Obama Surrogates Gone Mad/Pontius Palin

It would appear that Sarah Palin has driven the entire democratic Party completely insane. I mean literally coo-coo bananas. Here's the latest from some high ranking Democrats who have contracted "Palin Derangement Syndrome."

Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen compared Palin to the guy who killed Jesus.

"If you want change, you want the Democratic Party,” Cohen said. “Barack Obama was a community organizer like Jesus, who our minister prayed about. Pontius Pilate was a governor.”

That sounds like a reasonable comparison. Barack Obama is the second coming and Sarah Palin wants to nail him to a cross.


Not to be upstaged by her fellow southern Democrat, South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler hit the nail on the head when she said that John McCain had chosen a running mate "...whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

While it's unclear how many abortions Mitt Romney has had, he must have had at least one, because we all know that being the governor of a state is meaningless if you've ever terminated a pregnancy.

Here are some more dispicable quotes from members of the MSM:

Wendy Doniger, Newsweek: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

Dan Payne, Boston Globe: "She's got a Taliban-like tolerance for beliefs unlike her own."

Cintra Wilson, Salon: "...she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions...What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right."


Sarah Palin has only been on the national stage for two weeks and I have never seen anyone who has been so successful in driving Democrats out of their gourds with such incredible rapidity.

The reason behind it is obvious. The Democrats had the opportunity to make a historic choice for the advancement of American women and they chose not to. Now the GOP, the party whom the Democrats have spent the last 40 years trying to brand as the 'white males only' party, is closer than ever and if elected will be responsible for breaking the glass ceiling that the Dem's thought was theirs to break.

Buyer's remorse anyone.

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World Supports Obama, But World Also Made Up Of Idiots

Those are the findings of two new polls, the first finding that large portions of citizens of foreign nations, including Obama's father's home of Kenya support the Democratic nominee over Sen. John McCain.

Yes those citizens of the world who are so much more refined and intellectually enlightened than we slovenly rednecks here in the States, understand that Barack Obama will heal our planet and make America a nation that's not such a meanie-bo-beenie to peace loving nations like Iraq.

Then there's this....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from al Qaeda were responsible, according to an international poll published Wednesday.

The survey of 16,063 people in 17 nations found majorities in only nine countries believe Al Qaeda was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.

U.S. officials squarely blame al Qaeda, whose leader Osama bin Laden has boasted of organizing the suicide attacks by his followers using hijacked commercial airliners.

On average, 46 percent of those surveyed said al Qaeda was responsible, 15 percent said the U.S. government, 7 percent said Israel and 7 percent said some other perpetrator. One in four people said they did not know who was behind the attacks.

The poll was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a collaborative project of research centers in various countries managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland in the United States.

In Europe, al Qaeda was cited by 56 percent of Britons and Italians, 63 percent of French and 64 percent of Germans. The U.S. government was to blame, according to 23 percent of Germans and 15 percent of Italians.

Respondents in the Middle East were especially likely to name a perpetrator other than al Qaeda, the poll found.

Israel was behind the attacks, said 43 percent of people in Egypt, 31 percent in Jordan and 19 percent in the Palestinian Territories. The U.S. government was blamed by 36 percent of Turks and 27 percent of Palestinians.

In Mexico, 30 percent cited the U.S. government and 33 percent named al Qaeda.

The only countries with overwhelming majorities blaming al Qaeda were Kenya with 77 percent and Nigeria with 71 percent.

Interviews were conducted in China, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Egypt, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, the Palestinian Territories, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and Ukraine.

The poll, taken between July 15 and Aug. 31, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3to 4 percent.

That's right folks. The world has far more citizens who think like Rosie O'Donnell than you realize.

But hey, we all saw how excited Mr. Obama made those Europeans back in August, so if that's what you think matters then by all means, listen to this guy:

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Mean or Just Dumb?

When I first heard Barack Obama's latest quip about "lipstick on a pig", I was thinking the same thing that everyone else was thinking, but I dismissed it as media hype.

Obama's not that dumb, I thought. He would never intentionally use a phrase, so similar to Palin's, now famous quip about "Hockey moms" in her convention speech, replacing the ferocious and take no prisoners Pit bull with the filthy barnyard sow, right?

Then I remembered. This is a presidential campaign. Almost everything is scripted. The candidates give these same stump speeches over and over again. They know them by heart. Obama would never speak off the cuff in this manner by accident. He's proven himself to be a disciplined candidate who rarely gets off message. That's why he's done so well in this campaign, despite the fact that he has very little to offer in terms of policy specifics or experience.

If it had been a mistake Obama would have done the intelligent thing and apologized for offending anyone, saying that he simply meant the term as a figure of speech and not as a direct attack on Palin. Instead Obama attacked the news media, called the McCain campaign liars and referred to the story as a "made-up controversy."

Maybe he's right. Maybe we're making way too much of this. His cheering supporters certainly seemed to understand what he was talking about when he made the comment at a rally yesterday, but what do they know? Let's give Sen. Obama the benefit of the doubt here. Perhaps it was just a really bad choice of words. One more thing to add to the long list of bad choices that Obama has already made in his short political career.

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Palin Smears So Far

The left hasn't quite figured out how to attack Sarah Palin just yet, so they are reduced to making stuff up. Here are the best of the left-wing lies up till this point.

- Palin's youngest son is actually her daughter Bristol's.

-Palin called Barack Obama "Sambo" and made a myriad of other racially insensitive statements.

- Palin wanted to have books, such as Harry Potter, banned from the Wasilla library when she was mayor.


Expect more of these as McCain widens his lead and the panic starts to set in.

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Oops.

More bad judgement:


Note to the Democrats. Never have your picture taken with anyone involved in Detroit poltics. Nothing good can come from it.

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America's Swetheart

Last night I found myself, in the unique position of being relatively unfamiliar with the person I was watching on stage accepting a major party Vice Presidential nomination. I knew who Jack Kemp was in ’96. Dick Cheney was a household name in 2000. Joe Lieberman was famous for bucking his party on the Clinton impeachment vote in ’98 and John Edwards had just finished a run for the presidency and a six-year senate term when he was nominated. Joe Biden has been well known in political circles for years as both a loquacious senate mainstay, as well as a presidential candidate who had problems with plagiarism in the late 1980’s.

Sarah Palin was different. I knew of her and I was aware of some of her accomplishments in Alaska but unlike the names mentioned above, I had never seen her in action. Last night she was presented to the American public in what may have been the most powerful introduction of any political entity that I have ever witnessed, including Barack Obama’s in 2004. The speech was beautifully structured and perfectly delivered and if the Monday morning quarterbacking is any indication, it has succeeded in making Palin’s first impression an overwhelmingly positive one.

Today, the Obama campaign seems to be in somewhat of a state of disarray for several reasons. First, Obama is no longer the new kid in town. Palin has stolen almost all of his thunder. Watching Palin last night, I understood some of the fascination and curiosity, which has lead many to support Obama. That breath of fresh air that Obama represented in the Democratic primaries, is now serving to wake up the GOP in a similar way. I’m guessing that some of it will trickle down to independent voters as well.

Next, attacks on Palin's family, started by left wing bloggers and picked up by much of the media were largely viewed as unfair, tasteless and deemed sexist by some. These attacks were pinned on the Democrats, by default, even though Obama was the first one out of the gate in condemning the smears and declaring family members off limits. The nature of these attacks will not play well with suburban moms who have long been an all important voting block.

Attacks on what can only be described as Palin's female credentials , by so called feminists, due to the fact that she is pro-life are equally disturbing, but these are almost sure to backfire as well.

Attacks on her experience and those who were attempting to paint her as a political lightweight and the second coming of Dan Quayle disappeared once Palin gave her intelligent, tough, bitingly funny speech last night.

In Palin, the GOP has found the perfect vessel with which to mock Obama’s cult of personality and his celebrity status, while at the same time having "Rockstar" qualities in her own right.

While Obama’s story is fascinating and unusual, Palin’s is equally fascinating, yet far easier for American families to relate to.

It also seems as though Obama has lost his status as the sole proprietor of the mantel of “change”. Obama has come incredibly close to the nation’s highest office simply by repeating the word over and over again. Palin made a case for reform and backed it up with reforms that she has actually implemented. This is something that Obama is yet to do. It appears that the GOP is successfully making the theme of their convention “change” while at the same time, not ceding the experience issue either, insisting, correctly I might add, that Palin, the unknown woman who holds the 2nd spot on the ticket, has more experience than the Democrat’s presidential nominee.

The top Democratic talking point of McCain running for “Bush’s third term” and being “more of the same” was a salient, albeit patently false, attack for months. Now, that people are being introduced to the GOP ticket and hearing the candidate’s stories, they are coming to understand that both of the Republican candidates made their careers by repeatedly bucking the establishment.

I could be wrong, but my finely tuned political instincts are telling me that Democratic attempts to paint McCain as a Bush clone are about to become largely ineffective.

When Joe Biden was announced as Obama’s running mate, there were relatively few attacks from the McCain camp. By contrast the Obama camp has been relentless in their attacks on Palin. Obama needs to be very careful of this tactic. Because the Obama camps sights have been almost soley focused on Palin, the GOP and other pundits have begun comparing Obama with the second spot on the ticket rather than with John McCain. This serves to elevate John McCain, and makes Obama look less presidential and more vice-presidential. It has also, for the time being, made Joe Biden completely irrelevant, since Obama is now being measured up against both McCain and Palin instead of just McCain.


Last night’s speech was one of the best political speeches I have ever heard. Palin didn’t need a stadium full of screaming fans or a Hollywood set to make it memorable. She didn’t need soaring rhetoric or a cadence reminiscent of Dr. Martin Luther King to excite the crowd. All she needed to do was to prove that she was ready to play with the big boys and there are very few at this point who would say that she failed in that regard.

Most importantly, she has helped close the charisma gap with Obama and in doing so has blunted his most important, and some would say his only, attribute. Now it’s up to McCain to present himself as the elder statesman (but not too eld) and lay out the differences he has with both Obama and President Bush. If he succeeds, we may look back at the past week as the seven days that decided the election of 2008.
- Dan Joseph

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Obama Camp's Attacks on Palin Are Laughable

Just a few thoughts on the latest series of attacks on Sarah Palin by the Obama campaign.

I have been a Sarah Palin for VP advocate for about two weeks now and I knew what the attacks would be like if she was selected. With Obama as the Democratic nominee, attacking Palin for her lack of experience is the height of absurdity.

Palin has about as much experience in office as does Obama. She served as Alaska’s governor for roughly two years. This is about the same amount of time that Obama has “served” in the Senate, when you consider that he has spent the past two years focusing on his run for the presidency, instead of his Senate duties.

Before she was governor, Palin was the Mayor of the small Alaska town of Wasilla. Again, the Obama campaign immediately criticized these credentials, essentially downplaying her experience because of the “small town” in which the experience was acquired.

Of course we all know what Obama thinks of those “bitter” small town types.

What is most important about Palin’s experience when contrasted with Obama’s is that all of it is executive experience. Four of the last five presidents have been governors and while the next Commander In Chief will not be one, knowledge of navigating an executive branch, regardless of how small or frigid it was, couldn’t hurt a U.S. Senator making his first foray into executive leadership.

What’s most amusing about the criticism of Palin coming out of Obama’s supporters, is how cynical, supporters of the “candidate of hope” become when the diversity card is played against them.

Of course John McCain could have picked a more qualified candidate for the job. Of course the fact that she was a woman played a huge part in his decision. But you’re delusional if you think that Barack Obama would have been the Democratic nominee if he hadn’t been an African-American.

Obama won the nomination by racking up big margins in sates with large black populations, who voted for him over Hillary Clinton by a margin of 9 to 1. Had Obama been exactly the same person, with the same political record and same rhetorical skills, but with white skin, he would have been trounced by Hillary Clinton, who had the black vote wrapped up before Obama came onto the presidential scene. Three or four other Democratic contenders likely would have beaten him as well.

Speaking of Hillary, the more “experienced” candidate of the two wasn’t all that experienced either. We saw very clearly however that Democrats and young people in particular, often favor diversity over real experience and a proven legislative record. Once again, this record of achievement is something that Palin has and Obama lacks.

It all cuts both ways. If Obama is going to criticize Palin for her lack of experience, and they have roughly the same amount, isn't he criticizing himself in a roundabout kind of way?

Similarly, if Obama is arguing that he has the right judgement to be president and McCain doesn't and Obana's running mate, Joe Biden, supported the initial invasion of Iraq, by default, doesn't Joe Biden have poor judgement as well?

Over the next few months I believe that Americans will come to know and like Governor Palin. It will be interesting to see if the Obama camp has the audacity to criticize the experience of the candidate at the bottom of the GOP ticket when it is roughly equal to that of the candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket.

-Dan Joseph

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A Winning Ticket

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Two Great Ads

The new ad comes on the heels of circulating rumours which charge that George Clooney is advising Obama on matters of foreign policy.

I've also included "The One" ad, which is simply awesome.

One should never vote for or against a candidate or a policy proposal based solely on a TV commercial, but these two humorous ads have a point and should wake a lot of folks up as to where these starry eyed political neophytes who are making up Obama's base are leading us.

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Randy Newman's Crazy Liberal Rant

With the release of his 700th album, singer songwriter Randy Newman may be showing some signs of senility.

His latest CD contains this gem, a grandparent-esque rant, in which the respected historian, geo-political expert and the artist who gave us classics such as Short People, informs the world that our American empire is crumbling around us.

Now, we all expect this kind of silliness from the entertainment business, but check out what he says about Supreme Court justices, Alito, Scalia and Thomas near the end of the song.

Whoa!


That's borderline right there Randy.


A Few Words In Defense Of Our Country


I’d like to sayA few wordsIn defense of our country
Whose people aren't bad
Nor are they mean
Now, the leaders we have
While they're the worst that we've had
Are hardly the worst
This poor world has seen
Let's turn history's pages, shall we?


Take the Caesars, for example
Why, with the first few of them
They were sleeping with their sister,
stashing little boys in swimming pools,
and burning down the city
And one of 'em, one of 'em appointed his own horse to be Counsel of the Empire
That's like vice president or something


That's not a very good example right now, is it?


But here's one:Spanish Inquisition
That's a good one
Put people in a terrible positionI don't even like to think about it
Well, sometimes I like to think about it

Just a few words
In defense of our country
Whose time at the top
Could be coming to an end
Now, we don't want their love
And respect at this point's pretty much out of the question
But in times like these
We sure could use a friend

HitlerStalinMen who need no introduction
King Leopold of Belgium, that's right
Everyone thinks he's so great
Well, he owned the CongoHe tore it up too
Took the diamondsTook the silverTook the goldYou know what he left 'em with?

Malaria

You know, a president once said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
Now it seems like we're supposed to be afraidIt's patriotic, in factColor-coded
What we supposed to be afraid of?
Why, of being afraidThat's what terror means, doesn't it?
That's what it used to mean

You know, it pisses me off a little that this Supreme Court's gonna outlive me
Couple young Italian fellas and a brother on the Court now too
But I defy you, anywhere in the world, to find me two Italians as tightass as the two Italians we got

And as for the brotherWell, Pluto's not a planet anymore either

The end of an empire Is messy at best
And this empire's ending
Like all the rest
Like the Spanish ArmadaAdrift on the sea
We're adrift in the land of the braveAnd the home of the freeGoodbyeGoodbyeGoodbye

I may be way off here, but is Newman implying that Clarence Thomas isn't really black anymore, becasue of his political views? Did he just say that in his mind, Thomas lost his status as a "brother" in the same way that Pluto lost its status as a planet?

Oh man! You are so lucky that no one takes you seriously anymore Randy or your face would be plastered all over O'Reilly's dart board.

Crazy old Randy. America's ambassador to the world.

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Sensing Danger, Obama Plays The Race Card

Based on recent polling data, it increasingly appears as though Barack Obama’s recent trip overseas was not the success that many in the media made it out to be in its immediate aftermath.

New polls released this week show McCain pulling to a statistical dead heat with Sen. Obama and gaining ground in several key swing states.

Obama must sense the tide turning, because on Wednesday he shamelessly took a page from the Sharpton/Jackson playbook and used his race to attack John McCain and the GOP.

Here’s what Obama said:

“Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, ‘He’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name.’ You know, ‘He doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”’

Of course, we all know what Obama was implying when he made this statement.

When questioned on the meaning of this statement, Obama’s campaign gave this weak explanation:

“He was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It’s not about race.”

Yeah, right. The Obama campaign must think that we’re all pretty stupid.

With the media finally taking the Senator to task on his opposition to the surge and the surprising news that the U.S. did not dip into a recession but rather experienced modest economic growth in the second quarter, it would appear the Obama is adjusting his tactics.

Running as a post-racial candidate who transcends the boundaries of typical racial stereotypes, helped Obama in the primaries. However, abandoning that, in order to call his opponents racist, is a sure sign that the candidate of “change” is really just another typical, Democratic politician.

In addition, this statement flies in the face of yet another foundation of the Obama campaign, this being Obama’s promise to use “hope” rather than “fear” when promoting his agenda. But “fear” seems to be Obama’s weapon of choice, as he tells his supporters that McCain and the evil, racist GOP will attempt to convince the American people to vote against Obama because of his skin color. Of course this is nonsense, and Obama has absolutely no examples with which to back up such a ludicrous theory.

What are you basing this prediction on Senator?

This week Sen. McCain released an ad, which featured Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton, in a effort to show that Sen. Obama is running more as a celebrity, powered by young fans who have an emotional connection with the senator due to his soaring rhetoric, rather than as a serious policy advocate with the experience and knowledge to lead.

Senator Obama was quick to criticize the ad saying that we should be having a debate on the issues, rather than focusing on perpetually intoxicated starlets.

If Obama really believes this, then he should put the money where his mouth is and agree to the joint town hall meetings that Sen. McCain has proposed.

So far the Obama campaign has been almost exclusively style as opposed to the substance that people should expect from candidates running for our nation’s highest office. Then again style may be the way to go, when you’re running a candidate whose energy policy consists of telling people to keep their tires inflated.

Obama’s recent proclivity for race-baiting, suggests that many folks are beginning to realize this and are taking a second look at this unknown political entity.

-Dan Joseph

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'08 Polls Mirror 2004

Remember when John Kerry was arrogantly overconfident about his chances of winning the 2004 election? What a summer it was. Check these out. Compare the numbers from late July. Bush didn't even have a consistent lead until late August.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry_hth.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html

Just remember. Three months is an eternity in presidential elections.

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Obama Makes Play For Germany's Electoral Votes

Barack Obama essentially apologized to Europeans on behalf of the US today for bringing Democracy to a backwards part of the world.


"I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions."

Ironically, it was the German government, in bed with Saddam economically and still unwilling to use their NATO troops in combat situation in Afghanistan who owe the world an apology.

The last thing this nation and the rest of the world needs is for America to adopt European socialism. Do some research and you'll quickly see that the economic fortunes of most Western European nations have lagged well behind those of the United States over the last 30 years.

Like many young people I know in this country, Europe is enamored with Obama for three reasons:

1. He speaks well

2. He's not White

3. He views America less as a force for good in the world and more as a nation that should bow to the demands of the rest of the globe.


Not smart.

These are just words, and Obama's eloquent delivery means no more than that of a talented musician or gifted thespian. Look at his record if you need more proof of this.

We'll see if the polls continue to tighten in the aftermath of the Obama trip. I believe that there will not be a signifigant bump, but I could be wrong.

This isn't a reality show people and the Germans swooning should not give you hope, but should instead give great pause to those who are interested in having the Commander-In-Chief work in the interests of the American people.

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Obama Can't Admit He Was Wrong On The Surge

In his half a term as a United States Senator, Barack Obama has only had to cast one important foreign policy vote. He blew it.

Barack Obama's vote against the president's successful "surge strategy" speaks volumes about how this "different" kind of politician would approach issues of the up most importance while in office. He would approach them like a typical politician.

Had Obama had his way, the war in Iraq would probably be lost. While Obama can't say that this is what he wanted, the primary support on which he relied from his left-wing base, insisted that he oppose any policy that might turn the situation in Iraq around, in favor of immediate withdrawal.

Now, I don't believe that Barack Obama wants to lose a war. He's a smart guy, and I'm sure that in his heart he knows that American success in Iraq is essential and that a stable democracy in the center of the Middle-East would be a huge help to the United States in fighting the War on Terror. However the Senator has been painted into a corner by his strongest supporters, for whom the only acceptable position on Iraq is one in which American soldiers are all brought home immediately regardless of the consequences.

Once again, Obama is smart enough to know that the path in Iraq that is most beneficial to American interests in one in which there is some kind of long term American presence in that nation.

Obama has made it so that if he fulfills his promise of complete withdrawal and then tensions once again flare up in the region, US forces would have to return to Iraq for a third gulf war. No one wants that.

In opposing the surge, Obama put his own interests ahead of those of the nation he hopes to lead. In refusing to admit that he was wrong in his assertion that the surge would fail, we see the Democratic standard bearer doing the exact same thing that the current president was mercilessly criticized for by Democrats.

The Democrats were so gung-ho in their effort to get George W. Bush to admit that he made mistakes in his prosecution of the Iraq war. Where are they now?

Barack Obama will counter such criticism by pointing out that he opposed the war in the first place, which is meaningless considering that no one cared what a backbencher Illinois State Senator thought about such matters in the wake of 9/11 and that there is no way to tell whether his opposition to the war was based on strategic knowledge of the region or was simply a knee-jerk anti-war reaction, which was common in the area that he represented.

Once again however, Democrats seem to want to debate the reasons that we went in to Iraq, reasons that have been repeatedly analyzed, rather than talking about how to win.

As we see the candidate of change is only interested in it if it's change that helps him become president. The change brought about by the surge doesn't do that.

-Dan Joseph

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The Greatest Liberal Lie Ever Told

By Doug MacEachern

Poor, pitiable Henry Waxman.

The end of the Bush (Hitler) administration is coming to a close, and still the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has not accomplished the defining mission of his life, which is to see Vice President Dick Cheney frog-marched in chains from the White House.

The Beverly Hills Democrat is still trying. Waxman has demanded White House records involving meetings between Cheney and his former chief of staff, Scooter Libby in which they discussed former CIA employee and Vanity Fair cover girl Valerie Plame and her implausibly famous husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
And he wants to see any notes President Bush might have written down as he prepared the 2003 State of the Union address that included the famous 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Unfortunately for Waxman, nobody really cares anymore.

The White House and the Justice Department really don't care. Bush has claimed executive privilege regarding any Cheney interviews, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey has "cooperated" by turning over a few redacted transcripts collected by former special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Waxman is fuming over Bush's refusal. But executive privilege as a tool of presidents has a lengthy history that rarely gets overturned by courts unless the matter involves a criminal investigation (see: Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton). Long after George W. Bush is gone, psychiatrists still will have the nation on a couch trying to figure out the "Plame Affair." My analysis is that it constitutes the best example available of the nation's search, once the Iraq war went bad, for an answer to the question, "How did the Dope dupe us?"

The hard answer, the one Henry Waxman, et al, will never accept, was that he didn't.

The invasion of Iraq didn't happen because New York Times reporters failed to ask tough questions of Bush in 2002 and 2003. But if you follow their coverage of Democratic demigod Barack Obama, you will notice that Times reporters still have tough-question issues.

It didn't happen because Bush characterized Saddam Hussein as "an imminent threat" - a phrase that (if you look really hard) you can track to obscure references by Condoleezza Rice and Cheney, perhaps once each. But not only did Bush not use such a phrase, he argued that the nation should not wait until a threat was imminent before it acted.

But the invasion did happen, in significant part, because the U.S. - and every intelligence service in the world that spied on Iraq - believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. We subsequently learned he did not have WMD . . . except for the 550 tons of yellowcake uranium recently shipped from Iraq to Canada, where it will be concentrated for use in nuclear reactors.

The uranium had been in Iraq since prior to 1991. It appears that the International Atomic Energy Agency knew about the uranium stash prior to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. And, in fact, a few reporters here and there have written about its existence since 2003. It wasn't really a secret (although, clearly, the Bush administration never used it as a response to its war critics). Rather, it was just a part of the WMD story that no one seemed interested in.

It didn't fit the template of a prewar Iraq that had completely dismantled its nuclear-weapons program since, with a bit of enrichment, the 550-ton yellowcake stash could provide Saddam enough material for dozens of nuclear weapons.

Where did it come from?

Do you suppose it came from . . . Niger?

That would be the country in Africa to which Bush almost certainly alluded in his 2003 speech.

It also is the country that Wilson visited, at the urging of his wife, Val Plame, who is on record dropping his name to fellow CIA officials as someone who might help knock down rumors that Saddam had sought yellowcake there.

So Wilson went to Niger and sipped sweet mint tea with former Nigerien officials he knew there.

Wilson came back and made competing claims about what he learned. In his infamous New York Times op-ed piece, he claimed his trip knocked down Bush's contentions about Saddam's interest in Nigerien yellowcake. But according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, Wilson reported to the CIA that an Iraqi delegation had tried to buy 400 tons of yellowcake in 1998 and that another delegation had come knocking a year later. The Intelligence committee report identifies the leader of a 1998 delegation to Niger, as it happens. It was Wissam al-Zahawie, Saddam Hussein's top expert in negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding his nuclear program.

But, alas, no one is really interested in yellowcake much anymore. No one but poor, ignored Henry Waxman.

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Pelosi’s Failed First Term

As the end of Nancy Pelosi’s first term as House Speaker approaches, there is little doubt that her peers will reelect her to that position when the 111th Congress convenes in 2009. Pelosi is incredibly fortunate that it’s her fellow Democrats and not the American people who decide whether she deserves another term, because at this point she has failed to deliver on any of the major promises that her party made to the voters who put her in power.

Incredibly, Pelosi has not only failed to deliver on her promises to independent swing voters, but also to her far-left base. One would expect that the nation’s first female Speaker, hailing from San Francisco, would be on the fast track to sainthood with the far-left at this point. Alas, these finicky voters, who make up roughly 15% of the American electorate, are as upset with Pelosi as the Republicans are.

Demagoguery is nothing new when it comes to politicians trying to get elected, but Pelosi took a real chance when she promised voters that the Democrats had "...a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices” when campaigning in 2006.

Since then gas prices have gone up nearly two dollars a gallon.

We are still waiting to hear the Democrat’s plan.

The truth is that since she took office, Pelosi has done everything she possibly could to keep gas prices high.

Most recently, in what seems to be little more than a knee-jerk reaction to the President, she stubbornly continues to oppose drilling in ANWR and in coastal regions.

Over the last week, we’ve seen that even symbolic gestures by the federal government suggesting that it is open to increased domestic exploration can lower the price of oil.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for Nancy Pelosi to come up with an explanation, especially one palatable to independent voters, as to why she is opposed to such action.

On her left, Pelosi is struggling to explain why she was thwarted in her attempts to ensure failure in Iraq. Had she rallied Democrats in favor of the President’s surge strategy, she would at least be able to say that she helped bring about needed change in the Iraq policy. But the left was always invested in defeat and surrender, cleverly disguised as a Democratic desire for a “new direction”.

Now, not only is the far-left enraged that she could not achieve a full withdrawal from Iraq, but her opposition to the surge has allowed the right to label her as yet another Democrat who never had any interest in winning the conflict in the first place. In the long term, this adds yet more evidence to the increasingly widespread view that Democrats are weak when faced with adversity in the foreign policy arena. As we have seen since the end of the Vietnam War, this label has a tendency to stick.
Pelosi is either delusional or is yet to realize that the pendulum is swinging towards the GOP on both the Iraq issue and on the steps need to be taken to lower prices at the pump.

Pelosi is essentially immune from any political consequences this time around since the GOP has little chance of regaining control of the House of Representatives this cycle. However, Pelosi’s refusal to work towards solutions to our nation’s biggest problems, and instead spend her capital on repeated attempts to make political gains at the expense of an unpopular administration, could very well hurt Barack Obama in the fall.

Either way, it is nearly impossible for anyone, on either side, to spin Pelosi’s first two years wielding the gavel, as anything other than an abject failure.

-Dan Joseph

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Nah. Drilling Will Never Work.

Bush Says Drill, Drill, Drill — and Oil Drops $9!
By Larry Kudlow


In a dramatic move yesterday President Bush removed the executive-branch moratorium on offshore drilling. Today, at a news conference, Bush repeated his new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere. Crude-oil futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.

Now isn’t this interesting?

Democrats keep saying that it will take 10 years or longer to produce oil from the offshore areas. And they say that oil prices won’t decline for at least that long. And they, along with Obama and McCain, bash so-called oil speculators. And today we had a real-world example as to why they are wrong. All of them. Reid, Pelosi, Obama, McCain — all of them.

Traders took a look at a feisty and aggressive George Bush and started selling the market well before a single new drop of oil has been lifted. What does this tell us? Well, if Congress moves to seal the deal, oil prices will probably keep on falling. That’s the way traders work. They discount the future. Psychology and expectations can turn on a dime.

The congressional ban on offshore drilling expires September 30, so that becomes a key date. A new report from Wall Street research house Sanford C. Bernstein says that California actually could start producing new oil within one year if the moratorium were lifted. The California oil is under shallow water and already has been explored. Drilling platforms have been in place since before the moratorium. They’re talking about 10 billion barrels worth off the coast of California.

There’s also a “gang of 10” in the Senate, five Republicans and five Democrats, that is trying to work a compromise deal on lifting the moratorium. So it’s possible a lot of action on this front could occur much sooner than people seem to think.

So I repeat: Drill, drill, drill. Deregulate, decontrol, and unleash the American energy industry. Those hated traders will then keep selling oil as the laws of supply and demand and free markets keep working.

Bravo for Bush. Bravo for the traders.

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Robbing Peter To Pay Rev. Wright

With the political climate the way it is, if George Bush said the sky is blue and Barack Obama insisted that it was Orange, more people would agree with Obama. So when Sen. Obama tries to steal Evangelical Christians away from the GOP by essentially supporting Bush's Faith Based initiative, he's making a smart political calculation.

Support for the Bush policy is good politics on the surface, but when you look at the minor tweaks that Obama wants to make to the policy, the shallow and deceptive trademarks of Obama's campaign shine through.

First he wants to change the name. The program would now be called "The Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships."

This meaningless new nomenclature is typical of the senator whose entire campaign is about words and posing himself as being different from Bush even when the policy is essentially the same. Again, the sky isn't really orange, but from now on we're going to refer to the color "blue" as "orange", because we need change so badly.

Next, he wants to divert more of the federal money to "inner city" religious organizations. Of course no-one should be fooled by this clever name change. "Inner-city" is politically correct code for "black churches." The left-wing, America hating, black liberation theology, associated with these churches is not limited to Trinity United and Rev. Pfleger. It is widespread and unapologetic.


Whether Obama realizes it or not, this change would pour money into churches such as Trinity United, allowing them to help the poor and downtrodden but resulting in an increase in their congregation's strength and numbers, allowing them more opportunity to spread their ignorant ideology.

Obama also says that churches that discriminate against certain people because their lifestyle does not fit in with the religion's laws and theology, should not receive government money, however he seems to have no problem with churches that preach racism and spout divisive political rhetoric directly from the pulpit, getting taxpayer dollars.

The Faith Based Initiative is a terrific idea. Churches and religious groups around the nation are far better equipped to help our nation's poorest citizens than the federal government has ever been.

This play by Senator Obama is a smart one, but once again it should remind everyone, especially Evangelical Christians, that Barack Obama's view of religion is far different than that of your typical pious American.

Finally, to cap off his political posturing, Obama once again repeated the Democratic mantra that "Change comes not from the top down, but from the bottom up" In the long run, it's this concept which poses the greatest threat to all aspects of our nation's prosperity and innovative nature.

-Dan Joseph

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The Ever-Malleable Mr. Obama

Once agian "The Hammer" nails it. I've said before, I don't believe that "flip-flopping" is going to be a salient attack this fall, due to the terms over use as of late. However it is stunning that a guy with hardly any record at all could get awy with this much waffling, in such a short time.

The Ever-Malleable Mr. Obama
By Charles Krauthammer

"To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

-- Obama spokesman Bill Burton, Oct. 24, 2007

That was then: Democratic primaries to be won, netroot lefties to be seduced. With all that (and Hillary Clinton) out of the way, Obama now says he'll vote in favor of the new FISA bill that gives the telecom companies blanket immunity for post-Sept. 11 eavesdropping.

Back then, in the yesteryear of primary season, he thoroughly trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement, pledging to force a renegotiation, take "the hammer" to Canada and Mexico and threaten unilateral abrogation.

Today the hammer is holstered. Obama calls his previous NAFTA rhetoric "overheated" and essentially endorses what one of his senior economic advisers privately told the Canadians: The anti-trade stuff was nothing more than populist posturing.

Nor is there much left of his primary season pledge to meet "without preconditions" with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There will be "preparations," you see, which are being spun by his aides into the functional equivalent of preconditions.

Obama's long march to the center has begun.

And why not? What's the downside? He won't lose the left, or even mainstream Democrats. They won't stay home on Nov. 4. The anti-Bush, anti-Republican sentiment is simply too strong. Election Day is their day of revenge -- for the Florida recount, for Swift-boating, for all the injuries, real and imagined, dealt out by Republicans over the past eight years.

Normally, flip-flopping presidential candidates have to worry about the press. Not Obama. After all, this is a press corps that heard his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech -- designed to rationalize why "I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother" -- then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. Three months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great "race speech" now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes.

Worry about the press? His FISA flip-flop elicited a few grumbles from lefty bloggers, but hardly a murmur from the mainstream press. Remember his pledge to stick to public financing? Now flush with cash, he is the first general-election candidate since Watergate to opt out. Some goo-goo clean-government types chided him, but the mainstream editorialists who for years had been railing against private financing as hopelessly corrupt and corrupting evinced only the mildest of disappointment.

Indeed, the New York Times expressed a sympathetic understanding of Obama's about-face by buying his preposterous claim that it was a preemptive attack on McCain's 527 independent expenditure groups -- notwithstanding the fact that (a) as Politico's Jonathan Martin notes, "there are no serious anti-Obama 527s in existence nor are there any immediate plans to create such a group" and (b) the only independent ad of any consequence now running in the entire country is an AFSCME-MoveOn.org co-production savaging McCain.

True, Obama's U-turn on public financing was not done for ideological reasons, it was done for Willie Sutton reasons: That's where the money is. It nonetheless betrayed a principle that so many in the press claimed to hold dear.

As public financing is not a principle dear to me, I am hardly dismayed by Obama's abandonment of it. Nor am I disappointed in the least by his other calculated and cynical repositionings. I have never had any illusions about Obama. I merely note with amazement that his media swooners seem to accept his every policy reversal with an equanimity unseen since the Daily Worker would change the party line overnight -- switching sides in World War II, for example -- whenever the wind from Moscow changed direction.

The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician (though of unusual skill and ambition). The man who dared say it plainly is the man who knows Obama all too well. "He does what politicians do," explained Jeremiah Wright.

When it's time to throw campaign finance reform, telecom accountability, NAFTA renegotiation or Jeremiah Wright overboard, Obama is not sentimental. He does not hesitate. He tosses lustily.

Why, the man even tossed his own grandmother overboard back in Philadelphia -- only to haul her back on deck now that her services are needed. Yesterday, granny was the moral equivalent of the raving Reverend Wright. Today, she is a featured prop in Obama's fuzzy-wuzzy get-to-know-me national TV ad.

Not a flinch. Not a flicker. Not a hint of shame. By the time he's finished, Obama will have made the Clintons look scrupulous.

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A Response to MoveOn's "Baby Alex" Ad

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What Obama Would Do.

Here's a short list provided by former Clinton Aide Dick Morris.

• In effect, he would legislate a 60 percent tax bracket for upper-income Americans, killing all initiative and innovation. He'd raise the top bracket to 40 percent. He'd apply FICA taxes to all income, not just that under $100,000 as at present. So add 40 percent plus FICA's 12.5 percent plus Medicare's 2 percent plus state and local taxes averaging, after deduction, at 5-6 percent, and you have a 60 percent bracket.

• He would double the capital gains tax, saddling the 50 percent of Americans who own stock with dramatically higher taxes.

• He'd double the dividend tax, hitting elderly coupon-clippers now retired and depending on fixed incomes.

• He wants to cover 12 million illegal immigrants with federally subsidized health insurance, dramatically driving up costs and forcing federal rationing of healthcare. As in the U.K. and Canada, you will not be permitted certain medical procedures if the bureaucrats decide you are not worth it.

• He proposes requiring Homeland Security operatives to notify terror suspects that they are under investigation within seven days of starting the investigation.

• He says that unless they can establish that there is "probable cause to believe that a certain individual is linked to a specific terrorist group," Homeland Security cannot seize his documents and search his business. The current standard is only that the search be "relevant" to a terror investigation.


He does not oppose $5-per-gallon gasoline but only says that he wishes there had been a more "gradual adjustment" to the higher prices

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A Great Article

You need to go to this site and read this article. Check out the comments as well and notice the difference in the rational responses from those who support the authors arguments and the emotionally charged and poorly thought out responses from those who do not. Let me know what you think.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/06/22/do2201.xml&posted=true&_requestid=301012

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McCain Should "Flip-Flop" On ANWR

The term “flip-flop” became part of the American political lexicon, when it was used to define Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in the 2004 election.

The label was so effective that since then candidates from both parties, showing the lack of creativity that we’ve come to expect from our politicians, have attempted to use the term repeatedly to hammer anyone who has ever changed their stance on an issue.

While this strategy beat John Kerry, it hasn’t stuck to anyone else since then, which leads one to believe that the term has been overused and has lost most of its punch among the American electorate.

Due to recent events and the state of the American economy, John McCain is now faced with a unique opportunity, where a “flip-flop” may very well help him overtake Senator Obama in the polls. This is in regard to the newly resurrected debate over drilling in The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or ANWR.

Eight years ago John McCain opposed drilling on the airport sized piece of land in Alaska, which sits on top of what some estimate to be enough oil to produce a million barrels a day for 30 years. He reasoned that the land was a pristine, environmental treasure, that shouldn’t be disturbed. Of course this was when gas prices were around $1.70 a gallon.

Excruciating pain at the pump has taken its toll and polls now show that a sizable majority of the American people favor increased energy exploration in the United States. Porcupine Caribou be damned.

Barack Obama and the Democrats oppose any new oil exploration for two reasons. First, Democrats essentially favor high gas prices, seeing them as a way to wean people off of fossil fuels, and to boost the use of public transportation. They also have strong ties to the environmental lobby, and we all know how much trouble hippies can cause at national conventions.

John McCain would be forgiven for changing his mind. All he would have to do when the Democrats inevitably try to label him as a “flip-flopper” is to explain that his opposition to drilling in ANWR came at a time when gas prices were not an issue. We are now faced with a crisis that shows no signs of receding and action needs to be taken.

The American people would understand McCain’s change of heart, especially given their anger over gas prices. He would simply have to tout the benefits of drilling in ANWR to both our economy and our national security, which is an easy case to make. McCain’s switch would also force ANWR to become a prominent issue in the ongoing debate with Senator Obama. He would have to counter McCain on the issue in order to satisfy his liberal base. This gives the GOP a key economic issue on which they poll far better than the Democrats.

If McCain is to take advantage of this however he must do it now. He was presented with a window of opportunity to blunt any “flip-flop’ criticism put forward by Obama and the Democrats on Thursday, when Sen. Obama went back on his promise to run his campaign using public funds. This instance of Obama going back on his word would be a far more egregious example of hypocrisy than that of Senator McCain changing his mind after eight years of rising oil prices. All McCain would have to do is point it out every time Sen. Obama plays the “flip-flop” card on ANWR.

Drilling in ANWR is also an issue that is extremely popular among conservative Republicans, many of whom have not yet warmed up to McCain. Coming over to their side on this issue would solidify the GOP base for the senator more effectively than any other issue currently on the table.

The American people rejected John Kerry’s inability to take a firm position on a foreign policy issue during a time of war. Kerry was unable to balance his political needs with his need to exhibit leadership abilities during dangerous times and it cost him the election. “I voted for the $87 Billion, before I voted against it” became the equivalent of a political blooper reel at a time when people really didn’t know the candidate.

Americans know Senator McCain. He has taken unpopular stances his whole career and has been unapologetic about it. He supported the war in Iraq and fought for the surge strategy despite the fact that it almost cost him his bid for the presidency. Because of his history of independence and his tendency to do what he believes is right rather than what is politically expedient, the American people will most likely give him a pass on ANWR.

- Dan Joseph

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Criminals For Obama

As a proud Virginia resident, I find the following, as reported in today's Washington Post, very troubling:

"Civic and social organizations are teaming with Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to try to add thousands of nonviolent offenders to the voting rolls in time for the November election, a move that has angered Republicans who say the effort is designed to help Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign."


Now if I thought that some of these ex-cons might vote Republican, I may have a different view on this subject, but let's face it, criminals are not one of our constituencies.

The ACLU and the NAACP are helping Kaine in this effort. There's a shocker.

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Stunningly Naive

Earlier this week, Barack Obama made this stunning remark when asked about the United States policy towards fighting terrorism:

"....the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center -- we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated."

If ever the term "pre-9/11 mentality" applied, it's right here.

The proof that the anti-terror tactics which we used in the Clinton era, were a complete failure, should have been obvious to all, Democrats and Republicans ,on the morning of 9/11, when Islamic terrorists, successfully knocked down both WTC towers.

This was in stark contrast to the Jihadists first attempt in 1993 when they were only able to take a chunk out of one of the buildings.

Seriously Senator? I mean come on!!

And as if Obama wanted Americans to question his judgment even further, who does he put on the conference call as a point man in regard to the War On Terror? The hapless John Kerry.

John Kerry. Change We Can Believe In.

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5-4 = Dead Americans

For the benefit of Actor John Cusack who appears to be the most recent Hollywood celebrity/College Dropout to fall off the far-left, BDS , turnip truck, here's an article that sums up last weeks terrible Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121366596327979497.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Read it, get outraged and under no circumstances should you go see War Inc. If you do that, then the terrorists win.

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Last Gasps Of Vietnam II?

Here's the latest in the effort by the MSM to help Barack Obama and the Democrats lose the war in Iraq from http://newsbusters.org/:


NBC anchor Brian Williams on Monday evening rued that Afghanistan “is too often called the other war or perhaps even the forgotten war” when “in the month of May, for the first time ever, American and allied combat deaths were higher in Afghanistan than the monthly loss in Iraq.” But that's as much because of good news from Iraq, which Williams ignored, as bad news from Afghanistan. The number of U.S. service personnel killed in Iraq in May was the fewest in any month since the war began in 2003 -- a positive trend Williams, unlike his colleagues at ABC and CBS, failed to share with his viewers two weeks ago.
Back on Monday, June 2, the other networks noted how 19 died in May as a result of combat in Iraq. In the same month, total U.S. (15) and allied troop deaths in Afghanistan rose to 23, according to the Washington Post.

Now fortunately, despite the efforts of practically everyone on the left, those in the know are increasingly confident that Iraq is well on its way to becoming completely pacified and we will achieve victory in that conflict, despite the defeatist rhetoric of many Congressional leaders and presidential candidates over the past five plus years.

The stunning turnaround in that nation, due in large part to the "troop surge" is mostly ignored by the media, but especially by NBC and MSNBC who have made no real effort to hide their preference towards Senator Obama, in their news coverage.

Think about that for a second. If they aren't going to get their first preference which would be an embarrassing Saigon style withdrawal from Iraq, followed by history's judgement of the conflict as a defeat for the United States, the next best scenario for them is if no one notices the victory, at least until after Nov. 4th.

Fortunately, like Sen. McCain says, it is far better to lose an election than lose a war and if Sen. Obama wins in November, one can only hope that his rhetoric promising a speedy and full withdrawal from that nation is more lip-service to his far-left base than future U.S. policy.

History remembers The Lincoln Admin for winning the Civil War, not for the years in which Union armies were being devastated by the Confederacy. The tide turned in that conflict once President Lincoln fired general McClellan (no relation to Scott)and hired U.S. Grant.

It's the result that get the spotlight in the history books, and while the struggle is always important, it is often a footnote.

One wonders if the folks at NBC and the rest of our nations anti-war forces will ever understand that and accept defeat in their misguided cause, or if they will go to their graves insisting that we never won the Iraq war.

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Jeanne Sahadi Shows CNN Bias

Today CNNMoney.com senior writer Jeanne Sahadi gave what on the surface appears to be a fair and balanced analysis of the competing tax plans being floated by Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain. You can view it here:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/candidates_taxproposals_tpc/index.htm?cnn=yes

However, whether she knows it or not, Sahadi gives the reader a slanted view of the two proposals and of economic theory in general, by citing quotes and findings from The Tax Policy Center as pad for her article.

Two minutes of research is all that is required to discover that The Tax Policy Institute is little more than an arm of the Brookings Institution, a left of center think tank in Washington DC.

Now I'm not sure if Ms. Sahadi has the number of The Heritage Foundation in her Rolodex, but I'm guessing that someone from that think tank would have made a decent counterweight to what comes across as a fairly one-sided view of the effects of taxation and tax cuts, including quotes from Tax Policy Center director, Clinton appointee and tax increase advocate Len Burman.

As a young journalist, struggling to find work it's upsetting to me that someone who is employed by such a high profile news organization can get away with this kind of biased reporting.

This stuff isn't obvious upon reading the article, but it's exactly this type of sneaky journalism that has given much of the media its liberal reputation over the last 30 years.

Sahadi needs to learn that just because an organization is billed as "non-partisan" doesn't mean that it's not pushing a political agenda.

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Arthur Herman Serves Up Some Crow

Herman has always been excellent at exposing liberal myth. Check out his book on Joe McCarthy for another example.

Here he offers up a reality check for those who are still under the impression that the Iraq war is unwinable and was a pointless endeavor in the first place.


By ARTHUR HERMAN
Petraeus: Dealt lethal blow to Iraqi jihadists.
June 9, 2008 -- AMERICA has won, or is about to win, the Iraq war.

The latest proof came last month, as the Iraqi army - just a few months ago the target of scorn and abuse from Democratic politicians and journalists - forcefully reoccupied three cities that had served as key insurgency bases (Basra, Sadr City and Mosul).

Sunnis and Shias alike applauded as their nation's army compelled insurgent militias to lay down their arms. The country's leading opposition newspaper, Azzaman, led the applause for the move into Mosul - a sign that national reconciliation in Iraq is under way and probably irreversible.

US combat deaths in May also were down to 20, the lowest monthly total since February 2004. The toll for May 2007 was 121.

In a Washington Post interview, CIA Director Michael Hayden said we're witnessing the "near strategic defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq."

The Bush administration has taken heaps of abuse for its Iraq policy, including its decision to launch the "surge" last December. Now the strategy, which our nation's "best and brightest" regularly dismissed as a failure, has cleared the way for the establishment of a secure democracy in Iraq and a lasting peace.

It would be foolish to pop open the victory champagne yet. The truce between the Shia and Sunni in Iraq remains fragile; al Qaeda may well launch one more last-ditch offensive there (a la Tet 1968), in order to discourage the US and/or Iraq publics on the eve of the elections.

Meanwhile, we're still fighting a vicious insurgency in Afghanistan, and have yet to root out the al Qaeda remnants of along the Afghan-Pakistan border. And the continued threat of home-grown terror cells keeps European governments nervous.

In wars, however, trends have their own momentum. And the trend is running away from al Qaeda and its jihadist allies - not only in Iraq but also across the Middle East.

According to Hayden, al Qaeda faces a similar strategic debacle in Saudi Arabia.

And al Qaeda's fugitive leadership is learning that its former safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border is no longer so safe. Thanks to cooperation with Pakistan's new government, unmanned US Predator drones recently killed two top al Qaeda leaders there.

Once Gen. David Petraeus is confirmed as commander of US forces in the Middle East in July, he'll be able to apply the same strategy for victory learned in the Iraq surge to the war in Afghanistan.

In short, the larger War on Terror may be reaching a tipping point similar to that of the Iraq war.

The US public and policymakers need to recognize how this happened - and draw lessons from this success.

1) We need to acknowledge that the Iraq war wasn't a "distraction" from the War on Terror, as critics still complain, but its centerpiece.

It's not mere coincidence that our success against al Qaeda globally comes along with success in Iraq. For all its setbacks and frustrations, the Iraq war drew jihadists into a battle they thought they could win, because it would be fought on their home turf - but which they're now losing disastrously.

2) The US decision to "stay the course" in the Iraq war, which was also widely mocked and criticized, served to thoroughly demoralize the jihadist movement.

From its start in spring 2003, the Iraqi insurgency has been entirely built on the premise that it could use suicide and roadside bombings, sectarian slaughter and the torture and murder of hostages to force America out of the Middle East.

If Democrats had won the White House in 2004, the jihadists might have succeeded.

Instead, America doggedly refused to give in to terror, despite 4,000 combat deaths and massive antiwar sentiment, and unwaveringly supported an Iraqi government that was at times feeble and confused - and proceeded to break the jihadist movement's back.

In that interview, the CIA's Hayden also that al Qaeda is no longer able to use the Iraq war as a way to draw in new recruits. The reason is clear: If you go to Iraq to fight the American infidel you will die, and die for nothing.

3) Finally, the Bush administration's success in Iraq, and growing success in the War on Terror, offers a powerful object lesson in how to deal with the continuing threat from Iran.

Iran remains the most lethal state sponsor of terrorism, fomenting proxy wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and in Iraq itself. Its nuclear-weapons program proceeds despite minor sanctions and endless international efforts at engagement.

Now the Bush administration has shown the way for the next president. Instead of trying to "understand" the enemy, disrupt and defeat his plans. Instead of listening to domestic critics, act in the nation's best interests. Instead of relying on multilateral support to decide what to do, go it alone if necessary.

Instead of worrying about an exit strategy, realize that there's no substitute for winning.

Arthur Herman is the author of "Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age," just published by Bantam.

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Mike Huckabee New Spokesman For Campbell's Soup

Mmmmm, Mmmmmm, Good!

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How to Become A Major Party Nominee Without Ever Saying Anything Of Substance

I'm listening to Barack Obama give the same speech that he has given after every primary since January and wondering when he's going to start saying something.
Tonight John McCain laid out a platform for reform and change. He gave specifics, yet his speech was without the rhetorical flourish which has carried his opponent to the Democratic nomination.

His opponent gave a speech in which he used words like, "change" and "reform" yet was completely empty when it came to details. If anyone out there would like to dispute that, I'm listening. Good luck.

While the general election is just heating up, Americans should give a collective sigh of relief, when they realize what a bullet they dodged by denying Senator Clinton the Oval Office.

Her speech this evening represents at least a temporary end to the possibility that one of the most dishonest individuals whom I've ever seen perform on the American political stage, will ascend to our nation's highest office.

One down. One to go.

William Bennett sums it up well .



My Old Party [William J. Bennett]
First the Good News:

"This is an astounding moment in American politics. You cannot credibly say the Clintons are a political dynasty the way, say, the Kennedys or Bushs are. But I think one has to say the Clinton rule of the Democratic party has been dynastic. Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to have served two terms as president in two generations, the only Democrat to twice beat Republican nominees for president and his wife is a two term U.S. senator who will likely be in the Senate for years to come. Bill Clinton has been rated one of — if not THE — most popular person in the world, and yet Clinton rule in American politics ends tonight. Whatever it was the Republicans and so many independents did not like about the Clintons, we’ve learned the Democrats have had enough as well."


"And thus the Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of George McGovern, albeit without McGovern’s military and political record. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far-left candidate in the tradition of Michael Dukakis, albeit without Dukakis’s executive experience as governor. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of John Kerry, albeit without Kerry’s record of years of service in the Senate. The Democratic party is about to nominate an unvetted candidate in the tradition of Jimmy Carter, albeit without Jimmy Carter’s religious integrity as he spoke about it in 1976. Questions about all these attributes (from foreign policy expertise to executive experience to senatorial experience to judgment about foreign leaders to the instructors he has had in his cultural values) surround Barack Obama. And the Democratic party has chosen him."

I guess that's good news too.

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Yeah Barack. Let's Sit Down and Talk With This Guy!

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Monday that Muslims would uproot "satanic powers" and repeated his controversial belief that Israel will soon disappear, the Mehr news agency reported.

"I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene," he said.

"Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started."

Since taking the presidency in August 2005, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly provoked international outrage by predicting Israel is doomed to disappear.

"I tell you that with the unity and awareness of all the Islamic countries all the satanic powers will soon be destroyed," he said to a group of foreign visitors ahead of the 19th anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Ahmadinejad also again expressed his apocalyptic vision that tyranny in the world be abolished by the return to earth of the Mahdi, the 12th imam of Shiite Islam, alongside great religious figures including Jesus Christ.

"With the appearance of the promised saviour... and his companions such as Jesus Christ, tyranny will be soon be eradicated in the world."

Ahmadinejad has always been a devotee of the Mahdi, who Shiites believe disappeared more than a thousand years ago and who will return one day to usher in a new era of peace and harmony.

His emphasis on the Mahdi has been a cause of controversy inside Iran with critics saying he would be better solving bread-and-butter domestic problems rather than talking about Iran's divine responsibility.

The truth is that the only safe strategy with Iran is some sort of targeted military strike. It needs to be done soon, because if Obama is elected he is too weak and is far too indebted to the anti-war/anti-military wing of his party . He will not have 20 years to come to a decision on the right course of action to take with Iran as he did with Trinity United.

This guy is in way over his head.

I'm referring not only to Obama, but also to Ahmadinejad.

Dick Morris had a very interesting point tonight on FNC. Obama is a candidate who is tied with John McCain in a year when Democrats are likely to make huge gains in the House and Senate and are far ahead on the generic ballot. He should be up by 20-points right now.

This can only lead one to believe that either he is a seriously flawed candidate whom the Democrats prematurely put their faith in, due large part to his oratory skills, or that when they are forced to have a substantive debate on the issues, the Democrats lose.

Think about that.

John McCain is bashing Obama over his weaknesses in regards to the Iraq issue. This issue is the reason that the GOP is so unpopular in the first place and McCain is using to keep Obama on the defensive and has been doing so for two weeks.

Here's another interesting tid-bit.

Three different polls released this week put John McCain ahead in the State of Michigan. The Democrats cannot win the White House without that state.

Those white collar voters don't seem to be coming home to the Democrats just yet.

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