A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Siphoning Off Corn to Fuel Our Cars - CHARLES CITY, Iowa Erwin Johnson picks up a clump of the dark, rich soil that he has farmed for 35 years, like his father and grandfather before him. In a few months, this flat expanse of northern Iowa will be crowded with corn ready to be trucked to market. (READ MORE)
McCain Offers Market-Based Health Plan - TAMPA, April 29 -- Sen. John McCain on Tuesday rejected calls by his Democratic opponents for universal health coverage, instead offering a market-based solution with an approach similar to a proposal put forth by President Bush last year. (READ MORE)
U.S. Role Deepens in Sadr City - BAGHDAD, April 29 -- A four-hour battle Tuesday between U.S. soldiers and Shiite militiamen left at least 28 Iraqis dead in the capital's Sadr City neighborhood, making it one of the bloodiest days in a month of sustained street fighting. (READ MORE)
Bush lays gas blame on Congress - President Bush blamed the Democratic Congress for blocking bills he said would have lowered gas prices, marking a coordinated strategy with congressional Republicans to shift responsibility for the nation's economic woes to Democrats. They, in turn, were quick to strike back. (READ MORE)
Air marshals grounded in list mix-ups - False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem. (READ MORE)
Gates: Carrier in Gulf is Iran 'reminder' - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that sending a second U.S. aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf could serve as a "reminder" to Iran, but he said it's not an escalation of force. (READ MORE)
Obama 'outraged,' 'insulted' by pastor - Sen. Barack Obama yesterday broke with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., saying he was "outraged" and "insulted" by his former pastor's racial and anti-government rants — rhetoric he said he did not hear the pastor use in church. (READ MORE)
D.C. anti-gang effort: Call them 'crews' - D.C. officials insist on describing groups of young males as "crews," rather than gangs, even when they are held responsible for violent acts such as the wave of killings in the city last weekend. But police officials in other cities say the word play distinction is counterproductive. (READ MORE)
McCain's Progress - The Grand Guignol between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has to end eventually, and then the public discomfort over health care will resurface as a genuine policy dispute between the Democratic and Republican nominees. For a man whose heterodoxies have no doubt triggered GOP heartburn, John McCain delivered another speech yesterday on health care that offered a sophisticated set of policies that could lead to some of the most constructive changes to the system in decades. (READ MORE)
The Miley Cyrus Uproar - Readers with little girls at home don't have to be told who Miley Cyrus is. Their daughters want to be Miley Cyrus. The Disney Channel singer/actress is the star of "Hannah Montana," one of the most popular shows on TV. Her latest album is No. 3 on Billboard magazine's bestseller list. Reports estimate that she will bring in $1 billion in business to Disney this year. (READ MORE)
No, Spasiba - So the Kremlin can't buy every retiring European leader. Romano Prodi, for one, won't soon be bunking with Gerhard Schröder in Moscow. Vladimir Putin personally tried to tap the outgoing Italian Prime Minister to become chairman of South Stream, a new pipeline project by Russian gas monopolist Gazprom to link Russia to Europe. Mr. Prodi was "flattered" by the offer, his spokesman said, but won't be available. (READ MORE)
Obama Gains - His back against the wall over his relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama yesterday addressed the issue with clarity and decisiveness. If this is the start of a more direct campaign style from the Illinois Senator, there will be gains all around. And, if we may say so, not least with his heretofore fogged-up subject of taxes on capital gains. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Michael Medved: Ranting Rev's Education Theories Strike At Heart of Obama Campaign - The Ranting Rev is back, trailing malodorous clouds of sulfurous new controversy, imperiling the Obama campaign at its very core. The Obama promise of “a more perfect union” directly contradicts the Jeremiah Wright insistence on unbridgeable racial difference and distinction. Nothing makes this pastor-protégé conflict more obvious or more significant than Wright’s crackpot theories on education and his fiery insistence that the different “brains” of black kids and white kids require totally different educational approaches. (READ MORE)
Mary Katharine Ham: How Obama and McCain Keep Sister Souljah-ing the Wrong People - It was a pickle only John McCain could have gotten himself into. What should have been a mostly uneventful weekend for McCain, two weeks before the increasingly ugly Democratic campaign culminates in a Carolina showdown, turned into a hurricane of bad press when the presumptive Republican nominee asked the state Republican Party not to run an anti-Obama ad targeted at North Carolina’s two Democratic gubernatorial candidates, both of whom endorsed Obama. The ad, now quite familiar to anyone with a TV or radio suggested that Obama’s connection to Wright made him “too extreme” for North Carolina, and made Richard Moore and Bev Perdue too extreme by extension. (READ MORE)
Walter E. Williams: Cigarette Smuggling - While it's politically popular to impose confiscatory taxes on America's 40 million tobacco smokers, there are a number of consequences one might consider, but let's start out with a quiz. If a carton of cigarettes sells for $160 in New York City, and $35 in North Carolina, what do you predict will happen? If you answered tons of cigarettes will be going up I-95 from North Carolina to New York City, go to the head of the class. Smuggling cigarettes is illegal; so the next quiz question is: Who is most likely to engage in cigarette smuggling? It's a mixed answer, but for the most part, organized smugglers will be people with a high disregard for the law. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has found that Russian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Middle Eastern (mainly Pakistani, Lebanese, and Syrian) organized crime groups are highly involved in the trafficking of contraband and counterfeit cigarettes. (READ MORE)
John Stossel: The Conceit of the Regulators - Unless the government watches closely, the airlines will kill you. That seems to be what many reporters and politicians believe. "The result of inspection failures and enforcement failure [by the Federal Aviation Administration] has meant that aircraft have flown unsafe, un-airworthy and at risk of lives," says Rep. James Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee. "The FAA has clearly displayed a dangerous and cavalier lack of regard for tough safety enforcement," says Sen. Hillary Clinton. (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: Obama's Un-Disownable Preacher of Hate - Barack Obama looked pale and wan at what he called his "big press conference" about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Tuesday afternoon. Numb. Chastened. Defeated. Extolled for his eloquence, Obama stuttered and stammered his way through the question-and-answer session. It appeared he was having an out-of-body experience. Who knew that the greatest threat to his presidential campaign would come from the preacher who married him, baptized him and prayed with him? Barack Obama should have known. That's who. Take that judgment and shove it on a pretty campaign poster. (READ MORE)
Austin Bay: Darfur: Facing the Peacekeeping Conundrum - So far, theatrical protests of the Beijing Olympics by Hollywood stars and sign-waving demonstrators have failed to stop the genocide in Sudan's Darfur region or restore Tibetan independence. The sensationalist media love the fracas, since harassing Olympic torchbearers creates great video. "Publicity politics" leveraging shame and moral outrage and calling for action can produce responsive change in those rare places where freedom is constitutionally or institutionally enshrined -- in other words, in democratic nations that practice open, responsive politics. (READ MORE)
Terence Jeffrey: The Pastor Parses Obama - Given his 20 years of pastoring to Barack Obama, you would have to assume that if any of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's declarations have a particular claim to credibility it would be his repeated assertion over the past week that Obama does not always say what he means. "He's a politician," Wright explained to Bill Moyers on PBS. "And he says what he has to say as a politician. He does what politicians do." "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever's doing the polls," Wright said of Obama at the National Press Club. "He does what politicians do." (READ MORE)
John McCaslin: Disinvited Witness - What happened to Robert F. Turner last week unfortunately happens all too often on Capitol Hill, although one might argue the University of Virginia professor — more than most witnesses called to testify before Congress — was inconvenienced tremendously by his experience. We'll allow Mr. Turner to speak for himself, but for background he was invited by Caleb Rossiter of the House Foreign Affairs' subcommittee on international organizations, human rights and oversight to testify at a hearing Thursday on war powers in the 21st century. Indeed, his name remained on the witness list that was still posted yesterday by the committee. (READ MORE)
Bret Stephens: We're Not Losing Afghanistan - Elaborate security preparations on the eve of Afghanistan's Independence Day nearly kept me from making my flight out of Kabul on Saturday. But they did little to stop insurgents from nearly assassinating President Hamid Karzai, Sadat-like, from his review stand on a military parade ground the very next day. Are we "losing Afghanistan," as people like John Kerry seem to think? Sunday's attack illustrates a point, made to me by Brig. Gen. Mark Milley of the 101st Airborne Division, that "security is perception" – meaning that not only must the streets be safe, but people must believe them to be so. By that token, a spike in suicide bombings and kidnappings suggests Afghanistan is considerably less secure today than it was three or four years ago. (READ MORE)
Skippy's List: This again? - Military Honor and Decency Act Long term readers may remember this post. And so once again we have a group of people that think they know more than the rest of us should. If you have any respect for our soldiers, or value freedom in any way, you should contact your Representative and tell them that you don’t support this. I first saw this on my regular Internet news sites and at first I thought, “Eh, I’ve written about this before.” But then one of my readers, Patrick, sent me this site. As I read Mrs. Proctor’s arguments and her defense of them, I found myself getting angry. And then I realized that an unfortunate reality is that silence equals consent. (READ MORE)
A Newt One: War News: President Bush FINALLY Tells It Like It Is - As I stated in an earlier post, located here, this will be my situational awareness commentary on the Press Conference held on 4/29/2008 in the Rose Garden at the White House. The video of the event is here and the text is printed here. Also, if you just want the audio, click this. There are quite a few You Tubes floating around with specific segments for pet peeves or similar rant inspiring posts. I have downloaded the audio and will have specific segments ready for the BTR shows and I played the entire event tonight. Quite a bit was discussed in the Press Conference but a particular point was near and dear. I have that segment isolated here. This is the segment where "Martha" was trounced and then her "associate" tried to take up Martha's cause and GWB FINALLY came out with the gloves off. (READ MORE)
Cassandra: And To Keep Our Honor Clean - I haven't felt much like writing lately. There hasn't been much to say about the news that doesn't seem intuitively obvious, even to those who can only afford half the proverbial clue. Jeremiah Wright is still an egotistical, bigoted blowhard. Andrew Sullivan is still firmly in the running for Most Delusional Person on the Face of the Earth. Britney Spears seems grimly determined to plumb the depths of serial emotional train-wreckery as performance art. If you give kids an inch, (duh) they'll still take a mile (though at this point, some intrepid soul will pop up like Whack a Mole and argue the sheer impossibility of imposing any limits on human behavior without careening down the Otter Slide to Hell and an eventual police state). (READ MORE)
Eugene Volokh: Expressive Association, Student Groups Open Only to Members of One Religion, and Government Subsidies - A school or university bans discrimination (based on race, religion, sex, and the like) by all student groups that want access to school property and school funds. The ban applies even when it seems contrary to the group's ideological mission -- for instance, when a Christian student group is told that it can't limit membership to Christians (or a Muslim one to Muslims or an atheist one to atheists). Do such bans violate the school or university student groups' rights of expressive association, see Boy Scouts v. Dale, or high school student groups' rights under the federal Equal Access Act? Or are they permissible school decisions about whom to give government benefits (such as access to classrooms or funds)? (READ MORE)
Dr. iRack: Good Cop, Bad Cop - Dr. iRack has admired Tina Susman's terrific reporting on Iraq for the Los Angeles Times for a while. (Indeed, throughout the war, the LAT has often produced much better reporting than any other paper.) Dr. iRack highly recommends you check out this interesting Susman piece on the Iraqi government's new tone regarding lethal Iranian aid to Shia militants in Iraq. For a long time, the Government of Iraq (GoI) has been reluctant to call out the Iranians publically, but they are now doing so. “Iraq's national security advisor, Mowaffak Rubaie, and Ministry of Defense spokesman Mohammed Askari said caches found in Basra included Iranian-made arms with markings showing they were manufactured in 2008. Rubaie said the government was preparing to present the evidence to the Iranians soon, but he did not say when.” (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: Kudos To Senator Clinton - I've been giving the matter some thought, and I think it's time to give the devil her due. Of all the candidates running for president, and the current president and powers that be in Congress, only Hillary Clinton has actually done something about rising gas prices. And we should all be grateful for her efforts. This is kind of complicated to explain, so bear with me. If there is one thing that is indisputable, it is that the Clintons are great at making money. Back in Arkansas, Hillary managed to parlay $1,000 into $100,000 in her first and only venture into the cattle futures market. Later, when Bill was governor, she held a partnership at Arkansas' most powerful law firm, and won a spot on the Wal-Mart Board Of Directors, both of which paid quite handsomely. (READ MORE)
Shrinkwrapped: Information War Strategy and Tactics - Last week, my post On Europe and Genocide provoked a passionate discussion in the comments. Many people take the position that Islam is irreconcilably opposed to freedom and democracy and that the struggle between Islam and thew West can only devolve into open warfare. If such an outcome is inevitable, all the horrors that ensue must be considered and all options must be placed on the table. I think this view is incorrect both strategically and tactically. There is no question that the radical Islamists, whether the Sunni of al Qaeda or the Shia of Iran, cannot stand against American military might. We have no equals when it comes to the kinetic warfare that has defined the fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. (READ MORE)
McQ: Why did Obama choose Trinity? - Obama has again repudiated the words of Jeremiah Wright, this time in much stronger words that before. But, as usual, the questions about the previous extent of the relationship remain. Noam Scheiber at TNR's "The Stump" begins to peck at one of the questions, on a deeper look at the Wright/Obama relationship, which needs to be answered and to this point hasn't. "Why'd Obama Join Trinity in the First Place?" We know, having read some accounts that part of it had to do with gaining street cred with his work as a community organizer among churches. (READ MORE)
Jon Henke: Factcheck.org: the DNC is lying, they know it, but they don’t care - After years of progressives, Democrats and particularly the Democratic Party claiming to be outraged by deceptive ads and rhetoric from Republicans, the Democratic Party demonstrates that they are not, and never really were, above that sort of thing. Factcheck.org is kind enough not to explicitly call the DNC brazen liars, but that's what it amounts to. “The Democratic National Committee has produced two TV ads against McCain, hoping to soften him up while the party figures out who its own presidential nominee will be. One ad shows selected portions of McCain's comments that a 100-year U.S. presence in Iraq would be ‘fine with me.’ The ad uses dramatic images of war and violence, and omits any mention that McCain was speaking of a peaceful presence like that in Japan or Korea.” (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: Ritual Denunciations - What we know: Barack Obama is willing to throw the Reverend Jeremiah Wright under the bus after the latter proved to be not only a political liability, but a persistent distractor whose inconvenient utterances threaten to derail the Change Train. What we don’t know: Whether, having won the hearts of the ink-stained wretches in the MSM with his like, totally epochal speech on race last month - but having failed to win the hearts of bitter, God-’n-gun clinging Pennsylvania trailer trash haters earlier this month - the Chicago politician engineered the latest Wright-down in order to create his own “Sistah Souljah” moment. (READ MORE)
Mountain Runner: Strengthening State by Making It More like Defense - AmericanDiplomacy.org has an interesting article by three students at the Joint Forces Staff College, LTC Shannon Caudill, USAF, MAJ Andrew Leonard, USA, and SgtMaj Richard Thresher (what, nobody from the Navy or a Coastie?), titled Interagency Leadership: The Case for Strengthening the Department of State. In short, they argue State's geographic focus should drop its early-20th (arguably late-19th) Century European view of the world and adopt the map of the Defense Department's Combatant Commands. The authors argue State "should be the pre-eminent diplomatic and interagency leader abroad, but it must be reorganized to become more relevant, robust, and effective." (READ MORE)
Jules Crittenden: Mr. and Mrs. Grievance - Steyn on the peculiar Michelle Obama, cuts through a lot of American political backyards. Brilliant as usual. Read the whole thing. It may say more about today’s big news than any of the analysis of Barack Obama’s latest utterance. In case anyone had any question, by the way, Obama will in fact say anything and throw anyone under the bus to get elected. Grandma. Spiritual counselor. Michelle would be a little tougher. She may have to go in the attic. Obama wants us to think Wright has changed, this racist nutcase is not the man in whose pews he spent the last 20 years, selectively heeding. It’s pretty much the only way Obama can wedge Wright under the wheels. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Why do the DNC and Howard Dean continue to lie? - Making a misstatement of fact once can rightly be called a mistake. Making a series of misstatements over and over again and rolling them into national ads can only be considered lies, and perhaps a Big Lie propaganda strategy at that. The DNC and its chair, Howard Dean, apparently have no other choice to lie about John McCain despite numerous corrections in the media and elsewhere. Fact Check looks at the lies and the bad math in its assessment of the latest ads from the Democrats. First, Fact Check scolds the DNC for continuing to use its “100 years of war” lie against McCain, even though Fact Check already debunked that claim two months ago: (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico: It Takes 10 Years - One of the reasons we keep hearing about not drilling for oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, from just about everyone opposed, is that it will take 10 years to actually get oil to the market. Oddly, had we started drilling there in 1991, when George H.W. Bush proposed it, and Democrats filibustered the idea to death, or 1995, when Bill Clinton vetoed the budget because of an ANWR provision, we'd be seeing that oil on the market today. In fact, it would have been there for the last 3-6 years. Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post points out the fantasy world of the folks opposed to exploration in the US in a column today, and says "Start Drilling". He not only suggests ANWR, but the coastal shelf and deep Gulf of Mexico areas. (READ MORE)
Don Surber: No recession - Growth at 0.5% followed by 0.6% growth is not much but it is still growth. This cannot please the Democratic party, but the USA economy is still not in a recession despite a war, $4 gasoline and the refusal of Congress and the president to balance the federal budge. AP quoted Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Bank of America’s Investment Strategies Group: “The economy is weak but not collapsing. A recession can’t be ruled out, although the stars are not lined up at this point to definitively say one way or the other.” (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: When the saints go marching in - Baldilocks argues that contstructing a religion on racist lines somehow makes the resulting faith less than a religion amd more like politics. And when you're dealing with Eternity, dates like 2008 seem awfully irrelevant. (Hat tip Gerard Vanderleun) “That’s his choice, but not mine and not that of those who focus on the Redemption offered by Christ instead of getting upon the Cross themselves. To quote myself, there is no ‘black church.’ There is only the Church.” The issue Baldilocks raises is related to one of the more interesting concepts in theology: that of the "Communion of Saints". (READ MORE)
This Ain't Hell: AP rushes out grim milestone - The AP could barely contain their glee as the rushed out the report that “US troop deaths hit 7-month high in Iraq“; “The killings of three U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 47, making it the deadliest month since September. One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad. A third soldier died in a roadside bombing Tuesday night in the east of the capital, the military said.” Of course they might have a smidgen of credibility if they’d reported that there were record lows last year, if they’d reported the overall success of the troops in the last six months. (READ MORE)
Cardinalpark: I'm Just Curious - If the media learned that a Presidential candidate was a member of an actively racist, bigotted church; that said candidate's spiritual mentor - the man who performed the candidate's marital ceremony, who baptized his children, who authored the sermon which named that candidate's own book -- repeatedly articulated and defended bigotted commentary about Jews, and conspiratorial assertions of the evil of America; that said candidate was sufficiently aware of the nature of his spiritual mentor that he, in a premeditated fashion, elected not to have said mentor appear publicly with him upon the announcement of his presidential candidacy, instead praying with him in private immediately prior to the public event in a separate, off camera location; wouldn't you suppose that said candidate's Presidential aspirations would have expired? (READ MORE)
Warner Todd Huston: Two Recent Success in WOT You Didn’t Hear About in the Media - The Taliban suffered a big loss in Pakistan/Afghanistan this month and so did al Qaeda in Iraq, but the MSM has been practically silent on these great successes. It only goes to show that the media is so completely sold on the claim that the war is lost that they aren’t interested in doing any real reporting on the war. Not only has Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki headed up a brilliantly successful attack on rebel leader and Iranian backed Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army in Basra, but it seems that Maliki’s hard-line against Sadr has convinced Iraq’s main Sunni block to return to their places in the Iraqi government. (READ MORE)
Dan Riehl: Wright's Saddest Truth Overlooked - Everyone has noted and commented upon some of Reverend Wright's worst, most recent rhetoric. Even Sullivan has seen enough. I may have missed it being dealt with directly, as it should be - but the saddest and perhaps most revealing truth of all for Wright and likely some in the Black community is buried within it. It's the last portion of this phrase. "Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color." Think about what that really means. Those aren't the words of a proud Black individual. They are the words of someone who is angry, primarily, ... because they are Black. (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: The Daily Kos Post Of The Day: "Uncle Tom" Obama - Uh-oh, it looks like Barack Obama has offended some of the liberals over at the Daily Kos for finally taking some reluctant, half-hearted shots at the anti-white, anti-American, conspiracy nut he has used as a "sounding board" and a spiritual mentor. Here's Daily Kos diarist Kaos237 playing the "race traitor" card on Obama, “I have been a huge supporter of Barack. He is the guy I've been behind for quite awhile now. Check my older diaries if you wonder about that. And while I've been steeling myself for a Barack loss in November, because I think the Repug machine is too good for him to beat, I had resigned myself to still working hard for him and for the Progressive cause! But today something changed for me...” (READ MORE)
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