Blue Dogs Bart Gordon (Tenn.), Baron Hill (Ind.), Mike Ross (Ark.), and Zack Space (Ohio) vote yes.

Blue Dogs Jim Matheson (Utah), Charlie Melancon (La.), John Barrow (Ga.), and non-Blue Dog Democrats Bart Stupak (Mich.) & Rick Boucher (Va.) vote no.

Okay, fine. I’ll pay for the privilege of lunch with the president. (Hope he’s got the Bud Light on tap.) But please—don’t make me eat Michelle’s sludgetables!

Today, the Washington Post told the crushingly sad story of 12-year-old Cortavia Harris. The Maryland 7th-grader is searching for solace this week in the sentencing of her little sister's killer.

It has been almost a year since the August night when Michael Eaton, on his way from a bar, slammed his car into Cortavia's family's car at about 90 mph, crushing the back end of the Jeep into the front seat, and killing 10-year-old Jazimen, who was asleep with her head on Cortavia's shoulder. Cortavia awoke in the hospital with a broken pelvis to find out about her loss.

"I will never forgive the man," she said, in an interview with the Post.

While Jazimen's grandfather was emerging from the driver's seat to find Jazimen lifeless in the back seat, and Cortavia helplessly reaching out to him, Michael Eaton kept driving his Range Rover. He eventually parked the car and walked to a nearby hotel.

He called 911 during the night, reporting his own arm injury, but not the fatal wreck he had caused on I-270. He hung up on the dispatcher and did not answer return calls from 911 operators.

It was not until 3:30 p.m. the next day, more than 12 hours after the accident, that Eaton turned himself into Rockville, Md. authorities.

Eaton was sentenced to eight years in prison for vehicular manslaughter this week (although he may be eligible for parole in four). For Cortavia, it's not much comfort for the lost lifetime the girls would have shared.

"You deserve whatever you get," Cortavia wrote in a letter read in court. "It probably won't be a lot, but I will live through it."

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on another man who once left a party after several drinks, taking a young female passenger with him.

Around midnight, he drove over a treacherous little bridge, accidentally piloting the car off the road and into the channel, where it came to rest, wheels-up underwater. He extricated himself from the car, leaving his female passenger behind as he surfaced. After attempting to dive to rescue the passenger, he walked back to the party, bypassing several houses with telephones in favor of summoning two friends from the party back to the scene of the accident.

The trio dove several times in an attempt to rescue the passenger, but could not. The two friends urged the driver to report the accident to police, and he assured them he would, subsequently swimming back across the channel to his hotel.

Once at the hotel, the driver changed clothes, chatted with the innkeeper at 2:25 a.m., and paced in his room until daylight. At 7:30 a.m. he was chatting with an acquaintance outside the hotel about boating and possible brunch plans when his two friends arrived, asking him what he had done about the accident.

He had done nothing. The driver then went to a pay phone, where he called close friends and relatives to seek advice.

In the meantime, two fishermen came upon the car, and reported it to police, who sent an emergency diver. The diver has said the young woman's position in the car suggests she might have survived in a pocket of air long enough to be rescued by a professional, had the driver called authorities immediately.

Only after her body was recovered did the driver turn himself in. "I just couldn't gain the strength within me, the moral strength, to call Mrs. Kopechne at 2 in the morning and tell her that her daughter was dead," Sen. Ted Kennedy said at the time.

Kennedy received a Presidential Medal of Freedom this week, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon any American civilian.

Liberals freely lionize the good senator, thinking nothing of honoring him at the 2008 Democratic National Convention with a tribute video with a water motif, no less. It is considered bad form for conservatives to mention Mary Jo Kopechne (who would have been close to 70 now if she had lived), especially now that Kennedy himself has fallen ill with a brain tumor.

But surely people can be forgiven for seeing little difference between the actions of Michael Eaton and Ted Kennedy, and a great deal of difference in the consequences they paid for them (Kennedy got a two-month suspended sentence and his license was temporarily revoked). And, surely some can even be forgiven for thinking that no amount of elected service or sponsoring of legislation should make either man eligible for this incredibly high honor.

That’s the lead story from Ha’aretz today, whose plugged-in diplomatic correspondent Barak Ravid writes that, in meetings this week in Israel, National Security Adviser Jim Jones told the Israelis that the Obama administration has begun thinking about imposing tough new sanctions on Tehran, if the Iranians don’t respond to the administration’s outreach by the end of September.

According to Ravid, “new sanctions would mainly aim to significantly curb Tehran's ability to import refined petroleum products. Despite its huge crude oil reserves, Iran has only limited refining capacity, so it imports large quantities of refined products such as gasoline. Jones and his team reported that a bill by Senator Joe Lieberman to curb sales of refined oil products to Iran is almost complete, and 67 senators have already signed it.”

The Lieberman bill in question is S. 908, which was the focus of a hearing yesterday in the Banking Committee. In fact, the bill now has 71 cosponsors. A source deeply involved in Iran policy tells the THE WEEKLY STANDARD that -- absent a diplomatic breakthrough between now and September with the Iranians -- the stars seem to be aligning for the Lieberman bill to surge forward once the Senate returns in September.

Chomsky on Iran:

"Putting aside the details of the election, about which we don't know much, the whole structure of the regime is oppressive and authoritarian, and undermines basic civil and other human rights. Protest against it is not only honorable but courageous, because it faces extreme violence."

Obama's always talking tough...he's from Chicago, he brings guns to knife fights, he was editor of the Harvard Law Review, etc. But it seems not everyone inside his campaign was terribly convinced that Obama had what it takes to survive the rough and tumble of a national political campaign. From Dan Balz's new book, a memo from Axelrod to Obama before he announced in 2006:

Axelrod also warned that Obama's confessions of youthful drug use, described in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father," would be used against him. "This is more than an unpleasant inconvenience," he wrote. "It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch. You care far too much what is written and said about you. You don't relish combat when it becomes personal and nasty. When the largely irrelevant Alan Keyes attacked you, you flinched," he said of Obama's 2004 Senate opponent.

The press secretary of Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) emails: "Congressman Matheson has numerous concerns with the current bill and will be voting against it in Committee."

The press secretary of Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) emails: "The Congressman is strongly pro-life, and voted in favor of the Pitts amendment last night. The passage of the Capps amendment will strongly influence his final vote on the bill."

To report the bill out of committee, Waxman will only need two out of the seven Blue Dogs on Energy and Commerce to vote yes. Politico reports that he has made a deal to get enough votes.

Francisco Toro writes at TNR:

More than one month after the coup in Honduras, the Obama administration's quiet-but-canny diplomacy is starting to pay off. The New York Times reports that de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, has agreed, for the first time, to restore the mercurial-if-democratically-elected Mel Zelaya to the presidency, albeit with tightly circumscribed powers.

Meanwhile, the AP reports:

But Micheletti told reporters Thursday night that Zelaya could return to Honduras only to face trial for abuse of power and other charges.

"Under no circumstances will we let him take possession of the government," he said.

There are a bunch of reports out suggesting that the recommendations of a review done by General McChrystal and an as yet unidentified group of ten or so civilian advisers (including Anthony Cordesman, who made his participation public earlier this week) will include a request for more troops. The Washington Post says that "Several members of the advisory group, who spoke about the issue of force levels on the condition of anonymity, said that they think more U.S. troops are needed but that it was not clear how large an increase McChrystal would seek." And the lede in the AP's write-up: "The U.S. general in charge of turning around the war in Afghanistan is likely to recommend significant changes to U.S. and NATO operations, military officials and others familiar with his forthcoming report said. Those changes could include additional U.S. troops despite political headwind against further expansion of the war."

It wasn't hard to see this coming -- and just about everyone on the right did see it coming. When Obama first announced his Afghan strategy, he set a course of escalation in a commendable attempt to recapture the initiative there, announcing the deployment of 17,000 additional U.S. troops to the fight. But that number was less than had been requested by the previous commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan. A month later, the administration announced that another 4,000 troops would be deployed. "The president has decided he is going to resource this war properly," an administration official told the Washington Post. John McCain warned that the president had left himself open to charges of a "Lyndon Johnson style of incrementalism." And barely a month later, Obama ordered an additional one thousand special operations forces to Afghanistan.

Obama did make a mistake in not committing a larger force to the fight from the outset. But the administration has, to its credit, tried to correct that mistake by providing commanders with the troops they need (notwithstanding the embarrassing "whiskey tango foxtrot moment" that General Jones warned commanders of should they request any additional forces). Now President Obama is once again likely to face a request for significantly more troops in the fight against al Qaeda and their Taliban allies. I've heard from defense experts in Washington familiar with the strategy in Afghanistan that McChrystal might need as many as six additional brigades.

President Obama may be too timid to talk of victory in Afghanistan, but he has made a commitment to the fight there already and the American people have every right to expect that he will finish what he's started. If our new commander in Afghanistan, who was selected by President Obama, requests more troops, the president should deliver them. Obama has been in office a little over six months. He has stayed the course on Iran and Israel, despite every indication that his policies have achieved no notable success and, at worst, may have been counterproductive. He has stayed the course in Iraq, where the security situations seems fairly stable and the outlook hopeful, though that was also the situation when he assumed office. So why would he not stay the course in Afghanistan, where he has already sent a steady stream of additional forces and entrusted strategy to a commander with an impressive track record. It would be shameful, not to mention horribly damaging to America's standing and interests in that part of the world, if the president were to lose his nerve just as things start getting tough.

Four men, four different beers. (Really three different beers and one nonalcoholic beverage.) It remains unclear what Obama was hoping to have achieved with the summit. Would Professor Gates admit he lost his temper and said things to a law enforcement officer he shouldn’t have? Would Officer Crowley admit he should not have handcuffed and taken the professor to the station on disorderly conduct charges? As Crowley later explained, the two men agreed to disagree and focused on the future. This suggests Crowley has a different recollection of that night and what was said. Same with Gates. Which ultimately led to a wasted PR opportunity for the White House. The cameramen were kept back and the resulting footage better resembled Roger Patterson’s “Bigfoot” clip than what the president really wanted: the end of Volcano when the black cop is carrying the white kid, helping him look for his mother. But volcanic ash has turned everyone gray. The kid notices this and in his sweet innocence says, “Look at their faces. They all look the same.” (Fast forward to the 2:30 mark and enjoy!)

"Susan Rice is one of my dear friends. There are few women in the world that I would say, 'I love you' to, and Susan is one of them. I love Susan Rice," he added.

That was Scott Gration, the Obama administration's envoy to Sudan, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The response came after one of the committee members questioned the discrepancy between Gration's assessment last month of the situation in Darfur ("What we see is the remnants of genocide") and the assessment of Susan Rice just 48 hours earlier in which the U.N. ambassador accused the Sudanese regime of "ongoing genocide." According to Gration, we shouldn't get too hung up on definitions:

"I am not saying that the genocide is over," he said. "I am focused on what we are doing to help. It doesn't matter what we call it in my view. What matters is that we have people living in desperate conditions. To get involved in a debate that is not required is not as important as fixing the situation, which is required."

Indeed, one shouldn't get bogged down in word choice, as Susan Rice once did. "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?" she famously asked at an NSC meeting as the Clinton administration struggled to respond to events in Rwanda.

If Rice was only being ruthless, Gration has all the marks of a complete sucker. He's declared the genocide over on nothing but his own authority. He told the committee that it's time to drop sanctions against Sudan ("we are going to have to unwind some of these sanctions"), and he wants Sudan taken off the state sponsors of terror list maintained by the State Department ("There is no evidence in our intelligence community that supports [Sudan] being on the state sponsors of terrorism list. It's a political decision"). But Sudan is still supporting terror to the point that earlier this year Israel bombed a convoy bringing weapons from Iran to the Gaza strip via Southern Sudan. The Sudanese alleged at the time that it was U.S. jets that carried out the raid. When pressed on the point, a government spokesman responded:

“We don’t differentiate between the U.S. and Israel. They are all one.”

Which is exactly what one would expect a state sponsor of terror to say. How Gration can come back to Washington and defend this regime -- even lobby on its behalf -- seems a testament only to his lack of qualification for the task he was given. And that he would profess his love for Susan Rice before a Senate committee further suggests that he might even be a little unbalanced. Not that we needed any more proof of that.

The American people act on incentives. When the incentive is free wads of $4,500 for cars that would likely never qualify for such trade-in values on the free market, there will never be enough money to satisfy demand.

That's why the cash-for-clunkers program, meant to incentivize the trading in of gas-guzzlers for energy efficient cars, thereby boosting the flailing auto industry, has been suspended after less than a week. It was supposed to last until November, but lo and behold, when the government offers "free" money, the demand is high, indeed.

WASHINGTON — Four days after it launched, the popular cash-for-clunkers program has burned through its $950-million budget, sending the Obama administration scrambling to find additional money tonight and avoid a shutdown of the program.
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Administration officials told Congress this evening that the plan would be suspended, triggering confusion and anger among thousands of dealers and car buyers across the country. Many dealers rushed to submit paperwork on pending trades, amid TV ads from automakers touting the program.

But a White House official denied late today that the program was suspended, and said all valid deals would be honored. Officials at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue were seeking ways to send additional money to the program; the U.S. House was set to adjourn Friday for a month-long break.

The House is trying to come to the rescue, with $2 billion in stimulus money. That's great. It oughtta keep up with demand for approximately two weeks:

The House will consider $2 billion to fund the fuel efficiency program, which burned through its nearly $1 billion budget after only six days of availability to consumers.

The House will vote on the bill as early as today, according to one House Republican Source. The funds will be drawn from re-directed stimulus funds, though it is not clear which programs will be targeted.

And, then we'll presumably be on the hook for another couple billion after that. But what's another couple billion? Taxpayers have already "invested" billions in the auto industry involuntarily, so why not an arbitrary redistribution of tax money from people who own cars above the 18-mpg "clunker" qualification to people who happen to own '87 Chevy Blazers? I've known people with '87 Blazers. They're good people, and I for one am happy to subsidize their switch from glorious two-tone muddin' machines to...Chevy Bolts.

Many Obama-supporters on Twitter today have argued that the program is only a failure insomuch as it is a great success. You see, the Obama administration simply revealed the tremendous demand for $4,500 hand-outs fuel-efficient cars, and should be congratulated for that. The utter lack of competence, planning, or understanding of incentives is not an indication of the federal government's unsuitability to mucking around in the private sector, but a reason to invite more mucking.

You know what was also a great success, by that standard? The KFC grilled-chicken giveaway. The crowds of angry people, the insufficient chicken supply to honor Oprah-touted coupons, the frayed relations with customers, franchise-owners, media, and the stain on the company's brand? Those were just syptoms of KFC's revelation of the tremendous demand for its free chicken product, not the biggest, most high-profile marketing failure and bad business decision in years.

Michael Barone notes that we've seen this program before:

How much will CfC ultimately cost? The sky may be the limit. The Almanac of American Politics 2002, of which I am co-author, describes a similar program in Arizona:

“Her [Governor Jane Hull’s] biggest mistake was signing the alternative fuels program pushed by House Speaker Jeff Groscost. This provided huge subsidies, averaging over $20,000, to cars equipped to run on alternative fuels—propane, natural gas, electricity. The law did not require motorists to use the alternative fuels, and soon car owners were installing small propane tanks in their SUVs and demanding huge rebates. The program was billed as costing $5 million, but over the fall the cost zoomed up to $500 million—one-tenth of the state budget. Hull called a special session of the state legislature in November 2000 and suggested the state would pay the rebates over five years; Attorney General Janet Napolitano argued that the rebates could be voided if the law were repealed in the same year it was passed. Eventually the law was repealed in December 2000, but the cost to the state has been huge.”

Meanwhile, the unintended consequences are stacking up with a vengeance:

Buy a Chevelle with your Cash-for-Clunkers money!

Jack up prices for car maintenance on the likely lower-income and responsible folks who forgo the giveaway to keep an old car that doesn't come with a monthly car payment:

If you own a "clunker," you would be harmed by this legislation, because it would remove old cars, and old car parts, from the market, making older cars even more expensive to buy and to fix.

Because the government plans to destroy the "clunkers" traded in -- even if they are perfectly good vehicles -- the supply of used cars will dwindle and both used -- and new-car prices will increase.

Cost already-hurting car companies millions in ads planned and paid for touting the Cash-for-Clunkers program!

But by all means, let's have these folks revamp the 15 percent of the economy that is health care. I'm sure they'll be able to keep us alive for more than a week.

Update: The House hurriedly passed $2 billion more for the Cash-for-Clunkers program, which Obama proclaimed successful "well beyond all expectations."

The vote was 316-109. The bill now goes to the Senate which remains in session for one more week. But they will have to pass the exact same bill since the House goes into recess today and will not be around to participate in a conference to hash out differences.

President Obama praised Congress for their quick action and said he was "pleased with the progress" made in the House.

Republican Rep. Dave Camp had this to say on Twitter: "Cash for Clunkers was running on fumes, so we voted to top it off through September."

Sen. Claire McCaskill at first declared, via Twitter, her intention to vote "no" on a similar provision in the Senate, should it come up next week, as expected: "I will vote no on any extension of Cash for Clunkers program."

But later prevaricated: "I will consider using EXISTING stimulus $ that has already been appropriated to finish up cash for clunker program. No new $."

Sen. John McCain was more definitive in his opposition: "House passes $2b additional for "cash for clunkers" - another outrageous act of generational theft!"

Last night, the House Energy and Commerce Committee narrowly passed the Stupak-Pitts amendment to prevent the bill from mandating that private insurance plans cover abortions, but when Chairman Henry Waxman brought the amendment up for reconsideration, Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee flipped his vote to 'no', defeating the Stupak-Pitts amendment 30 to 29. "I misunderstood it the first time," Gordon said of his flip-flop, according to The Hill. Gordon and Zack Space of Ohio were the only Blue Dogs on the committee to vote against the amendment to ban mandates for abortion.

Instead of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, the committee passed an amendment that is being billed by some Democrats as a "common ground" measure on abortion. The amendment--sponsored by Lois Capps (D-Calif.), whose National Right to Life Committee vote-scorecard is 0 for 74--would allow the "public option" to provide coverage for elective abortions and would allow federally subsidized private plans to provide abortion coverage as well. How exactly could this be construed as "common ground"? Congress isn't requiring the public option to cover abortion--merely allowing it. And through some nifty bookkeeping, abortions will supposedly be paid for out of private funds rather than tax dollars.

Because money is fungible, it's difficult to say that tax dollars wouldn't fund abortions through this plan. Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee says, "Federal subsidies would also flow to private plans that cover elective abortions, under meaningless bookkeeping schemes -- and the amendment actually creates a federal mandate that there must be at least one private abortion plan in each premium rating areas of the health insurance exchange." Say that an individual contributes $1,000 annually to purchase a health-care plan, and the government contributes $5,000. The federal subsidies are not supposed to pay directly for abortions services, but the taxpayer-subsidized plan would allow a person to purchase an abortion for, say, $50 rather than $500.

"The status quo is that nobody has federally subsidized health care that includes abortion," says Johnson. That is true not only for Medicaid recipients, but federal employees as well.

Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) believes the Capps amendment is a "phony compromise", according to his press secretary. Congressman Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) said in a statement that "The amendment would still allow for taxpayer funding to pay for plans that cover abortion. This is a fig leaf, designed to lure votes from Members who want cover on the issue. The American people will not be fooled. We want an explicit exclusion in the bill to prevent any taxpayer funding from paying for abortions. Anything else is wrong, and contrary to overwhelming popular opinion.”

Last week, Stupak said that there were a "minimum of 39 Democrats"--members who recently voted against public funding of abortion in Washington, D.C.--who would vote against a health-care bill that did not exclude coverage for elective abortions. Neither Zack Space nor Bart Gordon, the Blue Dogs who sided with Waxman, were among the 39 Democrats who voted against taxpayer funding of abortion in D.C. If those 39 Democrats joined all Republicans, they would have enough votes to defeat the bill.

The New York Post reports:

Mayoral hopeful Bill Thompson sat by silently as a guest at a campaign event loudly called City Council Speaker Christine Quinn a "whore" who could "kiss my ass," The Post has learned.

The slur was made by Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett, the co-owner of the restaurant Tea and Sympathy, at a public campaign event for Thompson held at the eatery on Wednesday morning, according to audiotape of the event and the recollections of two witnesses.

The tape, which was provided by Mayor Bloomberg's re-election campaign, reveals British expatriate Kavanagh-Dowsett and his wife, Nicky Perry, discussing the perils for small businesses along with other Village entrepreneurs.

It will be interesting to see how the New York Times reports this story, if the paper reports it at all. Last time Bloomberg went after his opponent -- Anthony Weiner before he walked away from the campaign -- the Times gave that opponent space to accuse Bloomberg of "a well-orchestrated smear campaign that can be traced to the re-election bid of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg." Now the Bloomberg campaign isn't even asking for anonymity as it pushes oppo to the Post.

Bill Sweetman reports on US Strategic Command's symposium on deterrence, where our new undersecretary for arms control was talking about a "path to zero," which she said would be "one of the leading accomplishments of the 21st century." The rest of the delegates then proceeded to talk seriously about deterrence policy while Tauscher read a choose your own adventure book in the back of the room.

The French seem to have the most ambiguous policy on the use of nuclear weapons:

If you didn't know that France regards nuclear weapons as a retaliatory weapon to inflict unacceptable damage in case of an attack (not necessarily nuclear) on its vital interests, but deliberately refrains from outlining what those "vital interests" might be, and that French policy is "skeptical" about no-first-use and accepts the use of a "nuclear warning strike", you should have listened to Lt Gen Paul Fouilland, commander in chief of the French strategic air forces. France also expects, later this year, to become the first nation to field a nuclear warhead developed without testing - the TNA for the Air-Sol Moyen Portee Avancee (ASMP-A), which is due to arm Mirage 2000Ns from this fall.

Liberals seem to forget that the whole point of building a massive inventory of nuclear weapons was to weaken the military-industrial complex and reduce spending on tanks, aircraft, and other materiel. Of course the Obama adminsitration wants to spend less equipping our conventional forces and eliminate entirely our nuclear arsenal. What could go wrong?

Japan Today reports:

Japan will continue to collect information on the U.S. F-22 fighter jet as a candidate to succeed its aging F-4EJ fighter fleet, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Friday, despite the U.S. House of Representatives’ decision to ditch funding for the aircraft. Katashi Toyota, press secretary for the ministry, said at a press conference that Tokyo ‘‘does not necessarily give up’’ on its plan to study acquisition of the F-22 fighter as one of six candidate models. The U.S. chamber passed a defense spending bill Thursday that scuttled the F-22 program.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said earlier in the day that Tokyo should consider ‘‘an alternative plan,’’ but Toyota said his remarks do not indicate that Japan will stop exploring the option of purchasing the F-22. ‘‘We recognize the F-22 as one of the world’s most advanced aircraft and will continue to gather information on it as well as on other candidate models,’’ Toyota said.

At this point, this is a little bit like those Japanese soldiers they'd find in some island jungle in the South Pacific in the 70s -- refusing to surrender unless ordered to do so by their commanding officers, unaware that the war was over. But the war is pretty much over. The Democrats in Congress have, at the behest of President Obama, killed a program that could have been worth as much as $15 billion (or 80 bazillion yen) in cash for the U.S. defense industry, helping to defray the cost to taxpayers of developing the Raptor and "saving or creating" thousands of jobs. More than that, a Japanese buy would have added several squadrons of the world's most capable fighter to a critical region. But hey, the Japanese should probably be spending all that money on green jobs or cash for clunkers or something they really need.

Blow-by-blow of the beer summit.

Cash-for-clunkers went bust in four days. But don't worry ; they can totally handle revamping 15 percent of the economy.

"If they can't administer a program like this, I'd be a little concerned about my health insurance."

Boehner: "Democratic chairmen of the three House committees that crafted the legislation...None of them have run a business before -- and looking at this legislation, it shows."

"The fact of the matter is that America's health care system is like a free market in the same way that Madonna is like a virgin—i.e. in fiction only."

Report: Clear Channel says no thanks to Palin radio show.

The dotty, unscientific health reporting of the Huffington Post. But we should totally trust Arianna on health care reform, right?

"The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act."

Biden: I never said exactly what I said in March.

Health care ad mania!

57 liberals say no to health care reform as it stands.

A fun spoof on health care rationing:

AP: "Bad Bridges Passed Up for Stimulus Cash."

We knew it was coming. Once there was a knighthood, could America’s highest civilian honor be far behind? Indeed not: the White house announced today that Ted Kennedy, Lion of the Senate and driver extraordinaire, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In presenting the complete list of medal winners, the president said:

These outstanding men and women represent an incredible diversity of backgrounds. Their tremendous accomplishments span fields from science to sports, from fine arts to foreign affairs. Yet they share one overarching trait: Each has been an agent of change. Each saw an imperfect world and set about improving it, often overcoming great obstacles along the way.

Their relentless devotion to breaking down barriers and lifting up their fellow citizens sets a standard to which we all should strive.

Some of the awardees have actually distinguished themselves by important work; others . . . maybe not so much.

But of Mr. Kennedy it can most assuredly be said that he has been “an agent of change” in his lifetime—and especially with respect to one Miss Mary Jo Kopechne, for whom he was “an agent of change” in the most essential way. Indeed, he “lifted up his fellow citizen”—right off Dike Bridge and into Chappaquiddick’s Poucha Pond. And yes, it really was “an imperfect world” when he left her there to drown, but he successfully “improved it” by running away and not reporting the accident until the next day. And he did, with “relentless devotion,” use every means at his disposal (and, being a Kennedy, they were legion), overcome the very “great obstacle” this event might have presented to his political career.

So bravo, Mr. President, for singling out such a deserving medalist, and bravo, Sir Dunksalot—you’ve earned it!

Folks on the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) e-mail list got slightly harsher rhetoric than they bargained for when they opened a Tim Pawlenty-bashing missive from the state Democrats today.

At 5:11 p.m., Deputy Communications Director Kristin Sosanie of the DFL sent out the "DFL Party's Statement on Governor Pawlenty's Speech to the RNC." The first paragraph contained these run-of-the-mill press release sentiments:

“Governor Pawlenty has no room to criticize President Obama or any other Democratic leaders since, under his watch, fewer Minnesotans are employed, including 112,000 who have lost jobs since June 2008; Minnesota is facing a projected deficit of over $6 billion for the next budget cycle; and more Minnesotans are fighting to stay afloat while the Governor kicks more than 35,000 people out of the state health-care programs.

But if one were to click the first link in the paragraph (content warning!), one would find a rather unorthodox message for a political press release. Content warning for dirty language in the link, which leads readers to a YouTube video of a young man tricking his Chinese-speaking grandmother into saying various curse words under the guise of teaching her English. It opens with the young man writing the F-word in capital letters on an easel, and inducing his grandmother to repeatedly shout it at her husband while the young man snickers. The same pattern is repeated with other colorful vocabulary. It was not immediately clear what this had to do with Gov. Pawlenty's record on the economy.

Perhaps not so many would have noticed the link had Sosanie not sent out a follow-up e-mail five minutes later, which said simply:

Kristin Sosanie would like to recall the message, "DFL Party’s Statement on Governor Pawlenty’s Speech to the RNC".

A recall e-mail— catnip for any good gossip-monger.

A revised version of the e-mail, this time without a link, came in seconds later. But 10 minutes after that version Sosanie sent yet another e-mail with this irresistible sentence at the top (piquing the interest of anyone not already intrigued by the recall e-mail):

**The previous version of this release contained an incorrect and inappropriate link. We did not check the links before the release was sent. We apologize for this error.**

At which point every single person on the list undoubtedly did exactly what the WEEKLY STANDARD did and promptly clicked through all the links in the first e-mail, finding the very educational English as a Second Language class to which the DFL had subjected us.

Luckily, Sosanie works for the party who got Al Franken into the Senate, so this kind of thing may be smiled upon at this point.

Quick screenshots of the relevant portions of each e-mail below the fold.

A report from Hill sources: As of now, Chairman Henry Waxman only has two Blue Dogs--Zack Space of Ohio and Bart Gordon of Tennessee--on board to vote the health bill out of committee. The other Blue Dogs are unwilling to commit to a 'yes' vote because they have not seen written language that would follow-through on Waxman's handshake-agreement.

If Space and Gordon serve as Waxman's lapdogs, the bill could still narrowly pass out of committee. Of course, there would still be enough Blue Dogs--and other moderate Democrats--to defeat the bill in the House.

I knew Saab made fine cars and even finer fighter jets but I wasn’t quite familiar with its other products, namely its man-portable weapons systems, including the AT4 84mm recoilless anti-tank rocket. As advertised on its website, “Using AT4 CS AST the soldier will always have access to an accurate and easily used weapon with the capability to defeat the multitude of targets that characterise the close combat of urban operations.” And more, “The tandem warhead of AT4 CS AST is designed to be able to defeat a large number of different targets, ranging from an enemy position behind heavy brick or reinforced concrete walls, to an enemy within a field fortification or in a light armoured vehicle. Depending on the gunner’s choice of fuze setting using the weapon mode selector, the main charge will either detonate in the building wall or in the room behind, creating a new point of entry.” And finally: “AT4 CS AST combines the firepower of the tandem warhead with the ability to fire from confined spaces and other narrow firing positions. Where conventional shoulder launched weapons would force the gunner to leave cover for a more open and exposed firing position, the unique internal ballistic design of the AT4 CS systems allows maximum use of the protection offered by the urban environment.”

How cool is that? There are even variations, such as the AT4 HEAT Light Anti-Armour Weapon, which is “just as effective against landing craft, aircraft and helicopters as well as armoured vehicles. It can also be employed for protecting fixed defence installations, supply points and other vital assets.”

And then there’s the AT4 CS HP: “Its special internal ballistics allows it to be fired from confined spaces, thick jungle, in front of obstacles or with own troops in close vicinity. The AT4 CS HP is preloaded with a specially developed high penetration warhead that produces an armour-penetration effect that greatly exceeds 500 mm, making it highly lethal against most types of targets on the battlefield.”

The operative words are “thick jungle.” Because a whole stash of AT4’s (not sure which variant) have been seized by the Colombian government from FARC terrorists. Which is not cool. Not that Saab Bofors Dynamics is selling such nifty weapons to terrorists. But in tracing the serial numbers, Colombian authorities say the rocket launchers were sold to Venezuela. In Saab’s defense, however, the Swedes stopped selling to Venezuela in 2006.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry and the Colombians are trying to figure out how this happened. The only seeming explanation is that the weapons somehow passed from Venezuelan to FARC hands. Chavez denies this vehemently. His minister of the interior and justice told a news conference that “to me it seems that this is a new attack against our government based on lies” and “it’s laughable. It sounds like a cheap film made by the American government.”

First of all, the American government doesn’t make commercial films. Second, there’s no way such a film would be cheap. It would probably be directed by Michael Bay.

Via Glenn Thrush, "about 50 House liberals"--enough to defeat the bill in the House if Republicans joined them--have signed the following letter:

We regard the agreement reached by Chairman Waxman and several Blue Dog members of the Committee as fundamentally unacceptable. This agreement is not a step forward toward a good health care bill, but a large step backwards. Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates—not negotiated rates—is unacceptable. It would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do anything to achieve the goal of “keeping insurance companies honest,” and their rates down.

To offset the increased costs incurred by adopting the provisions advocated by the Blue Dog members of the Committee, the agreement would reduce subsidies to lower-and middle income families, requiring them to pay a larger portion of their income for insurance premiums, and would impose an unfunded mandate on the states to pay for what were to have been Federal Costs.
In short, this agreement will result in the public, both as insurance purchasers and as taxpayers paying ever higher rates to insurance companies.

We simply cannot vote for such a proposal.

Jennifer Rubin has the details on Mary Robinson, the former Irish PM who went on to serve as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and who will soon be awarded the nation's highest civilian honor -- the Freedom Medal -- by President Obama. Robinson presided over the Durban conference that passed the famous Zionism=Racism resolution and which was, as a result, boycotted by both the United States and Israel, among others.

Robinson defended the Durban statement at the time, saying, "In the end, the text that came out of South Africa was remarkably good including on the issues of the Middle East." Time magazine came to a different conclusion, as did just about every right-thinking person in the Western world. "The conference was a disgrace. It was a disgrace in conception--in the very idea that a few days of talk could lead to any useful action directed against a scourge that diminishes the lives of millions--and it was a disgrace in execution," wrote Michael Elliott in a piece that singled out Robinson for her naiveté. After Robinson was retired from her post at the UN, she joined Rashid Khalidi on the faculty at Columbia, where she lamented,

It worries me that in this great country [the U.S.] that's not the perception: They don't see the suffering of the Palestinian people; they don't see the impact of collective punishment. They do immediately see and empathize -- and rightly -- with the suffering of Israeli civilians who are killed, or injured, or just frightened, and of course I do too. But I find it very disheartening that there is not more understanding here of the appalling suffering of the Palestinian population, nor appreciation that this is not going to lead to a secure future. It's going to lead to greater hatred and desperation, of further suicide bombings.

But things have changed. It was, after all, our current president who once declared that "No one is suffering more than the Palestinian people." And now that he is the president, he has brought the full force of that office to bear on the cruel regime that inflicts such suffering, leading the editors at the Washington Post to note today that among the "striking results of the Obama administration's first six months is that only one country has worse relations with the United States than it did in January: Israel." But I guess the opinion of the Columbia faculty club is all that really matters.

Will the Obama administration release Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad, thereby pleasing the ACLU crowd? Or, is it going to move forward with a criminal prosecution, as the DOJ has suggested?

Here is the background, in brief. Jawad is accused of throwing a hand grenade at a vehicle carrying two American servicemen and their Afghan translator. All three were seriously wounded in the attack. A federal court ruled today that Jawad should be released. This comes after that same court lambasted the evidence the Department of Justice was using to justify Jawad’s detention earlier this month. The ACLU, which represents Jawad, and U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle want Jawad released as soon as possible.

But the Obama administration is reportedly hesitating, saying that they are still exploring the possibility of bringing criminal charges against Jawad. Obama’s DOJ says new evidence has come to light, including possibly eyewitnesses who can identify Jawad as the attacker.

“The criminal investigation is continuing,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ian Gershengorn said to Judge Huvelle.

However, the ACLU is under the impression that the DOJ has agreed to release Jawad to his home country of Afghanistan. A statement from the ACLU’s Jonathan Hafetz says, “We are pleased that the Justice Department has expressed a commitment to getting him home so that this nightmare of abuse and injustice can finally come to an end.”

So, which is it? Has the Obama administration promised to send Jawad home? Or, is the criminal investigation truly continuing?

As I explained in a piece last week, there is no doubt that Jawad was abused while in Afghan and U.S. custody. And his initial confession was clearly coerced, making it inadmissible for any legal proceeding, including his military commission proceedings. Jawad’s treatment was simply unacceptable. But that doesn’t make him an innocent.

During his testimony before his combatant status review tribunal (CSRT) and administrative review board (ARB), Jawad made a number of admissions, even in the context of his denials. He denied that he threw the grenade that struck the American’s vehicle during both sessions. But during his CSRT he admitted, “They showed me how to use the grenade, how to throw the bomb.” In this context, “they” is most likely the terrorist organization run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (the HIG), who is a long-time ally of Osama bin Laden. Only later during his ARB hearing did Jawad try to take this back, claiming he knew nothing about grenades.

But during his ARB hearing, Jawad also conceded that he was at the scene of the attack, and that he was arrested while carrying a grenade. Jawad implausibly claimed that he didn’t know what the grenade was while in his possession until a shopkeeper told him what it was. He also said that he worked for the man who truly committed the attack -- that is, he admitted that he worked for a terrorist. What does that make Jawad?

The court, and previously Jawad’s military commission, has thrown out a number of Jawad’s statements because they were compromised by his horrible treatment. But none of the admissions that Jawad made during his CSRT and ARB hearing were part of an interrogation. He was not under duress at the time. He even claimed that he had never been tortured or abused at Gitmo during his ARB hearing. And he was free to claim that he did not throw the grenade at all.

For some reason, all of the statements made by Jawad during his Gitmo hearings have been left out of the public discourse even though they put him at the scene of the attack, holding a grenade, and in the employment of the terrorist Jawad claims truly perpetrated the attack.

For several years Pakistani government and military elites have accused India, Israel, and even the United States of backing Taliban leaders such as South Waziristan's Baitullah Mehsud and Swat's Mullah Fazlullah. This week, Pakistani officials claimed the government handed over evidence of Indian backing of the Taliban to the United States and NATO:

They said evidence of New Delhi’s involvement in aiding Mehsud were also provided to US commander of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, Lt. General Stanley McChrystal.

Sources said that Pakistan had provided enough evidence to prove ‘India’s covert links with Baitullah Mehsud and provision of aid to him through Indian consulate in Afghanistan.’

So if the Pakistani government and military have extensive evidence of their arch-rival backing Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Fazlullah, why did they cut a deal with Sufi Mohammed, Fazlullah's father-in-law and a known front man for the Taliban, this spring? Why are Pakistani officials currently seeking negotiations with Baitullah now? Why would a senior Pakistani generals describe Baitullah as "a patriot"when tensions between Indian and Pakistan flared late last year after the Mumbai assault?

If Pakistan is going to blame everyone but themselves for the mess their country is, the least they can do is be logically consistent.

America's Health Insurance Plans, an association of "nearly 1,300 member companies providing health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans," sent this statement when I asked them about Rep. Nancy Pelosi's classification of insurance companies as "immoral" "villains," "carpet-bombing" the debate:

“Health care reform is far too important to be dragged down by divisive political rhetoric from Washington, DC.

“Health plans have been working in support of bipartisan health care reform for three years. Our community has proposed guaranteed coverage for pre-existing conditions, discontinuing rating based on a person’s health status or gender, and a personal coverage requirement to get everyone into the system. We have proposed far-reaching administrative reforms to slash paperwork, reduce medical errors, and ensure doctors and hospitals can focus on patient care.

“Countless physicians, hospitals and employers, and millions of concerned citizens agree that a government-run health care plan will dismantle employer-based coverage, bankrupt local hospitals, and break the promise made to the American people that those who like their health plan can keep it.

“Health plans remain committed to working constructively in support of bipartisan health care reform.”

AHIP CEO Karen Ignani was among the health representatives and lobbyists on the list of folks visiting the White House. I wonder if Obama knows with whom he's fraternizing, according to the Speaker.

After liberal Democrats forced the Energy and Commerce Committee to delay its health-care bill mark-up last night over objections to the deal that Chairman Henry Waxman had cut with four Blue Dogs on the committee, mark-up started back up again this morning and will continue until midnight, Capitol Hill aides say. Mark-up will resume tomorrow, and the bill is expected to pass the committee. "Mr. Waxman says he has a deal. We don't know if he has a deal," a Republican source on Capitol Hill tells me. "We don't think he would continue the mark-up without a deal."

Again, Waxman has reportedly cut a deal simply with enough Blue Dogs on the committee, and the expectation right now is that liberals will cave during tomorrow's committee vote. Whether or not this deal will satisfy enough moderate Democrats to win passage on a floor vote is unclear. Per ABC's Rick Klein:

[Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn] said he could not guarantee that the concessions negotiated into that bill by conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats would survive in a final product. “We have absolutely no idea,” Clyburn, D-S.C., told me and ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “Remember this bill has to be squared with the product of two other committees. The Ways and Means Committee finished their markup a couple of weeks ago. Then the Education and Labor Committee has finished its markup. We have three different tracks running in the House. Now, when the Energy and Commerce Committee finishes, we’ll try to meld these three documents into one, and what that final document will be is certainly not going to be exactly what comes out of the Energy Commerce. People understand that.”

Sixth Seventh times' a charm. So much for Russia's sparkling new nuclear arsenal -- the Bulava was purportedly Putin's baby.

For the uninitiated, this is not an optimal missile trajectory.

They point those things at us, so I'll hoist a beer to this epic snafu. Credit to the Ruskies though, they're a determined bunch. Obama would've axed the program if a nut came loose during down-stage assembly.

Gallup released some new polling today suggesting Democrats will face stiffer political challenges in 2010 than in the past two electoral cycles. Democrats currently hold a slight 50%-44% lead in the generic ballot (“if the election were held today, which party would you vote for”). But as Gallup notes, Republicans historically turn out in higher proportions and wipe out those leads:

However, past data does suggest that Democrats typically need a large lead on the generic ballot among all registered voters in midterm elections to maintain a lead once turnout is taken into account.

For example, the Democratic Party averaged an 11 percentage point lead among registered voters in all of Gallup's generic ballot polling leading up to the 2006 midterm elections, compared with an eight-point Democratic advantage in the actual 2006 House vote. In 2001-2002, the average Democratic lead among registered voters in the generic ballot was three points in an election the Republicans eventually won by four points. And in 1998, Democrats enjoyed an average six-point registered voter lead while the eventual House vote was about evenly split between Republican and Democratic candidates.

The Gallup numbers also show Republicans and Democrats deadlocked among independents on the generic ballot.

The Democrats’ tough electoral sledding is further complicated by history. The president’s party historically loses seats in Congress in midterm elections. Gallup’s numbers suggest that trend could continue next November.

Read the full Gallup report here.

Illustrating once again that the newest research must tell Democrats to find a health care bogeyman and beat the mess out of him in order to get their government-centric health care reform passed, Nancy Pelosi lit into insurance companies today at her weekly press conference with some seriously scathing rhetoric: (Clarification: The first statement below came in separate remarks to reporters today, not in her press conference. The second statement came from the presser.)

"It's almost immoral what they are doing," Pelosi said to reporters, referring to insurance companies. "Of course they've been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure," she said, adding, "They are the villains. They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening."

"They are the villains?" Sounds like someone took her messaging memo a tad too literally. She also characterized insurance companies' tactics in the debate in pretty over-the-top war terminology not usually used for mere lobbying efforts: "Insurance companies are out there in force, carpet bombing, shock and awe against a public program."

Rep. John Boehner, speaking at his press conference, spoke up for Pelosi's "villains:"

"There are hundreds of health insurance companies out there today that provide a service.
They're certainly not lily white in this fight, but most Americans like their coverage, and what they want is lower prices."

Update: Who got the most "villainous" money from HMOs in the 2008 cycle, I wonder? It must have been John McCain, right? Republicans are always in the tank for those guys.

Or, not:

He also got more than $2 million from insurance companies (a group that encompasses "health, life, property and car insurance companies, agents and brokers"), which was about at parity with John McCain, who received slightly less than $200K more.

Nancy Pelosi herself is in the top 20 House recipients of "insurance" contributions this cycle, and insurance companies are her 10th-most frequent contributor over the span of her career.

The Washington Post's Jeffrey Smith reports:

House Seems To Be Set on Pork-Padded Defense Bill

The Democratic-controlled House is poised to give the Pentagon dozens of new ships, planes, helicopters and armored vehicles that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says the military does not need to fund next year, acting in many cases in response to defense industry pressures and campaign contributions under an approach he has decried as "business as usual" and vowed to help end.

The unwanted equipment in a military spending bill expected to come to a vote on the House floor Thursday or Friday has a price tag of at least $6.9 billion.

That's the lede, and then the close:

Regarding the disputed C-17 transport aircraft, for example, senior defense officials have formally testified that those purchased in previous years, in combination with upgraded C-5 aircraft, will be sufficient to meet any conceivable military needs. But the committee added $674 million for three unwanted planes because "the Air Force will say on the record that they don't support it, but if you ask them off the record if they will actually use the planes, they will say, 'Absolutely,' " said a House staff member who also was not allowed to speak on the record.

Political action committees affiliated with Boeing, the C-17's principal manufacturer, donated $161,500 to House defense appropriations subcommittee members since the beginning of 2007, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

It would be nice if, just occasionally, some larger historical perspective slipped into these hysterical accounts, such as on C-17, which Dick Cheney first tried to kill in 1992. Having those extra airlifters in places like Kosovo, Iraq and, particularly Afghanistan has been a life-saver and, of course, we're using C-17s much more than "planned," which means they're wearing out faster than "planned" and -- wait for it -- there's no replacement on the drawing board, let alone in design, test or production.

Every few years the Air Force does a "mobility requirements study" that, surprisingly, confirms whatever the budget of the times calls for but which, over the last decade or so, has seen the total airlift requirement mushroom.

In sum, nobody really believes that we have sufficient airlift. And so, for the past several years, the Pentagon has been in cahoots with the Congress: the DoD does not include C-17 buys in its budget on the presumption that the Congress will add them back, thank you very much, in its mark-up of the defense appropriations bill or in a supplemental. The only thing notable about this year's number is that it's substantially lower than the recent past, when we were buying 8 or more C-17s at more than $1 billion.

Further, to equate a John Murtha $8 million earmark to a home-district contractor and the purchase of desperately needed cargo planes -- as Smith does -- is the height of mendacity. Not all congressional modifications or add-ons are "pork," even if -- gasp! -- they have unfortunate consequences like creating or preserving manufacturing jobs. Or providing needed gear. Gates may be a popular defense secretary but that doesn't give him the authority to issue final diktats on defense spending. Thankfully, the Constitution vests that power in the Congress. In America, "business as usual" means "the rule of law."

Yesterday we wrote about the stimulus we might want or wish to have, and today Fox News reports on the stimulus Obama and Pelosi gave us. The federal government is now funding pornography and even a live production of Perverts Put Out:

The NEA was given $80 million of the government's $787 billion economic stimulus bill to spread around to needy artists nationwide, and most of the money is being spent to help preserve jobs in museums, orchestras, theaters and dance troupes that have been hit hard by the recession.

But some of the NEA's grants are spicing up more than the economy. A few of their more risque choices have some taxpayer advocates hot under the collar, including a $50,000 infusion for the Frameline film house, which recently screened Thundercrack, "the world's only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla."...

"We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary," Obama said at the time.

But he presumably didn't intend to have stimulus money help fund the weekly production of "Perverts Put Out" at San Francisco's CounterPULSE, whose "long-running pansexual performance series" invites guests to "join your fellow pervs for some explicit, twisted fun."

Read the whole thing -- you won't be disappointed.

See below for some excerpts of the testimony that is being given this morning before the Senate Banking Committee, which is holding hearings on possible economic and financial sanctions against Iran, including sanctions against companies that sell refined petroleum products to Iran. These sanctions are part of S. 908, which has 71 cosponsors in the Senate and would likely go into effect early this fall absent some serious movement in the administration's diplomatic outreach to A'jad and his buddies.

Lieberman -- who is speaking before the Committee first:

“Crippling sanctions are not only consistent with diplomacy; they are critical to any hope of its success. It is precisely by putting in place the toughest possible sanctions, as quickly as possible, that we stand the best chance of persuading Iran’s leaders to make the compromises and concessions that the peaceful resolution of this crisis will require.”

“The coming months will be critical in determining whether we stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. As I know all of the members of this Committee are aware, time is not on our side... Simply put, every day that we wait, the Iranian regime is advancing closer to its goal—and the odds that we can persuade them to turn back from the brink, through peaceful means, diminish.”

Then, from a panel of experts:

Nick Burns, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs:

“The President would be wise to set a limited timetable for any discussions with Iran. He should be ready to walk away if progress is not visible in a reasonable period of time. He should also agree on the automaticity of sanctions with Russia and China, in particular, before any talks begin. In other words, Moscow and Beijing should assure the U.S. that they will sanction if the talks fail. China and Russia have acted unhelpfully by continuing to trade and sell arms to Tehran as it thumbed its nose at the international community. If President Obama is to offer talks to Tehran, it is only reasonable for China and Russia to pledge to join us in draconian sanctions on Iran should the talks break down.”

“The U.S. and the other countries have declared their readiness to talk. The aim of these talks should be to convince Iran to cease its illegal nuclear research efforts. Should Iran not respond seriously and convincingly to this international offer by the autumn, the U.S. should turn to the second path by moving quickly and decisively with its key international partners to place very tough economic and financial sanctions on the Iranian government.”

Matt Levitt, Washington Institute for Near East Policy:

“Secretary Clinton has spoken about the possibility of inflicting “crippling sanctions” on Iran, and one particularly promising avenue to pursue would be to exploit Iran’s continued reliance on foreign refined petroleum to meet its domestic consumption needs at home. Due to insufficient refining capacity at home, Iran must still re-import the 40% of its domestically consumed petroleum from refineries abroad. The prospect of targeting Iran’s continued ability to re-import this refined petroleum back into the country could be a powerful tool targeting a regime soft spot. Consider as precedent the dramatic failure of the Iranian regime’s gas ration card program in June 2007. The cards were loaded with a six months ration, but many Iranians reportedly used their entire ration within weeks. Indeed, Iran worries each winter about a possible heating fuel shortage and the consequence of not being able to provide the public with sufficient fuel subsidies.”

Danielle Pletka, AEI:

“Perhaps more important than the moral and financial suasion of divestment, however, is the tool that has yet to be used by the international community to persuade Tehran of the wisdom of coming to the table: restrictions on the export to Iran of refined petroleum products and equipment to enhance Iran’s own refinery capacity. S. 908 affords the President that opportunity; it doesn’t force it on him, which may be an option another Congress will feel compelled to consider. But as a supermajority of the Senate and many in the House of Representatives (who support Congressman Berman’s companion bill) have made clear, only the “sword of Damocles” (to use Chairman Berman’s phrase) of punitive sanctions will impel the Iranian regime to take seriously the many, many deadlines and redlines announced by the international community.”

“This week, Secretary Gates suggested that «if the engagement process is not successful, the United States is prepared to press for significant additional sanctions that would be non-incremental." The Secretary is absolutely right that the drip drip of incremental sanctions will not answer the mail. But he posits a false choice for the administration and our allies. In truth, the choice is not between engagement and sanctions. Rather, it is only by applying the toughest possible sanctions that we stand any chance of persuading Iran’s leaders to consider serious negotiations with the international community. “

As the Washington Times reports, the Department of Justice's already-infamous decision to drop charges against Black Panthers who menaced Election Day voters in Philadelphia was approved by the DOJ's number three official, Thomas Perrelli.

But Perrelli's no stranger to controversy. In 2005, he represented Terri Schiavo's husband in his successful attempt to pull the plug on Terri.

Perrelli did the Schiavo work for free (of course). Unfortunately, you paid for his latest charity case.

The AP reports on the latest protests in Iran:

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iranian police fired tear gas and beat anti-government protesters with batons to disperse thousands attending a graveside memorial Thursday for victims of post-election violence, witnesses and state television said.

Police barred opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi from joining the crowd around the grave of Neda Agha Soltan, a young woman was shot to death at a June 20 to protest the disputed presidential election. The 27-year-old music student's dying moments on the pavement were filmed and circulated widely on the Web, and her name became a rallying cry for the opposition.

"Neda is alive, Ahmadinejad is dead," some of those at the ceremony chanted, referring to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who the opposition claims won the June 12 election by fraud. Witnesses said plainclothes forces charged at them with batons and tear gas, some of them chanting, "Death to those who are against the supreme leader." State television also reported that police used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators.

Earlier, when Mousavi arrived at the site, hundreds of police surrounded him. As several hundred supporters chanted his name, police forced Mousavi to leave Behesht-e Zahra, the vast cemetery on Tehran's southern outskirts where many of those killed in the nearly 7-week-old crackdown have been buried, the witnesses said.

The absurdly pro-Obama magazine Newsweek has a cover story saying "The Recession is Over! But Not For You -- Yet." The piece, by Dan Gross, is a well-written look at the current economic scene, and includes the caveat that, while macro-economic conditions may be improving, the job outlook will likely remain poor for some time. You'd think the administration would appreciate the (slightly) good news.

It didn't, however. In fact, Obama went out of his way yesterday to criticize the magazine that for the last two years has featured him on its cover something like, I don't know, a gazillion times:

I don't know whether you've seen the cover of the latest NEWSWEEK magazine on the rack at the grocery store, but the cover says, "The Recession Is Over!"I bet you found that news a little startling. I know I did. Here's what's true: we've stopped the free fall. The market is up and the financial system is no longer on the verge of collapse. We're losing jobs at half the rate we were when I took office six months ago ... So, we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the recession. But that's little comfort if you're one of the folks who have lost their job, and haven't found another ...

Gross rebuts the president here.

Key lesson: Money, or fawning coverage, can't buy you love.

Politico's Glenn Thrush reports:

Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva said some of his members will hold a 2:30 pm presser on Thursday to protest the Waxman-Blue Dogs compromise. [...]

CPC Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.): "Our goal is health care reform for all Americans - not just for who the Blue Dogs want."

She reiterated liberals' demand for a robust public option and urged Waxman et. al. to head back to square one if need be.

"It got all mucked up," she added. "So we might have to come back and start over."

Come back and start over? That sounds like kill it and start over, no?

The boys get beer; she gets scorn.

Cantor: "At last count, there were at least 32 active czars that we knew of, meaning the current administration has more czars than Imperial Russia."

"Support for President Barack Obama's health-care effort has declined over the past five weeks, particularly among those who already have insurance, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found."

Liberals balk at Blue Dog deal.

The big presidential beer commercial is tonight, and brewers want in.

Iranians memorialize those murdered in the streets during post-election protests.

Rep. Tom Price: "Though newly eligible Medicare patients struggle even to find a doctor who can accept them, the president appears immovable in his belief that what is needed to fix health care is more government involvement."

Pew: Obama's Gates comments look to have hurt him. "More people disapprove (41%) than approve (29%) of the president’s handling of the situation."

"Only one country has worse relations with the United States than it did in January: Israel."

Quick video look at the crowd of Obama protesters in Raleigh, with somewhat colorful commentary:

Just a few minutes ago the Senate Banking Committee began what should be an interesting hearing on options for economic and financial sanctions against Iran. Pressure in Congress at last seems to be building for the kind of tough-minded actions that, just a few months ago, seemed unlikely -- spurred by a combination of the regime’s brutal crackdown against its own people in the wake of the June 12 election and its disregard for the Obama administration’s offer of dialogue. Last week, notably, the Senate unanimously adopted a resolution that told the President to impose “crippling sanctions” on Iran if the regime doesn’t start negotiating seriously by the time of the G-20 summit in early September, or if they don’t suspend all enrichment and reprocessing activities within 60 days thereafter.

Today’s hearing -- which is being convened by Senator Evan Bayh -- is likely to focus in particular on S. 908, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act. The bill would revise the 1996 Iran Sanctions Act to impose sanctions on the handful of companies involved in selling refined petroleum products -- i.e. gasoline -- to Iran, thus going after an Achilles Heel of the regime. S. 908 was introduced earlier this year by Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, and Jon Kyl, and -- as of this morning -- has secured a staggering 71 cosponsors. Senate insiders expect that, in the absence of significant diplomatic progress, there will be a big push come September to pass this measure into law.

Surely, there can be no other explanation for this headline:

Obama's weapon: A dose of homecoming king charm

Tom Shales is the Washington Post TV critic whose critical assessment of Obama is he's "too good to be true." It looks like this CNN writer is following in his footsteps.

The White House's favorite blogger wants Obama to produce his original birth certificate.

Repubilcan Bob McDonnell is beating Democrat Creigh Deeds by 15 points in new poll of Virginia governor's race.

Allahpundit: Obama: Stop scaring people by talking about the horrible unintended consequences of ObamaCare.

David Freddoso explains what will happen to your individual health insurance under Obamacare.

Senator and physician John Barrasso talks Obamacare.

All would be right with the world. These two should go on tour. The American people would be the winner. I think it's clear who the loser would be, starting around three minutes in (although the whole thing is good):

The big news on Obamacare this afternoon was Henry Waxman's "breakthrough" on a deal with the Blue Dogs to markup the health bill this afternoon and presumably report it out of committee by Friday. "I’m especially grateful that so many members, including some Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee, are working so hard to find common ground," Obama said in a statement this afternoon. "Those efforts are extraordinarily constructive in strengthening this legislation and bringing down its cost."

But Roll Call reports that liberals on the committee have objected to Waxman's deal with the Blue Dogs, forcing the chairman to give up on marking up the bill today:

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) postponed the health bill markup that he planned to hold Wednesday afternoon amid a backlash from liberals to the deal that he cut earlier with four conservative Blue Dog Democrats.

Waxman told reporters that he intended to keep meeting with committee Democrats on Wednesday night, resume the markup Thursday and still finish the bill Friday. ...

Waxman’s deal with the Blue Dogs, backed by House leaders and the White House, cuts more than $100 billion from the bill, prevents a new public option from using Medicare rates to reimburse providers and exempts small businesses with a payroll of less than $500,000 from a new employer mandate, among other changes.

The weakening of the public option incensed some liberal Members, with Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) declaring she would vote against it.

It looks like spending right away on defense requirements really does put people to work:

Truck maker Oshkosh Corp. last month won a $1.05 billion contract to produce military vehicles built to withstand the rugged terrain of Afghanistan. The hitch: The Pentagon wants 2,244 of them ready by year's end.

During the boom times, such a deadline would have posed a huge challenge for Oshkosh, as truck and heavy-equipment makers world-wide struggled to find enough components, steel and skilled workers. But the recession has made things far easier.

A few weeks ago, Oshkosh held a two-day job fair at the convention center near its Oshkosh, Wis., headquarters. More than 3,000 people lined up to apply for 500 to 600 jobs. The unionized positions start at about $15 an hour and include benefits.

Among the applicants was Armando Soto, a 48-year-old welder from nearby Fond du Lac. He said he had been put on a two-week layoff from a metalworking shop. Although he expected to be called back, he viewed the Oshkosh openings as potentially steady work for the long haul. "This is a great opportunity," he said.

Oshkosh also is recalling 500 to 650 laid-off workers at its JLG unit in McConnellsburg, Pa., that makes aerial work platforms.

I distinctly remember someone making the case that maybe if some of that stimulus money was directed toward badly needed items on the Pentagon's wish-list, it could provide an instant -- what's the word? -- jolt to the economy. The left was happy to make the case for wasteful spending (literally, see "In Defense of Waste") that advanced the liberal agenda, but Democrats balked at the notion of pouring cash into the Pentagon even though it is the only part of the government bureaucracy with real experience in funneling billions of dollars to private companies -- and even though that money would have gone to making sure we equip our troops with the best equipment money can buy.

Instead, the Obama administration is slashing defense spending and cutting programs that employ tens of thousands of highly-skilled (and often union) workers. The administration drew a line in the sand over less than $2 billion for the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world that also happens to provide manufacturing jobs in 40+ states across the country. But the Obama administration did spend $3.2 billion on "Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Research" as part of the stimulus, another $2 billion on "Advanced Battery Loans and Grants," and $2 billion "for capitalization grants under section 1452 of the Safe Drinking Water Act." I'm sure that any day now the Wall Street Journal will be publishing stories on all the jobs those programs created.

Here's the section of today's town hall meeting in which Obama forgot that he was the one insisting the 1,000-page bill be passed before August recess. A man who is clearly an Obama supporter nonetheless asks the president if a month or so to read the bill might neutralize a central argument against the bill. Obama helpfully offers that, "Hey, August is plenty of time to read it!" Which is true, but ironic coming from the man who didn't want anyone to have August to read it:

Q This is more a political question than a technical question. I wondered -- I hear a lot, especially the opposition, complaining that they don't have time to read these thousands of pages in your health care plan. And I was wondering, on the one hand, we've been in this -- all this has existed for a long time; what difference does a couple of months, so we allow them to read it? And we just, you know, we just don't hear that anymore.

THE PRESIDENT: Good. Well, let me just say this about sort of the politics of health care reform.

First of all, this bill, even in the best-case scenario, will not be signed -- we won't even vote on it probably until the end of September or the middle of October. We're just trying to get it -- all these different bills out of committee. So that means that any one of these senators, if they want to take this bill home with them during the August recess, they would have more than enough time to read it. (Applause.)

Later in the event, Obama's evident relaxation in a campaign-style format led him to yuk and colloquialize his way into a promise he probably can't keep:

THE PRESIDENT: I'm for the public option. (Applause.)

So I just want everybody to know, Congress will have time to read the bill. They will have time to debate the bill. They will have all of August to review the various legislative proposals. When we come back in September, I will be available to answer any question that members of Congress have. If they want to come over to the White House and go over line by line what's going on, I will be happy to do that. (Applause.)

We are not trying to hide the ball here. We're trying to get this done. But the American people can't wait any longer. (Applause.) They want action this year. I want action this year. And with your help, we're going to make it happen, North Carolina.

Line by line? Let's remember that last week, the president did not even know if the bill outlawed private insurance, which is a pretty important issue in any health care plan.

Mark Knoller wonders whether the president will regret this particular promise:

House and Senate members seeking to indefinitely delay passage of the health care measure, could tie Mr. Obama up for months if not years, going over the bill line-by-line. We wouldn't subject detainees at Guantanamo to that level of cruelty.

Plus, if you've taken a look at the bill (here), it defies comprehension. Here's just a single sentence from Section 112 of the House measure:

"The requirements of sections 2711 (other than subsections (c) and (e)) and 2712 (other than paragraphs (3), and (6) of subsection (b) and subsection (e)) of the Public Health Service Act, relating to guaranteed availability and renewability of health insurance coverage, shall apply to individuals and employers in all individual and group health insurance coverage, whether offered to individuals or employers through the Health Insurance Exchange, through any employment-based health plan, or otherwise, in the same manner as such sections apply to employers and health insurance coverage offered in the small group market, except that such section 2712(b)(1) shall apply only if, before nonrenewal or discontinuation of coverage, the issuer has provided the enrollee with notice of non-payment of premiums and there is a grace period during which the enrollees has an opportunity to correct such nonpayment."

Can we go over line four again, Mr. President?

I, for one, would like to bask in the transparency of all the Blue Dogs and Republicans marching up to the White House with their lists of questions and their video cameras for these tutorials by the president. Now, that would be informative, but not in quite the way the president believes.

He better do a lot of beach reading this month.

Yes, that's right: Hispanic support for Obama has cratered at 93 percent--just kidding; it's actually 72 percent according to Gallup.

That's still high, but it looks the Sotomayor appointment isn't paying the political dividends it was supposed to. Perhaps aversion to socialized medicine is colorblind.

Via Wendy Long.

As the United States prepares to draw down in Iraq, the military has begun to free senior-level Iranian Qods Force detainees captured over the past two years. In return, Iran has begun turning over the bodies of British hostages its proxies captured in 2007.

Last month, the U.S. military released Laith al Qazali, the brother of Qais Qazali, the leader of an Iranian-backed terror group that kidnapped five British contractors in Baghdad after Qais was captured in early 2007. Qais's network was behind the capture and subsequent murder of five U.S. soldiers at a provincial center in Karbala in early 2007.

U.S. forces released Laith as part of a deal to get the five Brits freed. In return, the terror group turned over two dead Brits, who were killed months earlier. Their bodies were returned with gunshot wounds.

Earlier this month, the U.S. military turned over five Qods Forces officers, including Mahmud Farhadi, perhaps the most dangerous Iranian operative captured in Iraq. Farhadi was the Qods Force theater commander in northern Iraq and directly supported operations against U.S., Coalition, and Iraqi forces.

Reports from Britain indicate two of the three remaining British hostages are very likely dead.

According to the London Times, Qais should be released from U.S. custody some time later this year. Sadly, the odds now seem good that the last British hostage won't come home alive. The U.S and Britain have already signaled they are perfectly fine with trading senior terrorist leaders for corpses.

The men's websites of America are doing the heretofore unthinkable on August 4th— going a day without Megan Fox. It's for her own good, they say, as they fear the starlet has become overexposed:

A dozen male-focused Web sites including AOL's men's lifestyle/humor site Asylum.com — as well as Ask Men, Just a Guy Thing and Double Viking — have sanctioned Aug. 4 as a Megan Fox media blackout day.

Why the diss? All the editors feel the starlet has become a bit too overexposed — and they're not just talking about her fashion sense. Fox has appeared on the covers of Esquire, Empire, Maxim, GQ UK, Entertainment Weekly and Elle this year alone, plus she did heavy press for her role as Mikaela Banes in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."

"You can have too much of a good thing," says AskMen.com's Editor-in-Chief James Bassil, who tells us, "We're joining in the media blackout and giving our readers a one-day reprieve from the woman we've been drowning in all summer."

Boasting a paltry six U.S. magazine covers in 2009, which I believe may be fewer than the number of Newsweek covers alone that Obama carried last year, American libidos are already tiring of the raven-haired beauty?

Today, a president who has given four prime-time press conferences (one covering health care almost exclusively) and two high-profile town-hall-style events on health care (all followed by falling poll numbers) is doing two more health care events in Raleigh, N.C. and Bristol, Va. During the Raleigh event, MSNBC cut away from Obama for an important story on the dangers of tanning beds. When the cable-net arm of the White House communications shop is spurning you for in-depth reports on the wetness of water, your star ain't shining like it used to.

It strikes me as a grave miscalculation on the part of the unpersuasive orator to think the American public is thirstier for him than it is for Megan Fox. Either that, or he looks way better in cut-offs than I would have ever guessed.

Fine, here's a picture of Megan Fox:

Michael Gerson writes:

Six months on, how fares the Obama doctrine? Concerning North Korea and Iran, the doctrine is on its deathbed.

North Korea responded to administration outreach by testing a nuclear weapon, firing missiles toward U.S. allies, resuming plutonium reprocessing and threatening the United States with a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation." During congressional testimony, Clinton admitted, "At this point [it] seems implausible, if not impossible, the North Koreans will return to the six-party talks and begin to disable their nuclear capacity again."

The Iranian regime's reaction to engagement was to cut the ribbon on a nuclear enrichment facility, add centrifuges, conduct a fraudulent election, and kill and imprison a variety of political opponents. Regarding administration overtures, Clinton recently told the BBC, "We haven't had any response. We've certainly reached out and made it clear that's what we'd be willing to do . . . but I don't think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now."

If there is a single day on which any real hope of success for Obama's direct, presidential diplomacy was dashed, it was the day of the Iranian election, when that regime didn't hesitate to perpetrate fraud on a massive scale and the Obama White House did nothing. Then the regime cracked down, and the Obama White House did nothing. Now, there's nothing left for the White House to do. As absurd as direct, presidential diplomacy would have been before the election, it's now inconcievable that Obama would sit across the table from these thugs. Bush sent Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns to meet with the Iranians in Geneva. I doubt Obama can even outdo that. Can he send Clinton to Tehran? If she's willing to go, the RNC would probably be willing to pay her airfare.

And on North Korea...well, the last administration tried engagement. The left was so wowed with the result that the Obama administration gave Chris Hill perhaps the most important foreign post in the diplomatic corps. But it turns out the Bush administration policy in North Korea was every bit the disaster that John Bolton and other hawks said it was at the time.

So Obama still has the Arab-Israeli conflict, in which Obama has also produced zero movement from either side -- not a halt to settlements, not tentative steps toward recognition, not serious efforts to form a Palestinian unity government, nothing except a few less road blocks in the West Bank (the elimination of which were, by the way, an obsession of Secretary Rice during the last administration as well).

So do Obama's most ardent supporters believe that a major breakthrough on any one of these fronts is just beyond the horizon? Will Obama keep his pledge to meet with the leaders of rogue regimes during his first year in office (and not just a bro-shake at an Americas Summit)? When does the left concede that maybe the problem wasn't so much George W. Bush as the rogue regimes in Pyongyang, Tehran, and Gaza? (That's a rhetorical question: they don't call them the Blame America First Crowd for nothing.)

Over at RealClearWorld, George Friedman of Stratfor has an interesting analysis of Vladimir Putin's Russia, in light of Joe Biden's Georgia-Ukraine trip and President Obama's Moscow sojourn. In sum, the vice president didn't so much "tell the truth" about and to Russia as he repackaged the Washington conventional wisdom. Friedman's piece should be a reminder that demography and the health of a country's banking sector are not the only determinants of geopolitical power; if you're North Korea or Putin's Russia (or Soviet Russia or even Tsarist Russia), you can be a mess domestically and still scare the bejeebers out of the rest of the world.

And in particular, you can make small, struggling democracies who have the bad luck to live next door especially jumpy.

At the same time, Friedman perhaps goes too far. For one, Putin's ability to rebuild a "Chekist state" is a Humpty-Dumpty hope: Moscow's ability to enforce its writ in the hinterlands has fallen far down. And even Putin isn't spending the rubles required to rebuild the Red Army. Second, the collapse of the Soviet Union cost the Russian empire about 400 years worth of conquests. Retaking Abkhazia might seem like a first step, but the road to great power status -- as measured by something more than nuclear weapons and commodity prices -- is very long.

But the Friedman Theorem does have wider application, and is a useful lens through which to look at a rising China. The American presumption (meaning especially the Washington conventional wisdom) is that China wants to be rich -- the Chinese economy is still only a quarter the size of ours, and something like 900 million Chinese still live in deep poverty; China's population is also aging -- more than is wants to be geopolitically powerful. And while communist China isn't as nasty a Chekist state as Soviet or Tsarist Russia was, it is unquestionably a regime that aspires to be a global great power. Possibly Beijing's view of its role in the world might cause it, in the vice president's felicitous phrase, "to do something stupid."

Here's President Obama yesterday: "And I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want government-run health care, I don't want socialized medicine, and don't touch my Medicare.' (Laughter.) And I wanted to say, well, I mean, that's what Medicare is, it's a government-run health care plan that people are very happy with."

Perhaps the president was joking, or using hyperbole. But, for what it's worth, I don't believe the president got such a letter "the other day from a woman." (I'll withdraw my disbelief if the letter is produced.)

The president is recycling an old anecdote, perhaps from the 1993-1994 health care debate, perhaps from before, about someone standing up at town hall and saying something like, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” This may once have really happened, but it’s been recycled endlessly in recent years as a liberal talking point about the ignorance of the American people and their silliness in resisting new big government health care schemes. The president is entitled to recycle the story once again, and to make the point about Medicare--but he probably shouldn’t pretend he got a letter I’m doubtful he actually received.

It’s true, for the longest time it was only shlub morons like the rest of us who knew it might not be kosher to claim domiciles in two separate states as our primary owner-occupied residences, and if we wanted to refinance the mortgages on them both with sweetheart loans and special discounts on rates, fees, and points we’d probably have to go to Tony Soprano.

But now the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee (and scourge of Republican wrongdoers) knows it too.

Voinovich is going to save the Republican Party from itself by making fun of Jim DeMint's accent.

DeMint, whom Voinovich thinks is the problem with the Republican Party, rebuffs the birthers.

TARP: "By that measure, the government has been a poor investor, losing about $148 billion so far--$1,233 per U.S. household."

Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow on health care costs: "Oh, why health costs increase? The basic reason why health costs increased is that health care is a good thing! Because today there is a lot more you can do!"

Stocks go up as agenda stalls.

No deal.

"That represented the equivalent of cutting a foot-long submarine sandwich from the budget of a construction worker making $60,000 a year."

Hole-in-one, billiards-style:

In re Obamacare: The facts are bad, and public opinion is bad. Otherwise it’s doing fine!

Chuck Blahous of the Hudson Institute has an important article in today’s Politico.

He points out that President Obama makes it seem as if his health insurance reforms won’t add to the deficit over the next ten years. But the current House bill exceeds this standard, according to CBO--not merely by the oft-reported figure of $239 billion, but by $820 billion, and the fiscal damage would compound beyond the ten-year window. The perception that the bill is "only" $239 billion short of the goal line is due to its having been packaged with unrelated tax increases totaling $581 billion over ten years. Whatever the merits (or lack thereof) of these other income tax increases, they have nothing to do with health care reform or with "bending the cost curve"--and they don’t satisfy the president’s pledge that his health care reforms themselves would be revenue neutral.

And Gallup has an important new poll.

It shows more Americans than not believe that, under the Democrats’ legislation, their own health care costs will go up, their own health care will get worse, and their own access to health care will be reduced. Gallup’s bottom line: “These results do not coalesce into a terribly optimistic picture of Americans' views of the perceived impact of healthcare reform.”

My bottom line: Kill it and start over.

Kill Obamacare--"comprehensive," big-government-centered, central-planning-type health care reform.

Start over with targeted, discrete reforms that address problems of access and the insurance market, and that address problems with the already-government-run parts of the system.

Ezra Klein has posted a blog criticizing the claim (made by Bill Kristol on the Daily Show Monday night) that the costs of government-run health care have greatly outpaced other health costs. But Klein is mistaken.

Advocates of ObamaCare like to rely on studies comparing the cost-increases of government-run care with the cost-increases of private insurance. But such studies completely ignore private out-of-pocket costs. They ignore the fact that out-of-pocket costs have gone from being 62 percent of the private market in 1970 to just 26 percent today -- and that private insurance correspondingly covers almost twice as much care today as it did back then (74 percent compared to just 38 percent). They completely ignore a profound shift in the private market and draw conclusions as if that shift had never occurred. It’s a lot like looking at LP and CD sales, but ignoring MP3s, and concluding that Americans are no longer as fond of music.

If you look at all of private care, and don't just cherry-pick a select part of it, the picture is quite clear. As my study for the Pacific Research Institute shows, since 1970, the costs of Medicare and Medicaid have each risen one-third more, per patient, than the combined costs of all other health care in America -- the vast majority of which is purchased privately. Medicaid's costs have risen 35 percent more, and Medicare's 34 percent more, per patient, than the combined costs of all other health care nationwide.

The costs of the two flagship government-run health-care programs have also outpaced all other nationwide health costs since 1980, 1990, and, in Medicare’s case, 2000. (Medicaid’s costs haven’t risen much since 2000, as billions of dollars have been shifted from Medicaid to SCHIP.)

Moreover, my study is quite generous to Medicare and Medicaid in a variety of ways. It counts the Medicare prescription-drug benefit among the costs of private care rather than among the costs of Medicare, it doesn't adjust for the cost-shifting from Medicaid to SCHIP, and it counts all care that is purchased privately by Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries (including Medigap insurance and Medicare copayments) among the costs of private care without counting those who receive it among the recipients of private care. (Because Medicare's and Medicaid's enrollments have increased disproportionately over time, this magnifies private care's per-patient cost-increases.)

Despite all of these advantages, on a per-patient basis, for every $3 that all other U.S. health-care costs have increased since 1970, Medicare's and Medicaid's costs have each risen more than $4. Klein and Co. can only claim otherwise by completely ignoring a major chunk of the private market.

This is the same Barack Obama who asked the entire federal government to come up with $100 million in savings over the next year and couldn't deliver on deadline. Yet the military, actively engaged in two hot wars and fighting a global war on terror, or counterinsurgency, or contingency operation, or whatever the euphemism of the day is, will be asked to cut six hundred times as much in order to "pay for new priorities to be set by the Defense secretary, a top Pentagon official said Tuesday," according to the latest report from CQ's Josh Rogin:

The order from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is based on an assumption that there will be no real growth in defense budgets over the next five years, a radical departure for a department whose budgets have increased more than 80 percent since 2001....

One of the driving factors so far in the evaluation is the prospect that defense budgets largely will be static in fiscal 2011 through fiscal 2015, said David Ochmanek, deputy assistant secretary of defense for force transformation and resources.

The military services must “find offsets” to make room for the new capabilities that Gates wants to add or expand, he said. “They’re now busily looking for those billpayers,” said Ochmanek. “That’s how the zero growth assumption manifests itself.”

Zero growth for our troops. Zero growth for the defense of our country. And all the while, ballooning deficits to pay for health care, stimulus spending, car companies, and a $20 million dollar vacation home on Martha's Vineyard. Republicans are busy fending off ObamaCare (and having some success), but I suspect that when the dust settles on all Obama's domestic initiatives, and assuming there is at least some marginal economic recovery over the next 18 months, this gutting of our nation's military may well be the most fertile ground for Republicans in the midterm election -- and in 2012.

Well, that didn’t take very long. Less than one day after officials touted the peace agreement with the Taliban in Badghis province, the Taliban denounced it. Some of us never saw this one coming. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Within hours, however, clashes broke out in the region, and a Taliban spokesman told media that no deal ever happened. Suspected insurgents ambushed police, and fighting left two militants dead and two police wounded, Reuters reported, citing the Interior Ministry.

Here is what Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told the AP about the Badghis deal:

''This is all propaganda by the Afghan government,'' he said. ''We will continue our jihad and will not accept the request of the government for negotiations and cease-fire.''

One of two things happened here. Either the Afghan government and those pressuring them to negotiate cut a deal with the wrong people in Badghis, which indicates they don’t even know who the real Taliban players are (unlikely in this case), or the Taliban never intended to keep the peace agreement (very likely).

As the Christian Science Monitor reported, Badghis province is an ideal testing ground for negotiations with the Taliban as the Pashtuns there are isolated in a small pocket far from the Pashtun heartlands in the south and east. If a deal can’t be made there, it is unlikely deals can be made in the south and east, where the Taliban control vast tracts of ground and have ready access to safe havens across the border.

They also have an odd take on summer camp

Democrats have informed John Boehner's office of the schedule, according to the Politico:

From: Cavicke, David
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 4:51 PM
To: REDACTED
Subject: Schedule

Democratic Leadership has told Mr. Boehner’s staff that there will be no vote on Health on the Floor before recess and we will leave Friday.
We still have no confirmation of plans to resume or end the Committee Markup.

David L. Cavicke
Republican Chief of Staff
Committee on Energy and Commerce

Remember when it was rumored that some drinks in New York City were costing as much as $10? Now, of course, cocktails can cost as much as $20 at a trendy District bar. But in this economy, things couldn’t possibly get worse, could they?

According to the beverage giant Diageo, the answer is yes. From an email I received last night from my good friend Johnnie Walker (which Diageo owns):

The U.S. Senate is considering a proposal that would dramatically raise what they call “lifestyle taxes” to pay for a huge federal health care program. Under this proposal you would be paying more for some of the simple things you enjoy, such as a soft drink and your favorite alcohol beverages. The proposal calls for a staggering increase in federal taxes on alcohol beverages of up to 229 percent!...

Small businesses--your local wine, grocery, convenience stores and restaurants--will see sales go down. An estimated 160,000 people in the hospitality industry will lose their jobs--in an industry that has already lost 540,000 jobs over the past year. The last time the federal government raised taxes on distilled spirits nearly 100,000 people lost their jobs....

Nearly 60 percent of the price you pay at the store for distilled spirits already goes for federal, state, local taxes and other government fees. Do not let the government add more to an already hefty tax burden. You may agree that our health care system needs to be reformed, but not on the backs of hard working Americans.

I was then directed to a link to AxeTaxesNotJobs.com, which elaborates on the pernicious effects of regressive taxes even further.

Seriously, I understand that the folks at Diageo, an empire of booze that includes Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Smirnoff, Baileys, Cuervo, Tanquerey, and Captain Morgan, has a stake in the current battle over financing health care reform. They’re not exactly impartial. But the fact is, the cost of drinking could go up, and people could lose their jobs. Even worse, the cost of drinking could go up.

Isn’t that reason enough to proceed with caution? And no, I am not blogging on this to curry favor with Diageo. I happen to feel very strongly about regressive taxes. I think about it all the time, particularly when I come home from work, kick back, and pour myself a glass of Johnnie Walker Black Label—three ice cubes—and ruminate on the oak, the peat, and the ultimate smoothness of this exquisitely blended . . .

On Sunday I popped out of the heat and into the cool of the National Gallery to see two exhibitions on Spanish art: "Luis Melendez, Master of the Spanish Still Life" (warmly reviewed for TWS here) and "The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits from Imperial Spain." In the latter I found one of those habits of curators that’s in vogue now: the pairing of paintings with the very artifacts rendered in those paintings. For instance, there was a full suit of armor—Charles V’s (which had room for a smallish paunch)—placed to the side and slightly in front of a full-length portrait of him, decked out in that very suit.

I’m not sure to what to make of this yet, but I know I spent a lot more time inspecting the armor than the painting, and then I felt bad that the painting wasn’t getting its due attention. The same image in its 2-D and 3-D varieties shouldn’t have to compete for our gaze. But I’m guessing this is being done in an attempt to enrich our viewing of the painting and of the statue.

And now I just read that the Dallas Museum of the Art has found a new way to make viewers “interact more deeply” with art: adding music to paintings! People can access the music files via iPhones and Blackberries. The music-cum-paintings have been christened “soundscapes.” Pollock, for instance, is coupled with a jazz track, because he often listened to jazz when making those famous drip paintings.

This “soundscape” project is certainly a step beyond pairing paintings with matching sculptures.

Maybe I sound too old-fashioned, but there’s a lot to be said for looking at one thing closely at a time and with no distractions. That’s far more stimulating than overstimulation. And anyway, the more iPhones etc. we keep out of the galleries, the fewer people you’ll bump into as you shoulder your way toward Charles V’s resplendent fitted gown of armor.

It doesn't happen terribly often, but I'm with Andrew Sullivan on the need to lay Obama birther-ism to rest— a subject on which he's been blogging with some energy over the last day.

Indeed, it's almost as if birthers have allowed an intense and sometimes irrational dislike of a political figure to lead them to conspiracy theories while rationalizing the indulgence with concerns about the vetting process and rants about the failed responsibilities of a complicit media. It's almost like they continue to ignore evidence to the contrary of such theories in order to preserve their favored narrative long after the question (and election) is settled, even when induced to abandon it by friends, adversaries, and Occam's Razor alike.

They might even think to themselves, "Maybe I am crazy to even wonder. Or maybe we have witnessed one of the biggest frauds in American political history and the biggest failures among the American media in a very, very long time."

Yes, it does seem a lot like that.

Update: Andrew Sullivan performs the patented Sully 24-hour about-face on the birther issue. He's now saying the president should show the original birth certificate, using the same argument he used for the Trig documents. This new position has the virtue of being consistent with his Palin position, but it's unclear how he will continue to call Republicans and conservatives who have been less than affirming of Obama's citizenship stupid, illogical, and crazy. Liberals certainly won't appreciate him legitimizing the issue while they're using it as a cudgel. He is proprietor, after all, of the "the most popular one-man political blog site in the world."

Only Lindsey Graham broke Republican ranks and supported her:

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday voted to approve Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice over nearly solid Republican opposition, paving the way for a historic confirmation vote.

The panel voted 13-6 in favor of Sotomayor, with just one Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, joining Democrats to support her. The nearly party-line tally masked deeper political divisions within GOP ranks about confirming President Barack Obama's first high court nominee.

The New York Times reported last week:

Hamas Shifts From Rockets to Culture War

even months after Israel started a fierce three-week military campaign here to stop rockets from being fired on its southern communities, Hamas has suspended its use of rockets and shifted focus to winning support at home and abroad through cultural initiatives and public relations.

The aim is to build what leaders here call a “culture of resistance,” the topic of a recent two-day conference. In recent days, a play has been staged, a movie premiered, an art exhibit mounted, a book of poems published and a television series begun, most of it state-sponsored and all focused on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. There are plans for a documentary competition.

“Armed resistance is still important and legitimate, but we have a new emphasis on cultural resistance,” noted Ayman Taha, a Hamas leader and former fighter. “The current situation required a stoppage of rockets. After the war, the fighters needed a break and the people needed a break.”

Right -- Hamas just decided, 'you know what, this whole rocket thing isn't working out so well for us -- let's try musicals!' And of course Joe Klein is a believer, he writes today about the "softer tone from Hamas (and the cessation of missiles fired from Gaza at Israeli civilians)." Apparently Klein also believes "the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is a triumph of diplomacy," or at least he's too proud to retract the statement a month after it was made and as Shalit still languishes in some Hamas hell-hole. But the AP offers some countervailing evidence today:

Police order a lingerie shop to hide its scantily clad mannequins. A judge warns female lawyers to wear head scarves in court. Beach patrols break up groups of singles and make men wear shirts.

It's all part of a new Hamas campaign to get Gazans to adhere to a strict Muslim lifestyle — and the first clear attempt by the Islamic militants to go beyond benign persuasion in doing so.

It suggests that having consolidated its hold on Gaza in the two years since it seized control by force, Hamas feels emboldened enough to extend its ideology into people's private lives.

Hamas insists compliance with its "virtue campaign" is still voluntary and simply responds to a Gazan preference for conservative ways. But the rules are vague and there are reports of alleged offenders being beaten and teachers being told to pressure girls to wear head scarves.

Is it a "culture of resistance," a "softer tone"? No, it's a public beating. So, should we believe what Hamas and Klein say -- that Hamas stopped firing rockets as it searches for a more productive method of resistance -- or should we believe something more obvious -- i.e., that maybe Bibi threatened to obliterate Hamas if the rocket fire continued?

Obama thanked the organization for doing "what it does best" by "organizing" and "letting people know the options that are out there." This is how the allegedly nonpartisan AARP lets its members know the options:

Why is AARP not standing up for seniors when Obama says he will cut Medicare to help pay for health care?

The proposed changes to Medicare will help to get fraud, waste and abuse out of the system and create payment incentives to reward doctors and hospitals for the quality, rather than the quantity, of care they provide. They will not cut the benefits our members rely on in the traditional Medicare program, but will help to keep it affordable to make sure you get the care you need.

Isn’t this socialized medicine?

No. In socialized medicine the government directly owns the hospitals and directly employs the doctors. No one in Washington is talking seriously about anything like that.

At the link, Phil Klein notes that AARP was whistling quite a different tune when Bush suggested much more modest Medicare cuts.

As Obama heads to Raleigh, N.C. and Bristol, Va. this week, the GOP is doing its own thing, first with its own town halls:

Senate Republicans beat President Obama to the punch. Just hours before he planned to hold an online healthcare town hall with AARP members, the Republicans told Whispers that they have already talked to 1.3 million Americans in their own nightly healthcare town halls. It's just the first step in what both Democrats and Republicans say will be a heated and very busy August recess when lawmakers and special interests groups plan to flood the airwaves, phone lines, and even county fairs with their pitches for and against Obama-style healthcare.

The GOP leadership on July 6 set a goal of talking to 1 million Americans before the August recess began, and insiders suggest that the Republicans will end the campaign by talking to nearly 2 million. Some 16 Republican senators took part in the nightly effort, participating in hourlong calls to thousands. Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, for example, reached out to some 45,000 in Tennessee and got half of those on the phone. During the calls he took several questions on the Obama healthcare plan and the GOP alternatives.

The GOP will also be doing Blue Dogs the courtesy of re-introducing them to some of their districts' small-business owners:

Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) explained earlier Tuesday that "we’re going to bring together some small-business people ... from around the country, many of them from districts represented by some of the Blue Dogs that obviously have been speaking to the centrists on the other side who say, 'Look, the healthcare approach on the table is bad policy. It’s bad for business, and in these times of economic difficulty, why should we be adding to payroll taxes? Why should we be adding to the burdens of small businesses?' "

A friend passes along an interesting report on China's "Project 048," the PLA Navy's strategic plan to construct six nuclear and conventionally powered aircraft carriers. The first two conventionally powered carriers will reportedly be laid down this year, with more quickly to follow. Once completed, Project 048 should be the final step in the PLAN's transformation from a green to blue water Navy (or an expeditionary navy, if you prefer the British terminology).

Though plenty of brass in the DoD are sweating China's rise as a first-world power, this new carrier fleet isn't all that dire a prospect. Their technology is still a full decade behind ours, they have no experience in deploying carriers in combat (whereas we have plenty), and -- perhaps most importantly -- it will take China years to master the harsh arithmetic of flight deck operations. Further, it's likely to spook an already nervous Japan into matching the Chinese in naval power -- strengthening our powerful far east alliance with Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore. My friend, a former submariner who shares my skepticism, finished off his email with "thanks for the targets Beijing!"

In case you missed it, WEEKLY STANDARD contributor David Skinner has a terrific piece in the current issue of Humanities, which he edits. Entitled “Ain’t That the Truth,” the essay tackles Webster’s Third, “The Most Controversial Dictionary in the English Language.” Why controversial? Where to begin?

For starters, there was a listing for the word “ain’t.” But as many of us were told growing up, “Ain’t ain’t a word.” Life magazine went off on such words as “irregardless,” “finalize,” and “concretize.” But as Skinner points out, Life made its own share of mistakes in misinterpreting a number of words appearing in the third edition.

If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to issue a new edition of a lexicon, this piece gives you a peek: “One chemist ... needed over six years to review and comment on his assignment of 12,790 terms, which included an estimated quarter-million slips of paper.” It is a labor of love, a thankless job. And not everyone will be pleased.

For instance, there’s the late David Foster Wallace who has written about the “controversial” introductory essay in Webster’s Third by editor Philip Gove. Except, as Skinner points out, Gove’s essay appears nowhere in the dictionary. So was Wallace confused? Or was he not as familiar as he claimed to be? Find out for yourself--I ain’t tellin’.

Well, he's calling it a town hall, but who can miss the message of the setting?

President's town hall will be in the perishables section of the store, which will close several hrs Wed

"So, your grandma is kinda like this week-old cantaloupe: wrinkly, slowly dying, overly sweet, and frankly, not worth a lot of money."

You end up 400 miles away, in beautiful downtown Carpi.

The Vineyard Gazette (“Martha’s Vineyard’s Newspaper of Record Since 1846”) is reporting that the Obamas have chosen Blue Heron Farm, a 28-acre property in Chilmark, MV, for their holiday this summer. Of course it’s got to be a bit of a thrill for the vastly rich lefties who own properties on the island when their beloved lib-Dem presidents come to stay -- the Clintons vacationed there more than once, including two weeks of post-Monical “healing” in 1998. But it’s surely also a source of contention: Who’s gonna throw the first dinner party for Barry and Michelle? Whose kid is gonna be the first to share an ice cream cone and fly a kite with Sasha and Malia? And it can make for terrible traffic jams, too -- “a rental agreement for the farm will comprise three leases, one to be held by the Obamas, another by the Secret Service and a third by a White House entourage” -- on an island apparently already overwhelmed with urine:

. . . our waste, even properly disposed of in functional septic systems or sewers, still overwhelms our ponds, destroying the scallops and other tasty animals that we love and that are necessary for a fully functional ecosystem.

And what about the residents of nearby Oak Bluffs? New York Magazine reports that some of the town's African-American residents are thrilled at the prospect of the Obamic visit, while others seem allergic to a certain segment of the African-American community -- no one “too Southern Baptist, too dark-skinned, too street” need apply:

“Obama is more a man of the people,” says a Vineyarder who’s part of black high society. “He doesn’t seem to identify with affluent black people. His wife definitely doesn’t; she is basically a ghetto girl. That’s what she says—I’m just being sociological.”

These members of “black high society” “come to the island to connect to one another,” and “don’t want to be around white folks, and they don’t have to.” But where does that leave poor old Oak Bluffs partisan and Obama beer buddy Henry Louis Gates, who not so long ago -- but before being arrested for being “a black man in America” -- discovered (see the 35-minute mark of this video) through DNA and archival records research that “to my horror, I’m getting whiter by the minute”?

There's been some pretty egregious stuff floating around about the detention facility at Gitmo, but a recent blog post at the American Prospect takes the cake. According to the Prospect, the Guantanamo stockade apparently has the same effect on inmates as the Overlook Hotel from The Shining.

The prisoners were, by and large, sane when they arrived, with only 8 percent showing signs of serious mental illness, according to a report about Guantanamo that was written by Admiral Patrick Walsh, vice chief of Naval Operations. This level was significantly lower than the 45 to 50 percent rate of mental illness among individuals in U.S. prisons. However, many of the prisoners seem to be going insane because of their incarceration, wrote Leonard S. Rubenstein in The Lancet, citing reports from lawyers who have visited the prisoners.

There are psychiatrists and physicians on the island, but they have not necessarily helped the prisoners heal from their physical wounds and psychological crises.

A military prison which provides top-rate psychiatric and medical care, clean clothes, fresh water, religiously sensitive halal meals, and we're expected to believe that it's so horrendous battle-hardened terrorists from one of the most inhospitable regions on earth are going insane from the living conditions?

According to the Prospect, yup.

Obama said he will close down Guantanamo by January 2010, but in the meantime the prisoners are still there, with some trying to starve themselves to death as a protest against the conditions at the prison and others going quietly mad.

I was barely able to steady the trembling hand covering my mouth when I read this post. I need a hug.

Some very sympathetic police officers are going after the president on national TV, and what a surprising coincidence, Joe Biden has suddenly decided to make a donation to the Fraternal Order of Police -- for $1 billion:

BREAKING -- “Philadelphia, PA – Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder today [will announce] $1 billion in grants to fund the hiring and rehiring of law enforcement officers all across the country under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The grants will be awarded to 1,046 law enforcement agencies from all 50 states and will provide 100 percent of the approved salary and benefits for 4,699 officers for three years. … ‘A big part of the Recovery Act is about building communities – making them as strong as they can be, allowing every American family to live a better life than the one they are leading now,’ said Vice President Joe Biden. ‘And we can’t achieve the goal of stronger communities without supporting those who keep our streets safe.’”

Professor John Evans Evans-John (from the ever-ingenious Iowahawk). Slight content warning for the language:

Eventually my arrest record was expunged and I agreed to meet the loathsome arresting officer at President Faust's office for a conciliatory off-record "beer chat." As the University Counsel had predicted, the lure of free limitless alcohol proved irresistible to the simpleminded Irishman, and he was soon happily signing confessions of guilt and abject apologies. Still, even after he was fired, I was left to pick up the pieces of my shattered psyche.

The much-anticipated beer summit will be Thursday night:

The cop, the prof and the prez will meet for that beer at 6 p.m. Thursday, a sleepy White House official told us after it was first blogged by ABC’s industrious Jake Tapper. L.A.Times/Chicago Tribune’s Peter Nicholas: “The beer summit will be monitored closely. Many black leaders believe Obama was on target with his initial comments. They don't want the moment to pass without a fuller discussion of racial profiling. … Law enforcement agencies will be watching closely for any sign that the president will favor his friend Gates over Crowley. … ‘Whenever you get race and politics, it's like catnip,’ [Robert] Gibbs said, sitting behind his desk in his West Wing office. ‘All you need is a spark -- and cable television is happy to do that.’”

Yes, I remember it was cable television that went on national TV and unilaterally declared the actions of the Cambridge Police Department "stupid." Comcast is so inappropriately outspoken sometimes when it's holding press conferences about current affairs. Bad Comcast!

On a much more serious note, this video of Crowley's fellow Cambridge police officers standing behind him is a must-see. Stick around for the words of Kelly King, a black woman and member of the department who has known Crowley for more than a decade. I'll transcribe her full comments below, but her assessment of the president is this:

"It's unfortunate, I supported him. I voted for him. I will not again...I think it's admirable that he would speak on behalf of his friend, but he should have recused himself. He should have stepped back, and he should have said, 'I support my friend, but I don't have all the facts. I won't weigh in yet.'"

Speaking entirely anecdotally, I happened to be in Boston briefly this weekend, and the bars were abuzz with talk of Gates-gate. It's not scientific of course, but every person I met who found out I was in politics wanted to talk about their brother or cousin or sister who's a cop who is livid over the president's rush to judgment. Generally, the tendency is for people to shy away from the issues of the day once they find out what I do, which is fine with me as I'd often just rather enjoy my drink. It struck me as telling that so many people wanted to vent about this incident. The president Cable television has struck a nerve that is unlikely to be quieted with one round of drinks.

If you can't watch or don't have patience for the video above, Kelly King's remarks are below the fold. She's quite a witness:

One-man RNC Joe Pounder, whose releases frequently appear on this blog, is leaving the Whip's office to join Kay Bailey Hutchison's campaign along with Jeff Sadosky, another McCain alum, who now works for KBH's Senate office. It's a testament to Cantor having a good team that other Republicans are going fishing for talent in his office, but Pounder's departure isn't exactly good news for Republicans. "Few communications staffers on or off the Hill dominate inboxes the way" Pounder does, said Politico in a recent profile. Hopefully Cantor's office continues to fill that role.

Full release after the jump...

From the New York Times report on the gang of six:

Often a single topic can consume an entire day or more. On Wednesday of last week, it was Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income people that was likely to be expanded but was also a major factor in the legislation’s high cost.

Wow. A whole day on Medicaid. Who could possibly accuse Congress of rushing things through to meet an arbitrary deadline? And check out the Times photo that shows who is in the room for these meetings. Apparently the group consists of Republicans who are either "not beholden to the Republican leadership" or are "balancing...loyalty to the leadership" and Democrats who are "champions of health programs for low-income Americans" and have a "fiscal conscience." Notice who isn't in the picture: anyone who has actually practiced medicine or worked at an insurance company. But don't worry -- just look what a good job they're doing with the car companies.

With the JSF two full years behind schedule and the F-22 program dead, the USAF's fleet projections for the next 7-8 years are pretty ugly. Fortunately, the Obama administration will be retaining the Navy's robust fighter force to meet our air defense demands. Or... not:

At a discussion this week on the Navy’s “fighter gap” at the Center for National Policy in Washington, one of the defense world’s most knowledgeable sources on all things Navy, CRS’ Ron O’Rourke, tried to put a definitive number on that “gap.” From the Navy’s public statements, O’Rourke calculated the number at anywhere between 125 and 243 aircraft, although some in industry contend it’s 300 or more. The peak of this shortfall is projected to occur around 2015; the Navy contends a shortage of strike-fighters could reduce the number of available carriers from 11 to seven around that time.

Less than a month after the U.S., Britain, and a smattering of Coalition and Afghan forces launched a limited operation to secure central and southern Helmand province, some are looking for the "exit."

A concerted effort to start unprecedented talks between Taliban and British and American envoys was outlined yesterday in a significant change in tactics designed to bring about a breakthrough in the attritional, eight-year conflict in Afghanistan.

Senior ministers and commanders on the ground believe they have created the right conditions to open up a dialogue with "second-tier" local leaders now the Taliban have been forced back in a swath of Helmand province.

They are hoping that Britain's continuing military presence in Helmand, strengthened by the arrival of thousands of US troops, will encourage Taliban commanders to end the insurgency. There is even talk in London and Washington of a military "exit strategy".

This is no way to describe this mindset other than wishful thinking. While the U.S. Marines and the Brits have made good progress in Helmand, the region they have entered and are in the process of securing is but a small part of the conflict area. And the Taliban have by no means been defeated, they've merely gone to ground or shifted into neighboring areas where Coalition and Afghan security forces are absent.

Much of northern Helmand is a Taliban haven. The Taliban control plenty of territory to the west in Farah and Nimroz provinces, to the east in Kandahar, and to the north in Uruzgan province. The Taliban also have a presence in Ghor and Herat provinces. And provinces in southeastern and eastern Afghanistan are either contested or under effective Taliban control. This doesn't even factor in the Taliban havens in Pakistan's Baluchistan and Northwest Frontier Province, and the tribal areas.

There's another factor to consider: who exactly will take over security once the U.S., British, and Coalition forces pull back? The Afghan police are far from ready. And the Afghan Army is sparse in the south. The Army could only devote a little more than 600 troops to the current offensive, despite the numerous requests from the Marines running the show in southern Helmand. The Marines have contributed more than 4,000 troops to the operation.

The Taliban have a saying about the U.S.: we have all the clocks, they have all the time. Prematurely implementing a half-baked "exit strategy" will prove the Taliban right.

Mamoun Darkazanli -- the subject of tonight's The Wanted on NBC (9 pm) -- is probably one of the most interesting terrorists in the al Qaeda network. In addition to the financial assistance he provided the al Qaeda’s Hamburg cell for the 9/11 attacks, Darkazanli compiled one of the more intriguing dossiers you will read.

Darkazanli was initially a member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB), which was once staunchly opposed to the Assad family's regime and, in fact, sponsored by Saddam's government, among others. The Syrian government, however, went through a couple of phases of rapprochement with the SMB. And SMB elements abroad ended up working for or with Syrian intelligence on some occasions. In all probability, Darkazanli and his fellow Syrian, Mohammed Zammar, who recruited lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta for al Qaeda, were both such SMB elements.

They ran the al Qaeda Hamburg cell, but prior to that they worked for a company called Tatex Trading. Tatex Trading was run by Abdul Matin Tatari -- a longtime backer of the Assad family. Tatari's eldest son was actually close with Mohammed Atta. After 9/11, German investigators found that Mohammed Hadi Tatari often visited Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi (another 9/11 hijacker) in their Hamburg apartment. A younger Tatari son also signed one of Mohammed Atta's petitions calling for an "Islamic studies" group to be formed at the Technical University of Hamburg, where both Atta and the Tatari son attended.

It gets much worse. Tatex had only two shareholders. One of them was Mohamad Majed Said, who was the head of the Syrian intelligence service from 1987 to 1994. In 2001, Said was also a member of the Syrian National Security Council -- the government's chief security apparatus.

All of this, and more, is why German intelligence officials have openly talked about "The Syrian Connection" to 9/11.

There is nothing to worry about though. Just because an ally openly talks about a hostile government's involvement with al Qaeda, it doesn't mean we should take it seriously. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission went out of its way to ignore all of this.

Darkazanli, as tonight's The Wanted showed, is still a free man. The Germans have refused to extradite him to Spain to stand trial for his involvement with the 3/11 Madrid train bombers and his other al Qaeda ties. After being captured in Morocco, Zammar was transferred to the Syrians with the blessing of the Bush administration. Zammar’s transfer to the Syrians is one of the more bizarre episodes in the war on terror because it ensured that American investigators would not have direct access to him. There is simply no way the Syrians are going to tell us what Zammar and Darkzanli were really doing while working for Tatex, or how they ended up working for a Syrian intelligence front company.

One last thing: According to German intelligence, Darkazanli -- again, who helped finance 9/11 -- was involved in illicit trade deals with the Iraqi regime under the oil-for-food program. Darkazanli shipped mercury heat lamps through a Jordanian intermediary to Saddam's government. Those lamps were so-called "dual use" items that had legitimate purposes but could also be used in WMD development projects.

None of this appeared in tonight's show, but it was still worth watching.

How often is it that one hour of TV viewing can annoy terrorists, the New York Times, and Human Rights Watch? Take advantage of this infrequent confluence by watching "The Wanted" on NBC tonight at 9/8 c.

Here's the premise:

Eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks and the beginning of the war on terror, leaders and supporters of terrorist organizations still lead free and open lives around the world. More than a decade after the Rwandan genocide, its practitioners still roam the United States. The government seems unable - and sometimes unwilling - to change this state of affairs.

NBC's new program "The Wanted" aims to push the issue, entertaining audiences while bringing the accused to justice: Its team of terrorist trackers hops the globe collecting evidence about its targets in order to persuade extradition-shy countries to stop dragging their feet.

The team consists of former Green Beret Roger Carstens, former Navy SEAL Scott Tyler, war-crimes prosecutor David Crane and producer-journalist Adam Ciralsky. In the series premiere last week, the team went after the founder of Ansar al-Islam - which the State Department lists as a terrorist organization - who lives freely in Oslo and has yet to be extradited to Kurdistan to stand trial.

Tonight, the show goes after Mamoun Darkazanli. From the synopsis of tonight's episode:

Called "Bin Laden's financier," Spanish officials indicted Darkazanli in 2003 for providing logistical and financial support to Al Qaeda, specifically in connection with 9/11. Still he remains free in Germany. While the team surveils Darkazanli, negotiations for his deportation begin between Spain and Germany.

The Left is predictably squeamish about the projection of American moral authority via flashy extra-governmental investigations, and the unfairness and psychic pain such uncouth behavior might cause murderous terrorists and the Euro-wimpy bureaucracies that harbor them. They're not nearly as concerned about terrorists and accused perpetrators human rights violations living freely in Western countries with impunity.

As the U.S. and Britain are pushing for greater "integration" of the Taliban into Afghan society, the Afghan government cut a deal with the Taliban in the northwestern province of Badghis.

The ceasefire agreement calls for the Taliban not to interfere with the upcoming elections in one district in the province and an end to attacks on construction companies working on the Ring Road passing through the region. In exchange the military will not enter the district to secure the polling stations.

Afghan, British, and Pakistani forces have signed numerous agreements with the Taliban, only to see them backfire. The British debacle in Musa Qala led to the Taliban takeover of most of northern Helmand province. The British and Afghan armies couldn't oust the Taliban until they launched a major operation more than a year later.

Across the border in Pakistan, deals with the Taliban in Swat, North and South Waziristan, and a slew of tribal agencies and districts led to the rise of the Taliban that encroached to nearly 60 miles outside of the capital of Islamabad. The military had to launch a major operation in Swat to push back the Taliban, and in the process displaced more than three million people from their homes. The Taliban still control vast regions in northwestern Pakistan.

Perhaps things will be different with the Taliban in Badghis, but recent history says otherwise. And as the push for Taliban "integration" increases, deals like these will become more attractive to those looking for the easy way out of Afghanistan..

At the White House press briefing today, left-wing Air America radio talk show host Bill Press asked Robert Gibbs, "Is there anything you can say that will make the birthers go away?"

To which Gibbs replied, Oh, please, please don't make me talk about an issue that makes conservatives look like a bunch of nutjobs.

I paraphrase. You can read the full exchange after the jump.

But I thought it was curious that Helen Thomas seemed to think that concerns that Obama is not really a U.S. citizen are legitimate (some of the following exchange was left out of the official White House transcript, but see the 30:50 mark of this video):

GIBBS: ... no, nothing will assuage them. But there are 10,000 more important issues for people in this country to discuss, rather than--

HELEN THOMAS: A violation of the Constitution.

GIBBS:--whether or not the President is a citizen. ...

THOMAS: Why do you think it keeps coming up?

MR. GIBBS: Because for $15, you can get an Internet address and say whatever you want.

Former CIA boss: Wiretapping was lawful, effective and necessary.

If the beer-soaked assertions of some colleagues in the intelligence community are true, it also saved an awful lot of innocent lives.

A friend emails in response to this Washington Post story on the F-22 (which Noonan wrote up below):

[I]t contains an amazing error that, I think, reflects the way the playing field is tilted against defense; all the more remarkable because Greg Jaffe, who's a good defense reporter, contributed to the article. They described the Air Force as requesting "$400 billion" to buy "20 more" F-22s. That would be, oh, about $20 billion per plane. Not even the F-22 costs that much. Indeed, the F-22 program, development and 187 Raptors, didn't cost one-tenth of that. Imagine if the Post had gotten an Obamacare number wrong by, well, a real-live "order of magnitude." This is what passes for an insider story on a defense program.

Around Thanksgiving time last year, the FBI and NYPD suddenly warned of a terrorist threat against the commuter rail lines in the New York metro area. Security was stepped up. There was the usual round of reporting on whether or not the threat was legitimate. And then the story died. That is, the story was dead until last week.

Press reports published in the past week indicate that the source of the threat spike was intelligence gleaned from the FBI’s interrogations of a Long Island man named Bryant Neal Vinas. His story is equally troubling and fascinating. The most troubling aspect of Vinas’s tale is that he was sitting in a mosque in eastern New York when he decided to travel thousands of miles abroad to join al Qaeda and the Taliban. Thus, Vinas joined the ranks of hundreds of other so-called “homegrown” jihadists who were inspired to wage jihad while living in the West. Vinas’s story is also fascinating because he managed to meet with and serve senior al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists in Pakistan in a relatively short period of time. His access to senior al Qaeda leaders was so good that he has reportedly become a valuable informant.

We are left to ask: How did Vinas manage to gain the trust of some of the most dangerous and paranoid terrorists on the planet?

Court documents released online tell Vinas’s story. In January of this year, Vinas confessed to a Brooklyn court (transcript available at intelwire.com):

In the fall of 2007, I left my home in Long Island to travel to Pakistan with the intention of meeting and joining a jihadist group to fight American soldiers in Afghanistan. When I arrived in Pakistan, I made contact with and was accepted into al Qaeda, a jihadist group that I knew to be responsible for attacks against the United States, including suicide bombings targeting civilians.

As a member of al Qaeda, I received training in courses in general combat and explosives. During my time in al Qaeda, I took part, at the direction of al Qaeda leaders, in two missions in September 2008 in which we agreed and planned to attack a United States military base near the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The first attack failed and we had to abort the mission before firing on the base, but a few days later, I took part in firing rockets at an American military base. Although we intended to hit the military base and kill American soldiers, I was informed that the rockets missed and the attack failed.

Finally, during my time with al Qaeda, I consulted with a senior al Qaeda leader and provided detailed information about the operation of the Long Island Rail Road system which I knew because I had ridden the railroad on many occasions. The purpose of providing this information was to help plan a bomb attack of the Long Island Rail Road system.

What Vinas did not reveal in his confession is how, precisely, he came to make “contact with” and be “accepted into al Qaeda.” This is no small feat. For years, western intelligence services, which have reportedly had little success infiltrating al Qaeda’s ranks, have complained that al Qaeda’s measures keep them out. Al Qaeda has strict security protocols to prevent spies and saboteurs from entering its ranks. For example, al Qaeda members are frequently required to vouch for new recruits. If the new recruit turns out to be an “unfriendly,” then al Qaeda knows who let him into their club. This acts both as a deterrent (no one wants to vouch for a rat and, therefore, suffer the consequences), as well as an easy-to-employ counterintelligence tactic. The result is, with few exceptions, only the most committed jihadists are let into al Qaeda’s clubhouse.

Vinas managed to assuage any of al Qaeda’s and the Taliban’s security concerns rather quickly.

Within weeks of arriving in Pakistan in September 2007, according to the Los Angeles Times, Vinas became part of the “Taliban chief’s group.” Vinas then made his way deep into the heart of Taliban and al Qaeda country in northern Pakistan. Shortly thereafter, he was plotting with senior al Qaeda leaders, including Rashid Rauf and Abu Yahya al Libi.

Rauf was the al Qaeda terrorist partly responsible for planning the July 7, 2005, bombings in London and the 2006 plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners flying out of Heathrow airport. Rauf was killed in a predator strike in northern Pakistan just days after Vinas was arrested in November 2008. (Press reports hint that intelligence from Vinas may have played a role in the strike that killed Rauf, although this is far from clear.) Abu Yahya al Libi is a top-tier al Qaeda terrorist in his own right, and has released numerous propaganda videos since 2005. During his post-arrest interviews, Vinas reportedly pointed out that he appeared in one of al Libi’s videos as a masked man.

Again, how could Vinas get into al Qaeda’s and the Taliban’s good graces so quickly? And how could a westerner come to work for senior al Qaeda terrorists, who are notoriously paranoid about their own security?

The answer may lie in the LA Times’s account of Vinas’s journey. The Times cites a summary prepared by Belgian investigators after they interviewed Vinas in the FBI’s New York offices. The Times reports:

The summary gives an account of how three friends in New York, apparently of Pakistani descent, helped him plan his trip. One friend arranged for relatives in Lahore, Pakistan, to receive Vinas and find him a hotel, Vinas said. Another introduced him to an Afghan family in Lahore who, through a cousin, connected him with a Taliban commander, the “chief of a group of fighters who have fought the U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.”

The Times does not say so, but this is evidence that the Taliban and al Qaeda still have an active recruiting network on U.S. soil. Without this assistance, it is doubtful that Vinas could have found his way into the welcoming arms of the jihadist axis so quickly.

It is likely that U.S. investigators are already looking into how Vinas’s trip was organized and the role his “friends” played in helping him. One wonders: Are his “friends” still stateside? Are they being monitored by law enforcement? If so, where are they? Are they working on recruiting the next Vinas?

These are all pressing questions because this is not the first time a New Yorker has been recruited in his home state by al Qaeda and the Taliban. For instance, the Lackawanna Six were recruited by a long-time recruiter for Osama bin Laden at a mosque in the Buffalo area. And it is known that al Qaeda and the Taliban operate a world-wide recruiting network, which has been responsible for recruiting thousands of wanna-be jihadists.

It seems likely that there are other al Qaeda and Taliban recruiters still operating on American soil today. It also now seems possible that al Qaeda is not as impenetrable as was once thought. After all, if a young Long Island man can convince al Qaeda’s senior terrorists that he is worthy of their trust, then couldn’t a risk-loving spy do the same?

From National Review's August 10, 2009, issue’s “The Week” columns:

“In 2001, Robert Fisk, the hard-Left, jihad-sympathetic British journalist, was attacked by Afghan refugees along the Afghan-Pakistani border. He wrote that ‘young men ... Began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn’t see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees ... I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.’ Flash forward to November 2008. A Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, is kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan. They did ‘horrible things to me,’ she has now written in a book. They raped her for days on end. But ‘they also respected me.’ And ‘they are not monsters.’ Between bouts of rape, they gave her tea and biscuits. And the commander, she explains, ‘could not control his testosterone. I had the impression that afterwards he regretted what had happened.’ De Rijke denies that she is suffering from Stockholm syndrome. But she and Fisk are suffering from something.”

From the indispensable Small Wars Journal, a biting reality check to Secretary Clinton's Mid-East trumpet blast:

...anyone who remembers the Cold War should recall that U.S. security guarantees for Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea were not easy, cheap, or simple. A U.S. guarantee for the Middle East against Iranian aggression will be even more problematic than were America’s guarantees during the Cold War.

1) Will the supposed beneficiaries of the guarantee take the guarantee seriously? It is one thing to make a promise, it is another to deliver on it under stress. The credibility of a U.S. security guarantee would increase if there were visible presidential speeches on the subject, a Senate-ratified treaty, and permanent U.S. force structure commitments and deployments to back it up. Until these things happen, statesmen in Israel and the friendly Arab regimes will be rightfully skeptical.

2) Locking in a nuclear standoff between Iran and the U.S. will shift the conflict onto the irregular warfare playing field. Iran will have the advantage on this field while the U.S. and its friends will most likely be stuck on defense. Here again there are parallels with the Cold War. With a nuclear standoff in place, the Soviet Union’s political and military subversions and proxy wars achieved success in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa and the Middle East. Quantitatively Iran is no Soviet Union. But qualitatively, Iran is organized for subversion and prolonged irregular and proxy warfare, just as was the Soviet Union. A U.S. security guarantee policy that accepts an Iranian nuclear weapons capability will have to prepare for another such “twilight struggle.”

3) Be ready to relearn some old Cold War terms such as “hair-trigger alert,” “launch on warning,” “second strike reserve,” “counter-force versus counter-value targeting,” etc. This time, the standoff will be three-sided (Israel vs. Iran vs. Saudi Arabia) just like the gunfight at the end of “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.” And Middle East nuclear strategists will look back with envy to the Cold War when ICBM flight times were a leisurely 25 minutes.

Apropos of points 2 and 3, sound nuclear deterrence is predicated on credibility. Though our nuclear forces remain capable and strong, the Obama administration is stretching out Strategic Command's target list while sharply reducing the actual arsenal. That is, more targets to negate with less vehicles to do it. Further, while we do have a nuclear arsenal that's capable of knocking out one or two of the heavy hitters, we're currently in the process of trading away our second-strike capability. Second-strike is our survival mechanism, as the deterrence mission wouldn't disappear after a mass nuclear exchange with sluggers like Russia or China. If the administration is going to widen the nuclear umbrella to cover the entire Middle East, one hopes that such an ambitious defense pact would factor into the upcoming START negotiations with the Russians.

An interesting report from the Washington Post claims that the White House launched an "aggressive, coordinated effort" to slash the fifth generation fighter from the defense budget:

When a showdown vote loomed on July 15, Senate Democratic leaders who backed Obama's effort to scuttle the program did not think they had the votes to win. There was opposition in their own caucus: Sen. Patty Murray wanted the F-22 funding (and ultimately supported it in the final Senate vote, as did her fellow Democratic senator from Washington and the two Democratic senators from California). There were only about 20 votes that could be counted on to scrap the F-22 program, and even with those undecided and leaning, "we didn't crack 50," a Senate aide said.

So they put off the vote by shifting attention to a provision in the defense bill to expand protections under laws against hate crimes. That gave the Obama administration several days to restart its lobbying effort to win the vote. That afternoon, the administration, in a statement from the Office of Budget and Management, repeated the veto threat, emphasizing the point by underlining the sentence.

"People had to ask: Did we want this to be the first time he vetoed a bill from Congress?" said one senior Democratic Senate aide.

Why did the White House fight so furiously against the jet's sustainment? Raising an objection to F-22 acquisition is one thing, launching a Napoleonic campaign -- over the objections of both Congress and the military -- is excessive. There were some serious, deeply intelligent strategic thinkers who had some equally serious, intelligent justifications for building a larger fleet of Raptors. Considering the fighter's admittedly steep price is but a drop in the health care/stimulus bucket, it's a little hard to believe the administration's only motivation was to eliminate waste in the defense budget.

During his crusade for health care reform, Obama has often warned us about the high costs of "inaction." Sure, health care reform (or, "health insurance reform," as he's calling it now) will cost a lot of money, Obama told us, but it's an "investment" in eventually lowering costs, which is vital to controlling federal deficits and keeping America on a fiscally sustainable path.

The problem is, the Congressional Budget Office continues to point out that the cost of the action Democrats want to take is actually higher than "inaction" (that is, if you're counting in traditional currency and not heart-ache or empathy, as Democrats are wont to do).

"It's about the fact that the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid," Obama said in a prime-time press conference last week, ignoring the fact that the House bill authorizes an expansion of Medicaid that CBO estimates would bring in 10 million new enrollees, at a cost of roughly $500 billion.

Obama continued: "So let me be clear: If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit."

The CBO replied (indirectly) in a letter to House Ways and Means Committee members this week:

The net cost of the coverage provisions would be growing at a rate of more than 8 percent per year in nominal terms between 2017 and 2019; we would anticipate a similar trend in the subsequent decade. The reductions in direct spending would also be larger in the second decade than in the first, and they would represent an increasing share of spending on Medicare over that period; however, they would be much smaller at the end of the 10-year budget window than the cost of the coverage provisions, so they would not be likely to keep pace in dollar terms with the rising cost of the coverage expansion.

Revenue from the surcharge on high-income individuals would be growing at about 5 percent per year in nominal terms between 2017 and 2019; that component would continue to grow at a slower rate than the cost of the coverage expansion in the following decade. In sum, relative to current law, the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year-budget window.

A friend of the WEEKLY STANDARD translates thusly: "You can’t sustainably pay for this health care expansion with these tax increases. You’re within $239 B of doing so in the first decade, but the shortfall gets much worse after that."

I translate: "This suckah's just gonna get worse forever and ever, amen."

Cue former acting-CBO Director and member of the Council of Economic Advisers Donald Marron, who offers this chart to illustrate the widening gap that will widen further under this plan:

No wonder these guys have been flipping through the tax code to brainstorm ways to gouge us.

Doesn't this mean that, by Obama's own standards, it might be time to kill it and start over?

Meanwhile, the House Democrats are offering a five-hour seminar on what's actually in the bill, as few on the Hill have any idea. Better late than never I suppose, but Rep. John Conyers will be taking the no-read option on this historic legislation because, you know, what's the point?

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

We're constantly told that the "surge" of U.S. forces into Iraq failed because Sunni, Shia, and Kurds have refused to look past sectarian views and have rejected reconciliation. So when news of some real attempts at reconciliation arise, it is often ignored, but not here. Today, the Iraqi Awakening, the movement of Sunni tribes and former insurgent groups that banded together in Anbar province in 2006 and expanded throughout Iraq, has indicated it is close to allying with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who is often accused of being Shia sectarian and a pawn of the Iranians.

We are close to an alliance with Premier Nouri al-Maliki’s list in the next elections,” the head of the Awakening Conference, Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, told Aswat al-Iraq news agency, highlighting what he described as Maliki’s national project and scientific approach to developing the country.

Public elections are scheduled to take place in Iraq in January 2010 to choose a new parliament for the country.

“This alliance will serve as a deterrent to sectarianism, racism and partisanship…,” Abu Risha added.

The Awakening has the largest majority in Anbar province and has strong backing in many of the Sunni-dominated provinces. The Awakening could not maintain control of Anbar if the Sunnis in any way felt they were Iranian stooges.

Or, 52 easy payments of $19,231,769,235!

The pacing is a tad slow, but stick with it, and you'll find Jimmy Fallon is both funny and right in one segment. Historic!

Dallas Tea Partiers outnumber MoveOn.org organizers.

DNC has to remove anti-DeMint ads in South Carolina.

Chris Caldwell: California's fiscal charade.

Rasmussen's presidential approval index is in post-honeymoon territory.

Challenging Paul Krugman's assertion that the free market "just doesn't work" with health care.

Creigh Deeds, Democrat for governor in Virginia, keeps ending up on the opposite side of the state from every Obama event.

And, Bob McDonnell, Republican for governor in Virginia, is nationalizing the race. My, how times have changed since November.

In January, Rasmussen reported that only 20 percent of Americans "strongly disapproved" of Obama. Now, Rasmussen reports that 40 percent strongly disapprove of Obama. Also:

Forty-eight percent (48%) now see him as Very Liberal, up 20 points since he was elected

It’s official. German conservative CSU economics minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has just overtaken Chancellor Angela Merkel to become the country’s most popular politician.

According to a recent poll, the 37-year-old shooting star – whose friends refer to him as “KT” – scores an impressive +2.1 rating (on a scale ranging from -5 to +5). Two-thirds of all Germans now say that they like how the minister is handling his challenging portfolio during the current global economic crisis. Zu Guttenberg’s skyrocketing polling numbers are even more amazing if one considers that he is a strong free-market advocate who is instinctively skeptical about the role that expensive government interventions can and should play in turning around the economy.

Apart from his eloquence, personal likeability, and good sense of humor, people are probably most attracted by zu Guttenberg’s political independence and his willingness to speak up and fight for what he believes is right. These rare maverick qualities were impressively displayed during the recent show-down over GM’s Opel subsidiary, when zu Guttenberg emerged as the last principled defender of free-market economics and fiscal prudence in opposing a risky multi-billion dollar bailout package for the ailing carmaker. Conservatives in his native Bavaria and elsewhere are thrilled about the minister’s firm stand in Berlin.

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s rise in German politics can already be described as meteoric. The scion of a well-known Franconian noble family (his grandfather was a co-founder of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union CSU party), zu Guttenberg was first elected to the Bundestag in 2002. A frequent visitor to the United States, he quickly became well-known in Washington’s political circles, focusing on hot-button issues such as Iran, Afghanistan, and Russia. After a three-month stint as CSU secretary-general, zu Guttenberg was appointed German economics minister in early February of this year, following the surprise resignation of Michael Glos. Given his impressive political talents and performance, there can be no doubt that Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is the German politician to watch in the coming years.

Ulf Gartzke is the director of the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation's Washington Office and a member of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's CSU party.

Today, on Fox News Sunday, Juan Williams came up with a fine formulation, in the context of the Henry Louis Gates imbroglio:

"But in this situation, the president spoke without the facts. And so you can't have a teachable moment if it's based on a lie."

Amid all the blather about "teachable moments," I don't recall anyone else making this simple but profound observation: "You can't have a teachable moment if it's based on a lie." Another way of putting it might be to say that it's not a "moment" that's teachable, it's the truth that's teachable.

So a moment in which everyone colludes to obscure the truth (which seems characteristic of most "teachable moments" in contemporary America) is not a moment of teaching; it's a moment of deception, of misdirection, of obfuscation. Call it an obfuscatable moment.

Christian Lowe reports:

A top Pentagon official told a small group of defense reporters this morning (July 23) that the upcoming QDR will likely propose the formation of an aviation cadre devoted solely to irregular warfare.

The Pentagon's guru for special operations and low intensity conflict, the renowned Michael Vickers, told us that he believes a light strike, light reconnaissance aircraft would be useful to troops in an unconventional fight.

"That's one of the issues that this QDR is looking at about how to create these sort of irregular warfare air units -- should we do that, number one, because nothing has been decided -- then what that mix might be. But it might not reside in the special operations forces, it might reside in the general purpose forces as sort of a counterinsurgency capability," Vickers said.

I've heard rumblings that both the Air Force and Navy are looking to the Super Tucano for their primary ground attack bird. That's an excellent choice for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being the ST's long loiter time and impressive array of machine guns, a 20mm cannon, and rocket pods. It's also a proven in the field. A Columbian Air Force Super Tucano dropped the bomb that killed FARC #2 Raul Reyes during a cross-border raid into Ecuador last year.

Additionally, the Air Force has fielded a new squadron of MC-12 ISTAR birds in a Iraq, an intelligent solution to a long standing capabilities gap between ground pounders and the overtasked UAV fleet. Key to both the MC-12 and (proposed) Super Tucano acquisitions is that they're cheap enough to be purchased by second and third world allies plagued by indigenous insurgencies, easing the tricky task of standing up friendly foreign air forces. This is all part of a smart new COIN v2.0 campaign sweeping the Pentagon, and evidence that the US Air Force is finally getting serious about counter-insurgency.

As Goldfarb pointed out, the key to ballistic missile defense is redundancy. European deployment of the system affords Western allies a critical level of protection, as well as the first line of a robust, layered defense of the US mainland. The threat, however, isn't limited to Iran. Proliferation of ballistic missiles and ICBM/MRBM technology over the past 30 years has been nothing short of staggering. Check out the Missile Defense agency's troubling before and after missile proliferation charts -- the lion's share of the long range stuff is in unfriendly hands. It's also mostly Russian, something that the Obama administration should consider the next time Moscow cries foul over broken ABM treaties.

Politico's Chris Frates reports:

For the second time this month, congressional analysts have dealt a blow to Democrats' health reform efforts, this time by saying a reform touted by the White House as crucial to paying for the bill would actually save almost no money over 10 years.

A key House chairman and moderate House Democrats on Tuesday agreed to a White House-backed proposal that would give an outside panel the power to make cuts to government-financed health care programs. White House budget director Peter Orszag declared the plan "probably the most important piece that can be added" to the House's health care reform legislation.

But on Saturday, the Congressional Budget Office said the proposal to give an independent panel the power to keep Medicare spending in check would only save about $2 billion over 10 years- a drop in the bucket compared to the bill's $1 trillion price tag.

In the latest issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Yuval Levin and James Capretta discussed this proposal for Obamacare:

So, now, at the eleventh hour, the president is hailing a new approach--vast new powers for a board of experts in Washington to set rules and calibrate fees--as the secret to cutting costs and bringing the system under control, first within Medicare and then beyond. But in a system as complex as ours, this is a recipe for one-size-fits-all inefficiency and the shortages, misallocations, and waiting lines that come with it. This is even worse than simple rationing; it is an attempt at technocratic central planning for a country of over 300 million people.

All of that to save a whopping $2 billion.

A friend sends along this link, apropos my comment last night on the Special Report panel that President Obama’s instinctive identification with Professor Gates (and his willingness to attack Sergeant Crowley without knowing the facts) was as much about class as race.

In a short note in the August 2007 Travel and Leisure magazine, Gates explains why Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard is his favorite place:

“I started going to Oak Bluffs in 1981 and fell in love with the light. It reminded me of the light in the south of France, near St.-Paul-de-Vence, which for me was a déjà vu experience—it evoked the summer of 1973, when I spent a wonderful time in France with James Baldwin and Josephine Baker....I spend every July and August in my house near Oak Bluffs. I love bicycling, and because of a hip replacement I had a couple of years ago, I had a 24-speed tricycle made by hand in Germany.” Etc.

Perhaps the professor can show the president his tricycle next month when the Obamas are vacationing on the Vineyard. And the president can explain to the professor that he was lucky he got that hip replacement when he did (did a board of experts in Washington certify that it was necessary? cost-effective?), before Obama’s health plan went into effect.

Interesting concept art of Russian's new Sukhoi PAK-FA fighter jet, informally dubbed the "Raptor Killer" by Russian aficionados. Scheduled for its maiden flight later this year, the PAK-FA purportedly boasts many of the F-22's bells and whistles: stealth, supercruise, advanced phased array radar, and the latest in air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. Sukhoi is keeping the PAK's design pretty close to their chest, so no telling if this is a true to life rendition of the bird or just the fantasy of some talented Russian artist.

H/T - Defense Tech

Clifford Asness has a must-read on Health Care Mythology.

The Hill: "House healthcare negotiations dissolved in acrimony on Friday, with Blue Dog Democrats saying they were “lied” to by their Democratic leaders."

House Democrats censor congressional GOP health-care mailer.

Obamacare: Sacrifice for All Except Dem Donors.

Staff shakeup on Marco Rubio campaign.

On Wednesday Senate Democrats narrowly defeated the Thune amendment, a broad-sweeping law that would have made state-issued concealed handgun licenses (CHL's) valid across state lines.

To be sure, there was a valid concern with the Thune amendment--the superseding of state laws by the federal government. Laws concerning concealed carry vary widely from state to state and are very specific. Adding an overlapping federal level could be a confusing and possibly chaotic prospect, especially for police.

Democrats payed lip-service to states' rights, but for the most part they just trotted out the old canard about the "wacko gun nut." But the opposition to the Thune amendment was not only misplaced; it was fallacious, misleading and flat-out wrong.

Democrats were aided by a coalition of city mayors, most notably Mike Bloomberg of New York City, and anti-gun lobbying groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Violence Policy Center.

All of these groups painted the Thune amendment, and by proxy CHL holders, as a threat to safety. Besides coming up with fantastical scenarios of criminals using out-of-state CHL's to transport truckloads of guns into urban areas, they slandered normal, everyday citizens who are simply exercising their constitutional rights.

"The hard facts are that concealed handgun permit holders do not prevent mass shootings, they perpetrate them," said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center in an AP article.

I'm not sure where Rand is getting her "facts." Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech did not have a CHL. Neither did the killers at Columbine or Thurston High School.

Out of the 48 states that allow concealed carry, only Alaska and Vermont do not require permits. Most other states require classes and/or background checks that preclude violent felons.

Because of this, CHL holders are among the most responsible and law-conscious citizens. To put it bluntly: If you're going to shoot up a classroom or mall, why go through the trouble of an 8-hour class?

There are, inevitably, people getting concealed carry licenses that shouldn't have them. And there are inevitably tragedies that occur. The AP article takes time to cite a Violence Policy Center study revealing that "concealed handgun permit holders killed at least seven police officers and 44 private citizens during the two-year period ending in April."

Yet, the Brady Campaign's web site states that 85 people a day die from gun violence (including suicides and accidents). If their own statistics are to be believed, gun-control advocates should be least worried about CHL holders.

Much was also made of the point that families of victims of the VA Tech shooting took out ads opposing the Thune amendment. However, no one took the time to mention that Virginia Tech is currently home to the largest chapter in the nation of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a group that advocates for legal concealed carry of handguns on college campuses.

Or I could bring up the case of the 2002 Appalachian School of Law shooting. A former student entered the administration offices with a handgun and began firing, killing three and wounding three. He was subdued, not by police or campus security, but by a group of students, two armed with concealed firearms.

But what's the point? As they've made clear, anti-gun advocates these days don't seem to be interested much in facts or logic anyway.

This following comes from Senator Lieberman's floor statement on the Lieberman-Sessions Amendment, which was adopted by voice vote into the National Defense Authorization Act yesterday afternoon. If you want to know why the Senate voted unanimously in favor of the amendment, expressing the sense of the Senate that the administration should continue planning and funding for the installation of ground-based interceptors in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic, just look at the maps below.

The Context: "[O]n July 8, 2008, the United States and the Czech Republic agreed on establishing an American ballistic missile defense radar site on Czech territory. Two months later, on August 20, the United States and the Government of Poland reached a similar agreement under which we would deploy 10 ground-based interceptors to Poland. Just less than a year after these agreements, at a June 16 hearing at our Senate Armed Services Committee, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Lynn told the members of the committee: 'We think there are a number of ways to address [the Iranian] threat and one of the options is to deploy the missiles in Poland and the radar in the Czech Republic, and we are certainly evaluating that option as well as other possible options.'"

The Crux: "The findings of this report clearly demonstrate that the Ground-based Midcourse Deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic is the most effective and affordable option that is before us today. I am particularly struck by the report’s conclusion that the alternatives to the GMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic would significantly reduce America’s ability to provide a layered defense for our American homeland against the eventual threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles launched by Iran or anyone else in that region against the United States of America…

"I want to draw the attention of my colleagues to a pair of maps that I think indicate the differences as CBO found them between the planned GMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic and the proposed land-based SM–3 block IIA system that I think is a favored alternative—a possible alternative— I don’t mean it is selected, but one looked at with great interest by the Defense Department. Incidentally, these maps were prepared by the Congressional Budget Office and included in the study [“Options for Deploying Missile Defenses in Europe”], which I would commend to my colleagues to read in full.

"On the first map here we can see the planned GMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic would provide a layered defense for the entire continental United States. In other words, this is the area that would be defended. Most of Europe, if a missile were fired from Iran, and all of the United States would be covered. That means the concept of shoot-look-and-shoot would be in effect a defense for our entire population.

"The second map shows the capabilities of a prospective land-based SM–3 IIA block system, which is quite different. You can see that this one, as the CBO estimated, only covers a portion of the United States… In fact, on a population basis, because there is a concentration of population, of course, on the east coast, almost 80 percent of the population would be left uncovered by this redundant defense. All States west of the

"Mississippi, for example, would not be defended by this system.

"In terms of operational capability, it is also important to note that the components of the proposed GMD system for Europe are much farther along in their development and purchase closer to being proven to work than the proposed SM–3 Block IIA interceptor, which may not be available until close to 2020. So the consequences of pulling away from the Poland and Czech Republic system are serious in the near term."

The Conclusion: "As the Department of Defense now undertakes its review of the planned GMD deployment to Europe and possible alternatives, this amendment would express the Senate’s opinion of what we expect our missile defenses in Europe to deliver, generally. It would state that the United States expects those missile defenses to be the most capable and affordable and give a defense in the short term, not just to our allies in Europe but to our fellow citizens throughout the United States of America."

From a Reuters report on U.S. economic diplomacy with China:

"China is committed to growth, growth and growth and, in that circumstance, anything that looks like caps on emissions, or whatever, is going to be seen as something boxing them in and as a luxury that they can't afford," said Dan Blumenthal, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Bringing the State Department into the talks was a positive step that the former Bush administration should have taken from the outset, Blumenthal said.

He warned, however, that China and the United States have fallen into an unhealthy economic dependency that will be exceptionally hard to correct.

"It's like two drunks leaning on one another in a bar -- we reinforce one another's worst instincts because we continue to borrow from them and they keep expanding exports and lending money to us to buy them," he said. "It's extremely hard for either to stop."

In a surprise appearance at the White House briefing room this afternoon, President Obama addressed the controversy surrounding his statement Wednesday night that police who arrested Harvard's Professor Gates had been "acting stupidly".

"In my choice of words, I unfortunately gave the impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically," Obama said. The president spoke with Sgt. Crowley this afternoon and said that the conversation confirmed his impression that Crowley "was an outstanding police officer and a good man." Obama said both Crowley and Gates were "good men" who had both likely "overreacted". Obama has not yet spoken to Professor Gates, but Sgt. Crowley had suggested the three of them have a beer at the White House.

Obama didn't say if he apologized to Crowley, and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs refused to answer repeated questions about whether Obama had apologized. Obama said it was "unfortunate" that "my words contributed to more media frenzy" and hoped this would serve as a "teachable moment" in which all of us "spend more time listening to each other". Earlier today, Gibbs told reporters: "I think [President Obama] would probably regret distracting you guys with obsessions.”

To get a look at the firestorm Obama was trying to put out today, see the last minute of this Jon Stewart segment from last night:

The military has decided to stop reporting enemy casualties in Afghanistan and to put out positive press releases. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Under the order, issued last month by Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, the military will not release specifics on how many insurgents are killed in fighting, and instead will give general estimates.

The change is part of the focus on making the Afghan population feel safer and comes as U.S. commanders are taking new steps to avoid civilian casualties.

"We send the wrong message if all we talk about is the number of insurgents killed. It doesn't demonstrate anything about whether we have made progress," said Smith, who arrived six weeks ago to overhaul U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization communications efforts. "We want to shift the mind-set."

Smith has asked commanders to issue fewer news releases and to focus on improvements in security where international forces are operating.

"We have to show we are here to protect the people," he said.

There are a few questions I'd like to see Rear Adm. Smith and those who advocate the suppression of enemy casualties answer:

How does supressing enemy casualties show we are here to protect the people?

Does the U.S. military think the Afghan people, who have one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world, actually read military press releases?

Will the US military stop reporting on US and allied casualties?

Won't the reports of the increase in Coalition casualties, which have more than doubled since last year, cause a heightened sense of unease, both at home, abroad, and in Afghanistan, specifically when the US refuses to identify the number of enemy casualties?

Does purposefully obfuscating enemy casualties sow distrust in those who read the military press releases, including the media?

What happens when the US is vague on casualties and the Taliban is specific? To whose story do you think the press will lend credence?

And finally, how will the press handle this news? The media has kept meticulous body counts on US and Coalition casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Why are body counts for US and Coalition troop good, yet enemy body counts are bad?

To be clear, body counts on either side don't win wars. Ultimately those who are willing to pay whatever price is required -- in time, casualties, treasure -- win. This is a question of honesty and credibility. If the military in Afghanistan is purposefully suppressing information, then they should not be surprised when the information they do release is viewed with skepticism.

This should come as no surprise to those who closely watch Pakistan's military operations in the tribal areas. According to a senior politician, the government is conducting a faux offensive against Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and scores of suicide bombings across the country that have killed thousands.

"These are mere mock operations in order to convince NATO as well as the United States of America that Pakistan is very serious against the extremists," says Lateef Afridi, a central committee member of the Awami National Party, a coalition partner of the government. [Note, the Awami National Party runs the government of the Northwest Frontier Province in the heart of the Taliban insurgency.]

Instead, he says, Pakistani leaders are protecting the militants as proxy fighters in Afghanistan and a lure for Americans to "give them dollars."

The military announced a combined operation consisting of air and ground elements would dislodge Baitullah's forces from South Waziristan in mid-June. This offense has yet to materialize and instead the Pakistanis have conducted punitive strikes with air power.

The military purposefully has excluded Taliban groups in North and South Waziristan who are considered "good Taliban" because they focus their operations in Afghanistan and don't advocate toppling the government. But even after these "good Taliban" reneged on their peace agreements and began attacking security forces in the region, the military insisted the peace agreements are intact.

It’s conventional wisdom now that Obama's health care initiative is in deep trouble. But that’s wrong. It’s in deep, deep, deep trouble. Again contrary to Washington wisdom, neither the cost of ObamaCare nor the squabble among congressional Democrats is the main reason. The biggest problem is average Americans. They dislike ObamaCare.

The new Fox News poll, conducted this week, captures the dimensions of the public’s turnoff. The most compelling response was to this question: “Do you think the quality of health care for you and your family would be better or worse under the health reforms being considered?” Only 29 percent said better, while 45 percent said worse. That’s an unusually harsh rejection of ObamaCare. It’s similar to what polls found in 1994 when ClintonCare was being considered. That’s a bad precedent for Obama.

Another question asked: “For you personally, do you think the health care reforms being considered would cost you money or save you money?” A whopping 58 percent said yes, it would cost them. A mere 24 percent said they’d expect to save money. This finding is devastating. It strikes at one of Obama’s central arguments: that his plan would provide more care at less cost. It turns out this notion is not only illogical and counterintuitive, it’s also a non-starter with the American public.

There’s more bad news for Obama. A majority (58 percent) believe major health reform will increase the deficit. A larger majority (60 percent) say major reform isn’t possible without a tax increase. Indeed 79 percent think their own tax bill will go up if ObamaCare passes. Again, what most Americans think is at odds with what the president has been telling them.

On the health reform legislation itself, 47 percent are opposed, 36 percent in favor. That’s hardly affirmation. Should Congress pass health legislation this year or do nothing? To my surprise, 48 percent said do nothing (49 percent said pass something). Does Obama have a clear plan? Fifty-one percent said no and 43 percent said yes. I’ll mention only one more poll result. Should a “government-run health insurance plan” be created to compete with private insurers? This, too, is a central issue, though Obama euphemistically calls it a “public” plan. Anyway, 48 percent are opposed, 44 percent in favor. Sorry, but here’s one more poll result. If ill, would you rather be treated in a private health care system or a government system? Private won, 64 percent to 19 percent.

For what it’s worth, here’s what I conclude from the Fox News poll. 1) The public is smarter than we think. They know their health care. 2) A bill that’s rejected this soundly has little chance of being enacted, and the congressional recess won’t make things better. 3) Obama is not persuasive. He’s been touting his plan for months as support for it dropped. He’s lost the argument.

The Danger Room's David Axe reports on some cool new kit:

”The ability of the [NLOS-LS] missile to defeat a moving target is a first for the U.S. Army,” said Col. Doug Dever, the Army project manager. He said Missiles in a Box will give soldiers the ability to “precisely engage moving targets” on their own — “a capability they’ve never had before.”

These are the fruits of the Army's much-maligned and now cancelled Future Combat Systems.

Joe Klein:

let's assume the worst: say Iran is working on a bomb; say it acquires one in the next few years. Only Benjamin Netanyahu and assorted American neoconservatives believe — or pretend to believe — that Iran might actually use it, given Israel's overpowering ability to strike back.

McLaughlin & Associates poll from May 2009:

If Iran is able to produce a nuclear weapon, nearly eight in ten voters (79%) say it is likely that Iran will provide nuclear weapons to terrorists to attack an American city.

American Neocons: 240 million strong--and growing.

Read Ed Morrissey's description of the show here. It is, as he says, "the best show you’re not watching." The video below is an episode that has host Adam Ciralsky and his team tracking down the the founder of Ansaar-al-Islam, who was living the good life in Norway. Watch and find out what happens next. Also, you might remember these guys causing a bit of a stir when they found a war criminal working as a professor at Goucher College -- the U.S. government has since moved to deport him so he can stand trial in Rwanda.

Bill Sweetman runs down the seven memes that dominated the arguments against F-22. And then he explains why they are all based on "assumptions that are, at best, unproven." Meme No. 1 is my personal favorite:

The F-22 hasn't been used in Afghanistan or Iraq. In itself this is a statement of the obvious. What makes it a meme is the corollary that the F-22 is militarily irrelevant. However, there are many capabilities that haven't been used in those theaters - submarines, for instance - but nobody seems to panic as we keep spending money on those.

One thing at a time, Bill. They killed the RRW, they killed F-22, they're gutting missile defense. They'll get to subs eventually.

Republicans are highlighting Laura Meckler's report in the Wall Street Journal:

Last Saturday [budget director Peter Orszag] went to Camp David. While his two children played basketball and tennis with other administration kids, Mr. Orszag reviewed the situation with the president and prepared to appear on two Sunday-morning talk shows. "There are those who are advocating delay just as a desperation move to try to kill this," he said on CNN.

After his TV appearances, he went straight to the Senate Finance Committee, where he spent three hours with committee aides brainstorming about how to pay for the trillion-dollar legislation. At one point, they flipped through the tax code, looking for ideas.

Remember: "The time for talk is through."

Just a little note to the president who told ABC news that “victory” is not the goal in Afghanistan because “I'm always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” Apparently your grandfather wasn’t there for the Japanese surrender, and thus didn’t take you on his knee when you were a child to teach you all about it. So here’s a little history lesson: See that guy in the picture signing the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on board the USS Missouri? Well, he’s not the Emperor Hirohito, he’s Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu ... unless maybe that's the emperor over there on the right holding Shigemitsu's top hat.

Maybe if you’d actually study some history, as your predecessor did, voraciously, you’d learn that victory is the only honorable goal in war.

CQ's Josh Rogin has a massive scoop that has the potential to upset administration plans to kill the F-22 after a Senate vote earlier this week seemed to seal the fate of the air supremacy fighter. According to Rogin, "An internal Pentagon oversight board has found that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is two years behind the publicly announced schedule, say multiple congressional aides familiar with the findings." Why is that important? Because "as Congress has debated the future of the F-22 fighter program, lawmakers have used the promise of the F-35 plane’s completion as a key plank in their argument that the F-22 line could be ended without a significant risk to national security."

One defense expert emails in response to the revelations, “Gates and company get caught hiding the ball once again. Just another piece of evidence suggesting the decision to end the F-22’s production was driven not by analysis and study but simply a desire to cut the budget.”

Indeed, it's clear the Pentagon sat on a report that undermined the administration's case for killing the F-22 until after a key Senate vote. "Now, senators and aides are lamenting that the Pentagon oversight panel’s more pessimistic view on the F-35 program was not publicly released during the F-22 debate and are calling for more open disclosure of the problems with the development of the F-35," Rogin reports.

Assuming there are no further problems in production -- an absurd assumption -- "The oversight panel’s calculations determined that the fighter won’t be able to move out of the development phase and into full production mode until 2016, rather than 2014 as the program office has said." Of course, the JSF program has already faced major delays and according to this Pentagon report, the additional two year delay "could cost as much as $7.4 billion."

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell denies there's been any cover-up, but as CQ points out, the Joint Estimate Team's findings are at odds with statements from administration officials and members of Congress who had lobbied for killing F-22 as a redundant with so much already being spent on F-35.

Administration officials and senators repeatedly touted the F-35 program as the best bet to preserve U.S. air power superiority and as a primary reason that the F-22 program should be capped at 187 planes, as the Senate voted 58-40 to do on July 21.

“If properly supported, the F-35 will be the backbone of America’s tactical aviation fleet for decades to come,” said Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in a July 16 speech at the Economic Club of Chicago, “if — and it’s a big if — money is not drained away to spend on other aircraft.”

Experts said Gates’ tough rhetoric on the F-22 and his determined efforts to pressure senators to support the administration’s plan to end F-22 production would have been hurt had the Joint Estimate Team’s findings been widely known.

“If this information had been part of the debate over the last couple of months, several Democrats, many of whom switched their votes at the last minute, would have been much harder to persuade,” said Tom Donnelly, director of defense studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

The kicker: Rogin reports that the F-35 program is such a mess that John Murtha has reduced the administration's request for F-35 procurement funding by $530 million. The quote from Murtha, "This is a cut because we think they just can't spend the money [they requested]...They've got to do a better job of oversight." When John Murtha tells you you're wasting money and doing a lousy job of oversight, you've got real problems.

It's now clear that the Obama administration suppressed information that might have affected a Senate vote on a key national security program. It's a breach of the public trust, and it's evidence that this president is putting ideology ahead of national security. They were determined to kill F-22 come hell or high water. And they did. But it might not be too late to bring F-22 back from the dead.

And just for good measure, Aviation Week quotes "a senior U.S. Air Force intelligence officer":

“The F-35 [Joint Strike Fighter] is not an F-22 by a long shot,” he says. “There's no way it's going to penetrate Chinese Air Defenses if there's ever a clash.”

Put this in your Chloraseptic bottle, and spray it:

“We, too, are in favor of evidence-based medicine that supports quality patient care. President Obama’s statement highlights the complexity of medical decisions like this. However, the AAO-HNS is disappointed by the President's portrayal of the decision making processes by the physicians who perform these surgeries. In many cases, tonsillectomy may be a more effective treatment, and less costly, than prolonged or repeated treatments for an infected throat.

“For the past several years, the Academy has been developing clinical guidelines based on evidence and outcomes research, including ‘Quality of Life after Tonsillectomy,’ a January 2008 supplement to the journal Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. We are in agreement with the President’s statement that physicians, patients, and hospitals should make the decisions, based on the evidence, about what’s best for patient care.”

Several hundred Bundeswehr soldiers, backed by heavy “Marder” tanks and fighter jets, are currently helping about 1,200 Afghan National Army forces conduct major anti-terrorist operations near the Taliban stronghold of Chahar Dara, southwest of the city of Kunduz, where the bulk of Germany’s roughly 4,000 troops are stationed. The fighting--which started on Sunday and involves looking for Taliban / Al Qaeda fighters “village by village and house by house”--is expected to go on until at least next week. The Bundeswehr soldiers are part of the German-led NATO Quick Reaction Force (QRF), which provides force protection and serves as emergency back-up for Alliance troops. Finally, as German media have pointed out, the current Afghanistan offensive marks the first time since the end of WW II that Germany’s soldiers are again involved in major ground combat operations.

The operation, which is being fought mainly by Afghan soldiers trained by the Bundeswehr, marks a further step away from Germany’s original stabilization mission and towards a more offensive military operation. Slowly and without any official announcement, German soldiers are being drawn into the fight against the Taliban, who have massively increased their attacks on the Germans in recent months.

The Senate just passed the missile defense amendment to Defense Authorization -- unanimously on voice vote.

The Lieberman-Sessions Amendment would:

Deploy Effective, Affordable Missile Defenses to Europe

This amendment would express the sense of the Senate that while the administration reviews its options for providing a long-range missile defense capability to protect Europe and the United States from Iranian missile threats, it should: 1) continue to develop the planned Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system for Poland and the Czech Republic and 2) only consider alternatives that provide similar capabilities as the GMD system for the defense of Europe and the United States. It would also reserve $353.1 million in funds authorized by the FY09 and FY10 NDAAs for European missile defense to be used only for these purposes.

We've had two posts since yesterday on Hillary's attempt to articulate a coherent policy on that rogue of rogue states, Burma. If it was not such a serious issue it would almost be comical. She called for ostracizing the notorious military regime -- "Kick them out of ASEAN" -- and the next day dangled investment incentives before them to try and change their behavior. It's like watching a fish flopping around on a dock.

However, this irony we cannot let pass. It was just yesterday that Clinton highlighted Burma-North Korean cooperation that would make any non-proliferation analyst do a double-take: The Washington Post's Glen Kessler began with this:

The Obama administration is increasingly concerned that nuclear-armed North Korea is building mysterious military ties with Burma, another opaque country with a history of oppression, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday.

"We know that there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma, which we take seriously," Clinton told reporters after talks in the Thai capital. "It would be destabilizing for the region. It would pose a direct threat to Burma's neighbors."

And just what, pray tell, would those concerns center on? How about this:

• High precision equipment tracked from Europe to Burma delivered to academic institutions with backgrounds in nuclear research;

• The arrest in Japan last June of one North Korean and two Japanese for allegedly trying to export magnetic measuring devices to Burma via Malaysia. These controlled devices are used in missile development programs. The material was ordered through the Beijing office of New East International Trading Ltd, based in Hong Kong. The firm is believed to be under the direct control of the Second Economic Committee of the Pyongyang's Workers' Party of Korea. The committee is responsible for the party's military procurement; and

• The U.S. Navy spent weeks trailing the Kang Nam I from its North Korean port. South Korean intelligence suspected the ship was carrying missile parts and perhaps other technology to -- you guessed it -- Burma. Apparently the international attention (and the presence of the U.S.S. John McCain off its stern) dissuaded the Kang Nam I's captain from docking, so it returned home.

And after rightfully connecting these nuclear dots on a proliferation map, what did Hillary say today according to the AP?

"There is a positive direction that we see with Burma," she said. She praised Myanmar's government for committing to enforce the U.N. sanctions against North Korea, calling it important in light of Myanmar's suspected secret military links to North Korea.

Positive direction?

The Tripoli Post reports:

Farrakhan: Congress Must Side with US President Not The Israeli Lobby

Despite the sincerity of his heart, the United States President Barack Obama’s ambitious Middle East Policy will fail unless the American Congress sides with the American President instead of siding with Israel, says the most influential African-American leader the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.

So while Rev. Wright thinks that Obama is in the thrall of "them Jews," his buddy Farrakhan is at least convinced that Obama has broken free of the Zionist stranglehold on American foreign policy.

He's taught it for five years, in tandem with a black officer, to good reviews from the academy head, and was appointed to the position by a black police chief:

Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley, the cop at the center of a firestorm over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., has taught a racial profiling class at the Lowell Police Academy for five years.

His academy class, which he teaches with a black police officer, instructs about 60 police cadets per year who spend 12 hours in the classroom, said Lowell Police Academy Director Thomas Fleming.

“He’s a very professional police officer and he’s a good role model,” Fleming said. “Former police commissioner Ronny Watson, who is a person of color, hand-picked Sgt. Crowley. ... I presume because he would be the most qualified and most professional. He’s a very good instruction. He gets very high reviews by the students.”

Meanwhile, Obama is "clarifying" his comments on the incident a bit:

"Let me be clear," Gibbs said. "He was not calling the officer stupid, okay? He was denoting that ... at a certain point the situation got far out of hand, and I think all sides understand that."

Terry Moran offered this from the President on Twitter:

"President told me 'cooler heads should have prevailed' in Gates arrest but refused take back word 'stupidly.'"

Obama's direct quote on Gates arrest: "You probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who's in his own home."

"From what I can tell the sergeant who was involved is an outstanding police officer, but...better if cooler heads had prevailed."

One of the administration's key arguments in killing F-22 was that the F-35 was coming down the pike soon enough and it would have much of the capability of F-22 but at a much lower cost. Apparently not everyone in the Air Force is convinced that F-35 is an adequate substitute. Aviation Week's David A. Fulghum reports:

“I’m still planning on getting those airplanes,” says Brig. Gen. Peter Pawling, who earlier this year was commander of the Hawaii ANG’s 154th Wing and has now moved to the staff of U.S. Pacific Command. “I’ve been assured that [despite a smaller fleet] they are still coming to Hawaii.

“It’s just that the F-35 and F-22 are such different airplanes,” Pawling says. “There are those who think you can simply build more F-35s [to compensate for a smaller Raptor fleet]. But the F-22 is one of those once-in-a-lifetime airplanes. There is nothing out there that can fly against it. If we had a major conflict [against someone with advanced air defenses], I can’t imagine going in there with anything but an F-22.”

HT: J. Moses Browning

Spencer Ackerman reports:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opened the door for the first time Thursday to the prospect of a U.S. military presence in Iraq after the December 2011 deadline for troop withdrawal set by last year’s bilateral accord — something President Obama appeared to rule out during a joint appearance on Tuesday.

Speaking to an audience at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, Maliki said the accord, known as the Status of Forces Agreement, would “end” the American military presence in his country in 2011, but “nevertheless, if Iraqi forces required further training and further support, we shall examine this at that time based on the needs of Iraq,” he said through translation in response to a question from The Washington Independent. “I am sure that the will, the prospects and the desire for such cooperation is found among both parties.”

Maliki continued, “The nature of that relationship — the functions and the amount of [U.S.] forces — will then be discussed and reexamined based on the needs” of Iraq.

U.S. troops are going to be in Iraq for a very, very long time. The goal is to have them operating from positions of safety and relative comfort, as they do in Germany and Korea and Japan and other countries that were once liberated by U.S. troops. Iraq has no real air force, and there is no hope that it will have one anytime soon. At the very least, U.S. forces will be necessary to protect Iraqi airspace for a decade or more. As Eli Lake, the editor of elaketricity.com, reported in February, the Iraqi military is also "purchasing American helicopters, cargo planes and tanks equipment that typically requires a prolonged U.S. presence for maintenance and training." For the foreseeable future, American troops will be stationed in the very heart of the Middle East, where they will serve as a sort of insurer of last resort, guarding democracy and fostering prosperity in a country that borders the worst rogue states in the region.

It's a wonderful irony that Barack Obama will deliver us the permanent bases that George W. Bush never could.

Yet another partisan ideologue pushes for delay on the health care bill on— well, looky there—the same grounds conservatives have. Harry Reid:

"It's better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than try to jam something through."

The Senate Finance Committee will likely have a bill before the recess, and Reid will work on a compromise between it and the HELP Committee's bill, promising input for Republicans:

Reid said the decision to delay a vote was made Wednesday night in the hopes of getting a final bill that can win at least 60 votes in the Senate.

Reid said he had listened to the requests from senior Republicans working with Baucus to allow more time for a compromise to emerge.

"The decision was made to give them more time and I don't think it's unreasonable," he said.

It's a good thing Obama's no longer interested in blaming Republicans for the health care bill's delay, because that's getting harder and harder.

After finally pulling off her symbolic burqua as part of the 2009 ASEAN Asia Tour Relaunch, Secretary of State Clinton yesterday gave a long, diplomatic French kiss in the form of investment incentives to Burma's military regime if they released one of the world's most famous political prisoners -- Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi.

In an interview for NPR, Clinton stated she believes that the regime is in "angst" over what to do with the jailed Suu Kyi who is facing another round of trumped-up charges. She didn't have long to wait to see how far that smooch got her -- the regime's mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, stated in an article today titled "Wipe out Anti-Public Desire Elements" (are they taking lessons from North Korean propagandists or vice versa?), assured readers and by extension Madame Secretary that there are no political prioners rotting in Burmese jails. "The government has said many times that there are no political prisoners in Myanmar. They are, indeed, the ones who are serving their terms in accordance with the law for their harming stability and peace of the State, and committing other crimes. Daw Suu Kyi, like them, is not a political prisoner."

Looks like the only angst is at State, where after six months they have yet to develop a coherent policy on how to handle Burma and other bad regimes. For those worried, fear not, the Senate is scheduled to vote today on reimposing a broad set of sanctions on Burma. For the record, the NGO Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma confirms that more than 2,100 Burmese are jailed for such heinous crimes as demanding freedom, democracy, and human rights.

Honestly, I was only joking about Governor Schwarzenegger going (literally) ballistic with legislators over the budget. But in the spirit of life imitating art, the Governator seems to be taking things one step further with this video of him brandishing the very knife I previously described. Not that he’s planning on launching it at the opposition (though I am sure he’s thought about it). “[J]ust relax and have a little bit of a sense of humor,” says Schwarzenegger.

I’m just waiting for him to pull out that Minigun.

Any message Obama was trying to convey about health care last night is being quickly eclipsed by his o'er-hasty answer to a question about the arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates:

Obama answered a question about his friend Henry Louis Gates’s run-in with the Cambridge cops, after acknowledging “not having been there and not seeing all the facts,” by nonetheless asserting that “the Cambridge police acted stupidly.”

Well, at least he asserted his ignorance before embarrassing a police officer about whom he knows nothing on national TV. It'd be more convenient for Obama if the officer would take his lumps without question, but Sgt. James Crowley doesn't believe he was out of line, and is acquitting himself very well in the national media spotlight:

Though he harbors no “ill feelings toward the professor,” a calm, resolute Crowley said no mea culpa will be forthcoming.

“I just have nothing to apologize for,” he said. “It will never happen.”

Crowley also commented specifically on Obama's comments:

"I support the President of the United States 110-percent," he told WBZ Radio.

"I think he's way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts, as he himself stated before he made that comment. I don't know what to say about that. I guess a friend of mine would support my position to."

The official report on the arrest, filed by fellow officer Carlos Figueroa, who was on the scene with Crowley, is here. Crowley also offers details of the exchange with Gates that led to the arrest:

"Mister Gates was given plenty of opportunities to stop what he was doing. He didn't. He acted very irrational he controlled the outcome of that event."

"There was a lot of yelling, there was references to my mother, something you wouldn't expect from anybody that should be grateful that you were there investigating a report of a crime in progress, let alone a Harvard University professor."

Now that Obama has brought the story onto the national stage in a big way, we're finding out more about Crowley:

The Cambridge cop prominent Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. claims is a racist gave a dying Reggie Lewis mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a desperate bid to save the Celtics [team stats] superstar’s life 16 years ago Monday.

“I wasn’t working on Reggie Lewis the basketball star. I wasn’t working on a black man. I was working on another human being,” Sgt. James Crowley, in an exclusive interview with the Herald, said of the forward’s fatal heart attack July 27, 1993, at age 27 during an off-season practice at Brandeis University, where Crowley was a campus police officer.

It’s a date Crowley still can recite by rote - and he still recalls the pain he suffered when people back then questioned whether he had done enough to save the black athlete.

“Some people were saying ‘There’s the guy who killed Reggie Lewis’ afterward. I was broken-hearted. I cried for many nights,” he said.

Dr. Boyce Watkins, another black academic and the son of a police officer, is far more circumspect about the case than the president, cautioning:

Whenever a Black man is shot, officers are typically accused of racism, sometimes by those who don't even know the facts of the case.

My, who does that sound like?

If a crime goes unpunished, we complain about police not doing their jobs. But when officers arrest the wrong person, we complain that they are being overzealous and perhaps racist. Sometimes they are being racist, even when they don't intend to be; racism is a disease that affects us all. All of this is compounded by the officer's fear that he/she might not come home for dinner that night after taking on the most dangerous elements of our society...

Basically, this situation may have been a battle of two egos: One of them from a Harvard professor who seemed to feel that he should not be disrespected by a lowly police officer; the other from an officer who seemed to feel that a powerful Black professor could be treated differently from a powerful White professor. What is abundantly clear is that this is NOT the case of a poor Black male being exploited by the racist, classist power structure.

There's a lot to unpack in this story, and every American brings to it his own set of baggage. Obama would have been wise to leave the whole thing alone. There will likely be a review of the incident, at which point we will find out who was most imprudent—Crowley, Gates, or the president himself.

Update: Jim Geraghty wonders, is yelling at an officer automatically a crime?

A friend emails about the Obama/Maliki press conference yeseterday:

The President again failed to utter the words 'democracy' or 'terrorism.' Note that Maliki mentioned both, and also stressed our joint efforts to combat Al Qaeda.

The full transcript can be found after the jump.

Tom Shales on last night's presser:

Though polls show his popularity in slight decline, Obama did nothing at the news conference -- other than preempt or delay some prime-time shows -- that would seem potentially harmful to his image. About the most justifiable criticism that could likely be made: "Barack Obama still seems too good to be true."

A WEEKLY STANDARD colleague reading this aloud to the office says, "even if I thought that, I would never write it."

House Democrats are pushing hard to get the health-care bill passed, and to help it along they want to give doctors $245 billion to ensure political support. So wouldn’t this addition cause the bill to no longer be budget neutral? Not according to White House budget director Peter Orszag who said its “already baked” into the budget.

"It so happens they added that to this piece of legislation, but that's sort of already baked into our fiscal trajectory," White House budget director Peter Orszag said last weekend on "Fox News Sunday."

Their only-in-Washington reasoning is that they already decided to exempt it from congressional "pay-as-you-go" rules that require new programs to be paid for. In other words, it doesn't have to be paid for because they decided it doesn't have to be paid for.

The administration also says that since Obama already included the so-called "doc fix" in his 10-year budget proposal, it doesn't have to be counted again in the health overhaul bill.

The issue is providing ammunition for Republicans, who are accusing Obama of breaking his deficit-neutrality promise. And health experts scoff at the Democrats' fuzzy math.

As Bill Roggio reports, U.S intelligence officials believe that Saad bin Laden, Osama’s son, may have been killed in an American air strike earlier this year. If true, and we still await final confirmation either way, then this is a major kill. And press reports drawing into question Saad’s importance, such as this one from Fox News and this one from NPR, are simply wrong.

Saad bin Laden was, almost certainly, Osama's heir apparent. At the very least, he was one of the main competitors for Osama’s terrorist throne (another of Osama’s younger sons, Hamza, is also reportedly gaining prominence). Not only was Saad involved in terrorism, he played a leading role in some of al Qaeda’s international terrorist operations.

For years, Saad helped run al Qaeda’s terrorist plotting from Iran. In my short book, Iran’s Proxy War Against America (2007), here is how I explained Saad’s and al Qaeda’s plotting from Iranian soil (footnotes omitted):

Once in Iran, senior al-Qaeda leaders continued to operate their business as usual. In fact, U.S. intelligence officials believe that in April 2002 Saad bin Laden ordered one of al-Qaeda’s first post-9/11 attacks from Iranian soil. [Note: The April 2002 attack occurred in Tunisia.] More than a year later, on May 12, 2003, suicide bombers attacked three housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia almost simultaneously. Saudi and U.S. authorities quickly determined that the attack was ordered from Iranian soil by Saif al-Adel—one of the al-Qaeda terrorists trained by [Imad] Mugniyah in Lebanon and who is still wanted by the U.S. in connection with the August 1998 Embassy bombings. [Note: Mugniyah was subsequently killed in 2008.] Saad bin Laden had also been in contact with al-Qaeda’s cells in Riyadh. In addition, shortly after the bombing, Saudi authorities began searching for an al-Qaeda agent named Turki al-Dandani, who was thought to have played a key role in the plot. But he had already escaped to Iran.

On May 16, 2003, just days after the attack on Riyadh, yet another string of suicide bombings rocked Casablanca, Morocco. In the worst terrorist attack in Moroccan history, one dozen al-Qaeda terrorists attacked two restaurants, a five-star hotel, a Jewish community center, a Jewish cemetery, and other targets. Two more would-be bombers were arrested by Moroccan authorities before they could carry out their attacks. Once again, the trail led back to Iran: intelligence officials linked Saad bin Laden to the Moroccan attackers.

Saad was protected by the Iranians for years. It was part of a safe haven pact the IRGC and al Qaeda negotiated. The U.S. Treasury Department explained this in a designation earlier this year. Members of Osama bin Laden's family (including Saad), Ayman Zawahiri's family, Saif al Adel (AQ military chieftain) and al Adel's family, received shelter from the Iranians post-9/11.

The reason for the physical divide in al Qaeda’s ranks was most likely to protect al Qaeda's next generation of leaders. One half of the central military leadership (responsible for international attacks) went to northern Pakistan, the other half lived north of Tehran. If one half got killed or captured, then the other half lived on.

Saad was part of the Tehran contingent. It was after the May 2003 bombings that Iran supposedly put Saad et al. under "house arrest," which was and is almost entirely meaningless.

For example, the "house arrest" did not stop Saad from relocating to northern Pakistan to be with his father last year. He moved there to rejoin his father because they evidently believed they were safely entrenched. If this latest report is true, then they were wrong. Saad should have stayed in Iran. There is no fear of American strikes against al Qaeda targets operating north of Tehran.

Hillary is a "funny lady."

Why I don't feel sorry for Henry Louis Gates.

Cantor distances himself from "Waterloo" comment.

A couple liberals on health care reform.

All our energy is going down the drain...

Presser fact check on whether Obama's been blaming Republicans.

"Obama also vowed at a prime-time news conference to reject any measure "primarily funded through taxing middle-class families." Welcome to your new health care, only "partially" funded by middle-class tax hikes.

Over at the Washington Post's Post Partisan blog, the boss didn't stoop to respond to Obama's little jab at him during tonight's press conference--clearly, the boss knows it's not about him--but focused on Obama's disdain for docs and cops:

at press conferences there are often throwaway lines and unscripted moments that are interesting. I was struck by two that seemed to exemplify Obama’s easy disdain for the less enlightened among us -- in this case, for family docs and for Cambridge cops.

First, Obama offered this example of how doctors make decisions under the current system instead of doing what’s in their patients’ best interests:

Right now, doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that's out there. So if they're looking and you come in and you've got a bad sore throat or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, "You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out."

Does Obama really think pediatricians knowingly order unnecessary tonsillectomies in order to “make a lot more money?” Isn’t this a rather casual slander of a lot of doctors? And in any case, is this what’s driving up health-care costs?It’s probably as likely health-care costs are high because hospitals have too many vice presidents for government relations making $300,000 a year. But I wouldn’t think it appropriate for the president to single them out for attack either.

Second, Obama answered a question about his friend Henry Louis Gates’s run-in with the Cambridge cops, after acknowledging “not having been there and not seeing all the facts,” by nonetheless asserting that “the Cambridge police acted stupidly.” Does he really know enough about what happened to say that? Maybe it was Professor Gates who behaved stupidly, or at least arrogantly. He is, after all, a Harvard professor. I was once a Harvard professor, and my instinct is to side with the Cambridge cops. But if I were president of the United States, I might pause before casually accusing other Americans of acting stupidly unless I were confident I knew what I was talking about.

Read the whole thing here.

His remarks as prepared for delivery may be found after the jump...

Yesterday Hillary Clinton talked about the Obama administration's concerns over North Korean proliferation of nuclear technology to Burma. And yet today...she's talking about easing sanctions against the regime:

The release of Suu Kyi is "critical" to easing the strained relations between Burma and the United States. "If she were released, that would open up opportunities at least for my country to expand our relationship with Burma, including investments in Burma," Clinton told reporters while attending a regional security forum.

The Obama administration is in the middle of a "policy review" on Burma that has not been finished and yet Clinton is out making statements that are all over the map. The kicker is that the "elections" she is rushing to embrace will take place under the "constitution" that was "voted" on by the Burmese people in the days immediately following Cyclone Nargis, when upwards of 75,000 Burmese were killed, and guarantees the military total control over the government. So, at the end of the day, the US position will be that if they release Suu Kyi, the United States will allow for investments that would prop up this henious regime, which is possibly involved in proliferation, and insure military rule through support of a sham election.

Also, apropos of the boss's post this morning, a foreign policy wonk emails:

No sooner did Clinton proclaim "We're back!" than she immediately reconfirmed any Asian concerns that the United States was still preoccupied with other parts of the world, especially the Middle East. Thus she chose to use her ASEAN stop to step on all ASEAN-related news by talking instead about the Iranian threat (and also, by the way, putting her foot in it on that issue, inadvertantly letting slip administration plans to live with an Iranian nuclear weapon through a deterrence strategy.) Never has a message been so quickly undermined by the messenger. (Any decent reporter would have pointed out this contradiction, but that is too much to expect from the NYT's Mark Landler, the best puppy-dog a secretary of state ever petted.)

Barack Obama, discussing deficits and the stimulus, in an interview with the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt: "The reason that it hasn't been at the forefront of my agenda is because I walked in when we were about to slip into the Great Depression -- or the next Great Depression. And so I had to start off, coming out of the box, with a recovery package that, whatever arguments may be made by the critics at this point, there was no economist out there who thought we didn't need to do."

Right. Except for these 200, a list that included several Nobel laureates. What makes this fib by our president especially galling is that the content of the ad taken out by the Cato Institute that listed these economists. It began by correcting Obama's claim, on January 9, that "there is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help jumpstart the economy."

The economists wrote: "With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true."

It's still not true, however many times he says it.

There are a few, and one of them is reading Matt Welch as he adjusts his aim to the left.

From an administration that made its bones arguing that our defense resources are stretched dangerously thin:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iran Wednesday that the United States would extend a "defense umbrella" over its allies in the Persian Gulf if the Islamic Republic obtains a nuclear weapons capability.

Appearing on a Thai TV program, Clinton said the U.S. would also take steps to "upgrade the defense" of America's Gulf allies in such an event, a reference to stepped-up military aid to those countries.

I wonder what "upgraded defenses" the secretary is talking about. Missile defense technology, which the administration has lambasted as "unproven" and scheduled for heavy budget cuts, or our actual nuclear umbrella -- also due for drastic reduction? Most unnerving is that the Obama administration seems prepared for the inevitability of a nuclear Iran, and is already taking steps to mitigate the expected mass destabilization that would result from a successful Iranian atomic test. No wonder the Israelis are worried.

Rich Lowry posts what he calls a "shrewd" email on Republican positioning on the economy.

It would be a blunder of the highest order for the Republicans to make the case that the economy won’t recover if Obama persists with his policies. The credit markets have improved dramatically, the economy will recover late this year and the jobs will start coming in the spring. Obama will claim credit and blame those awful Hooveresque Republicans for trying to stand in the way of recovery.

The Republicans should right now be saying that the economy is going to recovery despite of Obama’s spending; both because of the actions that the Fed has taken to help heal the credit markets and because of the inherent dynamism of the economy itself (throw in something about hard working American workers and entrepreneurs). The GOP should focus on restraining spending, preventing tax hikes and calling attention to the unnecessary fiscal hole that the President and Congress have blown into the nation’s fiscal position. They should also make the case that the tradeoff of high Obama spending and inevitable huge tax increases will not help the economy in the long term. But again, it’s a mistake for the GOP to go out there and ask “where are the jobs Mr. President?” every month. If that’s all they have to say, it will be a rough 2010.

If on the other hand, harping on the weak economy is a way of drawing attention to the fact that the President isn’t focused on the voters’ primary concern right now, fair enough. But the GOP should be anticipating the economic rebound and planning its tactics accordingly.

I'm not sure I agree with his correspondent's thoughts on the timing of the full recovery, but the broad analysis strikes me as smart. It is indisputable that the credit markets have "improved dramatically," and there are many reasons to believe that such a recovery is on the way. Scott Grannis, whose blog is terrific on these matters, thinks we may already be there. "We have definitely seen the worst of the economy, and I would be very surprised if the economy has not been in recovery mode for the past month or two." Why does he say this? See here, here, and here for just a few examples.

This is the kind of business sense $50 billion will buy you:

I wanted a Chevy Camaro.

I'd never really liked American sports cars before. But the 2010 Camaro -- a revival Chevrolet has been talking up since 2006 -- is so much more sleek than your typical muscle car. And since my BMW 330 started showing its age (nine) around the same time that the death of the U.S. auto industry hit the headlines, I thought: Why not do a little something to help?

So, after seeing a newspaper ad promoting Camaros at a local Chevy dealer, I called and left a voicemail saying I was interested in a test drive.

I never heard back.

I was shocked. Here I was, ready to buy, while GM was in financial straits. I thought they'd be all over me. Turns out it's not so easy to obtain a piece of the American dream.

The next week, I decided to widen my search. I e-mailed four Chevy dealers in the area. Two never wrote back. One replied that they had no Camaros, and ended the correspondence right there. The fourth said they'd have one soon -- just stay tuned.

He didn't get a Camaro (which, by the way, does look pretty sweet this year, if only you could get someone to sell it to you). Who wouldn't want to own 0.000000435% of this promising company sure to give a massive return on your involuntary investment?

In other news, Chrysler, who first used your money to buy grammatically incorrect "thank you" ads in the nation's newspapers, is now sponsoring the Tour de France TV coverage. Because what better investment for the makers of the PT Cruiser and the Dodge Ram than to reach an audience of Europhile cycling enthusiasts. I'm sure they're all just rarin' to jump into a Sebring for the trip to the farmer's market to pick up artisan cheeses.

Could some of the trepidation about Obama's "investment" in health care reform, in Congress and among voters, not be attributed to his utter failure to produce results on any other "investment" he's made with your money? Nah, it's probably just the fear-mongers and lobbyists.

Now, go buy yourself a Caddy to bend the curve downward...or something.

Tomorrow Shona Holmes will testify before Congress about Obama’s proposed health care plan, but unlike most of the people debating health care on the Hill, Holmes is not a lobbyist, a doctor, a policy wonk or even an American.

Shona Holmes is a Canadian who almost went blind waiting for vital brain surgery in her country’s nationalized health care system, and who owes her sight to the quick care of American doctors.

When Holmes went to a doctor complaining of headaches and fuzzy vision, an MRI revealed a brain tumor. Unfortunately, she was told she would have to wait four to six months to see a specialist.

“I never truly understood that little inner voice--that gut feeling--until that time,” Holmes told me during an interview at THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s offices today. “And I thought, ‘I better figure out what’s going on.’”

So Holmes flew to the Mayo Clinic, where, within in a week, she was seen and diagnosed as having a Rathke’s cleft cyst. The cyst was growing and putting pressure on her optical nerves, slowly blinding her.

However, when she returned to Canada for surgery, Holmes had trouble finding a doctor. And when she did, she only ran into more trouble, thanks to laws and regulations against purchasing private health care.

“The one doctor I did see wouldn’t even open my American medical files and look at them,” she said.

When specialists from the Mayo Clinic tried to talk to the doctor, he wouldn’t even answer the phone.

“I was always told that if you were sick enough, you would be treated,” Holmes said. “And there I was, standing in the doctor’s office, and he wouldn’t take the call.”

So Holmes flew back to the Mayo Clinic, where neurosurgeons removed the cyst. Her vision has been 100 percent restored.

Her tribulations have spurred Holmes to action. In Canada, she has been fighting an ongoing legal battle with the province of Ontario to repeal the ban on purchasing private health care.

Holmes decided to come talk in the U.S. after hearing Canadian politician Jack Layton offer support for Obama’s health care plan (all the while touting the wonders of the Canadian system).

She calls Obama’s plan a “slippery slope,” but she doesn’t like to think of herself as an activist or advocate.

“All I have is a story and an experience from both sides of the border,” she said.

Christians United for Israel has been holding its annual conference in DC this week. There's good coverage of events at JTA's Capital J blog, including a quote from Las Vegas Rep. Shelley Berkley, who was so pleased with the reception that she declared "If I wasn't so Jewish, I'd think about converting right now." Our own Fred Barnes also addressed the crowd as a representative of "the most pro-Israel magazine" in the United States. Prime Minister Netanyahu gave his remarks via video link (you can read the text here) from Jerusalem, which he declared was "the undivided and eternal capital of the State of Israel and the Jewish people." In case Barack Obama was confused by that statement, it seems likely that the Prime Minister means to do more than make sure Jerusalem is "not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967."

Today, Nancy Pelosi said: "I have no question that we have the votes on the floor of the House to pass this [health-care] legislation." But Joe Pounder of the GOP Whip's press office emails:

Today, the President will hold a primetime press conference where he will inevitably employ a straw man argument to blame Republicans for somehow delaying the House Democrat health care bill. However, the press conference comes after at least 42 House Democrats have expressed either their outright opposition to or concern about the Democrats' health care bill. Please see below for a full list of the 42 and what they have had to say. We will keep updating this document in the days ahead.

Here's an update: 19 Democrats wrote in a letter to Nancy Pelosi: "we cannot support any health care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan." Twelve of these 19 Democrats aren't already on the list of 42, which you can see in full after the jump. (Update: I originally incorrectly wrote that 11 weren't on the list. Corrections have been made accordingly.):

Kathy Dahlkemper (Penn.)
Lincoln Davis (Tenn.)
Tim Holden (Penn.)
Mike McIntyre (N.C.)
Solomon Ortiz (Texas)
Jerry Costello (Ill.)
Travis Childers (Miss)
Steve Driehaus (Ohio)
Paul Kanjorski (Penn.)
Marcy Kaptur (Ohio)
John Murtha (Penn.)
Jim Oberstar (Minn.)

Earlier today, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said at a press conference that he believes there are potentially 39 Democrats who would vote against the House bill because it would mandate taxpayer-funded abortions. Thirty-nine Democrats recently voted to reestablish the Dornan amendment, which prohibits taxpayer-funding of abortions in D.C.

Asked after the same press conference if any Republicans support the bill, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) told me: "As of this point, we don't know of any. I just talked to a senior member this morning about that issue." Some of the most likely GOP suspects to vote for Obamacare are the eight Republicans who voted for cap-and-trade. But most of them have explicitly come out against Obamacare. The one exception: John McHugh, the New York congressman appointed to be Obama's Secretary of the Army. His press secretary did not respond to an email asking about his position on the House's health-care legislation.

If all Republicans oppose the legislation, they would need 40 Democrats to join them in order to defeat the bill.

Update: Apologies for the piecemeal process of tabulating congressman who have problems with the House bill, but it turns out that 15 of the 39 House Democrats who tried to block taxpayer-funding of abortion in D.C. aren't already listed above or below:

Carney
Donnelly (IN)
Doyle
Ellsworth
Griffith
Kildee
Kirkpatrick (AZ)
Lipinski
Mollohan
Mitchell
Nye
Perriello
Rahall
Skelton
Wilson (OH)

Because we learned yesterday (and will hear again from Obama tonight) that anyone who would like to delay the consideration of a health care reform bill is a partisan hack who only wishes to destroy the president, I thought I'd make a list of the destructive fear-mongers the president is up against.

Charlie Rangel (D- N.Y.): "No one wants to tell the speaker (Nancy Pelosi) that she's moving too fast and they damn sure don't want to tell the president," Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a key committee chairman, told a fellow lawmaker as the two walked into a closed-door meeting Tuesday.

Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.): “We don’t need to box ourselves in with any artificial deadline,” Mr. Ross added.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.): “If we get consensus, we’ll move on it” next week, Mr. Hoyer said. “If we don’t get consensus, I don’t think staying in session is necessarily necessary.”

Henry Waxman (D-Calif.): Waxman agreed with Ross that the entire committee — not just the Blue Dogs — “have great concern on the cost of the legislation.” “That is a view that is not just theirs, but ours as well,” Waxman said.

Progressives, Blue Dogs, and everybody in between: "I want to make it very clear that there's progressives, Blue Dogs and everybody in between who have expressed concerns, and we're working on that."

Quite a list. Why do they insist on "destroying his presidency?"

Update:

How I could I forget Gov. Brian Schweitzer, Democrat of Montana?: "The governors are concerned about unfunded mandates, another situation where the Federal government says you must do X and you must pay for it. Well if they want to reform health care, they should figure out what the rules are and how they are going to pay for it."

Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is also raining on the parade: “I’m personally very concerned about the cost issue, particularly the $1 trillion figures being batted around,’’

William Gale, an economist at the liberal Brookings Institution, does not like soak-the-rich proposals to fund health care. He really, really doesn't like it. "Choosing to finance health care reform by taxing the rich is bad economic policy, bad health policy, bad budget policy and poor leadership."

I don't like his preferred alternative -- taxing health benefits -- and I'm very sympathetic to what he derides as the "hue and cry" that accompanies tax hikes in general. But it's worth reading his short piece in its entirety to understand why a prominent liberal economist opposes the House Democrats' preferred health care reform funding mechanism.

Rasmusssen:

The health care reform legislation working its way through Congress has lost support over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% of U.S. voters are at least somewhat in favor of the reform effort while 53% are at least somewhat opposed.

Today’s 44% level of support is down from 46% two weeks ago, and 50% in late June.

Opposition has grown from 45% in late June to 49% two weeks ago and 53% today.

As in earlier surveys, those with strong opinions are more likely to oppose the plan rather than support it. The current numbers: 24% strongly favor and 37% strongly oppose.

You’d think it would be hard to come up with a more shameful example of cravenness than the Bush administration’s pandering to North Korea over years of fruitless negotiating in the Six-Party Talks. But the Obama administration has surely trumped it.

Just days after a sickening piece appeared in the Washington Post detailing the horrific torment of the barely living souls imprisoned in the vast North Korean gulag, and in spite of growing evidence of a military pact between the Norks and the tyrants of the Burmese prison-state, Mrs. Clinton’s team announces a new package of “incentives”—the carrot track of a carrot-stick effort to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nukes. No details yet, but, reports FOX’s James Rosen, these incentives “would include some elements that are ‘familiar’ from the Six-Party talks, the officials said, as well as new ones and some that differ in their ‘dimensions.’”

We know how well the Bush sanctions/incentives approach worked, and also how well Obama’s efforts have succeeded thus far in disarming the Norks. Of course, outperforming Bush in the area of sucking up to anti-American dictators and would-be dictators is no feat. In this hemisphere alone, Castro, Chavez, Ortega, Morales, and Zelaya spring to mind, as do Syria’s Assad and the despots of Iran.

And speaking of despots,

Clinton said Tuesday she would like to see Washington develop a “more productive” relationship with Burma, starting with steps by the government to release political prisoners and dissidents jailed there.

“We are very much engaged with partners such as Thailand and others in assessing and determining not only what is going inside of Burma but also what we can do effectively to change the direction and behavior of the Burmese leadership,” Clinton said.

The Obami rely on their belief that they have better relations with North Korea’s neighbors (and rest of the world, as well), and take it on faith that conciliation is an effective diplomatic tool for dealing with despots. So, they’re crossing their fingers and holding their breath.

But if they—and we—find that far from putting out Bush fires all over the globe their appeasement is pouring oil on conflagrations? What do they—and we—do then?

The stepson of Huffington Post blogger
Queen Noor is stripping Palestinians of
their citizenship. You can read her latest
honoring World Refugee Day here.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Jordanian government of King Abdullah is stripping Palestinians of their citizenship in order "to avoid a situation in which they would be 'resettled' permanently in the kingdom." The Jordanians claim they are acting "to prevent Israel from emptying the Palestinian territories of their original inhabitants," but the effect is to threaten both the Israeli government and the Palestinian authority with a massive influx of Palestinian refugees from Jordan. The move is what Barack Obama might call unhelpful. Yet there there isn't any noise from the "pro-peace" left. Most of the bloggers whom we typically rely on to highlighting the plight of the Palestinian people have yet to weigh in.

Where is Glenn Greenwald's perpetual outrage? Oh, that's right: He's a courtier when it comes to the Jordanian monarchy. Greenwald has in the past praised Jordan's Queen Noor for providing commentary that is "extremely insightful and articulate, virtually never heard (as the participants note) on American television, and underscores how unbalanced and incomplete is the debate most Americans hear concerning this issue of vital importance to American intersts (i.e.:virtually unquestioning American support for Israeli actions)." Queen Noor hasn't blogged at HuffPo yet on her stepson's decision to strip Palestinians of their citizenship, but we're guessing she supports it. Will Greenwald-- in the name of justice for the Palestinian people -- speak up?

How about Joe Klein? In just the last few weeks he's traveled to Syria, where he met with Hamas head-honcho Khaled Meshall (Klein said he asked a "good question" about whether the U.S. would bring enough pressure to bear on Israel) and to Iran to cover that country's elections (Klein was pleased to report that the country was "breezy with freedom). Despite his obviously deep interest in the Middle East -- and the success of the peace process -- Klein had nothing to say on reports out of Jordan, though he did claim on Monday that "Israel is the prime impediment to progress in the Middle East." Jeffrey Goldberg once wrote that Klein "derives great pleasure from criticizing Jewish supporters of the Iraq War -- the Wolfowitzes, Perles and Feiths -- in specifically Jewish terms." So maybe there's no pleasure for him in reporting on the mistreatment of Palestinians at the hands of the Abdullahs of the world.

No matter how deep the president's bow, the Saudis could not be convinced to make any concessions to the peace process. The Iranians have mocked and scoffed at every diplomatic overture from this administraiton. Hamas continues to hold Gilad Shalit. (This despite Klein's obviously premature celebration almost a month ago that "the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is a triumph of diplomacy" and Greenwald's claim that "the deal for Shalit's release was secured by some of the neocon's most despised enemies (Jimmy Carter and Syria), with the help of a President they insist hates Israel (Barack Obama), relying on tactics they have long scorned (diplomacy, negotiating with Terrorists, including Hamas)").

Despite everything, the president and his supporters remain focused on Israeli action and inaction, on settlements and checkpoints. These are the impediments to peace. And if Israel started stripping Arabs of their citizenship, there would be outrage -- as there rightly was at Avigdor Lieberman's suggestion of loyalty oaths for Israeli Arabs. But here the Arabs have done precisely what Lieberman threatened to do. So why is the response from the left so muted now?

From yesterday's press conference:

Q So it's incorrect to say he supports any of these bills?

MR. GIBBS: Well, I think, again, I think there are aspects of each of these bills that meet his principles. I think if you want to know how he feels, again, I think the letter that he sent to Congress about the principles he sees in health care is a good place to go.

So the president doesn't support either the House or Senate health-care legislation, but we're supposed to shut up and stop debating it. Because, you know, what matters is just passing a bill and then we can get to twisting arms during the House-Senate conference.

So much for the special relationship:

Hague's speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies was billed last night as the Tory leadership's most significant overview of its approach to foreign policy as it prepares for government. Hague aims to show that a Conservative government would uphold its commitments to human rights but would ensure that it pursues what aides described as "realpolitik" in foreign affairs.

"Foreign policy is above all about the protection and promotion of our national interest, and even narrowly defined the British national interest requires our continued fully active engagement in world affairs," Hague will say in an echo of Lord Palmerston's famous declaration. The future prime minister told the Commons in 1848, the year Europe was swept by revolutions: "We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."

On the upside, as Gary Schmitt recently explained in the Financial Times, the decline of defense spending in Britain means "the UK’s military will no longer be standing shoulder to shoulder with the US across the full spectrum of military capabilities." If the Tories turn their backs on us, it may not matter all that much -- as an ally they will have little to offer anyway. Read Schmitt in full here.

The AP's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports "nearly 90 percent of employer-based private insurance plans routinely cover abortion."

That is not true.

As the New York Times reported the other day, Kathleen Sebelius testified in April: "Most private plans do not cover abortion services except in limited instances." And Congressional Quarterly reported on July 15:

Most people with employer-sponsored insurance also must pay for abortions out of their own pocket. ‘Most insurers offer plans that include this coverage, but most employers choose not to offer it as part of their benefits package,’ said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry’s trade association.

The AP likely sourced its claim that 90% of employer-based insurance plans cover abortions to a very flawed Alan Guttmacher Institute study. The National Right to Life Committee's Douglas Johnson explains in an email why the AGI study is dubious:

We have now looked at the AGI paper that provided the basis for the claim that "nearly 90% of insurers cover abortion procedures." This report was based on voluntary responses sent to AGI by insurers who were selected by AGI to be surveyed by complicated criteria described in the report. Moreover, the report itself said that “some of the insurers reporting that abortion was covered narrowly interpreted this to mean when a pregnancy threatens a woman’s health.” Clearly, then, AGI arrived at the 87% figure by counting any respondent in its sample that covered abortion even to save the life of the mother. Thus, this report is essentially useless in estimating the extent of private insurance coverage of elective abortion.

If the NRA sends out a questionnaire, most pro-gun-control candidates simply won't respond. The same phenomenon surely occurred with health insurance companies that do not provide abortions not responding to the Guttmacher Institute, which was once formally connected to Planned Parenthood, and remains ideologically committed to legalized and taxpayer-subsidized abortion.

The real issue here isn't whether or not private plans cover abortions--it's whether or not American taxpayers should have to pay for abortions, something that is wildly unpopular and has been prohibited since 1976 by the Hyde amendment.

Pro-abortion advocates, however, have been spinning an argument that since most employer based plans cover abortions--which, in fact, they do not as noted above--then Obama's public plan and subsidized insurance plans should require abortion coverage as well. Time's Karen Tumulty wrote in a recent piece that resembled a Planned Parenthood press release that "many women" who would be rolled into plans with federal subsidies would have to "giv[e] up a benefit [for abortion] they now have under their private insurance policies."

Wait a second. I thought Obama told us that "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."

Apparently "public option" proponents are willing to concede that many people will lose their employer-based health insurance when faced with the prospect of losing free abortions.

Update: Ben Smith notes: 1) A different study claimed that 46% of employer-based plans covered abortions, 2) The Guttmacher Institute concedes that the number of plans providing coverage is somewhat less than 87%, and 3) Neither Sebelius nor America's Health Insurance Providers have yet backed up their assertions that most plans do not provide routine abortion coverage with studies.

"Must hate the Federal Reserve, neocons and the Trilateral Commission. Having your own tin foil hat a plus. Seeking strong man to envelop me in his protective arms once the coming race war erupts."

$23 trillion. I know that story's from a couple of days ago, but it will be haunting us the rest of our lives, so I reiterate.

Another one of those partisan Republican ideologues who just wants to kill the health care bill: "No one wants to tell the speaker that she's moving too fast and they damn sure don't want to tell the president," said...Charlie Rangel.

Because a trillion-dollar health care reform boondoggle isn't enough of a monument to Ted Kennedy...

"Too much too soon."

Democrat Senator "baffled" by Obama's health care stance. Why? He's consistently said that reform will happen this year, and that it will reduce costs. That's all he has to do, right?

National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance defends Obama's surgeon general pick.

Ahmadinejad is not in the mood to listen to the ayatollah.

Rep. Carnahan is really not telling the truth about health care reform costs.

Here's a piece of advice for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: I’m sure it’s been frustrating being cut out of decisions by the Obama White House. But it’s not worth currying favor with your boss by following in his footsteps and, when abroad, boosting him and his administration at the expense of the country. You’re Secretary of State of the United States of America, not just an operative of the Obama administration. Speak for America.

And that means don’t say, as you did in Bangkok yesterday, "The United States is back."

The AP explained, presumably based on guidance from Clinton’s staff, “By that she means the administration of President Barack Obama thinks it's time to show Asian nations that the United States is not distracted by its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and intends to broaden and deepen its partnerships in this region.”

This is ridiculous. The Bush administration did a fair amount of broadening and deepening relationships in Asia. And there was never much partisan dispute about Bush Asia policies, or criticism of them. The Obama administration is basically continuing them in virtually all major respects (which is mostly for the good)--and it would be hard today to say what major differences exist between Bush and Obama policies with respect to India, China, Japan, Indonesia, etc. In fact, the Bush administration probably had more Asia-focused policy-makers at high levels--Rich Armitage and Paul Wolfowitz, to mention two--than the rather Euro-centric Obama administration.

But that’s not the point. The point is that it’s simply inappropriate for an American Secretary of State, when abroad, to trash the recent policies or alleged recent attitude of her country--especially of course when her administration is pretty much continuing those policies. But even if her administration were making changes, the self-promoting comments at the expense of her predecessors would be inappropriate. Ronald Reagan and George Shultz certainly spent time at home explaining how Reagan’s foreign policy differed from Carter’s. Where there were serious policy changes, I’m sure they also made those clear when abroad. But I’d be surprised if you can find Reagan or Shultz, when traveling abroad, gratuitously dumping on their predecessors’ foreign policies for no purpose other than to promote themselves. If only for the sake of her own self-respect, Secretary Clinton should stop doing so.

David Brooks: Liberal Suicide March.

Meghan L. O'Sullivan: Biden's rhetoric could harm U.S. prospects in Iraq.

Rich Lowry: Obama is an ideologue in a hurry.

Health-care special interest groups give lots of money to the Democrats.

Wild and crazy guy Joe Biden really digs the Ukrainian foxes.

More job cuts expected in U.S. defense sector :

Big defense contractors could be poised to shed jobs as the Pentagon cuts traditional weapons spending, while smaller, niche companies may ramp up their hiring as the United States expands resources to protect ground troops and computer networks.

Industry leader Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) said this week it would cut 600 jobs, mainly in Owego, New York, as a result of the U.S. Defense Department's decision to terminate the VH-71 presidential helicopter program.

Aircraft maker Boeing Co (BA.N) said announced Pentagon cuts would claim 1,000 jobs in its defense business, affecting staffing at various U.S. work sites in missile defense and in the Army's Future Combat Systems modernization program, which is being opened to more competition.

Boeing, which has also been hit by the slump in commercial aerospace, declined to say whether the defense staff cuts were included in 10,000 jobs set to be pared companywide this year.

Tally up the tens of thousands of jobs that will be shed by the now defunct F-22 program. The administration can trump up new hirings by small scale defense shops, but those pale in comparison to the heavy hitters like Boeing, General Dynamics, and Lockheed. Multiple missile defense systems, the littoral combat ship, the Army's future combat systems, and the Zumwalt-class destroyer (among others), are also on the chopping block, amounting to hundreds of thousands of skilled labor jobs lost. Considering the untold billions channeled into stimulus projects of questionable necessity, it's strange that the White House doesn't consider programs that actually strengthen our nation's Armed Forces an equally worthy investment.

Just in case you have any illusions that the health care reform Obama's pushing is meant to be constructed with anything other than reckless abandon and just enough haste and favors to get the government-run plan running for the "greater good," enjoy these tidbits from last night's conference call with liberal bloggers.

First, as the boss pointed out this morning (in a blog post that may soon be making its appearance in a White House press briefing), Obama thinks the "time for talk is through."

It's not the first time he's acknowledged that the best way to get his health care reform passed is if we talk about the details as little as possible, and pass it as fast as possible. At a health care townhall-style meeting arranged by the White House in Virginia, he offered unprompted that it is his greatest desire to rush the process:

And for those who say, well, you know what, this is something that is very complicated so we shouldn't rush into it -- that's what happens in Congress all the time. They have hearings, they write white papers, and then suddenly the lobbyists and the special interests start going at it, and the next thing you know, another 10 years has gone by and we still haven't done anything. That's not what's going to happen this time. I am going to keep on pressing until we get it done this year. All right.

Indeed, lobbyists and special interests can have influence if the process is delayed, just as the liberal special interests who wish the legislation passed can do their part to push it through without delay. But what Obama and the rest of the liberals who insist on rushing never mention is that the delay also offers voters a chance to weigh in, perhaps in person over August recess when representatives are at home. That is powerful input, and dangerous for Obama whose extremely expensive approach with dubious results is running into increasing public opposition.

When I objected to rushing the process on Twitter today, liberal blogger Bill Scher replied glibly: "did you miss the last six months of open debate on health care? I can catch you up!" He followed up with a blog post claiming that those who want debate only want the bill killed. I'm certainly no fan of the very expensive plan with very dubious results, preferring much more simple tweaks to the system bitten off one-by-one instead. Though Scher insists on assigning bad faith to my concerns, I actually oppose the current plan outline because it would damage the health care of Americans. I'm with Obama's personal favorite Mayo Clinic on that point.

But it's not at all unreasonable to request (even in opposition) that Congress take the time to read the bill, understand its full impact, and even allow time for constituents to weigh those impacts and whether they're worth the steep price.

Bill Scher and I have been weighing the options over the last six months, and tuned into the debate, but I'd like for the folks who haven't been reading every emanation from the HELP committee to get a feel for what's on the table, too.

It'd also be nice if Obama himself had the first clue what's in the bill:

During the call, a blogger from Maine said he kept running into an Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House health legislation would outlaw private insurance. He asked: “Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” President Obama replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.” (quote begins at 17:10)

Hey, Obama, did you miss the last six months of open debate on health care? Bill Scher can catch you up!

This is the man for whom health care reform is the most urgent need of our country. He has a greater personal stake in the legislation than any other person in the country, and he has no idea what's in it. Whether private, individual health insurance would be outlawed under the legislation is a rather important point— one with which you might wish the bill's chief proponent to be familiar, and one the American public might want to know about.

It's hard to argue that this is a responsible way to solve the health care system's problems, even if liberal bloggers think it's fine and dandy.

In a conference call today, several House Republicans blasted Obama’s health care reform plan, specifically its effect on rural health care providers.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) said the plan will create “an economic tsunami in rural areas.”

Fleming said rural areas were already losing hospitals and physicians due to disproportionate Medicare and Medicaid claims, a process Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) said would only be accelerated under the expansive government program.

Gingrey happens to be an OB-GYN who has delivered more than 5,000 babies. He said Obama’s health care plan, instead of lowering costs, would add “something like $600 billion in additional taxes and literally wreck Medicare Advantage.”

Gingrey likened the eventual rising costs of the program to the Johnny Cash tune, “How High’s The Water, Mama?”

“Soon it gets too high,” he said, “and then you have to start rationing and throwing people over.”

Meanwhile, Republicans have been queued up all day on the floor of the House to give their one-minute denunciations of Obamacare, much to the consternation of Democrats, who must be feeling Obama’s “fierce urgency.”

(Obama is meeting today at the White House with a group of skeptical Blue Dog Democrats and, depending on whom you talk to, giving them a stern tongue-lashing or brokering some posh deals.)

On a side note, Fleming recently introduced a resolution, H.Res. 615, that would require any Congressman who votes for a government-run health care option to enroll in it, forgoing the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

Oddly, no Democrats have signed on to it.

C.J. Ciaramella is a Collegiate Network intern at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

One of the main justifications for killing the F-22 program was that the hyper-advanced fighter was irrelevant in a world of small wars and contingency actions. Secretary Gates is fond of pointing out that the jet has never flown a combat sortie over Iraq or Afghanistan -- an argument that's equally irrelevant. Our warfighting strategy, for decades, has relied on dominance of the skies. The fact that an American soldier hasn't been strafed by enemy aircraft since the 1950s is no accident. Even in Iraq and Afghanistan's counter-insurgency operations, we're dependent on freedom of airspace to fly our UAVs, air-assault troops, and gunships. The F-22 was the world's first air supremacy fighter. It was a guarantee that America would enjoy the luxury of friendly airspace for the next 15-20 years. It was also a tremendous deterrent against potential competitors, the strategic lynchpin for far-thinking Pentagon planners who considered American power critical to global stability.

Such is the real tragedy of the jet's long and controversial existence. The F-22 was perhaps the most misunderstood weapon system in history -- never about winning small wars, but rather ensuring that wars stayed that way.