mainstream of the party before Bill Clinton expressed them. ....

Similarly, Edwards, doing his best William Jennings Bryan impression, lashes out at the policy priorities of the ’90s and at poverty deepened by corporate venality, but his arsenal of specific proposals includes expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and accelerating the process of moving people out of public housing and into mixed-income neighborhoods. These new ideas are actually extensions of Clinton-era programs; they may be notable for their boldness but not for their originality. And even Edwards, in criticizing the lack of aid for poor Americans, has constructed his ambitious agenda on the central premise that people should get assistance only if they’re willing to work for it. In today’s environment, this hardly qualifies as noteworthy — there’s no serious Democratic candidate who would propose anything else — but it represents a marked shift from the party’s stance on welfare programs before Clinton started talking about those who “work hard and play by the rules.” ....

Clinton’s rhetorical influence, in fact, spans not just the Democratic Party but really the entire spectrum of American politics. Today politicians throw around phrases like “the new economy” or “the information age” as if they have always been part of the political lexicon, and yet most ordinary voters didn’t really grasp that America was undergoing a profound upheaval — moving from an industrial economy to one centered on intellectual and service industries — until Clinton showed up to masterfully explain it. Few American politicians talked about “globalization” before Clinton, as a candidate, stood on factory floors and argued that the next era’s economy would be nothing like the last, and that for workers, the transition would be painful but also full of promise. Clinton wasn’t the first candidate to grasp this change and to put it into words, but he was by far the most persuasive. He also articulated a philosophy of how to deal with these challenges that transcended the binary ideological struggle between outright entitlement and Darwinian self-reliance. When you go into a hospital now and see a placard on the wall that lists a patient’s “rights” directly opposite his “responsibilities” as a citizen, that’s Clinton’s influence. At its best, Clintonism represented a more modern relationship between government and individuals, one that demanded responsibilities of both.

Words aren’t the same thing as achievements, of course, but at critical points in history, they can move a country forward by modernizing the debate, and in this way, Clinton’s comparing himself with Theodore Roosevelt, the president who dragged politics into the industrial age, is apt. Perhaps it’s true that Clinton’s presidency will be remembered as a series of lost opportunities — “the Great Squandering,” as the historian David Kennedy recently described it to me. But it’s also possible that history will record Bill Clinton as the first president of the 21st century, the man who synthesized the economic and international challenges of the next American moment, even if he didn’t make a world of progress in solving them.

Dan Shaughnessy predicts that the New Year will be kind to former Red Sox slugger Jim Rice.

Rich Gossage and Rice should top this year's ballot, gathering the necessary 75 percent of the vote. There would be nice symmetry in the sight of this duo walking through the gates of the Hall together. Rice and Gossage were two of the central figures of the 1978 pennant race and it would be appropriate to see them enshrined on the 30th anniversary of the great race.

Adding to the 1978 Boston-New York theme, the late Larry Whiteside, pioneer of African-American baseball writers and a man who wrote thousands of words about Rice and Gossage, will be awarded the J.G. Taylor Spink Award posthumously when the hardball world gathers in Cooperstown, N.Y., next summer.

Not everyone agrees with me on Rice's chances. It's a risky prediction, given that Rice as recently as 1999 received only 29.4 percent of the vote and actually went backward last year.

But Rice has three things going for him: 1) His vote total has been north of 60 percent in recent years and Sox historian Dick Bresciani has boosted Rice's candidacy with a convincing public relations campaign; 2) The more we talk about steroids, the better Rice's numbers look; 3) There are no new candidates to overwhelm the voters.

Does Jim Ed deserve it?

He was a dominant power hitter before steroids polluted the game and skewed the numbers. Rice hit 46 homers in a season back when it meant something - before 50 became the province of guys like Brady Anderson and Luis Gonzalez. People who played and watched major league baseball from 1975-86 know that Rice was the most feared hitter of his day. Managers thought about intentionally walking him when he came to the plate with the bases loaded. He played hard and he played hurt. His managers loved him. Opponents feared him.

On the flip side, Rice is a power hitter who failed to reach 400 homers and broke down physically while in his mid-30s. Defense was not part of his game and his postseason numbers are weak. It's not fair to claim he's been kept out of the Hall because he was uncooperative (downright rude, usually) with the media. Eddie Murray was far more difficult with the press and he cruised into Cooperstown, as did silent Steve Carlton.

Rice has been forced to wait because he is a marginal candidate - which is no disgrace when we're talking about the Hall of Fame. A lot of great players don't get a sniff of the Hall. Take a look at the careers of Andre Dawson (438 homers), Harold Baines, and Dale Murphy. None of them has gotten as close as Rice.

N4N thinks Rice should be in the Hall, mainly because he was one of the dominant players of his era. And who knows how the 1975 World Series might have turned out had Rice not been injured and out of the lineup at the time.

Earlier this year, in April, the ProJo's typically on-the-mark Joe McDonald wrote what I consider an unusually harsh story about an appearance by Rice at the Kirkbrae Country Club in Lincoln. Topped by the headline "Rice bites the hand that fed him at welcoming," the story -- which included the sportwriter's scolding about Rice's "inappropriate comments" -- fed into the former outfielder's playing-days' reputation as a surly guy.

I wasn't there, so I can't say for sure, but it seems that Rice, like a lot of ballplayers, is not the most articulate guy in the world, and that more than anything, he was trying to encourage young ballplayers to work hard and dedicate themselves to their careers.

Here's how some of it came out:

There are a lot of people in baseball who share [Ben] Mondor's belief that Rice's accomplishments on the field deserve a plaque in Cooperstown. Rice, on the other hand, didn't help his cause yesterday during the annual PawSox Welcome Home Luncheon at Kirkbrae Country Club.

The event honoring Rice was going along smoothly until he imploded, basically telling the sellout crowd of more than 400, including the PawSox' players, that greed and cheating (not steroids) are good for furthering your baseball career.

During a Q & A session with former teammate and Red Sox broadcaster Bob Montgomery, Rice told some impressive stories about his career, including his time in Pawtucket. He had the crowd riveted with his tales, and Montgomery was quick to point out some extraordinary statistics, including when Rice played in all 163 games for the Red Sox during the 1978 season. The last one was the infamous tie-breaker game against the Yankees when Bucky Dent hit his deciding home run.

Toward the end of the 25-minute sitdown with Montgomery, Rice made more than a few inappropriate comments in a strange Jekyll and Hyde episode.

Montgomery asked Rice what his brightest moment was as a major-leaguer, and he answered by telling the audience it was helping the Red Sox reach the World Series in 1975 as a rookie. He was then asked if he had any advice for the PawSox' players, and he went on a six-minute rant, with a swagger that suddenly emerged.

"You have to trust yourself, he said. "You've got to work twice as hard, and to me, if I was one of the players right now, I would be a selfish player.

He began to explain that today's players take spring training for granted because of all the amenities and state-of-the-art equipment. Rice said he saw some things during this year's spring training that he didn't like. He said if he was playing today he wouldn't be sitting in his room watching television; he would be at the ballpark taking batting practice.

"This is my 36th year of marriage to the same woman," he said. "If I had to do it all over again, I would have been divorced 10 years or 20 years ago because I would have been at the ballpark. There is so much money now to be made in the game of baseball, and you have this ability to play the game, why not take advantage of it? It's out there. Go get it. They're not going to give it to you; you've got to earn it.

Jim Rice deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. I've seen him around Yawkey Way before Sox games, and he seems like a gentle and soft-spoken guy. Let's hope that he makes the Hall in 2008.

In this week's Phoenix, ace Red Sox amigo Mike Miliard looks into his crystal ball for 2008:

Hey geeks: all that online talk (nine billion Google hits and counting) notwithstanding, “Web 3.0” won’t be happening any time soon. And even if the anticipated advance to the next technological level was imminent, the growing consensus is that any blogger using that awful neologism should have his broadband connection yanked from the wall with extreme prejudice.

Regardless, just as it has every year of its existence, the Internet will change in 2008 — growing and evolving in its complexity and convenience, its reach and its risk. The most recent big leap, of course, came three or four years ago, with the introduction of new-generation Web services that facilitated interactivity and multimedia using wikis, podcasts, social networks, photo-sharing, online mapping, video/mp3 blogging, syndication, and more.

What can we expect next? There’s now nebulous chatter about another quantum advance of computing power. The looming evolution/revolution has been described in terms both practical (simply leveraging “Web 2.0” technology for newer, advanced service and content) and fantastical (an Internet, quoth the New York Times, that may learn to “reason in a human fashion”).

Mike senses Facebook Fatigue:

I’ve been friended. I’ve been poked. I’ve had my Super Wall scrawled upon. I’ve been bitten by zombies and invited to bite others (thereby, presumably, turning them into zombies, as well). I’ve been invited to locate world capitals on a global map-quiz game, and to join something called “Six Degrees of Separation — the Experiment.” I’ve been notified when friends use the friend finder to become friends with people I’m not friends with. I’ve been notified when friends send messages to people I don’t know.

I’m exhausted. It’s enough that I’ve got two dozen blogs to check in with every day, and a Red Sox message board to load and re-load, and an online music-discussion group to take part in — never mind three e-mail accounts to check, and, uh, actual work to do. Now I’m supposed to hew chunks from my day to engage with this endless procession of worthless Facebook applications?

First, it was Friendster. I joined in 2003, diligently filled out my personal info, and uploaded what scant digital photos existed of me at the time. Then, several months later, after Friendster had fallen out of favor, I had to do it all over again at MySpace. Then, in late 2006, Facebook opened up. Once more into the breach.

My gripe with Facebook — besides the fact that it’s the third social-networking site I’ve felt compelled to join during the past four years — isn’t so much the people I barely know flooding my inbox with friend requests. In fact, that’s a small price to pay for a site that’s helped get me in touch with a few college friends I hadn’t seen in years.

It’s more that interfacing with Facebook has begun to feel like homework. Perhaps it’s my ever-advancing age, but my eyes literally cross as I scan my profile trying to figure out WTF I’m supposed to click on next. At last count, there were more than 10,000 add-ons available on the Facebook Platform. Anecdotal evidence suggests I’m not the only one with Facebook fatigue. Yes, some have predicted the site is worth perhaps $15 billion. And Wired magazine rhapsodized recently that its “social graph” innovation may have “defined the future of the Internet.” But on boingboing.net, Corey Doctorow predicted that the site’s imposition of “socially obligated ‘friendships’ ” would hasten its demise. And one commenter had another prognostication: “If Facebook partners up with any more of their patently ridiculous outside applications, they will collapse under their own weight.”

And he notes the trend of e-mails from the great beyond:

On Wikipedia, there’s a page called Deceased Wikipedians, which features photos and remembrances of some of the site’s late contributors. There’s also one, ominously, called Missing Wikipedians. It lists dozens of people, known only by their screen names, who, for reasons unknown, haven’t been heard from in months. One user told me of a high-profile administrator who hadn’t posted anywhere since September, which is not like her at all. “People,” he said, “are getting very, very worried.”

As we spend ever more of our time on the Internet, the off-line pageant of life and death continues as it always has. It happens sometimes: folks you recognize from the online world only via a screen handle could die and you wouldn’t even know they were gone until you realized you hadn’t seen them proffer any Interweb wisdom in weeks. Back in 2005, one poster on a Red Sox message board headed to New Orleans to help with the Hurricane Katrina recovery. He then virtually disappeared for months. And months. And his e-brethren became concerned.

He turned out to be okay, thankfully. And we hope the Wikipedia admin will too. But in a world where friendships are forged and conducted entirely online, there is clearly a communication gap, in which those unable to log on (read: who have passed on) will leave their online friends wanting for info on their safety and well-being. Or there was such a gap, anyway, until a new wave of sites, including Letter from Beyond, YouDeparted, myLastEmail, and Post Expression, were launched.

These sites, which the New York Times recently noted fill “a macabre niche in the online economy,” allow you to send “e-mails from the afterlife” (which you compose while you’re still breathing) to an address list of preselected contacts. Besides making it easy for the dearly departed to inform heirs about wills, insurance, and the like, the sites’ biggest draw may be the ability to let your online pals know why you’ll no longer be weighing in on the big games. As more and more people spend more and more time making more and more friends on more and more Web sites, expect these services to get more and more popular. As the motto for Post Expression puts it: “Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

Click here to read the whole piece.

As Mitt Romney steps up his attacks on John McCain in New Hampshire, some observers, of different stripes, are calling the Arizona senator the best bet -- if he wins the GOP nomination -- to claim the presidency in 2008:

Steven Stark in the Phoenix:

McCain would bring a number of advantages to a general-election campaign. He’s been in the national-election eye the longest, so he’s well known and trusted — passing the presidential-threshold test by a mile. He’s a national hero of sorts. And, he’s perceived as enough of a maverick that he would appeal to some Democrats and independents. His weaknesses would be his age (he’d be the oldest person ever initially elected to the presidency), and the fact that his soft immigration stand might attract a third-party anti-immigration candidate. Still, despite his lukewarm showing in current GOP polls, he began this whole cycle as the strongest potential candidate in a general election, and he remains so — as long as it continues to appear that the war effort has turned a corner.

Robert Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times (h/t the Page):

Sen. John McCain, given up for dead a few weeks ago as he ran a cash-starved, disorganized campaign, today is viewed by canny Republican professionals as the best bet to win the party's presidential nomination. What's more, they consider him their most realistic prospect to buck the overall Democratic tide and win the general election. Indeed, if Mike Huckabee holds on to actually win the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, the road forward could be clear for McCain.

Mitt Romney's lavishly financed, meticulously organized campaign always has operated with a thin margin of error based on winning Iowa and then the New Hampshire primary five days later. If Romney loses to Huckabee in Iowa, he becomes vulnerable to McCain in New Hampshire. If McCain wins there, he will be favored to sweep through subsequent primaries despite meager finances and organization.

This scenario does not connote a late-blooming affection for McCain among the party faithful. Indeed, he remains suspect to them on global warming, stem cell research, tax policy and immigration controls, not to mention his original sin of campaign finance reform. Rather, his nomination would result from his being the last man standing. Rudy Giuliani's baggage is getting too heavy to carry. Fred Thompson never got started. Huckabee's Republicanism is even less orthodox than McCain's and seems unviable beyond Iowa. Romney is burdened with anti-Mormon prejudice and the accusation that he's ''plastic.''

McCain's return from oblivion also suggests a personal determination that was demonstrated during six years of torture and solitary confinement in a communist prison. Beginning the year as the GOP's putative establishment candidate, McCain presided over a spendthrift, ineffective campaign. His decline climaxed, however unfairly, when he came over as the apostle of immigration amnesty. Despite a free-fall in the polls and the inability to raise funds, McCain has impressed the political community with six months of tireless grass-roots campaigning.

This killing by a suicide bomber of Benazir Bhutto is bad news and only further complicates the US relationship with one of the linchpins in a very volatile part of the world.

While Rhode Island's statewide election in 2010 remains more than 30 months away, we can expect to see a heightened level of organizing among potential candidates in 2008. And Providence City Solicitor Joseph M. Fernandez has taken an early plunge by filing papers this month, indicating that he intends to be a Democratic candidate for attorney general, with the Rhode Island Board of Elections.

This could shape up as interesting race since one of the other prospective candidates, lawyer and state Senator Paul V. Jabour, is a close ally of former City Council president John J. Lombardi -- one of David Cicilline's most vocal critics on the Providence council. Robert Craven of Saunderstown is also considered a possible Democratic candidate for AG, and it's conceivable that others may emerge.

While Cicilline is backing Hillary Clinton, Fernandez and his wife, Emily Maranjian, a white-collar prosecutor in AG Patrick Lynch's office, were Harvard Law School classmates with Barack Obama, and they have been among the leaders of Obama's Rhode Island campaign. Fernandez and Maranjian attended Brown University as undergrads.

Fernandez does not currently have much statewide name-recognition, but he has been active in the Cicilline administration, serving on the task force that formed the mayor's ethics recommendations, for example, and in the community, serving on the board of Trinity Rep and as a director of Crossroads Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, Lynch, as we know, is term-limited as AG, and he shows every sign of being part of a busy Democratic field for governor.

Could there be any doubt?

Whether on the bump or in the news conference, Josh Beckett is the man.

Like some news junkies, N4N wouldn't consider starting Sunday morning without a big pot of coffee, the Sunday papers, my DVR, and various news and talking-head shows, including local entries ABC6 on the Record, 10 News Conference, and Newsmakers. And while Meet The Press constitutes a gold standard of sorts among the national shows, The McLaughlin Group has become one of my favorites.

In contrast to the stereotypical view of program as a shout-fest, McLaughlin offers a concise, pointed, and thoughtful analysis of the top national and international news of the week (I love the annual "Grade the Planet" element). While Providence Daily Dose's Ariel considers the cast a bunch of "boobs," even while praising McLaughlin's sartorial splendor, N4N finds the interplay among such mixed partisans Pat Buchanan and Eleanor Clift entertaining. And you know that we like Monica.

RI's Future and Anchor Rising have recently taken note of McLaughlin's Rhode Island roots. Here's what Matt had to say:

With a big ole' tip o' the tip to CAM at AnchorRising, I was surprised to learn that McLaughlin Group host, John McLaughlin is a Rhode Island native!

Here's McLaughlin's 2005 RI Heritage Hall of Fame entry: 

The marvelous story of Rhode Island’s own John Joseph McLaughlin leads one through more twists and turns than a Rocky Point roller coaster. Born on March 29, 1927 to Augustus and Eva (Turcotte) McLaughlin, he grew up in the neighborhoods of Edgewood and Mount Pleasant. His earliest run at greatness included stints as a pharmacy soda jerk, Triggs greenskeeper and caddy, Narragansett Park racetrack money-runner and a stock boy at Shepard’s department store.

A caddy at Triggs?!?  Andrew gets it right:

Golfer:  Do you think I should use my six-iron here? 

McLaughlin: WRONG!!!

Other twists of the McLaughlin story are that he was a Jesuit priest and that he ran for the US Senate in Rhode Island in 1970 against John O. Pastore (Pastore won 68% - 32%).   

Who knew??

-- WLNE-TV's plan to launch a 4 pm newscast is a sign that the new owners of Channel 6 are serious about competing with frontrunners WJAR-TV (10) and WPRI-TV (12). (For my look in early 2005 at how the previous administration at WLNE was trying to make improvements, click here.)

-- WRNI, Rhode Island's public radio station, continues to add improvements. The station (1290 AM) recently launched its Cultural Roundtable, the first incarnation of which featured AS220's Bert Crenca and the RISD Museum's Judith Tannenbaum. The station is also in the process of filling two grant-funded reporting positions. For a chat I had earlier this year with WRNI GM Joe O'Connor, click on his name.

Thanks to the Newseum for helping to share this newspaper classic:

Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York's Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history's most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.

Amid the bustle and rampant consumerism of the holidays, not to mention the violence and madness of the world, it's great to see a reminder -- such as Mark Arsenault's ProJo story yesterday -- about the true meaning of Christmas:

Spencer Furey is information-technology director for Priority Management Group, a Pawtucket medical-billing company. Inspired by an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the company celebrates the Christmas season by giving 13 employees $300 each to give away as they see fit. The only string attached is that the employees must tell the story of their good-doing at the annual company meeting, which was in Newport last weekend.

“It’s pressure,” says Lissa Singer, company compliance officer. “We all felt we wanted to do the best we could with the money.”

“What was neat was to see how people struggled to decide what to do,” says PMG co-founder Richard Santilli, executive vice president of administration and finance.

Like giving cash to random strangers outside a discount store.

Or providing Christmas presents to a dozen nursing-home residents who have no families.

Or buying coffee for scores of veterans.

Or helping a family endure the first Christmas after tragedy had taken a loved one.

“Three hundred bucks is not enough to solve all these people’s problems,” says Santilli, 40. “But if it helps them to have a decent Christmas, it’s worth it.”

Lots of others share this spirit of generosity, like the local PR professionals whose annual holiday party I had the pleasure of attending this past Saturday; they ask their guests to bring a toy to be given to Camp Street Community Ministries, for distribution to a needy child.

As part of my recent article about hunger in Rhode Island, I included a sidebar with information about agencies serving those in need. If it so moves you, please consider making a donation to the charity of your choice:

While there are many worthy social organizations in Rhode Island, these are some of the largest umbrella groups:

Amos House
Amoshouse.com
401.272.0220
415 Friendship St.
Providence, RI 02907

The Rhode Island Community Food Bank
Rifoodbank.org
401.942.6325
200 Niantic Ave.
Providence, RI 02907

Crossroads Rhode Island
Crossroadsri.org
401.521.2255
160 Broad Ave.
Providence, RI 02903

The United Way of Rhode Island
Uwri.org
401.440.0600
229 Waterman St.
Providence, RI 02906

The Fund for Community Progress
Fundcp.org
401.941.7100
1604 Broad St.
Providence, RI 02905

Youch.

CNN reports that New Hampshire's Concord Monitor has had a visceral reaction to Mitt Romney:

In unusually stark language, the newspaper in New Hampshire's capital calls former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney "a phony" and tells its readers Sunday that he "most surely must be stopped" in next month's first-in-the-nation primary.

The newspaper editorial in New Hampshire's state capital calls Romney "a phony."

The Concord Monitor published an editorial slamming the GOP presidential candidate for flip-flopping on issues. It also criticized him for his central-casting appearance.

With "an athletic build, ramrod posture, Reaganesque hair, a charismatic speaking style and a crisp dark suit" along with "a beautiful wife and family, a wildly successful business career and just enough executive government experience" Romney espouses "some old GOP bromides -- spending cuts and lower taxes -- plus some new positions for 2008: anti-immigrant rhetoric and a focus on faith," the editorial says.

The Concord Monitor editorial page is considered to be liberal.

But Romney's record makes him "a disquieting figure who sure looks like the next president and most surely must be stopped," the editorial added. The Monitor's editorial page is considered liberal.

It compared Romney's stances as governor of Massachusetts with those taken as a presidential candidate and found glaring differences.

"If you followed only his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, you might imagine Romney as a pragmatic moderate with liberal positions on numerous social issues and an ability to work well with Democrats," it said. Read the editorial

"If you followed only his campaign for president, you'd swear he was a red-meat conservative, pandering to the religious right, whatever the cost. Pay attention to both, and you're left to wonder if there's anything at all at his core."

The editorial then cited Romney's advocacy of gay rights in 1994, when he was running against Sen. Edward Kennedy for the U.S. Senate, and compared that with his current stance.

"These days, he makes a point of his opposition to gay marriage and adoption," it said.

It said Romney once sought to make contraceptive drugs more available, then vetoed a bill that would have allowed them to be sold over-the-counter.

Romney told voters he favored abortion rights in 1994, the editorial said, "and he cited the tragedy of a relative's botched illegal abortion as the reason to keep abortions safe and legal."

Today, it said, he describes himself as "pro-life."

Though Romney once supported embryonic stem-cell research, "these days, he largely opposes it," according the the editorial.

When he was running for governor, Romney rejected an anti-tax pledge "as a gimmick," the editors said. "In this race, he was the first to sign."

The editors acknowledged that people can change, but they said Romney "has yet to explain this particular set of turnarounds in a way that convinces voters they are based on anything other than his own ambition."

The editorial then took Romney to task about torture, saying "he dodges the issue ... unable to say, simply, that waterboarding is torture and America won't do it."

And it called "chilling" Romney's statement that he would like to double the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, which has held terrorist suspects for years without charges.

Considering the frontloading of the presidential primary process, it's kind of heartening how things remain utterly up for grabs. A new Boston Globe poll shows that Barack Obama and John McCain are neck and neck, respectively, with Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney:

Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination was all but dead this summer, has made a dramatic recovery in the Granite State 2 1/2 weeks before the 2008 vote, pulling within 3 percentage points of front-runner Mitt Romney, a new Boston Globe poll indicates.

McCain, the darling of New Hampshire voters in the 2000 primary, has the support of 25 percent of likely Republican voters, compared with 28 percent for Romney. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has slid into third place, with 14 percent. A Globe poll of New Hampshire voters last month had Romney at 32 percent, Giuliani at 20 percent, and McCain at 17 percent.

Among Democratic voters, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has opened up a narrow lead over Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, 30 percent to 28 percent. That, too, represents a major shift from last month's Globe poll, which had Clinton with a 14-point advantage. Former senator John Edwards of North Carolina remained a steady third at 14 percent.

The Globe poll also found wide disparities in voter opinion on domestic issues, with Republicans and Democrats expressing starkly different views on the government's role in healthcare and on whether illegal immigration is a problem.

In related news:

-- The ProJo's Scott MacKay, who has covered more than a few presidential races, offers a look today at the changing political character of New Hampshire and the search for votes:

With its wood-frame triple-deckers and hulking red-brick mills lining the Merrimack River, Manchester evokes its past on a slate-skied afternoon: a textile factory city of conservative Democrats, many with roots in French Canada. Today this is mostly façade: the old factories are filled with Internet Age start-ups, fancy restaurants and nonprofit education and medical offices.

The political divide in New Hampshire was historically drawn between rural Protestants and urban Roman Catholics. What they held in common was a Frostian, good-fences-make-good-neighbors lifestyle and, in politics, a disdain for large government and taxes; New Hampshire is the lone New England state without a sales or income tax.

But in recent years, the tidy villages with their white Congregational churches and town greens have drawn retirees lured by country living. “These communities have been gradually turning Democratic,” says Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire. “And in the rural parts of the state, there are old native New Hampshire folks who voted Republican for years and now look at the new Southern-based Republican Party and say, ‘This isn’t my party.’ ”

A Democratic voter is now more likely to be a nurse, teacher or retiree than anyone who has anything to do with manufacturing. While the state usually leads New England in economic growth, since 2000 it has also lost a larger percentage of its manufacturing jobs than any other state in the region. A reliable Republican voter is more likely to be self-employed or a tax refugee who moved from Massachusetts.

What no one disputes is that New Hampshire has become bluer, more Democratic. Democrat John Kerry defeated President Bush here in 2004, but it was the 2006 election results that revealed a transformed New Hampshire. New voters and a Democratic surge fueled by distaste for Mr. Bush and the Iraq War led to a historic GOP rout. The state’s two Republican congressmen lost, Gov. John Lynch, a popular Democrat, coasted to reelection, and the state legislature turned Democratic for the first time since 1874. ....

Independent voters have long been important in New Hampshire, but never so much as now. More than 40 percent of voters are independent. Changes in election law have made it easier for independents to participate in primaries. Independents can vote in either party primary. Same-day, walk-up registration makes it easy to vote; show a driver’s license and a utility bill, and you’re in.

It wouldn't be the holiday season in Rhode Island without Charlie Bakst's annual poetic greeting, and it's good to see this back this year, as M. Charles himself explains:

Chanukah’s lights have blazed, now comes Christmas in tow,

So this would be my 21st holiday poem in a row.

But in a chapter of my life I’d much prefer to heave

I found myself last December on a medical leave.

Thus, this is only the 20th time I’m sending out greetings

To officials who dominate debates and meetings.

But also to others who have a skill or a gift

To entertain, to educate, to give Rhode Islanders a lift.

I revere reader loyalty, I’m much in your debt,

And if you’ll just bear with me, I’ll get the hang of this yet.

And just in time, because big things are coming,

The presidential election already is humming.

We know that Charlie has a strong social conscience, yet he proves himself quite the clever wordsmith:

Let’s visit the State House, where there seems a great fuss,

Workers are unloading barrels from two trucks and a bus.

You’ve got to see this, pay attention, don’t blink:

It’s the world’s largest supply of flowing red ink.

Don Carcieri ordered it, but that doesn’t mean the gov should be fired,

After all, for a problem this large some Assembly was required. ....

The governor’s bills go to die in legislative chambers and halls,

With House Speaker Bill Murphy making most of those calls.

Certainly House legislation suffers from a pox

Unless it’s backed by Majority Leader Gordon Fox.

And by Rep. Steve Costantino, who tries to be fair

In House Finance, where he presides as the chair.

Hi to Portsmouth’s Amy Rice, of the Democratic side,

With her 10-vote reelection, you can call her Landslide.

The funny thing here is how Charlie, a Red Sox season ticket holder and diehard fan, somehow forgot to mention the home town team's World Series triump in 2007! Mr. Bakst, is the new paradigm of Sox' success dulling your senses?

It's sad but true that a fleeting, very tangible instance -- like last week's snow storm and the accompanying poor response -- will always get a lot more attention than serious and deep-rooted social problems -- such as Providence's unfortunate status as a city with one of the highest national rates of childhood poverty.

Yes, the case can be made that the response to the snow storm reflects poorly on the leadership ability of various officials, but I don't think this makes Al Qaeda any more likely to hone in on the Hurricane Ba