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To be replaced by what??
There is no pure form of any type of governmant/economis system and there will never be
The reality of the world is that socialism/communism has been proven to be failed systems.
Despite you twisted views, there is more opportunity in this country than any other in the world
Judgment now a distraction? Update: “Overthrow” video added
posted at 8:24 am on April 25, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Remember when Barack Obama tried to explain why his lack of experience didn’t really matter? He told rapturous audiences that his superior judgment mattered more than Hillary Clinton’s long years inside the Beltway. Obama claimed that his terrific hindsight qualified him for the presidency much more than John McCain’s 26 years in Congress.
However, now that people have begun to take a closer look at his judgment, especially in his political associations and in his judgment about middle America, Obama has taken to calling that a “distraction”. Charles Krauthammer replies that Obama had better remember the nature of the office for which he’s running:
With that, Obama identified the new public enemy: the “distractions” foisted upon a pliable electorate by the malevolent forces of the status quo, i.e., those who might wish to see someone else become president next January. “It’s easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit for tat that consumes our politics” and “trivializes the profound issues” that face our country, he warned sternly. These must be resisted.
Why? Because Obama understands that the real threat to his candidacy is less Hillary Clinton and John McCain than his own character and cultural attitudes. He came out of nowhere with his autobiography already written, then saw it embellished daily by the hagiographic coverage and kid-gloves questioning of a supine press. (Which is why those “Saturday Night Live” parodies were so devastatingly effective.)
Then came the three amigos: Tony Rezko, the indicted fixer; Jeremiah Wright, the racist reverend; William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist. And then Obama’s own anthropological observation that “bitter” working-class whites cling to guns and religion because they misapprehend their real class interests.
In the now-famous Pennsylvania debate, Obama had extreme difficulty answering questions about these associations and attitudes. The difficulty is understandable. Some of the contradictions are inexplicable. How does one explain campaigning throughout 2007 on a platform of transcending racial divisions, while in that same year contributing $26,000 to a church whose pastor incites race hatred?
What is Obama to do? Dismiss all such questions about his associations and attitudes as “distractions.” And then count on his acolytes in the media to wage jihad against those who have the temerity to raise these questions. As if the character and beliefs of a man who would be president are less important than the “issues.” As if some political indecency was committed when Obama was prevented from going through his latest — 21st and likely last — primary debate without being asked about Wright or Ayers or the tribal habits of gun-toting, God-loving Pennsylvanians.
Remember that one of the campaign slogans for Obama was “Judgment to Lead”. I often use the picture of Obama with that slogan on the lectern just to emphasize that Obama himself opened the debate over his judgment. Now that people want to start asking about the judgment he claims as his superior quality for the election, he wants to label it a “distraction”, but without it he has nothing else to offer except three undistinguished years as a backbencher in the Senate.
With no track record of legislative accomplishments and no evidence of any real engagement in change, judgment would have eventually become a focal issue for Obama anyway, even if he hadn’t brought it up himself. That means his judgment in launching his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist like William Ayers becomes relevant and germane, especially since the political connections between the two continued after Ayers announced that he wished he’d gone further in his political violence. Even in 2007, Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn talk about overthrowing the “corporate government” of the United States, to replace it with something more akin to Red China.
What is Obama’s judgment on Ayers and Dohrn? They’re “respectable figures of the mainstream in Chicago.”
For that matter, what is Obama’s judgment on middle America? In what he thought was a friendly crowd among the hard-Left elite in San Francisco, Obama judged small-town voters as bitter xenophobes that “cling” to guns and religion only because — and this is particularly revealing — “government failed them”. His solution was to provide an even bigger dose of government intervention in order to get them to see the Utopia that would follow. That was the point of that speech on Billionaires Row, which later got termed “Crackerquiddick”.
For someone to see Ayers, Dohrn, and Jeremiah Wright as mainstream, they have to be very far out of what the rest of the country sees as normal political thought. Distraction? Obama’s judgment is a revelation.
Update: Via Hugh Hewitt, here’s Bernadine Dohrn speaking at the 40th anniversary of the SDS, talking about “overthrowing” the American government — in 2007:
Barack Obama thinks this is mainstream.
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/25/judgment-now-a-distraction/
He was never convicted due to a technicality- evidence gathering errors
Point is, he's admitted his role and has even said he felt remorse at not doing more damage.
He's still devoted to taking down capitalism
About losing Basra
Posted by: McQ
If anything has come to typify the left's rush to declare any setback in Iraq, no matter how tiny or temporary, as proof the whole enterprise has collapsed, perhaps the "battle of Basra" best illustrates it. Quickly declared a loss for Maliki and the Iraqi government and a victory for al-Sadr, the left screamed about the inept Iraqis, the failure the ISF action and the poor quality of the troops, etc., etc, etc. Yet here we are, roughly a month after the action was initiated and the results?
Young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again.
All across Iraq's second city life is improving, a month after Iraqi troops began a surprise crackdown on the black-clad gangs who were allowed to flourish under the British military. The gunmen's reign had enforced a strict set of religious codes.
Yet after three years of being terrified of kidnap, rape and murder - a fate that befell scores of other women - Nadyia Ahmed, 22, is among those enjoying a sense of normality, happy for the first time to attend her science course at Basra University. "I now have the university life that I heard of at high school before the war and always dreamt about," she told The Times. "It was a nightmare because of these militiamen. I only attended class three days a week but now I look forward to going every day."
[...]
"All these men in black [who imposed the laws] just vanished from the university after this operation," said Ms Ahmed. "Things have completely changed over the past week."
[...]
Raids are continuing in a few remaining strongholds but the Iraqi commander in charge of the unprecedented operation is confident that his forces will soon achieve something that the British military could not - a city free from rogue gunmen.
British and US officials acknowledge tentatively that a turning point has been reached. Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the British Army, made an unannounced visit to Basra over the weekend.
Local people are daring to hope that the dark days of death squads and kidnap are over, displaying the sort of optimism that was last seen when British forces arrived in 2003 with the false promise of a better life free from Saddam Hussein.
Driving through Basra in a convoy with the Iraqi general leading the Charge of the Knights operation, The Times passed Iraqi security forces manning checkpoints and patrolling the roads. Not a hostile shot was fired as the convoy turned into what was until the weekend the most notorious neighbourhood in the city. Hayaniya, a teeming slum, was a bastion for al-Mahdi Army, the main militia.
For the first time in four years local residents have been emboldened to stand up to the militants and are turning in caches of weapons. Army checkpoints have been erected across Basra and traffic police are also out in force.
The security forces have also torn down many banners supporting al-Mahdi Army as well as portraits of its leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, though some still remain in militia strongholds.
The contrast could not be more stark with the last time The Times visited Basra in December, when intimidation was rife.
Quite a positive result for a "loss", wouldn't you say?
The ISF and government's success in Basra is critical for a number of reasons. It demonstrates both a will and ability to undertake and succeed in security operations. Basra gives the ISF and the government experience that can only be garnered in such operations. The success of the operation has given the government and ISF confidence in their abilities and, it appears, given Iraqi citizens confidence in their government and the ISF. Perhaps I wouldn't have counseled the government to try its first operation on a city of 2 million, but it has apparently succeeded, and you can't argue with success.
Reading about Nadyia Ahmed's reaction also pulls two things into focus. One, the average Iraqi is tired of the violence and bloodshed. They yearn for peace. And they're coming to realize that neither AQI or the militias are the answer to that yearning. It is also clear they want freedom. They want the ability to live what they consider normal lives as much free of interference as possible - be that interference religious or secular.
Last but not least, it appears the people of Basra have decided which horse to back in this race. Basra is, by all indications, a huge win for the Iraqi government and a complete repudiation of the left's critiques of the early operation. And it demonstrates tremendous progress in terms of Iraq's ability to stand up and defend itself.
In reality, the left should be celebrating the success in Basra. Instead, vested heavily in their arguments that Iraq is a "quagmire", they can't find it in themselves to acknowledge that Basra seems to be a success. The much anticipated Iraqi "Tet" spin didn't quite work as successfully as it did the last time when a victory was declared a loss.
Obama Keeps Hiring Anti-Israeli Advisors
Ed Lasky
Commentary Magazine Gabriel Schoenfeld has noted that another Obama adviser, Joseph Cirincione, seems to have anti--Israel views. His senior aide on nuclear non-proliferation had denounced reports that North Korea had been helping Syria build a nuclear reactor and said such reports were nonsense and were, in part, promoted so as to derail talks with Syria.
Cirincione had written after Israel's strike against the suspected Syrian nuclear plant that stories about it being a North-Korean designed and built plutonium reactor was a lie - a fiction being spread just as reports had been spread before the Iraq War that misled the press regarding Iraq's program. Shcoenfeld writes:
Who was behind this nefarious manipulation? It appears, wrote Circincione, “to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted ‘intelligence’ to key reporters in order to promote a preexisting political agenda.” What exactly was that political agenda? “[I]t appears aimed at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement.” There was also a dose of Zionist mischief thrown in: “Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria.”
Based on evidence shown to Congress today, there is now incontrovertible proof that the building bombed by Israel was a plutonium producing reactor that was geared towards the production of material for nuclear weapons - exactly what Cirincionne had previously dismissed as lies, in part, cooked up by Israelis trying to influence America's foreign policy.
This tendency to blame and castigate Israel was not the first time for Joseph Cirincione. He seems to have a penchant for targeting Israel for opprobrium.
In 2002, he wrote that Israel's possession of three diesel nuclear power submarines that can launch nuclear-missiles complicates American efforts to restrain a nuclear arms race. He also claimed that the US Navy monitored the Israeli testing of a new cruise missile from a submarine in 2002 off of Sri Lanka, according to unnamed "former Pentagon officials".
There is no verifiable proof that Israel launched such missiles, just a claim by Cirincione. He also blamed Israel for stoking an arms race that is creating a difficult situation not just for the United States, but also for preventing other nations that have signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty from breaking away.
Israel's has followed a principle of ambiguity regarding its nuclear program. Surrounded by an array of enemies that dwarf its own resources, Israel - a nation founded after the Holocaust - might reasonable be seen as needing such a nuclear force to protect its existence. It has been rumored that when Israel was on the brink of defeat during the Yom Kippur War , it made known that it might be forced to resort to a nuclear option. Cirincionne looks in askance at Israel's possession of such a deterrent and sees it as a problem for America and for the world.
In 2006, he declared that Israel's raid on the Osirak nuclear reactor was a "failure". This was despite the stunning success of the daring raid (only one man died) in derailing Iraq's program. Years later, Dick Cheney thanked Israel for disabling Iraq's nuclear program for , if Osirak had been allowed to be completed, Iraq might well have had a nuclear arsenal during the Gulf War in 1991. Instead, Cirincione held that it sped up the Iraqi program and led to a more devoted effort to secretly build nuclear capabilities. This, of course, paradoxically conflicts with his other belief that Iraq did not have such a nuclear program and that America should not have invaded Iraq absent such proof!
He also is firmly against any type of strike against the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
He is in favor of persuading Israel to give up its nuclear program which, as noted above, might be the only thing that can prevent Israel's destruction. One book reviewer noted that Cirincione's believes (as shown in his book, "Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons"):
Quite significantly, Cirincione thinks that Iran would also be encouraged to give up nuclear weapons building if it does not face a nuclear threat from what it considers to be its biggest enemy in the Middle East---Israel. The nuclear balance in the Middle East is always going to be contingent on the political atmosphere in that politically and historically volatile continent, and Israel is a key player in these developments. While Israel giving up its nuclear program may sound utopian, Cirincione is optimistic that Israel with its vast and superior conventional forces could be encouraged to incrementally reduce or even eliminate its nuclear capability, perhaps starting by shutting down its production reactor at Dimona.
Cirincione states that :
"The world does well to remember that most Middle East weapons programs began as a response to Israel's nuclear weapons," said Joseph Cirincione, director for nonproliferation at the liberal think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-author of its recent study, "Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security."
"Everyone already knows about Israel's bombs in the closet," he said. "Bringing them out into the open and putting them on the table as part of a regional deal may be the only way to prevent others from building their own bombs in their basements."
If this was not enough to give one qualms about the views of this important adviser to Barack Obama, Cirincione has expanded on these themes in a short article for The Globalist He criticizes America for not publicizing Israel's weapons programs. He calls for an end of this practice.
If you do not know much about Israel's programs, it is not surprising. Israel is never mentioned in semi-annual reports the U.S. Congress requires the intelligence agencies to prepare on "the acquisition by foreign countries during the preceding six months of dual-use and other technology useful for the development or production of weapons of mass destruction."
The agencies provide their assessment of programs in Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but Israel (and Egypt) are omitted. This pattern is repeated across the board.
For example, the 2003 report on the ballistic and cruise missile threat from the National Air and Space Intelligence Center lists 18 nations with missiles, including U.S. allies Bulgaria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Yemen, and Egypt — but not Israel.
Yet, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and an array of medium-range missiles that could deliver them.
He wants to put U.S. muscle behind a plan for seeking a nuclear-free Middle East region. This, of course, would be flexed against Israel. He wrote (in 2005) that Israel was never more secure from external threats and has less need for nuclear weapons than any time in its history. He calls for an "even-handed" approach towards nuclear weapons programs and calls for Israel's nuclear program to be "put on the table" as part of a regional deal to prevent nuclear proliferation.
There are more such policy pronouncements by Joseph Cirincione. They all reveal a stunning naiveté regarding the nature of the regimes that are engaged in nuclear proliferation in the region. Pakistan and North Korea have engaged in a nuclear bazaar to sell nuclear technology; Iran has spent billions to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal; Syria is cooperating with North Korea (and probably Iran) on weapons of mass destruction . They all have monetary or geopolitical reasons to do so. Iran wants to be a hegemonic power in the region-and also may very well have theological "reasons" for developing nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein was a megalomaniac who wanted nuclear arms to expand his power.
Yet somehow, Cirincione blames Israel for nuclear proliferation and seemingly wants to pressure Israel to shut down its nuclear program and strip itself of any nuclear weapons it may or may not have in its inventory. This man was chosen by Barack Obama to be one of his top advisers in the area of nuclear proliferation. He is also another in a disconcertingly long line of Obama advisers, who seemingly have an anti-Israel bias and who would be very willing to apply American pressure on our tiny ally to disarm itself in the face of its mortal enemies.
BEWARE ANYONE WHO IS SO THREATENED BY ANYONE EXPRESSING THEIR OWN FAITH
The fact that you can't understand why " anyone " would listen to Rush- in the face of his millions of daily listeners - tells more about your ignorance and being out of touch than anything else
Why do you consistently attempt to belittle people who have strong faith? Why should it bother you so much?
YOU consistently express wrongheaded liberal views that are not supported by the long history of liberalism. It can only be considered faith that keeps you on the wrongheaded path
The Wright Stuff: ABC provides the context
posted at 5:32 pm on April 24, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Barack Obama needs another eruption of the Wright Stuff like he needs another video of him making fun of embittered Bible-thumping bigots, but at least the former appears inevitable. ABC News responds to Jeremiah Wright’s allegation that his words were taken out of context … by providing the context. And guess what? The context makes it look just as bad:
Rev. Jeremiah Wright says his sermons were deliberately taken out of context by the news media “for a political purpose” and to “paint me as some sort of fanatic.”
“When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public. That’s not a failure to communicate,” he told Bill Moyers in his first interview since ABC News Good Morning America first broadcast portions of his sermons. The Moyers interview will be broadcast tomorrow evening on PBS.
Wright says the use of the his controversial statements- -saying the US brought on the 9/ll attacks and that Black Americans should sing God Damn America instead of God Bless America—were “unfair” and “unjust” and were used “for some very devious reasons.”
Once again, we have the complaint that quoting someone accurately amounts to devious behavior. Selectively quoting someone to remove context can be devious, but the only one doing that is … Barack Obama, at least twice so far in the campaign. He flat-out misquoted John McCain in claiming that McCain said he would want 100 years of war, and he recently put out an ad that completely mischaracterized McCain’s view on the economy by cutting out a significant portion where he said that times had gotten tough recently. So far, Obama hasn’t apologized for either, although he has stopped using at least the first claim lately.
So did Jeremiah Wright get the same treatment? Let’s look at the fuller context of his more controversial remarks. The first is his infamous sermon delivered just five days after 9/11, when Americans crowded into churches for comfort and resolve. What did Trinity United Church deliver? Emphases mine:
I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday, did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, did you see him John, a white man, and he pointed out, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammed was in fact true, America’s chickens are coming home to roost. We took this country by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arowak, the Comanche, the Arapahoe, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Granada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers, and hardworking fathers. We bombed Qaddafi’s home and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against a rock. We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hardworking people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children from school, civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.
We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.
In other words, we had it coming. We have no right to complain about terrorism when America is apparently the greatest terrorist state in history. Do you notice whom Wright never blames? The actual terrorists who had just murdered 3,000 of his countrymen. And talking about context, notice that Wright never provides any context for the actions against Japan, Libya, Panama, and Granada. In his speech, we just up and decided one day to murder Qaddafi’s child.
Next up is the 2003 sermon in which he tells his flock to sing “God Damn America” in 2003:
The British government failed, the Russian government failed, the Japanese government failed, the German government failed, and the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese decent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. The government put them in chains. She put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in sub-standard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law, and then wants us to sing God Bless America — no, no, no
Not God bless America, God damn America. That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent. Think about this, think about this.
For every one Oprah, a billionaire, you’ve got 5 million blacks who out of work. For every one Colin Powell, a millionaire, you’ve got 10 million blacks who cannot read. For every one Condoskeeza Rice, you’ve got 1 million in prison. For every one Tiger Woods, who needs to get beat, at the Masters, with his cap, blazin’ hips playing on a course that discriminates against women. God has his way of bringing you up short when you get to big for your cap, blazin britches. For every one Tiger Woods, we got 10,000 black kids who will never see a golf course. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.
The government gives blacks drugs? This is the conspiracy theory that the Reagan administration’s CIA acted to flood American cities with crack cocaine so that the wave of violence it inspired would give the government an excuse to imprison black men. Somehow in that same thought, the government has conspired to keep black kids from golf courses. While it’s mostly true about illiteracy — in 2003, it would have been closer to 7 million than 10 million — Hispanics had a far higher illiteracy rate (44% to 23%) and illiterate whites were double the number of illiterate blacks (over 14 million).
Wright is a conspiracist, a demagogue, and at heart someone who doesn’t much like America. Like William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, he spends his venom on the US and embraces dictators like Fidel Castro and terrorists like Hamas, whose screeds he publishes in Trinity’s weekly newsletters. Far from absolving Obama, the context once again forces Obama to answer for the company he keeps.
Change you can forget about, Part Two
Barack Obama has campaigned on the promise of "ending the war" in Iraq by withdrawing troops within 16 months. But Michael Crowley of The New Republic, after interviewing senior advisers to the Obama campaign as well as assorted foreign policy experts, has concluded that this pledge is close to a pipe dream. According to Crowley, what Obama "is offering is a basic vision of withdrawal with muddy particulars, one his advisers are still formulating and one that, if he is elected, is destined to meet an even muddier reality on the ground."
This conclusion is consistent with a statement made by Samatha (Soft) Power, a close adviser to Obama whose big mouth and corresponding ego caused her ouster (and least for public purposes) from the campaign. Power said that Obama's withdrawal plan amounts to a "best- case scenario" subject to substantial revision when he takes office. In addition, Crowley notes, the New York Sun has reported that the leader of the Obama campaign's working group on Iraq has produced a paper proposing to leave 60,000-80,000 American troops in Iraq through 2010.
Once again, perhaps, the "change" Obama has been peddling came out second-best in its encounter with reality.
Posted by Paul at 12:18 PM | Permalink | E-mail this post to a friend |
Change you can forget about
To understand how much Barack Obama's campaign has changed -- or how phony it was from the outset -- consider this statement by his campaign manager David Axelrod:
The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years.
In other words, as Bill Clinton correctly translates, "we don’t really need these working class people to win."
What happened to the Obama who wanted to get past the old divisions and categories, and to reject the politics of "getting to 51 percent" any way possible? I guess the American working class is just too bitter for such an approach to be sustainable.
Obama campaign abandons the working class
And what was McCain doing today?
By Soren Dayton Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama — Comments (15) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Dan already wrote about this, but I want to give it some more context, especially because Bill Clinton is hitting it. This could become a major gaffe between the Pennsylvania and Indiana primaries. Wednesday, David Axelrod, Chief Strategist for the Obama campaign, said:
The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years. This is not new that Democratic candidates don’t rely solely on those votes.
Translation: "We aren't going to win their votes. We don't want their votes. Screw them."
Obama has a real problem. He cannot win votes among a core constituency of the Democratic Party's coalition. Until people like Al Gore and John Kerry demonstrated that they were too out of touch for the American people to swallow. Further evidence of the potential unraveling or reorganizing of the Democratic coalition under Barack Obama.
Two things struck me. Read on.
First, and foremost, John McCain was in Inez, KY, the place that LBJ announced the Great Society. McCain wasn't there to announce some big government program, but to talk to people and to listen. While Barack Obama was throwing the working class under the bus, John McCain was talking with them. And they aren't bitter.
Second, in the 2004 election, the Democratic Party also lost the Catholics. Would Mr. Axelrod extend his analysis to Obama's inability to connect with Catholics. Does the Democratic Party not need or want the votes Catholics?
What about Hispanics, another group that is increasingly receptive to conservative values and messages -- Bush got 44% and McCain could get even more--, and they also don't like Obama. Does the Obama campaign want them?
And is this really Obama's new politics of hope, national unity, and reconciliation?
"... An ice age cometh"
Posted by: McQ
Phil Chapman, geophysicist, astronautical engineer and the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut has a piece in The Australian entitled "Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh".
THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.
What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.
Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.
Now I'll be the first to say, this needs more study, however, what he has to say makes much more sense, as in it seems more logical, than the lunacy of CO2 driven AGW. For instance:
It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.
This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.
It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.
The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.
Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.
That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.
Note, he's not saying Chicken Little should be warming up his tonsils, he's saying that given history and the data we now have, there appears to be cause for concern that the activity on the big yellow shiny thing that hangs in the sky each day may be having an effect on our climate, and that effect may not be what is predicted by the AGW crowd.
What should we be concerned with? Well here's the history:
The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.
The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.
The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.
There is no question, given the "bleak truth" that Chapman points too, that a warmer climate would be a much better choice than a colder climate.
There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.
What's clear is we really don't know, at this point, what the climate is going to do, but if history and cycles and sunspot activity (or lack thereof) are any indication, it isn't going to be what the AGW types are predicting.
Should we prepare for a new "Ice Age". Again, it is way to early to make that sort of determination. And even if we were able to decide, scientifically, that it was indeed coming, I'm not sure there's much we could do about it (although Chapman does give, what I would characterize as tongue-in-cheek ways to defeat it).
However, the real message of Chapman's piece is found in the conclusion:
We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.
The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.
All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.
It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.
In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."
Uh, Al?
You first.
The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 2
Last night, in The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 1 I reviewed Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who helped to kick off Obama's first political campaign and with whom Obama's campaign says he has a "friendly" relationship. Ayers and Dohrn were domestic terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s, and they are as radical now as they ever were, as evidenced by their own words. Obama emerged from the far-left fringe of Chicago politics, and his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn, like his relationship with spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, raises important questions about Obama's own political beliefs.
Obama has defended his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn by saying that Ayers did "reprehensible" things forty years ago, when Obama was eight years old. He says that Ayers and Dohrn are now respectable, mainstream figures in Chicago. But the reality is quite different; they, like Wright, are anything but "mainstream" in their views of America. The audio clips in which Ayers and Dohrn reveal their still-radical views were uncovered by Guy Benson, a recent college graduate who works for radio station WYLL in Chicago. Guy writes to introduce this series of clips:
In the process of doing some late-night research for both my own radio show and the program I produce, I stumbled upon a number of breathtaking videos featuring unrepentant terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Both are now gainfully employed at major Chicago-area universities, and both have longtime connections to presidential candidate Barack Obama. The audio linked below falls into two categories: First, a number of "terror era" comments from Ayers and Dohrn from the late 1960s and 1970s emphasize how truly radical, violent, and virulently anti-American they were. The second batch comes from a recent reunion of aging radicals in November 2007. These clips show that Obama's pals are as unhinged as ever, and they severely undermine Team Obama's spin that Ayers and Dohrn are now "respectable" members of the political "mainstream."
The Top Five - THEN and NOW:
1. William Ayers Then: clip titled- Ayers fighting and upheaval
In 1970, the Weather Underground's top leadership was forced to go into hiding after three fellow weathermen accidentally blew themselves up while building an explosive devise in New York City. The bomb was intended to target a military dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. While living in the shadows, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn participated in a series of short films. In this clip, Ayers explains how living underground served as a convenient "base" for his group's destructive plots.
Click here to download the mp3.
2. William Ayers Now: - Ayers 2007 rebellion and Mao
Ayers addresses a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) reunion in November 2007. He favorably quotes Chairman Mao's right-hand man while discussing the past and future roles of revolution.
Click here to download the mp3.
3. William Ayers Now: Ayers on leftist strategy
Addressing the SDS reunion in 2007, Ayers outlines the Left's strategy for the future, which requires them to "speak in a language that is large, and generous, and encompassing…and then we have to act." (One wonders if a certain Left-blessed presidential candidate with a nice smile and a vague mantra of "change" might fit the bill perfectly.)
Click here to download the mp3.
4. Bernadine Dohrn Then: Dohrn says "guard your children"
In this vintage recording (circa 1970), the voice of Bernadine Dohrn warns Americans that the Weather Underground is planning a series of violent attacks. She cautions her fellow citizens to guard their colleges, banks, and even their children. Dohrn explains that the revolution is designed to bring American society (or the "pitiful, helpless giant," as she so elegantly phrases it) "to its knees."
Click here to download the mp3.
5. Bernadine Dohrn Now: US violent "monster"
At the same 2007 SDS reunion, Dohrn quotes Martin Luther King, Jr., referring to the US government as "the greatest purveyor of violence" in the world. She says she believes this sentiment to be true today. She tells the audience that living in America constitues living in "the belly of the beast" and "the heart of the monster."
Click here to download the mp3.
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Also important, I think, is this 2007 clip in which Ayers describes his bizarre vision of contemporary America:
Click here to download the mp3.
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There are many more. In this 2007 clip, Ayers describes the United States as an incipient fascist country:
Click here to download the mp3.
Here, Ayers recalls his own use of "guns and bombs" to try to destroy the government of the United States:
Click here to download the mp3.
In this recent PBS interview, Ayres talks about overthrowing capitalism:
Click here to download the mp3.
In this 2007 clip, Dohrn denounces capitalism and the American "empire:"
Click here to download the mp3.
A blast from the past: Dohrn declares "war" against the United States on behalf of the Weather Underground:
Click here to download the mp3.
Does Barack Obama really consider these views to be "respectable" and "mainstream," as his web site indicates? If so, what does that tell us about Barack Obama and the hard-left milieu from which he emerged? Likewise, what are we to make of Obama's suggestion that Jeremiah ("God damn America") Wright's church is "not particularly controversial"? A politician can't pick his relatives, but he can choose his spiritual mentor and those who host fundraisers on his behalf. Barack Obama owes the American people an explanation of his choice of friends and political associates.
Posted by John at 10:34 AM | Permalink | E-mail this post to a friend |
http://www.powerlineblog.com/
Did I miss a Nazi reference??
Jimmy Carter dissembles again (update)
Posted by: McQ
Of course the only way he could conceivably make his trip worth something is if he came out of a meeting with Hamas claiming they were ready to recognize Israel's right to exist. That is the most important sticking point in the peace process and has been for years.
And that's precisely what Carter did. He claimed that they would accept a Palestinian state, accept the 1967 borders and accept Israel's right to exist if that was the will of the Palestinian people.
In fact he announced that yesterday to the Israeli Council on Foreign Relations.
Peace in our time!
Well, except for one minor detail: Hamas never agreed to the latter and most important point.
Hamas said yesterday it was prepared to accept a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, but contradicted a statement by former President Jimmy Carter that it would accept Israel's right to exist if that was the will of the Palestinian people.
So what Carter "accomplished" was to get Hamas to agree to what they'd already agreed to previously.
You have to wonder - how in the world does this guy think he's going to get away with such announcements? Does he think just because he makes such a claim that it will suddenly be true?
Carter's announcement:
Hamas "said they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders if approved by Palestinians, and that they would accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbor in peace, provided the agreements negotiated by [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas were submitted to the Palestinians," Mr. Carter said.
Hamas spokesman:
"We accept a state on the [1967] line with Jerusalem as capital, real sovereignty and full right of return for refugees, but without recognizing Israel," Al Jazeera quoted him as saying.
Net results for the talks? No change.
Net gain for the peace process? Zero, zip, nada, nothing.
Net gain for Hamas? Legitimacy granted by an old fool.
And Carter? Another miserable example of his ego-driven and inept meddling in places he doesn't belong.
UPDATE: Even Obama gets it:
On the issue of Hamas, Obama held steady in his criticism of Carter, saying that the former president should not have met with a terrorist organization.
"Given that they are not heads of state, to sit down with them, I think gave them a legitimacy that was unnecessary. And in fact, what we're seeing now is even as President Carter suggests there was a breakthrough, you have some of the same old rhetoric coming out of Hamas representatives with regard to Israel."
Perhaps the most disturbing statistic for Democrats to come out of the exit polls show that 26% of Clinton voters would vote for McCain over Obama and 19% would just stay home. That's 45% of Clinton voters saying they won't vote for Obama.
On the Obama side, it is 17% claiming that they would vote for McCain over Clinton and 12% would just stay home.
That points to how bruising and divisive this campaign has been. And the numbers you see above have increased since the last primary. Now, in all honesty, I fully expect most of those claiming they'll vote for McCain or stay home to have changed their mind by November (and I have no doubt that McCain will find numerous opportunities between now and then to help change their minds), but there is a certain percentage that mean what they say. Even if that's just a percentage or two, that could be a very significant blow to Democratic chances.
I think it is now clear and almost inarguable that the longer the Dem primary goes on, the more it benefits the Republicans and John McCain. Democrats are left with the unenviable choice of ending the democratic process by appealing to the superdelegates to choose now and not allowing remaining Democratic primary voters to vote, or letting this run its full course and suffering the consequences in November.
I agree he's probably the nominee, but how can he be elected?
He outspent her 3-1. It's just demographics. There re just too many people who won't vote for him no matter what ( just as Hillary has huge negatives she'll never overcome
Middle and lower class whites won't vote for him- look at Ohio, Texas and Pa.
His elitist tendencies are coming into focus.
There's no way he can beat McCain
Broadway Baby and Senator Hope and Change
posted at 9:10 am on April 23, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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John Kass delves deeper into the cases of Bernadine Dohrn, William Ayers, and the Weather Underground, and finds more crimes than commonly thought. Barack Obama tried to shrug off the radical past of his associate on the Woods Foundation board as having ended when Obama was eight, but now it looks more like the 80s. Kass relates the tale of how Dohrn in particular assisted radicals in armed robberies that turned into murders through identity theft:
According to a 1982 New York Times report, Broadway Baby was implicated in an investigation of a series of violent armed robberies in New York—netting more than $2 million over a two-year span—committed by former Black Panthers and Weather Underground members in the early ’80s.
Their aim? Global revolution, naturally. They needed cash, but the rich white parents weren’t in a giving mood. So their privileged offspring grabbed guns, pointed them at the faces of the working man and, sometimes, they pulled the trigger.
At Broadway Baby, customers often paid by check and used driver’s licenses for identification. On Dec. 28, 1979, information from two customer files was used to apply for two driver’s licenses at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. The fraudulent licenses were used to rent getaway cars for the gang.
Investigators tracked the identities on two licenses for the getaway cars. The names belonged to women who had shopped at Broadway Baby in December 1979. But they weren’t robbers.
And who was the manager of Broadway Baby during that period of the customer ID theft?
Dohrn, the future wife of Ayers, identified by investigators as taking customer information from one, and possibly both, of the women shoppers. Dohrn was never charged in that case.
This conspiracy didn’t involve political protest, but common robbery — and murder. The same gang that Dohrn supplied with fake ID later went on to murder a Brinks armed guard and two police officers. Dohrn refused to cooperate in a grand jury investigation and served seven months for contempt. Years later, Ayers’ father apparently pulled some strings at Northwest University, where he was a trustee, and got Dohrn a job at the school with less access to drivers licences.
Only 14 years after these murders, Barack Obama went to the house of the apparent accomplice in these robberies and murders and asked for her support in his first political campaign. He sat on panels with Ayers in Chicago discussing politics and worked with him on the Woods Foundation board. This isn’t just some neighbor with whom he accidentally crossed paths; the Obamas sought out Ayers and Dohrn and maintained political ties with them at least through 2002.
Do we want to hear another verse of how Ayers and Dohrn somehow equate to Tom Coburn? Barack Obama seems to really believe that nonsense. That, more than anything, should really be the cautionary tale — that a candidate for President considers a sitting Senator with a distinguished medical career the political equivalent of an unrepentant domestic terrorist and an accomplice to armed robberies and murder.
Absolutely, but they can't win w/o the black vote and I think that if Billary games the nomination there will be such hard feelings that they will stay away rather than vote for the shrew.
I think they're stuck w/ him and McCain is looking more and more presidential
No, they called him an elitist because of his comments about religion and gun ownership
The voters of Pa understand his ethics and voted accordingly
Less than 50% of the people who voted for Billary said she was not trustworthy
What does that say bout how unpopular Obama was?
We DO have a progressive income tax
The top 5% income producers pay what 40% of all taxes
In a recession, raising taxes is the stupidest possible course
Many of the "rich" are small business owners and taxing them will have the effect of stifling the economy
Once you get over your 60's held ove class envy, it's really very simple to understand
Lowering taxes increases tax revenue
Audio of Ayers and DHorn at Obama fund raiser.
In 2007 talking of the US as " the monster ", worlds worst pervayer of violence
http://www.powerlineblog.com/
The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 1
When Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer decided to retire in 1995, she hand-picked local left-winger Barack Obama as her successor. In order to introduce Obama to influential liberals in the district, she held a function at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. This was, really, the beginning of Obama's political career, and it linked him forever with Ayers and Dohrn, with whom, as his campaign has acknowledged, he continues to have a friendly relationship.
Ayers and Dohrn were famous radicals, and fugitives from the law, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dohrn, actually, was the more famous of the two; she was the head, as I recall, of Students for a Democratic Society or one of its factions. Dohrn was crazy. She is the only public figure, to my knowledge, to approve publicly and enthusiastically of the Charles Manson murders.
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Ayers was a would-be murderer of soldiers and policemen, but he wasn't a very good terrorist. He had the ill fortune to choose September 11, 2001, as the day on which to publish an op-ed in the New York Times, in which he said that he didn't regret his attempted murders and only wished that he had planted more bombs.
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In last week's Pennsylvania debate, Barack Obama was finally asked about his friendship with, and the political support he has accepted from, Ayers and Dohrn. Obama replied that Ayers had done reprehensible things forty years ago, when Obama was eight years old, and scoffed at the idea that Ayers's ancient history could be relevant. That was disingenuous, of course, given Ayers's 2001 regrets.
It turns out that we don't have to go back as far as 2001 to find that Obama's friends are as unrepentant as ever. Just last year, Ayers and Dohrn attended a reunion--no kidding--of what must have been the tiny remnant of SDS members who still haven't figured out that they were wrong about everything. Listen to what Bill Ayers, who hosted Barack Obama's first fundraiser, has to say about the United States. Not when Obama was eight years old, but in 2007:
At the same event, Obama's friend and supporter Bernadine Dohrn described the United States as "the monster." Obama was 47 years old at the time:
Barack Obama has declined to repudiate or distance himself from his neighbors, supporters and friends, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. There is a certain consistency of perspective among Obama's friends and mentors, which can be summed up in Jeremiah Wright's memorable phrase: "God damn America."
Much more to come, tomorrow.
PAUL adds: Michelle Obama also takes a fairly dim view of America. But with all those student loans to pay off, I guess it's understandable.
SCOTT adds: Hugh Hewitt notes:
Keep in mind a young radio producer --Guy Benson of WYLL's The Sandy Rios Show -- found audio that no one else in all of the MSM found to launch this story.
Hugh asks: "What else will we be discovering about Barack Obama's friends, and about the candidate?"
Posted by John at 9:29 PM | Permalink | E-mail this post to a friend |
JAMES LILEKS ON THE BILL AYERS SCANDAL: "There’s a touching naïvete about the description of Ayers as a college professor, as if that means he has entered a realm of pipe-smoking rumination about Truth and Beauty. Doesn’t that make him an Authority? Aren’t we supposed to question Authority? Note to Dick Cheney: get yourself to the Department of Political Science at the U of Wyoming, and watch those calls for war-crime prosecutions melt away. . . . It was a difficult time. What a wonderful absolution. Oh, we all went a little mad. Some of us listened to Steppenwolf, some of us bombed government buildings and plotted robberies that killed people, some of us were rotting in Vietnamese prisons having our teeth bashed out by torture experts. Those days are behind us now, best forgotten. (Unlike the McCarthy era, which will be the subject of 163 movies about the blacklist next year, bringing the total to 45,203.)"
LMAO walmart has done more to raise the standard of living in this country than decades of liberal hand wringing
While you and your ilk may feel better about paying MORE for products, most in this country don't feel that way
What are they doing but providing goods to consumers at the lowest prices. Mom and Pop stores that don't adapt to different marketing conditions will be hurt, but that's the nature of the market place
Just as with Hershey. Is it wrong for them to move elsewhere to find cheaper labor and lower tax rates? IS that unpatriotic.
Do you pay extra taxes each year?? Didn't think so- but that's what you're asking Hershey to do. Their obligation is to their share holders to maximize profit, not to uphold your liberal agenda
Iraq continues towards reconciliation
posted at 1:00 pm on April 22, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Nouri al-Maliki has fulfilled another demand of the US Congress and the Sunnis in Iraq towards national reconciliation. The Baghdad government began releasing thousands of detainees accused of all but the worst of crimes during the 2003-2008 time period, most of them Sunnis. The release further strengthens the bonds forged with the Sunnis over the past several months and enhanced by Maliki’s crackdown on Shi’ite militias:
Ghafur was among 122 detainees released from an Iraqi-run prison in Sulaimaniyah and given their freedom at a ceremony here Monday as part of the largest wave of prisoner releases since the war began. The Iraqi government set them free to reintegrate men into society who were accused of relatively minor crimes, and ease the strains on a prison system operating well beyond its capacity. ….
Most of those released were Sunnis who had been low-level army officials or former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. They were among thousands of Iraqis who were arrested without charges by coalition and Iraqi forces. The discharges signal “a return to some sense of normalcy,” said U.S. Army Col. David Paschal, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division, who attended the ceremony. “At some point, the fighting must stop.”…
The prisoners are being freed under an amnesty law passed by Iraq’s parliament in February. More than 52,400 detainees in government custody have applied for their freedom. Of those, nearly 78%, or more than 40,000, were granted amnesty. More than one in five, though, were denied because they are being held for crimes not covered by the law. These include killing, kidnapping, rape, embezzling government funds, selling drugs and smuggling antiquities.
The amnesty law does not cover more than 23,000 Iraqis who are in U.S. custody. Still, Air Force Capt. Rose Richeson, spokeswoman for coalition detainee operations, says nearly 8,000 detainees held at two coalition detention centers have been released since September, an average of 52 a day. “It is reasonable to expect that rate of release will continue,” she said.
This marks yet another benchmark in the Maliki government’s progress in meeting the political benchmarks set by Congress. It also defuses a longstanding point of friction with the Sunni tribes who have complained loudly about the imbalance in treatment for their communities by Baghdad. Their efforts to work within the political system have paid off, and their win in gaining amnesty for so many detainees will encourage them to work within the democratic system rather than conduct insurgencies against it.
The release allows both Iraq and the US to focus on bigger fish — and to keep them from recruiting insurgents from the inside. Both US and Iraqi officials note the danger of leaving massive numbers of minor violators in close proximity to real hard-line extremists. The prisons become recruiting and training centers for future terrorists, especially when neither have any real prospects for a normal life in post-Saddam Iraq.
At the ceremony in Sulaimaniyah, the released prisoners danced and celebrated with their former guards and their families. If that spirit can remain and the nation’s infrastructure can be restored and modernized, Iraq can reach a real reconciliation quickly. Perhaps at some point, the US will notice this progress and recommit themselves to encouraging and protecting it.
Well, lets look at the differences.
McCain was investigated and found not guilty- no charges were brought and he wasn't censured
At the time of their association, McCain wasn't aware of Keatings illegal activities. After he was indicted, McCain stopped all activity on his behalf
Ayers and Dhorn were convicted of terrorism- the act resulting in the killing of 2 police officers. They are both to this day unrepentant.
Obama is aware of their past, yet still chose to associate with them
About Obama's terrorist acquaintance
When William F. Buckley Jr. died in February, one of the things widely praised, by liberals and others, was his stalwart insistence on moral hygiene. Even when his conservative movement was small and embattled, he rejected the temptation to join forces with anti-Semites, the John Birch Society and other extremists. Later, he disavowed longtime confederates Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran for the sin of bigotry.
Buckley knew the importance of choosing allies carefully. But some people who expect such care from conservatives don't practice it themselves.
Among many liberals, extremism in the defense of "social justice" is no vice. When the folk singer Pete Seeger got a medal from President Clinton, no one cared that he was a veteran apologist for Stalin and that he still regarded himself as a communist. That indifference betrayed a double standard that conscientious liberals should reject.
By that standard, Barack Obama is a liberal, but not a conscientious one. I don't much care if he declines to wear a flag pin; I can overlook his wife's limited capacity for patriotic pride; and I defended his relationship with his former pastor. But his comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols.
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When the issue came up in Wednesday's Democratic debate, the Illinois senator tried to duck it. "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from," he said. He added that to suggest "knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense."
Obama went on, "I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions. Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements?"
This exercise in moral equivalence is unconvincing, if not dishonest. Would Obama be friendly with someone who actually bombed abortion clinics and defends that conduct? Not likely. But he is friendly with William Ayers, a leader of the radical Weather Underground, which in the 1970s carried out numerous bombings, including one inside the U.S. Capitol. (Though the last person who should object is Hillary Clinton, whose husband pardoned two Weather Underground members.)
Obama minimized his relationship by acknowledging only that he knows Ayers. But they have quite a bit more of a connection than that. He's appeared on panels with Ayers, served on a foundation board with him and held a 1995 campaign event at the home of Ayers and his wife, fellow former terrorist Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers even gave money to one of his campaigns.
It's not as though Ayers and Dohrn have denied or repudiated their crimes. After emerging from years in hiding, they escaped federal prosecution because of government misconduct in gathering evidence, but they don't pretend they were innocent. In 2001, Ayers said, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
Dohrn has likewise rationalized the explosions, claiming that "our acts of resistance were tiny and symbolic." She even went to prison for refusing to testify about an armored-car robbery involving her confederates. That crime was not tiny or symbolic to the two police officers or the security guard who were shot to death in the process.
All this is public record, and Barack Obama would have to be in a coma not to know it. Yet he showed no qualms about consorting with Ayers and Dohrn.
It's hard to imagine he would be so indulgent if we learned that John McCain had a long association with a former Klansman who used to terrorize African-Americans. Obama's conduct exposes a moral blind spot about these onetime terrorists, who get a pass because they a) fall on the left end of the spectrum and b) haven't planted any bombs lately.
You can tell a lot about someone from his choice of friends. What this friendship reveals is that when it comes to practicing sound moral hygiene, Obama has work to do and no interest in doing it.
Barack Obama & the Wisdom of Forrest Gump
By Lee Cary
The simple yet profound wisdom of the movie character Forrest Gump -- "stupid is as stupid does" -- has entered the Democratic race for the nomination. This time, though, the lesson is: arrogance is as arrogance does.
Thanks to American Thinker's Rick Moran and his analysis of a video from an LA Times blog, even better displayed in another camera angle posted by the Baltimore Sun, it's clear that Senator Obama delivered a common obscene gesture in Senator Clinton's direction as he spoke to a crowd of his loyal followers in North Carolina the day after the Philadelphia debate. He shot Hillary the bird, only slightly surreptitiously. Visit the links above to see it happen.
Obama's explanation of how the debate questions represented "Washington" playing "gotcha politics" is telling by itself. Whining does not become anyone who aspires to be the President of the United States of America, as Obama likes to voice the complete title of the job he wants. And his assurances that he was unfazed by the perceived attacks he received from the ABC moderators resemble the braggadocio of the boxer who climbs up from the canvas on a nine count, nose bleeding with one eye swollen shut, saying "Hey, he never laid a glove on me." We could read Obama's body language in the debate. We saw him take heavy leather. So what is this video all about, and what does it tell us about Barack Obama?
At its basest level, it displays his immaturity. Why in the world would a U.S. Senator use an obscene gesture to send a marginally subtle message to his inter-party opponent in a nomination campaign? That's just not smart. He will, if challenged on it, deliver an incredible denial alleging that such an interpretation is itself another effort of gotcha politics. But that will hang by a shred of cloth, at most. Only children below middle school (hopefully) and the visually impaired can miss his intention. This is the act of one who would be President that displays a remarkable level of immaturity.
It was also act of arrogance. As Forest Gump would say, "Arrogance is as arrogance does." This was Obama arrogance on display. His followers saw it, too, and they cheered. That is nearly as disturbing. This guy is not running for a seat on the City Council of a small town. In mine, and most small towns, giving the bird to an opponent would seal defeat in a close election. The obvious fact that his followers liked what he did, and that he enjoyed them liking it, should give us sober pause. Collectively, those in that audience also lack humility.
It was an act of self-defeating stupidity for a politician at his level. If you're a Hillary Clinton supporter and you see this, what impact does it have on you? The best coached athletic teams will not run up the score on their opponents at the end of the game when they're ahead. Why? Two reasons: they respect their opponent, and they know a humiliated opponent will be motivated to seek revenge. In a voting public evenly divided between the two major political parties, Obama as the nominee will need support from all of Hillary's backers. If you're one of them, will you forget the "finger" moment? Not likely. His was the behavior of a divider, not the uniter he claims to be.
Lastly, it was an act of someone who is being seduced by the adulation of those he has seduced. The questions he objects to pertain to his character. We care more about that, as Americans, than the inside-the-Beltway wonkishness of programs and policies that he says we want to hear about. The literate among us have gotten those points already, thank you. Besides, most of what candidates promise never see reality after they get elected anyway. After a point reached relatively soon, we're more interested in knowing the person than their platform.
Obama has been lulled into a sense of invincibility by his cheering, fainting, fawning crowds. Until the CBS debate, that adulation was being propelled by the MSM. But for some reason, Charlie and George decided to join Tim's brief moment in that shining light of the journalistic maturity he displayed in a previous debate, and they actually asked tough questions! It shocked us. But Obama - he was offended. This is the same man who wants to sit down with our adversaries and reason with them?
Here are things Obama clearly does not know. Never ridicule your opponent -- not before, during or after the contest. Never assume the contest if over until there is absolutely no possible way for your opponent to take the lead in the remaining time. If you win, treat the defeated with utmost respect, regardless of how well they played the game. Perhaps this is old fashioned sportsmanship in the era of ball spikes and trash talk. But it did govern the way we dealt with the losers of World War II and it worked well in that venue. It works in politics, too. By his offensive behavior toward Hillary Clinton, Obama offended her followers. That's not good for him.
Obama easily walked into the U.S. Senate after his opponent was sabotaged by an angry ex-wife who destroyed his political career by getting sexually bizarre sealed court records re-opened. Obama's eleventh hour opponent, Alan Keyes, is an articulate and honorable man who never had a prayer of winning that election. Keyes was political cannon fodder.
Consequently, Obama is in the first real fist fight of his short political career and he's getting arrogant because he's betting the former First Lady of an impeached President.
He should be on guard.
Pride goeth before the fall.
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/04/obama_fingers_a_gotcha_debate.html
I guess you must have missed the recent scheduled talks that have occurred between the US and Iran. Not to mention that I'm sure there are lower level talks going on all the time between the 2 countries
Again, there are very few as deluded as you who view Iran as a victim only reacting to US aggression. They have been the worlds largest promoter and supporter of terrorism
The bottom line here is that you and your ilk view the US and Israel as inherently evil and the source of all evil in the world so that any action taken against them, no matter how heinous, is justified
I see you in Rev Wrights congregation saying amen to his " chickens come home to roost " and the evil of Israel speech
pathetic
Iran, al Sadr, and the endgame?
By TigerHawk at 4/20/2008 08:45:00 AM
Even the New York Times, which has done its level best to promote the myth of Iraqi incompetence, acknowledges that the government has won the battle of Basra...
...but only after air and artillery strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to move into the Hayaniya district and other remaining Mahdi Army militia strongholds and begin house-to house searches, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi troops were meeting little resistance, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad.
Ah, yes. Iraqi ground troops wiped out the Mahdi Army in Basra, but they couldn't do it without our Air Force. Quagmire!
Anyway, it really does not matter what the editors on 43rd Street think. Iran knows a battlefield defeat when it sees one, and has obviously decided that Moqtada al-Sadr is such a loser that it rewrote history:
Why his fighters have clung to those fight-then-fade tactics is unknown. But American military and civilian officials have repeatedly claimed that Mahdi Army units trained and equipped by Iran had played a major role in the unexpectedly strong resistance that government troops met in Basra.
Whether to counter those allegations or simply because, as many Iraqis have recently speculated, Mr. Sadr’s stock has recently fallen in Iranian eyes, the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, on Saturday expressed his government’s strong support for the Iraqi assault on Basra. He even called the militias in Basra “outlaws,” the same term that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has used to describe them.
“The idea of the government in Basra was to fight outlaws,” Mr. Qumi said. “This was the right of the government and the responsibility of the government. And in my opinion the government was able to achieve a positive result in Basra.”
So why did Iran turn on al-Sadr, who is, after all, a volatile guy?
Iran has two great ambitions for post-occupation Iraq. First and foremost, it needs to ensure that the Shiites will remain in control in Baghdad so as to minimize the risk of another ruinous Iraq-Iran war. Second and less essentially, it wants sufficient freedom to operate in Iraq that it can use it as a base against other perceived threats to its security, including from Israel and Saudi Arabia. (Note that neither goal requires "stability," which everybody from the Iraq Study Group to the New York Times claims Iran wants without any actual evidence.) The best result from Iran's standpoint, then, is a Shiite government in Baghdad that is strong enough to keep the Sunnis in check and to prevent Kurdish independence but too divided to sustain Arab nationalism against the Iranians or to keep Iranian agents from having their way inside Iraq.
The United States responded to this by building up the Sunnis. We promoted and funded the Sunni "Awakening Councils," which had two benefits. Yes, they were critical in the defeat of the jihadis, without which there could be no peace in Iraq ever. The Councils also serve an important function in the semiotics of the war, for they signal to Iran that no Shiite government in Baghdad can be too weak, lest the United States supports a Sunni restoration. Iran seems to have understood this point, and from among the various Shiite factions it has chosen the government. Assuming that the Times article is factually sound, Kevin Drum's speculation seems right to me:
This gibes with other recent evidence (see here) that Iran might finally have decided to stop playing both sides and instead abandon Sadr and throw more of its weight behind ISCI and the current government. The current government is, after all, more pro-Iran than Sadr has ever been, so this is hardly unthinkable.
As always, it's hard to say what's really going on here. But it's possible that the ground is shifting. This might be good news, or it might be in the "be careful what you wish for" category. Stay tuned.
The United States also has two great (remaining) interests in post-occupation Iraq. The first is that the government of Iraq be sufficiently strong that transnational extremists cannot use Iraq to launch or otherwise sustain international terrorism. The second is that Iraq returns to its former position as a counterbalance to Islamic Republic. We would also prefer that the government of Iraq be fairly pluralistic and representative by the standards of the Arab world and that it permit permanent American bases, both of which would help interdict jihadis over the long run.
Given all of this, one can peer through the mist and discern the outlines of an endgame. Iran gets a relatively pro-Iranian Shiite government in Baghdad, but one that treats the Sunnis sufficiently well that they continue to play ball (and the Sunnis Arabs in the region do not fund a Sunni restoration). The United States promises not to support a Sunni restoration or Kurdish independence. In return for those promises, Iran and the government in Baghdad concede a substantial indefinite American military presence, the purposes of which would be to keep the Sunnis and the Kurds quiescent (by reassuring them), to interdict jihadis, and to guarantee Iran's implicit promise that it will not use Shiite Iraq to project power further into the region.
Or maybe I'm wrong.
Your superior wisdom is welcome in the comments.
The point was that they are being threatened BECAUSE of their continued development of nuclear weapons and their continued promotion of terrorism throughout the world
See, cause and effect
Only in your warped view of the world could Iran be considered innocent victims
Iraqis forces seize Mahdi stronghold in Basra
posted at 10:30 am on April 19, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Despite the news media’s apparent insistence on clinging to their narrative of defeat and disaster in Basra, Nouri al-Maliki’s operation to restore control of the city to the elected government achieved its major goal today with the fall of the Mahdi militia’s stronghold in the city. An early-morning offensive against the Hayaniyah district of Basra netted dozens of arrests as the central government took control of the area for the first time:
Iraqi soldiers swooped on the Basra stronghold of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday, saying they had seized control of his militia bastion where they suffered an embarrassing setback in late March.
The dawn raid by government troops on the Hayaniya district of the southern oil city was backed by a thunderous bombardment by U.S. warplanes and British artillery.
It came after more intense fighting in Baghdad between security forces and Sadr’s black-masked militiamen. Police said 12 people had been killed in the Shi’ite slum of Sadr City and hospitals said they received more than 130 wounded overnight. …
“Our troops deployed in all the parts of the (Hayaniya) district and controlled it without much resistance,” Khalaf told Reuters. “Now we are working on house-to-house checking. We have made many arrests.”
Maliki, himself a Shi’ite, has threatened to ban Sadr’s mass movement from political life if the cleric does not disband the Mehdi Army. In response, Sadr has threatened to formally scrap a ceasefire he imposed on his militia last August, a move that could trigger a full-scale uprising.
The Mahdis claimed that the government faced no opposition and did not need to conduct a military operation to seize Hayaniyah. However, the Reuters report includes a reference to an armored vehicle with bullet marks, showing that the Iraqi Army took incoming fire.
The Mahdis claim that they may end their cease-fire if the Maliki government doesn’t stop its offensive, but it looks like they may not have much juice left. They haven’t been able to slow down the Iraqi Army since the first days of the Basra operation, and the joint IA/US operation in Sadr City continues as well. Maliki has decided that the time has come to put an end to extra-legal armies in Iraq, and the evidence so far shows that he may have timed his operation well enough for success.
Of course, others will likely continue to spin this as more disaster because “violence” has occurred. At some point, though, the central elected government had to displace the militias and ensure that they had an indisputable monopoly on force in the nation if they expected to remain credible and keep Iraq in one piece. They gave the Sadrists at least four years to disband on their own, and they refused to do so. Maliki’s confidence in his armed forces appears to have been justified, while the Mahdis look more like the paper tigers the IA was supposed to be.
Again, the start of the conversation was how you will jump through any illogical hoop you can find to justify the behavior of Hamas and Iran while holding Israel responsible for all Arab ills
You're pathetic
They're also the ones supplying arms and materiel to the insurgents that are killing American and Iraqi soldiers- but in your twisted view, that's OK
The Miami Herald story ("Pentagon Study: War is a 'Debacle' ") distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04.
HE is saying it's a distortion-
On the other hand Iran has not threatened Israel
LOL- yet another example your idiocy.
IS Hamas your sole source for news
There have been repeated calls for the elimination of Israel
I know you're probably all to willing to believe he was just misquoted- further cementing your reputation as one who will go to great lengths to excuse and justify heinous actions by the enemies of Israel.
We know they're actually just peace loving and that Isarel is the source of all evil in the area
The McClatchy narrative on Iraq
downtalk, downtalk, downtalk
By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
McClatchy reporters Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott wrote yesterday about an Iraq study by a Dr. Joseph Collins of the National War College. The article is technically accurate but misleading because the article doesn't address until paragraph 13 (out of 19 written) the focus of the study, and then gets wrong that "much of the blame for what went wrong in Iraq after the initial U.S. victory at the feet of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld." The folks at Small Wars Journal read it and the "reporting" raised enough red flags that they contacted the author of the study. Here is Dr. Collins' response:
More below the fold...
The Miami Herald story ("Pentagon Study: War is a 'Debacle' ") distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not "lay much of the blame" on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he "bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff." It does not single out "Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley" for criticism.
Here is a fair summary of my personal research, which formally is NDU INSS Occasional Paper 5, "Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath."
This study examines how the United States chose to go to war in Iraq, how its decision-making process functioned, and what can be done to improve that process. The central finding of this study is that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance. With the best of intentions, the United States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has been unable to replace it with a stable entity. Even allowing for progress under the Surge, the study insists that mistakes in the Iraq operation cry out in the mid- to long-term for improvements in the U.S. decision-making and policy execution systems.
The study recommends the development of a national planning charter, improving the qualifications of national security planners, streamlining policy execution in the field, improving military education, strengthening the Department of State and USAID, and reviewing the tangled legal authorities for complex contingencies. The study ends with a plea to improve alliance relations and to exercise caution in deciding to go to war.
This is just the latest example of McClatchy clinging to its narrative of downtalking Iraq despite the facts and despite the actual situation on the ground. A few weeks ago, in the wake of the Basra offensive, Leila Fadel of McClatchy clearly colored her reporting to proclaim Muqtada al Sadr the victor and Nouri al Maliki the loser. The reality is that the situation in Basra has improved since Iraqi forces entered the city.
Leila Fadel of McClatchy is an uncritical cheerleader of that Soros-funded study.
Leila Fadel (and co-journalist Mohammed al Dulaimy) was quick to report a mass slaying of 11 in Baghdad, "underscoring the fragility of recent declines in violence." The problem is that the story is a hoax.
McClatchy was quick to report that twenty headless bodies were found near Baghdad last June. Quote: "A car bomb parked at a crowded Baghdad bus terminal killed at least 25 Thursday morning, while 20 beheaded bodies were found on the banks of the Tigris River southeast of the capital…The beheaded remains were found in the Sunni Muslim village of Um al Abeed, near the city of Salman Pak, 14 miles southeast of Baghdad." QandO compiled other similar reports of the slaughter, but the problem is that the massacre never happened (McClatchy removed the link and, best as I can tell, replaced it with this).
Jay Price and Qasim Zein of McClatchy produced this ridiculous story, lamenting the loss of business for Najaf cemetery workers because of the declines in violence.
I know it's tough being in the newspaper business, but there could very well be a connection between their sloppy, inaccurate reporting and the fact that their stock price has dropped around 70% in the last twelve months.
Wow [Jonah Goldberg]
I don't cry "class warfare!" very often. But the beginning of Obama's capital gains tax question was amazing stuff. He conceded the premise that revenues go up when you cut capital gains taxes. But he said it would be worthwhile to raise them nonetheless as an issue of "fairness" because some people are making too much money. In other words, even if the government loses money to pay for all of the wonderful things Obama wants to do, it'd be worth it because sticking it to rich people is a good in and of itself.
Obama: Just your typical politician, only he lies more
But his nose is turned up higher than most
By Erick
I thought Obama was as pure as the driven snow. I thought Obama, when he used the bathroom, left behind him the aroma of cinnamon and flowers. I thought Obama was driven by a passion for this country's better days and a love for dew covered fresh grass on a cool spring day.
Apparently he's as full of crap as the rest of them, but lies a heck of a lot more and looks down on the little guys a whole lot more.
Remember his whole "I'm not tainted by lobbyists" bit? We knew it was B.S. just from him taking money from lobbyists when he said he had not. Today, in the media's new quest to drown him in ink to save the Democrats, USA Today draws blood.
Barack Obama often boasts he is "the only candidate who isn't taking a dime from Washington lobbyists," yet his fundraising team includes 38 members of law firms that were paid $138 million last year to lobby the federal government, records show.
Those lawyers, including 10 former federal lobbyists, have pledged to raise at least $3.5 million for the Illinois senator's presidential race. Employees of their firms have given Obama's campaign $2.26 million, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign-finance data shows.
Thirty-one of the 38 are law firm partners, who typically receive a share of their firms' lobbying fees. At least six of them have some managerial authority over lobbyists.
"It makes no difference whether the person is a registered lobbyist or the partner of a registered lobbyist, if the person is raising money to get access or curry favor," said Michael Malbin, director of the Campaign Finance Institute, a non-partisan think tank.
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that while Obama's refusal to take money from lobbyists "isn't a perfect solution … it does reflect Obama's record of trying to change the way that Washington does business." He declined to elaborate.
The Obama's campaign strategy is rapidly boiling down to this one point: if we say "change Washington" enough times, people will believe it.
More and more, all Obama is actually showing us is that his nose is turned up higher than the rest of us, and he actually thinks we are so dumb that he can get away with cynical little ploys.
I think his 15 minutes are just about up.
Life in Basra improved by Maliki crackdown
posted at 6:10 pm on April 15, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Basra residents expressed gratitude for the actions of Nouri al-Maliki in clearing out the armed militia from the most critical city in the south, according to Agence France Presse. Far from a disaster, the military action has restored order to the city and made it safer for the residents. Residents in Umm Qasr echoed these sentiments after their liberation from the Mahdi Army:
Three weeks after Iraqi troops swarmed into the southern city of Basra to take on armed militiamen who had overrun the streets, many residents say they feel safer and that their lives have improved.
The fierce fighting which marked the first week of Operation Sawlat al-Fursan (Charge of the Knights) has given way to slower, more focused house-by-house searches by Iraqi troops, which led on Monday to the freeing of an abducted British journalist.
Residents say the streets have been cleared of gunmen, markets have reopened, basic services have been resumed and a measure of normality has returned to the oil-rich city.
The port of Umm Qasr is in the hands of the Iraqi forces who wrested control of the facility from Shiite militiamen, and according to the British military it is operational once again.
Once again, the American media got caught with its pants down and their, er, aspirations showing. They wanted the military operation to represent a breakdown of the government so badly that they reported it as a defeat even as the Iraqi Army adapted and prevailed against the militia members. They still have yet to acknowledge that the Basra and Umm Qasr operations have largely met their goals, and have driven Moqtada al-Sadr even further outside the political arena.
And note that the Iraqi Army did most of the heavy lifting in Basra and all of it in Umm Qasr. The American forces contributed some air power and logistical support, but almost all of the ground operation fell to the IA. The training and guidance provided by American military advisers has paid off.
Basra residents had endured under gangster rule ever since the British began reducing their forces and falling back to their bases in 2005. The power vacuum allowed the Mahdis and the Badr Brigade to grab turf in the south. While the Badrs eventually accepted the authority in Baghdad and merged into the government security apparatus, the Mahdis engaged in typical gangster protection rackets and conducted assassinations to maintain their grip on street power. AFP reports that has all come to an end, and Basra residents couldn’t be happier — especially since it was Iraqi troops who liberated them.
Maybe next time, the American media will wait to analyze a battle until it’s actually over. Probably not … but maybe.
Exactly typical of the attitudes here also. Any action is met with immediate hope for failure
Well, if you took the time to think about it ( a fantasy, I know ) you'd see past the numbers
The corporate tax rate is 35%. How do they only pay 12-15% in taxes then?
They hire the sharpest people to find legal ways to pay the minimum tax possible. A lot to the deductions go to tax avoidance entities. The pay of the people who find them and the structures themselves are counter productive. IF we would make the rate a more reasonable , the need for the tax shelters would disappear and more money could go to productive purposes.
This happened when Reagan simplified the tax code- doing away with the tax shelter benefits and lowering taxes
What more can Congress do if the companies are calculating taxes legally? Raise taxes even higher??
Don't you think that our corporate tax rates are preventing growth as companies can easily find friendlier places to do business?
PS It's not the job of the government to insure income equality, only to keep the playing field level ( and that does include cutting out "corporate welfare )
Interesting, please explain how it's Bush's policies that are causing the bankruptcies
TIA