Here’s what Barack Obama toldTime’s Karen Tumulty and David Von Drehle earlier this week, when asked what we would learn about him from his vice presidential pick:
Hopefully, the same thing that my campaign has told the American people about me. That I think through big decisions. I get a lot of input from a lot of people, and that ultimately, I try to surround myself with people who are about getting the job done, and who are not about ego, self—aggrandizement, getting their names in the press, but our focus on what's best for the American people.
I think people will see that I'm not afraid to have folks around me who complement my strengths and who are independent. I'm not a believer in a government of yes—men. I think one of the failures of the early Bush Administration was being surrounded by people who were unwilling to deliver bad news, or who were prone to simply feed the president information that confirmed his own preconceptions.
Is there a clue here as to Obama’s pick? Perhaps not--he’ll claim these nice statements would apply to anyone he chooses. But I’m struck by two things. The “who complement my strengths” sounds like a nod to the need for someone with foreign policy/military experience. And the “who are not about ego, self-aggrandizement, getting their names in the press” sounds like his choice may be less well-known than some of the alternatives.
Sounds like Sen. Jack Reed--who, for what it’s worth, I’ve always thought was the best choice among the senators.
Earlier in the summer, fashion designers held a $10,000-per-plate fundraiser for Barack Obama featuring his fashionable wife Michelle. Now with Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in NYC just around the corner, the fashion industry will be using the hype about the Spring 2009 collections to promote Obama’s hope, change, and tote bags.
About 20 designers are creating high-end Obama merchandise featuring “the candidate's image and his red-white-and-blue rising sun logo,” the Washington Post’s Robin Givhan reported this weekend. Items will include a Diane von Furstenberg tote bag and an $80 Tracy Reese appliqué T-shirt, among others. (Reese’s design for a $400 “one-shouldered silk georgette frock” didn’t make the cut, unfortunately.) This red-white-and-blue Obamawear is sure to clash nicely with the fall colors and styles that will soon debut.
The designers will wear their Obamawear at Runway for Change, a fundraiser for the candidate during New York Fashion Week in September. You too can schmooze with the designers and party hosts Sarah Jessica Parker and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, if you have an extra $250 to $10,000 to spare. The question is, if you have that kind of money and are in NYC for Fashion Week, wouldn’t you rather buy a designer tote bag that does NOT have a politician’s face on it?
CBS4 News has learned if mass arrests happen at the Democratic Convention, those taken into custody will be jailed in a warehouse owned by the City of Denver. Investigator Rick Sallinger discovered the location and managed to get inside for a look.
The newly created lockup is on the northeast side of Denver.
Inside are dozens are metal cages. They are made out of chain link fence material and topped by rolls of barbed wire.
The protesters have already given this place a name: "Gitmo on the Platte."
If by "Gitmo on the Platte" they mean that they'll have access to clean water, food, and legal recourse through the U.S. justice system, then I suppose that's accurate enough. Maybe the protesters meant "Gulag on the Platte?"
McCain Campaign: Bill Clinton a "force for good" on race
This is a stunner. Steve Schmidt, who is now effectively running John McCain's presidential campaign, told Politico's Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith yesterday that "every American should be proud" of Bill Clinton's record on race issues.
"Say whatever you want about Bill Clinton," Schmidt said, "but it's deeply unfair to suggest his criticism of Obama was race-based. President Clinton was a force for unity in this country on this subject. Every American should be proud of his record as both a governor and president. But we knew it was coming in our direction because they did it against a President of the United State of their own party."
Sheesh. I understand what they are trying to do politically, but saying something like this makes McCain own that Clinton record, to some extent. And it's a very mixed record.
For one thing, Clinton strongly opposed a ballot initiative in Michigan two years ago that uses the same language as the one in Arizona that McCain embraced last week. He spoke of the need to "mend" and not "end" affirmative action and yet extended many of the racial preferences that most Americans -- 82 percent according to a recent Newsweek poll -- find so odious. And what about Clinton's "national dialogue on race? According to a New York Times article on the panel, the chairman of the panel "indicated...that no conservatives had been invited to speak because he felt they had nothing to contribute."
And then there was the record of the Clinton Justice Department's shameful use of race at campaign time. Days before the 1998 congressional elections Clinton called on Republicans to "stand up and put a stop" to their alleged minority voter intimidation. "For the last several elections there have been examples in various states of Republicans either actually or threatening to try to intimidate or try to invalidate the votes of African-Americans in precincts that are overwhelmingly African-American -- mostly places where they think it might change the outcome of the election," said Clinton. Attorney General Janet Reno made the same claims, vowing extra security to thwart any GOP attempts to keep minority voters from exercising their rights. And when Republicans asked for evidence -- any evidence -- of their allegedly racist behavior, the Clinton administration and the Justice Department were silent and, in part on the strength of record minority turnout, Democrats bucked historical odds and picked up governorships and seats in the House and Senate.
So the McCain campaign is praising Clinton as a "force for unity" on race despite the fact that he falsely accused McCain's party of racist voter intimidation, and despite the fact that he expressly supports the racial preferences that McCain says he opposes, and despite the fact that the Clinton administration's top man on race once said conservatives have nothing to add to discussions of race?
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?
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.
Yesterday, Drudge blared the news that Obama was leading McCain by 9 points in Gallup's daily tracking poll, but the latest Gallup/USA Todaypoll 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.
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.
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."
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.
Democratic Senate Challengers Trail Badly in Money Race
Roll Call reports that despite the expectation that 2008 will be a banner year for Senate Democrats, many of their challengers are trailing badly in fundraising:
A couple of candidates are in good shape, at least on the fundraising front. Through May 21, Maine Rep. Tom Allen (D) raised $3.9 million, giving him 72 percent of Sen. Susan Collins’ (R) total raised. And in Minnesota, comedian Al Franken (D) actually outraised Sen. Norm Coleman (R), $9.4 million to $8.7 million through March 31.
The rest of the class is further behind.
Oregon Speaker Jeff Merkley (D) raised $1.9 million through April 30, about 38 percent of Sen. Gordon Smith’s (R) fundraising. Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D) raised $267,000 through March 31, putting him at 13 percent of Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R) total raised in Alaska.
In North Carolina, state Sen. Kay Hagan (D) raised 22 percent ($1.5 million) of Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s (R) take ($6.7 million) through April 16, though she announced on Wednesday that she collected $1.6 million from April 17 to June 30. In Mississippi, former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D) raised $449,000 through March 31, giving him 14 percent of appointed Sen. Roger Wicker’s (R) total at the end of March. In Kentucky, wealthy health care executive Bruce Lunsford (D) raised $1.5 million through April 30, 17 percent of the total taken in by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R).
Through March 31, Rick Noriega (D), having taken in 16 percent of Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s total in Texas; Andrew Rice (D), who had 30 percent of Republican Sen. James Inhofe’s total in Oklahoma; and Jim Slattery (D), who had 9 percent of Republican Sen. Pat Roberts’ total, also trailed the incumbents’ fundraising by wide margins.
So the two stars of the Democratic Senate class are Tom Allen (D-ME), who seems certain to lose, and Al Franken, who has problems of his own.
The report doesn't mention fundraising in most of the top seats that Democrats are targeting: Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, and New Hampshire. In each of those races, Democrats are rated as even money or better to take over Republican seats. However, in order to approach the mythical filibuster-proof 60 vote threshold, Democrats need several of the candidates on this list to prevail. And they'll need to significantly improve their money numbers to make that possible.
In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.
But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. [...] Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.
On a conference call this morning, Lindsey Graham called Obama's op/ed an "unbelievable, brazen effort by a politician to rewrite history." As Graham and others have noted, Obama opposed the surge because he believed it would not decrease the level of sectarian violence. Furthermore, Obama clings to his belief that Iraq's leaders have not reached "political accommodation" even though 15 of the 18 benchmarks have been met.
Obama also writes that he would leave behind "a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions". The McCain Report notes that Obama doesn't say how many troops will comprise this "residual force": "Will our withdrawal be a humiliating disaster or careful drawdown that could leave 30,000 troops in Iraq for 10 years?"
Pete Wehner's commentary on the rest of the nonsense in Obama's op/ed is a must read.
There was a good piece in the Chicago Sun-Times over the weekend on the Barack and Michelle Obama love story. The romance, as we've read before, began in 1988 when Obama, then at law school, had a summer internship at Sidley Austin law firm, where Michelle was the young attorney assigned to be his mentor. They were married by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named four years later at Trinity United Church of Christ. Why the long courtship? This part we hadn't read before:
It took two years for Obama to finally propose. Though she knew he didn't fear commitment, Michelle had become a bit irritated with his struggle over whether marriage had become an outdated institution.
We can totally sympathize with Michelle's irritation. Barack Obama is not exactly a baby-boomer. He likes to brag that he was only 8 years old in the late 1960s when his neighborhood friend Bill Ayers was setting bombs. And of course the late 1960s was also the high-water mark for radical doubts about bourgeois mating habits such as matrimony. Wasn't it a little, um, outdated, to be doubting the institution of marriage in the early 1990s?
Earlier this week, Larry Kudlow talked to a McCain adviser who told him McCain was moving away from his advocacy of cap-and-trade policies as a way to fight climate change.
...on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac’s two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely — even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read.
So then I asked this senior official if the campaign has taken cap-and-trade out behind the barn and shot it dead once and for all — buried it in history’s dustbin of bad ideas. The answer came back that they are interested in jobs right now — jobs for new energy production and jobs from lower taxes. At that point I became satisfied. Even though a McCain presidency might resurrect cap-and-trade, it will be a much different format. More important, the campaign is cognizant of the conservative rebellion against it.
Yesterday, McCain spokesman Jill Hazelbaker put out a statement saying that it was “totally false” that McCain was minimizing his support for cap-and-trade. Sadly, McCain’s comments at a town hall in Michigan suggest that she is correct.
"I believe that human activity, which is generating greenhouse gases, is effecting the climate of our planet. And I believe that in the cap-and-trade system, which I believe would be good for our economy, would be a way of addressing the greenhouse gas emissions which there is palpable evidence all over the planet."
Obama Dominating McCain in the Election's Most Critical Issue
The AP dares to ask: which candidate would you rather grill burgers with?
People would rather barbecue burgers with Barack Obama than with John McCain.
While many are still deciding who should be president, by 52 percent to 45 percent they would prefer having Obama than McCain to their summer cookout, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Wednesday.
Men are about evenly divided between the two while women prefer Obama by 11 percentage points. Whites prefer McCain, minorities Obama. And Obama is a more popular guest with younger voters while McCain does best with the oldest.
With over four months until the November election, handicapping 435 House races is a daunting task. But Jim Ellis, a seasoned political operative and electoral analyst who runs the PRIsm Information Network, puts the November landscape into clearer focus.
According to Ellis, 228 House seats fall into the “safe,” “likely,” or “lean” Democratic categories. Similarly, 189 Republican seats are considered safe, likely, or lean for the GOP. That leaves 18 seats as pure toss-ups--the ones that will shape the balance of power in the new House in January 2009.
Assuming each party holds all the seats in the three categories that tilt its way, the new Democratic majority in the House could range from 246 D to 189 R (assuming Democrats win all the toss-ups) to 228 D to 207 R (assuming Republicans win all the toss-ups).
Since it’s highly unlikely either party will run the table and prevail in all close races, the new House ratio likely will settle somewhere between Ellis’s two estimates.
Keep in mind that the current House ratio is 236 D to 199 R. Based on Ellis’ numbers, ending up anywhere north of 200 would represent a huge victory for House Republicans (that would take holding all of the safe, likely, and lean GOP districts and winning over half of the toss-ups). A better guess would probably put the new House closer to the 245 to 190 or 250 to 185 range, about where it was nearly 30 years ago right after Ronald Reagan was elected in November 1980 (the House included 244 Democrats and 191 Republicans in January 1981). Republicans dipped below 190 votes in the House after 1982 and hovered between the mid-160s and low-180s for the next 15 years. The House was at a 258 D to 176 R ratio in 1994, immediately prior to the Republicans winning the majority for the first time in 40 years.
The McCain campaign should be careful how they handle the Court's decision on handguns. While the Second Amendment in general is a winning GOP issue, the handgun aspects of it are more problematic with swing voters. In the end, this election will be decided by white females and ticket-splitting independents. The handgun issue is no huge winner among this group. McCain should applaud the decision, but tread carefully.
With that, the Cardinal is going celebrate the decision by cleaning his trusty CZ 75 P-01.
The Obama campaign has done away with the Great Seal of Barack. Marc Ambinder offers an insightful analysis of how the Great Seal came in to being:
Some Obama aides are enraptured by the idea of an Obama brand that transcends politics; others, including most of those who are actually close to the candidate, are much, much more concerned with the type of hubris that all the talk of an Obama brand actually encourages. All of which is to say that if you were to exchange brains with your typical Obama staffer, you can kind of see how designing a new seal seems cool and presidential...
Could the Obama campaign possibly be too cool for school? As one reader stationed in Iraq opined last week: Obama's "proposals for Iraq sound like something a college student who has no background in military matters would write in a term paper and think they've said something profound. 'Dude, you know what would be totally cool? A "counterterrorism" force!'"
One has to wonder if the same staffer who thought up Obama's counterterrorism force designed his super-patriotic seal.
Director Spike Lee, whose movies often cast a sharp eye on U.S. racial politics, predicted a presidential victory for black Democrat Barack Obama that would mark a "new day" for the United States.
"It's going to be before Obama, 'B.B.,' and after Obama -- 'A.B.' -- and some folks need to get used to this," Lee said. "And I'm going to be at the inauguration -- getting my hotel reservation now."
John Feehery, a GOP consultant and former communications director for Speaker Dennis Hastert, says that the sleeper issue of 2008 may be violent crime. More precisely, it may be a sleeper issue in GOP-leaning districts. Feehery points out that while crime is down nationwide, it's up in smaller cities--and sentiments about illegal immigration may be tied in with worries about crime:
I have had a working theory for quite a while that the anger towards illegal immigration is only partially explained by job security. The biggest reason that many Americans dislike illegal immigration is a fear of crime.
The Democrats now sense this and are outbidding the White House on spending for immigration enforcement, with a special emphasis on deporting people convicted of major drug offenses and violent crimes. According to one news report, “A Homeland Security budget bill now moving through the House Appropriations Committee specifies that at least $800 million be spent after Oct. 1 to identify and remove the most violent and dangerous criminals from the U.S.”
Politicohas more about the move by moderate Democrats--i.e., Democrats in Republican-leaning districts--to move to the right on immigration. How real is the anxiety about crime overall? Polls of Americans' top priorities generally no longer even list crime as a possible response. But in one recent poll where it did appear as an option--Gallup's poll in March--49 percent of Americans said crime and violence is something that they personally worry about "a great deal," putting it behind only Iraq and health care as a priority.
The Obama campaign has released the roster of its National Security Working Group. You’ll want to take your No-Doz before reading the full list:
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
Senator David Boren, former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Secretary of State Warren Christopher
Greg Craig, former director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning
Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig
Representative Lee Hamilton, former Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder
Dr. Tony Lake, former National Security Advisor
Senator Sam Nunn, former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Secretary of Defense William Perry
Dr. Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State
Representative Tim Roemer, 9/11 Commissioner
Jim Steinberg, former Deputy National Security Advisor
Okay, one obvious quibble--what the hell does Eric Holder know about National Security? I know he did the high profile prosecution of Dan Rostenkowski and was instrumental in getting Marc Rich his presidential pardon, but even so, Holder’s national security bona fides aren’t immediately apparent. Since his name keeps coming up in regards to Obama-related activities, he’s probably your next Attorney General if Obama wins. While Holder wouldn’t be an inspiring pick, we could do worse. (Hint: rhymes with “Schmeval Schmatrick.”)
But I digress. What really leaps out about the list is what a thoroughly conventional crew of advisors Obama has cobbled together. Does anyone really think Warren Christopher will devise a revolutionary national security plan? Or Madeline Albright? Or Tony Lake?
This goes back to what I was saying about Obama a couple of weeks ago. Rhetorical skills aside, Obama is a decidedly inside-the-box thinker. If he were really going to take America’s national security in a new direction, he wouldn’t be seeking counsel from these fossils.
Obama’s penchant for conventional--nay, clichéd--thinking provides equal measures of hope and fear. Those who fear that Obama might just turn over our national security checkerboard can probably breathe easier. That’s not how this particular politician rolls.
But the reliance on such a conventional cast of advisors suggests that Obama hasn’t really given much thought to national security. Instead, he has opted for the George H.W. Bush route of prudence. Everyone on the list of advisors (with the exception of Holder) has establishment credentials. If Obama has a national security vision, it remains impossible to discern.
On a conference call with John Kerry and Richard Clarke, Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner asked: "They've said if UBL were captured and detained at Gitmo, Obama would want to give him habeas corpus rights. They [the McCain campaign] said that this morning. Would he? In other words should UBL have the same rights that were granted, you know, by the Supreme Court last week to other terrorists?"
Sen. Kerry replied:
Let me answer that on several levels. This is John Kerry. First of all the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that they have those rights. This is not Barack Obama. This is the Supreme Court of the United States. If John McCain were president, he would have to give them those rights. This is a phony argument. And it is typical of what the Republican playbook is, which is say anything no matter what the other side has said. Just say it. And enough people may believe it unless you folks write the truth and write it boldly and clearly.
When Kerry says that the Supreme Court has "ruled that they have those rights," is Osama bin Laden included in the word "they"? It sure sounded like it to me. Though it would be a lot easier to "write the truth and write it boldly and clearly" if Kerry's grammar were a little clearer.
Barack Obama has been insistent that a central part of his economic plan is a middle class tax cut. According to Obama's website, his plan for tax relief includes a tax cut for working families, the 'American opportunity' tax credit, an expansion of the dependent care tax credit, and the elimination of income taxes for seniors earning under $50,000. Nevertheless, the McCain campaign has asserted that Senator Obama plans the largest tax increase in American history.
The liberal media has gone out of its way to defend Obama against the charge. Just the other day, the New York Times asserted that 'some [economists] question whether Mr. Obama’s tax plan can even be characterized as an increase.' Well, today the Times' own Paul Krugman comes to the rescue:
Barack Obama’s tax plan is more responsible than Mr. McCain’s: relative to current policy, the Tax Policy Center estimates, the Obama plan would raise revenue by $700 billion over the next decade, compared with a $600 billion loss for Mr. McCain.
It turns out that not only is Obama proposing a tax increase, he's proposing a huge tax increase.
According to Politico, Senator Barack Obama will mention “Google” three times in a speech in Michigan today. Why? Writes Jonathan Martin, “Last week, discussing how easy it is to find information on people these days, [Senator John] McCain said, ‘You know, basically it's a Google.’ He meant to say that much can be found via ‘a Google search,’ but left out that key last word.”
I am certain Senator McCain knows what Google is. But on the slight chance he doesn’t, he need not despair.
What James Webb Doesn't Know About Iraqi (and Japanese) History
Democratic senator James Webb of Virginia pursued an undeniably distinguished military career. But a fine record of service in arms doesn't preclude becoming a demagogue as a politician.
Last Thursday, Webb assailed Republican Sen. John McCain for comments on the Today Show, namely, McCain's declaration that “What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. . . . Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine.”
Webb told the Washington Post, “It’s pretty clear their intentions are that we put in a basing system in Iraq that parallels the Korea-Japan history. . . . The difference is, Iraq is not Korea or Japan. . . . The history of every single outside occupation of Iraq over the last thousand years argues against that logic.”
To suggest that a foreign presence in Iraq is more difficult to establish than such a presence in Japan shows breathtaking historical illiteracy. Baghdad was ruled by Persians and by the Seljuq Turks beginning in the 10th century, then fell to the Mongols in 1258--the latter is considered the most traumatic event in Arab history and was believed by Muslims of the time to be the end of the world. The soon-to-be-Islamized Mongols, who undermined the authority of narrow sharia, ruled until an invasion by the Persianized Central Asian conqueror Tamerlane, at the beginning of the 15th century. This was followed by the domination in Baghdad of more Mongols, then two sets of Turkic tribes (of which the Turkmens in Iraq today are a remnant), and once more by Iranians. The Ottomans took over in the middle of the 16th century and ruled until the first World War. Iraq did not gain anything resembling independence until the end of the post-WW1 British mandate in 1932.
Indeed, for almost the entire past 1,000 years the only proponents of Iraqi independence have been the 20th century British and Americans, even as Nazi and Communist agents latterly and unsuccessfully attempted to impose their influence in the country. And so it is today as the U.S.-led Coalition defends a new Iraq from Wahhabi and Iranian terrorists. Perhaps Sen. Webb thinks the lesson of “outside occupation of Iraq over the last thousand years” is that we should encourage an Iranian reconquest?
Webb’s pseudo-history is especially ridiculous in that he intimates that Iraqis have a long tradition of resistance to foreign domination, lacking in Japan, and that this explains the success of the American occupation of Japan. Japan, unlike Iraq, was never invaded or conquered by foreigners of any kind until 1945. The lessons of the past 1,000 years of Iraqi and Japanese history support U.S. intervention, not abdication. The primary rule of historical analysis, as well as of politics and even war is to make distinctions, not confuse them. Loose lips sink reputations.
A bunch of publications are naming Rep. Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, as a potential running-mate for McCain:
The National Journal, The Washington Post, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and a flurry of bloggers all have made recent mentions of Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Henrico, as a possible Republican vice-presidential nominee. When it comes to handicapping, operatives and experts remain skeptical of his chances.
“I would say it is very to extremely unlikely,” University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato writes in an e-mail. ... “McCain is already doing reasonably well among Jewish Americans,” he writes. “He doesn’t need Cantor.” As for McCain — “soon to be 72” — Sabato believes he “must pick someone who automatically passes the presidential test. Cantor does not.”
Unlikely, sure, but Sabato misses the point. Rep. Cantor would seal the deal on bringing Jewish Hillary supporters to McCain's corner. And for those who missed it, check out THE WEEKLY STANDARD's profile of Cantor from a few years back.
Speaking on an Obama campaign conference call this morning, John Kerry said: “Our generals have made it crystal clear that we cannot sustain American forces deployed in Iraq at this level. The fact is that our own military is overstretched. It has reduced American ability to be able to respond to other crises in the world from Darfur to Afghanistan, where our generals are asking for two additional brigades to get the job done.”
Barack Obama's real estate partner Tony Rezko was recently convicted in his trial. As a result, another beneficiary of Rezko's largesse may now face impeachment:
House Speaker Michael Madigan is circulating a memo to legislative candidates spelling out how they can call for impeachment hearings for Gov. Rod Blagojevich—with talking points that compare corruption under the governor to a tumor that must be removed.
The 14-page rundown of Blagojevich's alleged "misdeeds and malfeasance" is sure to deepen the feud between the two Democrats.
"One thing we learned from the [imprisoned former Republican Gov.] George Ryan case is that we should excise a tumor when it is first discovered; not leave it in the body to continue to spread and do further harm," the memo reads.
So far the national media have studiously avoided any serious scrutiny of Obama's links to the Chicago Democratic machine. If Blagojevich faces impeachment -- at the hands of a Democratic House led by a Democratic speaker -- it will be hard to avoid some scrutiny.
First, Vogue’s April It Girl Michelle has been heralded for her “potential to bring a more fashion-forward aesthetic into the White House,” especially with her custom-made “sleeveless purple silk crepe sheath” that reportedly retails for $900. And Barack was named one of British Esquire’s top ten best-dressed men “by virtue of his simple, sharp tailoring--usually seen clad in inconspicuous dark suit and crisp white shirt.”
I'm all for better style on Pennsylvania Avenue, but this is starting to sound like a Newsweek cover story.
Well, never mind. Barack was then caught by the Daily News cycling in "ill-fitting jeans, a tucked-in golf shirt, black-and-white socks and a helmet that could make Michael Dukakis blush." Even the Obamas need a little fashion help now and then.
While Newsweek has certainly produced some penetrating reportage and incisive analysis, the opposite has more often been true in this presidential race, as Jim Geraghty reminds us. Newsweek's latest pro-Obama work is this hit job on Joe Lieberman. The writers report that during a confrontation between Obama and Lieberman on the floor of the Senate last week, "Obama told Lieberman he was surprised by Lieberman's personal attacks and his half-hearted denials of the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim." This claim was sourced to an anonymous Obama aide, and as Mark Hemingway reports, Newsweek never contacted Lieberman's office for a response to this accusation:
Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittmann says, “The anonymous Obama campaign staffer’s characterization of the private conversation was entirely false and fabricated.” Another Lieberman aide confirmed, “I was not told that the Obama campaign was selectively leaking the contents of that conversation, or I would have made it clear that that characterization was completely and utterly false. The first time I knew what the Obama campaign was saying was when I saw it in a magazine.” That Newsweek did not ask Lieberman to respond to the specific charges is grossly unfair.
Newsweek never cites an example of Lieberman's "half-hearted denials" of the "Obama's a Muslim" rumor. And what makes the story all the more infuriating is that it seems, at least to me, that Obama's confrontation with Lieberman was a perfect example of the Clintonian triangulation he's supposed to be above. After pivoting away from his dovish positions on Iran in a speech to AIPAC, Obama then walks onto the floor of the Senate and tells Senator Joe Lieberman to shut up--a not-so-subtle appeal to the Kossack Left.
Obama's Military Adviser - Worst Chief of Staff Ever?
A note from a recently retired Air Force reader:
Believe it or not, the recent SNAFU with the Air Force's strategic assets can be traced directly back to Barack Obama's military advisor General Merrill McPeak. The changes that McPeak set in motion 15 years ago eventually came back to bite the USAF in the a$$.
I was a young LT, a wrench-turner, assigned to the 351st Strategic Missile Wing when McPeak was Chief of Staff. In addition to his most notable legacy --the infamous uniform changes that were immediately repealed when he retired-- McPeak was the man who dissolved Strategic Air Command. We were reassigned to 8th Air Force under his new Air Combat Command, and with the abolishment of SAC went many of the long standing regulations that guided the control and transport of nuclear weapons. It was only a matter of time before the Air Force suffered an embarassing nuclear incident.
Furthermore, McPeak stovepiped the promotion line so that fighter pilots were funneled up the ranks above all other [career fields]. Career nuclear weapons officers, once the men who ran the Air Force, now found little room for their expertise in the elite circles of Air Force command.
I have heard General McPeak's name floated as a possible candidate for SECDEF if Obama wins the election. May God have mercy on the US Armed Forces (not just the Air Force) if that's the case. His tenure as Chief was nothing short of disastrous. Imagine the damage he could do at the helm of the ENTIRE military.
McPeak's name is still a dirty word in many military circles. He was a deeply unpopular Chief of Staff (October 1990 - October 1994) --though he was, by all accounts, a phenomenal fighter pilot and a real hero of the Vietnam War.
It's important to note that the sweeping changes that Secretary Gates made last week directly contradicted the McPeak philosophies on how the broad sword of air power should be wielded. The Gates purge was very new-war, very 21st century. McPeak's changes, though originally configured for the Cold War, never really had a place in any century.
I'm a little nervous about making fun of the latest bit of Obama-as-mesiah stuff from the San Francisco Chronicle because I'm not entirely sure whether or not it's satire. Here's Mark Morford explaining that Obama just might be a "Lightworker":
I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?
I, of course, have an answer. Sort of. . . . [snip]
Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway. . . . [more snip]
Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.
The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history. . . . [yet more snip]
There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.
Not bad for someone who won the nomination with 48,519 fewer votes than his opponent! Maybe it was the positive vibrations which put him over the top.
But seriously you keep looking for Morford's punchline, don't you? And this isn't an alt-weekly or a college paper--it's a big-city daily newspaper. I suppose it's a sign of exactly where we are that it's impossible to tell the difference between genuine Obama praise and snarky anti-Obama satire.
There's a lot of it going around and most of it seems, to me at least, a little unfair. For instance, Drudge is linking to this Daily News story mocking Clinton for spending $109,823 per delegate. The reporter goes on and on coming up with other things she could have done with all of that money--she could have bought Priuses (Priui?) for 9,838 people! What a waste! Ha-ha! Get it? Do you get it!
Of course the reporter doesn't mention Obama's cost-per-delegate.
I don't know where the Daily News got their numbers--they say Clinton spent $212 million to get 1,926 delegates. (I'm not implying these numbers are invalid, I'm just saying I don't know where they come from.) However, using the numbers on money spent from Open Secrets and delegate totals from RCP, I get that Clinton spent $97,688 per delegate.
And Obama spent $98,198 per delegate.
Of course it's harder to make fun of Clinton that way.
Roll Call ($) reports that the Republican National Committee -- which has far outstripped Howard Dean's DNC in fundraising -- will lend support to the cash-poor National Republican Congressional Committee:
Republican Congressional Committee are set to form a joint fundraising committee with the goal of supporting GOP House candidates on the fall ballot, Roll Call learned late Friday.
According to a Republican strategist familiar with situation, the joint RNC-NRCC fundraising committee is set to be up and running in the coming days. Lobbyist Bill Paxon, a former NRCC chairman and ex-New York Congressman, will head the joint fundraising committee.
The strategist described this new joint fundraising committee as a way for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (Okla.) and the RNC to collaborate on providing funds for GOP House candidates, both incumbents and challengers.
By the end of April, the DCCC had an advantage of $45.3 million to $6.7 million in cash on hand. In contrast, the RNC held an edge of $53.6 million to $4.4 million in cash on hand at the end of May. The House Republican campaign committee can probably use all the help it can get to improve their prospects.
It's frequently observed that America's labor bosses no longer seem to have U.S. interests at heart. Is it any surprise, given that they are committed to tapping into the international leftist/socialist network to try to get their way?
...the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), joined by MoveOn.org and activists from 25 countries, launched a global campaign directed at world leaders and legislators to protest the special treatment and tax loopholes lavished on private equity firms...
Today, more than 10 million people worldwide will be asked to attend a demonstration in one of 100 cities and 25 countries July 17, and to sign a petition directed at legislators worldwide that says in part, "Support the fight to take back the economy and pledge to close tax loopholes that feed the greed of the buyout industry..."
In the United States, voters will be asked to send a letter to John McCain about his ties to Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts founder Henry Kravis. John McCain has said he does not support closing tax loopholes for hedge fund managers and buyout industry executives. Henry Kravis is a major fund-raiser for John McCain.
The effort to defeat McCain is pretty obvious. But it's offensive and inappropriate to coordinate the activity among 'activists from 25 different countries,' and to stage protests in Mexico City, Paris, Tokyo, and other locales. If America's union bosses want so badly to defeat McCain, they should try to do it here.
Indeed, if the SEIU really wants to muscle through this tax increase, then their real enemy isn't John McCain, but the Senate Democratic leadership -- which has been bought off to oppose it. Perhaps with the help of activists worldwide, the union bosses can get DSCC chair Chuck Schumer to see the light.
After lamenting the cost imposed by overeating in the West on the world's hungry, conference-attendees at the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization grappled with food shortages over a modest menu that included "puff pastries with corn and mozzarella, pasta with pumpkin and shrimp, and rolls of thinly sliced veal." They did skip dessert--you know, in solidarity with the downtrodden.
Obesity is no more likely to wane than the U.N.'s foie gras and truffle budget. Farm subsidies are a far more vulnerable target, and their evil is not limited to the starvation of the poorest people in the world. The fact is farm subsidies have probably created as much international animosity towards the United States as the War on Terror. And our supposed savior, Barack Obama, is not entitled to lecture his countrymen about rescuing our image abroad while voting in favor of legislation that doles out billions to farm
