:: July 2008 ::
Three Hundred??
[commentary] : Barack Obama has 300 advisors on foreign policy. What?? That includes the Winnie-the Pooh fellow and 299 other “experts” who, we are led to believe, didn’t catch Obama’s “syntax” error on “undivided Jerusalem.” Did not one of the 300 know about the history of presidential summitry? And none of them thought it might have saved a heap of trouble for Obama if once during his primary campaign he had a briefing with General Petraeus or trip to Iraq? [...]
Most troubling is the possibility that the performance of the campaign’s foreign policy apparatus is a preview of the Obama administration’s foreign policy apparatus. There are apparently hundreds (if not thousands) of folks waiting to join the State and Defense Departments who hold beliefs that defy evidence and logic. They honestly believe that Iraq is unimportant, unconditional direct talks with Iran will unlock the promise of world peace, we can talk up protectionism at home without scaring our trading partners, and the less input from military commanders in war zones the better.
Take your pick as to which theory makes the most sense. But 300? I guess it takes a lot of people to script a foreign trip so tightly that there is no room for a gaffe.
[commentary] : When the Obama camp thought Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki might be pressing for a firm deadline for a U.S. troop withdrawal, they were delighted and insisted the Bush administration come up with a fixed exit schedule. Now that a general understanding based on long term conditions and facts on the ground ( “a general time horizon“) has been reached, Barack Obama is back to threatening and bad-mouthing the Maliki government. In a statement, Obama (in words that sound like they were lifted from 2006) declares:
Now, instead of vague illusions to a ‘general time horizon,’ it’s time to pressure Iraq’s leaders to reach the political accommodation necessary for long-term stability, and to refocus on strengthening our military and finishing the fight in Afghanistan.
Rather than seize on the new understanding as the best possible news (after all didn’t Obama fear John McCain would have us stay in Iraq “indefinitely“?) he plays once again to his base, insisting on “pressuring” the Maliki government. To do what exactly? They have already reached 15 of the 18 benchmarks. [...]
It will be interesting to see what Obama will say to Maliki and what will he hear on his trip. Will Obama tell him what he allegedly told the Iraqi foreign minister (that he won’t abandon the Iraqis or sacrifice gains we have made), or will he read him the New York Times op-ed? And if Maliki, like General Petraeus, tells him that we can’t possibly adhere to Obama’s 16-month timetable, Obama will be faced with the prospect of ignoring him too (or flip-flopping once more).
Again, when you make up your mind in advance, facts and contrary advice have a way of catching up with you. Surely one of those 300 foreign policy staffers must have told him that.
To Err
[rcp] : Every voter understands the simple principle that you don't make up your mind about something until you have checked the facts -- but this week Obama declared he will stick to his predetermined troop-withdrawal schedule no matter what he might learn on his forthcoming trip to Iraq.
The only reasonable explanation for his rigidity is that he's hemmed in by the overwhelming demand of the Democratic base -- and left-wing bloggers above all -- that he not backtrack on the central promise of his campaign: to end the war.
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Bush administration flip-flops on Iran
[tws] : [...] So what changed? Very little.
In the weeks leading up to the State Department's announcement, Iran had been deliberately provocative. At a Kuala Lumpur summit for developing nations, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned of George W. Bush's "satanic desires." Iran test-fired long-range missiles, including the Shahab-3, which is capable of striking Israel. And a few days after that, it rejected a generous aid offer from our European allies--backed by the State Department--that included nuclear fuel, assistance on a nuclear reactor, and improved trade and diplomatic relations, if the Iranian regime would simply suspend its uranium enrichment program.
The State Department response wasn't to get tough. Instead, Condoleezza Rice directed her diplomats to simply drop the one precondition for engagement that we had insisted on for years and in effect reward these provocations.
But, it's not just Iran.
On October 9, 2006, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. The next morning George W. Bush condemned this "provocative act" and warned against proliferation. "The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or nonstate entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and we would hold North Korea fully accountable." He rejected North Korean requests for direct meetings. "Obviously, I made the decision that bilateral negotiations wouldn't work, and the reason I made that decision is because they didn't."
Three weeks later, chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill secretly met alone with his North Korean counterpart in China. Three months after that, they met again in Berlin. Eight months later Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear facility that had been constructed with North Korean assistance.
Despite all of this--despite North Korean nuclear aid to one of the world's leading terrorist regimes and despite its subsequent failure to account for its nuclear programs--in June the Bush administration volunteered to lift sanctions on North Korea under the Trading with the Enemy Act and, over the objection of our close ally Japan, decided to remove North Korea from the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terror.
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The Audacity of Vanity
[wapo] : Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins -- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.
What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.
Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the elder -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?
Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.) [...]
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
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[rcp] : [...] Obama has carried flip-flopping to new heights. In the space of a month and a half, this candidate -- who we don't really yet know very well -- reversed or sharply modified his positions on at least eight key issues:
• After vowing to eschew private fundraising and take public financing, he has now refused public money.
• Once he threatened to filibuster a bill to protect telephone companies from liability for their cooperation with national security wiretaps; now he has voted for the legislation.
• Turning his back on a lifetime of support for gun control, he now recognizes a Second Amendment right to bear arms in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.
• Formerly, he told the Israeli lobby that he favored an undivided Jerusalem. Now he says he didn't mean it.
• From a 100 percent pro-choice position, he now has migrated to expressing doubts about allowing partial-birth abortions.
• For the first time, he now speaks highly of using church-based institutions to deliver public services to the poor.
• Having based his entire campaign on withdrawal from Iraq, he now pledges to consult with the military first.
• During the primary, he backed merit pay for teachers -- but before the union a few weeks ago, he opposed it.
• After specifically saying in the primaries that he disagreed with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) proposal to impose Social Security taxes on income over $200,000 and wanted to tax all income, he has now adopted the Clinton position.
Obama's breathtaking flips and flops are materially different from McCain's. While McCain had opposed offshore oil drilling and now supports it, the facts have obviously changed. Obama's shifts have nothing to do with altered circumstances, just a change in the political calendar.
As a candidate who was nominated to be a different kind of politician, Obama has set the bar pretty high. And, with his flipping and flopping, he is falling short, to the disillusionment of his more naïve supporters. One wag even called him the "black Bill Clinton," a turnaround of the "first black president" moniker that had been pinned on Bill.
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Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate
[dailytech] : The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."
In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."
The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"
In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."
According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."
Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."
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The Iron Timetable
Whether the war in Iraq is being lost or won, Barack Obama's strategy remains unchanged.
[wapo] : BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: "They said we couldn't leave when violence was up, they say we can't leave when violence is down." Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might "refine" his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.
Mr. Obama's charge against the Republicans was not entirely fair, since Mr. Bush has overseen the withdrawal of five American brigades from Iraq this year, and Mr. McCain has suggested that he would bring most of the rest of the troops home by early 2013. Mr. Obama's timeline would end in the summer of 2010, a year or two before the earliest dates proposed recently by members of the Iraqi government. The real difference between the various plans is not the dates but the conditions: Both the Iraqis and Mr. McCain say the withdrawal would be linked to the ability of Iraqi forces to take over from U.S. troops, as they have begun to do. Mr. Obama's strategy allows no such linkage -- his logic is that a timetable unilaterally dictated from Washington is necessary to force Iraqis to take responsibility for the country.
At the time he first proposed his timetable, Mr. Obama argued -- wrongly, as it turned out -- that U.S. troops could not stop a sectarian civil war. He conceded that a withdrawal might be accompanied by a "spike" in violence. Now, he describes as "an achievable goal" that "we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future -- a government that prevents sectarian conflict and ensures that the al-Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge." How will that "true success" be achieved? By the same pullout that Mr. Obama proposed when chaos in Iraq appeared to him inevitable.
Mr. Obama reiterated yesterday that he would consult with U.S. commanders and the Iraqi government and "make tactical adjustments as we implement this strategy." However, as Mr. McCain quickly pointed out, he delivered his speech before traveling to Iraq -- before his meetings with Gen. David H. Petraeus and the Iraqi leadership. American commanders will probably tell Mr. Obama that from a logistical standpoint, a 16-month withdrawal timetable will be difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill. Iraqis will say that a pullout that is not negotiated with the government and disregards the readiness of Iraqi troops will be a gift to al-Qaeda and other enemies. If Mr. Obama really intends to listen to such advisers, why would he lock in his position in advance?
"What's missing in our debate," Mr. Obama said yesterday, "is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq." Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war's outcome -- that Iraq "distracts us from every threat we face" and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That's an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world's largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq's future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.
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Sure, it's no big deal, meaningless, etc. etc. Everybody changes right? Change.
Judgement : Obama Scrubs Website
[latimes] : Barack Obama's aides have removed criticism of President Bush's increase of troops to Iraq from the campaign Web site, part of an effort to update the Democrat's written war plan to reflect changing conditions.Debate over the impact of President Bush's troop "surge" has been at the center of exchanges this week between Obama and Republican presidential rival John McCain. Obama opposed the war and the surge from the start, while McCain supported both the invasion and the troop increase. [...]
After Bush delivered a nationally televised address on Jan. 10, 2007, announcing his plan, Obama argued it could make the situation worse by taking pressure off Iraqis to find a political solution to the fighting.
"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there," the Illinois senator said that night, a month before announcing his presidential bid. "In fact, I think it will do the reverse."
Obama continued to argue throughout 2007 that the troop increase was a mistake. By the early part of this year, he was acknowledging that it had improved security and reduced violence, but he has stuck by his opposition to the move.
In a speech Tuesday, he argued that since the surge began, the strain on the military has increased, the United States has spent another $200 billion in Iraq, Afghanistan has deteriorated, the Taliban and al-Qaida have rebuilt and Iraqis have not made political progress. "That's why I strongly stand by my plan to end this war," Obama said.
McCain said Obama is failing to acknowledge success. "Today, we know Sen. Obama was wrong" to oppose the surge, McCain said.
As first reported Tuesday by the New York Daily News, Obama's campaign removed a reference to the surge as part of "The Problem" section on the part of his Web site devoted to laying out his plan for Iraq.
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Banned : Welcome To The Nanny State
Whether you love it, hate it, or have never thought about it, chances are some politician wants to ban it. "Welcome to the Nanny State Nation," says reason.tv host Drew Carey. "Where the government minds your own business."
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Figures Reveal Massive Increase in Multiple Abortions
[dailymail UK] : Among the throng of women who gather outside the school gates each day, Angela Simmons is every inch the archetypal middle-class mother, fussing over her seven-year-old son Ben and ferrying him between after-school clubs and play dates.
Certainly nobody would guess that the 39-year-old former estate agent is one of around 50 women each year in the UK to have notched up her seventh abortion.
Government statistics released this week show that record numbers of women are having two or more abortions - and those who do so are not, as might be expected, young teenagers who don't know any better. [...]
Statistics show that last year 1,300 women had at least their fifth abortion. Almost 950 of those having a termination had already had four previously. Almost 200
had already had five, 110 had had six before and 54, like Angela, seven or more.
The ease with which such women are undergoing repeat abortions has led campaigners to argue that terminations are being approved all too readily - given for social reasons rather than because a pregnancy might pose a significant risk to a mother's health or well-being.
There are fears too about the emotional toll that multiple abortions may be taking on such women.
This week the Royal College of Psychiatrists warned that women may be at risk of mental breakdowns if they have abortions - something which, as we shall see, is borne out by Angela's story - and should not be allowed one unless they are properly counselled about this potential risk.
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On The Cover
You really have to wonder what's in the mind of the people that dream this stuff up (see below) and then reach a consensus of, "Yes, this is great, we'll go with it." Especially when considering that this magazine is by no stretch "right-wing" inclined and we all know how evil those people are. Sure, we get the professed goal and ideal, and frankly we're glad that the freedom to be this foolish does exist, but somehow it seems to us that the larger point (forget the unending hypocritical aspects - can you imagine?) once again is missed. With friends like these...
[breitbart]Barack Obama's campaign says a satirical New Yorker magazine cover showing the Democratic presidential candidate dressed as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist is "tasteless and offensive."
The illustration on the issue that hits newsstands Monday, titled "The Politics of Fear" and drawn by Barry Blitt, depicts Barack Obama wearing traditional Muslim garb—sandals, robe and turban—and his wife, Michelle—dressed in camouflage, combat boots and an assault rifle strapped over her shoulder—standing in the Oval Office.
The couple is doing a fist tap in front of a fireplace in which an American flag is burning. Over the mantle hangs a portrait of Osama bin Laden.
"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. "But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”
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Behold The Awesome
[nypost] : In his pre-campaign book, "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama proclaims, "I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience."
Some might think this odd testimony from a young and inexperienced freshman senator on the cusp of seeking the highest rank, and the most famous position, in the world. It's a bit like a parish priest saying he's happy with his modest lot in life and then declaring he's throwing his hat in the ring to become pope.
But a closer reading reveals a possible explanation. Perhaps he's an adulation junkie. Maybe the diminishing "nourishment" Sen. Obama receives from "popularity" is actually causing him to ratchet up his pursuit of more and more praise just to get the minimal fix he needs.
That would account for why a man who thinks striving for popularity is a character flaw has nonetheless decided to give his nomination acceptance speech in a 76,000-seat football stadium.
Or it might tell us why a candidate who hasn't even been nominated yet wants to re-enact some of the most famous scenes from both Reagan and JFK's highlight reels by holding a rally at Germany's Brandenburg Gate, even though he's not a head of state yet. (German authorities, aware of Obama's rock-star status with the German public, diplomatically suggested that it was up to Obama to decide what is in "good taste.")
Perhaps Dominic Lawson, writing in the British newspaper The Independent had it right when he recently wrote that Obama is "a man of stunning articulacy, but also stunning self-regard."
Last July, Obama explained to reporters that he would eventually overtake Hillary Rodham Clinton in the polls because "to know me is to love me." Some months later, according to The Associated Press' Ron Fournier, he proclaimed, "Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there."
Of course, Obama and his surrogates would say he's just being lighthearted, he doesn't really take himself all that seriously.
One problem with that interpretation is that there's little evidence that he's interested in dispelling or rebutting the cult of personality he's developed. Obama himself talks of reversing the ocean's tides.
The overarching theme to his entire campaign - "We are the ones we've been waiting for," and all that - is that voting for Obama is proof of the cosmic superiority of ... Obama voters.
In a speech in Madison, Wis., Obama told his supporters that rallying to his cause was today's equivalent of the "greatest generation" rallying to defeat Hitler and Tojo. Oprah merely calls him, "The One," saying he will help us "evolve to a higher plane."
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The Great Biofuels Con
[telegraph] : Rarely in political history can there have been such a rapid and dramatic reversal of a received wisdom as we have seen in the past 18 months over biofuels – the cropping of living plants, such as soya beans, wheat and sugar cane, to generate energy.
Two years ago biofuels were still being hailed as a dream solution to what was seen as one of the most urgent problems confronting mankind – our dependence on fossil fuels, which are not only finite but seemed to be threatening the world with the catastrophe of global warming.
In March 2007 the leaders of the European Union, in a package of measures designed to lead the world in the "fight against climate change", committed us by 2020 to deriving 10 per cent of all transport fuel from "renewables", above all biofuels, which theoretically gave off no more carbon dioxide than was absorbed in their growing.
Since then, however, the biofuels dream has been disintegrating with the speed of a collapsing card house. Environmentalists, formerly keen on this "green energy", expressed horror at the havoc it was inflicting on the world's eco-systems, not least the clearing of rainforests to grow fuel crops.
As the world suddenly faced its worst food shortage for decades, sending prices spiralling, experts pointed out that a major cause had been diverting millions of acres of farmland from food production to fuel. The damage this was inflicting on the world's poor led a United Nations official to describe the rush for biofuels as "a crime against humanity".
As damaging as anything to the belief that biofuels could help save the planet from global warming have been various studies showing that producing biofuels can give off more carbon dioxide than they save. So devastating has been this backlash that even the British Government, which prides itself on being the greenest of the green, commissioned a review, published last Monday, urging a slowdown in the move to biofuels. When this recommendation was endorsed by senior ministers, this put the UK directly at odds with a European Union policy to which it had already signed up. But the EU is firmly holding its line, saying it has no intention of lowering its target.
How did we come to such a pass? The story of mankind's love affair with biofuels goes back much further than most people realise, and has unfolded through five stages.
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Russian "U-Turn" : A Vote For Thuggery
[timesonline] Britain’s diplomatic strategy in Zimbabwe collapsed last night in an historic defeat for the West in the UN Security Council that will have repercussions across Africa and beyond.
Russia and China wielded their veto to kill a resolution imposing UN sanctions on President Mugabe and his inner circle in a defining vote in the 15-nation council.
Sir John Sawers, the British Ambassador to the UN, said: “The people of Zimbabwe need to be given hope that there is an end in sight to their suffering. The Security Council today has failed to offer them that hope.” [...]
Britain and the United States forced the draft resolution to a vote because they counted on the support of the nine members needed to secure adoption. In a dramatic show of hands, the draft did indeed earn the requisite nine votes to pass, with five against, but was not adopted because of Russia’s and China’s block. South Africa, Vietnam and Libya also voted against, while Indonesia abstained.
The showdown heralds a chilling of international relations as Russia and China resist growing UN intervention in other repressive regimes, such as Burma, and it represents a shift in the balance of power at the top table of diplomacy. Russia, China and developing nations are flexing their muscles after Western dominance since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“China and Russia have stood with Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe,” Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, told the council. “This resolution would have supported the courageous efforts of the Zimbabwean people to change their lives peacefully through elections.”
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Campaign Economics
[wapo] In serious consideration for ambassador to Belarus." That's the role John McCain joked that former senator Phil Gramm might have in a McCain administration. Gramm is McCain's most senior economic adviser, the one best qualified to lead the finance team of a McCain presidency. Now, however, Gramm faces political exile because he made the mistake of telling the truth.
What prompted the abrupt demotion? The short answer is what might be called Campaign Econ. Campaign Econ says the American economy is a certain way because Americans think it is. Campaign Econ competes with real economics and often wins -- with damage that extends way beyond, say, the political career of either Phil Gramm or John McCain.
Consider what happened this week. While speaking with the Washington Times, Gramm said that the country was not in a true recession but a "mental recession." He also said, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners" and "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."
Gramm was right about the recession and stood by his recession comments on Thursday. A recession is two consecutive quarters in which the economy shrinks, and last quarter it grew. But no matter. Voters feel they are in a recession, and so they are, at least according to Campaign Econ. [...]
Campaign Econ is certainly understandable. Gas prices are ruining vacation plans and killing businesses. Many Americans have lost or are about to lose their homes to foreclosure or in distress sales. The federal government may not be talking about it much yet, but inflation plagues the country. The weak dollar is altering our everyday calculations. For many, this is not a happy summer.
Still, to liken the current moment to the Great Depression, or even the early 1980s, as Campaign Economists have, is to whine, just as Gramm said. During the Depression, people lost their homes even though they had borrowed only 10 percent of the purchase price. People losing their homes today frequently have borrowed 90 percent or more. The country approached double-digit unemployment in the early 1980s. This week, even as McCain was trying to talk his campaign past Gramm's comments, joblessness stood at a historically modest 5.5 percent.
And Campaign Econ has costs. The first is that talk of a downturn -- or "mental recession," as Gramm put -- can itself generate a downturn. Keynesian economists say this is so because consumer spending slows when people are afraid. But there's also a non-Keynesian dynamic. Grumbling leads to costly government rescues that scare markets and slow growth.
Second, as evidenced by the plummeting prices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares, serious trouble may be closer than we think. The plunging stock of the government-sponsored mortgage companies reminds us that those entities urgently require restructuring. Wall Street figures and the Senate Finance Committee that Gramm used to chair are already talking about how to structure a bailout. But this task is about stopping recession, not luxuriating in it.
Social Security and Medicare also need rewriting -- and Gramm put forth one of the better proposals on Social Security in the 1990s.
In short, to fix it all, we need a frank conversation about the economy. McCain, in fact, inaugurated one back in 2006 when he gave a speech that was downright Gramm-like at the Economic Club of New York.
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Withdrawal Plan : U.S. Commanders : Logistical Nightmare
[abc] Whatever nuance Barack Obama is now adding to his Iraq withdrawal strategy, the core plan on his Web site is as plain as day: Obama would "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months."
It is a plan that, no doubt, helped Obama get his party's nomination, but one that may prove difficult if he is elected president. [...]
We spent a day with Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond in Sadr City. He is the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which is responsible for Baghdad. Hammond will likely be one of the commanders who briefs Barack Obama when he visits Iraq.
"We still have a ways to go. Number one, we're working on security and it's very encouraging, that's true, but what we're really trying to achieve here is sustainable security on Iraqi terms. So, I think my first response to that would be let's look at the conditions.
"Instead of any time-based approach to any decision for withdrawal, it's got to be conditions-based, with the starting point being an intelligence analysis of what might be here today, and what might lie ahead in the future. I still think we still have work that remains to be done before I can really answer that question," Hammond said when asked how he would feel about an order to start drawing down two combat brigades a month. [...]
Success on the battlefield is not the only complication with Obama's plan.
Physically removing the combat brigades within that kind of time frame would be difficult, as well.
The military has been redeploying troops for years, and Maj. Gen. Charles Anderson, who would help with the withdrawal, told us as we toured Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, "We have the capacity to do a minimum of two-and-a-half brigade combat teams a month -- can we expand that capacity? Sure. Can we accelerate? It depends. It depends on the amount of equipment that we bring back. And it's going to depend on how fast we bring them out."
It is the equipment that is the real problem.
In the kind of redeployment that Anderson is talking about, the troops head home, but much of their equipment stays behind. Two combat brigades means up to 1,200 humvees in addition to thousands of other pieces of equipment, like trucks, fuelers, tankers and helicopters.
And 90 percent of the equipment would have to be moved by ground through the Iraqi war zone, to the port in Kuwait, where it must all be cleaned and inspected and prepared for shipment. This is a place with frequent dust storms, limited port facilities and limited numbers of wash racks.
While Anderson and his troops have a positive attitude, several commanders who looked at the Obama plan told ABC News, on background, that there was "no way" it could work logistically.
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We Can Lower Oil Prices Now
[wsj] : Although most experts agree that financial speculation was not responsible for the surge in the global prices of food and energy, many people remain puzzled about the source of these remarkable price rises. Economics offers a simple supply-and-demand explanation and reason for optimism about the future of commodity prices. In the case of oil, economics also suggests how policy changes today that affect the future could quickly lower the current price of oil.
[...] increasing the expected future supply of oil would also reduce today's price. That fall in the current price would induce an immediate rise in oil consumption that would be matched by an increase in supply from the OPEC producers and others with some current excess capacity or available inventories.
Any steps that can be taken now to increase the future supply of oil, or reduce the future demand for oil in the U.S. or elsewhere, can therefore lead both to lower prices and increased consumption today.
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Michelle Obama on Short-Term Fix
[msnbc] In response to a question about the economic stimulus checks administered by the U.S. government earlier this year, Michelle Obama said her husband believes that short-term fixes don't solve economic problems.
"You're getting $600," she told an audience of mostly African-American women here. "What can you do with that? Not to be ungrateful or anything. But maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn't pay down every bill every month."
"Barack's approach is that the short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good," she continued. "And it may even feel good that first month when you get that check. And then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings," she joked.
The Obamas have been fighting Republican attacks painting the couple as elitist. Michelle Obama, who has been something of a lightning rod for the attacks, has fought those charges by highlighting the irony between the charges and her upbringing on the South side of Chicago. But her line on earrings could be red meat for some, particularly in making them in Pontiac. The satellite city south of Detroit was once a booming auto industry town, but now the per capita income is 40% below the national average and almost a quarter of the population is below the poverty line.
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Who really pays the taxes?
[powerline] [...] At the time we wrote the Bush tax return article for National Review, the most recent data came from 1991 tax returns. The data indicated that the top 1 per cent of tax filers reported 13 per cent of total adjusted gross income (i.e., before most deductions), but paid 24.6 per cent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 per cent of taxpayers reported 26.8 per cent of the income, but paid 43.4 per cent of the taxes. The bottom 50 per cent of tax filers, by contrast, reported 15.1 per cent of the income, but paid only 5.5 per cent of the taxes, leaving 94.5 per cent of the tax bill to be paid by those with above-average incomes.
Since we wrote the Bush tax return article the trend of disproportionate tax payments by high income taxpayers has continued. Stephen Moore previews the most recent data in today's Wall Street Journal: [link]"My contacts at the Treasury Department tell me that for the first time in decades, and perhaps ever, the richest 1% of tax filers will have paid more than 40% of the income tax burden. The top 50% will account for 97% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% will have paid just 3%." Moore's preview does not include the companion income data.
Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, political philosophers have worried that government based on majority rule could lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. "If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city," warned Aristotle.
The founders of the United States were deep students of politics and history, and they shared Aristotle's worry. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be "incompatible with personal security or the rights of property." James Madison and others therefore made it the "first object of government" to protect personal property from unjust confiscation. Numerous provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were included to protect the property rights of citizens. We've fallen off from the spirit of the founders on this issue, but it would be good to recall it in connection with the release of the income tax data previewed in Moore's column.
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Gallup on July
[dsurber] At this point in 2004, Democratic Sen. John Kerry had a 7-point lead in the Gallup while Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has a 2-point lead. The Gallup Poll looked at the last few elections and found that the leader in July won only 3 of the 9 contested races since 1948. [link]
Presidents Dewey, Humphrey, Dukakis and Kerry had leads of 11, 5, 6 and 7, respectively, at this point in their races.
In fact, in July 2004, Kerry had a majority over the incumbent, 51-44.
Of the 15 listed contests, Kerry was the only leader with a majority in July to lose in November.
The 17-point lead by Democratic Gov. Mike Dukakis was a Newsweek poll that came out in August.
Obama now leads Republican Sen. John McCain 46-44 in the Gallup.
Curiously, in 10 of the last 12 races, the Republican fared better in November than he polled in July. The two exceptions are President Clinton in 1992 and Vice President Al Gore in 2000.
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Democratic Convention : Rising Costs and Delays
[nyt] [...] With the Denver convention less than two months away, problems range from the serious — upwardly spiraling costs on key contracts still being negotiated — to the mundane, like the reluctance of local caterers to participate because of stringent rules on what delegates will be eating, down to the color of the food. At last count, plans to renovate the inside of the Pepsi Center for the Democrats are $6 million over budget, which may force convention planners to scale back on their original design or increase their fund-raising goals.
The convention is being organized by the Democratic National Committee, which is run by Howard Dean, with his chief of staff, the Rev. Leah D. Daughtry, leading the effort. [...]
Some of the Democratic missteps started soon after planning for the event began. The Democratic National Convention Committee decided not to take cheap office space and instead rented top-quality offices in downtown Denver at $100,000 a month, only to need less than half the space, which it then filled with rental furniture at $50,000 a month. And in a costly misstep, the Denver host committee, early on, told corporate donors that their contributions were not tax-deductible, rather than to encourage donations by saying that the tax-exempt application was pending and expected to be approved.
Overly ambitious environmental goals — to turn the event into a “green” convention — have backfired as only three states’ full delegations have so far agreed to participate in the program. Negotiations over where to locate demonstrators remain unsettled with members of the national news media concerned over proposals to locate the demonstrators — with their loud gatherings — next to the media tent.
And then there is the food: A 28-page contract requested by Denver organizers that caterers provide food in “at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple and white.” Garnishes could not be counted toward the colors. No fried foods would be allowed. Organic and locally grown foods were mandated, and each plate had to be 50 percent fruits and vegetables. As a result, caterers are shying away.
For the Democratic Party, the danger is that a poorly run convention, or one that misses the mark financially, will reflect badly on the party and raise questions about Democratic management skills. And more worrisome for the Obama campaign is that it will be left with the bill for overruns or fund-raising shortfalls, and that the candidate will have to compete in raising money against a convention effort desperate for cash.
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U.S. Secretly Takes Yellowcake From Iraq
A Huge Stockpile Of Natural Uranium Arrives In Canada After Secret U.S. Operation
[cbs] : (AP) The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
What is now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of Baghdad - using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.
"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" - a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material - it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.
The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.
"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.
The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives - kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.
And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.
Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger - and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims - led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.
Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre (9,300-hectare) site - surrounded by huge sand berms - following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.
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Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda
[timesonline] : American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.
After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul.
A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.
Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects.
The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.
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LA Times Cuts 250 Jobs
[forbes] : The most troubled big newspaper in U.S. is cutting off 250 jobs, including an unprecedented 150 positions in editorial, to bring its expenses down in line with declining revenues.
The Los Angeles Times newspaper will also reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15%, it announced on a slow Wednesday prior to July 4th holiday week.
These cuts will be across all departments of The Times, including circulation, marketing and advertising; the company will have about 3,000 employees after the reductions.
This is among the biggest such cuts announced by any major market U.S. newspaper in recent history. The editorial cuts amount to roughly 17% of the 876 the company employs now, will be spread between the print newsroom and The Times’ online operations and are to be completed by Labor Day.
Times Editor Russ Stanton explained the paradox in a staff memo: “Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money.”
Also thanks to the Internet, the luxury of monopoly is gone too…
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The donkey truly is a suitable mascot for the Democratic Party. The brilliance and self fulfilling prophetic nature continues to amaze with new found heights of jackassery.
Perennial rod, John Kerry, who I didn't think would be eclipsed in the ability to "drone on endlessly while saying zero or worse" sweepstakes for quite some time (surprise - enter Obama) was as skilled as usual, recently commenting on his insights that McCain doesn't have the judgment to hold the presidency. Yet, somehow he was Kerry's choice for VP, above any Democrat available in 2004.
[wtimes] John Kerry says Republican John McCain doesn't have the judgment to be president.
If that's the case, then it's probably a good thing Mr. McCain rejected overtures from Mr. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, to form a bipartisan ticket and run with Mr. Kerry as his candidate for vice president.
Mr. Kerry had no kind words for his Senate colleague Sunday, accusing the Arizonan of poor decision-making on everything from backing tax cuts for the wealthy to making support for continuing the U.S. military presence in Iraq the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.
"John McCain ... has proven that he has been wrong about every judgment he's made about the war.
The tripe really is astonishing - but hey, people let them roll along with it.
Then there's General Wesley Clark, who I honestly thought was someone of impressive verbal control during the initial Iraq episode and perhaps one to look ahead to due to his seemingly reasoned and calculatedly unbiased commentaries early on for CNN. He spoke well enough and seemed like an affable and nice guy, straddling an unbiased illusion quite well.
The 2004 presidential run that followed reeked of some type of superstar, cash-in thing, but I did consider and expect him to be a formidable sort and assumed he would do well. Then he started talking. Disappeared and lost was the reasoned fellow, replaced by mind boggling cliche and puppet string, partisan drivel. Wow. What an eye opener.
Now that he's paraded around for a few days with his latest boner (on par, if not greater than the Obama 'presidential seal' if only as that one was swept away and under the rug so quickly) espousing his opinion of McCain's qualifications relative to his military history. Misread? Lacking context? Very well possible. Isn't everybody misread or misunderstood nowadays? You bet. No matter, it remains a pathetic attempt and example - duly noted of a would-be Kerry supporter, he of such vaunted history himself - regardless if you consider McCain a good choice or POTUS or not.
The real magic is however, in attempting to downplay whatever value one may or may not place on McCain's military history - although it certainly came across as a devaluing attempt - Clark nimbly succeeded in underscoring the painfully obvious fact that if then naturally compared to Obama, with zero such experience, McCain makes Barry look like a toddler, more than standing behind that ridiculous seal even did.
Digging in didn't work out too well for Clark, so it looks like a forced redeploy to higher ground is the directive...issued from somewhere to be sure. Nice one Wes.
Obama, for his part continues to astound with oratory and mind numbing (for some) brilliance:
"He said Monday it was “very clear” Clark’s “remarks don’t reflect my beliefs.”
How's that for tired regurge? Is this the tenth time we've heard this line offered for different instances?
If you find yourself having reached your swoon fill of this brand of magical community organizer depth or perhaps just might find it interesting in general, regardless of personal feelings of McCain as presidential candidate, here's his story as told some years ago:
John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account
By John S. McCain III, Lieut. Commander, U.S. Navy
[usatoday] : John McCain spent 5½ years in captivity as a POW in North Vietnam. His first-person account of that harrowing ordeal was published in U.S. News in May 1973. Shot down in his Skyhawk dive bomber on Oct. 26, 1967, Navy flier McCain was taken prisoner with fractures in his right leg and both arms. He received minimal care and was kept in wretched conditions that he describes vividly in the U.S. News special report:
This story originally appeared in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S.News & World Report. It was posted online on January 28, 2008.
Of the many personal accounts coming to light about the almost unbelievably cruel treatment accorded American prisoners of war in Vietnam, none is more dramatic than that of Lieut. Commander John S. McCain III—Navy flier, son of the admiral who commanded the war in the Pacific, and a prisoner who came in "for special attention" during 5½ years of captivity in North Vietnam.
Now that all acknowledged prisoners are back and a self-imposed seal of silence is off, Commander McCain is free to answer the questions many Americans have asked:
What was it really like? How prolonged were the tortures and brutality? How did the captured U.S. airmen bear up under the mistreatment—and years spent in solitary? How did they preserve their sanity? Did visiting "peace groups" really add to their troubles? How can this country's military men be conditioned to face such treatment in the future without crumbling?
Here, in his own words, based on almost total recall, is Commander McCain's narrative of 5½ years in the hands of the North Vietnamese.
Wesley Clark 'moving on'
[politico] Nearly a week after his controversial “Face the Nation” appearance last Sunday, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark is taking a break from the presidential campaign — but many Democratic insiders think he has already been crossed off the list of Barack Obama’s potential running mates.
Sunday morning on CBS News, Clark argued that John McCain’s military experience — and his years as a prisoner of war — in no way qualified him to be president. Following his appearance, one prominent liberal blog, apparently seeing the genie as out of the bottle, launched into a considerably harsher attacks on McCain’s service headlined “Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in the military?”
“On a scale of 1 to 10, Clark’s words were a 10 in terms of unhelpfulness,” said one Democrat who has helped manage past presidential campaigns.
At first, Clark moved aggressively to defend his remarks, scheduling additional press appearances and even updating his Facebook status to “Wes Clark knows that John McCain is largely untested and untried when it comes to matters of national security.”
But now Clark is looking to put the remarks behind him. The former NATO supreme allied commander and 2004 Democratic primary candidate is “moving on,” said a close aide, who added that Clark can now “devote his time to the business affairs which pay the bills.”
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'Depressing' Media
[realclearpolitics] : [...] America is not in recession, and who knows -- maybe we'll be less likely to have one if my compatriots would just chill. A recession is defined as two quarters of negative economic growth. We haven't even had one quarter of negative growth.
Yes, growth has slowed, and many people are suffering because of falling home prices and higher food and energy prices. These are real problems, but watching TV, you'd think we were in a recession so severe it must be compared to the Great Depression.
Maybe I was just watching at the wrong times and just catching some outliers? No. A study by the Business and Media Institute (BMI) found that ABC, CBS and NBC regularly "hyped similarities to the Great Depression."
BMI took a novel approach. It compared the economic-news coverage by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3, 1929, around the time of the stock market crash, with the coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC from March 13 to 19 of this year.
"The difference between how the 1929 and 2008 media handled a crisis was profound -- with modern journalists hyping every event." Today's coverage is much more alarmist. In 2008, few reporters pointed out "the differences between today's economy and the nation's darkest economic years, or bothered to note that America is not in a depression. [...]
Positive news doesn't fit the narrative. On a day the Dow rose, writes BMI's Dan Gainor, ABC "Reporter Dan Harris seemed puzzled during the ... broadcast of 'World News with Charles Gibson' when he asked: "The sky is not falling. Why not?"
All three major broadcast networks are culpable. But BMI says CBS was the worst. That's typical when it comes to economic coverage, BMI added. "Business reporter Anthony Mason was even called 'the grim reaper' by his own anchor Katie Couric." "Early Show" co-host Julie Chen talked about "a world financial crisis" as if a "crisis" was just a given.
The state of economic reporting in this country is abysmal. We might laugh at it if it didn't have bad consequences. But the more people hear such inappropriate comparisons, the more apt they are to believe them and change their behavior accordingly -- investing less and taking fewer economic risks -- thereby aggravating bad economic conditions.
No wonder, as the Associated Press reported, "U.S. consumers are the gloomiest they've been since the tail end of the last prolonged recession".
The Great Media Depression
[bmi] : The economy consumes the nightly newscasts. Broadcast networks report that America’s finances are “like a house of cards.” ABC, CBS and NBC even hyped similarities to the Great Depression more than 40 times in the first four months of 2008. But that parallel doesn’t hold up, especially when analyzing the news of that era. In fact, daily coverage of the 1929 stock market crash strongly emphasized the positive side of events. The New York Times that year summed up a six-day Dow Jones loss of 30 percent as: “the market quickly regained its poise and stability.” In 2008, coverage has taken the opposite tone, even though the Dow dropped just 1/100th of 1 percent in the days after the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns. ABC found a dark cloud for every silver lining, saying: “And everywhere you look, it’s bad news.” On network news, that statement was accurate.
The Business & Media Institute performed a detailed analysis of two major weeks in America’s stock market history – the week of the stock market crash in 1929 and the week of the Bear Stearns collapse in 2008. BMI examined daily news reports from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3, 1929, in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post. Those were compared to daily reports on ABC, CBS and NBC from March 13 to March 19, 2008. The difference between how the 1929 and 2008 media handled a crisis was profound – with modern journalists hyping every event and their predecessors expressing calm optimism. Among the key findings:
[full report here]
* Modern Media Much More Negative: During the week of the 1929 stock market crash, daily news stories reported positive news more often than negative by a 4-to-1 ratio. The week that the Bear Stearns fall occurred, coverage was the complete opposite. Negative stories on ABC, CBS and NBC outnumbered positive 6-to-1.
* No Good News: Roughly 40 percent of the stories from 2008 contained no positive comments at all. On CBS, that percentage was even higher. Completely negative stories made up nearly 60 percent of its reports.
* It’s Not A Depression: Today’s journalists are making repeated connections to the largest economic crisis in modern times – often with the phrase “not since the Great Depression.” Only a few of those comments explained the differences between today’s economy and the nation’s darkest economic years, or bothered to note that America is not in a depression.
* Old Presidents Never Die…: The claim that President George W. Bush would be the first president since Hoover to lose jobs in his first term proved false, yet journalists repeated it more often than Democratic operatives. Journalists have been comparing Republicans to Hoover for several years and have already begun doing so with Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
* CBS the Worst: CBS consistently appears among the worst media outlets on the economy. This study was no different. Business reporter Anthony Mason was even called “the grim reaper” by his own anchor Katie Couric. In 2008 during the week of the Bear Stearns collapse, negative stories on CBS outnumbered positive by an 11-to-1 ratio.
* NBC the Best: NBC’s attempts to deliver balanced economic coverage can be summed up in two words – Maria Bartiromo. The star of sister network CNBC was a cautious voice reminding viewers that negative news can have an impact. “We could talk ourselves into a recession,” she told NBC’s “Today.”
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Holiday? Nice...
[bkrumm]How are you spending your 4th of July holiday? While most Americans probably slept, 1,215 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines raised their right hands and committed to a combined 5,500 years of additional service during the largest reenlistment ceremony in the history of the American military. Beneath a large American flag which dwarfed even the enormous chandelier that Saddam Hussein had built for the Al Faw Palace, members of all services, representing all 50 states took the oath administered by Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of Multi-National Forces Iraq.
Petraeus, reiterating earlier remarks made by Command Sergeant Major Hill, said that the unprecedented ceremony sends a “message to friend and foe alike.” He told those assembled that it is “impossible to calculate the value of what you are giving to our country . . . For no bonus, no matter the size, can adequately compensate you for the contribution each of you makes as a custodian of our nation’s defenses.”
Last year Gen. Petraeus, along with Senator John McCain, presided over a similar Independence Day ceremony. Then only 588 servicemen reenlisted. This year’s event, more than twice as large, saw the equivalent of two battalions extend their service in America’s military. Nearly the entire rotunda was filled with reenlisting servicemen, their voices drowning out all other noise. For two days the military members, flown in for the occasion from all across Iraq, have toured the elaborate palace where Saddam’s sons were said to have entertained friends lavishly and tortured enemies mercilessly in the basement dungeon. Following the ceremony, they were treated to Chicago deep dish pizza donated by Lou Malnati’s Restaurant and flown fresh by DHL for the occasion.
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Our best to all this July 4th
Independence Day in the U.S., is an annual holiday commemorating the formal adoption by the Continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia. Although the signing of the Declaration was not completed until August, the Fourth of July holiday has been accepted as the official anniversary of U.S. independence and is celebrated in all states and territories of the U.S.
The holiday was first observed in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776, at which time the Declaration of Independence was read aloud, city bells rang, and bands played. It was not declared a legal holiday, however, until 1941. The Fourth is traditionally celebrated publicly with parades and pageants, patriotic speeches, and organized firing of guns and cannons and displays of fireworks; early in the 20th century public concern for a "safe and sane" holiday resulted in restrictions on general use of fireworks. Family picnics and outings are a feature of private Fourth of July celebrations. [history]
Keep in mind...
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
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Happy Canada Day
On June 20, 1868, a proclamation signed by the Governor General, Lord Monck, called upon all Her Majesty's loving subjects throughout Canada to join in the celebration of the anniversary of the formation of the union of the British North America provinces in a federation under the name of Canada on July 1st.
The July 1 holiday was established by statute in 1879, under the name Dominion Day.
There is no record of organized ceremonies after this first anniversary, except for the 50th anniversary of Confederation in 1917, at which time the new Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, under construction, was dedicated as a memorial to the Fathers of Confederation and to the valour of Canadians fighting in the First World War in Europe.
The next celebration was held in 1927 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation. It was highlighted by the laying of the cornerstone by the Governor General of the Confederation Building on Wellington Street and the inauguration of the Carillon in the Peace Tower.
Since 1958, the government has arranged for an annual observance of Canada's national day with the Secretary of State of Canada in charge of the coordination. The format provided for a Trooping the Colours ceremony on the lawn of Parliament Hill in the afternoon, a sunset ceremony in the evening followed by a mass band concert and fireworks display.
Another highlight was Canada's Centennial in 1967 when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II attended the celebrations with Parliament Hill again being the backdrop for a large scale official ceremony.
The format changed in 1968 with the addition of multicultural and professional concerts held on Parliament Hill including a nationally televised show. Up until 1975, the focus of the celebrations, under the name "Festival Canada", was held in the National Capital Region during the whole month of July and involved numerous cultural, artistic and sport activities, as well as municipalities and voluntary organizations. The celebration was cancelled in 1976 but was reactivated in 1977.
A new formula was developed in 1980 whereby the National Committee (the federal government organization charged with planning Canada's Birthday celebrations) stressed and sponsored the development of local celebrations all across Canada. "Seed money" was distributed to promote popular and amateur activities organized by volunteer groups in hundreds of local communities. The same approach was also followed for the 1981 celebrations with the addition of fireworks displays in 15 major cities across the nation.
On October 27, 1982, July 1st which was known as "Dominion Day" became "Canada Day".
Since 1985, Canada Day Committees are established in each province and territory to plan, organize and coordinate the Canada Day celebrations locally. Grants are provided by the Department to those committees. [canadianheritage]
Three Hundred??
[commentary] : Barack Obama has 300 advisors on foreign policy. What?? That includes the Winnie-the Pooh fellow and 299 other “experts” who, we are led to believe, didn’t catch Obama’s “syntax” error on “undivided Jerusalem.” Did not one of the 300 know about the history of presidential summitry? And none of them thought it might have saved a heap of trouble for Obama if once during his primary campaign he had a briefing with General Petraeus or trip to Iraq? [...]
Most troubling is the possibility that the performance of the campaign’s foreign policy apparatus is a preview of the Obama administration’s foreign policy apparatus. There are apparently hundreds (if not thousands) of folks waiting to join the State and Defense Departments who hold beliefs that defy evidence and logic. They honestly believe that Iraq is unimportant, unconditional direct talks with Iran will unlock the promise of world peace, we can talk up protectionism at home without scaring our trading partners, and the less input from military commanders in war zones the better.
Take your pick as to which theory makes the most sense. But 300? I guess it takes a lot of people to script a foreign trip so tightly that there is no room for a gaffe.
[commentary] : When the Obama camp thought Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki might be pressing for a firm deadline for a U.S. troop withdrawal, they were delighted and insisted the Bush administration come up with a fixed exit schedule. Now that a general understanding based on long term conditions and facts on the ground ( “a general time horizon“) has been reached, Barack Obama is back to threatening and bad-mouthing the Maliki government. In a statement, Obama (in words that sound like they were lifted from 2006) declares:
Now, instead of vague illusions to a ‘general time horizon,’ it’s time to pressure Iraq’s leaders to reach the political accommodation necessary for long-term stability, and to refocus on strengthening our military and finishing the fight in Afghanistan.
Rather than seize on the new understanding as the best possible news (after all didn’t Obama fear John McCain would have us stay in Iraq “indefinitely“?) he plays once again to his base, insisting on “pressuring” the Maliki government. To do what exactly? They have already reached 15 of the 18 benchmarks. [...]
It will be interesting to see what Obama will say to Maliki and what will he hear on his trip. Will Obama tell him what he allegedly told the Iraqi foreign minister (that he won’t abandon the Iraqis or sacrifice gains we have made), or will he read him the New York Times op-ed? And if Maliki, like General Petraeus, tells him that we can’t possibly adhere to Obama’s 16-month timetable, Obama will be faced with the prospect of ignoring him too (or flip-flopping once more).
Again, when you make up your mind in advance, facts and contrary advice have a way of catching up with you. Surely one of those 300 foreign policy staffers must have told him that.
To Err
[rcp] : Every voter understands the simple principle that you don't make up your mind about something until you have checked the facts -- but this week Obama declared he will stick to his predetermined troop-withdrawal schedule no matter what he might learn on his forthcoming trip to Iraq.
The only reasonable explanation for his rigidity is that he's hemmed in by the overwhelming demand of the Democratic base -- and left-wing bloggers above all -- that he not backtrack on the central promise of his campaign: to end the war.
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Bush administration flip-flops on Iran
[tws] : [...] So what changed? Very little.
In the weeks leading up to the State Department's announcement, Iran had been deliberately provocative. At a Kuala Lumpur summit for developing nations, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned of George W. Bush's "satanic desires." Iran test-fired long-range missiles, including the Shahab-3, which is capable of striking Israel. And a few days after that, it rejected a generous aid offer from our European allies--backed by the State Department--that included nuclear fuel, assistance on a nuclear reactor, and improved trade and diplomatic relations, if the Iranian regime would simply suspend its uranium enrichment program.
The State Department response wasn't to get tough. Instead, Condoleezza Rice directed her diplomats to simply drop the one precondition for engagement that we had insisted on for years and in effect reward these provocations.
But, it's not just Iran.
On October 9, 2006, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. The next morning George W. Bush condemned this "provocative act" and warned against proliferation. "The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or nonstate entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and we would hold North Korea fully accountable." He rejected North Korean requests for direct meetings. "Obviously, I made the decision that bilateral negotiations wouldn't work, and the reason I made that decision is because they didn't."
Three weeks later, chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill secretly met alone with his North Korean counterpart in China. Three months after that, they met again in Berlin. Eight months later Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear facility that had been constructed with North Korean assistance.
Despite all of this--despite North Korean nuclear aid to one of the world's leading terrorist regimes and despite its subsequent failure to account for its nuclear programs--in June the Bush administration volunteered to lift sanctions on North Korea under the Trading with the Enemy Act and, over the objection of our close ally Japan, decided to remove North Korea from the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terror.
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The Audacity of Vanity
[wapo] : Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins -- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.
What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.
Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the elder -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?
Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.) [...]
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
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[rcp] : [...] Obama has carried flip-flopping to new heights. In the space of a month and a half, this candidate -- who we don't really yet know very well -- reversed or sharply modified his positions on at least eight key issues:
• After vowing to eschew private fundraising and take public financing, he has now refused public money.
• Once he threatened to filibuster a bill to protect telephone companies from liability for their cooperation with national security wiretaps; now he has voted for the legislation.
• Turning his back on a lifetime of support for gun control, he now recognizes a Second Amendment right to bear arms in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.
• Formerly, he told the Israeli lobby that he favored an undivided Jerusalem. Now he says he didn't mean it.
• From a 100 percent pro-choice position, he now has migrated to expressing doubts about allowing partial-birth abortions.
• For the first time, he now speaks highly of using church-based institutions to deliver public services to the poor.
• Having based his entire campaign on withdrawal from Iraq, he now pledges to consult with the military first.
• During the primary, he backed merit pay for teachers -- but before the union a few weeks ago, he opposed it.
• After specifically saying in the primaries that he disagreed with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) proposal to impose Social Security taxes on income over $200,000 and wanted to tax all income, he has now adopted the Clinton position.
Obama's breathtaking flips and flops are materially different from McCain's. While McCain had opposed offshore oil drilling and now supports it, the facts have obviously changed. Obama's shifts have nothing to do with altered circumstances, just a change in the political calendar.
As a candidate who was nominated to be a different kind of politician, Obama has set the bar pretty high. And, with his flipping and flopping, he is falling short, to the disillusionment of his more naïve supporters. One wag even called him the "black Bill Clinton," a turnaround of the "first black president" moniker that had been pinned on Bill.
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Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate
[dailytech] : The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."
In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."
The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"
In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."
According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."
Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."
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The Iron Timetable
Whether the war in Iraq is being lost or won, Barack Obama's strategy remains unchanged.
[wapo] : BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: "They said we couldn't leave when violence was up, they say we can't leave when violence is down." Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might "refine" his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.
Mr. Obama's charge against the Republicans was not entirely fair, since Mr. Bush has overseen the withdrawal of five American brigades from Iraq this year, and Mr. McCain has suggested that he would bring most of the rest of the troops home by early 2013. Mr. Obama's timeline would end in the summer of 2010, a year or two before the earliest dates proposed recently by members of the Iraqi government. The real difference between the various plans is not the dates but the conditions: Both the Iraqis and Mr. McCain say the withdrawal would be linked to the ability of Iraqi forces to take over from U.S. troops, as they have begun to do. Mr. Obama's strategy allows no such linkage -- his logic is that a timetable unilaterally dictated from Washington is necessary to force Iraqis to take responsibility for the country.
At the time he first proposed his timetable, Mr. Obama argued -- wrongly, as it turned out -- that U.S. troops could not stop a sectarian civil war. He conceded that a withdrawal might be accompanied by a "spike" in violence. Now, he describes as "an achievable goal" that "we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future -- a government that prevents sectarian conflict and ensures that the al-Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge." How will that "true success" be achieved? By the same pullout that Mr. Obama proposed when chaos in Iraq appeared to him inevitable.
Mr. Obama reiterated yesterday that he would consult with U.S. commanders and the Iraqi government and "make tactical adjustments as we implement this strategy." However, as Mr. McCain quickly pointed out, he delivered his speech before traveling to Iraq -- before his meetings with Gen. David H. Petraeus and the Iraqi leadership. American commanders will probably tell Mr. Obama that from a logistical standpoint, a 16-month withdrawal timetable will be difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill. Iraqis will say that a pullout that is not negotiated with the government and disregards the readiness of Iraqi troops will be a gift to al-Qaeda and other enemies. If Mr. Obama really intends to listen to such advisers, why would he lock in his position in advance?
"What's missing in our debate," Mr. Obama said yesterday, "is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq." Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war's outcome -- that Iraq "distracts us from every threat we face" and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That's an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world's largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq's future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.
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Sure, it's no big deal, meaningless, etc. etc. Everybody changes right? Change.
Judgement : Obama Scrubs Website
[latimes] : Barack Obama's aides have removed criticism of President Bush's increase of troops to Iraq from the campaign Web site, part of an effort to update the Democrat's written war plan to reflect changing conditions.Debate over the impact of President Bush's troop "surge" has been at the center of exchanges this week between Obama and Republican presidential rival John McCain. Obama opposed the war and the surge from the start, while McCain supported both the invasion and the troop increase. [...]
After Bush delivered a nationally televised address on Jan. 10, 2007, announcing his plan, Obama argued it could make the situation worse by taking pressure off Iraqis to find a political solution to the fighting.
"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there," the Illinois senator said that night, a month before announcing his presidential bid. "In fact, I think it will do the reverse."
Obama continued to argue throughout 2007 that the troop increase was a mistake. By the early part of this year, he was acknowledging that it had improved security and reduced violence, but he has stuck by his opposition to the move.
In a speech Tuesday, he argued that since the surge began, the strain on the military has increased, the United States has spent another $200 billion in Iraq, Afghanistan has deteriorated, the Taliban and al-Qaida have rebuilt and Iraqis have not made political progress. "That's why I strongly stand by my plan to end this war," Obama said.
McCain said Obama is failing to acknowledge success. "Today, we know Sen. Obama was wrong" to oppose the surge, McCain said.
As first reported Tuesday by the New York Daily News, Obama's campaign removed a reference to the surge as part of "The Problem" section on the part of his Web site devoted to laying out his plan for Iraq.
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Banned : Welcome To The Nanny State
Whether you love it, hate it, or have never thought about it, chances are some politician wants to ban it. "Welcome to the Nanny State Nation," says reason.tv host Drew Carey. "Where the government minds your own business."
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Figures Reveal Massive Increase in Multiple Abortions
[dailymail UK] : Among the throng of women who gather outside the school gates each day, Angela Simmons is every inch the archetypal middle-class mother, fussing over her seven-year-old son Ben and ferrying him between after-school clubs and play dates.
Certainly nobody would guess that the 39-year-old former estate agent is one of around 50 women each year in the UK to have notched up her seventh abortion.
Government statistics released this week show that record numbers of women are having two or more abortions - and those who do so are not, as might be expected, young teenagers who don't know any better. [...]
Statistics show that last year 1,300 women had at least their fifth abortion. Almost 950 of those having a termination had already had four previously. Almost 200
had already had five, 110 had had six before and 54, like Angela, seven or more.
The ease with which such women are undergoing repeat abortions has led campaigners to argue that terminations are being approved all too readily - given for social reasons rather than because a pregnancy might pose a significant risk to a mother's health or well-being.
There are fears too about the emotional toll that multiple abortions may be taking on such women.
This week the Royal College of Psychiatrists warned that women may be at risk of mental breakdowns if they have abortions - something which, as we shall see, is borne out by Angela's story - and should not be allowed one unless they are properly counselled about this potential risk.
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On The Cover
You really have to wonder what's in the mind of the people that dream this stuff up (see below) and then reach a consensus of, "Yes, this is great, we'll go with it." Especially when considering that this magazine is by no stretch "right-wing" inclined and we all know how evil those people are. Sure, we get the professed goal and ideal, and frankly we're glad that the freedom to be this foolish does exist, but somehow it seems to us that the larger point (forget the unending hypocritical aspects - can you imagine?) once again is missed. With friends like these...
[breitbart]Barack Obama's campaign says a satirical New Yorker magazine cover showing the Democratic presidential candidate dressed as a Muslim and his wife as a terrorist is "tasteless and offensive."The illustration on the issue that hits newsstands Monday, titled "The Politics of Fear" and drawn by Barry Blitt, depicts Barack Obama wearing traditional Muslim garb—sandals, robe and turban—and his wife, Michelle—dressed in camouflage, combat boots and an assault rifle strapped over her shoulder—standing in the Oval Office.
The couple is doing a fist tap in front of a fireplace in which an American flag is burning. Over the mantle hangs a portrait of Osama bin Laden.
"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. "But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”
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Behold The Awesome
[nypost] : In his pre-campaign book, "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama proclaims, "I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience."
Some might think this odd testimony from a young and inexperienced freshman senator on the cusp of seeking the highest rank, and the most famous position, in the world. It's a bit like a parish priest saying he's happy with his modest lot in life and then declaring he's throwing his hat in the ring to become pope.
But a closer reading reveals a possible explanation. Perhaps he's an adulation junkie. Maybe the diminishing "nourishment" Sen. Obama receives from "popularity" is actually causing him to ratchet up his pursuit of more and more praise just to get the minimal fix he needs.
That would account for why a man who thinks striving for popularity is a character flaw has nonetheless decided to give his nomination acceptance speech in a 76,000-seat football stadium.
Or it might tell us why a candidate who hasn't even been nominated yet wants to re-enact some of the most famous scenes from both Reagan and JFK's highlight reels by holding a rally at Germany's Brandenburg Gate, even though he's not a head of state yet. (German authorities, aware of Obama's rock-star status with the German public, diplomatically suggested that it was up to Obama to decide what is in "good taste.")
Perhaps Dominic Lawson, writing in the British newspaper The Independent had it right when he recently wrote that Obama is "a man of stunning articulacy, but also stunning self-regard."
Last July, Obama explained to reporters that he would eventually overtake Hillary Rodham Clinton in the polls because "to know me is to love me." Some months later, according to The Associated Press' Ron Fournier, he proclaimed, "Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there."
Of course, Obama and his surrogates would say he's just being lighthearted, he doesn't really take himself all that seriously.
One problem with that interpretation is that there's little evidence that he's interested in dispelling or rebutting the cult of personality he's developed. Obama himself talks of reversing the ocean's tides.
The overarching theme to his entire campaign - "We are the ones we've been waiting for," and all that - is that voting for Obama is proof of the cosmic superiority of ... Obama voters.
In a speech in Madison, Wis., Obama told his supporters that rallying to his cause was today's equivalent of the "greatest generation" rallying to defeat Hitler and Tojo. Oprah merely calls him, "The One," saying he will help us "evolve to a higher plane."
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The Great Biofuels Con
[telegraph] : Rarely in political history can there have been such a rapid and dramatic reversal of a received wisdom as we have seen in the past 18 months over biofuels – the cropping of living plants, such as soya beans, wheat and sugar cane, to generate energy.
Two years ago biofuels were still being hailed as a dream solution to what was seen as one of the most urgent problems confronting mankind – our dependence on fossil fuels, which are not only finite but seemed to be threatening the world with the catastrophe of global warming.
In March 2007 the leaders of the European Union, in a package of measures designed to lead the world in the "fight against climate change", committed us by 2020 to deriving 10 per cent of all transport fuel from "renewables", above all biofuels, which theoretically gave off no more carbon dioxide than was absorbed in their growing.
Since then, however, the biofuels dream has been disintegrating with the speed of a collapsing card house. Environmentalists, formerly keen on this "green energy", expressed horror at the havoc it was inflicting on the world's eco-systems, not least the clearing of rainforests to grow fuel crops.
As the world suddenly faced its worst food shortage for decades, sending prices spiralling, experts pointed out that a major cause had been diverting millions of acres of farmland from food production to fuel. The damage this was inflicting on the world's poor led a United Nations official to describe the rush for biofuels as "a crime against humanity".
As damaging as anything to the belief that biofuels could help save the planet from global warming have been various studies showing that producing biofuels can give off more carbon dioxide than they save. So devastating has been this backlash that even the British Government, which prides itself on being the greenest of the green, commissioned a review, published last Monday, urging a slowdown in the move to biofuels. When this recommendation was endorsed by senior ministers, this put the UK directly at odds with a European Union policy to which it had already signed up. But the EU is firmly holding its line, saying it has no intention of lowering its target.
How did we come to such a pass? The story of mankind's love affair with biofuels goes back much further than most people realise, and has unfolded through five stages.
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Russian "U-Turn" : A Vote For Thuggery
[timesonline] Britain’s diplomatic strategy in Zimbabwe collapsed last night in an historic defeat for the West in the UN Security Council that will have repercussions across Africa and beyond.
Russia and China wielded their veto to kill a resolution imposing UN sanctions on President Mugabe and his inner circle in a defining vote in the 15-nation council.
Sir John Sawers, the British Ambassador to the UN, said: “The people of Zimbabwe need to be given hope that there is an end in sight to their suffering. The Security Council today has failed to offer them that hope.” [...]
Britain and the United States forced the draft resolution to a vote because they counted on the support of the nine members needed to secure adoption. In a dramatic show of hands, the draft did indeed earn the requisite nine votes to pass, with five against, but was not adopted because of Russia’s and China’s block. South Africa, Vietnam and Libya also voted against, while Indonesia abstained.
The showdown heralds a chilling of international relations as Russia and China resist growing UN intervention in other repressive regimes, such as Burma, and it represents a shift in the balance of power at the top table of diplomacy. Russia, China and developing nations are flexing their muscles after Western dominance since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“China and Russia have stood with Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe,” Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, told the council. “This resolution would have supported the courageous efforts of the Zimbabwean people to change their lives peacefully through elections.”
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Campaign Economics
[wapo] In serious consideration for ambassador to Belarus." That's the role John McCain joked that former senator Phil Gramm might have in a McCain administration. Gramm is McCain's most senior economic adviser, the one best qualified to lead the finance team of a McCain presidency. Now, however, Gramm faces political exile because he made the mistake of telling the truth.
What prompted the abrupt demotion? The short answer is what might be called Campaign Econ. Campaign Econ says the American economy is a certain way because Americans think it is. Campaign Econ competes with real economics and often wins -- with damage that extends way beyond, say, the political career of either Phil Gramm or John McCain.
Consider what happened this week. While speaking with the Washington Times, Gramm said that the country was not in a true recession but a "mental recession." He also said, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners" and "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."
Gramm was right about the recession and stood by his recession comments on Thursday. A recession is two consecutive quarters in which the economy shrinks, and last quarter it grew. But no matter. Voters feel they are in a recession, and so they are, at least according to Campaign Econ. [...]
Campaign Econ is certainly understandable. Gas prices are ruining vacation plans and killing businesses. Many Americans have lost or are about to lose their homes to foreclosure or in distress sales. The federal government may not be talking about it much yet, but inflation plagues the country. The weak dollar is altering our everyday calculations. For many, this is not a happy summer.
Still, to liken the current moment to the Great Depression, or even the early 1980s, as Campaign Economists have, is to whine, just as Gramm said. During the Depression, people lost their homes even though they had borrowed only 10 percent of the purchase price. People losing their homes today frequently have borrowed 90 percent or more. The country approached double-digit unemployment in the early 1980s. This week, even as McCain was trying to talk his campaign past Gramm's comments, joblessness stood at a historically modest 5.5 percent.
And Campaign Econ has costs. The first is that talk of a downturn -- or "mental recession," as Gramm put -- can itself generate a downturn. Keynesian economists say this is so because consumer spending slows when people are afraid. But there's also a non-Keynesian dynamic. Grumbling leads to costly government rescues that scare markets and slow growth.
Second, as evidenced by the plummeting prices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares, serious trouble may be closer than we think. The plunging stock of the government-sponsored mortgage companies reminds us that those entities urgently require restructuring. Wall Street figures and the Senate Finance Committee that Gramm used to chair are already talking about how to structure a bailout. But this task is about stopping recession, not luxuriating in it.
Social Security and Medicare also need rewriting -- and Gramm put forth one of the better proposals on Social Security in the 1990s.
In short, to fix it all, we need a frank conversation about the economy. McCain, in fact, inaugurated one back in 2006 when he gave a speech that was downright Gramm-like at the Economic Club of New York.
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Withdrawal Plan : U.S. Commanders : Logistical Nightmare
[abc] Whatever nuance Barack Obama is now adding to his Iraq withdrawal strategy, the core plan on his Web site is as plain as day: Obama would "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months."
It is a plan that, no doubt, helped Obama get his party's nomination, but one that may prove difficult if he is elected president. [...]
We spent a day with Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond in Sadr City. He is the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, which is responsible for Baghdad. Hammond will likely be one of the commanders who briefs Barack Obama when he visits Iraq.
"We still have a ways to go. Number one, we're working on security and it's very encouraging, that's true, but what we're really trying to achieve here is sustainable security on Iraqi terms. So, I think my first response to that would be let's look at the conditions.
"Instead of any time-based approach to any decision for withdrawal, it's got to be conditions-based, with the starting point being an intelligence analysis of what might be here today, and what might lie ahead in the future. I still think we still have work that remains to be done before I can really answer that question," Hammond said when asked how he would feel about an order to start drawing down two combat brigades a month. [...]
Success on the battlefield is not the only complication with Obama's plan.
Physically removing the combat brigades within that kind of time frame would be difficult, as well.
The military has been redeploying troops for years, and Maj. Gen. Charles Anderson, who would help with the withdrawal, told us as we toured Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, "We have the capacity to do a minimum of two-and-a-half brigade combat teams a month -- can we expand that capacity? Sure. Can we accelerate? It depends. It depends on the amount of equipment that we bring back. And it's going to depend on how fast we bring them out."
It is the equipment that is the real problem.
In the kind of redeployment that Anderson is talking about, the troops head home, but much of their equipment stays behind. Two combat brigades means up to 1,200 humvees in addition to thousands of other pieces of equipment, like trucks, fuelers, tankers and helicopters.
And 90 percent of the equipment would have to be moved by ground through the Iraqi war zone, to the port in Kuwait, where it must all be cleaned and inspected and prepared for shipment. This is a place with frequent dust storms, limited port facilities and limited numbers of wash racks.
While Anderson and his troops have a positive attitude, several commanders who looked at the Obama plan told ABC News, on background, that there was "no way" it could work logistically.
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We Can Lower Oil Prices Now
[wsj] : Although most experts agree that financial speculation was not responsible for the surge in the global prices of food and energy, many people remain puzzled about the source of these remarkable price rises. Economics offers a simple supply-and-demand explanation and reason for optimism about the future of commodity prices. In the case of oil, economics also suggests how policy changes today that affect the future could quickly lower the current price of oil.
[...] increasing the expected future supply of oil would also reduce today's price. That fall in the current price would induce an immediate rise in oil consumption that would be matched by an increase in supply from the OPEC producers and others with some current excess capacity or available inventories.
Any steps that can be taken now to increase the future supply of oil, or reduce the future demand for oil in the U.S. or elsewhere, can therefore lead both to lower prices and increased consumption today.
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Michelle Obama on Short-Term Fix
[msnbc] In response to a question about the economic stimulus checks administered by the U.S. government earlier this year, Michelle Obama said her husband believes that short-term fixes don't solve economic problems.
"You're getting $600," she told an audience of mostly African-American women here. "What can you do with that? Not to be ungrateful or anything. But maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn't pay down every bill every month."
"Barack's approach is that the short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good," she continued. "And it may even feel good that first month when you get that check. And then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings," she joked.
The Obamas have been fighting Republican attacks painting the couple as elitist. Michelle Obama, who has been something of a lightning rod for the attacks, has fought those charges by highlighting the irony between the charges and her upbringing on the South side of Chicago. But her line on earrings could be red meat for some, particularly in making them in Pontiac. The satellite city south of Detroit was once a booming auto industry town, but now the per capita income is 40% below the national average and almost a quarter of the population is below the poverty line.
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Who really pays the taxes?
[powerline] [...] At the time we wrote the Bush tax return article for National Review, the most recent data came from 1991 tax returns. The data indicated that the top 1 per cent of tax filers reported 13 per cent of total adjusted gross income (i.e., before most deductions), but paid 24.6 per cent of all federal income taxes. The top 5 per cent of taxpayers reported 26.8 per cent of the income, but paid 43.4 per cent of the taxes. The bottom 50 per cent of tax filers, by contrast, reported 15.1 per cent of the income, but paid only 5.5 per cent of the taxes, leaving 94.5 per cent of the tax bill to be paid by those with above-average incomes.
Since we wrote the Bush tax return article the trend of disproportionate tax payments by high income taxpayers has continued. Stephen Moore previews the most recent data in today's Wall Street Journal: [link]"My contacts at the Treasury Department tell me that for the first time in decades, and perhaps ever, the richest 1% of tax filers will have paid more than 40% of the income tax burden. The top 50% will account for 97% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% will have paid just 3%." Moore's preview does not include the companion income data.
Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, political philosophers have worried that government based on majority rule could lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. "If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city," warned Aristotle.
The founders of the United States were deep students of politics and history, and they shared Aristotle's worry. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be "incompatible with personal security or the rights of property." James Madison and others therefore made it the "first object of government" to protect personal property from unjust confiscation. Numerous provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were included to protect the property rights of citizens. We've fallen off from the spirit of the founders on this issue, but it would be good to recall it in connection with the release of the income tax data previewed in Moore's column.
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Gallup on July
[dsurber] At this point in 2004, Democratic Sen. John Kerry had a 7-point lead in the Gallup while Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has a 2-point lead. The Gallup Poll looked at the last few elections and found that the leader in July won only 3 of the 9 contested races since 1948. [link]
Presidents Dewey, Humphrey, Dukakis and Kerry had leads of 11, 5, 6 and 7, respectively, at this point in their races.
In fact, in July 2004, Kerry had a majority over the incumbent, 51-44.
Of the 15 listed contests, Kerry was the only leader with a majority in July to lose in November.
The 17-point lead by Democratic Gov. Mike Dukakis was a Newsweek poll that came out in August.
Obama now leads Republican Sen. John McCain 46-44 in the Gallup.
Curiously, in 10 of the last 12 races, the Republican fared better in November than he polled in July. The two exceptions are President Clinton in 1992 and Vice President Al Gore in 2000.
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Democratic Convention : Rising Costs and Delays
[nyt] [...] With the Denver convention less than two months away, problems range from the serious — upwardly spiraling costs on key contracts still being negotiated — to the mundane, like the reluctance of local caterers to participate because of stringent rules on what delegates will be eating, down to the color of the food. At last count, plans to renovate the inside of the Pepsi Center for the Democrats are $6 million over budget, which may force convention planners to scale back on their original design or increase their fund-raising goals.
The convention is being organized by the Democratic National Committee, which is run by Howard Dean, with his chief of staff, the Rev. Leah D. Daughtry, leading the effort. [...]
Some of the Democratic missteps started soon after planning for the event began. The Democratic National Convention Committee decided not to take cheap office space and instead rented top-quality offices in downtown Denver at $100,000 a month, only to need less than half the space, which it then filled with rental furniture at $50,000 a month. And in a costly misstep, the Denver host committee, early on, told corporate donors that their contributions were not tax-deductible, rather than to encourage donations by saying that the tax-exempt application was pending and expected to be approved.
Overly ambitious environmental goals — to turn the event into a “green” convention — have backfired as only three states’ full delegations have so far agreed to participate in the program. Negotiations over where to locate demonstrators remain unsettled with members of the national news media concerned over proposals to locate the demonstrators — with their loud gatherings — next to the media tent.
And then there is the food: A 28-page contract requested by Denver organizers that caterers provide food in “at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple and white.” Garnishes could not be counted toward the colors. No fried foods would be allowed. Organic and locally grown foods were mandated, and each plate had to be 50 percent fruits and vegetables. As a result, caterers are shying away.
For the Democratic Party, the danger is that a poorly run convention, or one that misses the mark financially, will reflect badly on the party and raise questions about Democratic management skills. And more worrisome for the Obama campaign is that it will be left with the bill for overruns or fund-raising shortfalls, and that the candidate will have to compete in raising money against a convention effort desperate for cash.
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U.S. Secretly Takes Yellowcake From Iraq
A Huge Stockpile Of Natural Uranium Arrives In Canada After Secret U.S. Operation
[cbs] : (AP) The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
What is now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of Baghdad - using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.
"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" - a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material - it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.
The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.
"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.
The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives - kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.
And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.
Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger - and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims - led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.
Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre (9,300-hectare) site - surrounded by huge sand berms - following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.
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Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda
[timesonline] : American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.
After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul.
A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.
Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects.
The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians.
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LA Times Cuts 250 Jobs
[forbes] : The most troubled big newspaper in U.S. is cutting off 250 jobs, including an unprecedented 150 positions in editorial, to bring its expenses down in line with declining revenues.
The Los Angeles Times newspaper will also reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15%, it announced on a slow Wednesday prior to July 4th holiday week.
These cuts will be across all departments of The Times, including circulation, marketing and advertising; the company will have about 3,000 employees after the reductions.
This is among the biggest such cuts announced by any major market U.S. newspaper in recent history. The editorial cuts amount to roughly 17% of the 876 the company employs now, will be spread between the print newsroom and The Times’ online operations and are to be completed by Labor Day.
Times Editor Russ Stanton explained the paradox in a staff memo: “Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money.”
Also thanks to the Internet, the luxury of monopoly is gone too…
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The donkey truly is a suitable mascot for the Democratic Party. The brilliance and self fulfilling prophetic nature continues to amaze with new found heights of jackassery.Perennial rod, John Kerry, who I didn't think would be eclipsed in the ability to "drone on endlessly while saying zero or worse" sweepstakes for quite some time (surprise - enter Obama) was as skilled as usual, recently commenting on his insights that McCain doesn't have the judgment to hold the presidency. Yet, somehow he was Kerry's choice for VP, above any Democrat available in 2004.
[wtimes] John Kerry says Republican John McCain doesn't have the judgment to be president.
If that's the case, then it's probably a good thing Mr. McCain rejected overtures from Mr. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, to form a bipartisan ticket and run with Mr. Kerry as his candidate for vice president.
Mr. Kerry had no kind words for his Senate colleague Sunday, accusing the Arizonan of poor decision-making on everything from backing tax cuts for the wealthy to making support for continuing the U.S. military presence in Iraq the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.
"John McCain ... has proven that he has been wrong about every judgment he's made about the war.
The tripe really is astonishing - but hey, people let them roll along with it.
Then there's General Wesley Clark, who I honestly thought was someone of impressive verbal control during the initial Iraq episode and perhaps one to look ahead to due to his seemingly reasoned and calculatedly unbiased commentaries early on for CNN. He spoke well enough and seemed like an affable and nice guy, straddling an unbiased illusion quite well.
The 2004 presidential run that followed reeked of some type of superstar, cash-in thing, but I did consider and expect him to be a formidable sort and assumed he would do well. Then he started talking. Disappeared and lost was the reasoned fellow, replaced by mind boggling cliche and puppet string, partisan drivel. Wow. What an eye opener.
Now that he's paraded around for a few days with his latest boner (on par, if not greater than the Obama 'presidential seal' if only as that one was swept away and under the rug so quickly) espousing his opinion of McCain's qualifications relative to his military history. Misread? Lacking context? Very well possible. Isn't everybody misread or misunderstood nowadays? You bet. No matter, it remains a pathetic attempt and example - duly noted of a would-be Kerry supporter, he of such vaunted history himself - regardless if you consider McCain a good choice or POTUS or not.
The real magic is however, in attempting to downplay whatever value one may or may not place on McCain's military history - although it certainly came across as a devaluing attempt - Clark nimbly succeeded in underscoring the painfully obvious fact that if then naturally compared to Obama, with zero such experience, McCain makes Barry look like a toddler, more than standing behind that ridiculous seal even did.
Digging in didn't work out too well for Clark, so it looks like a forced redeploy to higher ground is the directive...issued from somewhere to be sure. Nice one Wes.
Obama, for his part continues to astound with oratory and mind numbing (for some) brilliance:
"He said Monday it was “very clear” Clark’s “remarks don’t reflect my beliefs.”
How's that for tired regurge? Is this the tenth time we've heard this line offered for different instances?
If you find yourself having reached your swoon fill of this brand of magical community organizer depth or perhaps just might find it interesting in general, regardless of personal feelings of McCain as presidential candidate, here's his story as told some years ago:
John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account
By John S. McCain III, Lieut. Commander, U.S. Navy
[usatoday] : John McCain spent 5½ years in captivity as a POW in North Vietnam. His first-person account of that harrowing ordeal was published in U.S. News in May 1973. Shot down in his Skyhawk dive bomber on Oct. 26, 1967, Navy flier McCain was taken prisoner with fractures in his right leg and both arms. He received minimal care and was kept in wretched conditions that he describes vividly in the U.S. News special report:
This story originally appeared in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S.News & World Report. It was posted online on January 28, 2008.
Of the many personal accounts coming to light about the almost unbelievably cruel treatment accorded American prisoners of war in Vietnam, none is more dramatic than that of Lieut. Commander John S. McCain III—Navy flier, son of the admiral who commanded the war in the Pacific, and a prisoner who came in "for special attention" during 5½ years of captivity in North Vietnam.
Now that all acknowledged prisoners are back and a self-imposed seal of silence is off, Commander McCain is free to answer the questions many Americans have asked:
What was it really like? How prolonged were the tortures and brutality? How did the captured U.S. airmen bear up under the mistreatment—and years spent in solitary? How did they preserve their sanity? Did visiting "peace groups" really add to their troubles? How can this country's military men be conditioned to face such treatment in the future without crumbling?
Here, in his own words, based on almost total recall, is Commander McCain's narrative of 5½ years in the hands of the North Vietnamese.
Wesley Clark 'moving on'
[politico] Nearly a week after his controversial “Face the Nation” appearance last Sunday, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark is taking a break from the presidential campaign — but many Democratic insiders think he has already been crossed off the list of Barack Obama’s potential running mates.
Sunday morning on CBS News, Clark argued that John McCain’s military experience — and his years as a prisoner of war — in no way qualified him to be president. Following his appearance, one prominent liberal blog, apparently seeing the genie as out of the bottle, launched into a considerably harsher attacks on McCain’s service headlined “Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in the military?”
“On a scale of 1 to 10, Clark’s words were a 10 in terms of unhelpfulness,” said one Democrat who has helped manage past presidential campaigns.
At first, Clark moved aggressively to defend his remarks, scheduling additional press appearances and even updating his Facebook status to “Wes Clark knows that John McCain is largely untested and untried when it comes to matters of national security.”
But now Clark is looking to put the remarks behind him. The former NATO supreme allied commander and 2004 Democratic primary candidate is “moving on,” said a close aide, who added that Clark can now “devote his time to the business affairs which pay the bills.”
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'Depressing' Media
[realclearpolitics] : [...] America is not in recession, and who knows -- maybe we'll be less likely to have one if my compatriots would just chill. A recession is defined as two quarters of negative economic growth. We haven't even had one quarter of negative growth.
Yes, growth has slowed, and many people are suffering because of falling home prices and higher food and energy prices. These are real problems, but watching TV, you'd think we were in a recession so severe it must be compared to the Great Depression.
Maybe I was just watching at the wrong times and just catching some outliers? No. A study by the Business and Media Institute (BMI) found that ABC, CBS and NBC regularly "hyped similarities to the Great Depression."
BMI took a novel approach. It compared the economic-news coverage by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3, 1929, around the time of the stock market crash, with the coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC from March 13 to 19 of this year.
"The difference between how the 1929 and 2008 media handled a crisis was profound -- with modern journalists hyping every event." Today's coverage is much more alarmist. In 2008, few reporters pointed out "the differences between today's economy and the nation's darkest economic years, or bothered to note that America is not in a depression. [...]
Positive news doesn't fit the narrative. On a day the Dow rose, writes BMI's Dan Gainor, ABC "Reporter Dan Harris seemed puzzled during the ... broadcast of 'World News with Charles Gibson' when he asked: "The sky is not falling. Why not?"
All three major broadcast networks are culpable. But BMI says CBS was the worst. That's typical when it comes to economic coverage, BMI added. "Business reporter Anthony Mason was even called 'the grim reaper' by his own anchor Katie Couric." "Early Show" co-host Julie Chen talked about "a world financial crisis" as if a "crisis" was just a given.
The state of economic reporting in this country is abysmal. We might laugh at it if it didn't have bad consequences. But the more people hear such inappropriate comparisons, the more apt they are to believe them and change their behavior accordingly -- investing less and taking fewer economic risks -- thereby aggravating bad economic conditions.
No wonder, as the Associated Press reported, "U.S. consumers are the gloomiest they've been since the tail end of the last prolonged recession".
The Great Media Depression
[bmi] : The economy consumes the nightly newscasts. Broadcast networks report that America’s finances are “like a house of cards.” ABC, CBS and NBC even hyped similarities to the Great Depression more than 40 times in the first four months of 2008. But that parallel doesn’t hold up, especially when analyzing the news of that era. In fact, daily coverage of the 1929 stock market crash strongly emphasized the positive side of events. The New York Times that year summed up a six-day Dow Jones loss of 30 percent as: “the market quickly regained its poise and stability.” In 2008, coverage has taken the opposite tone, even though the Dow dropped just 1/100th of 1 percent in the days after the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns. ABC found a dark cloud for every silver lining, saying: “And everywhere you look, it’s bad news.” On network news, that statement was accurate.
The Business & Media Institute performed a detailed analysis of two major weeks in America’s stock market history – the week of the stock market crash in 1929 and the week of the Bear Stearns collapse in 2008. BMI examined daily news reports from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3, 1929, in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post. Those were compared to daily reports on ABC, CBS and NBC from March 13 to March 19, 2008. The difference between how the 1929 and 2008 media handled a crisis was profound – with modern journalists hyping every event and their predecessors expressing calm optimism. Among the key findings:
[full report here]
* Modern Media Much More Negative: During the week of the 1929 stock market crash, daily news stories reported positive news more often than negative by a 4-to-1 ratio. The week that the Bear Stearns fall occurred, coverage was the complete opposite. Negative stories on ABC, CBS and NBC outnumbered positive 6-to-1.
* No Good News: Roughly 40 percent of the stories from 2008 contained no positive comments at all. On CBS, that percentage was even higher. Completely negative stories made up nearly 60 percent of its reports.
* It’s Not A Depression: Today’s journalists are making repeated connections to the largest economic crisis in modern times – often with the phrase “not since the Great Depression.” Only a few of those comments explained the differences between today’s economy and the nation’s darkest economic years, or bothered to note that America is not in a depression.
* Old Presidents Never Die…: The claim that President George W. Bush would be the first president since Hoover to lose jobs in his first term proved false, yet journalists repeated it more often than Democratic operatives. Journalists have been comparing Republicans to Hoover for several years and have already begun doing so with Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
* CBS the Worst: CBS consistently appears among the worst media outlets on the economy. This study was no different. Business reporter Anthony Mason was even called “the grim reaper” by his own anchor Katie Couric. In 2008 during the week of the Bear Stearns collapse, negative stories on CBS outnumbered positive by an 11-to-1 ratio.
* NBC the Best: NBC’s attempts to deliver balanced economic coverage can be summed up in two words – Maria Bartiromo. The star of sister network CNBC was a cautious voice reminding viewers that negative news can have an impact. “We could talk ourselves into a recession,” she told NBC’s “Today.”
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Holiday? Nice...
[bkrumm]How are you spending your 4th of July holiday? While most Americans probably slept, 1,215 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines raised their right hands and committed to a combined 5,500 years of additional service during the largest reenlistment ceremony in the history of the American military. Beneath a large American flag which dwarfed even the enormous chandelier that Saddam Hussein had built for the Al Faw Palace, members of all services, representing all 50 states took the oath administered by Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of Multi-National Forces Iraq.
Petraeus, reiterating earlier remarks made by Command Sergeant Major Hill, said that the unprecedented ceremony sends a “message to friend and foe alike.” He told those assembled that it is “impossible to calculate the value of what you are giving to our country . . . For no bonus, no matter the size, can adequately compensate you for the contribution each of you makes as a custodian of our nation’s defenses.”
Last year Gen. Petraeus, along with Senator John McCain, presided over a similar Independence Day ceremony. Then only 588 servicemen reenlisted. This year’s event, more than twice as large, saw the equivalent of two battalions extend their service in America’s military. Nearly the entire rotunda was filled with reenlisting servicemen, their voices drowning out all other noise. For two days the military members, flown in for the occasion from all across Iraq, have toured the elaborate palace where Saddam’s sons were said to have entertained friends lavishly and tortured enemies mercilessly in the basement dungeon. Following the ceremony, they were treated to Chicago deep dish pizza donated by Lou Malnati’s Restaurant and flown fresh by DHL for the occasion.
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Our best to all this July 4th
Independence Day in the U.S., is an annual holiday commemorating the formal adoption by the Continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia. Although the signing of the Declaration was not completed until August, the Fourth of July holiday has been accepted as the official anniversary of U.S. independence and is celebrated in all states and territories of the U.S.The holiday was first observed in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776, at which time the Declaration of Independence was read aloud, city bells rang, and bands played. It was not declared a legal holiday, however, until 1941. The Fourth is traditionally celebrated publicly with parades and pageants, patriotic speeches, and organized firing of guns and cannons and displays of fireworks; early in the 20th century public concern for a "safe and sane" holiday resulted in restrictions on general use of fireworks. Family picnics and outings are a feature of private Fourth of July celebrations. [history]
Keep in mind...
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
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Happy Canada Day
On June 20, 1868, a proclamation signed by the Governor General, Lord Monck, called upon all Her Majesty's loving subjects throughout Canada to join in the celebration of the anniversary of the formation of the union of the British North America provinces in a federation under the name of Canada on July 1st.The July 1 holiday was established by statute in 1879, under the name Dominion Day.
There is no record of organized ceremonies after this first anniversary, except for the 50th anniversary of Confederation in 1917, at which time the new Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, under construction, was dedicated as a memorial to the Fathers of Confederation and to the valour of Canadians fighting in the First World War in Europe.
The next celebration was held in 1927 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation. It was highlighted by the laying of the cornerstone by the Governor General of the Confederation Building on Wellington Street and the inauguration of the Carillon in the Peace Tower.
Since 1958, the government has arranged for an annual observance of Canada's national day with the Secretary of State of Canada in charge of the coordination. The format provided for a Trooping the Colours ceremony on the lawn of Parliament Hill in the afternoon, a sunset ceremony in the evening followed by a mass band concert and fireworks display.
Another highlight was Canada's Centennial in 1967 when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II attended the celebrations with Parliament Hill again being the backdrop for a large scale official ceremony.
The format changed in 1968 with the addition of multicultural and professional concerts held on Parliament Hill including a nationally televised show. Up until 1975, the focus of the celebrations, under the name "Festival Canada", was held in the National Capital Region during the whole month of July and involved numerous cultural, artistic and sport activities, as well as municipalities and voluntary organizations. The celebration was cancelled in 1976 but was reactivated in 1977.
A new formula was developed in 1980 whereby the National Committee (the federal government organization charged with planning Canada's Birthday celebrations) stressed and sponsored the development of local celebrations all across Canada. "Seed money" was distributed to promote popular and amateur activities organized by volunteer groups in hundreds of local communities. The same approach was also followed for the 1981 celebrations with the addition of fireworks displays in 15 major cities across the nation.
On October 27, 1982, July 1st which was known as "Dominion Day" became "Canada Day".
Since 1985, Canada Day Committees are established in each province and territory to plan, organize and coordinate the Canada Day celebrations locally. Grants are provided by the Department to those committees. [canadianheritage]
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