May 05, 2008

5/5: Veering Right

Hillary Clinton continues to infuriate liberal bloggers by aggressively pushing her gas tax holiday proposal and belittling the "economists" who almost universally oppose her plan. The netroots are also upset that Clinton used the George W. Bush-sounding "with us or against us" line while calling on her Congressional colleagues to take a stand on her proposal. Chris Bowers bemoans this "pretty stark right-wing turn for Clinton in this campaign," while Josh Marshall declares that Clinton has "no more sharks left to jump." Clinton has certainly alienated many liberal bloggers with her GOP-sounding rhetoric during the past few weeks. Should she capture the Dem nod, we expect that it will take some time before the netroots fully get behind her (although we don't doubt that they eventually will).

Meanwhile, the conservative love affair with Clinton continues. Righty bloggers are praising Clinton's "grit," arguing that she's more electable than Barack Obama, and declaring that she would make a better President than Obama. One thing is clear: while most liberal bloggers appear to be rooting for Obama, most conservative bloggers appear to be rooting for Clinton. We certainly did not foresee this split back in the fall of '07, when conservative bloggers viewed Obama more favorably than Clinton.

DEM FIELD: So Sick Of Electability...

Liberal bloggers are pushing back strongly against the Clinton camp's arguments that the NY senator is more electable than Obama. Several bloggers are buzzing about Charles Blow's New York Times editorial, in which he argues that Clinton's problems with black Dems are bigger than Obama's problems with white Dems:

"The question is this: Have white Democrats soured on Obama? Apparently not. Although his unfavorable rating from the group is up five percentage points since last summer in polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, his favorable rating is up just as much. On the other hand, black Democrats' opinion of Hillary Clinton has deteriorated substantially (her favorable rating among them is down 36 percentage points over the same period). While a favorable opinion doesn't necessarily translate into a vote, this should still give the Clintons (and the superdelegates) pause. Electability cuts both ways."

• The Field's Al Giordano: I turn on the TV, read the political columnists (and a significant number of analytically-challenged bloggers, too) and all I hear is a bunch of white folk prattling on about their favorite narrative: 'Obama's losing white voters!' They've swallowed the Clinton racially-obsessed spin, hook, line and sinker. [...] So imagine my pleasant surprise this morning to see a New York Times columnist, Charles Blow, who did what none of these chattering lunkheads have done. He looked at the hard data of how voters, white and black, view the two Democratic candidates -- favorably or negatively? -- and how those views have progressed over time. [...] The numbers show that the cynical effort to turn the 2008 campaign into a race riot has hurt the popularity of one candidate among an important demographic, and it's not Barack Obama."
• Daily Kos' DemFromCT: "I have been writing for some time that the polling hasn't moved much despite the bloviating from broadcast media, especially. [...] This remains a fundamentally difficult election for Republicans, and the media's zest for Democratic conflict stories doesn't change that one bit."
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "If we're going to hear about how Obama can't win downscale whites (which is a real problem east of the Mississippi), we better hear about how Clinton loses big among African Americans, educated whites, and independents (which she has lost in every state except Arkansas, Oklahoma, Massachusetts and Rhode Island)."

TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat, a fierce Obama critic, pushes back: "Blow's column is incomprehensible yet smear filled. Giordano enjoys the smears but ignores the problems. [...] Obama is more popular with whites now, says Giordano. Which begs the question -- then why does he get less white votes now than he did in February? Obama is poised to lose the white vote in North Carolina and Indiana by 3-2 at least. He lost the white vote by 2-1 in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. He loses white working class voters to [John] McCain while Clinton wins them. He now runs worse than ever in head to heads with McCain while Clinton runs better than she ever has. I do not doubt that Obama is better liked, but I am not at all sure anymore that he is likely to get more VOTES. And votes are what count in politics."

Meanwhile, several pro-Obama bloggers are arguing that Clinton has significantly more "baggage" than Obama:

• The Huffington Post's Frank Schaeffer: "If you think that a few loopy loops of Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright's more unfortunate sound bites endlessly playing in October spells terminal trouble for Obama, why are all my old Republican friends rooting for Hillary? And why is McCain quietly playing tag team with Hillary Clinton to destroy Barack Obama's chances? The Republican insiders aren't just rooting for Hillary; they're salivating at the chance to run against 'THE CLINTONS.' Republicans know that in spite of the Wright 'issue,' the absent flag pin 'issue,' the who Obama's acquaintances are 'issue,' the if Michelle [Obama] loves our country enough 'issue,' etc., etc., that none of this amounts to anything compared to the HUGE target Bill and Hillary would present in the fall."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis links to a YouTube video entitled "Hillary's Baggage" and writes: "Because remember what Hillary told us, we're actually doing her a favor by vetting a candidate's baggage now rather than during the general election."

DEM FIELD II: More Conservative Love For Hillary

Righty bloggers are alternately praising Clinton's "grit" and arguing that she's more electable than Obama:

• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "If [Clinton] has the tenacity to overcome Barack Obama in a race where the mainstream media and many of the elites in her own party have aligned against her, many Americans would give her a certain amount of much needed credit for toughness, grit, and for showing grace under fire. Even most Clinton-loathing conservatives would be willing to admit at this point that if it came right down to it, they'd rather have her handling national security issues and phone calls at 3 AM than Barack Obama. [...] At this point, Obama still appears to be the favorite to win the nomination, but as it becomes clearer and clearer that Hillary is the more electable of the two candidates. It wouldn't be surprising to see the superdelegates start to flock towards Clinton. What it may eventually come down to is whether the superdelegates are willing to suffer personal attacks to select the candidate with the better chance to win in November or whether they'd rather make the netroots and black Democrats happy while simultaneously significantly increasing the chances that John McCain will end up in the White House."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "I think, given the choice between Barack and Hillary, we should throw our support behind Hillary. To be sure, Hillary is a threat to our freedom and would be a disaster as President. But when judging between the evils of two lessers, we must sometimes make tough choices. I write from the premise that, regardless of what McCain does this Presidential season, the odds are still in favor of a Democrat in the White House. And from that vantage point, I think Obama has the potential to do more long term damage to this nation than Hillary Clinton. Hillary has an iron fist that will first pound on the Democrats and media that opposed her. It'll be close to three years in the White House before she focuses on the rest of us. Obama, on the other hand, is both a piss poor manager and is a terrible judge of character. [...] Given the choice between Hillary and Obama, I'll take the one who, at the end of the day, is in it mostly for herself over the guy who is in it to see [Karl] Marx's dream made real."
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "In a primary race where the differences between the two candidates are sometimes hard to discern, there were two vivid ones on display Sunday morning as Barack Obama did Meet the Press and Hillary Clinton did This Week in a town hall setting in Indiana. The first is temperamental. As she was with Bill O'Reilly, Clinton was funny, cracking jokes (this time about Rush Limbaugh), and looking and sounding like she is having fun. [Obama] was dour, humorless, and emotionally remote. [...] Second, their foreign policy perspectives are markedly different. From his point of view, threatening Iran is 'George Bush foreign policy.' From hers, it's making clear to our most menacing adversary that we mean business. Yes, they have merged views on Iraq (if you take them at their word), but the similarity ends there. She's not exactly Scoop Jackson. But he is George McGovern (the 1970's McGovern, not the more conservative one we have now). And this is a classic Democratic dilemma: McGovernites tend to prevail in primaries and Jacksonians in general elections."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "What Obama has won is the heart of the left, and they don't care that he cannot win Pennsylvania or Ohio in the fall. They want one of their own. They prefer six months of theater they produce to four years of power in which they have supporting roles. [...] Incredibly, the Dems are about to nominate the hardest left major party candidate in modern American political history, despite that candidate having lost almost every big state primary and despite his deeply troubling personal associations with radicals and crooks. [...] Does anyone really believe that there isn't another major explosion coming in the Middle East? Can you imagine Barack Obama superintending it? Hillary, yes. Obama, no. The Democrats have a chance to reclaim the White House, but the hard left of the party would rather have the party than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

CLINTON: Digging In...

Liberal bloggers continue to slam Clinton for her aggressive advocacy of her gas tax holiday proposal. The netroots are particularly upset that Clinton challenged her colleagues in Congress to take a stand on the issue:

"'I believe it would be important to get every member of Congress on record,' Clinton told supporters at a rally in southern Indiana. 'Do they stand with the hard-pressed Americans who are trying to pay their gas bills at the gas station or do they once again stand with the oil companies?'

'I want to know where people stand and I want them to tell us, are they with us or against us when it comes to taking on the oil companies?' she added."

• Moulitsas: "Remember the last time a president took a 'with us or against us' line? And remember the last time a president ignored what the policy experts cautioned? Yeah, me too. I have no desire to relive the Bush Administration yet again. [...] Clinton may have a political winner on her hand. I have no doubt it's been worth a few points in Indiana and North Carolina. But invading Iraq was a political winner for Bush, until Middle East experts (and by 'experts', I don't mean the morons at the AEI) were proven correct by reality. It would be nice to have a president who listens to reason, and not one who panders with bad policy in the mad pursuit of power."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "Looking at a study from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (.pdf), a three month suspension of the federal gasoline tax would cost roughly $12 billion in revenue for infrastructure but would also cause the loss of over 300,000 jobs. [...] For reference, it would also cost Indiana $183,722,596 in transportation money, as well as 6,390 highway-related jobs, and cost North Carolina $203,319,748 in federal highway funds and 7,071 jobs. All of this for a plan that would likely do more to pad the profits of big oil companies than it would to lower the actual price at the pump, while at the same time potentially increasing gasoline usage, thus detrimentally affecting the environment. With numbers like these, perhaps it shouldn't be such a surprise that Democrats on Capitol Hill -- both in their roles as members of Congress and as superdelegates -- aren't biting at Clinton's challenge."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "You really can't get more shameless than Hillary Clinton. She, like her husband, will screw over the rest of the Democratic party for her own political gain. The new 'Exhibit A' is the gas tax gimmick. This should be a real warning sign to all Democrats. Clinton had the audacity to challenge other Democrats to join her crusade to basically pour money into the oil companies while draining money from needed highway projects. [...Clinton]'s using her campaign to damage all Democrats. If they vote against her loony proposal, it will be used against them in the fall by the Republicans. So now the Clintons are very much taking the entire party down with them. They've done it before. They'll do it again."
• Open Left's Bowers: "The gas tax holiday episode collects all of my worst fears about a possible second Clinton presidency in a single, dark, place that I haven't entered since the 1990's. Are we to suffer through another Democratic President who will make impromptu, right-ward shifts toward bad policy, justified in nonsensical, Orwellian language, all the while claiming such a move must be done because it will score huge political points even though it is ultimately a bad political calculation, and then threaten the entire Democratic Party to fall in line behind such a move or else? This is basically all of my worst fears about Hillary Clinton becoming President rolled up into one giant ball of tin-foil and dropped on my front porch. If this is how she will run the country, then she just isn't what the country needs."

MyDD's Todd Beeton, who supports Clinton, thinks her aggressive advocacy of the gas tax holiday is politically savvy: "At a basic level, Clinton is on strong political ground using this as a wedge issue [...] Clinton comes out ahead because this issue both gives her the opportunity to present herself as the fighter and the candidate of solutions that she's been campaigning as for months and simultaneously forces Obama to go on defense and to be the anti-solutions candidate, the candidate who is on the attack, which is the exact opposite of the brand Obama has created for himself. In other words, she's driving the debate and strengthening her own brand while weakening his."

Bowers disagrees: "While the Clinton campaign thinks that this is smart politics, I have to disagree. After Tuesday, there will be more uncommitted superdelegates than uncommitted pledged delegates. Given this, how exactly is threatening the 82 uncommitted superdelegates in Congress with gas tax holiday legislation smart? To undecided superdelegates, Mark Udall and Nancy Pelosi, have already blasted Clinton on this proposal. Threatening members of Congress to support oil companies or else doesn't strike me as very smart politics, especially since most of them are probably tired of similar threats from Bush over the past eight years."

CLINTON II: Who Cares What Those Smartypants Economists Think?

Liberal bloggers were particularly incensed by Clinton's response to George Stephanopoulos's question about whether she could name a single economist who supports her gas tax holiday proposal:

"'I'm not going to put in my lot with economists,' [Clinton] said. [...] A few moments later, she added, 'Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.'"

• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "I had no idea that the economic interests of oil companies were identical with those of the vast majority of Americans. Good thing we've got Hillary Clinton, Populist Extraordinaire around to tell us otherwise. [...] I'm not going to say that our public policy should blindly conform to the consensus among the economics profession, but the gas tax holiday is an illiteracy on a much deeper level -- there's simply no support for this idea among people who've looked at it in a serious way. That's not elitism, that's reality, and what Clinton's selling is Bush-style misgovernment."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "Clinton's disgust for 'elite opinion' is not only entirely out of character for her, it's a textbook George W. Bush move. There's just no excuse for any Democrat, especially one as sharp and knowledgeable as Clinton, to do this. Indeed, the fact that Clinton can make these remarks with a straight face is rather disconcerting. [...] The irony is, Clinton is at her best, her most impressive, and most inspiring when she's showing off the depth of her knowledge. Policy Wonk Clinton is absolutely amazing -- she knows details and policy minutiae better than almost anyone on the national stage. [...] Policy Wonk Clinton is a bit like Al Gore, only with better political instincts and shrewder campaign skills. She's the type of candidate I can really get excited about. Policy Wonk Clinton, however, has left the building, and has been replaced with Shameless Pandering Clinton, who sounds like Bush while promoting John McCain's gas-tax ideas."
• Ex-Labor Sec. Robert Reich: "In case you've missed it, we now have a president who doesn't care what most economists think. George W. Bush doesn't even care what scientists think. He rejects all experts who disagree with his politics. This has led to some extraordinarily stupid policies. I'm not saying HRC is George Bush. And I'm not suggesting economists have all the answers. But when economists tell a president or a presidential candidate that his or her idea is dumb -- and when all respectable economists around America agree that it's a dumb idea -- it's probably wise for the president or presidential candidate to listen. When the president or candidate doesn't, and proudly defends the policy by saying she's 'not going to put my lot in with economists,' we've got a problem, folks."
• Ezra Klein: "The gas tax stuff shouldn't be thought of as economists versus everyone else. It's economists, environmentalists, energy experts, budget types, and anyone who has spent a couple minutes thinking through the implications of the policy. It's simply a bad idea, albeit one that polls well, so Clinton is running with it. That's experience you can count on, or something."
• TPM's Marshall: "[Clinton has] no more sharks left to jump."

Bowers is growing increasingly alarmed by Clinton's rhetoric: "Clinton is trying to frame the gas tax holiday as 'taking on the oil companies,' which is a working class, progressive populist position. However, when it turns into taking on academics, the framing takes a sharp turn to the right where study and science are discounted, even scoffed at. [...] It fits into a larger pattern where Clinton is using right-wing conceptualizations of elitism to attack Obama. Now, for example, she is sending out direct mail attacking Obama for being an elitist who wants to take away rural people's guns. That is a pretty stark right-wing turn for Clinton in this campaign. [...] While Obama has engaged in some right-wing talking points of his own on 'Hillarycare,' a social security 'crisis,' and the rather absurd notion that the Clintons are ultra-partisan super lefties, Clinton is stepping into far more dangerous territory here. Her arguments border on holding liberalism and progressivism itself in the same sort of narrative contempt that conservatives have long done through the Great Backlash Narrative. This very much reminds of me when the DLC was dominant in the Democratic Party in the 1990's, and it is not a place to where I long to return."

OBAMA: In Bed With Teamsters, Terrorists, And Other Unsavory Characters

Conservative bloggers continue their anti-Obama onslaught, hitting the IL senator for allegedly "telling the [Teamsters] union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption":

• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "Obama holds himself out as a new kind of politician who refuses to play the old games. This story should blow Obama's pretense up several times over."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "Once again, it is interesting that this information is at least partly coming from within Obama's own team. Making back-room deals with the Teamsters -- now that's a 'new brand of politics'!"

Conservative bloggers are also buzzing about a 2001 Chicago Magazine article about ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers, which includes a photo of Ayers stomping on a U.S. flag:

• Michelle Malkin: "Flag desecration of the day: Bill Ayers stomps on Old Glory. Here's your Monday morning blood pressure-raiser. Put your coffee down before clicking."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "It's sometimes hard to remember that Jeremiah Wright is not the most reprehensible of Barack Obama's associates. We've written here and elsewhere about Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn. Now, via Marathon Pundit, this photograph of Ayers treading on an American flag has emerged. [...] Marathon P. says the picture was taken in 2001. This would be after Ayers and Dohrn launched Obama's career with a fundraiser at their home, and in a year when Ayers donated to Obama's State Senate campaign fund and served with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund. [...] Maybe it's time for Obama to disown Ayers and Dohrn, too."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "The optics of these picture will not help Barack Obama make his case that Ayers' radicalism existed when Obama was only eight years old. [...] The Old Glory Boogie in 2001 will again raise questions about Obama's judgment in working with America-hating radicals and lunatics. At some point, one has to wonder whether this shows bad judgment or reveals something about Obama's real views on America and politics -- and which would be worse in the White House."

MCCAIN: No Blood For Oil?

Liberal bloggers are attacking McCain for appearing to suggest that the Iraq War was motivated by the U.S.'s dependence on foreign oil:

"'My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will...prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East,' McCain said."

McCain later tried to clarify his remarks by claiming that he was referring to the first Gulf War and not the current conflict, but liberal bloggers aren't buying his explanation:

• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis links to a video of McCain's remarks which suggests that McCain was referring to the current conflict, not the first Gulf War: "McCain caused quite a stir earlier today when he said that the Iraq war just about oil, and that if we could become energy independent we'd never have to send troops to the Middle East ever again. Now McCain is lying, claiming that he was referring to the FIRST Gulf War being about oil, not the current one. Only problem, the transcript and video show quite clearly that McCain was talking about the current Iraq war and not the Gulf War."
• Benen: "No matter how long the Democratic presidential race lasts, and how much damage it does, the saving grace for the party may very well turn out to be John McCain's inability to speak coherently about foreign policy. If he were bright and lucid, I'd probably feel a whole lot worse about Democrats' chances. [...] For those keeping score at home, just recently, McCain has been confused about whether the U.S. can maintain a long-term presence in Iraq; confused about the source of violence in Iraq; confused about Iran's relationship with al Qaeda; confused about the difference between Sunni and Shi'ia; confused about Gen. [David] Petraeus' responsibilities in Iraq; and confused about what transpired during the Maliki government's recent offensive in Basra."
• Obsidian Wings' publius: "[This incident] reinforces my argument that McCain -- paper credentials aside -- is a weak campaigner. He's extremely undisciplined and that's ultimately going to cost him. It's not just that he's prone to unforced gaffes, but that his 'damage control' often gets him in further trouble than the original gaffe. For instance, here, his initial response was that he was thinking about the First Gulf War -- a claim that Benen explains just doesn't hold water given the context of the speech. But later on, he couldn't even get that explanation right when an AP reporter pushed him on it."

Meanwhile, Daily Kos' georgia10 thinks the "new digital era" makes McCain particularly vulnerable to gaffes like this one: "Many members of the press refuse to hold McCain to the standards against which the Democratic candidates are being measured. Accordingly, McCain has galloped by stumbles that may have doomed any other candidate: confusing Shiite (Iran) and Sunni (al Qaeda), not knowing whether contraceptives prevent the spread of HIV ('you've stumped me'), etc. [...] But how will the real McCain -- whiplash policy McCain -- play out in 2008, where video and blogs will be able to juxtapose his stances and statements in such a manner that shatters the myth of McCain as an 'honest broker'? [...] When McCain's words are set against McCain's words online -- as they are, for example, in this YouTube video, or this one, or this one -- the effect is devastating. [...] For over a decade, McCain has been able to craft the image of a moderate, independent guy by controlling the media environment around him. When that control is non-existent online, when ordinary citizens are each armed with their own tools to tarnish McCain's shining armor, that's when the real McCain will be exposed."

MCCAIN II: The Gray Lady Strikes Again

Conservative bloggers are accusing The New York Times of bias after it published an editorial urging McCain to disclose his health and financial information:

• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "In what is starting to look like its own version of Operation Chaos, the New York Times endorsed John McCain for president earlier this year. But since McCain clinched the Republican nomination, the Times has been doing its best to smear the candidate. Who can forget, for example, its hit-piece implying that McCain had an affair with an attractive lobbyist? Now the Times editorial board has weighed in with an attack on McCain for his alleged reluctance to disclose health information. [...] But the Times was happy to endorse McCain for the Republican nomination without mentioning this alleged deficiency in McCain's record. Thus, the paper's good faith in raising the issue now is subject to doubt."
• Morrissey: "As far as disclosure coming before clinching the nomination, isn't that a decision voters make? Republicans in the primaries didn't see it as a big enough issue to keep Senator McCain from clinching the GOP nomination. In fact, neither did the New York Times editors, which endorsed McCain in February. If they believe he needed to disclose his medical records and Mrs. [Cindy] McCain's financial records before winning, why did the NYT editorial board give him the endorsement before the disclosure? The Times has engaged in an obvious attempt to smear John McCain ever since he won the nomination. [...] The paper has become indistinguishable from the DNC and MoveOn's public-relations organs."
• RedState's Soren Dayton: "Lemme guess how this played out. NYT wanted to write a (hit) piece on this. They asked for more details on [McCain's] health. The McCain campaign responded with a solid date, something that the campaign is very accountable for, and then the New York Times attacked anyways. Why does the campaign even bother with the NYT? Their readership is collapsing. Their reporters like [Jim] Rutenberg and [Elisabeth] Bumiller are embarrassing the paper and demonstrably lowering its standards. Why even invite them on the bus and plane anymore. The campaign doesn't invite the DNC, why its surrogate?"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Weaker Than Advertised?

The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum thinks the blogosphere's "influence on the national stage appears to be pretty close to nil":

"The real lesson of the 2008 primaries is to raise some serious doubts about the power of the blogosphere in particular and the netroots more generally. On the Republican side, I'd venture that John McCain was the least favorite of the major candidates by a pretty fair margin. But he won anyway. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton was the least favorite of the majors but she's one of the last two standing. And although Barack Obama is a netroots darling now, it's worth remembering that his initial foray on Daily Kos didn't endear him to the blogosphere in the beginning. His message of bipartisan reconciliation was about the farthest thing imaginable from the 'fighting Dem' spirit of the blogosphere and he took plenty of hits for it. He's only popular now by default: virtually the entire netroots loathes Hillary Clinton, which means Obama is the only choice they have left.

If the respective left and right blogospheres had any real say in things, would we be looking at a McCain vs. Obama contest in November? Or McCain vs. Hillary? We would not. It would be [Rudy] Giuliani vs. [John] Edwards, or maybe [Mitt] Romney vs. [Chris] Dodd. The blogosphere is good at raising modest sums of money, and it likewise plays a modest role at the congressional level, but its influence on the national stage appears to be pretty close to nil. That was true in 2004, when [John] Kerry won the Democratic nomination, and it appears to still be true four years later."

LEST WE FORGET: Jaded Seismologist Can No Longer Feel Anything Under 7.0 On Richter Scale

From The Onion:

"SAN FRANCISCO -- Numbed by 30-plus years of recording more than 700,000 major and minor earthquakes, seismologist Richard Keefer, 58, told reporters yesterday that earthquakes measuring below 7.0 on the Richter magnitude scale do absolutely nothing for him anymore. 'In my younger days, even something as small as a 3.0 would get my blood pumping,' said Keefer, adding that once you've felt a 5.5 quake, you've felt them all. 'Now I'm lucky if a 6.8 even gets me out of bed.' According to Keefer, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which measured 9.0 on the Richter scale and killed more than 225,000 people, was the last time the seismologist felt alive."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at May 5, 2008 12:56 PM