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You mean the war monger negotiated peace??
For Future of Biofuel, Secret of MPG Ooze Lies in Mutant Bacteria
Looking way beyond ethanol, scientists have zeroed in on 2010 or 2011 for the zero-emissions magic to start happening: a genetic transformation from bug juice to eco-friendly hydrocarbon power—the production-ready designer fuel to end high gas prices for good.
Through a twist of synthetic biology, researchers at San Francisco startup LS9 (top) say bacteria-based diesel could be ready for cars by 2011, while Emeryville, Calif.-based Amyris (bottom) has teamed up with a Brazilian ethanol giant for production of its own third-generation alternative fuel, which may come even sooner. (Photographs Courtesy of LS9 and Amyris Biotechnologies)
The key to the next generation of biofuels isn't growing in a field; it's mutating in a lab. By swapping natural genes in yeast and bacteria for synthetic ones, scientists have tricked the microbes into producing hydrocarbons—creating, in essence, billions of tiny refineries to turn simple sugars into environmentally friendly diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and biocrude.
"We've been making a lot of things using micro-organisms for a long time," says Jim McMillan, biorefining process R&D manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). "The real breakthrough here, I think, is recognizing that you can get these microbial factories to produce these very high-energy fuel molecules, like hydrocarbons."
Moonshine, penicillin, even certain cheeses all rely on millions of similar little helpers. But recent advances in genetics have allowed researchers to design genes on computers and splice them into a microbe's DNA, no longer simply refining the natural abilities of microorganisms, but creating in them new talents entirely.
"Essentially, we take what would normally be converted into triethylglycerides—effectively, fats—and divert that off into these hydrocarbons that we care about," says Greg Pal, a senior director at LS9 in San Francisco, which hopes to bring bacterial diesel fuel to commercial scale by 2011.
Amidst increasing criticisms of ethanol's shortcomings—lower energy density, energy-intensive production and distillation, and the inability to transport the fuel within existing pipelines—a growing handful of companies are betting that the biofuels of the future will look almost identical to the petroleum-based fuels of the present.
"It's getting easier and easier, but it still takes a decent amount of effort to engineer a biological system into doing something that you want it to do," says Neil Renninger, co-founder of four-year-old Amyris Biotechnologies, a company that previously engineered microbes to churn out inexpensive antimalarial drugs. "So before going down the route of engineering a bug to make a biofuel, we wanted to make sure we were making the best biofuel possible."
Amyris first studied the highest performing compounds of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel, then tinkered with the genetic structures of E. coli and yeast to produce bioequivalents, Renninger says, leveraging the same cutting-edge technology previously employed to produce pharmaceutical-quality medicines at commodity-level prices. The company recently announced a deal with the Brazilian sugar and ethanol manufacturer Crystalsev to launch a joint facility south of São Paulo, giving Amyris access to 2 million tons of sugar to feed its mutated strains of yeast. It projects commercial production of some 30 million gallons of diesel as early as 2010, with production of gasoline and jet fuel roughly one and two years behind, respectively.
LS9 plans to open a pilot facility this summer and a 50- to 100-million-gallon plant three years later, producing a drop-in replacement for diesel, as well as a biocrude to be processed in traditional refineries. Rogue scientist J. Craig Venter, who helped lead an international consortium of scientists to map the human genome, has announced plans to engineer bacteria able to create hydrocarbons not just from sugars, but from CO2 pulled straight from the atmosphere.
"If you look at where sugar cane is in Brazil, or at where biomass will be here in the near future, we're pretty confident that we can compete with oil around the $50-a-barrel range," Pal says. "The key driver of the cost really is the cost of raw materials."
For the moment, microbial hydrocarbons, like ethanol, rely on an inexpensive supply of simple sugars to convert into fuel. In the United States, that supply has traditionally come from the starches found in corn kernels, a feedstock with questionable environmental benefits and marginal economic ones. Until technologies exist to easily derive sugars from tough cellulosic material, such as corn's remaining stalks, leaves and cobs, companies like LS9 and Amyris are likely to feed their fuels with sugar cane—a relatively green source of easy-to-use sucrose, albeit one with limited domestic potential.
As the world continues to consume some 150 million gallons of oil every hour, any potentially game-changing solutions will need not only to work, but to work cheaply and at truly massive scales.
"We could be harvesting on a sustainable basis over a billion tons of dry biomass in the United States if we got serious about it, and that would get us somewhere close to 30 percent of our liquid transportation fuels," NREL's McMillan says. "So while sucrose is undoubtedly part of the solution, to really get that huge volume impact, you have to go to those cellulosic feedstocks."
All hail the steadfastness of the Constitutional Law Scholar!
You know, I *almost* wish that the USSC upholds the DC handgun ban, now. *Almost.*
By Moe Lane
I don't, of course, because not being a Constitutional Law Scholar! I retain this naive belief that the 2nd Amendment is simply a straightforward confirmation of my individual right to own weapons, and that the typical reaction of the Founding Fathers to suggestions otherwise would be horrified laughter. Said naive belief is also shared by my party's candidate for President (H/T: Snowflakes in Hell), along with what looks to be most of the rest of the Congressional/Senate GOP.
But not the Constitutional Law Scholar! Back in 2007, the Chicago Tribune noted:
But the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he '...believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.'
What a refreshingly unambiguous statement made that he made ther...
Obama Camp Disavows Last Year's 'Inartful' Statement on D.C. Gun Law
ABC News' Teddy Davis and Alexa Ainsworth Report: With the Supreme Court poised to rule on Washington, D.C.'s, gun ban, the Obama campaign is disavowing what it calls an "inartful" statement to the Chicago Tribune last year in which an unnamed aide characterized Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as believing that the DC ban was constitutional.
"That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator's consistent position," Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News.
Err, right. May I suggest that Senator Obama start putting a "Freshest if used by" date on all his speeches? It'd be a help, really.
Moe Lane
PS: Just in case the DC gun ban is upheld, I suggest that Obama supporters bookmark this site. Actually, bookmark it anyway: you're going to need it.
More of the " new " politics, huh.
Explain to me again how this empty suit is differnt any other pol?
Obama's Corn Fake
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Energy: If Obama wants energy independence through alternative fuels, why doesn't he back imported sugar-based ethanol? This old-style politician knows it isn't grown in the Midwest and Brazil has no electoral votes.
Read More: Energy | Election 2008
Barack Obama says he represents change. He also criticizes John McCain for trying to drill our way to energy independence to add to the profits of Big Oil. But it's Obama who's playing politics by trying to plant our way to energy independence, buying votes with alternative fuel subsidies that benefit ethanol producers such as Archer Daniels Midland.
ADM is based in Illinois, the second-largest corn-producing state. Not long after arriving in the U.S. Senate, Obama flew twice on corporate jets owned by the nation's largest ethanol producer. Imagine if McCain flew on the corporate jets of Exxon Mobil.
Corn-based ethanol gets a 51-cents-a-gallon tax subsidy that will cost taxpayers $4.5 billion this year. McCain opposes ethanol subsidies while Obama supports them. McCain opposed them even though Iowa is the first caucus state. Obama, touted by Caroline Kennedy as another JFK, was no profile in courage in Iowa.
That subsidy was cut to 45 cents a gallon in the new farm bill, but more money was pushed toward other biofuels such as switch grass. The Democrats can't wait for offshore oil or ANWR, but they can wait for switch grass. The tariff on imported ethanol was extended. Neither candidate voted on the bill, but Obama said he supported it. McCain said as president he would have vetoed it.
If Obama is sincere about alternative fuels, why does he oppose imported sugar-based ethanol from countries like Brazil? He supports not only the domestic subsidy, but a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. McCain opposes both.
Corn ethanol is less energy-efficient and costs more. It generates less than two units of energy for every unit of energy used to produce it. Ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy ratio of more than 8-to-1. Production costs and land prices are cheaper in the countries that produce it.
This year, according to John Lott Jr., senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, 34% of U.S. corn — some 3.65 billion bushels — will be used for fuel. Putting this much food into our gas tanks hasn't reduced gas prices, but it has raised food prices.
Farmers in vote-rich farm states plant corn for fuel, not only raising the price of corn, but also milk, eggs, meat and even bread as wheat fields are converted to corn.
Last year, as President Bush was about to sign an energy cooperation agreement with Brazil, Obama said the move would hurt "our country's drive toward energy independence."
Really? The only thing it might hurt is Obama's drive to the White House.
Sounds like just another greedy pol with no ethics to me
When Enough Is Finally Enough
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Barack Obama is certainly a media favorite as this election season continues and there is no doubt that he gets better coverage than does John McCain. Still, it is possible, evidently, for Obama to anger media figures and related to that, consider Ruth Marcus enraged:
When in the course of political events it becomes advantageous for a presidential candidate to dissolve a campaign promise, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that the candidate at least refrain from wrapping himself in the Declaration of Independence.
Not Barack Obama.
Click on Obama's campaign Web site and you'll find a virtual parchment scroll, complete with running tally of how many "citizens have declared their independence from a broken system by supporting the first presidential campaign truly funded by the people."
Written as " the PEOPLE," in that familiar, evocative style -- and with a July 4 deadline for signing up.
So Obama isn't just junking his campaign pledge to participate in the public financing system if his opponent agreed to do the same. He isn't just becoming the first presidential candidate since Watergate to run a campaign fueled entirely by private money.
No, he deserves praise for this selfless -- scratch that, patriotic-- move.
Marcus's contempt is as dripping as it is rightfully placed. The common answer of Obama acolytes and the campaign itself to accusations of Obamanian hypocrisy have been to argue that the decision to opt out of public financing allows the Obama campaign the ability to run a truly people-powered race for the White House.
But Marcus throws cold water on that argument as well, pointing out that Obama now has access to
. . . bundlers who can collect six- and even seven-figure sums for your campaign. Because even as he was rhapsodizing in public about "the grass-roots values that have already changed our politics and brought us this far," Obama was privately cozying up to Hillary Clinton's major fundraisers.
Earlier this month, he dispatched his campaign manager, David Plouffe, to woo Clinton bundlers in Washington and New York. This week, Clinton will introduce Obama to nearly 200 of her major bundlers, including some who have raised $1 million or more, in a meeting at the Mayflower Hotel.
"This group could represent 50 million, if not 100 million, bucks," said one top Clinton strategist.
I am still waiting for the Obama campaign to come out and admit the obvious: that the reason they opted out of the public financing system was because they would be able to raise more money privately and enhance Obama's chances of winning the election. Instead, we continue to have our collective intelligence insulted by the claim that Obama's decision to opt out of public financing somehow constitutes an act of political bravery and selflessness. It's nice to see that journalists like Ruth Marcus are finding their voices and calling shenanigans, but really, the outrage needs to be greater on this issue.
E Pluribus Obama [Mark Hemingway]
I missed this when it was first reported yesterday, but it's worth noting. The Politico's Ben Smith reported that AIPAC released two letters from the Senate addressed to the President in which the signatories affirm, among other things, Israel's right to defend itself in response to attacks from Gaza:
One letter is signed by 77 senators, including John McCain.
The other is signed by Barack Obama.
The letters don't differ on major points. Obama's letter omits even faint praise for Bush. It also is less explicit in calling for a veto of a United Nations resolution, though it does call for standing up for Israel at the U.N. And it adds a passage praising the Israeli negotiations with Syria.
But it is a mark of the difference between the two campaigns: Obama's is extremely focused on the clarity of his message, and isn't about to sign onto others' roughly similar words or views.
Smith's primarily a reporter so it's not his job to read too much into this, but saying Obama released his own letter because he's "extremely focused on the clarity of his message" is excessively charitable. Based on the contents of his letter, Obama would like to see the Palestinians and Israelis get together and hash things out. Yet he can't bring himself to sign on to the same letter as 77 other senators? His decision to not sign on to the main letter suggests he doesn't work well with others and/or he's significantly outside the mainstream on Israel policy such that he can't bring himself to align with the majority on some level, despite Smith's suggestion that the the differences in the letters are minor. Stunts like this can't be terribly reassuring to Jewish voters.
UPDATE — A reader draws my attention to this sentence from the second paragraph of Obama's letter:
But I am deeply concerned that Israel's security has been put at risk both because of renewed threats from implacable enemies like Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas, and because of policy choices by the United States. [Emphasis added]
Does Obama really want to go around blaming Israel's security problems on the U.S., let alone do it in the same sentence he notes the threats presented by Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas? Well, you'd certainly be hard pressed to find many people in congress willing to si
The man simply needs to be kept away from responsibility for our national security
5-4 Supreme Court Bars Death Penalty For Child Rape
Raping A Child Not Really As Bad As Democracy
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in Justice Kennedy | Law — Comments (40) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The Supreme Court today, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, found that the Eighth Amendment bars the death sentence of a man who brutally raped his 8-year-old stepdaughter, causing traumatic physical injury (decency doesn't permit quoting here the Court's discussion of the facts on p. 2 of its opinion), to say nothing of the emotional trauma. The decision was 5-4, with Justice Kennedy writing the opinion joined by the Court's liberal bloc. The decision is significant in three major main ways:
1. It essentially bars the death penalty in all cases that do not result in the death of the victim, with the exception of "offenses against the State."
2. It explicitly confirms that the Court's reliance on an 'evolving national consensus' against the death penalty in specified circumstances is truly a one-way street; the Court frankly admits that unless there is strong evidence of a national consensus favoring the death penalty for a particular crime at a particular time, the Court will permanently bar every state from using the democratic process to impose such a penalty at any time in the future.
3. It rejects the notion that state legislatures are competent to come up with any sort of safeguards, a conclusion much in line with the Court's recent view that Congress is incapable of determining procedures for the handling of alleged enemy combatants. The assertion of judicial supremacy inherent in this conclusion is staggering.
Read On...
1. No Death Penalty For Non-Homicide Crimes
Justice Kennedy's opinion began with a decidedly ahistorical reading of the Eighth Amendment, a document written at a time when basically all felonies were punishable by death:
[P]unishment is justified under one or more of three principal rationales: rehabilitation, deterrence, and retribution....It is the last of these, retribution, that most often can contradict the law's own ends. This is of particular concern when the Court interprets the meaning of the Eighth Amendment in capital cases. When the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint.
Applying this view of the death penalty's permissible scope, the Court concluded that the rape of a child just isn't bad enough to justify an execution:
It must be acknowledged that there are moral grounds to question a rule barring capital punishment for a crime against an individual that did not result in death. These facts illustrate the point. Here the victim's fright, the sense of betrayal, and the nature of her injuries caused more prolonged physical and mental suffering than, say, a sudden killing by an unseen assassin. The attack was not just on her but on her childhood. For this reason, we should be most reluctant to rely upon the language of the plurality in Coker, which posited that, for the victim of rape, "life may not be nearly so happy as it was" but it is not beyond repair. ... Rape has a permanent psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical impact on the child. ...We cannot dismiss the years of long anguish that must be endured by the victim of child rape. It does not follow, though, that capital punishment is a proportionate penalty for the crime. The constitutional prohibition against excessive or cruel and unusual punishments mandates that the State’s power to punish "be exercised within the limits of civilized standards."
Note that the Court offers no further explanation of why the death penalty is disproportionate to such a horrible crime. The Court's expressed concern for the awfulness of child rape is just so much window-dressing, to be given no real analytical weight against the ipse dixit of the present state of five 'consciences':
Consistent with evolving standards of decency and the teachings of our precedents we conclude that, in determining whether the death penalty is excessive, there is a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even including child rape, on the other. The latter crimes may be devastating in their harm, as here, but "in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public," ...they cannot be compared to murder in their "severity and irrevocability."
+++
Evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society counsel us to be most hesitant before interpreting the Eighth Amendment to allow the extension of the death penalty, a hesitation that has special force where no life was taken in the commission of the crime. It is an established principle that decency, in its essence, presumes respect for the individual and thus moderation or restraint in the application of capital punishment.
The Court left for another day, however, the death penalty as applied to crimes that extend beyond individual victims:
We do not address, for example, crimes defining and punishing treason, espionage, terrorism, and drug kingpin activity, which are offenses against the State.
Now, personally, I have a good deal of sympathy with the idea that, for a variety of reasons, the death penalty is best employed against these sorts of crimes. But it's revealingly statist as well as inhumanly insensitive and legally nonsensical to impose a rule of Constitutional dimension that says that dealing drugs is worse than raping a child.
2. Democracy Stops Here
The real challenge in Kennedy, as I have noted for some time, is that unlike prior decisions that restricted the use of the death penalty against the mentally retarded or underage offenders based on an alleged 'evolving national consensus,' - a position that, in flagrant violation of Article V's express provision for how a specific number of state legislatures may change the meaning of the Constitution through the amendment process - in this case, the trend, however modest, has been for states to add the death penalty for crimes like child rape.
The Court examined the evidence of such movement and found it - like so many things in the democratic process - fitful and inconclusive:
The evidence of a national consensus with respect to the death penalty for child rapists, as with respect to juveniles, mentally retarded offenders, and vicarious felony murderers, shows divided opinion but, on balance, an opinion against it. Thirty-seven jurisdictions—36 States plus the Federal Government—have the death penalty. As mentioned above, only six of those jurisdictions authorize the death penalty for rape of a child. Though our review of national consensus is not confined to tallying the number of States with applicable death penalty legislation, it is of significance that, in 45 jurisdictions, petitioner could not be executed for child rape of any kind. That number surpasses the 30 States in Atkins and Roper and the 42 States in Enmund that prohibited the death penalty under the circumstances those cases considered.
In general, this sort of nose-counting is precisely the stuff of the democratic process and no business of the judiciary. But the Court determines that there are simply not enough states to stand in its way:
Respondent insists that the six States where child rape is a capital offense, along with the States that have proposed but not yet enacted applicable death penalty legislation, reflect a consistent direction of change in support of the death penalty for child rape. Consistent change might counterbalance an otherwise weak demonstration of consensus. .... But whatever the significance of consistent change where it is cited to show emerging support for expanding the scope of the death penalty, no showing of consistent change has been made in this case.
How does the Court respond to the lack of a consensus? By finding that a consensus to the contrary must exist!
After reviewing the authorities informed by contemporary norms, including the history of the death penalty for this and other nonhomicide crimes, current state statutes and new enactments, and the number of executions since 1964, we conclude there is a national consensus against capital punishment for the crime of child rape.
Well, as long as five Justices count the votes, what are you going to do about it? The majority expressly rejects the idea that the messy business of finding consensuses should be left to the representatives of the people whose "consensus" is being announced, and instead announces a default presumption against the death penalty wherever a clear national consensus does not exist in its favor, regardless of the consensus within individual states:
[The difficulty of determining the direction of the states] has led some Members of the Court to say we should cease efforts to resolve the tension and simply allow legislatures, prosecutors, courts, and juries greater latitude. ...Our response to this case law, which is still in search of a unifying principle, has been to insist upon confining the instances in which capital punishment may be imposed.
Note that the lack of "a unifying principle" does not restrain the Court from reaching a conclusion that is both categorical and intended to be a permanent restraint on further evolution of the People's consensus:
Our determination that there is a consensus against the death penalty for child rape raises the question whether the Court's own institutional position and its holding will have the effect of blocking further or later consensus in favor of the penalty from developing. The Court, it will be argued, by the act of addressing the constitutionality of the death penalty, intrudes upon the consensus-making process. By imposing a negative restraint, the argument runs, the Court makes it more difficult for consensus to change or emerge. The Court, according to the criticism, itself becomes enmeshed in the process, part judge and part the maker of that which it judges. These concerns overlook the meaning and full substance of the established proposition that the Eighth Amendment is defined by "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."... Confirmed by repeated, consistent rulings of this Court, this principle requires that use of the death penalty be restrained. The rule of evolving standards of decency with specific marks on the way to full progress and mature judgment means that resort to the penalty must be reserved for the worst of crimes and limited in its instances of application.
The reference to "full progress and mature judgment" is a particularly ominous one for fans of popular self-government and limitation of the Court's powers to those enumerated by prior agreement of We the People.
Ironically, the Court also bats away the suggestion that some states may have feared to enact the death penalty due to suggestions in prior decisions that it could be struck down:
[R]espondent contends, it is possible that state legislatures have understood Coker to state a broad rule that covers the situation of the minor victim as well. We see little evidence of this. Respondent cites no reliable data to indicate that state legislatures have read Coker to bar capital punishment for child rape and, for this reason, have been deterred from passing applicable death penalty legislation. In the absence of evidence from those States where legislation has been proposed but not enacted we refuse to speculate about the motivations and concerns of particular state legislators.
Note that the Court is comfortable finding a consensus of the people, but not discerning the intentions of legislatures.
The position of the state courts, furthermore, to which state legislators look for guidance on these matters, indicates that Coker has not blocked the emergence of legislative consensus.
+++
We conclude on the basis of this review that there is no clear indication that state legislatures have misinterpreted Coker to hold that the death penalty for child rape is unconstitutional. The small number of States that have enacted this penalty, then, is relevant to determining whether there is a consensus against capital punishment for this crime.
3. Never Trust The Legislature
The final piece of the Court's holding that I'll deal with only briefly here is its concern that the death penalty could not be applied with sufficient safeguards to child rape, given the relative (national) rarity of its application:
Evolving standards of decency are difficult to reconcile with a regime that seeks to expand the death penalty to an area where standards to confine its use are indefinite and obscure.
Once again, the Court simply does not trust legislatures, unlike courts, to deliberate and develop rules and standards. But those state legislatures simply do not have five votes.
Problem with Barack Obama's First General Election Ad
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Barack Obama's first general election ad says about 46 seconds in that the Illinois senator passed laws that "extended health care for wounded troops who'd been neglected."
The ad "Country I Love", which was released Friday, provides a citation at the bottom of the screen which reads "Public Law 110 - 181."
The problem is Senator Obama never voted for that legislation. Public Law 110 - 181 is part of the defense authorization bill which passed the Senate in January by a vote of 91 to three with six senators not voting. Barack Obama was among those six absent senators.
So, what we need to do is elect someone with no experience in national security matters who has shown repeatedly he lacks knowledge of history and is incredibly naive- yeah, that's the way to gain respect
Our adversaries will " respect " him because they know he has no clue
Tammany Hall's senior senator
The Chris Dodd-Countrywide scandal refuses to die, despite the three major TV networks' refusal to cover it in their broadcasts, according to the Media Research Center. In fact, had Sen. Dodd not followed up his initial denials about the sweetheart mortgages he got from Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Nozilo with an explanation that one wag called "hilariously implausible," the scandal might have died from journalistic neglect by now.
But this scandal has legs, and commentators from across the spectrum are weighing in. The left mostly doesn't get what all the fuss is about. We paraphrase: "A Senate Banking Committee member who got $75,000 worth of VIP treatment from Countrywide is pushing a bill that would let Countrywide offload more than $25 billion of its worst subprime loans onto taxpayers? Hey, it's not like he accepted drywall and gutters."
Perhaps the most biting commentary was written by Democrat David Kahane, a National Review Online columnist whose lasting impression of Sen. Dodd is "his shock of white hair, his vaguely New England-ish accent, his hazy demeanor and his utter lack of shame."
"I know you're as shocked as I am," Mr. Kahane told his readers, "to discover that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Countrywide) has been identified as a 'Friend of Angelo,' amid charges that the Enron of subprime mortgages gave him a sweetheart deal. ... You're probably also stunned that Dodd — the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and the alleged other half of the Edward Moore Kennedy Memorial Waitress Sandwich — had to admit the other day, 'I don't know what interest rates are today.'"
Moreover, he wrote, "it will no doubt astonish you to learn that Dodd, who some say ran for the Democrat nomination for president this year before his campaign collapsed from terminal anti-charisma, along the way shook down — excuse me, 'collected millions of dollars in campaign contributions from' — various subprime lenders and other real-estate types whose activities he oversaw.
"Is this a great racket — excuse me one more time — country, or what? The whole thing makes me proud to be a member of the Tammany Party. Yes, the party of Slavery, Segregation, Secularism, and Sedition — that Tammany party. ... The Tammany Party as in Tammany Hall, which was once led in its earliest days by none other than that great Democrat, Aaron Burr, who nobly served his country as Thomas Jefferson's vice president, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, and was later tried for treason. ... And while the Tammany party ain't what it used to be, it sure is great to see Chris Dodd emerging as a throwback to our glory days."
Are you talking about the flex fuel plan?
Who exactly does it pander to??- as most of the fuels that it could run aren't in production yet
Ethanol from biomass-n Brazilian sugar cane, grasses etc make a ton of sense and have no constituency to pander to at this point
Basically the same arguments were made 10 years ago- talk about lack of foresight
How long before any of the alternative sources are ready to replace oil?? I'd venture longer than 10 years
Demand will not go down. China and India with their expanding middle classes now able to afford cars ( Tata in India is coming out with a $3000 car ). Their use will only increase
The only proposal that makes sense in the flex fuel mandate- at a cost of $100/car. Then every car will be able to use whatever fuel the market deems acceptable. Corn ethanol is just another pork extravaganza ( supported by the "change" candidate Barry )
"We don’t have enough oil to meet our demand"
Has to be the stupidest argument ever. We can't match demand so let's limit supply even further
Now we know what that " change " he's been talking about really means.
Typical, rather than dealing with specific- and damning- outline of why Barry is not a good choice, you make jokes and attempt to impugn the author
Why not try to disprove at least 1 of the ten points??
Does the fact that Bennett smokes and drinks and gambled make what he wrote about Barry not true???
10 Concerns about Barack Obama
It's policy.
By William J. Bennett & Seth Leibsohn
1. Barack Obama’s foreign policy is dangerous, naïve, and betrays a profound misreading of history. For at least the past five years, Democrats and liberals have said our standing in the international community has suffered from a “cowboy” or “go-it-alone” foreign policy. While politicians with favorable views of our president have been elected in Germany, Italy, France, and elsewhere, Barack Obama is giving cause to make our allies even more nervous. This past Sunday’s Washington Post reported, “European officials are increasingly concerned that Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to begin direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program without preconditions could potentially rupture U.S. relations with key European allies early in a potential Obama administration.”
Barack Obama’s stance toward Iran is as troubling as it is dangerous. By stating and maintaining that he would negotiate with Iran, “without preconditions,” and within his first year of office, he will give credibility to, and reward for his intransigence, the head of state of the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism. Such a meeting will also undermine and send the exact wrong signal to Iranian dissidents. And, he will lower the prestige of the office of the president: In his own words he stated, “If we think that meeting with the president is a privilege that has to be earned, I think that reinforces the sense that we stand above the rest of the world at this point in time.” Not only has his stance toward Iran caused concern among our allies in Europe, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton called it, “Irresponsible and frankly naïve.”
↓ Keep reading this article ↓
Barack Obama’s position on negotiating with U.S. enemies betrays a profound misreading of history. In justifying his position that he would meet with Iran without precondition and in his first year of office, Barack Obama has said, “That is what Kennedy did with Khrushchev; that’s what Nixon did with Mao; what Reagan did with Gorbachev.”
In reverse order, Ronald Reagan met with no Soviet leader during the entirety of his first term in office, not (ever) with Brezhnev, not (ever) with Andropov, not (ever) with Chernenko. He met only with Gorbachev, and after he was assured Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader — and after Perestroika, not before.
If Barack Obama wants to affiliate with Richard Nixon, that’s certainly his call. But one question: Was Taiwan’s expulsion from the U.N. worth “Nixon to China”? That was the price of that meeting.
As for the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit of 1961, Kennedy himself said “He beat the hell out of me.” As two experts recently wrote in the New York Times: “Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was ‘just a disaster.’ Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed ‘very inexperienced, even immature.’ Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was ‘too intelligent and too weak.’ The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.”
So successful was the summit that the Berlin Wall was erected later that year and the Cuban Missile Crisis, with Soviets deploying nuclear missiles in Cuba, commenced the following year.
2. Barack Obama’s Iraq policy will hand al-Qaeda a victory and undercut our entire position in the Middle East, while at the same time put a huge source of oil in the hands of terrorists. Barack Obama brags on his website that “In January 2007, he introduced legislation in the Senate to remove all of our combat troops from Iraq by March 2008.” His website further states that “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.” This, at the very time our greatest successes in Iraq have taken place. And yet, as Gen. David Petraeus has stated (along with other military experts from Michael O’Hanlon at the Brookings Institution to members of the U.S. military), our progress in Iraq is “fragile and reversible.”
Obama’s post-invasion analysis of Iraq is anything but credible or consistent, leading one to even greater doubt about his strategy as commander-in-chief. When President Bush announced the surge strategy in January 2007, Barack Obama opposed it, saying it “would not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly,” and that “the President’s strategy will not work.” Of course, the surge is one of the greatest achievements in Iraq since the initial months of the invasion, and is has reversed much of the loss suffered since the invasion.
Beyond these miscalculations and poor judgment on Iraq strategy, Obama has been anything but consistent on Iraq. For example, the same year (2007) he stated it would be a good idea to bring home the U.S. troops from Iraq within March of 2008, three months later he stated, we should bring them home “immediately…. Not in six months or one year — now.”
3. Barack Obama has sent mixed, confusing, and inconsistent messages on his policy toward Israel. Earlier this month, Barack Obama told an audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” The next day, Obama backtracked, stating: “Obviously, it’s [Jerusalem] going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues…And Jerusalem will be part of the negotiations.” Later, Obama’s Middle East adviser tried to explain the flipping of positions on Jerusalem by stating Obama did not understand what he was saying to AIPAC: “[h]e used a word to represent what he did not want to see again, and then realized afterwards that that word is a code word in the Middle East.”
Such quick switches of policy may stem from mere inexperience or they may stem from a general tone-deafness on the meaning of words and policy when it comes to the Middle East. After all, earlier this year, a leading Hamas official endorsed Barack Obama stating, “I do believe [Obama] is like John Kennedy, a great man with a great principle. And he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with humiliation and arrogance.” Rather than immediately renouncing such an endorsement, Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, embraced the endorsement, saying “We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it’s flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps.” Given Barack Obama’s long-standing ties to Palestinian activists in the U.S., one has good cause to wonder.
4. While his Mideast policy may have been the quickest turnaround or flip-flop on a major issue, it is not the only one. In the primary campaign, Barack Obama consistently campaigned against NAFTA, but has now changed his tune, as he has with other issues. During the primary, Obama sent out a campaign flier that said “Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA,” and called it a “bad trade deal.” He also said NAFTA was “devastating,” “a big mistake,” and in what the Washington Post labeled as a unilateral threat to withdraw from NAFTA, Obama said “I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage.”
No longer. Recently, Barack Obama backtracked on NAFTA and said, “I’m not a big believer in doing things unilaterally.” “I’m a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people.” He explained his primary campaign opposition this way: “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.”
This is of a piece with his further change of position on public campaign financing. As a primary candidate, he touted his support for the public financing of presidential campaigns, but then witnessing his own fundraising prowess, as a general election candidate he has gone the unique route of forswearing the system. As David Brooks put it in the New York Times:
Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system. But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck.
5. Barack Obama’s judgment about personal and professional affiliations is more than troubling. On March 18, after several clips of sermons by his longtime friend and pastor Jeremiah Wright surfaced (showing Wright condemning the United States with vitriolic comparisons and denunciations), Obama defended his friend stating: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” After Rev. Wright delivered two more talks along the same lines as the clips that led to the March 18 speech, Sen. Obama finally denounced Wright the following month, stating: “His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.” “They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs,” he said.
It strained credulity to believe Obama was unaware of Wright’s previous rants — especially after a 20-year membership in Wright’s church, especially when in February of last year Obama asked Wright not to attend his campaign announcement because he “could get kind of rough in sermons,” and especially when his church’s magazine honored on its front cover such a man as Louis Farrakhan. Nonetheless, once he ceased being a political asset and turned into a political liability, Obama dumped him.
Jeremiah Wright is, of course, not the only person close to Barack Obama who holds vitriolic anti-American views. Bill Ayers was a founding member of the Weather Underground. According to his own memoir, Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. As recently as 2001, Ayers said “I don’t regret setting bombs….I feel we didn’t do enough.’’ When asked if he would engage in such terrorism again, Ayers responded: “I don’t want to discount the possibility.” When confronted with his friendship with Bill Ayers, Barack Obama dismissed the negative connections saying he is also friendly with abortion opponent U.S. Senator Tom Coburn. While Obama has never, himself, discussed his relationship with Ayers, what we do know is that Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Obama in his home and, according to the Los Angeles Times:
Obama and Ayers moved in some of the same political and social circles in the leafy liberal enclave of Hyde Park, where they lived several blocks apart. In the mid-1990s, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, Ayers introduced Obama during a political event at his home, according to Obama’s aides….
Obama and Ayers met a dozen times as members of the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a local grant-making foundation, according to the group’s president. They appeared together to discuss juvenile justice on a 1997 panel sponsored by the University of Chicago, records show. They appeared again in 2002 at an academic panel co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.
↓ Keep reading this article ↓
6. Obama is simply out of step with how terrorists should be handled; he would turn back the clock on how we fight terrorism, using the failed strategy of the 1990s as opposed to the post-9/11 strategy that has kept us safe. The most recent example is his support for the Supreme Court decision granting habeas-corpus rights to terrorists, including — theoretically — Osama bin Laden. When the 5-4 Supreme Court decision was delivered, Obama said, “I think the Supreme Court was right.” His campaign advisers held a conference call where they claimed the Supreme Court decision was “no big deal” according to ABC News, even if applied to Osama bin Laden, because a judge would find that the U.S. has “ample grounds to hold him.”
In a recent interview, Obama stated: “What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks — for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world, and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, ‘Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.’”
Ask the legal officials during the 1990s just how cowed terrorists were by our continued indictments against them. Or, witness the bombings at the African embassies, the attack on the USS Cole, or the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, ask yourself why we have not been attacked since 9/11, and, even more specifically, why there have been no successful attacks against American civilian interests abroad since 2004.
7. Barack Obama’s economic policies would hurt the economy. As Kimberly Strassel recently put it in the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Obama is hawking a tax policy that would take the nation back to the effective marginal tax rates of the Carter days. He wants to further tax income, payroll, capital gains, dividends and death. His philosophy is pure redistribution.”
When Barack Obama speaks of taxing only the wealthy, keep in mind this could have a devastating effect on new small businesses. As Irwin Stelzer has written: “Taxes change behavior. By raising rates on upper income payers, Obama is reducing their incentive to work and take risks. The income tax increase is not all that he has in mind for them. He plans to increase their payroll taxes, the taxes they pay on dividends received and capital gains earned, and on any transfers they might have in mind to their kith and kin when they shuffle off this mortal coil. If the aggregate of these additional taxes substantially diminishes incentives to set up a small business of the sort that has created most of the new jobs in recent decades, the $1,000 tax rebate will be more than offset by the consequences of reduced growth and new business formation.”
8. Barack Obama opposes drilling on and offshore to reduce gas and oil prices. While Barack Obama has opposed off-shore drilling and a gas-tax holiday (as supported by John McCain or Hillary Clinton), his solution to our energy crisis does include additional tax burdens on oil company profits, taxes we can only imagine will be passed on to the consumer, thus causing an even more expensive trip to the gas station. As the New York Times recently detailed, ethanol subsidies are a major plank in Barack Obama’s view of energy independence and national security; the “Obama Camp is Closely Linked with Ethanol,” and “Mr. Obama…favors [ethanol] subsidies, some of which end up in the hands of the same oil companies he says should be subjected to a windfall profits tax.”
9. Barack Obama is to the left of Hillary Clinton and NARAL on the issue of life. As a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, a law that would have protected babies if they survived an attempted abortion and were delivered alive. When a similar bill was proposed in the United States Senate, it passed unanimously and even the National Abortion Rights Action League issued a statement saying they did not oppose the law.
10. Barack Obama is actually to the left of every member of the U.S. Senate. According to the National Journal, “Sen. Barack Obama…was the most liberal senator in 2007.” As the magazine reported: “The ratings system — devised in 1981 under the direction of William Schneider, a political analyst and commentator, and a contributing editor to National Journal — also assigns ‘composite’ scores, an average of the members’ issue-based scores. In 2007, Obama’s composite liberal score of 95.5 was the highest in the Senate. Rounding out the top five most liberal senators last year were Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), with a composite liberal score of 94.3; Joseph Biden (D., Del.), with a 94.2; Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), with a 93.7; and Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), with a 92.8.”
Whom will a man this far left appoint to the Supreme Court?
— William J. Bennett is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show Bill Bennett’s Morning in America. Seth Leibsohn is the show’s producer.
The two leaders with the highest approval rating are UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
LOL
So much for the value of running a country based on polls. IS the UN a model of ethics??? I guess the oil for food scandal never happened? Russia??? Give me a f]n break
Where exactly is the lawlessness?
The "illegal" wiretapping that even Barry has agreed to?
What lies got us to go into Afghanistn?? IS it a lie that the country was run by the Taliban and was a major source of AQ that took down the WTC?
Long on rhetoric/ short on facts
THe moonbats have been masturbating over the prospect of impeachment and it's all still a fantasy
Ummm, postng links are free and choosing to actually pay for Ihub is one of lifes IQ tests- and you failed
About those "inactive" oil leases ...
Posted by: McQ
The Democrats have answered the "drill here, drill now" crowd by saying that 80+% of the leases presently owned by oil companies are non-producing.
As usual, their answer is clueless legislation - they would, by law, compel the oil and natural gas companies to produce from the federal lands they're presently leasing. Since they're not presently doing that, the reasoning goes, there's no need for more leases or opening more territory.
Now, anyone with the IQ of a hamster can see through the absurdity of that position. It assumes two things. One is that all of these leases will produce oil and gas and the oil companies just aren't doing anything to produce it. If it was true that oil and gas is everywhere I'd have an oil rig in my backyard pumping out crude right now. The fact is, you're more likely, by a lot, not to find enough recoverable oil and gas on a lease than you are.
Red Cavaney of API covers the second part of why this is absolute nonsense in a WSJ article:
A company bids for and buys a lease because it believes there is a possibility that it may yield enough oil or natural gas to make the cost of the lease, and the costs of exploration and production, commercially viable. The U.S. government received $3.7 billion from company bids in a single lease sale in March 2008.
However, until the actual exploration is complete, a company does not know whether the lease will be productive. If, through exploration, it finds there is no oil or natural gas underneath a lease - or that there is not enough to justify the tremendous investment required to bring it to the surface - the company cuts its losses by moving on to more promising leases. Yet it continues to pay rent on the lease, atop a leasing bonus fee.
In addition, if the company does not develop the lease within a certain period of time, it must return it to the federal government, forfeiting all its costs. All during this active exploration and evaluation phase, however, the lease is listed as "nonproducing."
Obviously, companies want to start producing from active fields as soon as possible. However, there are a number of time-consuming steps to be taken before they can do so: Delineation wells must be drilled to size the field, government permits must be obtained, and complex production facilities must be engineered and installed. All this takes considerable time, and during that time, the lease is also listed as "nonproducing."
Because a lease is not producing, critics tag it as "idle" when, in reality, it is typically being actively explored and developed. Multiply these real-world circumstances by hundreds or thousands of leases, and you end up with the seemingly damning but inaccurate figures our critics cite.
And to get to the literal bottom-line point of all of this, Richard Ranger, a senior policy advisor with the API gives you that side of the story:
[C]ompanies in the industry are in the business of producing oil and natural gas and their products for profit. ... [T]he companies bid on these leases, they lay down risk capital often, and in many cases, offshore in the tens of millions of dollars. ... [T]here?s every expectation in the marketplace, every expectation from their shareholders that when they?re putting that capital down front-end and then they're continuing to invest new capital at risk in the seismic work which can cost a couple hundred grand a day for offshore seismic program, it can take several months.
Drilling operations, which in the Gulf deep water, can exceed, $100 (million), $200 (million), $300 million of wealth. There?s every expectation that at the earliest possible point, those capital dollars invested at risk generate revenues.
And that?s even more the case for the independent sector of the oil and gas industry and a lot of the integrated majors are API members. But particularly out west ... the independents are responsible for drilling some 80 percent of the wells that are drilled out there. And a lot of them are funded by venture capital. So if anyone who knows anything about the expectations of the contemporary marketplace in every other line of business, there is that expectation that you turn investment into returns as quickly as possible. So the idea that companies are sitting on these leases is simply a basket of red herring.
Follow the money. Money that is invested by public companies and venture captialists is not going to be invested into something which is not going to produce revenue. And that means oil and gas. Anyone who doesn't take the time to figure that reality into the rhetoric, to include a whole lot of ignorant congress people, are engaged in the lowest level of red fishmongering.
The fact is the leases which show promise are being worked and are in one of phases of development that Cavaney lists in his article. And playing rhetorical games with the language to suit a political position doesn't help anyone solve the imminent energy crisis we face.
Mossad Chief Empowered to Prepare Groundwork for Iran Strike
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
June 23, 2008
Meir Dagan appointed to seventh year as Mossad Director
Meir Dagan appointed to seventh year as Mossad Director
By extending the Mossad director, Meir Dagan’s tenure for another year until the end of 2009, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has put in place a vital constituent for a possible eleventh-hour unilateral strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In his six years on the job, the 61-year old external intelligence has proved his covert mettle in a variety of counter-terror operations, graduating most recently to a highly successful intelligence coup leading up to the demolition of Syria’s North Korean plutonium reactor in al Kebir last September.
Appointed by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2002, Dagan’s first four years as the Mossad’s tenth chief were dedicated to counterterrorism rather than tracking Iran’s nuclear activities or monitoring Iran’s burgeoning strategic ties with Syria and Hizballah.
From mid-2006, the former general shifted the agency’s priorities to include these targets, while the Mossad continued to show its fearsome counter-terror paces in Damascus, Beirut and other Arab capitals.
Not all the Mossad’s operations have seen the light of day, but it has been credited in the past two years with hits against high-profile Hizballah, Hamas and Jihad Islami operatives in Syria and Lebanon.
The operation against Syria’s plutonium reactor last year was one of the most complex operations ever performed by the Mossad. For the Israeli raiders to put the facility out of commission and lift out the evidence of a working nuclear collaboration between Syria, Iran and North Korea, they needed from the Mossad precise data on the facility’s inner and outer defenses. It had to include the air defense systems in place across Syria, the whereabouts of the materials and equipment the Israeli team was assigned to appropriate from the site and transfer to the United States, and the nature and numbers of the Syrian, Iranian and North Korean personnel present.
It was not until April 2008, seven months later, that the US Central Intelligence Agency released news of the operation in Washington, providing graphics attesting to the depth of Mossad’s penetration of the of the most secret and well-protected facility in Syria.
Examination of those visuals attested to one or more agents having been planted solidly enough in the Syrian nuclear project to have photographed the different stages of the reactor’s construction and the North Korean equipment installed there – a feat which drew the respect of Dagan’s undercover colleagues in the West.
The other outstanding feature of the Al Kebir operation was one that has come to be associated with the spy chief’s method of operation: No leads or clues were left for the Syrian, Iranian and North Korean investigators to find –even after the photos were published.
His spy or spies proved untraceable.
Dagan, a hands-on spymaster, demonstrated this skill earlier in the operation to eliminate one of the longest-running and most dangerous enemies of Israel and America, the head of Hizballah’s special security apparatus, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus on February 12. It followed similar methods in the preceding two years - usually explosives planted under a driver’s seat or headrests of vehicles driven by Hizballah, Hamas and Jihad Islami operatives. Neither Hizballah nor Syrian intelligence has been able to prevent these liquidations or catch the hit-teams.
The intelligence operation for aborting Iran’s aspirations to acquire a nuclear bomb would undoubtedly ratchet up the Mossad’s targets for its most formidable mission ever. It would be undertaken in the full knowledge that a nuclear bomb in the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran would constitute the most dangerous threat to Israel’s survival in 60 years of statehood, as well as a menace to the free world.
It would be up to Meir Dagan, a Holocaust survivor born in the Soviet Union, to rise to the Mossad’s motto: "Where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety" (Proverbs XI/14)
The Mossad chief has his critics at home. In Israel’s clandestine agencies, some find his style excessively individualist, secretive and highhandedly confined to fields which he finds interesting rather than objectively important to national security. He is faulted with shunning the close collaborative relations traditional in the undercover world. The Mossad’s structure is also said to be antiquated and in need of an extensive overhaul, although it recently launched a website for recruitment.
But Dagan has the full trust of his boss, the prime minister.
The timing chosen for extending the Mossad chief’s tenure – early summer of 2008 – is indicative. Israeli intelligence estimates the summer months are critical for acting against Iran’s nuclear advances, especially uranium enrichment which Iran refuses to forego. If it is not stopped by September or October of 2008, it will be too late; Iran will have crossed the threshold to the last lap of its military program.
Israeli intelligence and its armed forces have three months to finish the job which has long been in preparation.
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Obama Might Just Blow It
This is Not the Moderate You are Looking For
By Mark I Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Liberals | Obamafiles | Same as the Old Politics — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The biggest danger to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign comes not from his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, nor from his former rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, but from Barack Obama himself. Obama has sold himself as a new kind of politician, even an anti-politician, a practitioner of a new kind of politics. The Achilles heel of this strategy is that Obama is not really that different from other politicians; and if he can be shown to be just like every other candidate, save for his eloquence, voters who invested in him on a personal level may begin to feel like they have been had.
The past week provided Obama with a few opportunities to show that he really is a different kind of candidate, indeed a different kind of Democrat, than the standard variety. But in each instance, he espoused the typical liberal position.
Read on...
The Supreme Court's wrongheaded decision in Boumediene, for the first time granting habeas corpus rights to terrorist detainees, was embraced by the "different" Obama as an important step in preserving civil liberties for American citizens. But the decision has nothing to do with Americans. It grants the rights of Americans to non-Americans who want to harm American citizens, but it does not one thing to advance any American's civil liberties. Obama's embrace of the decision may just as well have come from the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or any other far left liberal watchdog group. Obama missed an opportunity to take a "new politics" position on terrorists, in favor of a garden variety liberal one.
Obama then compounded his error by holding out the example of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a model for how an Obama Administration would deal with terrorists and terrorist acts. He assessed the trial and conviction of the terrorists in that first Islamic terrorist attack on American shores as having been a success. "They are in U.S. prisons, incapacitated," he boasted of the terrorists responsible. He did not address how, if the trial and conviction of those terrorists was so successful, the September 11th attacks took place. Clearly, the trial did nothing to prevent further acts of terrorism on America at home or abroad. Obama missed a chance to take a post-September 11th position on terrorists, a more robust one than federal prosecutors can implement, in favor of a tired old liberal worldview.
But Obama was not finished. He capped off the week by suggesting that if Osama bin Laden himself were captured alive during an Obama Administration, the mastermind of the murder of more Americans than any other person in history would not be subjected to the death penalty. Obama said that the U.S. should deal with a captured bin Laden in a way that does, "not make him a martyr." That may be a popular position in the liberal salons of Cambridge and New Haven, but it is not one that will resonate with an overwhelming majority of Americans. Even those personally opposed to capital punishment will have a hard time finding any sympathy for bin Laden's soul. Obama could have easily said that bin Laden deserved "ultimate justice" for his crimes, or some other suitable euphemism for execution, and he would have been praised as a "new" kind of Democrat, tough on terrorism. But instead he went out of his way to take the liberal position, even for the worst of America's enemies.
Since securing the nomination, Obama has been trying to tack back to the center, walking back pledges to meet personally and unconditionally with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. But there's nothing new about that strategy either. Presidential candidates since time immemorial have campaigned to the fringes in the primary and to the center in the general election. What is new about Obama, however, is the length to which he has gone to convince voters that his greasy fast food served on fine china is really nouveau cuisine. It's not. If Obama doesn't start to come up with some genuinely new positions and fresh ideas, he will lose in November, and become just another bitter liberal former nominee.
Cross Posted at Mark on the Right
Who’d a thunk - Obama pulls the race card out and slaps it on the table ...
Posted by: McQ
Well at least it's out in the open. And I'm not the least bit surprised to see it first played by a Democrat and specifically, Barack Obama. What would you expect from the party which invented identity politics?
"It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy," Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid.
"They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"
This, of course, is an obvious attempt to frame the debate - Republicans are mean-spirited, racist, hate-mongers who ain't too fond of furrin' soundin' people. Now, put whatever they say in that frame and you know what to think.
All of that after the only true points in the statement - that he is both young and inexperienced.
In reality no one is going to have to bring up Barack Obama's race or name. Leave that to the Democrats - as they did in the Democratic primary.
All anyone has to do to win is get him away from the tele-prompter, question him specifically (no glittering generalities allowed) about anything to do with foreign policy, national security, trade, energy or taxation, and he'll prove how young, inexperienced and, frankly, dangerously naive he is.
That should be more than enough - but it is interesting to see the Obama Campaign choose to continue their strategy of falling back on race in the Democratic primary during the general election.
Pretty telling.
Obama’s Halo Seriously Flickering
obama
Photo: Getty Images
Reformer, hopemonger — and politician. Barack Obama had a choice between keeping his word on public financing or reaping a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars from unrestrained fund-raising, and in true American fashion, he chose the money. The decision is widely viewed as pragmatic — after all, he's trying to win an election here, not run an exhibition on consistency. But for those dazzled by promises of reform, Obama's reversal has the scales falling from their eyes — a recognition that he is, beneath all the hype, a politician who acts in his best interests.
• The Washington Post editorial board writes that Obama “had an opportunity here to demonstrate that he really is a different kind of politician, willing to put principles and the promises he has made above political calculation,” though they can understand why he didn’t (the money). At the same time, he could have spared us “the self-congratulatory back-patting while … doing it.” [WP ]
• The Boston Globe editorial board contends that Obama’s decision “deals a body blow both to the system of campaign finance and to his own reputation as a reform candidate.” [Boston Globe]
• The USA Today editorial board says that while it’s not a surprise, Obama’s decision “is disappointing nevertheless, particularly for a candidate who claims to be running as a reformer and a different kind of politician.” Obama “is being disingenuous about his reasons for opting out of public financing,” as they were less about the “broken” system (which isn’t really broken) than the huge financial advantage he has over John McCain. [USAT ]
• The Wall Street Journal editorial board wonders if this is “the tone of the new postpartisan Obama era,” begun with a “large and telling … flip-flop.” Obama “entered the campaign as a ‘reformer’” and “will no doubt end a half-billion dollars later proclaiming himself to be even more of a reformer.” [WSJ]
• The New York Times editorial board says that Obama has come up short in his vow to “depart from self-interested politics,” and his “description of public financing as ‘broken’ is only half true,” as the system works fine for the general election. [NYT]
• David Brooks argues that “Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today.” Sure, he’s the high-minded liberal, but he’s also the politician who, “at the first breath of political inconvenience … threw public financing under the truck.” He sold out “the primary cause of his life … with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding.” [NYT]
• David Corn claims that Obama “has indeed demonstrated the potential of a new model,” and it’s possible that “his embrace and mastery of small-donor fundraising [is] an indication he is truly a vehicle for change.” [Mojo/Mother Jones]
• Michael Scherer says “there is nothing inherently sinful about Obama's opting out of public financing because he wants to keep his significant fund-raising advantage.” But it’s a problem is he does that while “maintain[ing] at the same time that he is a money-in-politics reformer who is going to do politics differently.” [Swampland/Time ]
• Lynn Sweet writes that “however liberating from special interests it is having millions of donors, it is not the same as taking public financing.” While he justifies his decision based on the “broken” system, “Obama knew the system was broken … all along.” [Chicago Sun-Times] —Dan Amira
Related: Obama Broke His Promise!
For a complete and regularly updated guide to presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain — from First Love to Most Embarrassing Gaffe — read the 2008 Electopedia.
More: Early and Often »barack obama, camp
THere are, but none of the other alternatives that exist now are ready to take over meaningful energy needs
Conservation will only go so far- the developing nations can now afford to buy cars and AC units and will not be stopped.
The same " it doesn't make sense to drill now because it will take 10 years " was the main argument used 10 years ago- and look where it's gotten us
They're ALL a bunch of thieves, Eddi....and they're in it together.
Something we agree on...
I usually don't respond to your posts, since its a waste of time, but this post is even beyond your usual idiocy
What do the names of the people who were involved in Tillamns death have to do with Murthas outrageous comments??
I'm no aware of any people who have been convicted of murdering Tillman. If there was a coverup and his death was not an accident of friendly fire, then I'd have no problem with those involved being prosecuted and being punished to the full extent of the law
Murtha defamed soldiers by calling them cold blooded killers w/o evidence and he has been proven wrong
Do you still justify his behavior? Should he apologize?? This is the problem with liberal logic. They can't admit they are ever wrong. Why bring up a completely unrelated matter that is in no way similar?
Dear Congressional Democrats ...
Posted by: McQ
I'm still waiting for someone on your side to announce the investigation of Senator Dodd (and others) for a very questionable relationship with an institution over which he, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, had oversight.
If you need to borrow a little wording so you can use the appropriate rhetoric in your announcement, may I suggest looking over these quotes:
"Enron clearly raises the suspicions of the American people about the connection between political contributions and public policy." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi ("Democrats force House to vote on campaign funds; Enron's actions help assure vote on halting 'soft money,'"San Francisco Chronicle, Marc Sandalow, January 25, 2002).
"I think there should be hearings. Republicans won't have hearings." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi on the WorldCom collapse (CQ Daily, June 26, 2002, "WorldCom Scandal Shakes Up Senate Calendar, Summer Politics," Emily Pierce, Susan Ferrechio and Keith Perine).
"We can't sit here sanctimoniously and browbeat Enron and Arthur Andersen executives and question every decision they made if we're not willing to give the same scrutiny to ourselves, and the Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration. And if we don't examine how the political system broke down, the public will see through us and that, in truth, will only deepen cynicism." - Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), House Financial Services Committee hearing on Enron collapse, February 6, 2002.
"A group of House Democrats today asked House Republican leaders to hold hearings to determine if there were any improper relationships between Enron Corp. executives and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials. In a letter sent to House Speaker Hastert, House Minority Whip Pelosi, Government Reform ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Reps. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., and Bob Filner, D-Calif., said 'the American people deserve to know whether or not FERC has been doing its job and protecting consumers or whether it has been influenced by Enron to do otherwise.' The lawmakers, who did not reveal any specific links between the embattled company and the energy regulators, asked for hearing[s] in the Government Reform and the Energy and Commerce committees." (Mullen, Brody; National Journal's CongressDaily, "House Dems Ask Hearings On Enron, FERC Connections," June 18, 2002)
"We can't say anything [about the Enron scandal] until we know what the facts are. But the facts — some of the facts that we know are these: We know that Enron gave a huge amount of money, over $6 million over a period of time, to elected officials. . .Whether there is a crime connected there remains to be seen, but I think that we cannot dispose of the issue until we have the facts." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi, CNN's "Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields," February 16, 2002.
"The group's startup was funded through a large contract [secured from] Enron. . .The image and integrity of Congress have been called into serious question. To restore public faith in Congress, the institution must initiate a careful examination of how corrupt practices have influenced the legislative process. Understanding what went wrong is a prerequisite to accountability and reform." - Letter from House Minority Leader Pelosi, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and Rep. Henry Waxman seeking congressional investigation of Alexander Strategy Group; Pelosi press release, January 25, 2006.
Good luck. I'm sure looking forward to you doing your duty.
[And yeah, I am writing from a reverse parallel universe where Democrats actually take their prior rhetorical posturing seriously and always do the right thing].
Haditha Marine prepares to sue Murtha over smear
Congressman had accused soldiers of killing 'in cold blood'
Posted: June 18, 2008
6:14 pm Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani
With most of the eight Marines charged in the Haditha, Iraq, incident now exonerated, the highest-ranking officer among the accused is considering a lawsuit against Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who fueled the case by declaring the men cold-blooded killers.
In an interview with nationally syndicated radio talk host Michael Savage, the lead attorney for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani said he and his client will look into suing Murtha and the Time magazine reporter, Tim McGuirk, who first published the accusations by Iraqi insurgents.
But the attorney, Brian Rooney, said nothing will happen immediately because he wants Chessani, described as a devout Christian and the father of six homeschooled children, completely "out of the woods" legally before any action is taken. The government, through Lt. Col. S.M. Sullivan, today filed a notice that it would appeal the case to the next judicial level.
As WND reported, a military judge at Camp Pendleton in California yesterday dismissed charges that Chessani failed to properly investigate the Nov. 19, 2005 incident in which 24 Iraqi men, women and children were killed.
Rooney, an attorney for the Thomas More Law Center who served a tour of duty in Iraq himself, is urging citizens to tell their representatives in Congress and military officials that they want the case to come to an end.
"At some point you have to have somebody in the chain of command, whether it's civilian or military, saying enough is enough," said Rooney, who served with Chessani in the second battle of Fallujah.
Rooney told Savage the Haditha case is the largest investigation in the history of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, with 65 agents assigned by the government.
The filing of charges against Chessani was approved by Gen. James Mattis, then commander of the Marine Corps Forces Central Command and commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton. Mattis has been promoted to commander of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation and commander of U.S. Joint Forces.
"This is the most important case since Vietnam, if not before," Rooney said. "There's no doubt about it."
He noted the New York Times featured the case on the front page when it was being compared by war critics to the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam. But now, with evidence the Haditha accusations were a smear, the story has been relegated to the back pages.
(Story continues below)
The military judge, Col. Steve Folsom, dismissed Chessani's charges without prejudice, giving permission for the prosecutors to continue trying to build a case that began in December 2006.
Four Marines were charged with murder and another four with not properly investigating the incident.
Defense lawyers contend insurgents deliberately attacked the Marines from hiding places where they surrounded themselves with civilians to use as shields. The defense insisted Chessani promptly reported the events to his superiors and that nobody in the chain of command believed there was any wrongdoing on the part of the Marines.
Libel and defamation
Rooney acknowledged to Savage it's difficult to sue a sitting congressman, but he believes it can be done.
"If he leaves his realm of speaking from the congressman's point of view … then he can be sued for libel and defamation," Rooney said.
The Time magazine story, according to Rooney, was planted by an insurgent propaganda agent. Publishing of the story was soon followed by a May 17, 2006, news conference by Murtha. The congressman announced he had been told by the highest levels of the Marine Corps there was no firefight and Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
"All the information I get, it comes from the commanders, it comes from people who know what they're talking about," Murtha told reporters at the time.
Murtha's assertions, however, conflicted with results from the military's own investigations. An initial probe by Army Col. G.A. Watt found no indications coalition forces "intentionally targeted, engaged and killed noncombatants." Later, Army Maj. Gen. Aldon Bargewell found no cover-up.
Nevertheless, the Marine Corps eventually brought charges against Chessani and seven other Marines.
But now the cases against Lance Cpls. Stephen Tatum and Justin Sharratt, Capts. Randy Stone and Lucas McConnell and Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz have been dropped. First Lt. Andrew Grayson has been acquitted, leaving only the case of Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich untested in court and Chessani prosecutors facing the hurdles of the appeal process.
WND previously reported a military jury of seven officers acquitted Grayson of all charges.
The ruling by Col. Folsom yesterday followed a previous decision in which he confirmed evidence of unlawful command influence.
The evidence indicated two generals who controlled Chessani's case were influenced by Marine lawyer Col. John Ewers, who was allowed to attend at least 25 closed-session meetings in which the case was discussed.
Throwing Marines under the bus
Rooney acknowledged the Haditha case taken a toll on the Marine Corps.
"There's no doubt it's affected recruiting," he told Savage. "How could you have your sons or daughters join the Marine Corps when you're not sure the government will protect them?"
Rooney was asked by Savage why he thought Murtha, a former Marine himself, accused the officers and enlisted men.
"In my opinion, it's clear it was done during the election cycle, it was done to bolster himself in the party," the attorney said. "He was vying for a leadership position, and if he had to throw some Marines under the bus to do so, that was the cost of power for him."
He hopes soon politicians will weigh in on the case in support of Chessani and the others.
"I would think all politicians, especially politicians that have military records, should say something about this case," he said.
"In a horrible and very complex environment, when you have an enemy that's using women and children as shields, you should always give the benefit of the doubt to the Marine or soldier," said Rooney. "You should never bring him back and put him in front of a court martial."
Related special offers:
Just like his new position on free trade- all of a sudden he's for it noe, but while he was campaigning in the primaries ( ohio ) it was awful for the country
THe man is a ( dangerous ) lightweight
Backtracking All Around
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Given that he changed his mind about his earlier decision to take public financing for the general election cycle, it should come as no surprise whatsoever to find that Barack Obama is now conducting a whiplash-inducing policy change concerning the issue of trade:
The general campaign is on, independent voters are up for grabs, and Barack Obama is toning down his populist rhetoric - at least when it comes to free trade.
In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.
"Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.
Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.
Just out of curiosity, how responsible is policymaking in the Obama campaign when it is vulnerable to being altered 180 degrees simply because "during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified"? We all have our moments when we say things that we regret, but the Obama campaign engaged in a deliberate, patterned, systematic and repeated effort to augment protectionist sentiments and to trash free trade agreements like NAFTA and the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Now, we are being told that all of this was just "overheated and amplified" rhetoric and that Obama committed a forensic boo-boo?
Give me a break. Go through the entire story and see just how much Obama has backtracked on the issue of trade and just how purposefully protectionist he sounded during the primary campaign season. The only thing we have to rely on when it comes to trade issues is Barack Obama's inconstancy. And the causes of prosperity and economic development both in this country and around the world deserve better than that from the next American President.
Justice?
Haditha again.
By Mackubin Thomas Owens
In November 2005, the Marine Corps reported that a number of civilians had been killed in Haditha by an improvised explosive device (IED) that also killed Marine Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, and that eight insurgents were killed in the ensuing firefight.
But in March of 2006, Time ran a story, “Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha?” which claimed, based on interviews with locals, that the Marines had killed 24 civilians in cold blood in retaliation for Terrazas’s death. In May, the Marine Corps charged a number of Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, with killing the civilians, and a number of officers for covering up the alleged killings.
Although the investigation had hardly begun, opponents of the war pounced. The press, especially Time and the New York Times, presumed the Marines guilty. Rep. John Murtha (D., Pa.) piled on, claiming that “there was no firefight, there was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” This incident, said Murtha, “shows the tremendous pressure that these guys are under every day when they’re out in combat.”
Appearing on This Week on ABC, Murtha also contended that the shootings in Hadithah had been covered up. “Who covered it up, why did they cover it up, why did they wait so long? We don’t know how far it goes. It goes right up the chain of command.” When Alan Colmes asked Barack Obama about Murtha’s charge in June of 2006, Senator Obama replied, “I would never second-guess John Murtha . . . I think he’s somebody who knows of which he speaks.”
But a strange thing happened on the way to the lynching. The case against the Marines began to fall apart, and a deafening media silence ensued. Eight Marines were originally charged with offenses ranging from murder to dereliction of duty, but charges against six have been dismissed, and one has been acquitted.
The case began to unravel in 2007, when then-Lt. Gen. James Mattis, Commanding General of the First Marine Expeditionary Force (IMEF), accepted the recommendations of the Article 32 investigating officer and dropped charges against two of the Marines charged with murder and an officer charged with dereliction of duty. In the case of Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt, one of four enlisted Marines charged with murder in the Hadithah incident, General Mattis wrote that Sharratt:
has served as a Marine infantryman in Iraq where our nation is fighting a shadowy enemy who hides among the innocent people, does not comply with any aspect of the law of war, and routinely targets and intentionally draws fire toward civilians.
With the dismissal of these charges, LCpl Sharratt may fairly conclude that he did his best to live up to the standards, followed by U.S. fighting men throughout our many wars, in the face of life or death decisions made in a matter of seconds in combat. And as he has always remained cloaked in the presumption of innocence, with this dismissal of charges, he remains in the eyes of the law — and in my eyes — innocent.
The acquittals and dismissals continue.
Earlier this month, First Lt. Andrew Grayson, a Marine intelligence officer, was acquitted of contributing to the Haditha “cover up” by having a military photographer erase digital photos of the dead Iraqis. Grayson had turned down a plea deal to face charges on five counts that could have led to a maximum of 20 years in prison. The military judge in the case had previously dismissed an obstruction-of-justice charge against Grayson.
And now, a military judge has dismissed charges of dereliction of duty against the battalion commander at the time of the incident, Lt. Col. Jeffery Chessani, for failure to investigate the killings. The issue in Chessani’s case was undue “command influence.” The military judge in the case, Col. Steven Folsom, observed that "unlawful command influence is the mortal enemy of military justice."
↓ Keep reading this article ↓
The one Marine remaining under indictment is Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who faces nine counts of involuntary manslaughter, charges that were earlier reduced from unpremeditated murder. Wuterich was the squad leader of the unit involved in the Haditha incident. His court martial was postponed at the end of February and has not been rescheduled.
Let me be clear. If Wuterich and his Marines had killed civilians in Haditha in revenge for the IED attack, he and they would be guilty of a war crime. But as the complete story has emerged, it seems to be the case that the killings, though a tragedy, did not rise to the level of war crime or atrocity.
There was a great deal of wisdom in the observations by Lt. Col. Paul Ware, the Article 32 investigating officer in the case of Sharratt (whose charges Mattis dismissed). Ware wrote that “the government version is unsupported by independent evidence. . . . To believe the government version of facts is to disregard clear and convincing evidence to the contrary.” Ware continued, “whether this was a brave act of combat against the enemy or tragedy of misperception born out of conducting combat with an enemy that hides among innocents, Lance Corporal Sharratt's actions were in accord with the rules of engagement and use of force.” He concluded that further prosecution of Sharratt could set a “dangerous precedent that . . . may encourage others to bear false witness against Marines as a tactic to erode public support of the Marine Corps and its mission in Iraq. . . . Even more dangerous is the potential that a Marine may hesitate at the critical moment when facing the enemy.” These observations apply as well in the case of Wuterich.
In September of 2007, Wuterich told 60 Minutes, “What I did that day, the decisions that I made, I would make those decisions today. What I’m talking about is the tactical decisions. It doesn’t sit well with me that women and children died that day. There is nothing that I can possibly say to make up or make well the deaths of those women and children and I am absolutely sorry that that happened that day.”
What can we say about Haditha? As I have observed previously, our opponents in Iraq have chosen to deny us the ability to fight the sort of conventional war we would prefer and forced us to fight the one they want — an insurgency. Insurgents blend in with the people, making it hard to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant. A counterinsurgency always has to negotiate a fine line between too much and too little force. Indeed, it suits the insurgents’ goal when too much force is applied.
For insurgents, there is no more powerful propaganda tool than the claim that their adversaries are employing force in an indiscriminate manner. It is even better for the insurgents’ cause if they can credibly charge the forces of the counterinsurgency with the targeted killing of noncombatants. For many people even today, the entire Americans enterprise in Vietnam is discredited by the belief that the U.S. military committed atrocities on a regular basis and as a matter of official policy — even though, as Jim Webb has noted, stories of atrocious conduct, e.g. My Lai, “represented not the typical experience of the American soldier, but its ugly extreme.”
Under the circumstances, what is most remarkable is not that incidents such as Haditha have occurred, but that there have been so few of them. As the Wall Street Journal observed in an editorial published on October 19, 2007:
While some violent crimes have been visited on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, overall the highly disciplined U.S. military has conducted itself in an exemplary fashion. When there have been aberrations, the services have typically held themselves accountable.
↓ Keep reading this article ↓
The same cannot be said of the political and media classes. Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template.
Most despicably, they created and stoked a political atmosphere that exposes American soldiers in the line of duty, risking and often losing their lives, to criminal liability for the chaos of war. This is the deepest shame of Haditha, and the one for which apologies ought to be made.
I expect that we will be waiting for these apologies for some time. As Field Marshal Slim noted, it is so much easier to twist, misinterpret, falsify, or invent facts to slander the soldier as “an inhuman monster wallowing in innocent blood.”
— Mackubin Thomas Owens is an associate dean of academics and a professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. and editor of Orbis, the journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
the American Civil Liberties Union sternly warned members against voting for the legislation.
LOL
Or else what???
I'd venture a wild guess they weren't worried about the constitutionality of giving soldiers at war against us habeas corpus rights
Obama Rejects Public Financing
By JACOB M. SCHLESINGER
June 19, 2008 9:52 a.m.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama announced Thursday that he would become the first presidential candidate to forgo public financing of his general election campaign since the system was established three decades ago.
In a video emailed to supporters, he said that "it's not an easy decision, especially because I support a robust system for public financing of elections."
[Washington Wire] WASHINGTON WIRE
• Obama Breaks Earlier Pledge on Public Financing
• Text of Obama's statement
• Protester Drills McCain on Oil Money
• All campaign posts
• Complete coverage: Campaign 2008
The move was widely expected, following the Illinois senator's record-shattering fundraising during the nominating contest, and his proven ability to raise unprecedented sums from big donors and small Internet donors alike.
Sen. Obama's Republican opponent, John McCain, has been much less successful at raising money and the move sets up the likelihood of a big mismatch in money heading into the fall campaign. If Sen. McCain stays in the public financing system, as is expected, he would have about $80 million to spend between the Republican nominating convention in September and the Nov. 4 election. Sen. Obama is expected to be able to raise $200 million for that contest.
Sen. Obama said he felt compelled to make the move because "we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system."
"John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs," he said. "And we've already seen that he's not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations."
Sen. McCain, a champion of public financing, is likely to attack his opponent for undermining a long-time staple of political reform, and for backtracking on a statement that Sen. Obama made earlier in the campaign implying that he had agree to public financing if the Republicans would as well.
Write to Jacob M. Schlesinger at jacob.schlesinger@wsj.com
Israel's Truce With Hamas Is a Victory for Iran
By MICHAEL B. OREN
June 19, 2008; Page A13
Proponents of an Israeli-Palestinian accord are praising the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that went into effect this morning. Yet even if the agreement suspends violence temporarily -- though dozens of Hamas rockets struck Israel yesterday -- it represents a historic accomplishment for the jihadist forces most opposed to peace, and defeat for the Palestinians who might still have been Israel's partners.
The roots of this tragedy go back to the summer of 2005 and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The evacuation, intended to free Israel of Gaza's political and strategic burden, was hailed as a victory by Palestinian terrorist groups, above all Hamas.
Hamas proceeded to fire some 1,000 rocket and mortar shells into Israel. Six months later Hamas gunmen, taking advantage of an earlier cease-fire, infiltrated into Israel, killed two soldiers, and captured Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
Hamas's audacity spurred Hezbollah to mount a similar ambush against Israelis patrolling the Lebanese border, triggering a war in which Israel was once again humbled. Hamas now felt sufficiently emboldened to overthrow Gaza's Fatah-led government, and to declare itself regnant in the Strip. Subsequently, Hamas launched thousands more rocket and mortar salvos against Israel, rendering parts of the country nearly uninhabitable.
In response, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) air strikes and limited ground incursions killed hundreds of armed Palestinians in Gaza, and Israel earned international censure for collateral civilian deaths and "disproportionate" tactics. Israel also imposed a land and sea blockade of Gaza, strictly controlling its supply of vital commodities such as a gasoline. But the policy enabled Hamas to hoard the fuel and declare a humanitarian crisis.
Israel never mounted the rolling, multi-month operation that the IDF had planned. Traumatized by his abortive performance in the Lebanon War, hobbled by financial scandals, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert balked at a military engagement liable to result in incalculable casualties and United Nations condemnations, but unlikely to halt Hamas aggression.
Like Hezbollah in 2006, Hamas won because it did not lose. Its leaders still walked Gaza's streets freely while children in Sderot and other Israeli border towns cowered in bomb shelters. Like Hezbollah, which recently wrested unprecedented powers from the Lebanese parliament, Hamas parlayed its military success into political capital.
The European Parliament demanded the immediate lifting of the Gaza blockade, and France initiated secret contacts with Hamas officials. A minister from the Israeli Labor Party, Ami Ayalon, went a step further by calling for Hamas's inclusion in peace talks -- a recommendation soon echoed by Jimmy Carter and the New York Times.
The Egyptian-brokered cease-fire yields Hamas greater benefits than it might have obtained in direct negotiations. In exchange for giving its word to halt rocket attacks and weapons smuggling, Hamas receives the right to monitor the main border crossings into Gaza and to enforce a truce in the West Bank, where Fatah retains formal control.
If quiet is maintained, then Israel will be required to accept a cease-fire in the West Bank as well. The blockade will be incrementally lifted while Cpl. Shalit remains in captivity. Hamas can regroup and rearm.
The Olmert government will have to go vast lengths to portray this arrangement as anything other than a strategic and moral defeat. Hamas initiated a vicious war against Israel, destroyed and disrupted myriad Israeli lives, and has been rewarded with economic salvation and international prestige.
Tellingly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who once declared Hamas illegal, will soon travel to Gaza for reconciliation talks. Mr. Abbas's move signifies the degree to which Hamas, with Israel's help, now dominates Palestinian politics. It testifies, moreover, to another Iranian triumph.
As the primary sponsor of Hamas, Iran is the cease-fire's ultimate beneficiary. Having already surrounded Israel on three of its borders -- Gaza, Lebanon, Syria -- Iran is poised to penetrate the West Bank. By activating these fronts, Tehran can divert attention from its nuclear program and block any diplomatic effort.
The advocates of peace between Israelis and Palestinians should recognize that fact when applauding quiet at any price. The cost of this truce may well be war.
Mr. Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, is the author of "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present" (Norton, 2008).
Democrats Skip Right Over Socialism; Land Squarely In The Land Of Karl And Hugo
..and we all settle in nicely to our bonny new Communist America
By haystack Posted in absolute power corrupts absolutely | Congress | Democrats | Energy Policy | stick it to the little guy — Comments (43) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Picking up where Mr. Hahn left off...
Elections DO matter folks. The lunatics we put in power in 2006 have rather nicely gone and outdone themselves with this little brainstorm... I swear I'm stuck in a really bad episode of the Twilight Zone:
House Democrats responded to President's Bush's call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. This was at an on-camera press conference fed back live.
Among other things, the Democrats called for the government to own refineries so it could better control the flow of the oil supply.
[...]
We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.
My head is exploding...they're doing SO well with all the other things they run, aren't they? These are the very same "geniuses" who, just a few days ago blocked efforts to make MORE of them, when they kicked H.R 3089 (No More Excuses Energy Act of 2007) out of Committee. The bill was submitted by Rep Mac Thornberry [TX-13] back in July 2007 [attaboy Mac-thanks for trying, at least].
These people on the left are freaking insane.
Watch as my hair spontaneously combusts below the fold..
All you need is this quote from that whack job, Maxine Waters, to see how much like Hugo Chavez the Democrats want to become:
A report by Fox News, captured in a clip posted on YouTube.com, showed Waters challenging the president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, to guarantee the prices consumers pay will go down if the oil companies are allowed to drill wherever they want off of U.S. shores.
Hofmeister replied: "I can guarantee to the American people, because of the inaction of the United States Congress, ever-increasing prices unless the demand comes down."
The Shell exec said paying $5 at the pump "will look like a very low price in the years to come if we are prohibited from finding new reserves, new opportunities to increase supplies."
Waters responded, in part, "And guess what this liberal would be all about. This liberal will be about socializing … uh, um. …"
The congresswoman paused to collect her thoughts.
"Would be about, basically, taking over, and the government running all of your companies. …"
The oil executives responded, according to Fox News, by saying they've seen this before, in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.
Did I say elections matter yet? This next one coming up is pretty near life and death for a lot of us.
Obama and McCain Spout Economic Nonsense
By KARL ROVE
June 19, 2008; Page A13
Barack Obama and John McCain are busy demonstrating that in close elections during tough economic times, candidates for president can be economically illiterate and irresponsibly populist.
In Raleigh, N.C., last week, Sen. Obama promised, "I'll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we'll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills."
Set aside for a minute that Jimmy Carter passed a "windfall profits tax" to devastating effect, putting American oil companies at a competitive disadvantage to foreign competitors, virtually ending domestic energy exploration, and making the U.S. more dependent on foreign sources of oil and gas.
Instead ask this: Why should we stop with oil companies? They make about 8.3 cents in gross profit per dollar of sales. Why doesn't Mr. Obama slap a windfall profits tax on sectors of the economy that have fatter margins? Electronics make 14.5 cents per dollar and computer equipment makers take in 13.7 cents per dollar, according to the Census Bureau. Microsoft's margin is 27.5 cents per dollar of sales. Call out Mr. Obama's Windfall Profits Police!
It's not the profit margin, but the total number of dollars earned that is the problem, Mr. Obama might say. But if that were the case, why isn't he targeting other industries? Oil and gas companies made $86.5 billion in profits last year. At the same time, the financial services industry took in $498.5 billion in profits, the retail industry walked away with $137.5 billion, and information technology companies made off with $103.4 billion. What kind of special outrage does Mr. Obama have for these companies?
Sen. McCain doesn't support the windfall profits tax, but he can be as hostile to profits as Mr. Obama. "[W]e should look at any incentives that we are giving," Mr. McCain said in May, even as he talked up a gas tax "holiday" that would give drivers incentives to burn more gasoline.
This past Thursday, Mr. McCain came close to advocating a form of industrial policy, saying, "I'm very angry, frankly, at the oil companies not only because of the obscene profits they've made, but their failure to invest in alternate energy."
But oil and gas companies report that they have invested heavily in alternative energy. Out of the $46 billion spent researching alternative energy in North America from 2000 to 2005, $12 billion came from oil and gas companies, making the industry one of the nation's largest backers of wind and solar power, biofuels, lithium-ion batteries and fuel-cell technology.
Such investments, however, are not as important as money spent on technologies that help find and extract more oil. Because oil companies invested in innovation and technology, they are now tapping reserves that were formerly thought to be unrecoverable. Maybe we are all better off when oil companies invest in what they know, not what they don't.
And do we really want the government deciding how profits should be invested? If so, should Microsoft be forced to invest in Linux-based software or McDonald's in weight-loss research?
Mr. McCain's angry statement shows a lack of understanding of the insights of Joseph Schumpeter, the 20th century economist who explained that capitalism is inherently unstable because a "perennial gale of creative destruction" is brought on by entrepreneurs who create new goods, markets and processes. The entrepreneur is "the pivot on which everything turns," Schumpeter argued, and "proceeds by competitively destroying old businesses."
Most dramatic change comes from new businesses, not old ones. Buggy whip makers did not create the auto industry. Railroads didn't create the airplane. Even when established industries help create new ones, old-line firms are often not as nimble as new ones. IBM helped give rise to personal computers, but didn't see the importance of software and ceded that part of the business to young upstarts who founded Microsoft.
So why should Mr. McCain expect oil and gas companies to lead the way in developing alternative energy? As with past technological change, new enterprises will likely be the drivers of alternative energy innovation.
Messrs. Obama and McCain both reveal a disturbing animus toward free markets and success. It is uncalled for and self-defeating for presidential candidates to demonize American companies. It is understandable that Mr. Obama, the most liberal member of the Senate, would endorse reckless policies that are the DNA of the party he leads. But Mr. McCain, a self-described Reagan Republican, should know better.
Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.
Not Ready for Late Night Infomercial Time
Repeatedly through the campaign so far, Barack Obama has demonstrated a troubling lack of familiarity with American history, especially diplomatic history. Obama's cluelessness about diplomacy has raised troubling questions about whether he is qualified to be President. This one may have answered the question:
Democrat Barack Obama misused a "code word" in Middle East politics when he said Jerusalem should be Israel's "undivided" capital but that does not mean he is naive on foreign policy, a top adviser said on Tuesday.
Addressing a pro-Israel lobby group this month, the Democratic White House hopeful said: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
Obama backed off almost immediately when Palestinians protested his remarks to AIPAC. The adviser, Daniel Kurtzer, continued:
Daniel Kurtzer, who advises Obama on the Middle East, said Tuesday at the Israel Policy Forum that Obama's comment stemmed from "a picture in his mind of Jerusalem before 1967 with barbed wires and minefields and demilitarized zones."
"So he used a word to represent what he did not want to see again, and then realized afterwards that that word is a code word in the Middle East," Kurtzer said.
I don't believe Kurtzer's explanation for a moment--why would Obama's mental picture of Jerusalem date from a time when he was five years old?--but it seems clear that, as Kurtzer says, Obama did not understand the significance of an "undivided Jerusalem."
Diplomacy is full of "code words," and for a President not to understand them can be lethal. It could also be dangerous for a President to have a "picture in his mind" of Jerusalem that is forty years out of date, if that really is the case. Maybe Obama should stop off there on his trip to Iraq, whenever that may take place.
It has become clear that Barack Obama has a great deal of learning to do before he is ready to serve as President. (One wonders, actually, what he is doing in the Senate.) Worse, he seems to have little understanding of his own limitations and no interest in putting in the hard work it will take for him to become even moderately conversant with foreign policy issues. Once again, we see the dangerous combination of ignorance and arrogance that characterizes Obama's Presidential campaign.
Via Jennifer Rubin.
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He can't be serious
Jennifer Rubin catches Barack Obama in what looks like a serious misstatement about his telephone conversation with Iraqi foreign minister Hoshay Zebari. According to Obama, Zebari didn’t raise the issue of Obama’s troop withdrawal plans. But Zebari's account, as presented by the Washington Post, paints a different picture: “My message. . .was very clear. . . . Really, we are making progress. I hope any actions you will take will not endanger this progress.” Moreover, according to Zebari, Obama responded by assuring him that a Democratic administration "will not take any irresponsible, reckless, sudden decisions or action to endanger your gains, your achievements, your stability or security." Obama added that "whatever decision he will reach will be made through close consultation with the Iraqi government and U.S. military commanders in the field.”
Zebari is clearly more credible than Obama on this, and not just because Obama is running for office. Obama and his surrogates have been playing this kind of double-game (reckless statements for consumption by his base followed by reassurances to foreign leaders) all year. Think, for example, of the assurances his campaign provided Canada regarding NAFTA. Even on the issue of Iraq, Samantha Power (before her dismissal) was trimming Obama's position on immediate withdrawal. And, as Rubin points out, Obama recently told the Washington Post that that after all the pain and sacrifices of the past five years, “we are just turning the corner in Iraq” and a precipitous withdrawal “would create a huge vacuum and undo all the gains and achievements," causing the enemies of the United States to "celebrate.”
It's no accident that Obama lacks credibility when he talks about Iraq. He's loath to advocate his offical substantive position -- prompt withdrawal -- to serious, informed individuals, but much of his usual audience is neither serious nor informed.
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Want to buy an overpriced house in Las Vegas? You’re about to!
By Matt Kibbe Posted in Barney Frank | Chris Dodd | Congress | Countrywide Financial | Dodd-Frank | Mortgage Bailout — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Thanks to Matt for stopping by to post this. Matt Kibbe is the President of FreedomWorks. --Erick
The current correction in the housing market is painful for Wall Street and many homeowners. Not missing an opportunity to ‘solve’ a ‘crisis,’ Congress is attempting to save the day with the Dodd-Frank bailout bill that is scheduled to hit the Senate floor later today.
While supporters try to sell the bill as legislation to help folks facing foreclosure, a closer look shows who benefits and who ultimately pays.
Dodd-Frank creates a new $300 billion taxpayer loan guarantee facility that nearly doubles the size of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and allows mortgage lenders and banks to cherry-pick the worst performing and riskiest loans in their portfolios and offload them onto the FHA, creating new loans that shift 100 percent of the liability to the taxpayer.
Read on . . .
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 35 percent of the loans will eventually default even after they are refinanced through the new program. This is hardly a good deal for taxpayers or struggling borrowers but it is a great deal for the banks that get to unload their problem loans. And these are not small loans. There are no income caps for borrowers and the House version of the bill would refinance loans as large as $729,000, which is more than three times the national median home price.
So this is how you are about to buy property in Las Vegas. Someone who recently bought a house they could not afford, with no money down, and from a bank that did not even document the borrower 's employment, suddenly finds himself unable to make the payments.
Both the borrower and lender placed a bet that housing prices would go up forever, and that the borrower would be able to flip the house for a profit if they could not make the payment or before the payment reset.
But that bet did not pay off, and unlike losing at poker, banks and overstretched homeowners are looking to Washington to fix the bad bet.
Under Dodd-Frank, the bank will be able to dump the loan onto the FHA after the principal owed has been reduced. But with a one in three chance the borrower will still not be able to make the reduced payments and default, the FHA will and the taxpayer will be on the hook.
Congratulations, John Q. Taxpayer, you just purchased a home in Las Vegas!
Energy Guzzled by Al Gore’s Home in Past Year Could Power 232 U.S. Homes for a Month
Gore’s personal electricity consumption up 10%, despite “energy-efficient” home renovations
NASHVILLE - In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.
“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”
In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.
In February 2007, An Inconvenient Truth, a film based on a climate change speech developed by Gore, won an Academy Award for best documentary feature. The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research uncovered that Gore’s Nashville home guzzled 20 times more electricity than the average American household.
After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use, the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.
Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.
In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria.
“Actions speak louder than words, and Gore’s actions prove that he views climate change not as a serious problem, but as a money-making opportunity,” Johnson said. “Gore is exploiting the public’s concern about the environment to line his pockets and enhance his profile.”
The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a Nashville-based free market think tank and watchdog organization, obtained information about Gore’s home energy use through a public records request to the Nashville Electric Service.
Stuck on Stupid
posted at 9:03 am on June 18, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Susan Rice appeared on MS-NBC’s Morning Joe, which presumably originates out of either New York City or Washington DC, both attacked on 9/11 by al-Qaeda terrorists almost seven years ago. In fact, they were the last American cities attacked, as the Bush administration has managed to foil terrorists enough to keep them from hitting us, which no one predicted on 9/12/01. Everyone assumed that we would be hit again and probably often.
That track record speaks volumes to everyone — except Rice and the Barack Obama campaign. She says that the war has been fought “stupid” by George Bush and John McCain:
First off, John McCain hasn’t fought the war on terror; George Bush has. McCain had the correct strategy to fight the Iraq war, but had no opportunity to implement it. Bush adopted McCain’s approach in late 2006, more than two years after McCain privately and then publicly demanded the adoption of the current counterinsurgency strategies that have succeeded. If Susan Rice can’t tell the difference between the two, then it isn’t John McCain who’s stupid. That’s nothing more than perhaps the lamest attempt to tie George Bush to John McCain, a big non-sequitur from a campaign that has already specialized in them.
Second, I’ll take a “stupid” strategy that results in zero terrorist attacks any day over a return to the Clinton-era strategy of prosecuting terrorists after they kill lots of people. Barack Obama suggested that we return to the posture we took in 1993 of simply arresting people after they commit terrorist attacks, blithely ignorant of the series of escalating attacks al-Qaeda committed during the 1990s after the conviction of the Blind Sheikh and his henchment for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Apparently, Americans need to die before Obama will take action to stop terrorists rather than stop them before they attack.
If that’s what Susan Rice calls “smart”, then it explains a lot about Barack Obama’s ineptitude on the campaign trail. (via John McCain Report)
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