Holiday News Roundup, 2007

As the holiday season is now officially over, it's time to catch up on what's been going on in that time — as anyone that hoped for a quiet, peaceful Christmas news season is probably sorely disappointed.

There's no way a recap of that could lead off with anything other than the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The former prime minister of Pakistan and leader of its largest opposition party, the Pakistan People's Party, Bhutto was considered to be a critical piece to the puzzle of Pakistani stability. A coming national election was thought to be likely to sweep her party into the majority in Parliament once again, with her as prime minister and possibly setting up a power-sharing pact with President Pervez Musharraf to ease tensions caused by Musharraf's militaristic governing style. With the U.S.-supported Musharraf being increasingly unpopular, and now with the planned coalition between Bhutto and Musharraf impossible, the long-term prospects of stability in Pakistan need what CNN calls a "Plan C."

The wave of presidential primaries kicks off tomorrow with the Iowa Caucuses. Which, if you're wondering, win the award over this holiday season for highest proportion of news stories on the subject to actual news available about it. I'll tell you one thing: I don't know if Iowa will be more or less important this year because of all the stories covering whether Iowa should be this important, but I love politics, and even I'm getting a little sick of never-ending coverage on minor variations of the same information.

The current big thing buzz-wise is the Des Moines Register's most recent poll, which showed a 32/25/24 split among Obama, Clinton, and Edwards, respectively. However, the poll showed that 40% of test-takers are independents — which strongly favored Obama. Does this mean that the state is going to have a much higher independent turnout than the typical 20%, or that the independent vote in the poll is heavily overrepresented? We'll know in just a bit over 24 hours.

Additionally, Nader's supporting Edwards, Kucinich is supporting Obama and asked his supporters to pick him as the second-choice candidate, McCain's showing signs of being back in the race so Romney is attacking both him and Huckabee, and Thompson has actually been busting his tail in Iowa — not that it's likely to do much this late, but you never know.

If you need a refresher on what's been going on in the past few weeks so you can look good in front of your friends at your caucus-watching party tomorrow, head on over to the Des Moines Register and check out their caucus coverage.

In local news, the Harris County GOP is going through some turmoil over District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal. Rosenthal, a Republican himself, came under criticism by the party when several emails surfaced from 2007 of him "declaring his affection" for his executive secretary; he was married at the time to his second wife. County Judge Ed Emmett called him "damaged goods," and the party's Advisory Committee urged him to withdraw from the Republican primary. They cannot force his hand, however, and he has stated that he will run despite the decision. This could make for a very ugly Republican primary, and a boon for the Democratic nominee for District Attorney this year.

And Ric Williamson, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, died of a heart attack last Sunday. Williamson was best known for spearheading the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor project. Our condolences go out to his family.

And finally for this holiday roundup, the economy was a big player in the news over the Christmas season. Despite President Bush's attempts to talk up the economy, the American public seemed to disagree with his rosy outlook. The lesson Republicans can't seem to learn: If you ignore the well-being of the average American to benefit corporate interests, the average American will eventually be too worried about where the next rent check's coming from to consume all these nifty goods the corporate sector provides. The way they're "learning" the lesson this year: retail sales were well below expected this holiday season, and along with concerns of a possible recession, retail stock prices have been dropping during the first part of the year.

There has always been a disconnect between those who measure the "economy" as per capita GDP versus those who measure it by CPI-adjusted median income — or in other words, between those who measure how well business is doing versus those who measure how well people are doing. Hopefully the fact that the government's ignoring the latter in favor of the former is leading to a sinking of all ships will enlighten some folks as to the necessity of looking out for the average Joe. There's my wish for the new year.