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)
Iraqis Condemn American Demands - BAGHDAD, June 10 -- High-level negotiations over the future role of the U.S. military in Iraq have turned into an increasingly acrimonious public debate, with Iraqi politicians denouncing what they say are U.S. demands to maintain nearly 60 bases in their country indefinitely. (READ MORE)
Mullen Urges Pakistan to Act on Al-Qaeda - The top U.S. military officer warned yesterday that al-Qaeda leaders operating in Pakistan's tribal areas are planning new terrorist attacks against the United States, making it imperative that Pakistan's new government take action to eliminate their sanctuary there. (READ MORE)
McCain, Obama Clash on Economy - ST. LOUIS, June 10 -- Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain outlined on Tuesday sharply different approaches on how to revive the nation's economy and provide aid to struggling workers, giving voters a clear choice on the issue that Americans say they are most concerned about. (READ MORE)
Obama's Choice of Insider Draws Fire - Last month, Sen. Barack Obama turned to James A. Johnson, a former Fannie Mae chief executive and Washington insider since the Carter administration, to lead the vetting of potential running mates for the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee. (READ MORE)
Tax Hike On Oil Profits Blocked - Senate Republicans yesterday blocked a proposal to tax the windfall profits of the nation's biggest oil companies and eliminate some of the firms' tax breaks, rejecting Democratic claims that the measure would help assuage consumer anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline. (READ MORE)
Kucinich Forces Vote On Bush's Impeachment - Having failed in efforts to impeach Vice President Cheney, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) escalated his battle against the administration this week by introducing 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush, using a parliamentary maneuver that will probably force a vote today. (READ MORE)
Friends of Barack - Barack Obama may have come up with a creative way to solve the housing recession: Let everyone buy property at a discount the way he did from Tony Rezko, and give everyone in America a discount mortgage the way Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide did for Fannie Mae's Jim Johnson. Team Obama's real estate and mortgage transactions are certainly a change from business as usual. They suggest old-fashioned back-scratching below even current Beltway standards. (READ MORE)
Putting Children Last - Democrats in Congress have finally found a federal program they want to eliminate. And wouldn't you know, it's one that actually works and helps thousands of poor children. We're speaking of the four-year-old Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides vouchers to about 2,000 low-income children so they can attend religious or other private schools. The budget for the experimental program is $18 million, or about what the U.S. Department of Education spends every hour and a half. (READ MORE)
Obama, McCain enlist former lobbyists - Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are relying on Washington insiders and former lobbyists to scrutinize possible vice presidential candidates, even as they campaign against lobbyists as a corrosive force in the nation's capital. (READ MORE)
Corruption scandals still haunt Chicago - CHICAGO - When former Illinois Gov. George Ryan got snared in a racketeering and fraud investigation several years ago, some thought Chicago might get a break from the corruption that has plagued this city for as long as anyone can remember. (READ MORE)
Candidates take aim at tax rates - The presumptive presidential nominees staked out diametrically opposed positions on taxes Tuesday, with Republican John McCain pledging to extend soon-to-expire tax cuts for millions of Americans and Democrat Barack Obama promising tax increases for many of the nation's wealthiest people. (READ MORE)
Officials to probe traders of crude - Securities regulators Tuesday vowed to pursue possible illegal manipulation of the oil market through an expanded task force including the Federal Reserve and Treasury, helping to drive premium crude prices down $3 to $131.31 a barrel in New York trading. (READ MORE)
Suicide recruits dropping in Iraq - The United States is seeing a sharp drop in the number of foreigners entering Iraq to become al Qaeda suicide bombers, according to intelligence and Bush administration sources. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Thomas Frank: Mister Maverick, Meet Da Machine - I always knew that the 2008 election would become another battle in the culture wars; the only mystery was the particular form the conflict would take this time around. The answer surprises even cynical me: Barack Obama's neighborhood. Republicans are preparing to court the blue-collar vote by casting the election as a referendum on Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, which Mr. Obama represented in the Illinois Senate and where the prestigious University of Chicago is situated. The news came in last Friday's Washington Post, in which it was announced that "Republicans plan to describe Obama as an elitist" – mmm, novel word, that – "from the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where liberal professors mingle in an academic world that is alien to most working-class voters." (READ MORE)
Holman W. Jenkins: How a Short Sale Went Wrong - Like the pariah medieval animal renderers who traveled the highways and byways collecting carcasses to be made into soap and candles, short sellers do useful work and get mostly grief for it. Yet a growing strain of economic thinking holds we need more short selling, not less. But this is old hat, and we won't repeat a column about the special problems of short selling during a bubble. It further stands to reason that the best short selling opportunities will be those presumably rare cases where rational, well-informed investors are misinformed about a company's value because of deliberate accounting fraud. Which brings us to David Einhorn, the press's new favorite hedge-fund guru. (READ MORE)
Brian Wesbury: Change We Can Believe In Is All Around Us - Rarely do senators become president, but in less than five months either John McCain or Barack Obama will become the 44th president of the United States. That's change, and that's interesting. It's also what everyone seems to want – change. Sen. Obama promises to provide "Change We Can Believe In." Sen. McCain suggests that "the choice is between the right change and the wrong change." If it's the war that is the focus of all this talk about change, well, that's understandable, and maybe people really do want change. But if it's the economy, it's hard to imagine that change could happen any faster. In fact, the U.S. economy (really, the global economy) is transforming at an absolutely astounding rate. We're living in Internet Time, where policies and their consequences travel the world at the speed of light. (READ MORE)
Steven Walker & Ronald Trowbridge: How the Senate Can Help Ted Kennedy - The recent news that Sen. Ted Kennedy has brain cancer sharply focuses national attention on the tragedy of all forms of cancer. The senator has a malignant glioma so difficult to treat that half of those diagnosed with it die within a year, and nearly all are dead within two years. There are many promising new cancer treatments in the pipeline, but under current Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, almost no one gains access to them, no matter how dire the need or how compelling the evidence that the drugs work. Most people receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis die before the most promising treatments in the pipeline reach them. Why? Because those tragic events occur on the wrong side of the magical moment when someone at the FDA puts an approval letter on a fax machine declaring the drug they needed – and never got – is "safe and effective." (READ MORE)
Joseph M. Feczko: Smoking Has Side Effects Too - Patients and physicians want breakthrough medicines, and pharmaceutical companies spend years – and billions of dollars – researching and testing such medicines. But this is all becoming increasingly difficult amid the public's growing confusion about how drug development and safety monitoring actually work. Patients might rush to judgment, making medical decisions without consulting their doctors. We could also wind up with policies that reduce the availability of innovative new medicines in decades to come. We should keep all that in mind following last month's release of a collection of adverse-event reports by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), a nonprofit group in Horsham, Pa. The report focused on Chantix, a medicine developed by Pfizer to help people quit smoking. (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: D'OH-bama's Mortgage Industry Mess - If you're going to promise "new politics," it would probably be wise to eschew the same old Beltway cronies and insiders who have served presidential nominees of yore. And if you're going to attack political opponents for playing "textbook Washington games," it would probably be best not to play them yourself. If you do, you'll end up tongue-tied in front of the cameras, hung by your own holier-than-thou rhetoric and faced once again with the decision to throw another bad choice under the bus. Yes, Barack Obama, we're talking about you. Again. It's getting mighty crowded under that bus, isn't it? Last week, D'Oh-bama announced the appointment of D.C. denizens Jim Johnson and Eric Holder to head his veep search committee -- along with a Kennedy (Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg) thrown in for glamorous good measure. John McCain supporters rightly jumped on Johnson and Holder as shady Washington operators. (READ MORE)
Tony Blankley: Who Is Obama? Where Is the Press? - How would one sneak a left-wing radical into the Oval Office in broad daylight? Perhaps the same way that President George W. Bush got two strong conservatives on the Supreme Court: Find a candidate without a paper trail on the most controversial issues. For those of us who suspect but cannot yet prove that Barack Obama is a genuine radical leftist, his lack of much of a voting record is going to make it difficult to prove what his real values, policies and motives are to be president. This is particularly the case because the media is so obviously going to give Obama cover not only for his current revelatory gaffes but also for embarrassing bits from his past. For example, back on June 2, National Review Online ran an extraordinary article by Stanley Kurtz that closely assessed a 1995 article about Obama by Hank De Zutter titled "What Makes Obama Run?" The essence of his thesis is the following: (READ MORE)
Michael Medved: Obama's "Undivided Jerusalem" - More Meaningless Words? - The morning after he secured the Democratic nomination, Senator Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and made a surprisingly strong statement about the future of Jerusalem. “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” he said to thunderous applause. Israelis and their supporters in the United States responded warmly to a bold, unequivocal proclamation that went well beyond the positions of the Bush or Clinton administrations – positions which have always endorsed key Israeli concessions on Jerusalem. Within a week, the Palestinians and various foreign policy commentators denounced the new Obama approach, and the candidate hastily retreated from his prior declaration. His subsequent equivocation and undeniable confusion on an issue of profound international importance... (READ MORE)
Walter E. Williams: Are Americans Pro-Slavery? - Let's do a thought experiment asking whether Americans are for or against slavery. You might say, "What are you talking about, Williams? We fought a war that cost over 600,000 lives to end slavery!" To get started, we might find a description that captures the essence of slavery. A good working description is: slavery is a set of circumstances whereby one person is forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor. The average American worker toils from January 1st to the end of April, and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor for that period. Federal, state and local governments, through the tax code, take what he produces. A small portion of the fruits of his labor is used to provide for the constitutional functions of government. (READ MORE)
John Stossel: The Entitlement Mess - Congress is spending us into a hole. We hear about the cost of earmarks and the Iraq war. But what about "entitlements"? That's the government's ironic term for programs that transfer money from people who earned it to people who didn't. Entitlement? How can you be entitled to someone else's money? To finance "entitlement" programs, the government threatens force against the taxpayers who provide the money. Why are people who favor compulsion called humanitarians, while those who favor freedom are stigmatized as greedy? But I digress. Today's big problem with entitlements is that their growth will soon eat everything in the federal budget. Last month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed the growth of government spending and deficits for Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.), ranking member of the Budget Committee. (READ MORE)
Lawrence Kudlow: Big Mac: The Taxpayer-Friendly Candidate - Sen. John McCain moved decisively to the supply-side Tuesday in a strong speech to the National Small Business Summit in Washington, D.C. For investors, small-business owner-operators, and the vast majority of middle-class Americans who go to work every day and are concerned about Sen. McCain’s tax vision, this speech is good news. Big Mac is the taxpayer-friendly candidate. The Republican candidate for president embraced low-tax-rate incentives to grow the economy, promising a combination of pro-growth tax reform and simplification along with significant spending restraint. He has called himself a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution. This tax speech clinches it. McCain pledged to keep taxes low for families and employers, putting himself squarely in Ronald Reagan’s camp and offering to extend the long prosperity wave started by the Gipper over twenty-five years ago. (READ MORE)
Austin Bay: Behind Gates' Decision to Fire Up the Air Force - The classic World War II-era poster reminded talkative dock workers that "loose lips sink ships." Well, loose nukes present an even more imposing problem, one with continent-cracking possibilities. Last week, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates requested and received the resignations of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley, Gates' office cited as a reason a Pentagon investigation of lax standards in Air Force oversight of nuclear weapons. One incident involved a USAF bomber with cruise missiles over-flying a wide swath of the United States -- and the crew didn't know the weapons had real nuclear warheads. That sounds bad, and bad it is. Resignation at Wynne and Moseley's level of national service, especially under these conditions, is a euphemism for "fired." (READ MORE)
Johnnie B. Byrd: Don't Be Afraid of Obama-Mania - Admit it. Republicans are intimidated by the “shock and awe” of Obama-mania—sold-out venues and the roar of the frenzied crowds swooning to high oratory. It’s so embarrassing. I just feel like editing out the pathetic crowd responses in McCain’s audio clips before airing them on my show. The truth is that many Republicans are genuinely fearful as the Obama campaign turns its full attention to the general election. Even Bill Kristol says Republican insiders are quietly sharing their frustration over the “style” gap. Most are trying to brace themselves for the campaign ahead. Republicans just need to man up! The McCain campaign has a lot going for it—really. For one thing, Republicans should be smiling like a Cheshire cat over something that anyone who has ever run a political campaign knows: Be happy when your opposition claims he or she will win the election by turning out young people and by targeting voters who usually do not vote. (READ MORE)
Bill Steigerwald: It's About Time Big Oil Started Defending Itself - As any recent television viewer can attest, the American Petroleum Institute - the main lobbying group for the oil industry - has launched a huge ad campaign designed to tell Big Oil's side of the $4-a-gallon gasoline story. Aimed at one audience -- voters -- the multimedia, multimillion-dollar propaganda blitz is a necessary antidote to the misinformation and false charges we constantly hear about Big Oil from Big Media and our duly elected demagogues. We've all heard about the alleged sins of Big Oil, the handy media-made pejorative for the world's largest oil and gasoline manufacturers: It controls/manipulates the world energy market. Its six "supermajors" -- multinationals like ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron -- are exceptionally evil and rapacious corporations that are responsible for skyrocketing oil and gasoline prices. (READ MORE)
ToySoldier: My New Crusade - Ok, so maybe some people won’t like that I’ve compared this to the Crusades. I personally do not care as the 1st Crusade was a response to a pending Muslim Invasion. My Crusade is of similar intent. Since I have been in Iraq I’ve come to an understanding that if we don’t fight them over there we will fight them here. It seems as if they want to prove me wrong. Jamaat ul-Fuqra/MOA Compound: Dover, TN The post is old, but the Compound still exists, you can even get an aerial view of it here. There are compounds just like this all over the states. I used the Jammat Ul Fuqramoa as my main example simply because it hits close to home, literally. This compound is only 6 and a half hours from my home, even more interesting to you who read this it is 7 miles east of the largest power supplying plant in the TVA System (TVA being the power authority in Tennessee), go just another 12-15 miles North East of this compound and you will hit the borders of Fort Campbell. (READ MORE)
Classical Values: The commissariat of inclusion - If you've been wondering what's behind the scenes in the ridiculous fight that Spike Lee started with Clint Eastwood, don't miss Roger L. Simon's analysis. He thinks the motivation is simple jealousy, cloaked in the form of Lee's bitter identity politics: “...No wonder Spike's jealous. So what does he do? He reaches back to an era when he was more successful. He plays the old identity/race card. Now we could all laugh and say this is just another case of an (prematurely) aging artist grasping for attention, but these times are more complex than that. We don't know which way we are going - toward a post-racial future or back to a racist past.” I couldn't agree more. Bearing in mind that the black Marines at Iwo Jima served in segregated units, from a purely artistic standpoint, including them in a film about the raising of the flag would have been a distraction, as it introduces a very different, although otherwise legitimate theme. Films like this -- like any form of art -- simply cannot depict everything, and I dislike demands that art be altered for "inclusionary" political purposes. (READ MORE)
Information Dissemination: Observing the Ugly, Bad, and Potential Good in Shipbuilding - We acknowledge for a blog entry, this one is particularly long. However, we believe that those who read in full will feel rewarded for committing the extra few minutes. Quote of the Week: “Executing the Navy’s most recent 30-year shipbuilding plan would cost an average of about $27 billion a year (in 2009 dollars), or more than double the $12.6 billion a year that the Navy has spent, on average, since 2003. (Unless otherwise indicated, the cost figures presented in this letter are expressed in billions of 2009 dollars of budget authority, and years denote fiscal years.) Since CBO testified on this topic on March 14, the Navy provided additional information that led CBO to increase its estimate of the annual cost of the shipbuilding plan from $25 billion to $27 billion.” This is quoted from page one, a letter from the CBO to Gene Taylor, in a newly released assessment by the Congressional Budget Office titled Resource Implications of the Navy's Fiscal Year 2009 Shipbuilding Plan put together by Eric J. Labs and Raymond Hall. (READ MORE)
Dr. iRack: SOFA Update - Dr. iRack has been writing a lot about the ongoing U.S.-Iraq negotiations over the SOFA and the related but separate Strategic Framework Agreement (outlining long-term military, economic, and political ties) in the last week. (For good summaries of the agreements, see here and here). In recent days there have been a lot of important developments on this front. Maliki just returned from Iran, where Iranian leaders (including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) complained about an impending U.S.-Iraqi security pact and, as usual, blamed all the violence in Iraq on the U.S. "occupation." (Perhaps to mollify Tehran's concerns, Iraq and Iran agreed to increase their own defense cooperation.) On the Iraqi side of the equation, the growing number of complaints against the SOFA negotiations include the number of bases (58 by one count), U.S. control of Iraqi airspace, contractor immunities, and the right of U.S. forces to detain Iraqi combatants. (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: Bombardment of Israel continues - The daily bombardment of southern Israel continued as more Israeli civilians were injured by randomly-fired mortars. That’s two dead and eleven wounded in the last week and a half. A fire also broke out in the factory that was hit. Meantime, Hamas is taunting Israel. “‘The current Israeli government is the weakest in the country’s history,’ Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said Wednesday ahead of the national security cabinet’s crucial meeting regarding possible Israeli responses to the situation in Gaza. ‘The Israelis are unable to deal with the Palestinian organizations and the rockets,’ he said, ‘They know they cannot launch a wide-scale operation in Gaza because (if they do) the Strip will become a graveyard for Israeli soldiers.’” And in spite of the fact that Hamas is daily trying to kill Israelis, they’re ready for a cease-fire. No, really. (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: Shakedown - One of the standard talking points from the opponents of the War on Terror is to mock some of the things we proponents believe in and state. I've lost track of how many times I've heard, in a condescending tone, "the terrorists hate us because they hate our freedoms." I freely admit it sounds pretty shallow and stupid. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. I would like to challenge anyone to find an alternative explanation for this news story. A six-member delegation from the government of Pakistan is going to the European Union and telling them that they need to curtail their citizens' right to free speech and give special protection to Islam, exempting it from criticism (I'm sorry, "hate speech"). And if Europe doesn't agree to cave in and be good little dhimmis and recognize that Islamic laws against blasphemy take precedence over fundamental human rights like free speech and free press and other forms of free expression, "bad things" might happen. (READ MORE)
DJ Drummond: Convince Me - I had some fun yesterday, kicking over the anthill that is the Obama cult, and my, how the little critters are still furious about it. This is one reason I can't be a Democrat; the people in that party appear for the most part to be driven only by emotion. Sure, it makes sense to care about the issues and your candidate of choice, but there really should be rational, logical reasons for your positions. And frankly, the Left seems to hate the very idea of defending its positions with logic and evidence. Take Global Warming, for instance. I agree that we humans must be responsible for the materials we use, and to be accountable for the effect our actions have on other people and living things. But accepting radical demands simply because they are couched in the 'we can't wait to prove our case' arguments of Global Warming advocates is not rational, especially when there is reason to suspect hidden agenda and ulterior motives. (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: Pondering A Gaza Operation - First, you get reports that Israel is considering major operations against Hamas and the terrorists in Gaza. Israel rules out a military operation against Hamas in Gaza for the time being. Right. Good show. The terrorists can continue their bombing campaign against Southern Israel and Israel's leadership thinks that taking the fight to the terrorist infrastructure in its entirety is not quite appropriate at this time. How many more Israelis have to die or be injured before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his cronies take action? They're engaging in limited airstrikes against terror cells after they fire on Israelis, but that does little to prevent attacks. (READ MORE)
AndrewsDad: Mayor Greg Nickels Decides Which Constitutional Rights Apply In Seattle - Since the last couple of days here at AoSHQ have featured a number of post taking shots at Seattle and since I was born in raised there and have lived all of my life there and am part owner of a small business inside the city limits, I wanted to make sure I also got in a swift kick to the nuts while I had the chance. All City of Seattle properties are about to become a Gun Free Zone: “Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has signed an executive order that asks all departments to come up with a plan within 30 days to ban guns at all property owned by the city. Nickels signed the executive order after the recent shooting at the NW Folklife Festival at Seattle Center that wounded two people. ‘At many of our properties, including City Hall, you can bring a gun if you have a concealed weapons permit. Under this order, people with concealed weapons will be asked to leave or hand over their gun.’ It's a city rule that cannot trump state law. The only thing the city and police can do is kick someone with a gun out of a building or an event.” (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Comeuppance - Raising gas prices had the opposite effect of what environmentalists intended. Back in 2000, Vice President Al Gore proposed raising taxes on gasoline to force Americans — but not their elected officials — to sacrifice their SUVs at the altar of environmentalism. At $4 a gallon, SUVs, indeed, are a drug on the market. But so is environmentalism. From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “Wisconsin’s ban on nuclear power plants would be relaxed, in conjunction with plans to dramatically boost the state’s reliance on wind turbines and other forms of renewable power between now and 2025, under a proposal unveiled Tuesday to members of the state’s global warming task force.” Wait. Nukes are back? In the Badger State? (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: WSJ: The new Barack Obama plan for housing - The Wall Street Journal tears into Barack Obama in a lead editorial this morning for his hypocritical standards on the housing crisis. After yesterday’s performance by Obama in which he declared that Jim Johnson didn’t work for him and that he had no obligation to vet the vetters, the Journal wonders what responsibilities Obama thinks the presidency entails. The editors also wonder what happened to Obama’s pledge of a new kind of clean politics, and the change he would bring to DC: “Barack Obama may have come up with a creative way to solve the housing recession: Let everyone buy property at a discount the way he did from Tony Rezko, and give everyone in America a discount mortgage the way Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide did for Fannie Mae’s Jim Johnson. Team Obama’s real estate and mortgage transactions are certainly a change from business as usual. They suggest old-fashioned back-scratching below even current Beltway standards.” (READ MORE)
Patterico: CJR: Here’s What’s at Stake for the Supreme Court . . . If You Completely Ignore History - Zachary Roth at the Columbia Journalism Review has this odd and quite untrue passage: “In recent presidential elections, anyone paying a basic amount of attention to the race has gone to the polls understanding one clear and compelling difference between the candidates: that the Democrat would pick judges who would vote to uphold Roe v. Wade, ensuring that abortion remains legal, and that the Republican would, in all likelihood, pick judges who would vote to overturn it, opening the door to state-level abortion bans. As a result, we’ve all been admirably well informed about the impact of our vote on this key issue.” This must be some new meaning of the phrase “in all likelihood” that I am unfamiliar with. (READ MORE)
Steve Schippert: Senate Intel Report and Swiss Cheese - At The Weekly Standard, Tom Joscelyn’s latest article Harboring al Qaeda demonstrates ’ What the new Senate Intelligence Report says about Saddam’s hospitality.” There has been a lot written about the latest Senate Intelligence Report in the past week, but I think Tom boils it all down effectively, noting that the report even contradicts itself in a partisan effort to lay another stone in the foundation that seems intent on supporting a future punitive process against members of the current administration under a potential Democrat-run legislative and executive branches of the federal government. It is not overly lengthy, but the money graphs (in my humble view) are below: (READ MORE)
The Sundries Shack: Bush Lied? Once and For All, No. - I really can’t believe that after six years, a couple or three Congressional commissions, documentaries, in-depth news reporting, and a horde of bloggers digging up quotes and poring through reports, Democrats are still gnawing on the dessicated bone of pre-war intelligence and the hoary “Bush lied” slogan. Even a junkyard dog knows when the marrow’s out of the bone and finally lets it go in search of a more savory snack. Not so with Democrats. Senator Jay Rockefeller just released another report purporting to prove that “Bush Lied” or at least worked some hypnotic mojo over Congress, the American people, our intelligence agencies, and the governments of most of the free world in order to launch an “unjust” and “illegal” war against Saddam Hussein. Except his report proved exactly the opposite. The Arkansas Democrat Gazette took one for the team and read the whole report. (READ MORE)
Warner Todd Huston: Democrats Try to Make Military Press Conferences Illegal - Congressional Democrats announced early in May that they wanted to make “military propaganda” illegal. To achieve this goal they passed new legislation that strengthened previous legislation that is supposed to ban the Pentagon from indulging in “propaganda” for the military. This bill is supposed to stop the military from sending “any form of communication in support of national objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes or behavior of the people of the United States in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly.” In other words, the military is not allowed to talk to the American people or Congress for fear of disseminating “propaganda.” (READ MORE)
Melanie Phillips: Obama and the giant blogosphere conspiracy - Today’s Guardian reports that Barack Obama is setting up an entire unit to combat ‘virulent rumours’ about him on the internet. Doubtless one of the blogs in the sights of team Obama is Little Green Footballs, which in the last few days has been excavating examples of wildly anti-Jewish and anti-American prejudice and conspiracy theories posted up by fans on Obama’s own website. LGF is making hay with the fact that the Obamanables are belatedly taking (some of) this stuff down from the site while simultaneously insisting that its presence is nothing to do with them because the website has no moderators. Yeah, right. The Guardian quotes the director of some monitoring outfit as saying that the blogosphere’s smears about Obama are particularly vicious. (READ MORE)
McQ: "Martyrdom" seems to be losing its appeal - That is if the sharply declining number of suicide bombers in Iraq are any indication: “The United States is seeing a sharp drop in the number of foreigners entering Iraq to become al Qaeda suicide bombers, according to intelligence and Bush administration sources. An administration official and a military adviser to Iraqi commanders attribute the decline to a fairly new phenomenon: Al Qaeda’s call for mass killings in the name of Islam is losing some of its appeal with young Arabs in North Africa and Saudi Arabia, where most of the bombers originate.” Part of that is due to renewed debate on whether it is indeed "martyrdom" when Muslims kill Muslims. One of the main objections to this style of fighting and killing is the fact that it has been aimed at Muslim civilians in an effort to start a civil war. The vast majority of Muslim opinion seems to find that unacceptable (to include the Muslim population of Iraq - which is why AQI is failing there). (READ MORE)
Andrea Shea King: THEY WANT US TO SHUT UP - Where do you get your news and information? If you say "Talk Radio", you're among just 7% of Americans who do. Brian Fitzpatrick at the Media Research Center's Culture and Media Institute has written a just - released compelling analysis "Unmasking the Myths Behind the Fairness Doctrine" that explores the new push by both sides of the aisle in Congress to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Not satisfied with dominating four of the five most important news and information media, liberals are more determined than ever to take over the fifth as well--talk radio. With an almost incessant whine, the wheels of change are creaking, and liberals may indeed get their way. (READ MORE)
A Newt One: "The Why" We Are Fighting - This Thursday evening on Blog Talk Radio, we will be talking about the war. Why? Because it is one that I have fought. It is one my son has fought. It may be that it is your son or daughter, father or mother, friend or relative has fought. It may be that one of your own is still fighting this war at this particular moment. God bless them one and all. We will be talking about the war. Why? Because the politicians in this country are one of two kinds of politicians yet, are the same. One type of politician supports the Troops and their mission...and at this time that is questionable. One type of politician says they support the Troops but not their mission. This makes them liars because as a Troop, you cannot support me but not my mission. Especially so since before they were against the Mission, they were for it. (READ MORE)
Donald Douglas: Jim Webb and Neo-Confederate Ideology - As some readers may recall, I've denounced neo-confederate hate commenters at this blog on a couple of occassions (sample comments are here). I'll note, though, it's a tricky subject dealing with affinity for the values of the Old South. If one respects Southern tradition, does that automatically make them bigoted? I don't think so, although some organizations - like the League of the South - have a history of supporting racist oppression, so it does matter where one positions themselves along the spectrum. My blog buddy Stogie's family background dates back to the Confederacy, but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who speaks out so consisently and eloquently agains racism and anti-Semitism. Values of duty, honor, and pride of heritage are respectable sentiments, but in our age of extreme racial sensitivity, it must be difficult showing historical affinity for the patrician conservativism of the former plantation states. (READ MORE)
Atlas: Pakistan Gave Intel on US troops - While Pakistan blames US coalition for troops' death, me thinks they full of shiz. What say you? US News and World reports, "U.S.-led coalition forces along the volatile Afghan border launched an airstrike that killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops, Pakistan's army said Wednesday. The military condemned it as an act of aggression within Pakistan's border that "hit at the very basis of cooperation" in the war on terrorism." Aggression the new euphemism for self defense. "Think tank: Pakistan gave info on U.S. troops Marine Times KABUL, Afghanistan — Pakistani intelligence agents and paramilitary forces have helped train Taliban insurgents and have given them information about American troop movements in Afghanistan, said a report published by a U.S. think tank. The study published Monday by the Rand Corp. also warned that the U.S. will face 'crippling, long-term consequences' in Afghanistan if Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan are not eliminated." (READ MORE)
Baldilocks: The Meaning of Spike Lee's Words - Rumor has it that Hollywood is one of the most racist places in the country. Though I live in LA, I don't operate in that world, so I don't know first hand whether this is so; however, even if this is true, there was a time when Lee's career flourished, perhaps peaking with 1992's Malcolm X--something which may have been a function of Denzel Washington's Oscar-nominated performance. Spike made a successful, vaunted career by making movies about race or with race as a backdrop. He was the go-to director for such a genre and perhaps that's the problem. When he tried to branch out and away from that racial strait-jacket, it became obvious that he really isn't that great of a director. So now Lee does what he has to do to get attention for his new project, Miracle at St. Anna, even stooping to taking cheap racial shots at the far more successful (and old, white, male, Republican) Eastwood of all people. (READ MORE)
Have an interesting post or know of a "must read?" Then send a trackback here and let us all know about it. Or you can send me an email with a link to the post and I'll update the Recon.
No comments:
Post a Comment