CNN's Roland Martin argues that Obama's big mistake was that mentioned "Bush, then McCain" then lobbed the charge that "they" would make racist attacks. Had Obama simply referred to "bloggers, columnists, conservative talk show hosts ... he would have been absolutely right," says Martin. "I can understand why [McCain's] camp is responding the way they are. I would do the exact same thing."

Actually conservative columnists, bloggers, and talk-show hosts aren't engaging in race-baiting, but Obama would have gotten away with a more general smear against Republicans--as he did last month.

This clip will be featured in a lot of Republican campaign ads:

1) From SlateV.com, “Leave Obama Alone” by Christopher Beam (Please see update below)

This is a first in Required Reading history – Required Viewing! Before diligently completing your assignment, be forewarned: Those pretend whiny Obama supporters can be a salty bunch. There is obscenity in the clip below. If that kind of thing won’t fly in your workplace, you’ll have to wait until you get home to watch it.

As funny and over-the-top as the video is, it crystallizes several important things about the Obama candidacy. It’s not just that people have finally found a way to laugh at Barack Obama. As regular readers of this site know, we cracked that code months ago. But what this clip does is bring together all the parody-worthy elements of the Obama phenomenon. The ridiculous devotion of His followers, His scandalous lack of accomplishments, His and His campaign’s hypersensitivity – they’re all there.

Most noteworthy is the comedy value that the swooning Obama supporter brings to the table. The Obama campaign rests on a foundation of irrational devotion. As I pointed out yesterday, several people who should know better, including conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and Doug Kmiec, have made Barack Obama the vessel for their hopes and dreams. This was never a rational decision, and as the meringue-like solidity of the Obama campaign becomes ever more obvious, that foundation has the potential to crumble.

One last word about negative campaigning, specifically Barack Obama’s reaction to negative campaigning. During the general election season, Obama surrogates have suggested that John McCain is senile and minimized his military service in a serial fashion. Somehow John McCain carried on without whining over these attacks. And yet now the Obama campaign is driven over a mental ledge when a satirical ad compares its hero to Paris Hilton? As Captain Ed Morrissey said on another occasion regarding Obama’s paper thin skin, get a helmet, Buttercup.

UPDATE: I have been informed that the star of this video is doing a voiceover of a talented young gentleman named Chris Crocker who previously starred in the viral video, "Leave Britney Alone." I apologize for my pop culture ignorance.

2) From the Wall Street Journal, “Is John McCain Stupid?” by Daniel Henninger

As the title of this column suggests, Henninger is a little peeved at John McCain:

Is John McCain losing it?

On Sunday, he said on national television that to solve Social Security "everything's on the table," which of course means raising payroll taxes. On July 7 in Denver he said: "Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won't."

This isn't a flip-flop. It's a sex-change operation.

He got back to the subject Tuesday in Reno, Nev. Reporters asked about the Sunday tax comments. Mr. McCain replied, "The worst thing you could do is raise people's payroll taxes, my God!" Then he was asked about working with Democrats to fix Social Security, and he repeated, "everything has to be on the table." But how can . . .? Oh never mind.

Yesterday he was in Aurora, Colo., to wit: "On Social Security, he [Sen. Obama] wants to raise Social Security taxes. I am opposed to raising taxes on Social Security. I want to fix the system without raising taxes."

What I'm asking is, does John McCain have the mental focus, the intellectual discipline, to avoid being out-slicked by Barack Obama, if he isn't abandoned by his own voters?

It's not just taxes. Recently the subject came up of Al Gore's assertion that the U.S. could get its energy solely from renewables in 10 years. Sen. McCain said: "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable." What!!?? In a later interview, Mr. McCain said he hadn't read "all the specifics.”

My many critics, please take note: What’s about to come will mark the second time in one day that I’ve defended John McCain. Here’s what people have to understand about John McCain: There are some issues he cares passionately about. Among those issues are the most vital ones, namely those involving national security matters. On such matters, you can count on John McCain to fight like a pit-bull but with much more ferocity.

On virtually everything else, John McCain’s style of leadership is to try to get things done. And that means compromise. Some of those compromises like his notorious one on immigration reform will drive conservatives nuts. But McCain is what he is, and he’s also the only candidate in this race who realizes a national security plan requires more than spewing a lot of One World gibberish on a global tour.

So when McCain expresses what seems to be agnosticism on everything ranging from the environment to payroll taxes, take him at his word. A McCain administration will likely bring a lot of agita to American conservatives. (Good news thought for the makers of Prilosec, the sole known cure for agita.) But conflating the trademark McCain willingness to reach out to the other side with stupidity is unfair.

With his plea for “intellectual discipline,” though, Henninger occupies more solid ground. Candidate McCain long ago developed the habit of freelancing. This was fine when he was riding the Straight Talk Express in 2000 with but a handful of worshipful media types in tow, all eager to play his Boswell. The senator is playing a bigger room now, and he has to sharpen up. If that means he has to cut back on his beloved spontaneity, so be it.

3) From the Wall Street Journal, “Obama’s Iraq Fumble” by Karl Rove

Someone has to say it, so it might as well be me. When Karl Rove first started writing for Newsweek and appearing on Fox News, he was an exciting presence. He was full of fresh insights, and given his pedigree you had to listen to what Rove said.

Now, several months later, Rove is mailing it in. In today’s WSJ column, Rove focuses on Obama skipping Landstuhl and His apparent inability to admit a mistake. Yes, Rove is correct that these are major stories, but the stories and his insights regarding them are both nearly a week old. The column has all the freshness of a chewed piece of Wonder Bread.

It wouldn’t be fair if I left you with the impression that Rove is somehow deficient as an op-ed columnist. I’m always amazed at how many op-ed columns address topics that high end news gatherers had worn out days earlier. So by a more lenient measure, Rove’s effort is par for the course. But Rove is arguably the most accomplished political strategist of the past quarter century. He has more to offer than insights that even Joe Klein might have previously stumbled over.

4) From the L.A. Times, “Obama’s Best Strategy? Attack” by Jonathan Chait

This is the second time I’m recommending a Chait column in as many days. It’s also the second consecutive day I’m recommending a Chait column for the specific purpose of showing how blinkered Obama supporters can be:

Negative ads work better than positive ads. In focus groups, voters insist they hate negative ads, because that sounds virtuous. Yet studies show the negative advertisements are the ones they remember.

To go on the attack, Obama doesn't need to engage in character assassination and baseless charges, as his opponent has done. All he needs to do is stop letting McCain paint a wildly distorted self-portrait. The Arizona senator wants voters to see him as a maverick who never changes positions for political reasons. One ad touts the way he bucked Bush on the environment. It doesn't mention that McCain has abandoned the climate-change bill he co-sponsored, demanded wider drilling and a gas-tax holiday that would undermine the goal of burning less fossil fuel, and started raking in huge sums from oil companies.

I hate to burst Chait’s bubble regarding the lily-clean purity of the Obama campaign, but the Obama campaign has indeed attacked. As I mentioned earlier, His surrogates have steadily suggested that John McCain is senile. They have also minimized McCain’s military service. There’s also the flip-flopping charge that Obama and His surrogates have habitually lobbed at McCain. And then just yesterday, Obama Himself dipped his big toe into the vile pool of negative campaigning, implying that the McCain campaign and its supporters were a bunch of closet racists who soon enough would let their true colors show.

So Chait should be happy – these are attacks. What should make Chait unhappy is that they are spectacularly ineffective attacks. The personal attacks have been laughable. The flip-flopping ones had a juvenile I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I quality to them. And the most recent charge of raaacism is about a thousand times more likely to backfire on Obama than to help Him.

There’s a point to negative advertising that eludes Chait, at least as far as John McCain is concerned. The reason negative campaigning worked so well against the likes of John Kerry and Michael Dukakis is because they were unknown quantities. Effective negative campaigning came to define them for the American public.

There’s a problem applying this strategy to John McCain. As the Obama campaign has pointed out on numerous occasions, McCain is not a young man. Indeed, he has been an American political fixture since the earth cooled. In other words, John McCain has defined himself. But if the Obama campaign wants to waste some of its limitless resources on attacking McCain and in the process sullying its candidate’s pristine image, I wish them happy hunting.

5) From ESPN.com, “Ramirez Traded to Dodgers in Three-way Deal” by some guy

Let me be the first to say on behalf of Red Sox Nation – our long national nightmare is over. Manny Ramirez can go be Manny for some other unsuspecting team who thinks they’re merely getting one of the greatest sluggers ever. Yes, the Dodgers are getting that, but they are also getting one of the most frustrating talents ever to play the game. And they’re going to drop him into the middle of a pennant race.

Good luck to the Dodgers. For me, for the first time in almost eight years, it is now once again safe to watch the Red Sox without risking a coronary.

BONUS! A quote of the day from Lindsey Graham: ”Somebody asked me about (Obama in) Germany. I said, ‘There goes Germany. We're going to have to get to 270 without Germany.’”

Mark Hemingway writes that "when Obama says he 'doesn't look like those other presidents on the dollar bills,' he's not talking about race. He's talking about his ears."

Seems plausible to me. But on second thought, I think Obama was in fact referring to his being really really ridiculously good-looking.

Having returned from his European vacation, this is the perfect time for Obama to try out a new lapel pin. The seal is gone, and the American flag was temporarily gone. Here is a proposal that should ring true with his staffers: how about Obama wear a United Nations / USA friendship flag lapel pin?

The Friendship pin will reaffirm the suggestion, which many Obama staffers find flattering, that if European intellectuals were to design an American presidential candidate, you'd get Obama. That whole idea that the Constitution calls upon the American government to regard American interests ahead of all others is just an accident to them. Anyway, if Obama's staffers think the UN/U.S. Friendship pin is a little gutsy, but are still uncomfortable with the patriotic display, perhaps Obama could swap the U.S. flag for the Star Trek Federation Seal.

This could alienate the Borg, a crucial part of Obama's base. But perhaps it could win over others parts of the Universe. How do you say, Yes we can, in Klingon?

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs denies that his candidate's statement that John McCain will try to scare voters by saying that Obama "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills" had anything to do with race:

"What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn't get here after spending decades in Washington," Gibbs said Thursday.

"Right, neither did Lincoln, but his face, along with those of many other white men, adorns a dollar bill," writes Jonathan Martin.

"Unadulterated crap," is Allahpundit's even pithier take on Gibbs's spin.

Today is the magical number of 8 days before the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, to be held at 8 p.m. on the 8th day of August, the 8th month of the year.

The number 8 has all sorts of magical attraction for the Chinese. Eight, in Mandarin, also means “prosperity” and “fertility” and “wealth” or “fortune.” A powerful combination of ideas in any culture, so the combination of eights associated with the opening day of these games is like some once-in-a-century aligning of the planets would be to astrologers.

A large group of China’s most famous recording artists have produced a new song,"Beijing Welcomes You," that is not unlike the 1985 “We Are The World,” recorded by an all-star cast of singers and musicians to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia. Only this song was inspired not by the desire to generate donations for the recent Sichuan earthquake but to serve as an anthem for the Olympic Games, which are hardly in need of either more treacle or more pomposity—both of which the song has in spades.

You would have to be living underground in China not to know the song at this point. When I tried to email a copy of the MP3 version to a Beijing colleague she told me, “oh I do not need it. You cannot go to a shopping mall or supermarket or anywhere without hearing this now.” We can only be happy it's not 8 minutes long.

In response to Barack Obama's remarks yesterday in Missouri, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis issued this statement: "Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."

You can read Obama's remarks, as provided by the McCain campaign, are after the jump.

House Democrats pulled out all the stops to win a hard fought legislative victory yesterday – prevailing on a dramatic 213-212 nail-biter vote on the “adjournment resolution,” authorizing a five-week summer recess. Congress sets dates for its “district work periods”, through these normally routine measures that must pass both the House and Senate, but don’t require the President’s signature.

Earlier in the week, House Republican leader John Boehner urged his colleagues to “vote no” on what customarily amounts to a legislative housekeeping matter. He implored Congress not skip town without considering comprehensive energy plan, including lifting the ban on offshore drilling.

For their part, House Democratic leaders seemed more interested cracking the whip for a five-week vacation than hammering out a plan to lower gasoline prices. Still, 17 Democrats – almost all from vulnerable districts – joined all the Republicans present (195) and voted “no” on the motion to adjourn. But 213 members (all Democrats) voted to leave town. You can read the tally here.

Losing would have amounted to a stinging embarrassment for the House majority. Even the speaker of the House – who by tradition normally abstains except for highly substantive or symbolic matters – cast a vote for adjournment. Speaker Pelosi joined in the last minute cajoling like a burly Chicago precinct captain. But Democrats from swing-districts that voted “no” decided to buck their leaders’ heavy lobbying rather explain why they chose a holiday over energy price relief.

The “vacation vote” arm-twisting became rather heated, according to several sources that witnessed yesterday’s legislative battle. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reportedly “got in the face” of freshman Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina and persuaded him to switch his vote at the last minute to “yes” after he initially voted “no.” The former Washington Redskins quarterback doesn’t have much of a race this November. Nevertheless it still may be tough to explain back in the Tar Heel state where Mr. Shuler likes to advertise his “independence” from the liberal congressional Democratic leadership.

As you know, I haven’t exactly established myself as a robotic defender of the McCain campaign. Thus, in the spirit of a very minor league Nixon going to an even more minor league China, I will be the first member of the right wing press to unequivocally defend the McCain ad that compares Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Former McCain aide John Weaver has settled some old scores and called the ad childish and lamented the campaign’s “tomfoolery.” As to the ad’s purported puerility, I’ll stick to assessing its effectiveness while noting that nobility seldom equates with impact in the world of political advertising. Weaver also observed that “John’s been a celebrity ever since he was shot down.” With that last critique, Weaver shows precisely why the ad is effective.

Some of the ad’s critics have noted that Britney Spears and Paris Hilton aren’t even such enormous celebrities. Tiger Woods and Brad Pitt, they rightly argue, are much bigger stars. But that analysis misses the point as far as Obama is concerned. Unlike Britney and Paris, Tiger Woods earned his fame. No one could accuse Tiger Woods of being a media sensation or being famous just for being famous.

And that’s why linking Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton is so spot on. Think back on Weaver’s strangely acid observation that McCain has been a celebrity since he was shot down. This critique tacitly acknowledges a critical difference between McCain and Obama. McCain has come about his circa 2008 fame the old-fashioned way – he earned it. Obama, on the other hand…Someone tell me precisely why Barack Obama “has become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” Was it because of His spectacular achievements as a community organizer? Or His stellar work as a part-time lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School? Or maybe it all boils down to those good grades He got in law school.

The point is, like Britney and Paris, Barack Obama hasn’t earned the status that He (like they) so enjoys. And then there’s the further and still more relevant issue that He’s unworthy of that status. Obama’s ranking as a Savior would be easier to handle if it turned out He had all the right stuff to handle the presidency. But repeatedly, Obama has shown Himself to be ill-informed, historically illiterate and more impressed with His own superficial analyses than actual facts.

Think about the ad this way – it has annoyed many people. Most presidential campaign ads this cycle, especially the drearily self-righteous ones excreted by the spendthrift Obama campaign, have come and gone with no one either noticing them or caring about them. Why are people talking about this one? Because it hits close to home.

Gallup reports:

A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds nearly half of Americans saying the U.S. troop surge in Iraq, now over, has made the situation there better, up from 40% in February and just 22% a year ago. Accordingly, the percentage believing the surge "is not making much difference" has declined from 51% a year ago, and 38% in February, to just 32%.

Gallup also notes: "Americans' views about the surge have been, and remain, highly politicized. However, all three partisan groups -- Republicans, independents, and Democrats -- have grown more likely since February to believe the surge is helping."

Byron York reports that President Bush announced today:

The progress in Iraq has allowed us to continue our policy of "return on success." We now have brought home all five of the combat brigades and the three Marine units that were sent to Iraq as part of the surge. The last of these surge brigades returned home this month. And later this year, General Petraeus will present me his recommendations on future troop levels — including further reductions in our combat forces as conditions permit.

As part of the "return on success" policy, we are also reducing the length of combat tours in Iraq. Beginning tomorrow, troops deploying to Iraq will serve 12-month tours instead of 15-month tours. This will ease the burden on our forces — and it will make life easier for our wonderful military families.

ABC News has video of Barack Obama telling voters in Missouri today:

Nobody really thinks that, that, that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face. So what they are going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know he--oh, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all of those other presidents on those dollar bills.

I'm sure the Washington Post is hard at work on a front-page story debunking this scurrilous and unfounded accusation.

First Read reports:

Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, declined to endorse Stevens' campaign for reelection. The NRSC describes itself on it's Web site as "the only political committee solely dedicated to electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate."

Ensign, instead of endorsing the longest serving Senate Republican in history, said he wanted to wait for the results of Alaska's Republican primary on August 26th. Stevens faces six opponents.

"The candidates are on the ballot right now, and we're going to wait to see how that whole thing plays out," Ensign said.

"Do you still endorse Sen. Stevens?" a reporter asked Ensign.

"I've said exactly what I was going to say," Ensign responded. "We'll wait and see how the process plays out."

This is remarkable, given the NRSC's policy of endorsing incumbents. Perhaps Republicans want to win after all.

1) From Gallup.com, “Presidential Race Tightens to 4 Points” by some guy who works for Gallup

The Ego has landed! A mere three days ago, Barack Obama sat comfortably perched atop a nine point lead in the Gallup tracking poll. Now it’s down to four. Rasmussen shows an even tighter race. In Rasmussen’s tracking numbers, Obama’s six point lead of four days ago has shrunk to two. And let’s not forget the notorious Gallup non-tracking poll which showed McCain with a four point lead. True, that one was an obvious outlier and as responsible analysts we should ignore the outliers. But the big picture is obvious – Barack Obama’s lead is a slim one.

So what gives? If you think I’m about to slip in a peroration on the effectiveness of the McCain campaign, think again. Regarding the McCain operation, the most charity I’m capable of is that as much as the outfit has struggled, it’s still right in the thick of things. Imagine if they get their act together.

Obama’s relative misfortunes are his own doing. Yesterday I was having a conversation with a friend, a fellow conservative who as it turns out has traveled the same political journey the last several months that I have. At the start of the year, both of us found Barack Obama a very attractive candidate. Neither us would have considered voting for him because of his reflexive and dangerous dovishness (among other problems), but his personal decency and his call for national unity were appealing.

Six months later, the thrill is gone. The simple fact is Barack Obama doesn’t wear well. The more most people see of him, the less they like. This phenomenon has much to do with his lack of substance. Calling for nice things like unity, whether in Boston or Berlin, is a swell thing. (Did you like the way I worked in some Obama-style alliteration there?) But the endless repetition of the call unaccompanied by a substantive plan of action eventually grates. After a while, the whole Hope/Change thing begins to sound like empty rhetoric.

And then you have Obama’s ego. If ever there was a presidential candidate who had cause to be modest, it’s Barack Obama. By presidential aspirant levels, he has accomplished virtually nothing of significance in his life. And then there’s the disquieting fact that we’re not exactly talking about Bob Casey Jr. here – where Senator Casey Jr. has no discernible talents, Obama is a highly intelligent and gifted guy. And what has he done with his life?

The longer and closer you pay attention to Barack Obama, the more concerning these things become. And I’m not just talking about the reaction of conservatives. I implore you to read the lefty blogs. Their lack of enthusiasm for Obama is almost as marked as their opposite numbers’ lack of excitement for McCain.

Here’s some free strategic advice for the Obama campaign – acknowledge that your guy doesn’t wear well and won’t wear well. His substance-free style of politicking eventually frustrates a fair share of the electorate, and his self-regard reaches a tipping point when a level of over-exposure is reached. The obvious solution is to amp down the rock star aspects of the Obama campaign.

Problem is, being a rock star seems to be Obama’s favorite part of the process.

2) From the New York Times, “Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Apart” by Jodi Kantor

Apparently having nothing newsworthy to print today, the Grey Lady ran this extended appreciation of Barack Obama’s days as a lecturer (not a Professor) at the University of Chicago Law School. Guess what? His students loved him. I’m not surprised. As I’ve written many times, the people who went to law school with him sing the same tune regardless of their current political orientation – they all adore him. By all accounts on a personal level, Barack Obama is a swell guy.

If he were running to be my next door neighbor rather than president, he’d have my vote (especially since John McCain seems like he could be highly irritable if I hit a whiffle ball into his yard). But the presidency involves more than personal affability and charm. So why am I linking this meaningless story? I don’t expect you to follow the link – indeed, I’ll be angry if you do. I may even track down your ISP and send you an angry email. But I still wanted to call Professor Richard Epstein’s characteristically cogent assessment of his semi-colleague to your attention:

“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”

That’s our Barry, no?

3) From The New Republic, “Cartoon Character” by Jonathan Chait

Chait asks the nearly existential question:

Why is the Democratic candidate always a flip-flopper? John Kerry, as everybody remembers, came to be defined almost exclusively as a flip-flopper. (A 2004 Wall Street Journal news article described him as "a politician with a troublesome reputation for trying to have it both ways.")

Al Gore was relentlessly attacked by Republicans for his alleged waffling. ("Mr. Gore has a bit of a reputation for flip-flopping and corner-cutting," reported The New York Times in 2000.) Bill Clinton was attacked by George H.W. Bush for "turn[ing] the White House into a Waffle House" and the subject of a famous Time cover story titled, "Why Voters Don't Trust Bill Clinton."

Chait’s answer to why every Democrat is a flip-flopper?

In the late 1980s, the popular revolt against government that had bubbled up in the mid-'60s began to peter out, sapping the power of straightforward anti-government appeals. And, starting in 1992, Democrats ruthlessly purged nearly all their political liabilities by embracing anti-crime measures, welfare reform, and middle-class tax cuts, and, more recently, by abandoning gun control. What's left is a political terrain generally favorable to Democrats, which has, in turn, forced Republicans to emphasize the personal virtue of their nominees.

Or maybe the answer is simpler than Chait posits. First of all, Bill Clinton wasn’t typecast as a flip-flopper. A fraud? Check. A pathological liar? Yessir. But not a flip-flopper. Clinton had a well articulated and consistent political philosophy both times he ran for president. For instance, in both campaigns he promised to deliver tax relief to the long-suffering middle class that “worked hard and played by the rules.” Of course, he completely ignored those campaign promises when the elections were over. Attacking him as a flip-flopper wouldn’t have made any sense, especially since the fabulist attack had such a solid basis in reality. It’s nice that Chait was able to produce that undated Bush 41 quote, but Republicans generally did not go after Clinton as a flip-flopper.

Not so much for Al Gore either, even though Gore underwent a startling transformation when he headed the ticket in 2000. The erstwhile southern moderate metamorphosed into a shrieking, angry populist when he sewed up his party’s nomination. As Jay Cost might say, this was a meta-flip-flop. And yet the charge of flip-floppery was not commonly heard in 2000. Instead, Gore’s general strangeness and unappealing nature, two things vastly amplified by his bizarre performance in the first general election debate, proved more fertile ground.

As for Kerry and Obama, it’s true they have been the targets of the flip-flop charge. As I’ve said many times, this is unfair – both men are in fact straddlers. But semantics aside, such charges are made because they have a solid basis in reality, a possibility that Chait doesn’t seriously countenance before going on to suggest that John McCain is the real flip-flopper.

A brief prediction: If Mitt Romney should join McCain on the Republican ticket, Chait will find the whole flip-flopping issue suddenly far more germane.

4) From the Wall Street Journal, “From Gitmo to Miranda, With Love” by Debra Burlingame

Burlingame’s brother died in the 9/11 attack, and she has watched in horror as the American left has rallied to the cause of the Gitmo detainees:

The poem, "To My Captive Lawyer, Miranda," was written by Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi while he was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No doubt, it would have given the former detainee, who was released in 2005, immense satisfaction to know that his last earthly deed was referenced in Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion in Boumediene v. Bush. That's the recent Supreme Court decision that gave Guantanamo detainees the constitutional right to challenge, in habeas corpus proceedings, whether they were properly classified by the military as enemy combatants.

Al-Ajmi, a 29-year-old Kuwaiti, blew himself up in one of several coordinated suicide attacks on Iraqi security forces in Mosul this year. Originally reported to have participated in an April attack that killed six Iraqi policemen, a recent martyrdom video published on a password-protected al Qaeda Web site indicates that Al-Ajmi carried out the March 23 attack on an Iraqi army compound in Mosul. In that attack, an armored truck loaded with an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of explosives rammed through a fortified gate, overturned vehicles in its path and exploded in the center of the compound. The huge blast ripped the façade off three apartment buildings being used as barracks, killing 13 soldiers from the 2nd Iraqi Army division and seriously wounding 42 others.

Using the name "Abu Juheiman al-Kuwaiti," Al-Ajmi is seen on the video brandishing an automatic rifle, singing militant songs and exhorting his fellow Muslims to pledge their allegiance to the "Commander of the Faithful" in Iraq. Later, Al-Ajmi's face is superimposed over the army compound, followed by footage of the massive explosion and still shots of several dead bodies lying next to the 25-foot crater left by the blast.

In 2006, Al-Ajmi's "Miranda" poem was included in a recitation of detainee poetry at a "Guantanamo teach-in" sponsored by Seton Hall Law School. The all-day event was Webcast live to 400 colleges and law schools across the country and abroad.

Here in a nutshell is what makes the left’s attack on Gitmo so galling. Attacking the detention center as somehow un-American or unconstitutional or unwise is fine and in bounds. I disagree with such attacks, but consider them in good faith. But why have so many members of the left felt the need to declare solidarity with the Al-Ajmi’s of the world, wannabe killers who despise our way of life and no doubt chortle at the useful idiots who celebrate their poetry and facilitate their murderous plans?

Read Ms. Burlingame’s entire article. Please.

5) From HotAir.com, “New McCain Ad: Celeb” by the Allahpundit.

Here’s the ad:

It’s clever. Predictably, the Obama campaign has responded with its characteristic lightness of heart and good natured bonhomie:

On a day when major news organizations across the country are taking Senator McCain to task for a steady stream of false, negative attacks, his campaign has launched yet another. Or, as some might say, 'Oops! He did it again.' Our dependence on foreign oil is one of the greatest challenges we face.

In this election the American people have a real choice -- between Obama's plan to provide tax rebates to American families while creating a renewable energy economy in America that frees us from our dependence on foreign oil, and Senator McCain's plan to continue the same failed energy policies by handing out nearly $4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies while investing almost nothing in the new energy sources that represent our future.

Stop it! I’m laughing so hard, my sides hurt!

In his post on the subject, Allah wonders why, unlike the McCain campaign, all of Obama’s ads have been so dull and forgettable. Perhaps it’s because the Obama campaign has taken on the true personality of its candidate – both have become drearily self-righteous bores.

Rapper Ludacris has released a new song called "Politics: Obama Is Here." In the song, Ludacris attacks Hillary Clinton, John McCain, President Bush, even Jesse Jackson, with nasty, hateful words. An excerpt:

Said I handled his biz and I'm one of his favorite rappers
Well give Luda a special pardon if I'm ever in the slammer
Better yet put him in office, make me your vice president
Hillary hated on you, so that b**** is irrelevant

In November 2006, Obama met with Ludacris to discuss "empowering the youth." This rap doesn't seem like it will do much good for America's youth, does it?

Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded,

As Barack Obama has said many, many times in the past, rap lyrics today too often perpetuate misogyny, materialism, and degrading images that he doesn't want his daughters or any children exposed to. This song is not only outrageously offensive to Senator Clinton, Reverend Jackson, Senator McCain, and President Bush, it is offensive to all of us who are trying to raise our children with the values we hold dear. While Ludacris is a talented individual he should be ashamed of these lyrics.

Talented? Whoops. Listen for yourself:

I noted yesterday that opinions in the presidential race are more fluid and softer than usual--resulting in a high degree of variability and volatility in the polls. Today, Rasmussen released this new survey that further underscores that point. According to its most recent poll, about twice as many likely voters are “uncommitted” when given a choice between the two major candidates as they were at this point in the race in 2004.

When given a choice between BarackObama and John McCain for President, 14% of voters are uncommitted. That figure includes 6% who say they’d vote for some other candidate and 8% who are undecided…

It’s worth noting that there are far more uncommitted voters at this point in Election 2008 than there were four years ago. The Election 2004 Presidential Tracking Poll showed that 92% of voters were committed to either President Bush or Senator Kerry on July 24, 2004. Only 8% were uncommitted.

For a variety of reasons unique to 2008, both candidates produce small degrees of uncertainty among potential voters. McCain generates some reluctance among Republicans because they feel cross-pressured by their desire to support the party’s nominee and his maverick positions on a handful of issues. Obama also engenders uncertainty because many still don’t believe they know him well enough or trust he has the requisite experience to be commander in chief. Some of those polled will state a preference for Obama or McCain--even if those inclinations are weak and changeable. That’s one reason why these survey numbers seem to shift around a bit. Rasmussen’s observation about the number of people without firm commitments at this point in the race helps explain this daily volatility.

More on the controversy over why Obama called off his visit to greet wounded troops at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Dan Balz and Michael D. Shear report in the Washington Post:

[Obama campaign official Robert] Gibbs said yesterday that the campaign had planned to inform the traveling media members sometime on the morning of the flight to Ramstein that Obama was intending to visit the hospital but had made no plans to take reporters, including even the small, protective press pool that now accompanies him most places.

But that's not what Gibbs told reporters on Friday:

Q: We would have stayed on the plane, would there have been any pool report?

Gibbs: there may have been, I don't know if we ever came to a decision on that.

Balz and Shear also report Gibbs's initial excuse that the visit was “canceled because Obama decided it would be inappropriate to go there as part of a trip paid for by his campaign.” They fail to note that Obama visited troops during a campaign-funded trip to Colorodo on July 2. Clearly Obama didn't think that was "inappropriate", and no one criticized him for the visit.

"It does now seem that Barack Obama snubbed the troops for reasons other than a lack of photo-op potential, but the initial reports were less clear," writes Michael Goldfarb at The McCain Report. But he explains:

In this haze of confusion, and with the press unable or unwilling to resolve the question of why Senator Obama had snubbed the troops, this campaign drew its own conclusion from the crystal clear statements of Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell:

"We made it clear to him that campaign staff and press would not be permitted to accompany him," Morrell said of Obama. "We relayed those ground rules. They made a choice based upon the information we relayed to them. It was their choice. We had nothing to do with it."

It was their choice--meaning Obama didn't want to do the trip without his press, without his campaign staff, or both. Only when Obama was forced to explain the snub himself did we learn that it was the exclusion of Gration that led him to cancel the trip.

So Obama chose to cancel a visit with wounded troops because a campaign adviser, retired Major General Jonathan S. Gration, couldn't accompany him. That's arguably not as appalling as scrapping the visit because the photographers and press couldn't come along. But since when is a senator unable to meet and greet some wounded soldiers without an adviser to whisper in his ear?

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was indicted yesterday "on seven counts of failing to disclose thousands of dollars in services he received from a company that helped renovate his home." MSNBC reports:

Prosecutors said Stevens received more than $250,000 in gifts and services from VECO Corp., a powerful oil services contractor, and its executives.

From May 1999 to August 2007, prosecutors said, the 84-year-old senator concealed "his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from a private corporation."

Many conservative bloggers argue that Stevens should resign from the Senate. The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini says, "At a minimum, Stevens must abandon his re-election campaign if not resign. Let's not act like Democrats, who shield their William Jeffersons." Hot Air's Ed Morrissey adds, "Stevens should resign, but he won’t without his colleagues making it necessary."

What's next for Alaska? Is this bad news for Republicans? TNR's Isaac Chotiner says, "Stevens is in a close--and closely watched--Senate race with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. In other words, this is not good news for the GOP." But Kos is worried and says, "It would've been better [for Democrats] for these indictments to hit after the late-August primary."

The Corner's Mark Hemingway remarks, "Stevens' indictment isn't exactly good news for the G.O.P., but he's a corrupt politician first and a Republican second." Most Republicans will be rooting for him to resign or at least drop out of his re-election race, ASAP. As Michelle Malkin says, "Republicans can’t tell the Dems to clean their House, if they won’t come clean about the GOP’s own dirtbags."

The Anchorage Daily News reports:

Palin said she has no interest in leaving her job as governor should the Republican Party look to find a replacement for Stevens on the election ballot.

Jake Tapper notes that frantic Democrats are attempting to add “context” to Barack Obama’s latest mega-gaffe. In case you’ve already forgotten, Obama’s latest homage to Himself found Him saying, “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

Anyhoo, per Tapper, here’s the purported context:

"His entire point of that riff was that the campaign is NOT about him," says a House Democratic staffer. The Post "left out the important first half of the sentence which was something along the lines of 'it has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. Its about America. I have just become a symbol.'"

Other staffers with whom I spoke back that up, and a Democratic Congressman who isn't a particular fan of Obama agrees, saying that Obama preceded that quote with something along the lines of, 'Those people in Germany weren't excited about me. They were excited by the prospect of America getting back to being all it could be.'"

So in other words, He meant exactly what He said. The staffer and congressman in question both implicitly posit a straw man, namely that some venal conservatives are saying Obama stated “I represent the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” If in fact any conservatives have misrepresented Obama in this manner, allow me to apologize on behalf of the entire movement.

What Obama said, and what the staffer and congressman confirm, is that in Obama’s view, the world has selected Obama as a repository for its hope and dreams. I’m not sure how this shows less ego than the unsupported straw man argument, but there it is anyway.

Obama’s observation suggests that the longtime community organizer has concluded the world is composed of Andrew Sullivans – people who are just gaga for him and who believe everything depends on his electoral fate. In truth, for every Andrew Sullivan out there, there are 50 Markos Moulitsasi. Kos will vote for Obama and do so enthusiastically, but like most normal people he views Obama as a politician, not an all-important symbol.

What makes Obama’s self-nomination as a global symbol particularly laughable is the kind of cocoon thinking that it represents. Most people are relatively indifferent to politics. Somewhere around half the American population won’t even bother to vote in November. And the vast majority of those who do vote will go on with their lives the next day regardless of who won the election.

Being surrounded by adoring sycophants for months on end has apparently warped Obama’s perspective. The candidate obviously believes everyone is as wrapped up in Barack Obama as He is.

Speaking to a bunch of Democratic congress-crtitters last night, Barack Obama proved beyond any measure of a doubt that his ego has completely run away with him. Quoth the longtime community organizer:

"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

Somehow I don't see this magnificent flight of ego restoring the missing Obama bounce. Exit question: Will this be a gaffe so large that it removes the Landstuhl fiasco from the headlines?

The Chicago Sun-Times's Lynn Sweet wrote in a blog post on Friday, July 25:

Though the Rammstein visit had been planned for days, Obama senior strategist David Axelrod said that that Pentagon notified an Obama military advisor only yesterday or the day before that he should not come. The Pentagon "viewed this as a campaign event and therefore they said he should not come," Axelrod said.

Tonight Sweet writes that she rewrote that paragraph "to eliminate an Axelrod quote that I misunderstood." She does not explain how she "misunderstood" the Axelrod quote, which appears to be pretty straightforward. Was the wording inaccurate, or was it somehow taken out of context?

Sweet could have made an honest mistake, but as it stands there's no way to know for sure that Axelrod didn't spin her.

This is not a parody. PBS's ombudsman reports that viewers were "outraged" and "appalled" that Max Boot demolished Lawrence Korb's arguments during PBS's NewsHour last week.

Of course, they say they're angry that Boot was given more time to speak than Korb, but NewsHour's host Margaret Carlson writes in her defense: "A look at the transcript will show that since Lawrence Korb tended to give relatively short answers, I tried to compensate by asking him two questions at each of his 'turns' to speak."

But outraged viewers shouldn't worry. It appears PBS has already atoned by hosting a fair and balanced discussion on Iraq between Peter Galbraith and Juan Cole.

Via the Hotline, a hopeful history lesson by Steve Lombardo at Pollster.com:

The trend from 1988 - 2004 shows that the GOP candidate tends to under-poll in the summer--with the exception [...] of the 2000 campaign. In each of the other four years, the Republican candidate had been polling significantly behind the Democrat at this point in the race. Each of those times, however, the Republican improved his position, gaining an average of 15 points relative to the Democrat.

The editors at National Review make the case that he should step down:

The question is not whether Stevens should resign, but whether he should resign now or after Alaska’s August 26 primary. If he steps aside now, the nomination will go to one of the six relatively unknown Republicans who are registered to run in the primary. The deadline for registration has passed, so it is too late for the party to field a stronger contender. If, however, Stevens won the primary and then stepped aside, the party could replace him with a better candidate.

Barack Obama's campaign has been spinning their candidate's position on the surge for the past two months. First, David Axelrod said on MSNBC that Obama "never disputed the fact that if you throw a surge of American soldiers in an area that you can make a difference." A week later Obama's communications director Robert Gibbs said that "there's no doubt that the security situation has improved, much as everybody admitted it would if we put more troops on the ground."

Obama himself has engaged in this spin, most recently telling Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press "I know that there's that little snippet that you ran," referring to a clip from January 2007 in which Obama said the surge would "do the reverse" of solving sectarian violence.

But, Obama told Brokaw, "there were also statements made during the course of this debate in which I said there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence. But unless we saw an underlying change in the politics of the country, unless Sunni, Shia, Kurd made different decisions, then we were going to have a civil war and we could not stop a civil war simply with more troops."

Jake Tapper asked the Obama campaign to provide him "with any information of Sen. Obama saying the surge would reduce violence 'during the course of this debate' over the surge."

Tapper writes:

The earliest quote they provided from Obama suggesting the surge might reduce violence came in March 2007, when Obama told Iowa's WQAD that "I don't think there's been any doubt that if we put U.S. troops in that, in the short term, we might see some improvement in certain neighborhoods because the militias are going to fade back into the community. That's one of the characteristics of what we've seen. The problem is that we don't see any change in the underlying dynamic which is Shia militias infiltrating the government, Sunni insurgents continuing the fight, that's the essence of the problem and unless we say that we're going to occupy Iraq indefinitely, we're gonna continue to see problems. I would disagree the bombings and the deaths that have been occurring over the last several weeks, you hadn't seen any real significant difference over what we've seen in the last year.”

From there, it doesn't seem he made any comments along those lines until August 2007.

As Tapper points out, Obama's tepid statement that violence would "temporarily" go down "in certain neighborhoods" statement occurred after relevant votes and debate on the surge in February of 2007.

(Hat tip: Ed Morrissey)

1) From the Politico, “Ted Stevens indicted on 7 Counts” by Martin Kady II and John Bresnahan

As they say up in Alaska, oy gevalt. At least that’s what they say up there in a Michael Chabon novel. Anyway, the Republican party has a new poster boy for the 2008 election. He’s an 84 year-old whose alleged turn-ons include accepting petty gifts without disclosing them.

You know what really grates about this scandal? The almost absurd pettiness. Ted Stevens allegedly compromised his country, his high office and his party for $250,000 worth of “things of value” including a Viking stove. Viking stoves are nice, but when a big-thinker like LBJ used his office for personal gain, he walked away from the dealings a rich man.

Over at the Daily Kos, they are of course hanging the metaphorical bunting to greet this news. The fact that Stevens is up for reelection does not diminish their joy. Or does it? Kos rightly points out that Stevens was an endangered incumbent to begin with. Assuming Stevens does the right thing and falls on his sword (or puts his head in his Viking range to use a more appropriate metaphor) any time up to 48 days before his election, the Republicans can replace him on the ballot. And of course, he hasn't won the nomination yet.

Long story short? Sarah Palin looks good anywhere she goes, but she would look especially good in the United States Senate.

2) From the Washington Post, “Known Unknowns About Obama” by Richard Cohen

Cohen has belatedly discovered that Barack Obama is a man of few accomplishments. One wonders how Cohen finally arrived at this breathtaking conclusion. Has he been attending remedial pundits’ school? Here’s the introduction:

"Just tell me one thing Barack Obama has done that you admire," I asked a prominent Democrat. He paused and then said that he admired Obama's speech to the Democratic convention in 2004. I agreed. It was a hell of a speech, but it was just a speech.

On the other hand, I continued, I could cite four or five actions -- not speeches -- that John McCain has taken that elicit my admiration, even my awe.

Nice. Now here’s a middle passage:

Obama is often likened to John F. Kennedy. It makes sense. He has the requisite physical qualities -- handsome, lean, etc. -- plus wit, intelligence, awesome speaking abilities and a literary bent. He also might be compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt for many of those same qualities. Both FDR and JFK were disparaged early on by their contemporaries for, I think, doing the difficult and making it look easy. Eleanor Roosevelt, playing off the title of Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, airily dismissed him as more profile than courage. Similarly, it was Walter Lippmann's enduring misfortune to size up FDR and belittle him: Roosevelt, he wrote, was "a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for office, would very much like to be president." Lippmann later recognized that he had underestimated Roosevelt.

You can see the column went downhill rather sharply. Anyway, let’s play Cohen’s game and “compare” Candidate Obama to Candidate FDR in regards to actual accomplishments, the intellectual software that Cohen trotted out at the start of the column. I must have missed the four years when Obama served as governor of the country’s most populous state. Or the time when Obama served as a wartime Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Even more importantly, what has Obama done that shows the character FDR displayed in overcoming his polio-induced paralysis? Yup, Cohen nails it – Obama and FDR are practically two peas in a pod.

I single out the FDR comparison because Cohen is to my knowledge the first columnist sufficiently obtuse to draw such a parallel. Cohen is on much safer albeit more clichéd grounds when he likens Obama to JFK. But if you challenged someone in 1960 to name one thing that JFK had done that was worthy of admiration, you’d get an answer. His war heroics might have come up. Or his distinguished 12 years in congress. Or the Pulitzer Prize winning book that he sort of wrote. (Okay, he only commissioned it, but that’s the next best thing.) And yet Cohen wants us to take the FDR and JFK comparisons seriously enough so he can conclude with this inscrutable passage:

The next president will have to be something of a political Superman, a man of steel who can tell the American people that they will have to pay more for less -- higher taxes, lower benefits of all kinds -- and deal in an ugly way when nuclear weapons seize the imagination of madmen.

The question I posed to that prominent Democrat was just my way of thinking out loud. I know that Barack Obama is a near-perfect political package. I'm still not sure, though, what's in it.

Take it from one who knows – that last paragraph is an example of brilliant polemicizing. Any time you leave the reader scratching his head and grunting “Huh?” you’ve done your job well.

3) From the Captain’s Journal, “The Surge” by Herschel Smith

As you know, the left’s latest talking point is the Surge was indeed wonderful, but all the good stuff that’s happened in Iraq since the Surge basically would have happened anyway. Twisting themselves into this intellectual pretzel is the only way the left can simultaneously minimize the surge in Iraq while insisting on the necessity of a surge in Afghanistan.

Among those peddling this risibly counterfactual rubbish is Barack Obama advisor Professor Colin Kahl who has written, “In short, contrary to the Bush administration’s claims, the Awakening began before the surge and was driven in part by Democratic pressure to withdraw.” Democratic pressure – is there anything it can’t do? Too bad our Democrats in congress won’t put some of their vaunted pressure on gas prices, no?

I strongly encourage you to read Herschel Smith’s wonderful takedown of this latest Democratic fad.

4) From the New York Post, “O’s Tour De Farce” by Amir Taheri

Please also note the wonderful subtitle: “Photo ops and Fecklessness.”

Taheri doesn’t break any new ground with this piece, but he does return the focus to where it should be – Barack Obama’s almost stunning indifference to winning in Iraq:

Iraqis were most surprised by Obama's apparent readiness to throw away all the gains made in Iraq simply to prove that he'd been right in opposing the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. "He gave us the impression that the last thing he wanted was for Iraq to look anything like a success for the United States," a senior Iraqi official told me. "As far as he is concerned, this is Bush's war and must end in lack of success, if not actual defeat."

Okay, that view suggests not just indifference to winning, but actual hostility to victory. When John McCain said last week that Obama preferred losing a war in order to win a campaign, the phony outrage industry went into overdrive. “Scurrilous!” bellowed Joe Klein and other similarly scandalized media bigfoots.

In retrospect, I would label McCain’s comments not scurrilous but misguided. By attacking Obama’s good faith, McCain ventured into the realm of the unsupportable. Better to have remained (and now to return) to what can be proven – Barack Obama is sufficiently indifferent to victory in Iraq that he’s not willing to bear any burden in order to prevail there.

If Obama wants to argue that Iraq is unimportant and America should turn its back on the victory we are now almost able to claim, let’s have that argument. More likely, Obama will argue that his plan – full and rapid retreat – is actually a plan for victory. Assuming he makes that case, the McCain people can still get him on the hypothetical level. As we’ve seen, savvy media commentators like Richard Cohen often liken Obama to John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was perhaps best known for not only promising to “bear any burden” for freedom, but walking the walk as well. Asking Barack Obama what burdens he would bear in order to win in Iraq will eventually evidence a curt answer that lies beneath all the soaring rhetoric – none.

5) From the Wall Street Journal, “Thx for the IView! I Wud ♥ to Work 4 U!! ;)” by Sarah Needleman

The kids aren’t alright. As the Wall Street Journal reports, they can be a bunch of dolts. Many young-ish job seekers have substituted overly familiar text messaging for the traditional thank you notes people used to send after a job interview. The interviewers have not been amused.

Looking for a job is a lot like running for office – you have to shore up your weaknesses. If you’re a young person, maturity is going to be the big issue that potential employers are going to be wary of. Thus, a young person on the job prowl will want to dress himself or herself in traditional garb for the interview and avoid any overly youthful references like talking about the great Rave he attended last weekend.

In politics, it’s the same way. If you have an office-seeker who has a thin résumé, he can’t ever risk coming across like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Hence Barack Obama’s refusal to admit error even when he obviously blew it like he did on the surge.

Come on kids – be more like Obama!

The Washington Post reports:

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) was charged with seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms in an indictment unsealed in federal court in the District this afternoon. [...]

Stevens, a senator since 1968, "knowingly and willfully engaged in a scheme to conceal a material fact" according to the 28-page indictment.

Items Stevens received include the creation of a new first floor, garage, and a wraparound deck on a Girdwood, Alaska property the lawmaker dubbed "the chalet," according to the court papers. He also received a professional Viking gas grill and a tool cabinet, prosecutors said.

In return, Allen and his company sought funding and help with international projects in Pakistan and Russia, as well as federal grant and contract requests, according to the charges. Veco officials also sought assistance to construct a natural gas pipeline on Alaska's north slope.

Stevens faces a contested primary on August 26. But Chris Cillizza notes that Stevens's Republican challengers are not as well known as the presumed Democratic candidate Mark Begich; the deadline for candidates to enter the race has already passed. The most recent Alaska Senate race poll--conducted before the indictment was handed down--showed Stevens trailing Begich by 8 points.

Confused about the array of contradictory polls released in the last few days? You’re not alone. First there was the 8-point Obama advantage in Gallup tracking.

But wait: Then there was the 4-point McCain lead in another Gallup poll released the same day.

What gives?

Mark Blumenthal does a nice job of dissecting the "Berlin Bounce"--or lack thereof at Pollster.com.

This dizzying array of numbers requires a little perspective. First, keep in mind not everyone who answers a poll question holds opinions with the same degree of certainty. Moreover, some people may not have thought a lot about the race yet at all. This leads to survey volatility that's seen in these polls.

Second, there are significant differences among polls measuring the opinions of “adults,” “registered voters” and “likely voters.” Polls of those three groups will normally yield different results. Frank Newport of Gallup sums up how his organization sorts out the differences here.

Newport also notes that until recently, a higher percentage of “likely voters” in Gallup’s 2008 model were Democrats--probably because of the heightened interest in the longer-than-usual primary campaign between Senators Obama and Clinton. But historically, a higher percentage of Republicans fall into the Gallup likely voter category. Newport writes this:

In earlier 2008 polls, more Democrats than Republicans were engaged in the campaign and considered likely voters. This is generally a rare occurrence given that Republicans have historically been more likely to qualify as likely voters under Gallup's model (a fact that has been borne out in the real world as Republicans are able to win elections despite facing deficits in party identification or pre-election standing among all national adults).

Therefore, McCain now doing better among “likely voters” compared to registered voters is in some respects a return to the historical norm.

During his recent visit to Qatar, Chinese vice president Xi Jinping told a group of Hong Kong reporters traveling with him that the chaotic series of incidents leading up to the Beijing Games, including the Lhasa riot and the frequently interrupted torch relay, should be treated with this mindset:

We cannot worry too much whether people like the fact that Beijing is hosting the Olympics. The world is a big bustling place made up of all sorts of people. There are all kinds of birds in the cage. If we remove the ones making the most noise, the cage would no longer be a bustling place…

Despite Xi’s “bustling-cage theory,” the noisiest of the birds in China have been silenced or put on notice with less than two weeks to go before the Games. Chinese media remain characteristically mum about these arrests and detentions. Instead, they have inundated the public with reports that the Beijing Olympics is the realization of a century-old dream that started in 1908 with these three questions raised by the magazine Tianjin Youth:

When will China send an athlete to the Olympics? When will China send a team to the Olympics? When will China host the Olympics?

The first Chinese athlete to compete in the Olympics was sprinter Liu Changchun. He was eliminated in the preliminary heats of both the 100m- and 200m-dash at the 1932 Los Angeles Games. Chinese media have emphasized that Liu was a patriot who represented a poor nation considered by many as “the sick man of East Asia” and widely viewed with “suspicion, disdain, and ridicule.”

The second question raised by Tianjin Youth was answered in 1984, when Beijing sent a team to the Los Angeles Games. This marked the People’s Republic of China’s first full participation in the Olympics. Chinese media find it poignantly significant that it was in Los Angeles, more than half a century after Liu Changchun’s humiliating defeat there, that China won its first-ever Olympic gold medal.

On August 8, Beijing will meet the magazine’s third challenge as more than 80 heads-of-state attend the opening ceremony of the 29th Olympic Games. The magnitude of this moment of glory is not lost on the Chinese people, as evidenced by this Internet posting:

As foreign leaders gather in Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Olympics, they would not dare to sit when the Chinese master of ceremonies yells “stand,” just as they would not dare to stand when they are told to “sit.” They must listen to the Chinese national anthem. And they must be on their feet while they gaze at the Chinese national flag with respect...Ten thousand states have come to pay tribute to the Middle Kingdom, just as the Chinese anticipated a century ago.

A century ago, the famed Chinese educator Zhang Bolin predicted that “the day China hosts the Olympics is the day when China soars into the blue sky.”

The question is, how far can a nation of caged birds soar?

Mary Ann Akers at the Washington Post's Trail blog reports that "folks all across Idaho are howling over a snafu that put presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on a political button with GOP Sen. Larry Craig" instead of Democratic candidate Larry LaRocco.

The button was not commissioned by LaRocco's campaign, but rather a private company Tigereye Design. A Tigereye official explained how the mix-up occurred: "When our designer sat down to make this button, he positioned his mouse pointer over a photo of Larry LaRocco. This particular designer uses a fairly wide pointer arrow, which may have been in contact with a photo of Larry Craig."

Akers writes: "A wide pointer arrow, eh? Is that like a computer's mouse's equivalent of a wide stance?" The Post provides this illustration:

Mexico is our third-leading supplier of foreign oil, but Mexico's national oil company -- Pemex -- faces serious challenges. Pemex will be unable to produce from new deep-water fields without an infusion of private capital, and the Mexican constitution forbids private investment in the petroleum sector. With the Cantarell field in decline, Mexican oil production will fall off dramatically.

Mexican president Felipe Calderon has proposed a reform package to enable Pemex to contract with private companies. In contrast to the package proposed by former president Vicente Fox, this one seems to have a chance of passage. But the socialist opposition party has staged a series of non-binding referenda in parts of the country, and the results could chill the move for reform:

More than 80% of those who cast ballots Sunday in Mexico City opposed the plan, according to the official tally of the federal district released Monday. The results were even more lopsided outside the capital, where nine of Mexico's 31 states also participated. With about two-thirds of the ballots counted, more than 90% of those voters gave the president's proposal a thumbs down...

Orchestrated by the opposition Democratic Revolution Party, the so-called Citizen Consultation was the first of three public referendums to be held throughout Mexico over the next month to gauge public opinion on pending energy reforms.

The results have no official bearing on legislation being hashed out in Congress. But the left-leaning PRD is gambling that strong public opposition will force lawmakers to back off proposals to open portions of the state petroleum monopoly to private or foreign firms.

According to the head of Pemex, Mexico's production of oil will fall by about 1.2 million barrels per day by 2015 without this reform. The U.S. currently imports slightly less than that. There's no doubt that if Mexico's production tailed off so dramatically, we would bear the brunt of it. Suddenly canals might seem practical.

When Hillary Clinton kicked off her 2000 campaign for senate, she gaudily commenced a “listening tour” in which she traveled New York listening to the concerns of ordinary voters. The cynics among us never wholly swallowed the notion that the then-First Lady really cared what the Joe Six-packs of the Empire State were thinking, but the display of modesty was becoming. It played in Poughkeepsie.

Barack Obama last week gave his answer to the listening tour – the first-of-its-kind “Talking Tour.” In spite of going to areas where he had little or no expertise, Obama showed scant regard for what he might have heard on his global travels. When David Petraeus spoke about the needs of the Iraqi theatre, Obama haughtily dismissed Petraeus’ concerns as beneath his potential pay-grade. Of course, the Talking Tour culminated in grand fashion – the foreign policy neophyte addressed hundreds of thousands of Germans, rendering a sloppy history of the Berlin Airlift and the Cold War in the process. If Obama’s journey was supposed to be a listening tour, then that was a curious and ill-fitting showpiece.

Then again, does Barack Obama really do listening? Remember, to Obama, a national dialogue on race was in actuality him giving a single speech.

In America, we don’t actually expect our presidential aspirants to be humble individuals. Individuals marked by unusual quantities of humility don’t seek to rule 300 million people. But we do expect our politicians to know their limits. And we do expect them to keep some shackles on their egos. Most presidential candidates understand this and work very hard to at least appear somewhat humble.

Barack Obama obviously has deemed such efforts beneath him. In so doing, he has made a critical error. A Gallup poll out this morning suggests that his Talking Tour will damage him with the voters. Quoth Gallup, "Could John McCain benefit from Barack Obama's much-publicized foreign trip? Several observations from the just-completed USA Today/Gallup poll suggest that this is a possibility."

Only 35% of voters had a positive impression of Obama’s trip. 26% had a negative impression, while 39% had no opinion. Mind you, these numbers come after a week of saturation media coverage that wrapped the Talking Tour in glory. As we get further away from that coverage and the impression of an unjustly haughty neophyte solidifies, the narrative of the Obama campaign will be rewritten.

The Rasmussen tracking poll also suggests that the long term impact of the Talking Tour will harm Obama. An initial bump from the trip that swelled Obama’s lead to eight points at the end of last week has vanished. Today, the lead has shrunk to one.

What’s especially problematic for Obama is there’s no obvious way for him to undo the damage of his Talking Tour. If he suddenly decides that he should value David Petraeus’ opinion rather than publicly minimize it, his insincerity will be transparent. And it’s impossible for him to unring the bell of talking 40 minutes of One World gibberish to a bunch of swooning Germans.

In Democratic circles, there has long been the concern that Barack Obama’s ego would ultimately make a mess of his campaign. While the mainstream media was swooning, it happened last week. Other politicians would have made their first trip to the war zone in three years humbly vowing to learn all they could. Obama instead used his public pronouncements abroad to confirm his own brilliance and sense of self-importance. That he may have done, but he redefined himself for the worse in the process.

Politico reports that yesterday Senate Republicans blocked Harry Reid's "Tomnibus"--an omnibus bill of many measures that Tom Coburn had placed a hold on:

The vote sent Reid into one of his trademark tirades on the Senate floor, as he basically accused Republicans of voting against people with strokes, people in wheelchairs and those suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.

"You go home and explain to your folks [voters] about stroke legislation," Reid said. "You go home and tell people ... in a wheelchair you voted against moving forward on something that could get them out of their wheelchair."

"You're going to have to go home and explain to the poor, the disabled and the elderly," Reid continued.

Coburn objected not only to the spending increase these measures would incur but also Reid's attempt to "hotline" the bills--unanimously pass them without debate or amendment. Senate Republicans joined Coburn and said they would hold up all legislation until the Senate deals with rising gas prices.

Last night, Mike Huckabee appeared on Hannity & Colmes. I was occasionally critical of Huckabee during the primaries – okay, I was more like "very often" critical of Huckabee during the primary season - but his appearance on H&C was extremely impressive. The McCain campaign should be listening to this guy.

Huckabee provided the perfect plan for how McCain should have dealt with last week’s Obama World Tour. McCain has positioned himself as the grumpy uncle alternative to Obama’s irritating prodigy of a candidate. While the election will essentially boil down to Obama vs. Not Obama, it would behoove McCain to become more endearing.

And this is where Huckabee had a great idea. Rather than go 100% combative last week, the McCain campaign could have used some self-deprecating humor. It could have run a spot juxtaposing Obama swishing a three-pointer with McCain air-balling a lay-up and Obama basking in the adulation of hundreds of thousands of Germans with McCain making way for cleanup on aisle five. Then McCain could have said to the camera words to the effect of, “I may not be able to hit three-pointers or make the Germans love me, but while Barack Obama is out doing those things, I’m working every day to solve the problems of ordinary Americans.” A brief spiel on gas prices and drilling would have amplified the spot’s impact.

It’s a brilliant idea, or at least it was. While the moment for such an ad may have passed, the McCain campaign should realize that it has an ally in Mike Huckabee who knows a thing or two about connecting with the voters. His skills in this critical area dwarf those of all his Republican contemporaries. If John McCain has a kitchen cabinet helping him run the campaign, Mike Huckabee should be in it.

Greg Craig, senior foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign, went on MSNBC this afternoon to defend his candidate's decision to skip a visit with wounded U.S. troops in Germany. The key exchange:

Andrea Mitchell: You were facing the Pentagon saying this can't be political, you can't bring aides, you can't bring General Gration, who is a retired military officer, why not just have him go and make it clear you weren't bringing all the others?

Greg Craig: The Pentagon said they were treating it as a campaign event, that this was politically sponsored, and the Pentagon told us that that was the fact of the matter, that he was engaged in a political event. So, to avoid putting the troops in the middle of a political situation, Senator Obama said "I'd rather take them out of it, rather than be seen as exploiting them. Let's not politicize the troops." And what has happened is, that ad and what Senator McCain has said has done precisely that. They are using the troops in a political fashion. It's disgraceful.

Craig should know disgraceful when he sees it, having personally represented an assassin (John Hinckley), a dictator (Fidel Castro), and foreign officials accused of war crimes (former Bolivian Defense Minister Carlos Sánchez-Berzaín). When not advising Senator Obama on matters of foreign policy, Craig remains a partner at the D.C. law firm Williams & Connolly. There he currently represents, among others, Pedro Miguel González, the president of Panama's legislature and a fugitive from justice in the United States. González is under federal indictment for the murder of U.S. Army Sgt. Zak Hernández Laporte.

Of course, Obama deserves the best representation money can buy.

We all wish Robert Novak a full and speedy recovery. His excellent reporting, such as this story on Romney's VP prospects, will be missed while he's in the hospital. Novak writes that the reason Mitt Romney is at (or near) the top of McCain's vice-presidential list is his ability to deliver Michigan:

The principal reason why former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has climbed to the top of Sen. John McCain's practical wish list for vice president is the possibility that he could bring Michigan's 17 electoral votes to the Republicans for the first time since 1988.

Private polls show Romney could make all the difference in Michigan. A McCain-Romney ticket carries the state by a moderately comfortable margin. With any other running mate, McCain loses Michigan.

George Romney, Mitt's father, was a Detroit auto executive and the popular three-term governor of Michigan. The younger Romney won the 2008 primary in Michigan over McCain, who had won there in 2000 against George W. Bush.

Paul Maslin recently wrote about a few of the different paths to victory for Obama--assuming he wins Michigan:

1) Win Ohio, which takes him to 275; 2) win in the West -- Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, for 274; 3) win the three N's (Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire) for 269, plus one other state; or 4) win two of the three N's and either Colorado or Virginia.

Without Michigan, Obama would be hard-pressed to make up those 17 electoral votes elsewhere.

Brian Williams, anchorman and part-time earnest diplomat, needs to get back to reading the news. His blockbuster journalistic coup--scoring an interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--is a farce.

Maybe it was the heady trip to the Middle East and Europe with the man who will bring peace to our world. Maybe it’s just the giddiness of scoring an interview with an evil dictator. But geez, buddy, watch the tape. It looked like a Borat interview--with Williams playing the sucker.

“It was clear to all of us watching and listening,” Williams raved, that Ahmadinejad “brought with him a new approach.” What’s the “new approach”? Oh yeah, “mutual respect”. Uh, Brian, the Iranians have said roughly one hundred thousand times that if America drops all sanctions and embraces the Tehran regime including its support for terrorism, killing American soldiers, and its nuclear weapons program, then we could be friends.

Williams did press for an answer on the new “freeze for freeze” offer from the United States and European nations--a freeze on enrichment in exchange for a sanctions freeze. Ahmadinejad wasn’t game to answer that, instead touting his own “nonepaper” (no spell check in Iran) that even the New York Times ridiculed as an “open-ended, cost-free, high-level negotiating process” with no value. Getting no answer to his question, Williams seemed disinclined to pursue the issue, instead seeking opinions on whether Iran really is pursuing nuclear weapons (phew, they’re not) and why Ahmadinejad keeps wearing that tan jacket (seriously).

“And finally,” Williams chortled, “loosely paraphrased, one of the comments he gave us today on the bomb front he said `nuclear weapons are so 20th century.'” He forgot to add that terrorism is “so eighties”.

Yesterday, Drudge blared the news that Obama was leading McCain by 9 points in Gallup's daily tracking poll, but the latest Gallup/USA Today poll shows Obama trailing McCain by 4 points:

The Friday-Sunday poll, mostly conducted as Obama was returning from his much-publicized overseas trip and released just this hour, shows McCain now ahead 49%-45% among voters that Gallup believes are most likely to go to the polls in November. In late June, he was behind among likely voters, 50%-44%.

Jim Geraghty is skeptical about Gallup's apparently contradictory polls. But one explanation for the conflicting results is that the daily tracking poll--which shows Obama up by 8 points today--is a survey of registered voters, while the poll showing McCain up by 4 points only included "likely voters".

That would indicate that Obama is the one suffering from a huge enthusiasm gap.

Of course, Gallup might be off. Rasmussen's daily tracking poll of "likely voters" shows McCain down by 3 points.

What's clear is that the race is close. An average of polls compiled by Pollster.com shows Obama up by 4 points, and the Real Clear Politics average shows Obama up by 3.

McCain's decision to support the Arizona civil rights initiative, on the ballot on Election Day this fall, means that a critical campaign issue is now in play. The initiative, patterned after ones in California, Washington, and Michigan, requires that the state of Arizona neither advantage nor disadvantage its citizens on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex in allocating limited educational, employment, and contracting opportunities. In those three areas, where state governments have most commonly used race, ethnicity, and sex to favor certain citizens over others--under the name of affirmative action--the initiative proposes nothing less than colorblind law.

That's the sort of law that the civil rights movement insisted upon for well more than 100 years until the mid-1960s, when most of its leaders opted for race preferences in not only the public but also the private sector. Preferences have never been popular, however, and colorblind law--at least to the extent it obligates the public sector--remains the kind of law that makes most sense in a country like ours whose citizens come from every part of the planet and whose fundamental law demands the equal treatment of all persons.

Having come out for the Arizona initiative, McCain can't allow himself to be so intimidated by Democratic attacks (note Obama has already accused McCain of taking a position that’s “divisive”) that he fails to argue in its behalf--that he quits on it. Which is, of course, exactly what Obama and his aides would like to see McCain do. McCain’s advisers usefully could carve out some time--right now--to brief McCain on the ins and outs of this issue. And to schedule a major speech in which he could, without interruption, make the case for colorblind government in Arizona--and in other states and at the federal level, too. After all, McCain can't limit his support for colorblind government to his own state. The logic of the issue won’t allow that.

1) From the Horse Race Blog, “On Obama’s Message” by Jay Cost

The always cogent Cost does a magnificent job laying out Barack Obama’s meta-narrative:

Obama's organization is built around a faulty, occasionally absurd meta-narrative.

A meta-narrative is just a campaign's central message, the core claim that connects all of the campaign's assertions. It communicates the candidate's diagnosis of the country and his prescription for the future. Bill Clinton had a great one in 1992: generational change can invigorate a tired government and grow a sagging economy. Clinton's outfit consistently reinforced this narrative. From the campaign theme, to the selection of Al Gore as running mate, to "It's the economy, stupid" - it made sure people knew his core claim.

Obama's narrative should be similar to Clinton's. It's tailor-made for a year like this and a man like Obama. But that is not the Obama campaign's message. Its message seems to be: this great man will unify a divided America around himself…

Early in his candidacy, Obama's narrative was very different. He was a candidate mobilizing the public in a social movement for the sake of the common good. This was a good message - but because of his campaign's grandiose rhetoric and imagery, it has been displaced. Obama no longer seems like the humble mobilizer, working to unite people around the common good. Instead, he often seems like the goal of the mobilization itself.

You’ll have to read the whole thing, but I especially want to salute Cost for making the perspicacious comparison between Clinton and Obama. Like Obama, Clinton in '92 hit the change thing hard. But Barbara Jordan was able to ask repeatedly at the Democratic National Convention that year in regards to all the change talk, “From what to what?” because Clinton, bless his heart, never skimped on the specifics. In 1992, Clinton had so many multi-point plans that many of us played a parlor game at home called “Guess the Acronym” that tried to figure out what acronym he used to remember all of his boring talking points. Later, as president, Clinton became the master of the two hour State of the Union address. The SOTUs had to be so long because Clinton larded them with minutiae ranging from how long he would require a woman to stay in the hospital after giving birth to the particulars of his midnight basketball program.

The Obama campaign rolls differently, obviously figuring specifics are boring and so last millennium. On the rare occasions when Obama tries to put some flesh on his Hope/Change skeleton, the specifics are so vague as to be essentially meaningless. For instance, Obama assures us that in an Obama administration, all seniors will henceforth retire with dignity. I guess from a policy perspective this has something to do with social security, but specifically what it has to do with social security is unknowable. All of Obama’s big promises – from “provid(ing)care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless” to “slowing the rise of the oceans and healing the planet” – are maddeningly devoid of specific policy implications. Indeed, Obama’s entire agenda is more a wish list than a plan for action.

I know I may be coming across as a frustrated conservative in talking this way, angry that Obama has so far managed to pull one over on the electorate. But those aren’t my feelings at all. Barack Obama is the most ideologically agnostic candidate for president we’ve had since George H. W. Bush. Bush 41 thought he should be at the center of things because of his personal skill set. Obama feels the same way. Many people consider Obama a far left liberal. While he may tend to the liberal side of things just as Bush 41 tended to the conservative side of things, he subscribes to no consistent political orthodoxy.

So what kind of policies will we get in an Obama administrations? As we’ve seen with his serial vacillations on Iraq, even he doesn’t know. And he won’t be hemmed in by a series of onerous campaign promises. Campaign promises like pledging to "heal the sick" leave a lot of wiggle room.

2) From the New York Times, “Be Afraid, Please” by William Kristol

The Boss has discovered a issue for McCain to exploit, namely the hideous disaster that unchecked Democratic power would be:

It occurred to me that one man’s “deadlock-proof” Democratic majority is another’s unchecked Democratic majority. Given the unpopularity of the current Democratic Congress, given Americans’ tendency to prefer divided government, given the voters’ repudiations of the Republicans in 2006 and of the Democrats in 1994 — isn’t the prospect of across-the-board, one-party Democratic governance more likely to move votes to McCain than to Obama?

So I cheered up once again. For it will become increasingly obvious, as we approach November, that the Democrats will continue to control Congress for the next couple of years. But if the voters elect Obama as president, they’ll be putting Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in untrammeled control of our future.

Just because Obama is successfully running a campaign with minimal not to mention ever-evolving specifics, that doesn’t mean his fellow Democrats are doing the same. When I was guest-hosting the Hugh Hewitt radio show last week, we had Republican Senators Richard Burr and Mitch McConnell drop by to talk about drilling and other means we can use to expand our energy production. The congressional Republicans spy an issue here, especially since the Democratic plan is to wait until Al Gore’s moon shot energy “plan” delivers on its promise some time in 2068.

Obama is part of the Democratic party, and has shown no eagerness to differentiate himself from his party’s mainstream on any issue. In other words, no maverick he. Therein lies a significant Republican opportunity.

3) From the Huffington Post, “Say It Ain't So, John. Why Progressives Need To Get Out In Front Of The John Edwards Affair Rumors” by Lee Stranahan

Much to Mickey Kaus’s delight, the dam is beginning to break on the John Edwards love-child rumors. While the mainstream media has considered the story not newsworthy, the far more reputable Huffington Post has weighed in:

The truth is that I believe anyone who looks into the John Edwards / Rielle Hunter affair story will see that Edwards has, at best, acted in a very suspicious manner for over a year now. When the Larry Craig story was breaking, I didn't buy his particular line of bullshit and I don't buy Edwards's either after I've spent the last couple of days Googling with my wife. (That's not as dirty as it sounds.) At first, I was skeptical of the National Enquirer story catching Edwards leaving the Beverly Hills Hotel at 2:45am because there were no pictures and the tabloids aren't reliable. Now it turns out that Edwards was at the hotel, so was Ms. Hunter, and that he when he saw reporters he hid in the bathroom until security guards came and got him.

The story about Edwards could of course be bunk. The National Enquirer who broke the story gets some things right, but it is hardly an authoritative outfit. But the fact the mainstream media has declared the well-sourced rumors and the even better-sourced actual events in the Beverly Hills Hilton off-limits is quite literally laughable. If a differently oriented former candidate, say Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney or Fred Thomspon, was caught visiting the woman rumored to be the mother of his love-child at a hotel at 3 in the morning and hid out in a restroom until hotel security could spirit him to safety, I doubt the New York Times would have shown such restraint. And I’m sure the lefty blogosphere wouldn’t have shown such restraint. Somehow I doubt the Republican’s “former-candidate” status would have insulted him from the media’s curiosity.

As far as what implications this story may have, there are two tracks. One concerns John Edwards and his political future. Quite frankly, the only thing that interests me less than John Edwards’ present is his future. I respectfully decline to speculate on what moves Edwards will have to make in order to silence these rumors and finagle his way into the Obama cabinet. Obviously any chances he had of being Obama’s running mate are as dead as disco.

The more relevant side of the story concerns the media. The kids at the Daily Kos don’t deny that their purpose in life is to get Democrats elected to office. Thus, propaganda will be more in their bailiwick than journalism (although they seldom embrace the label “propagandists”). The people at our leading dailies like to think of themselves differently. They can think of themselves however they like. The rest of us will form our own conclusions.

4) From the Washington Post, “Unfinished Business at Freddie and Fannie” by Lawrence Summers

The former treasury secretary and erstwhile president of the World’s Greatest University takes dead aim at the rescue plan that has “saved” Fannie and Freddie, at least for the moment:

No one should suppose, however, that the issue is satisfactorily resolved, even for the short term. Emergency legislation was necessary because market participants were unwilling to buy Fannie and Freddie's debt; investors doubted that the government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, were healthy enough to repay it and did not draw sufficient reassurance from the implicit guarantee of federal support. If their debt proves easier to place now, it is only because this guarantee has been strengthened, not because anything has changed at the GSEs.

This, to put it mildly, is a highly problematic posture for policy. While I strongly supported the Federal Reserve's policy response to the crisis at Bear Stearns, because it was necessary to avoid systemic risk, it is easy to sympathize with those who fear that bailouts inhibit market discipline. Consider how much more problematic the Bear Stearns response would have been had policymakers signaled their commitment to back the company's liabilities without limit; left management in place with no change in the business model; and allowed dividends to be paid and shareholders to keep going with hope for a better tomorrow. Yet all these elements are present in the cases of Fannie and Freddie.

Some people think Fannie and Freddie are an election issue. Those people couldn’t be more wrong. Fannie and Freddie are a bipartisan disgrace, and even for the handful of Republicans like Richard Shelby and Jim DeMint who find themselves on the side of the angels here, the issue is too complex to make any real political hay. All in all, the Fannie and Freddie debacle is a dispiriting case study in how our present leadership class isn’t up its responsibilities.

5) From the Boston Globe, “Slugger’s Act Has Grown Very Tiresome” by Dan Shaughnessy

For eight years, weary Red Sox fans have put up with Manny Ramirez’s shtick. The guy can hit, but he’s arguably the most frustrating player in the history of the Red Sox franchise. Now that Manny is getting older and his production is slipping, his antics are becoming increasingly untenable. At the end of last week, Ramirez sidelined himself with a fantasy knee injury. The injury just happened to coincide with Manny publicly expressing his frustration over his contract status. Writes Shaughnessy:

The Sox spanked him publicly Friday. For the first time. Outraged he would quit on them at the start of the Yankee series, they let him dangle in the breeze for all the world to see. Convinced he was lying about his right knee, they sent him for an MRI on both knees (in case Manny suddenly tried to claim it was the left knee). Then they made sure we all knew the MRIs were clean - getting word out before the end of the game. Late Friday, the club told him he'd be suspended if he refused to play Saturday - a sanction the Players Association would have grieved and won…

It looks like these are the final days of Manny Ramírez in a Red Sox uniform. He said it himself. Enough is enough. He's tired of us and we're tired of him.

Manny is an enormous irritant – no question. But one of the reasons the Red Sox have been so successful in recent years is they’ve looked to maximize a player’s strengths while overlooking or at least managing his weaknesses. Manny’s style is an affront to every Red Sox fan who thinks a guy who gets paid $20 million a year should care about his job. Not everyone can hustle like Pete Rose did, but for that kind of money the Red Sox should at least get a modicum of professionalism in return.

But don’t look for the Sox to cut off their nose to spite their face. They need Manny’s production if they’re going to win their third title in five years. This will be Manny’s final year in Boston. The Sox won’t spend $20 million next year on an aging slugger/clubhouse headache. But someday from a distance, the Manny Ramirez era will look like a beautiful thing. He may be the biggest pain the neck ever, but he’s also one of the best hitters ever. Sadly, there’s no substitute for talent. Happily, the preceding won’t come as news to the Red sox savvy management team.

Elevating oratory!

As Stephen F. Hayes points out below, over the weekend, John McCain came out in favor of Ward Connerly's Arizona ballot measure, which would end race, sex, and other discriminatory preferences in public education, contracting, and hiring. A well-briefed Barack Obama returned serve: "I think in the past he'd been opposed to these Ward Connerly initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right."

Obama is no doubt right about divisiveness. What he neglects to say is that government preferences themselves--like all spoils systems--are arguably divisive by design. Naturally, the people who benefit from them are going to be unhappy to see them shut down. But larger numbers of people side with Connerly and the McCain of 2008 on the anti-discrimination side of this "divisive" issue than with Obama and the McCain of 1998.

Two years ago in Michigan, when voters passed a ballot measure like the one Arizona voters will decide this fall, the "divide" was 58-42 in favor of the Connerly/McCain position. Indeed, the margin was closer to 70-30 in all-important suburban Macomb County, the constituency fetishized by political pros as a bellwether for swing voters (it went for Gore in 2000 and Bush in 2004).

If this be divisiveness, McCain should make the most of it.

It's summertime. In a normal year that would mean overeager interns from the Ivy League are overrunning offices all along the Northeast corridor. But this is an election year and the Obama campaign is based in Chicago, so these students have spread their wings and ventured to the Midwest. They're sucking down coffee and sucking up space. They're full of ideas and self-regard, which is to say, they're mostly full of crap. Anyone who has worked with such a person -- or has been one -- knows their pathetic little efforts at clamoring for power are mostly benign. I mean, what harm can really be done when your only responsibility is gophering papers and photocopying?

Sources within the Obama campaign are now claiming, however, the Ivy kiddos pose a genuine threat to Obama's coming to be. And not just because everyone finds their Nantucket reds distracting. These students are interfering with operations and costing the campaign actual votes on the ground.

[C]ampaign employees have had it up to their ears with overly ambitious Ivy League volunteers who have been causing problems for the campaign by putting their individual ambitions over the larger goals of the campaign as a movement. This employee and fellow South Side native has shared with me that the campaign is getting a sense that the attitudes of dedicated Ivy League volunteers had, over the course of the primary, given Republicans enough stories to run with the ‘elitist’ trope in the general election.

In Pennsylvania, where the campaign lost big time to Hillary due to pushy Penn students stoking conflict with long-time city activists, the Obama campaign has instituted a training that teaches volunteers how to be sensitive to existing communities. Senator Obama himself feels Ivy League graduates have held sway over Washington too long and even though he attended Harvard and Columbia, if elected, he intends to do very little hiring from the Ivies.

Blaming the entire Ivy League for the actions of the University of Pennsylvania is like blaming all of Los Angeles for Britney Spears. As far as what Obama allegedly told this "South Side native" about White House hiring policies, he should keep in mind the fact that Obama has sought the affirmation of Ivy League folk -- and to become one of them -- even as he struggles with issues of racial identity. How else to explain Obama's decision to transfer to Columbia after two years at Occidental College? Before Obama, Occidental's most famous alum was Ben Affleck, and he didn't graduate either.

John McCain yesterday told George Stephanopolous that he supports the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, a ballot proposition based on the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that will appear before Arizona voters this fall. When Arizona legislators pushed for a similar measure back in 1998, McCain called it "divisive" and, according to news reports at the time, fought behind the scenes to smother it.

McCain has a cluttered history on racial policy, but his comments in 1998 are exceptions to the views he has expressed over most of his career. And with one major exception, a 1998 vote on a highway bill that included rigid quotas, McCain has pretty consistently voted against affirmative action programs that include racial preferences and quotas.

The mainstream media seems focused on McCain’s “reversal” on the ballot initiative. See ABC News here and the Associated Press here. Fair enough, he flip-flopped and they are right to point it out.

What about Barack Obama? The man running as a post-racial candidate is backing racial preference programs that, by their very definition, count Americans by race. He went out of his way to defend these discriminatory practices by cutting a radio ad against a ballot initiative in Michigan – the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative – two years ago. Obama warned that race-neutral policies would “close doors” to advances by minorities.

More troubling, however, is that Obama – the supposed avatar of a new, more civil politics – would be associated with a campaign compared ending racial preferences to the attacks on September 11, 2001.

“If you could have prevented 9/11 from ever happening, would you have?” another radio ad asked. “On November 7th there's a national disaster headed for Michigan, the elimination of affirmative action.”

Is this the new politics Obama has promised? How does he square it with his claim in his stump speeches that “We can’t afford the same politics of fear that invokes 9/11 as a way to scare up votes.”

Six weeks ago, I asked Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs how his candidate squares his very compelling campaign rhetoric this year with his words and the actions of the anti-MCRI campaign in 2006. He promised an answer. Despite follow-ups, I’ve heard nothing.

For more background on McCain, Obama and racial preferences, see here.

Barack Obama returned home to lots of press about his World Tour--but not the press he had hoped for. The candidate has been criticized for canceling his visit to wounded U.S. troops in Landstuhl, Germany. ABC's Jake Tapper says, "The campaign had initially said that Sen. Obama had said he thought it might be inappropriate to visit the troops since the campaign was funding his European swing." Then an Obama adviser said that the Pentagon disapproved of the visit because it was a "campaign event." Then, according to Tapper, "the Pentagon said that wasn't true, that Obama was more than welcome to come, it was just that he couldn't bring the media or campaign staff." What did Obama do? He went to the gym.

The Corner's Kathryn Lopez asks, "Is the world tour a campaign event or a citizen of the world event? If the latter, why couldn't he visit troops in Germany?" Hot Air's Allahpundit explains the mess and concludes that "he and his team have handled this lamely." Drew M. at Ace of Spades adds, "Obama almost made it through his World Tour without screwing up but he couldn't quite do it and even the MSM has followed up on the troop visit story."

The McCain camp responded with this ad:

Time's Mark Halperin calls it McCain's "toughest attack ad yet." At Contentions, Jennifer Rubin says, "The McCain camp successfully introduced two story lines: Obama snubbed the troops and he has too many excuses." Although Obama supporters like Chris Bodenner at Andrew Sullivan's blog say the ad is "nasty, petty, and desperate," Hot Air's Ed Morrissey counters that this "is very much fair game for McCain to highlight--and for voters to consider. Obama gave an demonstration of his priorities, and thanks to his media entourage, the nation saw it."

Power Line's John Hinderaker concludes, "Brutal. In the end, this character-revealing blunder may be the only thing voters remember about Obama's international excursion."

This week in Washington, House Republicans will try to produce a little political heat from rising energy prices. They will attempt to block Congress from adjourning for its summer recess if Democrats don’t allow an up or down vote on the GOP energy plan, which includes expanded drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). House procedures -- which heavily favor the majority party -- will allow the Democrats to thwart those efforts, but Republicans can claim the issue: Congress will leave town without an up or down vote on expanded OCS drilling. Republicans hope movement in public opinion in favor of offshore drilling, spurred by record gasoline prices, will produce a new and effective line of political attack.

The GOP hypothesis draws some support in at least one Senate race. Former Republican Congressman Bob Schaffer has made progress in his contest against U.S. Rep. Mark Udall in Colorado, according to the most recent polling. What accounts for the GOP’s recent improvement? It’s gasoline prices – and more specifically, the stark differences between the two candidates on drilling policies. Voters apparently now see a much clearer connection between extreme environmental policies – like banning all offshore drilling – and pain at the pump. The last two independent polls show the race moving from about a 10-point Udall advantage to a near dead heat.

The Rasmussen numbers show a particularly strong shift among swing voters: “Among unaffiliated voters, Udall leads by just four percentage points. A month ago, he held a twenty-one point lead among these voters." You can read the full Rasmussen Colorado poll report here.

This piece in today’s Washington Times underscores how Republican Schaffer has transformed his support for drilling from a political liability to an electoral asset.

Record gasoline prices linked with what House Republican leader John Boehner calls the “Drill Nothing Congress” could fuel the political engines of many Republican congressional candidates this fall.

The Obama campaign is not just spending thousands on coffee. It's also racked up a fairly sizable bill for wine and assorted booze. In total, the Obama campaign has charged over $6,100 at Sam's Wine and Spirits in Chicago. And the luxuries don't stop there. They spent nearly $2,800 on 14 meals at an Italian restaurant in Des Moines, Iowa, each averaging close to $200. The Obama campaign spent another $2,200 on three meals at Smith & Wollensky in Chicago. They even spent $149 on a single meal at the uber-posh Stone Lotus, which calls itself a liquor spa. These kind of charges may not be unheard of on Wall Street and at New York City law firms, but they are unheard of on campaigns.

The Obama campaign makes a fuss about the percentage of contributions it receives in the form of small donations of $50 or less. It paints the picture of a donor base that is engaged in politics for the first time, of people just barely making ends meet -- but who believe in Obama's message so desperately that they're willing to make a sacrifice in contributing to his campaign. If Obama staffers actually believe this narrative, you would think it would instill a sense of modesty in their expenditures. Sure, they would spend every penny they can to ensure their guy is elected, but they wouldn't indulge their every whim. No matter how much of it their campaign raised, they would dispense with luxuries -- perhaps even red wine.

Would a donor who had to sacrifice to support Obama be happy knowing that his money was used to buy triple soy lattes at $5 a pop? And what opinion should one have about the staff of the people's candidate if that staff demands top shelf accommodations? How would these same people steward the country through its economic challenges? Obama's staff acts as if they're already in the White House. Well, they should know that it would be illegal for them to accept such meals if they were already there.

Brian Williams held an interview with Mahmoud Ahmadenijad that you’ll be able to see on NBC tonight. The following exchange will likely make the most news:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Is Iran's goal to have nuclear power or to be a nuclear power?

Pres. AHMADINEJAD: (Through translator) We are not working to manufacture a bomb. We don't believe in a nuclear bomb. We also think it will not effect political relations. The Zionist regime which you refer to earlier has an arsenal of hundreds of nuclear warheads. Has this arsenal helped the zionists to prevail inside the conflict inside Lebanon? No.

Again, did nuclear arms help the Soviet Union from falling and disintegrating. For that matter, did a nuclear bomb help the U.S. to prevail inside Iraq or Afghanistan, for that matter. Nuclear bombs belong to the 20th century. We are living in a new century. We think that things to nuclear issue, an inappropriate measure or action was taken. Nuclear energy must not be equaled to a nuclear bomb.

Phew! For a while there, I feared that Ahmadenijad and his regime were downright belligerent. Now I see that they view nuclear weapons as just soooo 20th century. Then again, with a regime that worships the mores of the 7th century, perhaps something purportedly belonging to an era that passed a mere nine years ago still has a little shelf life left in it.

Gen. Petraeus doesn't think it's time to declare victory:

"We occasionally have commanders who have so many good weeks, (they think) it's won. We've got this thing. Well we don't. We've had so many good weeks. Right now, for example we've had two-and-a-half months of levels of violence not since March 2004," he said from his office at Camp Victory.

"Well that's encouraging. It's heartening. It's very welcome. But let's keep our powder dry. . . .Let's not let our guard down."

HT: Allahpundit
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It was a very smiley version of the Sunday news shows.

Barack Obama appeared on Meet the Press, and John McCain popped up on This Week. And both of them smiled a lot. Perhaps McCain’s aides thought he had been coming through as too cranky and that the best way to counter to such an impression would be to smile frequently. To still further humanize the GOP nominee, the McCain house pets invaded the set mid-interview. What a crazy, unplanned and completely spontaneous accident! Unfortunately, the senator didn’t leverage the incident and failed to show his dogs any love. Opportunity missed.

Obama had his own reasons for smiling. As he has positioned himself ever more frequently as a savior responsible for nothing less than mankind’s redemption, Obama has become an increasingly grim and dour figure. What’s more, after Friday’s explosive People Magazine revelation that he denies his children both birthday and Christmas presents, it was necessary for Obama to show a human side. So he sat across Tom Brokaw for almost the entire hour, frequently grinning and occasionally laughing. He even tried his hand at a lame joke or two, quipping after Brokaw mentioned his recent travel itinerary, “It makes me, makes me tired just listening to you read it.” Ha! Haven’t I been telling you this guy is almost as funny as Dukakis?

How’d they do for substance? Generally speaking it was a big nothing-burger from both candidates. Still, the more engaging Obama had a pretty good go of it, while McCain had a couple of cringe-inducing moments. McCain’s embarrassing fumbles on gay adoption and his insistence that Wall Street is “the villain” in the subprime crisis likely put conservative teeth on edge. His further expressed willingness to have payroll tax increases “on the table” as a potential means of “saving” social security also likely failed to thrill his base. Nevertheless, McCain’s populist streak is nothing new and will probably be an asset in the general election if he uses it.

As for Obama, the only interesting thing of substance that came through during his lengthy appearance with Brokaw was his suffocating self-regard. Did he learn anything new on his trip? Of course not. But when you’re blessed with other-worldly intelligence not to mention super-human judgment, learning new stuff is virtually impossible.

On Fox News Sunday, Claire McCaskill and John Thune gamely recited campaign talking points that had grown moldy weeks ago. Zzzzzzz. Both surrogates acquitted themselves well given the thanklessness of the task. Karl Rove then came on and offered some predictions/analyses about the election. I forget what they were, but seem to recall thinking they were interesting. When the panel convened, our own Bill Kristol went out on a limb and made a truly bold prediction – Barack Obama will name his running mate next Monday at 11:00 a.m. Virginia governor Tim Kaine (who has been Obama’s most impressive surrogate if you ask me) will get the honors.

On Face the Nation…well, I didn’t watch Face the Nation. I have a life, you know. Even though I didn’t watch it, I think we’re safe in assuming that the show continued it’s long running tradition of avoiding anything remotely interesting, thought provoking or newsworthy.

Obama never explains--perhaps he was never asked--why he just didn't choose to leave his advisers on the plane while he visited with wounded U.S. troops:

You know, the staff was working this, so I don't know each and every detail. But here's what I understand happened. We had scheduled to go. We had no problem at all in leaving -- we always leave press and staff out. [...]

I was going to be accompanied by one of my advisers, a former military officer, and we got notice that he would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy, but he wasn't on the senate staff. That triggered, then, a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political.

Watch it:

The McCain campaign hits Obama with a statement from retired Lt. Colonel Joe Repya:

The most solemn duty of a commander in chief is to fulfill his responsibility to the men and women who serve this country in uniform. Barack Obama had scheduled a visit with wounded American troops who have served with honor and distinction in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he broke that commitment, instead flitting from one European capital to the next. Several explanations were offered, none was convincing and each was at odds with the statements of American military leaders in Germany and Washington. For a young man so apt at playing president, Barack Obama badly misjudged the important demands of the office he seeks. Visits with world leaders and speeches to cheering Europeans shouldn't be a substitute for comforting injured American heroes.

John Dickerson writes that Barack Obama's stubbornness is strikingly similar to that of George Bush:

Barack Obama's trip to Iraq was so presidential that at moments, he sounded like our current White House resident. When Karen Tumulty of Time asked Obama what he'd learned on his trip, he said, "It confirmed a lot of my beliefs." Lara Logan of CBS asked him if he was ever in doubt that he could lead the country in war as commander in chief, and he answered, "Never."

Of course the comparison isn't entirely fair. Eventually Bush did have the presence of mind and the courage to change strategy. But Obama looks more and more like a broken clock with each day that passes:

Before Obama flew to Baghdad, I asked his top foreign-policy adviser, Susan Rice, what kinds of questions he'd asked of his advisers over the months to test whether his Iraq withdrawal plan still matched the realities on the ground in Iraq. Rice gave me no examples. And now that the trip is over, we have no better sense of how Sen. Obama thinks about Iraq. It's not that I expect grand revelations. But Obama still holds the same policy views he did more than a year and a half ago, even though a lot has changed since then in Iraq, and a lot of those events appear to contradict his earlier views. We know that Obama hasn't moved, but we don't know, really, why that's so. [...]

Obama's take on the surge also tells us how he processes information about Iraq. This has direct bearing on how he shapes his policy for the country today. The same choices are in play—will military tactics or withdrawal get the Iraqis to make political progress? If Obama was wrong about the tactical gains that would be made by the new strategy and wrong about how the Iraqi political leaders would react, can his larger theory about how Iraqis will respond to a troop pullout remain intact? Perhaps, but he has the burden of explanation. Does he elide contradictions, claim they're irrelevant, and generally spin? In his interview with NBC's Brian Williams, he suggested that he'd always said the surge would decrease violence in Iraq. That's not just spin. It's not true. At the time Bush announced the surge, Obama said: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

In case you missed it, Gerard Baker's column today is a must-read:

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?"

Update: What's better than reading Baker's column? Listening to him read it:

A new Wall Street Journal poll finds that John McCain trails Barack Obama by six percentage points in a head-to-head match up. But when Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are thrown into the mix, Obama opens up a 13-point lead:

In a head-to-head match up between Barack Obama and John McCain in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Obama is holding steady with a 47%-41% advantage. But what happens when Ralph Nader is thrown in the mix?

Obama’s lead is strengthened to 48%-35%, with Nader nabbing 5% and Libertarian candidate Bob Barr registering at 2%. Still, WSJ pollsters caution that those numbers may not be as shocking as they first appear...

“If all [voters] want to do is vote against Obama…then maybe Nader is just as good a vehicle as McCain,” Newhouse reasoned. “The anti-Obama vote is camping with John McCain now, but given other alternatives there’s a chance they could go somewhere else.”

Hart agreed. “It’s not about these other candidates,” he said of Nader and Barr, “All it is, is an indication that Barack Obama holds onto his vote while the McCain vote is the one most likely to move.” Hart also voiced skepticism that Nader’s support was anywhere near as strong as the poll indicates. “Ralph Nader always looks good before people get ready to vote,” he said, it’s "'Oh yeah, I know the name,’…but when they get down to it…they are going to be moving away from Nader as they have before.”

Pentagon officials tell NBC

the problem was that Obama's request to visit Landstuhl included two members of his campaign staff -- retired Major General Jonathan S. Gration and Jeff Kiernan. US military officials in Germany informed the campaign the two political operatives would not be permitted on base.

Pentagon officials say Gration was the campaign's point of contact at Landstuhl in arranging Obama's visit and "got torqued" when he was told he would not be permitted to join Obama. It was Gration who later suggested to reporters that the Pentagon short-circuited Obama's visit.

Jim Geraghty wrote yesterday: "A very interesting email from a source I must protect suggests that Obama's visit to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center had the green light until a campaign staffer raised a stink about going with Obama."

And today Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs strongly hinted that Gration's exclusion was what led to the campaign's last-minute decision to scrap the visit.

"Based on the information that we received from the Pentagon," Gibbs said, "anybody on the staff that was related to the campaign including General Gration a two start [sic] general" would not be allowed to go to Landstuhl.

So it seems likely that Obama's choice was very simple: He could have left behind Gration and visited wounded troops or cancel his visit so as not to offend the general's ego.

I know. Barack Obama inspired you yesterday. And yet you’re frustrated. You too long to be a “citizen of the world.” But you feel stymied. You’re asking yourself, “How do I go about such a thing?” Well, I’m here to help.

If you click here, you will be directed to a website that will allow you to register as a “World Citizen.” But don’t do so lightly, for the responsibilities that weigh on a World Citizen are consequential. According to the website:

A World Citizen is a human being who lives intellectually, morally and physically in the present. A World Citizen accepts the dynamic fact that the planetary human community is interdependent and whole, that humankind is essentially one. A World Citizen is a peaceful and peacemaking individual, both in daily life and contacts with others. As a global person, a World Citizen relates directly to humankind and to all fellow humans spontaneously, generously and openly. Mutual trust is basic to his/her lifestyle. Politically, a World Citizen accepts a sanctioning institution of representative government, expressing the general and individual sovereign will in order to establish and maintain a system of just and equitable world law with appropriate legislative, judiciary and enforcement bodies. A World Citizen brings about better understanding and protection of different cultures, ethnic groups and language communities by promoting the use of a neutral international language, such as Esperanto. A World Citizen makes this world a better place to live in harmoniously by studying and respecting the viewpoints of fellow citizens from anywhere in the world.

To each his own, but to me quite frankly it all sounds like too much work. Living “intellectually, morally and physically in the present?” Blech! Especially to the last part. If I get the opportunity to time travel, I would feel pretty stupid if my World Citizen status prevented me from doing so. And don’t even get me started on promoting Esperanto.

Oh, by the way – sadly enough, this isn’t a joke. And bring your credit card. Becoming a World Citizen will set you back 65 smackers. And that amount doesn't include any expenses you'll incur promoting Esperanto.

1) From the New York Times, “Playing Innocent Abroad” by David Brooks

Brooks takes a savage scalpel to Barack Obama’s soon-to-be- infamous Ich bin ein Weltburger speech. ("Weltburger" means “citizen of the world,” by the way.)

Obama speeches almost always have the same narrative arc. Some problem threatens. The odds are against the forces of righteousness. But then people of good faith unite and walls come tumbling down. Obama used the word “walls” 16 times in the Berlin speech, and in 11 of those cases, he was talking about walls coming down.
The Berlin blockade was thwarted because people came together. Apartheid ended because people came together and walls tumbled. Winning the cold war was the same: “People of the world,” Obama declared, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together and history proved there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

When I first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially American campaign.

But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more.

Here’s the big problem with the “citizen of the world” claim as well as the rest of the speech – it sells America’s sacrifices short, and it completely denies American exceptionalism. It’s a lovely sentiment for Obama to insist in regards to the Berlin Airlift that “Berlin kept the flame of hope burning” and then praise Berlin’s then-mayor for offering some rhetoric that inspired the world. It comes as little surprise that the hero of Obama’s little drama would be the verbally adept Mayor - we all know that Obama prefers focusing on the rhetorical side of things rather than on the actions that made a difference. I can even understand how it’s in the interest of trans-Atlantic relations to pretend that the Germans and Americans were co-equals in that particular episode.

But we weren’t, and it's interesting to note how Obama's frequent forays into rewriting history seldom accrue to America's greater glory. America did the heavy lifting during the Berlin airlift; Germany was the beneficiary of said heavy lifting. And when the talk turns to the Berlin Wall coming down, again it was America that led. While Ronald Reagan was implementing the policies that led to the Berlin Wall’s destruction, he and his policies were about as popular in West Germany as the Ebola virus. Or George W. Bush. Of course, things remain the same today. America bears the brunt of fighting the war on terror, while most of our Continental allies content themselves with carping about the means by which we do so.

Mind you, I’m not complaining about our Continental allies. As Donald Rumsfeld might say, they are what they are. It’s America’s duty to lead in every necessary fight simply because no other nation is willing or able to pick up the burden. It’s been that way for almost a century. When Obama somberly mentioned to his German audience the problems in Darfur and Burma, he surely knew that nothing good would happen in either place unless America opts to bear still more burdens. If he doesn’t know that much, then even I’ve underestimated his historical ignorance.

It’s a decided oddity that a guy who seeks the U.S. presidency is so reluctant to salute America’s greatness. It’s odder still that on foreign shores he granted his so-called global citizenship co-equal or perhaps superior status to his American citizenship. Then again, given the scant regard he’s willing to express for America’s accomplishments, I guess it all makes a sort of sense.

2) From The Daily Dish, “Citizen of the World” by Patrick Appel

While Andrew Sullivan is on vacation, his roster of guest-bloggers are gamely attempting to dig Barack Obama out of his “citizen of the world” mess. Patrick Appel ventures into unintentional hilarity by running a letter that purports to show presidents have long used the phrase:

John F. Kennedy used the same phrase in his famous inaugural address in referring to his global audience. I also did a one minute Google search – and I’m sure I could find more if I did a 15-minute Google search – and discovered that President George H.W. Bush used the exact phrase “citizen of the world” in presenting the national medal of the arts to Vladimir Horowitz, the legendary Russian-born pianist who became a US citizen in 1940.

So let’s see – Kennedy referred to his global audience as “citizens of the world” and Bush 41 called a Russian born pianist a “citizen of the world.” Is it possible to distinguish those two events from a presidential aspirant declaring himself a “citizen of the world” (or a weltburger as one would say in German)? Apparently for Obama supporters, the answer is no they can’t.

Know obtuseness!

3) From the Politico, “Obama Leaves the Gifting to Santa” by Mike Allen

Remember long ago when the Obama candidacy seemed like fun? Remember when Barack Obama brought a certain joy to the campaign trail that even conservatives couldn’t deny? Those days are long past. We’ve long since discovered that Obama is about as much fun as a more dour Michael Dukakis. Today brings the most disturbing indication yet that an Obama presidency will be about as much fun as passing a kidney stone:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) tells People magazine in the issue out Friday that he and his wife, Michelle, do not give Christmas or birthday presents to their two young daughters.

Obama tells the magazine’s Sandra Sobieraj Westfall in a seven-page cover story that he and his wife follow the unusual practice because they “want to teach some limits.”

No Christmas presents? What’s next? A Skinnerian box? For the entire nation?

4) From New Criterion, “Not Without a Fight” by Stanley Kurtz

This is a long story, but you owe it to yourself to read the whole thing. It’s especially relevant in light of all the global harmony gobbledygook that’s been floating around the past couple of days. Kurtz documents how England’s libel laws have triggered book burnings right out of the pages of a Bradbury novel. The books being burned? Those that have the audacity to look into Islamic terror funding:

It's been less than a year since the phenomenon of "libel tourism" first broke into public consciousness in the United States. On August 10, 2007, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Britain's Cambridge University Press had agreed to pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World.

In several passages, embedded in a much broader study, Alms for Jihad suggests that businesses and charities associated with one of the world's richest men, the Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, helped to finance terrorism during the 1990s. Bin Mahfouz's threat of a libel suit in Britain was sufficient to extract from Cambridge University Press not only an agreement to pulp the book, but also a public apology, payment of substantial damages, legal fees, and a pledge to contact libraries worldwide with a request that they remove Alms for Jihad from their shelves.

In the face of this legal challenge, Alms for Jihad's American authors, the academic historian Robert O. Collins and J. Millard Burr, a retired employee of the U.S. State Department, stood by their work, offered evidence in support of their book's assertions to Cambridge, and refused to join in the press's apology. Indeed the manuscript of Alms for Jihad had been vetted and approved by Cambridge's in-house lawyers prior to publication. Yet the mere threat of a suit in a British court was enough to push this publisher to abandon Alms for Jihad without a fight.

Kurtz goes on to explore in some depth the different cultures of different Western nations and how those cultures affect the global war on terror. It’s must reading for all of us, but especially so for naïve politicians who seem unable to recognize the differences that exist between different countries.

5) From the Wall Street Journal, “Obama Urges Iran to Accept EU Nuclear-Weapons Proposal” by some stringer for the AP

Behold! Tough, principled diplomacy! The fierceness of Obama will surely bring results. The mullahs are on notice. They have officially been urged!

We can all heave a sigh of relief. The Iranian nuke crisis is all but over.

Obama's professional spinmeister Robert Gibbs maintains that the campaign "learned from the Pentagon that the trip to Ramstein and Landstuhl will be viewed as a campaign stop".

But First Read reports that the Pentagon says they never discouraged Obama's visit:

Did the Pentagon discourage Obama from visiting Landstuhl? "No," says Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman.

Did the Pentagon tell Senator Obama that it was inappropriate for him to visit because he is on a campaign trip? "No. That's inaccurate," Whitman said.

Was Obama's Senate office told that he and his Senate staff could visit the facility? "Absolutely."

"As a sitting United States senator, Obama obviously has an official interest in the well being of our service members and how the wounded are being treated," Whitman said, adding:"He is welcome to visit a military medical center any time that he wants to. As you all know, we do have certain policy guidelines for political campaigns and elections and what is appropriate and what's not appropriate in those situations," Whitman said. "The Pentagon did not tell the senator that he could not visit Landstuhl."

"If you are both a sitting senator and a political candidate when you are doing things like a visit to Landstuhl, you need to do it in your capacity as a sitting senator or you have to do it with the restrictions that apply," Whitman added.

Follow the money, writes William Tate:

An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans.

Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.

And the International Herald Tribune reports

The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.

While the disparity in coverage of Obama and McCain is revealing, the quality of news coverage is much more important. And the media are all too often willing to give Obama a pass on his distortions.

For example, last night Barack Obama said on NBC: "What I said even at the time of the debate of the surge was that when you put 30,000 American troops on the ground, of course it's going to have an impact. There's no doubt about that."

That's not true. In January 2007, Obama said that the surge would not reduce the level of violence (see the YouTube video below). But Brian Williams never called Obama out on this lie.

Hat Tips: Swampland and Powerline

Republican political strategists worry that a weak economy will hurt John McCain this November. This fear makes intuitive sense, but is there any data to back it up? My favorite blog written by academics recently addressed this question. University of Houston professor Noah Kaplan notes some interesting data from a Time magazine poll conducted in late June suggesting voters blame the incumbent White House party less than you might think.

The survey asked which candidate--Obama or McCain--would do a better job handling the economy. The results show the candidates virtually tied among all voters--42 percent said Obama; 39 percent said McCain. The same holds true with “swing voters”--33 percent said McCain would do a better job while 31 percent Obama would.

Next the poll asked voters if they thought McCain would be largely independent of President Bush or continue his economic policies. The results were split among all voters while 50 percent of “swing voters” said McCain would be indepdent and 37 percent said he would continue Bush’s policies.

Kaplan concludes with this--including just a wee bit of pro-Obama tilt:

The above breakdown suggests that McCain is less burdened by Bush’s economic record than might be anticipated; Obama is going to have a difficult time “tarring” McCain with the economic failures of the Bush administration. To the extent that the election is about the economy, Obama needs to be seen as the superior manager. But the public will not assume this based upon the current administration’s failures alone. Obama needs to be proactive and emphasize an economic program that is seen as a credible alternative to that offered by McCain and the Republicans. Otherwise, McCain has a real chance of winning the swing voters.

McCain should also highlight the role of the Democrats in Congress when it comes to economic stagnation. The majority party supports the largest tax increase in history in its current budget. That can’t help them among voters who want economic growth.

First Read reports:

One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama's representatives were told, "he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers." In addition, "Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama's visit."

The official said "We didn't know why" the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. "He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him."

Ed Morrissey writes that "those same rules applied for the CODEL trip to Iraq and Afghanistan."

The Obama campaign's line that he couldn't visit troops on a leg of the trip "funded by the campaign" is ludicrous.

Obama could have left the press and his campaign staff behind for a few hours while he visited wounded troops. But instead the senator and Democratic presidential nominee chose to leave the troops behind while he enjoyed a "celebratory vodka martini" with the press corps.

The latest report on Obama's missing thesis comes from MSNBC. Written his senior year at Columbia University, Obama's thesis was about Soviet nuclear disarmament. It's only natural to wonder what the budding socialist turned presidential candidate thought of nuclear proliferation in the early 1980s.

The Obama campaign, proving every bit as secretive as the Office of the Vice President, has been less than forthcoming with details. "Spokesman Ben LaBolt wouldn’t even say whether Sen. Obama threw out his copy or lost it." At an earlier date, an aide actually told the New Republic the junior senator couldn't recall what he had written about, but as that editor notes, "who doesn't remember their senior thesis?" To get the inside scoop, MSNBC contacted the former professor who taught Obama's senior seminar and who recalls the content of the paper better than Obama himself.

His former professor, Michael Baron, recalled in an interview with NBC News that Obama easily aced the year-long class. Baron described the paper as a “thesis” or “senior thesis” in several interviews, and said that Obama spent a year working on it. Baron recalls that the topic was nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.

“My recollection is that the paper was an analysis of the evolution of the arms reduction negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States,” Baron said in an e-mail. “At that time, a hot topic in foreign policy circles was finding a way in which each country could safely reduce the large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at the other … For U.S. policy makers in both political parties, the aim was not disarmament, but achieving deep reductions in the Soviet nuclear arsenal and keeping a substantial and permanent American advantage. As I remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A.”

What MSNBC doesn't report is that Baron, or at least a Michael Baron who also happens to run an electronics company in Florida, has given $1,250 to Obama. Maybe if the Obama campaign would release the thesis and Obama's college transcript like a normal presidential campaign, we could all decide for ourselves whether Obama deserves an A.

Obama canceled a planned visit with U.S. troops in Germany because, his spokesman said, it would be "inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign."

But after a July 2 campaign event in Colorado, "Obama later paid a private visit to the U.S. Air Force Academy and Peterson Air Force Base and raised money for his campaign at a $1,000-per-person event at a luxury hotel."

That trip to Colorado was certainly "funded by the campaign". So how was that visit okay if visiting troops in Germany is "inappropriate"?

Iranian representatives said today that their country is done cooperating with UN investigators looking into its nuclear program. If past is prologue, the State Department is scrambling to determine what more the U.S. can give to the Islamic Republic.

Passionate Obama supporter Meteor Blades titled his Daily Kos essay on today’s colossal failure of a speech, “By This Foreign Policy Speech Will Future Ones Be Measured.” Fair enough – that’s why they make paint in different colors. In spite of mine and Mr. Blades’s disagreement on the speech’s merits, I still found this passage noteworthy:

I have in the past four decades often found myself at odds with American foreign policy, so much so that I went to prison to oppose it. And knowing history, including the history of my own Indian people, I have reasons enough to be jaded about much that the U.S. has done in the world in the far and near past and recently. I am not very forgiving of those who shaped many of those policies, vicious and hypocritical and resting as they did on a rubric of pernicious American exceptionalism.

Not, of course, that everything the U.S. has done on the world stage has been evil.

I think we’ve finally found the audience for whom this speech was intended!

1) From Barack Obama.com, “A Magical Cure for All Insomniacs” by Barack Obama

Greetings, fellow citizens of the world! If you’re like me and suffer from insomnia, you’ll want to keep the link to Obama’s speech in Germany today handy. Free yourself from Ambien! The speech was so dull, even Obama seemed like he was going to nod off half way through it.

My opinion? Believe me, this comes from the heart - I thought the speech was a giant failure. Obama loaded the speech with banal clichés in the hope that it would be a giant nothing-burger, and yet he still failed. To him, referring to oneself as a “citizen of the word” may sound like the kind of meaningless lofty language that he specializes in. But “citizen of the world” is actually a pretty freighted term given the context that this particular citizen of the world wants to be President of the United States.

Perhaps Obama’s ego has grown so large that he figures one country, even the world’s lone superpower, is no longer worthy of his leadership. A quick prediction – “the citizen of the world” mess-up will be one of the issues that frames the rest of the election.

2) From OpinionJournal.com, “Genocide Flip-Flop” by James Taranto

While enduring an interminable wait for a flight at Washington DC’s Dulles Airport, I was struck by the following passage in Ron Chernow’s magnificent biography of Alexander Hamilton:

Let us pause briefly to tally the grim catalog of disasters that had befallen (Hamilton and his brother) between 1765 and 1769: their father had vanished, their mother had died, their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle and grandmother had all died. James, sixteen, and Alexander, fourteen, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless…Such repeated shocks must have stripped Alexander Hamilton of any sense that life was fair, that he existed in a benign universe, or that he could ever count on help from anyone.

Alexander Hamilton was neither the first nor the last great man whose greatness was partly forged by absorbing at a bone deep level the basic principle that life is unfair. The longtime beau ideal of youthful and inspiring leadership, John F. Kennedy himself, famously joked about life’s unfairness during a presidential press conference. Kennedy knew of whence he spoke.

A bone-deep knowledge of life’s unfairness tends to hasten the acknowledgement of life’s unpleasant realities. Being unfair, life often presents us with no-win situations where no course of action is entirely satisfactory. Choosing the lesser of multiple evils is a regular necessity for all but the most fortunate of us. A way out of tough situations is usually impossible. Most often, a way through is the best that we can manage.

All of this requires a sort of hardheadedness. If one clings to fantasies about life’s inherent fairness or in fact has led a life that has allowed the reasonable inference that life is in fact fair, then there’s a good chance that hardheadedness will be lacking.

Which brings us to our presidential candidates. Barack Obama has gone to great efforts to stress his humble origins. As is often the case with Obama, methinks the Messiah doth protest too much. If you read Obama’s autobiography “Dreams From My Father” (and please note it’s “From,” not “Of” – all these lefties who claim to have read the book but can’t even manage to get the title right cast their credibility into doubt), you’ll see that Obama’s claims to hardship seem a little trumped up. Yes, his father was absent and his mother a bit eccentric, but he grew up surrounded by people who loved him. It’s true Obama grew up middle class, but he was comfortably middle class. While he relentlessly harps on the purported financial hardships he bore as a youth, they didn’t prevent him from attending Hawaii’s finest and most exclusive prep school.

Obama’s adult life has also been devoid of misfortune. He has enjoyed financial comfort his entire adult life in spite of not having a real job or making any real money until he was 13 years out of law school. He can thank his wife for his material comfort. Apparently there have been no health challenges.

Professionally, Obama steadily declined to test himself and experience potential adversity. While most of his Harvard Law classmates entered the maw of big law firm life knowing they would either thrive or fail, Obama shrunk back in relative safety, organizing communities, teaching a con-law class, writing a book and generally living the life of a dilettante intellectual.

In the past 48 hours, Obama and his campaign have been stung by the suggestion that he doesn’t oppose genocide. Actually, that’s how Obama surrogate Keith Olbermann framed the issue last night on his MSNBC (whatever that may be) broadcast last night. Of course, no one is saying that Barack Obama opposes genocide as a philosophical matter. I’m sure if the topic came up at a Hyde Park cocktail party, Obama, William Ayers, Bernadette Dohrn and Jeremiah Wright all would agree that genocide is a very, very bad thing. Then they would probably crack open a bottle of Grgich Hills Chardonnay and dine on Ayers’ famous Lemon Tarragon Bell & Evans chicken which they would enjoy almost as much as their sense of moral superiority.

I’m sure the Sunnis in Iraq who would perhaps be confronting a potential genocide right now if Barack Obama’s plan for a 16 month withdrawal had taken effect in 2007 would find the spiritual kinship of the Hyde Park gang a tremendous comfort. But as a leader rather than a Hyde Park intellectual, Obama’s opposition to genocide, in order to have any real meaning, will have to be attached to action.

And this is where the hardheadedness comes in. To prevent a potential genocide in 2007 required American resolve. It also required leaders who were willing to commit American blood and treasure to doing so. Barack Obama, then a prominent senator and candidate for president, was willing to make no such commitments. He explicitly said at that time that genocide would not be reason enough to maintain an American military presence in Iraq. For special fans of Keith Olberman related ironies, MSNBC’s website reported these Obama comments.

Yesterday, Obama engaged in perhaps the cheesiest moment in modern campaigning memory by using Israel’s Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, as a backdrop for a photo-op that would visually illustrate his seriousness and gravitas. During this visit to Yad Vashem, Obama predictably said “Never again” – not quite an original sentiment, but still a welcome one. And on his website two weeks ago, he semi-reversed his position on genocide, saying that as POTUS he would reserve the right to arrest his sudden withdrawal from Iraq to stop a genocide. Of course, the statement included the linguistic gymnastics we’ve come to expect from Barack Obama – he didn’t say he would do whatever was necessary to halt the genocide. He didn’t even say he would do anything necessary to halt the genocide. He just said he reserved the right to do so. He also added the annoying caveat that he would do so while working with our international partners.

There are two Barack Obamas – the one who offers beautiful words and the one who prescribes scant actions. And the words without action or at least the credible promise of action mean nothing. “Never again” is a nice thing to say, but attaching real meaning to the words requires a certain resolve. Saving the situation in Iraq and preventing a potential genocide required an embrace of a Hobson’s Choice.

We’ve certainly learned one thing about Barack Obama during this campaign – he’s wrestled the art of saying nice words down to a science. But when the same guy who said he wouldn’t intervene to stop a genocide in Iraq a year later pops into Yad Vashem and says “Never again,” you have to take pause. And you have to wonder whether those words are anything more than hollow platitudes meant to more reflect his own sense of moral superiority rather than any actions he might take as president.

3) From the Wall Street Journal, “The Fannie Mae Gang” by Paul Gigot

Gigot and his editorial page have been harping about the dangers of Fannie Mae and her ne’er do well sibling Freddie Mac for the better part of a decade. Events have sadly proven Gigot prescient. In spite of the predictability of Fannie's woes, the thuggish ways of Fannie as well as her congressional and media allies still surprise:

Angelo Mozilo was in one of his Napoleonic moods. It was October 2003, and the CEO of Countrywide Financial was berating me for The Wall Street Journal's editorials raising doubts about the accounting of Fannie Mae. I had just been introduced to him by Franklin Raines, then the CEO of Fannie, whom I had run into by chance at a reception hosted by the Business Council, the CEO group that had invited me to moderate a couple of panels.

Mr. Mozilo loudly declared that I didn't know what I was talking about, that I didn't understand accounting or the mortgage markets, and that I was in the pocket of Fannie's competitors, among other insults. Mr. Raines, always smoother than Mr. Mozilo, politely intervened to avoid an extended argument, and Countrywide's bantam rooster strutted off.

I've thought about that episode more than once recently amid the meltdown and government rescue of Fannie and its sibling, Freddie Mac. Trying to defend the mortgage giants, Paul Krugman of the New York Times recently wrote, "What you need to know here is that the right -- the WSJ editorial page, Heritage, etc. -- hates, hates, hates Fannie and Freddie. Why? Because they don't want quasi-public entities competing with Angelo Mozilo."

That's a howler even by Mr. Krugman's standards.

Today brings the news that you the taxpayer will be footing the bill for Fannie and Freddie’s pratfalls. Know frustration.

4) From HotAir.com, “Christ Appears in Berlin, Uses Lots of ‘Wall’ Metaphors” by the Allahpundit

As a public service, Allah has gathered some of Obama’s banalities into one omnibus blog-posting. Know clichés!

As prepared for delivery in the capital city of an enemy that couldn’t be negotiated with, behold the text of what I’m calling the greatest speech since whatever the last Obama speech was that the media declared was the greatest speech ever. As Hitchens once said about the since partly retracted Great Peroration on Race, for a supposed rhetorical genius, Barry never actually delivers any memorable lines, does he? It’s the circumstances of his speeches that make them “memorable.” The best he can do by way of takeaways is Zen pap like “Yes, we can” or “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” or today’s latest mindless positive affirmation, “This is our moment, this is our time.” Here’s my own favorite line, seemingly plucked from one of Jerry Springer’s concluding Thought for the Day segments:

“True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice.”

How true that is. But perhaps not as true as:

“The road ahead will be long.”

5) From Daily Kos, “Ich Bin Ein Liveblog” by BarbinMD

Forget Dr. Barbin’s brief comments. Skip down to the comments and sample the madness! Says Kos Kid “Observer,” “Our future president presenting himself to the world. A man of courage, intelligence and vision. Wow!”

Believe it or not, “Observer” was in the minority. Most of the Kos community recognized the stupidity of this particular gambit. Said Jack Dublin, “This speech will not win him the election. He has to be very careful. If he appears to be attacking the U.S. at all, he is in for trouble at home. I'm not saying it is right, but that is the state of U.S. ‘gotcha’ politics… He is boarding (sic?) on that now.”

“The Bagof Health and Politics” (if that's his real name) amplified Mr. Dublin’s concerns: “This was a bad idea. I'd be all happy about it--if it were happening the second week of November and Barack was the President-elect, but there is something wrong with this in the middle of the election. It's over-anxious and getting out way too far ahead of ourselves."

Yes folks, it’s true. The kids at the Daily Kos are shrewder than the people running the Obama campaign.

Barack Obama in March 2006: I speak “Indonesian and a little Spanish.”

Obama on July 8, 2008: "It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup."

Obama on July 11, 2008: "I don’t speak a foreign language. It’s embarrassing!"

Obama today: "My German is not real good [...] I can speak Bahasi Indonesian but I don't think...there would be a lot of appeal to that."

This morning Marc Ambinder reported that Barack Obama is already making plans for his presidential transition team, and this afternoon McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said that Obama's speech was a "premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin".

Perhaps the "Victory Column" in Berlin was a particularly ominous venue choice for Obama. In 1999 Tiergarten's mayor told Wired magazine how the fourth ring of the Victory Column was dedicated to a victory that never was:

"Hitler and Speer made plans for a German capital that should be three times greater than the capital in Washington. For that, they needed space, so they moved the Victory tower to this place where it is now. It had three rings, one for victory in 1864, the second for victory in war in 1866, and the third for victory in war against the French in 1871. They added a fourth part for the victory in the Second World War. That victory didn't happen, but they were convinced they would win. So after all this, it's a real Nazi part to have this monument there."

Americans face gas price shock every time they fill up the tank. So it’s not a great time to advocate other radical changes that will further drive up energy costs. That’s the conclusion of this new Rasmussen poll analyzing opinion about Al Gore’s new proposal to shift electricity production to other carbon-free sources in 10 years”

Overall, 44 percent of the 1000 likely voters interviewed believe Gore’s plan will raise energy costs even further. Only 26 percent believe it will bring prices down.

Even fewer believe the Gore plan is realistic. Rasmussen writes: “Only 33% of American voters believe Al Gore’s proposal to switch all of the nation's electricity production to wind, solar and other carbon-free sources in 10 years is realistic.”

Let’s summarize. Voters believe the former vice president’s plan is “costly” and “unrealistic.” Not a great perceptual starting place for his new initiative.

Jake Tapper has a statement from Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs on why Obama canceled his meeting with U.S. troops:

During his trip as part of the CODEL to Afghanistan and Iraq, Senator Obama visited the combat support hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad and had a number of other visits with the troops. For the second part of his trip, the senator wanted to visit the men and women at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to express his gratitude for their service and sacrifice. The senator decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign.

Obama can't meet with wounded servicemen and women because the campaign paid for his trip? Ridiculous. Does that mean that he can't meet with troops stationed in the United States when he's traveling on his campaign's dime?

Furthermore, it can't be that Obama just discovered yesterday or today that his campaign was paying for this trip to Germany. So what's the real reason for Obama's last-minute decision to snub the troops in Germany? Is he really that self-centered that sightseeing is more important?

Did Barack Obama forget that people in Germany can't vote for him? Bloggers are convinced that his speech in Berlin tonight is just a campaign event and that the candidate has his priorities all wrong.

First, bloggers are posting the event flier (at right, and English translation from Political Punch) as evidence. The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini concludes that "this isn't just some sober, high-minded foreign policy speech, part of a foreign trip occurring under the auspices of his official Senate office. It is a campaign rally occuring on foreign soil. They are using the same tactics to turn out Germans to an event as they would to any rally right here in America." And Hot Air's Ed Morrissey adds, "The Obama campaign wants to hold a political rally in Berlin, apparently to impress upon American voters how popular Obama is among Europeans."

At Contentions, Jennifer Rubin is skeptical that this rally will help Obama win voters: "I find it hard to figure out which voters are going to be moved by a massive show of affection by Germans for Obama. Voters who think he’s 'not one of us' are going to be irked and the folks who are genuinely concerned about foreign policy smarts and credentials aren’t necessarily going to be wowed by a mass rally."

Not to mention, it appears that he is ignoring the Americans who are there. In another Hot Air post, Morrissey notes that Obama cancelled visits to U.S. military bases in Rammstein and Landstuhl. The American Spectator's Philip Klein says that "he's more concerned with playing rock star for German citizens than he is with visiting our troops. It's the type of thing that just makes your blood boil."

At Ace of Spades, Gabriel Malor simply concludes, "The whole campaign thinks that they've already won."

Ed Morrissey notes a Der Spiegel report that Obama is skipping his planned meeting with U.S. troops in Germany:

++ Visit to US Military Bases Cancelled ++

1:42 p.m.: SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday. “Barack Obama will not be coming to us,” a spokesperson for the US military hospital in Landstuhl announced. “I don’t know why.” Shortly before the same spokeswoman had announced a planned visit by Obama.

Certainly there could be circumstances that justify this, but Obama said this morning: "we've got some down time tonight. What are you guys gonna do in Berlin? Huh? Huh? You guys got any big. plans? ...I've never been to Berlin, so...I would love to tour around a little bit."

It would be egregious for Obama to snub wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan at Landstuhl--especially after rejecting an invitation to attend a townhall with veterans, service members, and military families at a U.S. base.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Obama campaign finds a way to make it to Landstuhl. If they don't, it will look like the trip to Iraq and Afghanistan was nothing more than a photo-op with Petraeus and the troops.

The Denver Post has some harsh words for the DNC following reports Democrats weren't paying the gas tax.

So, let's get this straight: While the rest of us poor schlubs have been grimacing as we put $4 a gallon gas into our cars, local organizers of the Democratic National Convention have been pumping tax-free gas into theirs? That's just wrong. The local committee hosting the DNC ought to pay the same state and federal taxes — which amount to 40 cents a gallon — that the rest of us pay.

The disclosure came at a regular Denver City Council meeting Tuesday, and by the end of the day it seemed that everyone involved was quickly backpedaling and promising that local organizers indeed would be paying taxes on gas. Good. But the larger issue, of course, is whether and how taxpayers might find themselves subsidizing the DNC. ...

We're also bothered by the fact this deal is based on a $466,125 contract that has yet to be inked. That's bad business practice. The city needs to get the contract signed before letting people take the goods — in this case, filling up at city pumps.

The local paper also took the Democrats to task for the most shameless spin yet of the election. Democratic Convention organizers actually claimed it needs tax free gas from the state's reserves for security reasons.

As for the gas situation, we've heard it was an effort to give local DNC organizers a secure place to fill up, a concern should they have dignitaries in the car.

That sounds like a stretch. If you're ferrying some Democratic hotshot from the airport to a hotel, wouldn't you fill up first? It doesn't seem plausible that you'd take such a guest by the city yards to tank up.

A host committee spokesman told the Rocky Mountain News that they used city pumps because it's safer and the gas isn't "tainted."

A puzzling explanation indeed.

Via First Read, a new Quinnipiac poll of likely voters shows McCain ahead by two percentage points in Colorado, and trailing by just a few in Michigan and Minnesota:

COLORADO: McCain 46% - Obama 44%
MICHIGAN: Obama 46% - McCain 42%
MINNESOTA: Obama 46% - McCain 44%
WISCONSIN: Obama 50% McCain 39%

Meanwhile a weighted average of polls at Pollster.com shows Obama up by two points nationally.

Obama is skipping the election and proceeding at full speed to the turkey pardons and state dinners.

Last year, Obama was on a bus in Iowa, his future uncertain. This week, he's getting chauffeured by the King of Jordan and saying he expects to be on the global stage for the next decade. Team Obama says he's not getting ahead of himself. Still, the Republican National Committee's "Audacity Watch" tweaks Obama for the following:

Obama said he wanted to meet world leaders "who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years."

An Obama foreign policy adviser cited White House rules Tuesday when asking to be off the record during a media briefing. Reporters retorted: Obama isn't the President.

Team Obama initially looked at Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate for a major speech today - a site that President John F. Kennedy famously visited and where President Ronald Reagan spoke. The German chancellor suggested that was inappropriate.

Alex Conant, an RNC spokesman, quipped, "At this rate, it's only a matter of days before he opens his presidential library."

This air of inevitability is remarkably similar to that exhibited by a recent foe of the junior senator from Illinois, but so quickly he and his allies forget what sunk the Clinton campaign.

From New Hampshire's Concord Monitor:

After a year of lagging behind his opponent in polls, Sen. John Sununu has closed the gap, transforming New Hampshire's U.S. Senate race into a dead heat, according to a new poll from the University of New Hampshire.

Most surveys for the past year have shown Democrat Jeanne Shaheen holding a double-digit lead over Sununu. National political analysts often rank Sununu, a Republican, as the Senate's most vulnerable incumbent.

The recent poll has Sununu, a Republican, trailing Shaheen 42 to 46 percent, a difference within the margin of error of 4.5 percentage points. The poll, which asked 475 likely voters whom they would vote for if they had to make a choice today, indicates that the race is fluid, with 72 percent of those polled saying they haven't made a final decision.

Chris Cillizza currently rates Sununu's seat as the 4th most likely to change hands, but assuming this poll isn't an outlier, there's reason to hope Sununu can pull off an upset. He defeated Shaheen in 2002 and his advantage in cash on hand will keep his campaign afloat as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee floods the Granite State with ads and campaign staffers.

P.J. O'Rourke's recent profile of Sununu can be found here.

Before you put the final touches on Senator Obama's speech, it's still not too late to crib from Bill Kristol's column suggesting that the the senator might want to follow in JFK's footsteps and talk about achieving victory:

Speaking on behalf of “the world of freedom,” Kennedy challenged the anti-anti-Communists and the peaceniks. He chastised the “many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world.” He rebuked those “who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists.” To all of them, Kennedy memorably said: “Let them come to Berlin.”

Perhaps Obama — with the Victory Column at his back — will also challenge those who think it impossible to imagine victory today. Perhaps Obama will also warn of the temptation of assuming we can somehow avoid confronting the terrorists and jihadists, and those who support them.

Marc Ambinder reports that John McCain was asked by a reporter about the kerfuffle surrounding his comments on the surge and the Anbar Awakening:

“First of all, a surge is really a counter-insurgency strategy," McCain said. [...]

Colonel McFarland, in Anbar province, McCain said, "had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counter-insurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is quote the surge, part of the surge, would be, would be, successful. So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to carry out this insurgency. Prior to that -- counter insurgency. Prior to that they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counter-insurgency, the surge, entailed going in and clearing and holding, which Colonel McFarland had already started doing. And then of course, later on, there were additional troops, and General Petraeus said that the surge would not have worked, and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place, successfully, if they hadn’t had an increase in the number of troops."

"So I’m not sure frankly that people really understand that a surge is part of counter-insurgency strategy which means going in, clearing, holding, building a better life, providing services to the people. And then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help insure the safety of the sheiks, to gain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge would continue to succeed as a counter-insurgency.’’

Ambinder makes an important observation: "Most of us equate the surge with troop levels, but for McCain, it has always been about a strategy; to executive the strategy, more troops were needed."

That's exactly right. Here's how McCain described the proposed "surge" on January 5, 2007--five days before it was ordered by President Bush:

The mission of these reinforcements would be to implement the thus-elusive hold element of the military's clear, hold, build strategy, to maintain security in cleared areas to protect the population and critical infrastructure, and to impose the government's authority: essential elements of a traditional counterinsurgency strategy.

We are talking about the fundamental elements of counterinsurgency strategy here. We are not inventing new strategies.

German authorities in Berlin are downplaying an incident earlier today in which a man drove his car through the security perimeter of the Siegessäule (Victory Column) where Barack Obama is scheduled to speak tomorrow. Reuters quotes police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski as saying, “We don’t yet know what his motives were but it does not appear to have had anything to do with politics.” Really? Is the driver complaining about the price of paint? (The picture in today’s Der Tagesspiegel makes Schodrowski look like Sergeant Schultz.)

On MSNBC this morning, former Gen. Wesley Clark made some inaccurate statements about the application of the "surge" in Anbar province. "Actually, the surge was about Baghdad and it was not about Anbar province," he said. "They didn't bring more troops out to Anbar."

Actually, two Marine battalions were added to Anbar as part of the surge. But Clark's more glaring error is his contention that the "surge" amounted to nothing more than the deployment of more troops to Iraq. The "surge" strategy consisted not only of sending additional troop but also waging a counterinsurgency throughout Iraq.

Yet Clark grants more credit to the Saudis for buying off the Anbaris than the American troops for fighting a counterinsurgency.

Watch it:

Matthew Continetti and Ana-Marie Cox talk about Obama and the press, Iraq, and more.

1) From Swampland, “McCain Meltdown” by Joe Klein

Huge news! Joe Klein is scandalized. The following John McCain quote has made the longtime and battle hardened campaign coverer hie to his proverbial fainting couch:

“This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”

Writes Klein in response:

This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad… The reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Nouri al-Maliki nor most anybody else believes that the Iraq war can be "lost" at this point.

Odd. Until a mere week ago, the Obama website was declaring Iraq an unwinnable fiasco. Now, according to Joe Klein, it can’t be lost. Now that’s progress!

But back to the matter at hand. We all know, as the Allahpundit insightfully put it, “If the rest of the media is chest-deep in the tank for Obama, Klein’s already fully submerged.” So with all due respect to Joe Klein’s phony outrage, the issue of Barack Obama’s commitment to victory is a valid one. Obama only began speaking about winning in Iraq a couple of weeks ago, and even now he’s more hinting about winning in Iraq than actually talking about it. Obama’s hard left base will categorically reject the news that Iraq is anything other than a disaster.

What’s more, Obama’s evolving positions have always focused on one and only one goal – getting out of Iraq. Winning has never been a consideration. In 2007, Obama was willing to withdraw from Iraq even if doing so triggered a genocide. For Obama to say he now wants to withdraw only because it is the best means of achieving victory requires a heaping helping of that famous Obama audacity.

Once again, Obama really isn’t talking about victory, even though it’s now within reach. Obama has never mentioned what burdens he would have America bear in order to win in Iraq. Just yesterday, he told Katie Couric that he would feel free to ignore David Petraeus’ advice regarding what was necessary for victory in Iraq if he felt the money for such a venture could be better spent elsewhere.

Of course, none of these Obama positions necessarily add up to the McCain conclusion that Obama would lose a war to win an election. In order to get to that point, you also need to assume a certain amount of bad faith on Obama’s part. So we must ask, is such an assumption unreasonable? Most sensible people agree that winning in Iraq is critical. Most sensible people agree that Barack Obama is himself a sensible person. Yet yesterday, Obama said that he might decide as Commander-in-Chief to use the funds necessary for winning in Iraq to shore up the American economy (whatever that means). That kind of pathetic pander doesn’t sound like a guy who cares more about the war’s result than his own political fortunes.

Contra Joe Klein, the conclusion that Barack Obama is indifferent to victory in Iraq is not manifestly unreasonably. Indeed, it’s the logical place you finish if you weigh all the Obama statements over the years. Of course, Obama is far from indifferent regarding his own electoral fortunes. So would Obama be willing to break some Iraq war eggs in order to serve up the beautiful omelet that an Obama administration would be?

Know narcissism.

2) From the Wall Street Journal, “McCain’s Message Gets Makeover” by Laura Meckler and Elizabeth Holmes

This is an enormously entertaining and somewhat endearing profile of new McCain campaign jefe Steve Schmidt. Schmidt is renowned for his intensity as well as his relentless focus on day-to-day excellence. The following little nugget caught my eye:

Mr. Schmidt specializes in the combat that dominates today's political culture -- the minute-by-minute, talking point-vs.-talking point battles that fill a 24-hour news cycle. His formula: a tightly controlled message delivered repeatedly and with almost military-like precision.

This week presents just the latest in a string of challenges. With Sen. Obama on a high-profile trip that includes Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and Europe, Mr. Schmidt had to devise counter-programming that would at least keep Sen. McCain in the mix.

In a word, oy. I understand Schmidt’s desire to fight for each inch of metaphorical battlefield terrain, but sometimes you have to know when to retire from the field. This week was going to be about Obama. The McCain campaign would have been better off dealing with that reality and trying to help shape the Obama coverage from behind the scenes rather than keeping their own guy in the mix. As if to prove my point, Obama's disastrous interview with Katie Couric has amply contributed to the impression many voters are forming that the fellow just isn’t up to the job. That’s a very favorable story for the McCain campaign, even though it doesn’t involve the campaign’s principal.

3) From the New York Times, “Congressman Pushes Staff Hard, or Out the Door” by David Chen

Meet Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, maybe the worst boss in America:

WASHINGTON — It started as a routine conference call. But at some point during the call, Representative Anthony D. Weiner became furious, convinced that his scheduler had not given him a crucial piece of information.

His scheduler, John J. Graff, who was in the next room, suddenly heard the congressman yelling at him through the wall.

Then, Mr. Graff recalled, Mr. Weiner started pounding his fists on his desk, kicked a chair and unleashed a string of expletives… Mr. Weiner, who is running for New York City mayor next year, is without question one of the most intense and demanding( bosses on Capitol Hill), according to interviews with more than two dozen former employees, Congressional colleagues and lobbyists.

Mr. Weiner, a technology fiend who requires little sleep and rarely takes a day off, routinely instant messages his employees on weekends, often just one-word missives: “Teeth” (as in, your answer reminds me of pulling teeth) or “weeds” (as in, you are too much in the weeds). Never shy about belting out R-rated language, he enjoys challenging staff members on issues, even at parties.

And here I was, laboring under the delusion that liberals are nice and sensitive people!

4) From the Washington Post, “Behind Maliki’s Games” by Max Boot

The always excellent Boot deconstructs Nouri al-Maliki’s series of statements from the last week. Long story short? If the left wants to be intellectually honest, it might not want to make too much of this momentary propaganda coup:

In May 2006, shortly after becoming prime minister, he claimed, "Our forces are capable of taking over the security in all Iraqi provinces within a year and a half."

In October 2006, when violence was spinning out of control, Maliki declared that it would be "only a matter of months" before his security forces could "take over the security portfolio entirely and keep some multinational forces only in a supporting role."

President Bush wisely ignored Maliki. Instead of withdrawing U.S. troops, he sent more. The prime minister wasn't happy. On Dec. 15, 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported, "Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has flatly told Gen. George Casey, the top American military commander in Iraq, that he doesn't want more U.S. personnel deployed to the country, according to U.S. military officials." When the surge went ahead anyway, Maliki gave it an endorsement described in news accounts as "lukewarm."

In January 2007, with the surge just starting, Maliki predicted "that within three to six months our need for the American troops will dramatically go down." In April 2007, when most of Baghdad was still out of control, the prime minister said that Iraqi forces would assume control of security in every province by the end of the year.

Watching Anderson Cooper a couple of nights ago as he breathlessly reported on Maliki’s comments from Friday (and hilariously referred to them as “breaking news” more than 72 hours after they were uttered), I couldn’t help but be struck how Cooper and his reporters treated Maliki as some sort of omniscient figure who always knows best. That clearly hasn’t been the case.

That said, I feel the need to reiterate what I wrote yesterday. Victory in Iraq is within reach, and John McCain has to show an appropriate eagerness for seizing the victory that he midwifed. To date, McCain hasn’t done so, although on a conference call yesterday his surrogates did belatedly show a more appropriate enthusiasm for ending the war. The American public wants this war won, and then it wants the war ended. The public does not want it fought endlessly. McCain’s resolve is admirable – his resolve made victory possible. But the campaign has to focus on what lies ahead, specifically the road to victory and then the road home. Promising an indefinite slog doesn’t square with the facts on the ground, and the McCain campaign has to be cognizant of that fact.

5) From The Next Right, “Obama Campaign Prints German-language Flyers for Berlin Rally” by Patrick Ruffini

Take a gander at that poster. Really now, how will Obama’s courtship of Germany play in Peoria? Is it redolent of John Kerry’s “global test?”

Personally, I think it’s a swell thing that Obama will soon be basking in the adulation of up to a million Germans. Obama obviously suffers from low self-regard, and such a display of public affection may well be salubrious for his emotional well-being. You know, just because we view political matters differently doesn’t mean I can’t wish him the best on the self-esteem front.

If journalism were a game of how many distortions you can pack into a single paragraph, Amy Wilentz's profile of Jimmy Carter in New York Magazine would win a Pulitzer.

It’s always been Carter’s nature to avoid the political fray. He likes to engage in intelligent conversation with powerful parties, he likes to resolve things in a mannerly, civilized way—but he doesn’t do politics, he doesn’t do down-dirty, he doesn’t do low-level horse-trading: no my-bowlegged-nag-for-your-glue-factory-gelding. Carter deals only in thoroughbreds. He insists on taking the high road, and he’s not about to change his plans—say, to cancel his visit to see Hamas—because it might somehow hurt the Democrats in 2008.

Despite Wilentz's curious assertion to the contrary, Jimmy Carter's conduct in the last 8 years has been more directed at entering "the political fray" than any former president in history. Never has a former president criticized a sitting president and vice president with such frequency and such vitriol. While most former presidents refrain from such judgments, Carter has shared his observations about the Bush administration as a matter of routine. He even threw a temper tantrum after Pope John Paul II died, claiming he wasn't invited to participate in the U.S. delegation -- despite the fact Andy Card twice invited him and he twice declined. And what to make also of Wilentz's characterization of Carter's meeting with Hamas? Since when did meeting with a ringleader of suicide bombers constitute the "high road"?

Joe Scarborough and Harold Ford agree that it's laughable to believe that the Anbar Awakening could have survived without the surge:

No wonder the Democrats don't support the gas tax holiday. They don't pay taxes like the rest of us on the fuel they're using.

Since March, staffers working on the Democratic National Convention have been using the city of Denver's tax-free gas pumps to fill up their cars — and using its carwashes. A dispute about this prompted city officials Tuesday to promise that the local host committee will reimburse the city at a market rate for gas — and pay state and federal taxes on the fuel. It was never the intent of the city not to properly charge the Democrats for the fuel or its taxes, said Katherine Archuleta, mayoral liaison to the convention.

Some Denver City Council members became angry when Denver public-works employee Christine Downs told them Tuesday that the host committee will reimburse the city for the carwashes and tax-free fuel it is using for its fleet of vehicles. Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz reacted sharply. She said she didn't think it was fair that local host-committee employees, as well as those with the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) who use those cars, are driving around on tax-free fuel.

Given the DNC is $11 million short on its convention, the City Council might want to do a credit check before fronting any more fuel. Perhaps the DNC is using all the money it saves on taxes to buy offsets to reduce its carbon footprint without breaking the bank. Or maybe the money is going to the balloon budget.

Money matters when it comes to winning elections. And races for the U.S. House are no exception. That’s why Washington campaign strategists and the pundit community are abuzz about the recently released second quarter fundraising numbers posted for congressional races.

Jim Ellis, who runs an election monitoring and analysis service at www.prisminfo.net, combed through all the numbers and found a couple interesting developments.

First, a few wake-up calls. Any time a congressional challenger raises more money than an incumbent, it’s time to take stock. Ellis found 10 cases where this occurred (eight Democratic challengers and two Republican):

To date, ten challengers have raised more campaign money than their incumbent opponents – eight Democrats and two Republicans. Six, Walt Minnick (ID-1; Sali), Cedric Richmond (LA-2; Jefferson – Democratic primary), Mark Schauer (MI-7; Walberg), Eric Massa (NY-29; Kuhl), Michael Skelly (TX-7; Culberson), and Darcy Burner (WA-8; Reichert) also show more cash-on-hand than their Republican adversary. Two Democrats, Victoria Wuslin (OH-2; Schmidt) and Tom Perriello (VA-5; Goode) have raised more than their respective opponents, but have less money available to spend. The two Republicans who have outpaced their Democratic incumbent opponents on the money trail are also in the situation of having fewer dollars currently in the bank. Those GOP candidates are former Rep. Jim Ryun (KS-2; Boyda), and Chris Hackett (PA-10; Carney).

Second, some races are already in hyper-speed when it comes to raising funds. And it looks like the most expensive race is shaping up in Connecticut, as a political consultant friend of mine likes to say, “both candidates are raising enough money to burn a wet mule.” Others are looking kind of cheap--at least by comparison. Ellis notes these patterns in Connecticut, Utah, Pennsylvania, and Illinois:

The most expensive race in the nation looks to be in CT-4, where eleven-term Rep. Chris Shays is projected to be in his third consecutive tough race. The Congressman currently posts $1.698 million cash-on-hand and his Democratic challenger, Greenwich Democratic chairman Jim Himes, has $1.444 million in the bank. The two cheapest campaigns: UT-3, where Jason Chaffetz -- who defeated Rep. Chris Cannon in the GOP primary last month -- and his Democratic opponent together have $20,000 cash-on-hand, and PA-5 (open John Peterson) where the two general election candidates have just over $91,000 combined in their political accounts. The two leading overall congressional fundraisers for the election cycle are Reps. Mark Kirk (R-IL-10; $3.8 million) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY-20; $3.7 million).

You're not the only one unhappy about the Olympic mascots, collectively known as the Fuwa.

If the Beijing Olympics' five cuddly mascots go down in history as a dud, their creator wants no part of the blame. After China's Olympics organizers gave him the assignment, folk artist Han Meilin initially sketched out five children representing the traditional Chinese elements of fire, wood, water, gold and earth. Then the bureaucrats got involved. "There had to be a panda, even though you'd think the public would have had enough of them," says the 72-year-old artist.

Alas, mankind will never get enough of the panda, but the problem with the Fuwa is much broader than anyone of them. Each of the five mascots is more annoying than the next. And why are there five of them anyway? Is this a statement about the diminutive role of individualism in the people's republic? As an official web site helpfully explains,

Each of [the] Fuwa has a rhyming two-syllable name -- a traditional way of expressing affection for children in China. Beibei is the Fish, Jingjing is the Panda, Huanhuan is the Olympic Flame, Yingying is the Tibetan Antelope and Nini is the Swallow. ... Like the Five Olympic Rings from which they draw their color and inspiration, Fuwa will serve as the Official Mascots of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, carrying a message of friendship and peace -- and good wishes from China -- to children all over the world.

Don't talk about peace and friendship with Joe Bryant, a blogger at Footballguys.com. He asks, "Why do the Olympic mascots have to look like some mutant Pokemon / Telletubbie thing? What's wrong with a bull dog or a cougar or a sweat shop worker for a mascot?" That's the spirit!

As you know, Barack Obama is still trotting across the globe, sinking three pointers, ignoring military counsel and healing the occasional leper. Amidst all the hullabaloo, these Obama comments regarding Israel and terrorism have been sadly overlooked:

“Um, let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”

Hah! Truly eloquent, and still more evidence of what Marc Ambinder refers to as Obama’s “talented, incredible gift of a mind.” But that comment hasn’t been overlooked, and really isn’t important. But these comments have been overlooked and are a lot more important than the typical Obama gaffe:

“What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and to recognize the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now and recognize that it is not only in the interest of the Palestinian people that their situation improves - I believe that it is in the interest of the Israeli people…That’s why terrorism is so counterproductive as well as being immoral because it makes I believe the Israelis want to dig in and simply think about their own security regardless of what’s going on beyond their borders.”

This is the conventional lefty trope about Israel, and it is completely contrary to all the facts. Then again, we all know by now that Obama has the ugly habit of repeating lefty tropes, blithely unconcerned about their accuracy or lack thereof.

The Israel government has responded to the many terrorist provocations of the past 15 years by pursuing an increasingly desperate search for peace. Israel spent the Clinton years trying to broker a deal with the since-deceased mass murdering capo of the Palestinian regime. That misguided Israeli effort to give away the store mercifully failed when Yasser Arafat spurned Israel’s way-too-generous peace proposals.

Okay, that’s ancient history and took place when Obama was still consumed with trying to organize communities and teach a Con Law class at the University of Chicago. But more recently, just last week as a matter of fact, Israel exchanged a terrorist prisoner infamous for shattering the skull of a four year-old for the corpses of two Israeli soldiers. Israel made this deal with the decidedly non-peaceful terror organization, Hezbollah.

The point is that Israel, as recently as last week, has consistently scrambled for peace and has willingly engaged terrorist organizations to do so. Far from driving Israel into “digging in,” Hezbollah’s terrorist activities have often had their desired effect. And yet Barack Obama yesterday peddled the risible notion that Arab terrorism had somehow squelched the Israeli desire for peace and forced Israel into a protective shell.

How can Obama, he of the “talented, incredible gift of a mind,” be unaware of such basic facts? Then again, in Obama-world, perhaps such a deal would be called “tough and principled diplomacy.” Regardless, Obama’s assertion that terrorism has made Israel "dig in" is ludicrously counterfactual. I understand that on the Obama campaign bus they only watch ESPN, but it’s still surprising that the news of last week’s prisoner swap escaped the presumptive nominee’s notice.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with her North Korean counterpart today in Singapore as part of "informal" six-party talks, according to this report from Bloomberg. The face-to-face meeting, a first for a Bush administration that once considered North Korea part of the "Axis of Evil," comes within weeks of the State Department's announcement that President Bush intended to ease some sanctions on the rogue regime and, despite its proliferation of nuclear technology to Syria, remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terror.

Meanwhile, after years of the Bush administration refusing direct engagement with Iran, the State Department last week dispatched its No. 3 official, Bill Burns, for meetings with Iranian nuclear negotiators. Today comes word, via this story from the AFP, that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iran will not
concede anything to the "oppressive powers" in the negotiations. "The Iranian people are steadfast and will not step back an inch against the oppressive powers," he said.

If there was any doubt that such face-to-face engagement gives undeserved legitimacy to terrorist-sponsoring states, Ahmadinejad put it to rest saying in a speech broadcast on Iranian television that he appreciated how "politely" Burns treated his Iranian counterpart and "respected the Iranian nation."

Context: Iran, which has been training, equipping and funding some of the terrorists in Iraq responsible for killing American soldiers, has refused to suspend its uranium enrichment program. Many of the world's leading intelligence agencies believe Iran is close to becoming a nuclear power. In October 2006, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon and earned the condemnation of the world and stern warnings from the Bush administration. Then, last spring, North Korea was caught proliferating nuclear technology to Syria, the world's second-leading state sponsor of terror (behind Iran), and the Bush administration, after keeping this information secret for months in order to protect its diplomatic efforts with Kim Jong Il, once again warned against proliferation and then offered further concessions.

All of this from the administration run by a president who once said: "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

John McCain is drawing criticism for the following exchange with Katie Couric:

COURIC: Sen. McCain, Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that?

MCCAIN: I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening.

As Frederick Kagan wrote in September 2007: “Anbari tribal leaders did begin to turn against AQI in their areas last year before the surge began, but not before Colonel Sean MacFarland began to apply in Ramadi the tactics and techniques that are the basis of the current strategy in Baghdad.”

If McCain was saying that Col. McFarland's counterinsurgency approach "began the Anbar Awakening" then that's pretty much on the mark. The "surge" after all is often shorthand for both the addition of U.S. troops as well as the adoption of a counterinsurgency strategy.

Of course, the official "surge" was ordered by President Bush in January 2007--four months after the Awakening began. Some are pointing to this statement as proof that McCain gets "his facts all wrong", as Matthew Yglesias writes.

But Yglesias's colleague Marc Ambinder writes that a charitable reading of McCain's statement is "that the surge helped the Anbar Awakening to succeed because the shieks could actually be protected."

Indeed, the surge did not midwife the Anbar Awakening--it kept the Awakening from being strangled in the crib. Here's how the Washington Post characterized a November 2006 Marine intelligence report on Anbar:

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there [...]

Moreover, most Sunnis now believe it would be unwise to count on or help U.S. forces because they are seen as likely to leave the country before imposing stability.

So two months after the Awakening began, Anbar looked hopeless. Yet Yglesias contends that the surge was not largely responsible for the progress in that province:

This specific timing issue aside, we can see here the larger point that McCain doesn't actually seem to know what the surge was. But the surge troops were overwhelmingly sent to increase the level of manpower in Baghdad (i.e., not where the Anbar Awakening happened)

But Fallujah--in Anbar--is about 30 miles west of Baghdad. That's the distance between Washington D.C. and Dulles airport. Might not U.S. forces killing terrorists in Baghdad have reduced the level of violence in Fallujah as well as 30 miles farther west in Ramadi?

Furthermore, two additional Marine battalions were sent to Anbar, and it wasn't until they were deployed and the counterinsurgency implemented that the Anbar Awakening flourished.

The Awakening, Kagan wrote,

proceeded slowly and fitfully for most of 2006 and, indeed, into 2007. But when Colonel John Charlton’s brigade relieved MacFarland’s in Ramadi and was joined by two additional Marine battalions (part of the surge) elsewhere in Anbar, the “awakening” began to accelerate very rapidly. At the start of 2007 there were only a handful of Anbaris in the local security forces. By the summer there were over 14,000. [...] The fact is that neither the surge nor the turn of the tribal leaders would in itself have been enough to turn Anbar around — both were necessary, and will remain so for some time.

Jon Stewart had a segment last night on the media's love affair with Obama:

HT: Hot Air

Via the McCain campaign, the Rocky Mountain News reports:

The committee hosting the Democratic National Convention is using the city's gas pumps to fill up on fuel, avoiding state and federal highway taxes, officials said today.

"There's something there that just doesn't seem right to me because, in a sense, you're saying then that the officials who pass the laws are not willing to live by them, and that concerns me," Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz said.

Denver's mayor John Hickenlooper says that the RNC is getting the same break from the city of St. Paul, but how does this square with Hickenlooper's pledge to "make this the greenest convention in the history of the planet"?

In the past, I’ve noted how elites in the Bos/Wash/NY/Hyde Park corridor have shown a benign indifference to soaring gas prices. Mind you, I’m a self-confessed arugula-munching/latte swilling Boston-based elitist myself who visits his local filling station on average a bit more than once a month. Thus, I’m well positioned to explain how the pain that high gas prices have visited on some parts of the country hasn’t been felt universally.

Well, worry no more you rural types who have become wage slaves to the gas pump. The environmental do-gooders have arrived on the scene, and they’re here to help:

Average motorists in Mississippi spent nearly 8 percent of their incomes on gasoline in 2007 and drivers in South Carolina and Georgia spent more than 7 percent, according to the report released on Tuesday by environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Meanwhile, drivers in the Northeast spent the least amount of their incomes on fuel with Connecticut motorists paying just over 3 percent. Drivers in New York spent about 3.3 percent and motorists in Massachusetts spent about 3.5 percent…

The report, called "Fighting Oil Addiction: Ranking States' Oil Vulnerability and Solutions for Change," ranked the states for their setting of fuel conservation measures like incentives for buying fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles, slowing suburban sprawl, and targets for reducing driving.

I hope this is crystal clear to all you backwards Mississippians who are burning fossil fuels like you’re Al Gore or something. Stop all of your suburban sprawling.

Boy, the NRDC sure has it figured out. If only Georgia had more incentives for buying hybrids! And for those of you who feel the pain at the pump, have you considered stopping your complaining and just moving to Washington DC and becoming a blogger for a living? You could bike to work!

One wonders it it’s ever occurred to the National Resource Defense Council that people in Mississippi aren’t burning so much gas because they engage in a lot of hot-rodding in their vintage Sedan Devilles. Then again, an appealing sort of myopia has always been the environmental lobby’s most appealing characteristic.

On PBS last night the Center for American Progress's Lawrence Korb argued that the Democrats' taking power in the 2006 congressional elections led to the Anbar Awakening, which was a more important factor than the surge in reducing violence in Iraq.

Thankfully Max Boot was on the show to smack down Korb's nonsense.

Here's Korb:

what began to turn things around in Iraq was, in 2006, after the Democrats won control of the Congress, the -- what they called the Sunni insurgents became known as the Sons of Iraq -- you had the Al Anbar awakening -- said that they would team up with us to go after al-Qaida in Iraq, because al-Qaida in Iraq had been so violent, the things they had done. And they realized that we were not going to be there forever.

This is the deal, that that has gotten the violence down in Al Anbar Province, which is where it was the heaviest. And then, even before the surge was completed, in February 2007, Sadr, Muqtada al-Sadr, told his militia to lay down their arms.

MARGARET WARNER: But are you saying that the surge, the 20,000 additional combat forces, aren't a significant factor in why things are more peaceful?

LAWRENCE KORB: It was a factor, but was not nearly as big a factor as the Sunni insurgents laying down their arms, because the -- we now call them the Sons of Iraq. We are paying them. We are training them. It was about 100,000 of them. But this is a deal we could have had in 2004. We didn't take it. We took it in 2006, because -- after the election.

Here's Boot:

First, let me, if I could just very quickly, correct a misapprehension that Larry Korb is perpetrating here, the same one that Barack Obama has perpetrated before, which is to say that the success that we are seeing in Iraq as a result of the Democratic victory in the November 2006 election.

Now, that is just bizarre, because anybody who has been to Iraq knows that the Al Anbar awakening...

LAWRENCE KORB: If you want to correct me, then I'm going to come back, OK? She asked you a question. Answer that one.

MAX BOOT: Larry, let me finish my sentence, please.

Anybody who has been to Iraq knows that the Al Anbar awakening began in September of 2006, months before the Democrats took office in the United States. And anybody who has been to Iraq recently also knows that there is no way that these brave Sunnis or the Sons of Iraq would be risking their lives if they saw that American troops were on their way out.

The only reason they are willing to stand and fight against al-Qaida is because they know that the commitment of the United States remains secure and that we will stand with them.

You can find a transcript and video of the entire exchange here.

So the media blasted the Hillary campaign when reports surfaced that it spent $1,200 in a single month at Dunkin' Donuts. That's a lot of coffee for the campaign, or a lot of doughnuts for Bill Clinton. At the time, Gerard Baker wrote a brilliant article about what coffee preferences revealed about the Democratic primary:

Among voters whose voting choice is not based on identity politics, Mr Obama's supporters are the latte liberals. These are the people for whom Starbucks, with its $5 cups of coffee and fancy bakeries, is not just a consumer choice but a lifestyle. They not only have the money. They share the values.

They live by all those little quotes on the side of Starbucks cups about community service and global warming. They embrace the Obama candidacy because to them he transcends traditional class and economic divides. He is a transformative political figure -- potentially the first black man to be president - and is seen as the one to revive America's faith in itself and restore America's status in the world. For these voters the defining emotion is hope.

Mrs Clinton is the candidate of what might be called Dunkin' Donut Democrats. They do not have money to waste on multiple-hyphenated coffee drinks -- double-top, no-foam, non-fat lattes and the like. Not for them the bran muffins or the biscotti. They are the 75-cent coffee and doughnut crowd. For them caffeine choice doesn't correlate with their values but simply represents a means of keeping them going through their challenging day.

No one has taken the Obama campaign to task for its coffee expenditures, but in absolute terms it is certainly in excess of the Hillary campaign's. Given all the wasteful spending by the Obama campaign, it is hardly a surprise that its coffee expenditures are, shall we say, lofty. Before its June report was filed, the Obama campaign had spent about $1,800 at Starbucks and $1,400 at Dunkin Donuts. The McCain campaign, on the other hand, has spent a mere $498 at Starbucks and $970 at Dunkin' Donuts. It is also well known the Straight Talk Express is stocked with Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

If coffee is a heuristic for the presidential election, the McCain campaign is in good shape. While Starbucks is in the process of closing 600 locations, Dunkin' Donuts is opening dozens. Because Americans are pessimistic about the economy, they're more likely to spend only a buck or two on a cup of coffee than they are to splurge on the mocha chip frappuccino. There is also some dignity in being able to say small, medium, or large as opposed to tall, grande, or venti. Customer surveys also show that Dunkin' Donuts is out pacing Starbucks for the first time in years.

But if everything is so bad for Starbucks, how did Obama manage to win the primary? Well, fortunately liberal elitists who have money to burn compose a smaller percentage of the overall population than the Democratic Party. Petite vanilla scones are to Obama what the bear claw is to McCain, and Americans are going to choose the latter.

1) From the Los Angeles Times, “For McCain, the Surge is a Losing Strategy” by Jonah Goldberg
A couple of week ago, I mentioned my depression over the way the McCain campaign was functioning. My sad mental state had driven me to beat myself over the head with a baseball bat. After a jot of relatively smooth sailing, the McCain campaign has forced me to turn to my trusty Louisville Slugger once more.

The McCain campaign has been caught completely flat-footed by the Maliki pronouncement that he would like to see American troops leave a secure Iraq as rapidly as possible. Of course, the McCain camp and other surge proponents should want the identical thing. Our major beef with the Obama withdrawal plan is that Iraq’s well-being and a consolidation of our victory don’t seem to be any sort of Obama priorities. They never have been in the past.

More unforgivably, the McCain campaign also has been caught flat-footed by the ongoing success of the surge. Right now, we have a bizarre dynamic in which John McCain seems to be refusing victory. Instead, as that victory’s primary architect, he should be embracing it. But with the progress of the surge having surpassed the prognostications of even its most optimistic proponents, McCain’s adherence to an endless slog seems oddly ill-fitting with the fresh facts on the ground.

Senator McCain and I aren’t exactly email pals, so I’m not quite privy to his innermost thoughts. Still, I think I understand what’s going on in McCain land. McCain was the hero of the surge. Without his efforts in the Senate, it wouldn’t have happened. What’s more, he was an early not to mention lonely Republican critic of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. McCain can make an honest claim to being the Winston Churchill of the Iraq War. And Winston Churchill lost in 1945 to a historical non-entity named Clement Atlee.

For McCain and his minions, it’s probably unnerving to see Iraq fade as an issue. He was right on the surge. Obama was wrong. Yet the public will look forwards, not backwards. Still, all things considered, it’s not so bad. If someone told me six months ago that Iraq as an issue would be a wash come November, I would have taken it.

Here’s Jonah Goldberg’s cogent take on things:

Within months of the invasion, McCain was calling for more troops and the head of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Later, when the Iraqi civil war erupted, Al Qaeda in Iraq metastasized and the Iranians mounted a clandestine surge all their own, McCain doubled-down; he argued that we couldn't afford to lose and proposed a revised counterinsurgency strategy for victory. That was the same very month that Obama introduced the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007."

That's all great stuff for McCain's biographers. But the tragic Catch-22 for the Arizona senator is that the more the surge succeeds, the more politically advantageous it is for Obama.

Voters don't care about the surge; they care about the war. Americans want it to be over -- and in a way they can be proud of.

Richard Nixon didn't win in 1968 by second-guessing LBJ about the mess in Vietnam; he ran on getting us out with honor. McCain is great talking about honor, but the getting-us-out part is where he gets tongue-tied.

If Iraq recedes as an issue and the positions of the two candidates effectively blur, what does McCain do? The temptation will be to run a campaign based on biography, honor and being right about the surge. This is a temptation McCain will have to resist. You don’t get elected president as some kind of lifetime achievement award. The presidency is not a metaphorical gold watch that the electorate bestows upon its most worthy citizen. This is the part of presidential politicking that John Kerry never got.

McCain will have to talk about the future. He’ll have to talk about his plans for the economy, his plans for $4 gas, and why the kind of resolve he showed in Iraq will be necessary to deal with the developing messes we have in Iran and perhaps Pakistan. Much of this stuff lies outside McCain’s comfort zone. He was so uneasy with economic matters, he outsourced them to political klutz extraordinaire Phil Gramm. And discussing grand strategy has never been a McCain forte.

But as the Goldberg column points out, every election is about the future. This one will be no different.

2) From The Fix, “McCain to Meet With Jindal” by Chris Cillizza

I’m glad I didn’t put my Louisville Slugger away – I need it again.

Speculation has swept the intertubes that McCain will name his running mate this week, the better to steal some headlines from his globetrotting opponent. I have nothing against the possibility of Bobby Jindal being on the ticket. I am, however, appalled that Team McCain thinks it needs to go to such desperate measures to win a news cycle in July. For better or for worse, this is Obama’s week. But it’s a long way to Election Day.

I can’t decide which is a more depressing prospect – whether the McCain camp will really name its running mate this week or whether this is an elaborate head fake to make sure McCain’s name stays in the papers for the next few days. What’s especially baffling is why Team McCain can’t pay attention to its own internal analyses. The McCain campaign is obviously concerned that Iraq and other issues of war and peace are receding/disappearing. If that is indeed the case (which to some extent it almost surely is), why has the McCain campaign convinced itself that an Obama trip abroad in July presents a threat that must be thwarted?

The McCain campaign is blustering about making a major strategic move in response to the other guy’s day-to-day tactics. It’s undisciplined campaigning. It fairly reeks of panic.

3) From the Bourbon Room, “Obama, Reed, Hagel Note Iraq Progress, Credit More Than Surge” by Major Garret

Remember back in 2004 when the left relentlessly hounded George W. Bush, demanding that he recount a time when he made an error? It looks like we on the right may have similar sport with Barack Obama, who seems congenitally unable to admit occasions when his superhuman judgment failed him. Major Garret calls our attention to this exchange Obama had with Nightline’s Terry Moran:

Q: If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?

Obama: No. Because, keep in mind that —

Q: You wouldn’t?

Obama: Keep in mind, these kind of hypotheticals are very difficult. You know hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one I just disagreed with.

One thing about Obama – he just hates looking back. Unless you’re talking about looking back to the run up to the Iraq war and his righteous opposition to said war. He loves looking back at that.

4) From the Wall Street Journal, “Afghanistan Doesn’t Need a Surge” by Ann Marlowe

What with the presumptive Democratic nominee showing all sorts of manliness regarding Afghanistan, longtime Afghanistan-based war correspondent Marlowe offers some contrarian counsel. And the counsel is contrarian to both nominees:

Barack Obama said: "We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there." Mr. Obama should have supported the surge in Iraq, but that doesn't mean that advocating one in Afghanistan makes sense.

Afghanistan's problems are not the same as Iraq's. Its people aren't recovering from a brutal, all-controlling tyranny, but from decades of chaos and centuries of bad government. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, is largely illiterate and has a relatively undeveloped civil society. Afghan society still centers around the family and, for men, the mosque. Its society and traditions are still largely intact, in contrast to Iraq's fractured, urbanized and half-modernized population.

Regarding Iraq, it’s been gratifying that the Democrats have at last become cognizant of the salubrious effects that more aggressive strategies can have when it comes to warfare. Still, Obama and his surrogates seem relatively unaware of the COIN doctrine that made such a huge difference in Iraq. The extra resources helped dramatically. But the sea-change in tactics, shifting the focus from force protection to battling the enemy and protecting the population, helped even more.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Obama now supports mindlessly throwing more resources at Afghanistan. Since time immemorial, that’s been the liberal solution to just about every problem. But Afghanistan gives Obama an ideal chance to use that big brain of his (or what Marc Ambinder today refers to as "a talented, incredible gift of a mind") – the situation is a lot more nuanced than Team Barry has to date cared to acknowledge.

5) From the Boston Globe, “Is Alcohol Par For the Course?” by Richard Thompson

If you want to know what it’s like to live in a state that Michael Dukakis molded in his image, take a look at this article. In Massachusetts, there is actually a law on the books that bans the sale of alcohol on golf courses. Yes, this law applies to private golf courses as well as public ones.

And no, this law is not common across the land. The only other state with a similar statute is Alaska. Alaska, as you may have guessed, is not exactly a golf paradise.

Mind you, consuming alcohol while on the golf course is unforgivably vulgar. One should focus on one’s game. Besides, golf is hard enough to play when sober. But why would such a matter possibly have been the concern of the Bay State legislators who crafted this idiotic law? If some hacker wants to steel his nerves with a Rum and Coke before playing the challenging 16th hole and his country club allows him to do so, what interest does the state have in preventing him from imbibing?

Then again, with Al Gore plotting to take away our fossil fuels, perhaps modern liberals pose still graver threats.

It's official: The media are consumed by the fire of their love for Barack Obama:

And the public is catching on. As I noted earlier today, a new Rasmussen report shows that "49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage." And 45 percent think that "most reporters would hide information if it hurt the candidate they wanted to win." How could the public possibly come to that conclusion?

At the McCain website, you can vote for the media's Obama love anthem. Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" is winning. Where is John Cusack with the boombox when you need him?

On a conference call with reporters this morning, McCain surrogate Congresswoman Heather Wilson said that John McCain would "like troops to come home earlier than 16 months if the conditions allow it. Senator Obama has said it's a 16-month timeline no matter what."

In response to a follow-up question asking if it was "conceivable" that conditions could improve enough to allow the troops to come home in 16 months, Wilson said that Obama's withdrawal plan is "based on a calendar, and John McCain believes that withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground. Whether that happens in in 12 months, 16 months, or 24 months, the important thing is our troops come home with victory and America's vital national interests secured."

Wilson, as well as McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann did not directly say whether conditions could improve enough to withdraw in 16 months. Scheunemann emphasized that Obama favored "rigid date-driven unconditional timetable", while McCain's withdrawal would be based on two factors: "advice of the commanders on the ground" and the "security situation on the ground".

Commanders in Iraq have said that there's "no way" to withdraw all combat troops within 16 months, as Obama has proposed. But it wasn't clear whether Wilson was saying that "all combat troops" could be withdrawn in less than 16 months or if she was simply emphasizing the difference between McCain's conditions-based withdrawal versus Obama's time-based withdrawal.

Update: McCain's deputy communications director Michael Goldfarb calls to say that Wilson was simply making a rhetorical point:

John McCain would like to be out of Iraq tomorrow, but any withdrawal is going to have to be based on conditions on the ground and the simple fact is that our commanders have made fairly clear that they do not believe that 16 months, even under ideal conditions, would allow for a safe and responsible withdrawal of all American troops and their equipment.

I'd also note that Barack Obama also does not intend to pull all our forces out of Iraq in 16 months, but has committed to maintaining a "residual force" of unspecified size in Iraq for an undetermined length of time.

"It’s always a bad practice to say 'always' or 'never'"--Senator Barack Obama

Today's catch phrase is "media bias." Yesterday--the same day Drudge revealed that the New York Times rejected John McCain's op-ed rebutting Barack Obama's op-ed in the same paper--Rasmussen released a timely report:

The idea that reporters are trying to help Obama win in November has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey, taken just before the new controversy involving the Times erupted, found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help the Democrat with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.

Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.

At Pajamas Media, Rick Moran asks, "With half the country able to see through the gushing idolatry of the press and their shameless promotion of Obama’s candidacy, where does that leave journalistic standards like objectivity and fairness?" Redstate's Pejman Yousefzadeh adds, "We need to ensure that an informed decision is made, and the more the media shows that it is in the tank for Barack Obama, the less confidence people will have that the appropriate information to make that decision is being afforded to the voting public." But Power Line's John Hinderaker finds the "silver lining": "I suspect that by November, lots of people will be in rebellion against the media's effort to make them vote for Obama."

Speaking of bias, it seems that the Obama campaign plays favorites, too--or rather, punishes journalists who make the campaign mad. Remember last week's controversial New Yorker cover? The Politico reported yesterday that the Obama campaign just couldn't find room for New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza on the press plane.

Coincidence? The Moderate Voice's Joe Gandelman says, "If it was no coincidence, then it shows the Obama campaign is going to throw down the gauntlet to news organizations that run items that create big political problems." The Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar remarks, "Whatever one thinks of the New Yorker cover--that it was clear satire that clearly lampooned ridiculous rumors, that it went way overboard, that it was a comedic misfire--a robust press can't operate under threat of reprisal for unwelcome items." And Megan McArdle adds, "If you excuse petty punishments of reporters on the grounds that all that really matters is the policy, you'll soon find that you've lost not only the reporters, but the good policy."

As the Los Angeles Times's Andrew Malcolm says, "Now, that's Chicago politics."

Despite the rumors, Obama will not hold any fundraisers during his Euro Trip. That means that six days out of the month, or about 20 percent of the month, will be spent without any such events. Obama's online efforts could make up the difference, but reports suggest they won't: "Several said in interviews that the campaign is no longer seeing the kind of online bonanza that occurred during Obama's long battle with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, when more than $1 million was flowing in each day." Indeed, this is why the number of Obama's traditional fundraisers Obama spiked last month.

Some scoffed when I suggested here and here that Obama was spending nearly as much as he was presently taking in. As an aside, the Boston Globe wrote a whole piece about Obama having the largest paid staff in the history of presidential elections. No surprise that it neglected to explain the cost associated with having 900 staffers. And that was in May! It also failed to note that Obama has paid staffers in Utah and is running ads in Alaska. What possible purpose could there be for such expenditures? And will they come back to haunt the Obama campaign in August, when it runs a giant deficit?

Faruk Sen, the Turkish-born founding Director of the Center for Studies on Turkey in Essen / Germany, has come under sharp political criticism over recent comments comparing the situation of Turkish migrants living in Europe to the plight and discrimination previously suffered by European Jews. Here is an excerpt:

“Although our people, who have lived in central and western Europe for 47 years, have produced 125,000 entrepreneurs with a total turnover of 45 billion euros, they are discriminated against and marginalized like the Jews, albeit to differing degrees and in different ways.”

Faruk Sen’s remarks, first published by the Turkish business paper Referans a few weeks ago, prompted the conservative-led government of the state of North-Rhine Westphalia (which has been providing major funding for the Turkish Studies Center since its founding in 1985) to push for Sen’s immediate dismissal. The Center’s Board sharply criticized Faruk Sen over the “irresponsible comparison between Turks and Jews” and accused him of having done “severe damage” to German-Turkish relations and Germany’s integration policies in general. Sen later apologized for his statement.

Unfortunately, despite his outrageous remarks, Mr. Sen was able to extract a rather favorable exit package from the state government following his threat to retaliate with a lawsuit. The 60-year old self-styled political activist masquerading as an academic has been put on leave until the end of this year, when he will formally resign as the Center’s Director.

Barack Obama made a major gaffe yesterday in an interview with ABC's Terry Moran, saying that despite the obvious success of the surge he still would not support it if he were able to cast his vote again. Why? Obama told Moran that he wanted to change "the political debate."

Here is the exchange:

Obama: No, because -- keep in mind that, that … ABC: You wouldn't? Obama: Well, no, keep in mind -- these kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult. You know, hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely convinced of is that at that time, we had to change the political debate, because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.

It's a moment that will provide a real test for the mainstream media covering his campaign. He should have to answer some version of these obvious follow-ups:

Would the U.S. be in better strategic position today if there had been no surge and if troops had pulled out in early 2007 as Obama had argued?

And what about the U.S. troops who would have fallen in the absence of the surge?

Isn't the fact that Prime Minister Maliki can now talk openly about a timeline for withdrawal itself evidence of the surge's importance?

Which candidate wins the debate over Iraq has everything to do with how that debate is framed. Obama wants the debate to be one of timing, McCain wants to talk about outcomes. Obama: Do we leave soon or stay indefinitely? McCain: do we fight to win or choose to lose?

McCain's team is hammering Obama on the gaffe. McCain should talk about nothing else today. The question is whether even a mistake of this significance will be enough to break Obama's good-luck streak or loosen the loving embrace of the mainstream media. There's reason to be skeptical.

In July 2007 when he was still frantically courting the far left, Barack Obama flatly declared that genocide wouldn’t be a good enough reason to keep American troops in Iraq:

SUNAPEE, N.H. - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said.

With all the scrubbing and airbrushing that’s been going on at the Obama campaign and its website, the fact that he has flip-flopped on genocide has been sadly overlooked. That’s right - the presumptive Democratic nominee now opposes genocide! According to his website’s new and improved 16 month withdrawal plan:

“Obama would also work with Iraqi authorities and the international community to hold the perpetrators of potential war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide accountable. He would reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppress potential genocidal violence within Iraq.”

I for one applaud this flip-flop, although I lament the ongoing straddle. Note carefully how the longtime community organizer is still trying to occupy both sides of the issue. He reserves the right to intervene militarily to interrupt a genocide, but he doesn’t say he will intervene militarily. Which way would President Obama decide? Candidate Obama is unwilling to say.

So maybe calling the latest Obama incarnation “anti-genocide” represents a premature celebration. And I’m sure Obama’s not-quite muscular phrasing of “reserving the right to intervene” (with our international partners!) provides little comfort to any nervous Sunnis in Iraq. Still, Obama’s new position is far more responsible than his old one.

Which raises an interesting exit question – was he really as indifferent to genocide as he made it seem a year ago?

Ed Morrissey writes that John McCain’s "statement, that Obama's voting record is ‘more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont,’ is unfortunately not terribly accurate."

Morrissey contends that McCain’s statement is inaccurate because National Journal's Senate scorecard in 2007 only includes 99 votes while a more “comprehensive” index compiled by UC-San Diego political scientist Keith Poole includes 388 votes—every vote that wasn’t unanimous.

But it’s not clear that the Poole’s rating system is better than National Journal’s. Morrissey writes that “The [Poole] index shows how often each member votes with their own party as a measure of partisan and ideological leaning.” In other words, Poole is measuring partisanship, not ideology. National Journal, on the other hand, ranks each vote as conservative or liberal.

Poole’s index ranked John McCain as the second most conservative senator in 2005-2006. That doesn't seem terribly accurate to me.

1) From the New York Times, “No Substitute for Victory” by William Kristol

In discussing the portion of Barack Obama’s road show that will soon stumble across Germany, Kristol avoids any pettiness regarding the campaign’s choice of venue for Obama’s benediction/mass leper healing session. Instead, he optimistically focuses on what Obama could say:

I’m choosing to take the location of Obama’s speech as a hopeful sign.

I’m hoping it means that Obama in Berlin will go beyond the anodyne message his campaign advertised Sunday — a discussion of the “historic U.S.-German partnership” and strengthening trans-Atlantic relations. I’m wondering if Obama chose the Victory Column as his speech venue because he intends to make the case for ... victory.

Perhaps Obama — with the Victory Column at his back — will also challenge those who think it impossible to imagine victory today. Perhaps Obama will also warn of the temptation of assuming we can somehow avoid confronting the terrorists and jihadists, and those who support them.

One thing you have to understand about the Boss – he is by nature an optimist. So when presented with the question of whether Obama will be able to turn his back on the irresponsibility he has shown on the campaign trail regarding the war, the Boss will of course answer with an emphatic “Yes He Can!”

But I’m sure Kristol would agree that to date, “victory” hasn’t exactly been an Obama preoccupation. Take the ludicrous “16 Months to Victory Plan” Obama has been aggressively peddling regarding Iraq. Eagle-eyed observers will note that Obama was also proposing a 16 month withdrawal plan when the war was at its nadir back in early 2007. It would be a helluva coincidence if two such wildly divergent sets of circumstances such as the grim facts we confronted 18 months ago and the much more promising scenario we face today demanded identical American tactics and strategy.

For Obama, “victory” has never been anything more than a shorthand for ending American involvement in Iraq. His indifference to what actually might happen in Iraq has at times been almost astonishing. In July 2007, the then second place Democratic candidate stated preventing genocide wasn’t a good enough reason for America to stay in Iraq. As remains the case today, Obama’s sole strategic concern was comprehensively removing all American troops within 16 months.

It would be nice on a variety of levels if Obama commits to victory when he heals the Germans. It would indeed be a swell thing if the world realized that America won’t potentially be tossing out its leadership resolve next January.

2) From Political Diary, “Just Another Pol” by John Fund

More polls! The latest shows Obama leading McCain by three which is pretty much in line with what everyone else is getting. But as Fund notes, there’s still big news to report. The swooning has ended.

The good news for Mr. Obama is that he narrowly leads among independents and white women, key demographic groups he must add to his overwhelming support among Democrats and African-Americans. But his Achilles heel could prove to be young people, who provided much of the enthusiastic support he used to win the Democratic primaries. The ABC poll found that in March, 66% of voters under the age of 30 said they would vote in November no matter what. Today, that number is down to 46% -- a far more typical measurement of the engagement of young people in politics.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos says enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate among young voters "has been dampened" and "all of the questions in recent weeks on whether or not Barack Obama is shifting positions, becoming 'a typical politician,' is turning some of them off."

What’s most amazing about this scenario is that Obama’s wounds have all been self-inflicted. And as he thrashes about, returning to his silly original positions like the audacious 14 Month Surrender Plan, he only further compromises his campaign.

3) From the Wall Street Journal, “Let’s Have Some Love for Nuclear Power” by William Tucker

Many of you reading this are probably too young to remember the No Nukes movement. Thank your lucky stars. In the dark days of the late 1970s/early 1980s, Hollywood-types and flat-earthers were able to use their combined muscle to damage our energy situation for decades. At least the current energy crisis will cause us to revisit and likely redress such past foolishness:

And just last month John McCain called for the construction of 45 new reactors by 2030. Barack Obama is less enthusiastic about nuclear energy, but he seems to be moving toward tacit approval.

In the U.S. at present, 104 nuclear plants generate about 21% of our electric power. Last November, NRG Energy, of Princeton, N.J., became the first company to file for a license to build a new nuclear plant since the 1970s. Almost a dozen more applications have now also been filed.

While we may be at a turning point, one enormous question still hangs over this revival of nuclear power in the U.S.: Who is going to pay for it? The construction of reactors in the rest of the world is essentially a government enterprise. Private investment and even public approval are not always necessary. In the U.S., however, the capital will have to be raised from Wall Street. But not many investors are willing to put up $5 billion to $10 billion for a project that could become engulfed by 10 to 15 years of regulatory delay -- as occurred during the 1980s. The Seabrook plant in New Hampshire went through 14 years of that before opening in 1990. The Long Island Lighting Company's Shoreham plant began in 1973, but was shut down by protests in 1989 without generating a watt of electricity, and the company went bankrupt as a result.

Right now, everything’s on the table. One would hope a proven technology with minimal downside would have a seat at the head of the table. On a related subject…

4) From the New York Times, “Yes We Can” by Bob Hebert

Sometimes in politics, just as in life, you get lucky. Could Republicans have gotten a bigger break than Al Gore emerging from his massive house (which consumes more energy in a month than most American homes do in a year) last week, strolling out of his SUV and hectoring the country on how it should embrace his vision of tough love while ditching the fossil fuels that Gore consumes so profligately?

In spite of the rank foolishness of the Gore endeavor, Bob Herbert positively swooned:

My view of Mr. Gore’s passionate engagement with some of the biggest issues of our time is that he is offering us the kind of vision and sense of urgency that has been so lacking in the presidential campaigns. But the tendency in a society that is skeptical, if not phobic, about anything progressive has been to dismiss his large ideas and wise counsel, as George H. W. Bush once did by deriding him as “ozone man.”

The naysayers will tell you that once again Al Gore is dreaming, that the costs of his visionary energy challenge are too high, the technological obstacles too tough, the timeline too short and the political lift much too heavy.

But that’s the thing about visionaries. They don’t imagine what’s easy.

One might ask, easy for whom? I would imagine someone with Al Gore's wealth could make the transition from filthy, environment-despoiling oil to solar powered wind turrets with greater ease than a family of four struggling to get by on the median American income,

So as a Gore naysayer of long-standing, let me officially offer my “nay.” What I don’t understand about people like Gore and Herbert is that, being liberals, they’re supposed to be obsessed with the plight of those who live on the economic margins. And yet Gore proposes tossing an umpteen trillion dollar monkey wrench into the American economy, and the issue of who such economic dislocation will most affect doesn’t warrant any consideration.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the benign indifference/barely hidden enthusiasm that the intellectual chattering class had for $4 gas. And why wouldn’t they? When you have an adequate bank roll and you ride public transportation or your tricycle to your blogging job, $4 gas is an abstraction. Of course, for the tens of millions of non-wealthy people living in rural areas for whom biking 80 miles to work isn’t a feasible option, $4 gas is a somewhat more concrete matter.

So let Al Gore utter his sweet nothings about how “we need to make a big, massive, one-off investment to transform our energy infrastructure from one that relies on a dirty, expensive fuel to fuel that is free.” Americans will know who’s going to pay for that pie-in-the-sky one-off investment. And they’ll also know that even Gore’s wildly optimistic not to mention scientifically unfounded promise of energy price relief in a mere ten years is still completely unacceptable.

5) From the New York Times, “Surge Protector” by Admiral William Fallon

The left’s favorite admiral issued a betrayal of the cruelest sort yesterday. In the pages of the Grey Lady, Fallon urged something that virtually every serious military and international affairs analyst agrees with – the remarkable gains of the surge shouldn’t be sacrificed on the altar of trumped up timetables and domestic political ambitions:

A long-term arrangement with the United States is key to Iraq’s future security.

Reasonable objectors to the security pact, in both countries, must jettison the rhetorical and emotional baggage of the recent past. Forget the errors and bad decisions and deal with the present. Real progress has been made, and this positive momentum must be maintained.

Compromise, of course, will be essential. But confidence will be, too. The Americans need to trust Iraq’s security forces, and the Iraqis need to trust America’s intentions. The United States must give the Iraqi government an opportunity to demonstrate sovereignty over its territory while the government of Iraq must recognize its continued, if diminishing, reliance on the American military.

If Barack Obama were to return to his real original position, i.e. “I don’t care what happens in Iraq – I just want the troops home,” such a stance would at least have the benefit of intellectual honesty. But Obama is by nature a straddler. He wants to hold both sides of the issue, namely a rapid surrender combined with a lionhearted commitment to victory. This untenable silliness has already damaged his reputation. Unless he can use this week’s voyage to clarify his position, the bleeding will continue.

Closing the “enthusiasm gap” is John McCain’s major hurdle in the next several months according to Republican leaders and political strategists I talked to last week. Barack Obama’s supporters are more fired-up, confident, and interested.

CBS News polling director Kathleen Frackovic wrote a piece last week that makes some comparisons about the “gap” in the 2004 presidential race.

She notes that John Kerry had a similar enthusiasm problem, a deficit that lingered throughout the race:

In late July, 2004, even AFTER that year’s Democratic Convention and before the Republicans met, John Kerry’s supporters were a lot less committed to their candidate than supporters of George W. Bush were committed to theirs.

How does Team McCain build enthusiasm? It’s a complicated question with more than one answer. One of the solutions, however, is to not lose sight of the Republican base. True, it’s been shrinking. But research suggests Republican partisans are the place to start building excitement. They are attentive earlier in the process, more apt to participate and most likely to pass their enthusiasm on to others in their communities. One problem with consciously going after independents right now is that few pay a lot of attention to politics during the summer months. Moreover, independent leaning Republicans (a group the GOP has to win back) listen to these stronger partisans. I wrote a piece about wooing these independents by energizing partisans in the Washington Times.

There is a lot at stake in this election and McCain needs to communicate that to build more enthusiasm among his supporters. Thinking about how he can do that with the Republican base is key. They strongly support him in terms of vote preference, but need to ratchet up their intensity level. From the McCain campaign's perspective a challenge easier said than done. The Republican convention is a great place to urge the most loyal supporters to ratchet up the enthusiasm--it will infect others and pull them along.

The current cover of Der Spiegel prepares the readers of Europe’s biggest weekly news magazine for Barack Obama’s first public appearance in Berlin this Thursday. The headline “Deutschland trifft den Superstar: Barack Obamas Auftritt in Berlin” (Germany meets the super star: Barack Obama’s appearance in Berlin) is a direct reference to the popular German reality TV talent show “Deutschland sucht den Superstar” (Germany searches the super star) modeled after the “Idol series”.

In his op-ed “The Audacity of Vanity” Charles Krauthammer already commented on Obama’s upcoming trip to Berlin, where the Democratic presidential candidate initially wanted to speak at famous Brandenburg Gate:

Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast--a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins--would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

After Chancellor Merkel voiced her opposition to an Obama speech at the famous Brandenburg Gate, the Democratic presidential candidate chose Berlin’s Siegessäule (Victory Column) as an alternative venue. It is just about half a mile from the Brandenburg Gate and will still provide a picturesque backdrop for Barack Obama’s speech. Berlin authorities expect that up to one million people could show up to listen to Senator Obama. By any standard, that would be a remarkable figure and could most likely be the biggest audience that Barack Obama will have ever addressed. The Obamamania that has gripped Europe and many other parts of the world is well known. But U.S. presidential elections are not about popularity contests abroad.

Via Hot Air, watch and laugh:

Barack Obama's much-publicized Middle East trip is in full swing. As Newsbusters notes, his basketball games and photo-ops are getting a lot of attention from the mainstream media.

What has Obama been up to in Afghanistan? At Contentions, Jennifer Rubin says not much: Obama "hasn’t proved himself capable of doing much of anything other than walking and smiling. I wonder if the U.S. media will notice or have the nerve to explain the charade going on."

Obama is also shunning the foreign press, according to Christoph von Marschall, Washington bureau chief for Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel. LGF's Charles Johnson says that Obama's "staff is desperately worried that the candidate will make a gaffe, as soon as he ventures into uncharted territory. Foreign reporters tend to ask questions about...you know...foreign stuff." And Protein Wisdom's Karl adds, "Mr. von Marschall should not be surprised, inasmuch as hubris and control-freakishness are increasingly hallmarks of the Obama campaign."

And on Sunday we learned that it might be to Obama's advantage to avoid the press. Face the Nation aired Lara Logan's interview with the candidate, in which he said that "the objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years." (Video at Hot Air.)

ABC's Jake Tapper says, "The notion that Obama will be dealing with world leaders for eight-to-ten years, possibly up through July 2018, suggests that either (a) he believes that not only will he be elected and re-elected, but the 22nd amendment will be repealed and he will be elected for a third term, OR (b) he was speaking casually and just meant two terms." At Ace of Spades, Drew M. notes, "Obama is either very bad at math, does not know how long the President's term of office is or he's planning on repealing the 22nd Amendment." And The Corner's Victor Davis Hanson remarks that this is "Why you must not let Sen. Obama talk extemporaneously and off the teleprompter."

As Patterico says of a possible 10-year Obama administration, "Whew. That’s a long time to govern 57 states."

The Hong Kong-based newspaper Wen Wei Pao reported last week that in the wake of the recent labor unrest in Vietnam, dozens of Taiwanese businesses are considering pulling out of the Southeast Asian country. The report cited a Taiwanese trade representative in Ho Chi Minh City as saying that a wave of bankruptcies, beginning this month, will result in more than 1,000 factory closures in Vietnam before the year is out.

Labor disputes have been increasing in Vietnam. According to Taiwan media, strikes were occurring so frequently that since September of last year Taiwanese businessmen in Vietnam have been greeting each other with “Have you been struck yet?” instead of the customary expression “Have you eaten yet?”

Vietnamese government statistics indicate that in 2007 there were 541 strikes as compared with the previous year’s 387. In the first four months of this year alone, the country was hit by 295 strikes. Workers are demanding higher wages to cope with soaring inflation, which topped 25 percent year-on-year in May, with food prices witnessing a jump of 42 percent.

Most of the strikes have involved low-end footwear, textile, and toy factories owned by Taiwanese, Hong Kong, or South Korean businesses. The Taiwanese have been especially hard hit. During the first four months of this year, more than 20 Taiwanese-owned plants in or around Ho Chi Minh City had to suspend operation temporarily due to strikes, including one that makes shoes for Nike and employs 20,000 workers.

Adopting the China-plus-one strategy, Taiwanese companies with operations in China began diversifying into Vietnam in the late 1980s, long before that country’s economy gained steam and many felt it would become the next “Asian tiger.” By this past April, approximately 3,000 Taiwanese firms had invested a total of $10.9 billion in the Vietnamese economy, making the self-governing island Vietnam’s third-largest source of foreign capital, after South Korea and Singapore.

The recent spate of strikes by Vietnamese workers has since made some Taiwanese firms rethink their investment strategies. The Pacific Hospital Supply Company and Taiwan Sugar Corporation, for example, have both postponed plans to invest in Vietnam.

It’s not all gloom and doom, however. While investors in labor-intensive sectors such as clothing and footwear may be getting jittery about Vietnam, Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Group (FPG) recently poured a whopping $8 billion into the more upstream steel industry. Earlier this month, in the central Vietnamese province of Ha Tinh, prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung presided over the ground-breaking ceremony for an FPG iron and steel complex, the largest foreign investment project in Vietnam to date. FPG reportedly will also build an oil refinery and ethylene plant near the complex.

Despite these occasional positive developments, unless the underlying problems with Vietnam’s economy are dealt with effectively, the future of Taiwan investment in Vietnam can be characterized as, at best, uncertain.

Byron York reports that during a conference call this morning McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann rejected the notion that Maliki endorsed Obama's 16-month withdrawal. "One inartful statement from Prime Minister Maliki certainly does not change Iraqi government policies..." said Scheunemann.

York writes:

Scheunemann's use of the word "inartful" was no mistake, given that Obama has used the word to describe his own (inaccurate? mistaken? false?) statements in the past. Scheunemann went on to list a few, beginning with Obama's endorsement of an "undivided" Jerusalem. Scheunemann then said he cannot believe that the Obama campaign would try to hang its entire position on Iraq on Maliki's statement. Just watch them.

Well, if the Germans want Obama to be president, what possible cause for concern could there be?

"There is a sort of Obama-mania in Germany right now, but I think a lot of people will have their illusions shattered if he does become president," an official in Chancellor Angela Merkel's office told Reuters, requesting anonymity. ... But a survey released by the Pew Research Center last week showed Germans vastly prefer Obama over John McCain, his Republican challenger for the presidency, by a 49 point margin.

Is anyone actually surprised by reports that two UN soldiers were photographed saluting the coffins of Hezbollah militants?

If only the UN could honestly say this kind of behavior were rare. The fact is the UN can't even say its terrorist sympathies are rarely caught on tape. In 2004, the Israeli military snapped a photo of a terrorist loading a missile onto a UN ambulance. There is also video footage from a year later that shows terrorists using a UN ambulance to flee a gunfight.

UN soldiers and staff are not merely engaged in symbolic gestures. They're complicit as well. And the world wonders why the United States doesn't view the UN with warm and fuzzy feelings, why the presence of UN in the Middle East doesn't reassure U.S. forces so much as inspire them to look over their shoulders.

Last week, comedy writers for the late night shows bemoaned their inability to write jokes about Obama. Alas, there's nothing funny about the Great One--at least not in the minds of Harvard-educated white guys suffering from liberal guilt. In the off case they've been shamed into actually doing their jobs, they should check out this clip from the weekend. Obama said he expects to work with world leaders as president for the next 8 to 10 years.

Is the one-time constitutional law lecturer unfamiliar with the 22nd Amendment? If McCain had made the same mistake, Jay Leno might suggest his personal copy didn't include that change since it was added after he was born. For Obama, the better route might be to suggest he will seek the repeal of the two-term limit, or that he wants to read the Constitution for the first time--that he's saving the moment--for after he becomes president.

There is also perhaps a joke in the fact that Obama appears to have a less firm grasp of reality than John McCain. Lest we forget, Obama has no idea where he is most of the time. He says things like, "Thank you, Sioux City!" even when he's in "Sioux Falls." (Obama might want to watch the episode of The Simpsons featuring special guest Spinal Tap for a tip on how to avoid this pitfall in the future.) Obama has also said he's visited 57 states "with one more to go." This would be A-material but for the fact Obama transcends politics, race, and comedy.

The kids gloves were snugly on the Sunday morning talk shows this morning, as Democratic luminaries Barack Obama and Al Gore popped up on Face the Nation and Meet the Press, respectively.

Obama was “questioned” on the situation in Afghanistan, leading to this exchange:

Sen. OBAMA: Well, mission accomplished would be that we have stabilized Afghanistan, that the Afghan people are experiencing raising--rising standards of living, that we have made sure that we are disabling al-Qaeda and the Taliban so that they can no longer attack Afghanistan, they can no longer engage in attacks against targets in Pakistan and they can't target the United States or its allies.

LOGAN: So losing is not an option.

Sen. OBAMA: Losing is not an option when it comes to al-Qaeda, and it never has been. And that's why the fact that we engaged in a war of choice when we were not yet finished with that task was such a mistake.

You heard it on Face the Nation first: Obama has taken a brave stand against losing. Unless, of course, the nation is Iraq. Then it’s okay.

Al Gore, environmental hero, was on Meet the Press and fawned over by Tom Brokaw. This was the toughest question asked by our fearless host:

Let me ask you about your personal lifestyle, because it's been the subject of a lot of dialogue on the blogs, as you know. You and Tipper have bought a big home outside of Nashville, and you had it retrofitted. But for a time there was a comparison between what the president has in Texas at his home as being more environmentally correct than your home. The Building Green Council gave you its second highest award. But Stephen Smith, who is with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, is troubled by the scale of your home. He said, "We all need to evaluate what we ... need in square footage." Present company included. We all have to look at scale, don't we? Why was it necessary for you to have a 10,000 square foot home? Because that is going to be more energy intensive than a smaller home for just the two of you.

Note: It’s wrong to criticize Gore without pointing out that he’s “retrofitted” his house, won an important green award, and that the controversy exists only in that dirty little world of the blogs. The more enlightened section of the media, however, knows that Gore is doing his best.

Getting back to reality, Fox News Sunday talked to joint chiefs of staff Adm. Michael Mullen, who had this to say about setting timelines. “When I have discussions with commanders on the ground, and I did a couple of weeks ago, they are very very adamant about continuing progress, about making decisions based on what’s actually happening in the battle space, and I just think that’s prudent. That’s served us very well--certainly since the surge, which has been very successful--and I think will continue to serve us well based on the overall conditions I see in Iraq right now.”

Via Jim Geraghty, the Kansas City Star asks John McCain if Obama is a socialist:

[McCain] also said Obama had the “most extreme” record in the Senate.

Asked later if he thought Obama was an extremist, McCain said: “His voting record … is more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.”

Does McCain think Obama is a socialist? “I don’t know. All I know is his voting record, and that’s what people usually judge their elected representatives by.”

Michael Crowley writes that McCain "is not quite living up to the admirable standards of political discourse he professes to champion."

But Bernie Sanders is an avowed socialist. Obama's voting record was ranked farther to the left than Sanders's. Obama is free to label his own political views however he wants, but that's a fact.

Hopefully some intrepid reporter has a chance to ask Obama about this matter, and while they're on the topic would it be too much to ask Obama why he attended socialist conferences in college?

In Dreams from My Father, Obama writes of the "socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union", and he later recounts attending a Stokely Carmichael speech:

In search of some inspiration, I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of SNCC and Black Power fame, speak at Columbia. At the entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature and arguing with each other about Trotsky's place in history. Inside, Toure was proposing a program to establish ties between Africa and Harlem that would circumvent white capitalist imperialism. At the end of his remarks, a thin young woman with glasses asked if such a program was practical given the state of African economies and the immediate needs facing black Americans. Toure cut her off midsentence. "It's only the brainwashing that you've received that makes it impractical, sister," he said. His eyes glowed inward as he spoke, the eyes of a madman or a saint. The woman remained standing for several minutes while she was upbraided for her bourgeois attitudes. People began to file out. Outside the auditorium, the two Marxists were now shouting at the top of their lungs.

"Stalinist pig!"

"Reformist bitch!"

It was like a bad dream. I wandered down Broadway, imagining myself standing on the edge of the Lincoln Memorial and looking out over an empty pavilion, debris scattering in the wind. The movement had died years ago, shattered into a thousand fragments. Every path to change was well-trodden, every strategy exhausted. And with each defeat, even those with the best intentions could end up further and further removed from the struggles of those they purported to serve.

Based on that passage it clearly seems like Obama wanted to unite "the movement"--a movement big enough for said 'reformist bitch' and 'Stalinist pig'.

Obviously political views can change over time (see former Goldwater Girl Hillary Clinton). But it's telling that Obama's never been asked about his attendance at socialist conferences, according to a search in Nexis.

I'm pretty sure that if some Republican had attended fascist conferences in the 1980s, inquiring minds in the press would dog him unrelentingly to find out why he went.

The netroots are in a tizzy because John McCain said that Barack Obama will be in Iraq sometime this weekend.

What are they worried about? According to Joe Biden, "the bad guys" don't live in Iraq.

Christopher Beam of Slate explains how his original misleading report on the infamous phrase "terrorist fist jab" was amplified by the right-wing freak show Time, Politico, Andrew Sullivan and friends:

The morning after Obama locked up the nomination, I was writing a "Trailhead" item that mocked the media's difficulty in figuring out what to call the now famous gesture. "Fist-pound," "knuckle-bump," and "fist-to-fist thumbs up" were among the funnier examples, but one of them—"Hezbollah-style fist jab"—was particularly risible. It came from the Web site for Human Events, a hard-right weekly. Unfortunately, I failed to note that its provenance was not the magazine itself but a reader comment posted below an unrelated column by Cal Thomas. I linked the phrase to the column but didn't explain that the words weren't Thomas'.

Many "Trailhead" readers clicked through to Thomas' column and, not finding the phrase there, assumed that Thomas or his bosses had wiped it from his column. What really happened, it seems, is that Human Events removed the reader comment after many other readers posted comments taking offense and/or debunking it. These latter comments remained, while the comment that provoked the outrage vanished into thin air, creating further confusion about its origin.

When I realized the confusion I'd helped cause, I posted a correction. But it was too late. Liberal bloggers from all over had already seized on the phrase. Time and Politico misreported that the words were Thomas'. Then, fatefully, Fox News anchor E.D. Hill jauntily paraphrased "Hezbollah-style fist jab" on air as "terrorist fist jab." Hill wasn't endorsing the phrase, but she failed to make clear that she was citing someone else's characterization. She apologized the next day but lost her show anyway.

Yes, but not much:

The latest Pew Research Center national survey, conducted June 18-29 with a sample of 2,004 adults including 503 on a cell phone, finds that the overall estimate of voter presidential preference is modestly affected by whether or not the cell phone respondents are included. Barack Obama holds a 48% to 40% lead in the sample that includes cell phones, and a 46% to 41% advantage in the landline sample.

On the home page, Peter Wehner thoroughly documents the Democratic opposition to the surge, at least before it was glaringly obvious that the surge had succeeded. One of the many choice quotes in the article is Dick Durbin's statement slamming the "Bush-Petraeus report":

In September 2007, Senator Dick Durbin, the Democratic majority whip, in anticipation of congressional testimony by General Petraeus, said, "By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working. Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong."

Funny thing: by the time of the April 2008 Petraeus hearings, the Democrats were no longer talking about the "Bush-Petraeus report."

We also no longer hear about "the Bush-Petraeus surge," as Sen. Chuck Schumer dubbed it in September 2007. "[T]he Bush-Petraeus surge had failed to meet its objective," Schumer said at a press conference. "And let me be clear: the violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge."

And for some reason, I don't think that any Democrats will be calling the surge "The McCain Doctrine" ever again.

1) From RealClearPolitics.com, “The Audacity of Vanity” by Charles Krauthammer

’hammer time! Dr. Krauthammer’s article has justifiably set off quite a firestorm of delight in conservative circles. My email box has overflowed with links to the column and comments like “Krauthammer’s best ever!” Since this is much higher praise than, say, “Krugman’s best ever,” the column is must reading.

Krauthammer’s theme is not new. A lot of us, ranging from Obama critics to even Andrew Sullivan, have explored Barack Obama’s unattractive self-regard that risks tripping into a full-on case of hubris. But Krauthammer says it better than anyone else has or likely will:

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself.

There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.

I know you’re going to read the whole thing, so I don’t even have to encourage you to do so. But before clicking along, allow me to expand on the point that Krauthammer makes above. If someone told you in 2003 that a guy who was a part-time law professor, part-time lawyer and part-time state legislator would be president in five years, you probably would have laughed. If you were further informed that the individual in question’s greatest accomplishment as an adult was his stellar performance in law school, you would have pled for mercy because the ensuing hysterics would have made your sides ache.

Of course we don’t elect résumés for president. That much is understood. But other presidential candidates with modest accomplishments knew enough to at least try to look humble. It’s worth pondering why Obama isn’t capable of doing the same or self-aware enough to know he ought to.

2) From the Boston Globe, “Obama’s Summer of Success” by Scott Lehigh

I kind of wish the title were ironic, but it isn’t. Lehigh actually thinks Obama has had a wildly successful summer. Yes, Lehigh is talking about the same smoldering summer in which Obama managed to convince a majority of Americans that he tells them whatever they want to hear and transformed himself from a Lightworker to just another politician.

Barack Obama has used the lazy days of summer to considerable advantage with a series of speeches aimed at rooting himself in mainstream American values.

"One of the most important qualities that people look for in a president is someone who shares their values, and Obama is showing them that he does," says Democratic strategist John Sasso, who has played an important role in almost every presidential campaign of the last quarter-century.

Adds Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin, formerly a senior strategist for Hillary Clinton's campaign: "At the presidential level, there is a greater concern with understanding what makes somebody tick and whether they are motivated and driven by the same kind of values voters themselves have."

Give Lehigh special bonus points for the stirring display of hyperbolic Boston parochialism. In the Lehigh telling of things, John Sasso has played an important role in almost every presidential campaign of the last quarter century. At least we’ve finally cleared up the mystery why Sasso was advising both Bush and Gore in 2000.

Personally, I hope Obama and his campaign listen to Lehigh rather than Krauthammer.

3) From HotAir.com, “Why Would Romney Want to be McCain’s VP?” by the Allahpundit.

Allah piggybacks on an essay by Patrick Ruffini that suggests Romney would be crazy to accept the running mate slot since it (not to mention the vice presidency itself) is the traditional burial ground of presidential ambitions. Quoth Ruffini:

Mitt Romney is already in line to be the nominee in 4 years if McCain loses under the GOP Law of Primogeniture. Why would he want to muck it up with a VP run? If McCain loses, it is all downside for Mitt. People would forget all the positive aspects of his Presidential run and remember his role on a losing ticket. (See Edwards, John.)

And even if McCain wins, Romney would face a tough road getting elected in his own right. Republicans are already facing voter exhaustion after 8 years in power. Could they win a third or fourth consecutive election even if they manage to pull it out in ‘08? The possibility grows progressively unlikelier.

I’ve steadily avoided vice-president talks, especially those involving Romney. When it comes to discussing Mitt Romney, I don’t exactly have Nixon-to-China credentials. For what it’s worth, in private conversations over the past several months I’ve expressed deep ambivalence about Romney joining the ticket because I wasn’t sure he would help the ticket. (My wife would usually end those private conversations by saying, “I didn’t ask you about Mitt Romney. I asked you to pass the peas.”)

But $4 gas, a crushing credit crunch and a general (and accurate) sense of economic crisis change everything. It’s been obvious during the past few weeks that neither candidate can address the economy with any authority. That’s understandable enough – during their long careers, each candidate barely paused long enough in the private sector to enjoy a triple grande latte.

It will be the smart candidate who tabs as his running mate an expert who knows something about how an economy works and can communicate effectively with the public on such matters. Romney had his faults as a candidate in the primaries, but he was very strong when he discussed the economy. Additionally, it’s not like either party has a strong roster of economic experts waiting to join the ticket. I can’t think of a single Democrat who would fit such a bill, and on the Republican side the Phil Gramms, Jack Kemps and Warren Rudmans are mercifully non-starters.

As to what joining the ticket would do to Romney’s long term ambitions, who cares? We’ve got four consequential years to get through. As Allah points out, if Romney were asked to serve, he would be unlikely say no so he could begin munching rubber chicken preparing for 2012 when duty calls.

4) From the Wall Street Journal, “The Blame Game” by Kimberley A. Strassel

Last week I mentioned a letter the airlines sent out to their customers blaming their woes on oil speculators. Today, Strassel responds with a letter of her own:

Dear CEOs of U.S. airlines:

I want to say thanks for the July 10 email you sent to all your customers seeking to explain why today's air travel experience is so painful. The letter, signed by 12 of you, explained that "oil speculators" -- presumably by betting on future oil prices -- are killing your industry and thus requested that I, as a consumer, pressure Congress to rein in this "unchecked" market "manipulation."

I admit that just lately I'd begun to feel that flying was something akin to having my intestines fished out with a long hook. Actually, I'd been wondering whom to blame for the fact that it would probably be cheaper, easier and maybe even faster to drive to wherever I want to go than to board one of your planes. Suddenly, all is clear.

I now understand that it is oil speculators who set your hiring policies and who must have outlined the three types of people you may employ: those who grunt at me, those who sigh deeply as if my presence has ruined their day and those who are actively hostile to my smallest request.

When the airlines come looking for their next federal bailout, one wonders whether they’ll be shocked at the public's indifference to their woes.

5) From YouTube.com, Andrea Mitchell chatting with David Petraeus

You’ll want to watch the whole thing, but here’s a brief nugget from the conversation:

ANDREA MITCHELL: Is 16 months a reasonable time to get U.S. troops out and turn it over to Iraqis? Here’s what he said.

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: It depends on the conditions, depends on the missions set, depends on the enemy. The enemy does get a vote and is sometimes an independent variable. Lots of different factors I think that would be tied up in that. The dialogue on that and the amount of risk, because it eventually comes down to how much risk various options entail. That’s the kind of discussion I think that is very important as we look to the future.

So what’s the Democrats’ next move? Is it “Betray Us” time again? Or does Barack Obama posit that he knows more about the independent variables in question than David Petraeus does?

The most likely scenario is that Obama continues his clumsy and inelegant straddle in which he tries to please the left’s anti-war base while keeping at least a big toe dipped in reality. I would wager that Obama’s position on Iraq will keep evolving throughout the campaign. I’d also wager that every time he discusses the subject, he won’t be able to resist wedging in a little homage to his own magnificent judgment.

We know that Time and the three network news anchors adore Barack Obama. But Elle magazine?

Elle associate publisher Samantha Fennell is leaving the magazine to work for the Obama campaign. On the Elle Tell All blog--a “fashion, design, and style” blog--Fennell explains,

Barack Obama must be elected President of the United States. It’s his worldview, his clarity of judgment, and his just plain right-mindedness that resonate with me. Figuring that my efforts were best spent raising money for the campaign, I have thrown myself into a new world--one in which fluffy chatter and frivolous praise are replaced by a get-to-the-point directness and disciple-like devotion.

Talk about "frivolous praise."

Fennell describes the red Prada dress she wore to a NYC Obama event and how the candidate noticed her in the crowd and squeezed her hand because of it. Lucky girl. I'd give anything for a red Prada dress. She concludes,

His speech was pitch-perfect and reinforced for me all of the reasons why I, like so much of the country, am completely engaged and energized by this candidacy. As we say in fashion, it was a brilliant collection. Not of dresses and jackets, but of ideas, ideals, hope, and change.

And I, like so much of the country, think that Elle writers should stick to gushing about Choos rather than change. Will a McCain-supporting Elle editor make her case on the blog, too? If they need one, I'd grudgingly oblige.

Perhaps more than any recent election, watching how women vote this year is a critical variable in predicting the outcome of the presidential race. First, female voters comprise a growing share of the U.S. electorate. Men and women no longer represent roughly equal parts of the voting universe as they did a generation ago. For example, in the 2000 presidential race, 52 percent of voters were females while 48 percent were males.

Four years later, the women’s share grew to 54 percent of the electorate compared to 46 percent for men.

This year analysts believe women could represent 55 pecent to 56 percent of the total electorate.

But 2008’s contentious and extended Democratic nomination battle also raises some new questions about women voters. Will those who supported Hillary Clinton now come around and vote for Barack Obama?

Pew released a new poll this week that sheds some light on this question.

In some parts of the women’s voting bloc Obama is performing quite well--particularly among independents and younger Americans. But older women--much like their male counterparts--are still a weak spot for the Illinois Senator.

Pew writes this:

Whether female voters, who largely favored Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, will give broad support to Barack Obama this fall remains a key to the outcome of the election. The latest survey from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds that Obama is, in fact, performing quite well among this key voting bloc, largely as the result of his substantial lead among politically independent and younger women. However, a significant numbers of older women, especially those who backed Clinton for the Democratic nomination, are not yet ready to throw their support behind Obama.

The Pew study shows McCain doing about the same among women as George Bush was performing against Al Gore at this point in the 2000 race. But it also demonstrates Bush and Kerry were virtually tied among women in the summer of 2004. Keep in mind, however, the other reason Obama has to over perform with women--he’s currently losing among men as the most recent Newsweek and other polls show.

We now know where Senator Barack Obama will be speaking in Berlin next Thursday. My source told me last night (and it has already been mentioned in Politico) that it will be at the Siegessäule (the Triumphal Column) on the Street of the 17th of June (Strasse des 17. Juni). Dedicated to Prussia’s victory over the Danes in 1864, the column was further enhanced (following victories over the Austrians and the French) by Friedrich Drake’s “Victory” statue (as seen in Wim Wenders’s Far Away, So Close!, a movie made even better by Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan in City of Angels--I’m kidding).

As my German friend notes, the Sieggesäule was “the venue of the Love parade of yesterday's fame. A telltale location, in that sense. He's going to stand on a rostrum there, probably facing the West so that the Brandenburg Gate will be visible as a backdrop, albeit one mile away.”

The New York Times reports that Barack Obama has "a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department, to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters."

Jennifer Rubin riffs:

Barack Obama has 300 advisors on foreign policy. What?? That includes the Winnie-the-Pooh fellow and 299 other “experts” who, we are led to believe, didn’t catch Obama’s “syntax” error on “undivided Jerusalem.” Did not one of the 300 know about the history of presidential summitry?

And none of them thought it might have saved a heap of trouble for Obama if once during his primary campaign he had a briefing with General Petraeus or trip to Iraq?

What I don't understand is what Obama's campaign thinks this mini-State Department can tell him that he doesn't already know. On Good Morning America last year, Obama explained how his foreign policy experience was superior to his rivals because he studied abroad and "majored in international relations":

MS. ROBERTS: As you know, Iraq is such a concern with the American public. And, you're calling for a slight withdrawal of troops. And, I need to ask you this: are you concerned that your lack of experience when it comes to foreign policy may hurt your chances in the run for the White House?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, actually, my experience in foreign policy is probably more diverse than most others in the field. I mean, I'm somebody who has actually lived overseas, somebody who has studied overseas. You know, I majored in international relations.

Marc Ambinder responds to my post about Obama's burn rate. He says, "it's almost absurd to compare the Obama campaign's primary burn rate -- which, incidentally, is a percentage, not an aboslute (sic) figure -- to McCain's for June." But I'm not just comparing Obama's spending to McCain's in the last month -- I'm comparing what he's spending now to every presidential campaign in history.

Obama's recent television buy costs about $650,000 a day. That's $19.5 million for the month. His campaign's non-media related expenses in May, when he had a mere 700 employees, was another $23 million. Toss in a few million for the doubling of the staff and all the bells and whistles, and Obama's spending is barely sustained by his current fundraising.

Obama's spending is absolutely unprecedented, and it's not clear his fundraising will sustain it through the election. Fifty-two million is an impressive sum, but keep in mind it was in large part supported by Hillary contributors giving for the first time. In May, Obama only raised $22 million, and there's no reason to assume those levels -- impressive by historical standards but a financial train wreck given his burn-rate -- won't return.

Obama's strategy could work, and if it does, it will change how presidential campaigns are run. But I think there are plenty of reasons to suspect it won't. In the first place, polls haven't shifted in Obama's favor despite fundraising and lavish spending. As of July 1, Obama had spent nearly $92 million compared to McCain's $11 million on broadcast media. When one factors in the potential bad press Obama will get if he needs to fire hundreds of people come the end of August when fundraising falls below historical records, not to mention the time he's spending to raise the money -- his Internet fundraising lagged the last couple months, and he's had to host more traditional fundraisers to make up the difference -- refusing public financing won't necessarily give Obama such a large advantage.

Barack Obama delivered a speech in West Lafeyette, IN on Wednesday and once again mangled some well known historical facts:

Throughout our history, America's confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.

Aaah yes – "the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor." Who can forget that? It was the big one, the one that took out all those boats. I guess Obama's political correctness prevents him from noting someone actually dropped "the bomb" and it didn't just fall.

This is a surprising error for a Hawaii native (via the great Kansas heartland) to make. Perhaps Obama was merely confused, as he and his surrogates so often accuse John McCain of being.

More evidence in an Associated Press/Yahoo! poll.

The passion and interest shown by blocs of voters are important because they affect who will be motivated to vote. For now, the numbers favor Obama: 38 percent of his supporters say the election is exciting compared to 9 percent of McCain's. Sixty-five percent of Obama's backers say they are hopeful about the campaign, double McCain's, and the Democrat's supporters are three times likelier to express pride...

Half of McCain's supporters say the race makes them frustrated, more than double Obama's backers who say so. By 2-to-1 or more, McCain backers are likelier than Obama's to say the campaign makes them bored, angry and helpless. And while 16 percent of those preferring Obama say they may change their candidate, 24 percent of McCain's say they might do the same.

"I don't feel I have a choice I can really get behind," said Carol Hall, 63, a Republican from Yorktown, Va., who prefers McCain but said he isn't conservative enough, yet doesn't trust Obama. "I think they're pitiful choices."

1) From the Wall Street Journal, “Who Obama Should See in Iraq” by Dan Senor

Senor spent 2003 and 2004 as a senior advisor to the coalition in Iraq. From this experience, he has a pretty good idea what a naïve junior senator should look for in Iraq if he is in fact intent on having a serious fact gathering mission:

Of course Mr. Obama will spend time with the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad. But beyond the standard briefing on the current state of affairs, he should probe the ambassador about his own change of heart on U.S. policy in Iraq.

Mr. Crocker is a fluent Arabic speaker, widely regarded as among the State Department's most distinguished Arabists. Before Iraq, he was ambassador to Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan, with postings as well to Iran, Qatar, Egypt and Afghanistan.

Before the war, Messrs. Obama and Crocker both opposed the invasion of Iraq. In a 2002 memo to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Mr. Crocker outlined the risks of going to war, including the danger of inflamed sectarian tensions, violent Sunni opposition to the new political order, and meddling from neighbors Iran and Syria.

But Mr. Crocker is a professional diplomat, not an ideologue. Since his days serving with the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 and later taking over as ambassador, he has focused on the challenges facing U.S. policy now – not on whether his 2002 views have been vindicated. He is a strong supporter of the surge strategy, and recognizes that a sustained U.S. commitment to Iraq is essential to building on recent successes.

When Mr. Crocker and I were colleagues in Iraq, I often saw him provide unvarnished and sober recommendations to the most senior officials in the administration, including President Bush. He is not afraid of telling his political masters what they do not want to hear. Mr. Obama should avail himself of Mr. Crocker's experience and judgment, and should give him a fair hearing on why – whatever mistakes both men may think were made in 2002 – the current strategy is the right one in 2008.

But does Obama care about the reality in Iraq? Over the course of the campaign, the longtime community organizer has shown a surprising disregard for facts. Remember, this is the guy who thought the Americans liberated Auschwitz and that Kennedy and Khrushchev sat down for a confab at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Obama has shown a steady preference for hewing to his pre-existing narratives, however erroneous they may be. His supporters will probably consider the following an admirable sign of backbone, but Barack Obama adamantly refuses to let the actual facts confuse him.

And then there’s the secret plan that Obama’s advisors hold for his upcoming Iraq trip. Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin calls our attention to this leak:

One big challenge for Obama will be how to handle his expected discussions with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq during the troop surge that has helped lessen violence in the country. (Petraeus is widely considered the architect of the surge policy.) What Obama advisers want to avoid is a situation where Petraeus undermines the presumptive Democratic candidate’s stated policy—such as by saying a phased withdrawal would jeopardize the hard-won gains of U.S. troops, ignore their sacrifices, and put the future of Iraq at risk. “That would reverberate around the country in a negative way,” says the Democratic insider.

I guess Obama is as serious about hearing from the commanders on the ground as he is on marching towards Afghanistan.

2) From the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, “Covington Partner Demonstrates Treatment of Detainees” by Dan Slater

Back in the 1990’s, the white-shoe law firm Covington & Burling was not-so-affectionately known as Covington & Boring for both its tedious practice and its lifeless environment. I haven’t had contact with that world for a while, but if Covington still retains that demeaning sobriquet, it’s not partner David Remes’ fault.

Remes represents a handful of men at the Guantanamo detention center. In order to dramatize his clients’ plight, he dropped trou at a press conference in Yemen after meeting with the men’s families. As if the visual aids weren’t enough, Remes delivered a stirring soliloquy that would have made Clarence Darrow (or at least Corbin Bernsen) proud:

“I’d been to Guantanamo in mid-June and there’s a certain amount of normalcy that has settled over the normal miserable conditions of confinement, which amount to solitary confinement without sleep and without sunlight and without anyone to talk to. So at the news conference, I said that, in addition to this torment, which has become so typical that we don’t even talk about it anymore, now the torment also consists of constant body searches in which the men are required to pull their shirts up to their chest, drop their pants, and then the corn-fed U.S. military sticks their thumbs under the prisoner’s underwear band and circles the prisoner’s torsos.”

I can’t tell which is more offensive – Remes using the bizarre pejorative “corn-fed U.S. military” or showing his tighty-whities for all the world to see. Actually, looking again at the accompanying image, it’s clearly the latter. Still the use of the term “corn-fed U.S. military” is pretty damn offensive also. One wonders whether Remes realizes that the “corn-fed U.S. military” allows him the freedom to wear extremely expensive suits, even if he apparently discards the lower half when the urge strikes.

As for the propriety of this entire adventure, there was a time when law firms like Covington considered their partners pantsing themsleves in public to be less than entirely cricket. There was also a quaint time when they frowned on crassly insulting the American military while on foreign ground.

3) From the Wall Street Journal, “Voters Want Economic Leadership” by Karl Rove

I’m sorry, but this is one Rove column I just don't get. Today, Rove suggests that politicians can make a winning issue out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

Elections are often reshaped by unexpected and fast-moving events, and when this happens a candidate who quickly takes the lead on the new issue can bolster his chances to win. There is such an opportunity now for Barack Obama and John McCain with the crisis facing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The mortgage giants touch tens of millions of people because their core business is to buy, insure and securitize home loans. But they act like huge hedge funds with their portfolios worth hundreds of billions. As government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), they have an implicit federal guarantee that allows them to borrow money more cheaply than competitors. They have used that advantage to make ever-larger bets in their portfolios, generating big profits when home prices were rising, but big losses when housing weakened.

Let’s flash back to 1992 and the debate where the citizens got to question the candidates. One forlorn woman asked President Bush how the deficit had personally affected him. He rightly looked at her like she had two heads, having no idea how to answer such a strange question.

What Bush didn’t know was that “the deficit” had become a catch-all phrase for “the stumbling economy.” Perhaps Fannie and Freddie could become the same thing, but with $4/gallon gas, the housing bubble and the credit crunch, such abstractions are likely unnecessary. Besides, do we really think the American public is ready for a serious and substantive conversation on mortgage backed securities? (“Mortgage-backed whats? Give me affordable gas!!”) Alas, have we become so boring as a nation? And even if we were ready for such a national dialogue, there’s no indication that either presidential candidate has the private sector chops to participate in such a conversation let alone lead it.

4) From the Washington Times, “Democrat Centrists Duel with Netroots” by Christina Bellantoni

I don’t know who the “centrists” in the title refers to. Harold Ford seems to be the only centrist dueling, and he’s not even an office-holder. Joe Lieberman’s a centrist, but he’s not really a Democrat and he wouldn’t touch the Netroots with a ten foot modem.

Anyway, Ford is off to Netroots Nation, the rechristened version of the Yearly Kos, to debate Markos Moulitsas.

"When we started this 'netroots' thing, we worked to get 'more and better Democrats' elected. At first, we focused on the 'more' part. This year, we're focusing a bit more on the 'better' part. And in 2010, we'll have enough Democrats in the House to exclusively focus on the 'better' part," Mr. Moulitsas wrote in June.

"That means primary challenges," he said. "As we decide who to take on, let it be known ... voting to give telecommunication companies retroactive immunity may not guarantee a primary challenge, but it will definitely loom large."

Since the Netroots’ ascendancy, times have been good for the Democratic party. I would argue crediting the Netroots for the good times is akin to crediting the trees for pushing the wind, but the records between the Democrats “under” Kos and the Democrats “under” the DLC provide a dramatic contrast.. The DLC lost congress; with the Netroots at the party’s forefront, the Democrats regained congress.

But good luck to Harold Ford in making his case to Netroots Nation.

5) From the Wall Street Journal, “Smooth Sailing Gets Ugly with Russian Billionaire’s Yacht” by Robert Frank

For people who make truly obscene amounts of money, there is I believe a moral obligation that they labor mightily to enjoy that money and in so doing fuel the dreams of countless other businessmen and craftsmen who have long waited for a profligate billionaire to enter their lives.

If I had the billions that 36 year-old Russian industrialist Andrey Melnichenko possesses, I would take this responsibility seriously. I would probably start modestly by building the world’s five best golf courses. But once I was warmed up, there’s no telling what I would do.

Melnichenko discharged his sacred responsibility of blowing a huge wad of money on something stupid by building the world’s ugliest yacht. Philipe Starck, who normally crafts kitchen appliances and hotel lobbies, did the design honors. I think after glancing at the picture of the boat you’ll agree Starck should henceforth stick to lemon-squeezers.

Yes, it’s true that Melnichencko’s $300+ million should have gotten him an attractive yacht. But kudos to the guy for trying. And if you read the story, I’m sure you’ll agree the yacht sounds very cool even if it looks positively wretched.

I know, Obama's 3-hour workout has been the main feature on Drudge all day, but the real story is that the senator doesn't sweat, he glows:

A distinct lack of visible sweat on the Illinois senator triggered questions about whether he was actually exercising or using the gym visits as cover for conducting vice presidential vetting or interviews.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton e-mailed a succinct, two-word answer: "Working out."

That view held credence among some of the photographers who regularly accompany Obama. They said that even when he shot hoops earlier this year with members of the University of North Carolina varsity men's basketball team, they didn't see Obama sweat.