As of this writing, the New Hampshire primary’s too close to call, for the Democrats (but History Unfolding says, it Obama, by one point, but apparently, not) has Hillary Clinton as the Comeback Kid. Click for detailed results on Politico.com. Pollsters were the biggest losers, says Roger Simon. In Slate, a tough question: Did Obama “Supporters” Lie?:
But now Clinton leads. This sort of jarring of our expectations conjures up past examples of black candidates who have polled significantly higher than their white opponents, only to confront a very different reality when the votes are counted. Pollsters know this as the “Bradley Effect,” christened for former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a black man who narrowly lost the 1982 California gubernatorial election to a white opponent even though Bradley led in the polls. (It’s sometimes also referred to as the “Wilder Effect,” after Douglas Wilder, who had been polling at 10 points ahead of Marshall Coleman in the 1989 governor’s race, beat Coleman by less than a point.) Harold Ford Jr., who lost his bid for a Senate seat in Tennessee in 2006, also polled better than he performed.
Very interesting is the role independent voters played in the primaries for both parties.
Encouraging news, at least so far, for the Clinton camp, which, in the wake of the Iowa caucus, was confronted with its political mortality quite starkly. See Hillary advisers fear N.H. loss. The situation in Iowa was chronicled by Roger Simon in Can you win on dull?, with this (for the Clintonites, at least) haunting scene:
Obama delivered a compelling, almost mesmerizing, speech, did not talk about any issue in detail and took no questions. His event lasted just over half an hour.
Clinton talked about issue after issue in almost mind-numbing detail and answered question after question in an event that lasted more than an hour and a half.
Both drew large crowds. But Clinton’s crowd was much smaller at the end of her speech than at the beginning.
Hundreds of people trickled and then streamed out while Clinton was still talking. But she went on and on as if she did not mind. And maybe she didn’t.
“You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose,” Clinton said, quoting Mario Cuomo.
Another view, from an Obama operative, is quoted in The Washington Note blog. See Belated Thoughts on Iowa from Michael Schiffer:
Interestingly, and based on some of my in-hall discussions caucus night, one of the other factors that Iowa caucus-goers seem to be responding to in supporting Obama is a subtle but significant difference in the rhetorical strategies employed by Clinton and Obama.
And no, this has nothing to do with change versus experience. Rather, it is a “me-you” distinction, and appears to have to do with a sense that the Clinton operation frames the campaign as one where “your role is to help and support her in her efforts”, as it was put to me, whereas the Obama campaign seems to try to frame things up as” him helping you.”
The various comment threads on the rather arcane caucus procedures and the logistics of the primary system sometimes make reference to Intrade Prediction Markets, where people make money trading, well, on the political futures of candidates. Almost hour-by-hour, you can track how candidates are faring, in terms of perception.
From The Guardian:
The Clinton camp accepts that her tactic of stressing her experience over Obama had lost out to his message of change.
She has since opted to stress that while he is promising change, he cannot deliver it. The campaign team also hopes the US media will subject Obama’s life and policies to greater scrutiny, having given him a soft run.
The strategy now is based on the calculation that Clinton will claim victory in next week’s primary in Michigan, albeit a potentially hollow one given that she is the only name on the ballot, and hopefully Nevada on January 19, Florida on January 29 and New York, California, Ohio and Texas on February 5. Obama is expected to take his home state, Illinois.
She is banking on winning support from the huge Hispanic population in Florida and California, who, the Clinton campaign claims, do not like Obama because of his stance on illegal immigration. But that strategy could come unstuck because of the nationwide publicity Obama has received since his Iowa win.
Behind the scenes, some Clinton campaign members are looking even further down the road at the prospect of trying to turn the summer nomination convention in Denver into a last-minute battle for votes.
Michigan has been stripped of its convention delegates by the Democrats because it broke party rules by holding its primary early, but Clinton, as winner in that state, could seek to have these delegates reinstated to boost her vote.
Also overseas, see Thaksin Was Rejected by the Thai Majority. How long before someone considers Joseph Estrada’s future prospects, in light of the unraveling of Thaksin’s supposedly solid base of support?
Here at home, even as Nat’l ID plan slammed, splits Senate, the Inquirer editorial enumerates why the revived proposal inspires skepticism.
The Business Mirror editorial points out the Sport of Kings is consumed by a fishwive’s quarrel.
The authorities were supposed to release their findings on the Glorietta blast on January 4. But didn’t do so. Even now, the Philippine National Police can only say they have “almost final” results they will be presenting in a report tomorrow. Here’s an indication of what’s caused the report’s delay: Razon to Ayala: Where’s proof bomb caused blast? and Police dare Ayala Land to show proof of ‘bomb’.
As devotees, thundering “Viva El Senor!” including the Vice-President, flock to Quiapo to show their faith in the Black Nazarene, it’s well to ponder Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Paradoxes of Latin America (found via Arts & Letters Daily). This extended passage is of relevance to Filipinos, not least because our own debates seem to echo Latin American debates, indeed, often touching on the question of whether we’re a portion of Latin America transplanted to Asia, or not. The trends he sees seem to be taking place here, too, the expansion of the mestizaje because of inter-marriage no longer with Spaniards or Americans but people from literally everywhere in the globe, but a new kind, and the introduction of a greater mix of cultural influences than ever before:
National boundaries, however, do not mark the true differences that exist in Latin America. These differences thrive in the bosom of each country and, in a transverse way, encompass regions and groups of countries. There is a Westernized Latin America that speaks Spanish, Portuguese and English (in the Caribbean and in Central America) and is Catholic, Protestant, atheist or agnostic; and there is an indigenous Latin America, which in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia comprises millions of people. That Latin America retains pre-Hispanic institutions, practices and beliefs. But even indigenous culture is not homogeneous, and it constitutes yet another archipelago that experiences different levels of modernization. While some languages and traditions–Quechua and Aymara–are the patrimony of vast social conglomerations, others, like the Amazonian cultures, survive in small communities, sometimes just a handful of families.
Fortunately, mestizaje–racial mixing–extends in all directions, bringing these two worlds together. In some countries, Mexico for example, mestizaje has integrated the bulk of society both culturally and racially. It represents the greatest achievement of the Mexican Revolution–transforming the two ethnic extremes, Native Americans and Europeans, into minorities. This integration is less dynamic in the other countries, but it is still going on and it will ultimately give Latin America the distinctive identity of a mestizo continent. But let’s hope it does so without making it totally uniform and erasing its subtle differences, though that is certainly possible in this century of globalization and interdependence among nations.
What is imperative is that, sooner rather than later, liberty and legality will be conjoined, thanks to democracy. Then all Latin Americans, regardless of race, language, religion and culture, will be equal before the law, will enjoy the same rights and opportunities, and will coexist in diversity without being discriminated against or excluded. Latin America cannot renounce its cultural diversity, which is what makes it a model for the rest of the world.
Mestizaje must not be understood exclusively as the fusion of Indians and Spaniards or Portuguese, though, naturally, those are the most important ethnic and cultural components in Latin American reality. The African contribution–and in the countries of the Caribbean basin and in certain regions of Brazil, it is an essential one–is of the highest importance. Africans reached the New World at the same time as did the conquistadors, and we see their influence in all artistic and cultural manifestations, especially in music. Asia, too, has been a presence in the life of the continent since the colonial era, and there are magnificent examples of how the techniques and achievements of Far Eastern plastic and decorative arts came to our lands and were assimilated by native artists and artisans. When you dig into the Latin American past without prejudice, without assuming a party pris, you soon discover that our cultural roots are spread all over the world.
Despite Latin America’s universality, one of its recurring obsessions has been defining its identity. In my opinion, this is a useless enterprise, dangerous and impossible, because identity is something possessed by individuals and not collectivities, at least once they’ve transcended tribal conditions. Only in the most primitive communities, where the individual exists only as part of the tribe, does the idea of a collective identity have any raison d’être. But, as in other parts of the world, this mania for determining historico-social or metaphysical specificity for an agglomeration has caused oceans of Latin American ink to flow, generating ferocious diatribes as well as interminable polemics.
The most celebrated and prolonged of all is the confrontation between Hispanists, for whom Latin American history begins with the arrival of Spaniards and Portuguese and the resultant linking of the continent with the Western world, and Indigenists, for whom the genuine reality of the New World resides in the pre-Hispanic civilizations and their descendants, and not in the contemporary heirs of the conquistadors, who still today marginalize and exploit Native Americans. Though eclipsed for long periods, this schizophrenic and racist vision of Latin America will never disappear. From time to time, it resurfaces in politics because, like all Manichean simplifications, it allows demagogues to stir up collective passions and provide superficial, schematic answers to complex problems. Every attempt to fix a unique identity for Latin America requires discriminatory surgery that excludes and abolishes millions of Latin Americans, along with many forms and manifestations of its rich cultural variety.
Speaking of the veep, Manuel Buencamino wonders, of the Vice-President,
Remember the answer of the masa in 1998 whenever the ilustrados would raise the issue of Erap not being educated or intelligent enough? They said, “We’re tired of being outsmarted.”
Maybe this time around the masa would rather lead than be led. Maybe, after living under Ate Glo’s thumb for so long, the masa want to become Kuya.
Who would’ve thunk? Revolutionary air car runs on compressed air.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, elections, philippines, politics, president, Senate, Washington DC
Supremo, at the very least, you need to explain why you believe that President Gore would go against the explicitly stated convictions of Citizen Gore when confronted with the same situation given that they are one and the same person. At the very least, you have to describe a plausible scenario or conditions in which this 180-degree turn could take place.
cvj,
Wake up! There is NO PRESIDENT GORE the last time I check.
Supremo, which is why i used the phrase “wouldn’t have“. Anyway, you’re right that there is no President Gore which is an unfortunate turn of events for the 1 million dead Iraqi victims of the invasion.
9/11 was not a pretext for Bush to order invasion of Iraq. 9/11 set the emotions raw; 9/11 set the stage, but 9/11 was not in the top 3 reasons for Bush to order troops into Iraq. It was already known that 9/11 is Bin Laden, and Bin Laden is Saudi, not Iraqi.
The top-reason for Bush-sending-troops-into-Iraq was Bush belief in Saddam possessing WMD. [So the UN said “most likely none”, but that was not good enough for “..most likely” is not good enough and because Saddam stupidly violated UN resolutions having kicked out the WMD inspectors.] The second reason was the Saddam-programs to develop WMD-expertise and WMD-delivery systems. One of the other reasons is the same reasoning now being used to justify United Nations involvement in Darfur, namely that Saddam the dictator’s sustained acts of brutality and mass-murder against a people. Cheney/Rumsfeld-etal most likely believed the “conquering heroes” blurb because it was an easy leap to make given the documented brutality of Saddam-the-dictator, Chemical-Ali and others of Saddam’s inner circle.
In a USA Today poll, 70% of Americans believed that Saddam was personally involved in 9/11.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm
The inspectors were not ‘kicked-out’ by Saddam. They were widthrawn by the Clinton administration.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1750
And more important, Gore not an issue, Gore is a non-event as far as the 2008-USA-election is concerned. Americans do not want to solve what is done and over with, and Gore-what-would-have-been is done. “Preemptive Doctrine” is not even an issue! Terrorism is an issue; how-to-get-troops-out-Iraq is an issue, Iran is an issue. Health care, the US economy and jobs are big election issues. The United Nations? China is a much bigger issue to Americans than the United Nations.
UPn Student, the UN Darfur intervention is different from a unilateral invasion. It also makes no difference to the 1 million dead Iraqis that they died in a war to liberate them from a dictator. Cheney/Rumsfeld et al’s belief that they will be greeted as “conquering heroes” is another example of American hubris.
I can understand that. I can imagine that 1 million dead Iraqis must weigh on the consciences of the Americans who supported Bush and his invasion. They would rather not face that inconvenient truth.
Except to those planning the invasion of Iran.
Preemptive Doctrine is not an issue for the American people because… because the issue is being resolved by history and through the American legal system. How Padilla-the-accused-American-citizen-terrorist has been treated by the Bush administration is not an issue in the New Hampshire campaign because this super-important-issue (rights of American citizens) is being resolved through the American legal system.
cvj… Americans look to the mistakes of the Vietnam war to understand what was/what may have been…. not to wear the mistakes as weights around their necks ala supplicants on their knees crawling to the Black Nazarene icon.
Yeah, being an American means never having to say you’re sorry. What’s a couple of million non-American lives worth anyway? As Britney Spears would sing, “Oops i did it again….”
cvj,
It’s really hard to understand the American psyche if you didn’t grow up here. I didn’t. My daughter once brought home a letter from school. The school is asking for donations for the troops. Any CDs, magazines, boxes of cookies or phone cards will do. They need the donations in 4 weeks to make it for Christmas. My daughter asked everyday before she goes to school ‘Where are the donations for the soldiers?’ That’s really annoying but I didn’t tell her that a million Iraqis already died because of this war so no donations. Why? Because the war is not the issue to her! The comfort of the soldiers is the issue. The war is for the current grown-ups to resolve not the kids. They will not even pass it to the kids. If it’s done, it’s also gone. Learn the lessons and move forward. It’s totally different for Filipinos. Conflicts span several generations. Filipinos remind their kids that so and so are the enemies. Nothing is done until your opponent is gone.
So if you meet my daughter sometime in her teens and ask her to apologize for the million dead Iraqis, she would probably give you the middle finger with a side salad to go.
Obama grew up in Hawaii. In this unique island, where no one dominant group is visible (every group is a minority in one sense) I see some outpouring of support from minorities, including Filipinos, who see in him new light at the end of the tunnel. However, seasoned politicians like Sen. Inuoye thinks otherwise – his time hasn’t come, not yet. Like it not, Obama is up against all odds. First and foremost is, demolishing the irony (or American hubris, if you will) of a “Black man in the White House.”
Are you saying Americans are just as forgetful as Filipinos?
But what if Iraq happened to America. Do you think they’d forgive.
BrianB: Already, Americans don’t even know anymore that Egyptian number-2 guy. And my expectation is that American high school kids of thirty years from now will not know Osama from Osaka, and Saddam will be Noriega — forgotten. But “The Alamo” is well-remembered now and so is Pearl Harbor, so Americans will always remember 9/11.
BrianB,
‘Are you saying Americans are just as forgetful as Filipinos?’
I once worked with an old, white American programmer. There’s not a single day that we don’t have any heated arguments at work. But at the end of the day, for several years, we would walk to the train station, take the same train and talk about the news of the day until we get to our station. No mention of work. Sa Pilipinas suntukan na yan.
Americans don’t really forget. They love history. They just don’t carry the emotional baggage associated with their history forever.
But you think Americans forgive as easily as they forget the wrong they’ve done to others?
Supremo, i do see that there is a disconnect between Americans and the rest of the world. (It’s not unlike the disconnect between the Tsinoys and the rest of the Filipino population that i’ve discussed with Silent Waters in the previous thread.) For the sake of every human being (including those in the USA), i’m hoping that your daughter, or at least her children, will grow up to see themselves primarily as residents of a shared planet first and foremost, and Americans next. As DJB declares in his blog, ‘there are virtues greater than nationalism’.
I was in Dallas, Texas for a business trip the day Saddam’s statue fell. In the hotel bar, people (including me) were intently watching CNN. I noticed that the Americans turned away from the TV when footage of injured Iraqis (because of collateral damage) was shown. I suppose that makes it easier for them to forget.
IRAN is NEXT!
cvj: I don’t expect Americans to be any less squeamish than you or any other in regards watching real-life bloodshed and gore on TV. And you were with Texans, plus the TV (Saddam’s statue being taken down) was about something for Americans to cheer about — they’ll take their eye away to order another round of drinks or because they got bored, not from any guilt-trip. I suspect that what you thought you saw as American behavior was created by the emotional upheavals inside you.
DJB: I disagree about Iran being next. Bush (or the next President) will be hard-pressed to orchestrate and convince the American population of the wisdom of war-against-Iran. Bush went into Iraq because of Saddam’s WMD, and Bush’s case against Iran is Iran’s development-programs to create The Bomb. However, the American population won’t toe the line this time especially since the CIA just published that Iran has stopped their nuclear-weaponry program.
plus…. American carrot-diplomacy seems to have found footing again. Happening now with with North Korea, so Americans will be inclined to believe that war is not inevitable and classic-bribery (translation : “enough dollars”/”enough commerce”) will solve the Iran-WMD.
So who is harder to buy off, an atheist (North Korea) or a religious nut?
In the context of a Hillary presidency, I repeat my earlier question: Democrat, Republican, really what’s the difference? From these islands, they all look the same.
Anyway, the NH results in the polls are being questioned by some quarters:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
outsourcing is a key issue. Democrats don’t like it.
Jeg: Democrat, Republican, really what’s the difference?
Gore Vidal: We only have one political party in the U.S., and that is the property party, which essentially is corporate America, which has two right wings, one called Republican and one called Democrat. I can’t say I like either of them.
Another reason why Iran will not be next is that the violence that the Iranian mullahs unleash on their own people is not wholesale enough (probably no different than the Castro dictatorship against Cubans) and one does not hear cries from enough Iranians that they will welcome foreign armies with flowers. It is Darfur that begs for foreign troops, not Iran (and interestingly, Bush is reported to want to send US troops to Moslem Darfur).
“outsourcing is a key issue. Democrats don’t like it.” — BriabB
Yup, i forgot about this one. It will definitely affect us here in Pinas should the next President get nationalistic about domestic jobs going outside, with our IT/BPO sector heavily dependent on American companies outsourcing jobs to us. Ha!, I for one presently get work as a part-time financial research editor for a New York-based company, and one of the key things I liked about it, is the standard pay that applies equally for those who are based in the US and those who are based outside.
This whole suppoty our troops business made sense when the US still had a draft. At that time, it was okay to support the troops because a soldier was a draftee and so even if he were against the war he had no choice but to fight.
But now the US has an all volunteer force. Kids who volunteer know they will ne semt to Iraq. They support the war. So why support those who volunteer to fight in a war you don’t support?
US Elections
Most importantly if Obama wins, Filipino politicians will be less gung-ho about morality, ethics and the law. Gaya gaya lang pinoy sa kano.
When Clinton lied about having an affair, GMA took it as license that it’s okay for her to lie,too. When Bush had prisoners at Guantanamo tortured, GMA took it as license she can have communists executed too. Filipino take their cue from American politics on how much they can get away with.
I’ll take your word for it. Your candor is appreciated.
That’s the equivalent of the ‘pare-pareho lang sila’ argument of the move-on crowd over here. The result was that the Nader voters split the progressive vote in Florida during the 2000 Presidential elections and altered the course of US (and Iraqi) history.
cvj: That’s the equivalent of the ‘pare-pareho lang sila’ argument of the move-on crowd over here.
That’s exactly what it is. What’s a citizen to do?
Whether we like it or not, that pare-pareho position is real, and should seriously be addressed instead of being dismissed or wished away, both here and in the US, which is so huge we watch what’s happening over there along with the rest of the world. Uncle Sam farts, and we’ll smell it half a world away. I was never an advocate of choosing the ‘lesser evil’ and did not. The ‘lesser evil’ vote was what happened in 2004. FPJ spooked the middle class so much that they chose GMA, whom they recognized as evil — the devil you know. (And the fact that she actually got slightly more votes than FPJ remains a possibility; Garci and the AFP merely deployed to pad her votes to a respectable margin.)
By the way, I got this quiz from a link in cvj’s blog.
http://www.gotoquiz.com/ultimate_2008_presidential_candidate_matcher
It’s a small quiz that determines which candidate whose platform matches yours. Mine came out Ron Paul.
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
By the way, I got this quiz from a link in cvj’s blog.
http://www.gotoquiz.com/ultimate_2008_presidential_candidate_matcher
It’s a small quiz that determines which candidate whose platform matches yours. Mine came out Ron Paul.
stupid thinking. politics isn’t everything and politicians can be forced to do what the people want.
I am an avid Ron Paul supporter, and I would love it if we can find someone in our country who can match his consistency in adhering to the constitution. He came out behind Giuliani in the NH primaries, and it looks like he does not have a snowball’s chance to win the nomination, but I believe that the effect he had to the new generation of voters will show in the years to come. A lot of young people were inspired by his message, and I know that many of them will venture into politics and espouse the message that Ron Paul is trying to spread.
It is a stretch to say that Gore is the same as Bush. If those 500 Nader voters in Florida chose the ‘lesser evil’ (i.e. Gore) instead of wasting it on Nader, then the chaos of Iraq would have been averted.
In any case, if the wrong hiring decision is made (as in the case with GMA over here), then citizens (from all sides) should remain collectively involved via the public sphere to prevent us from sinking further. Tuning out only encourages further irresponsible behavior from the politicians.
ManuelBu: Many of the American troops signed up during the Clinton-era. Many others signed up just after 9/11 to go after Osama. And many others are National Guard. The bullets and IEDs aimed at these soldiers are intended to kill Americans, not Americans-who-support-Cheney.
It is a stretch to say that Gore is the same as Bush. If those 500 Nader voters in Florida chose the ‘lesser evil’ (i.e. Gore) instead of wasting it on Nader, then the chaos of Iraq would have been averted.
Perhaps. But if I remember correctly, the Republicans also had Buchanan who split the conservative vote, so Nader and Buchanan canceled each other out. (Buchanan also wouldnt have sent troops to Iraq and was a vocal critic of it from the very outset, and has never flip-flopped from that position.)
My original question was actually about the parties, Republican and Democrat, and not about individual members. From where I sit, it would take a microscope to figure out the difference between the two. On paper they may be different, but in practice, theyre indistinguishable.
Jeg: Wikipedia provides a good description of the platforms of both the two main US Political Parties, e.g. that the Republican Party has always advocated a strong national defense. But I guess what you are saying is that you don’t see much difference in how your lifestyle/pocketbook gets affected by the party in the White House or the majority-party in the US congress.
We can only say the Nader and Buchanan’s votes would cancel each other out if the USA had a system of choosing their leaders purely via popular vote. As it happened, the ‘winner take all’ nature at the State level of the Electoral College meant that voting patterns within States mattered. The Progressives happened to split their votes in the State where it mattered most, i.e. in Florida.
There is a tendency for party ideology to converge to fit the preferences of the ‘median voter’ which is why the parties appear similar in terms of platform and behavior. However, even if it takes a microscope, spotting the difference(s) is worth it because of the non-linear relationship between actions and consequences especially when influenced by extraordinary events (such as 9/11). Even small differences at the start of the journey may still mean that you arrive at a very different destination at the end.
Djb,
You are incredible — what a warmonger!
Madonna,
I got the same impression as well after watching one Democrat debate. Hillary comes off as the better candidate if the criteria is competence alone.
Ironically, it is the women-under-30’s vote that secured victory for Obama in Iowa. Whatever happened to girl power?
Huckabee for US President!
He’s an evangelical Christian and hence God is on his side. Obama and Clinton fans maybe enjoying themselves right now, but wait till we mobilize our Christian Soldiers.
Huckabee all the way!
carl. i heared they got so drunk on election day celebrating obama’s impending victory, they couldn’t go to the polls to vote (lol).
Carl,
Obama’s strategy of focusing his message on changing the status quo of Washington politics is what’s so attractive to young voters, male and female. Change is very attractive to young people, and Hillary’s “experience” message of course doesn’t resonate as well with them. Obama seems to rather think of himself as the 21st century’s JFK.
And for women voters in general, I guess, it’s all rather a new experience to see a fellow woman go for and who might win the most powerful position not only in the United States, but in the world. So there’s a lot of uncertainty there on how to view it, chew it and consider it.
But as you could see, Hillary took the women votes again in New Hampshire, although the stats show that in the under-30 segment, Obama was a bit ahead. That moment when she choked up a bit (was it an act?; your guess is as good as mine, but the thing was it worked to her advantage) upon answering a personal question from a woman during a meeting with voters on how she’s doing — well, it virtually stopped Obama’s momentum because voters saw a side of her that she rarely or never shows.
It didn’t help Obama when he came off as patronising when he told Hillary “you’re likeable enough”
during the debate when she was asked to comment that voters seem to rate her rather low on the likeability factor.
Plus, the sight of Bill Clinton passionately defending his wife and getting emo went also well with voters I think.
Wow, this is the first time in years since the election of Bill Clinton himself in 1992 that I am again so keen on US national elections. I am rather a fan of the two, Bill and Hillary ever since – Monica, Whitewater, notwitstanding.
The Jihadist-blogger may know…. has some mullah put a prize on Obama’s head for apostasy?
‘That moment when she choked up a bit…’
The US military might have to add sympathy leaflets on those JDAMS if Hillary wins the presidency.