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)
Fannie and Freddie's Enablers - You'll love this one. In the strange accountability of Washington, the same folks who put taxpayers on the hook for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now demanding ransom to let taxpayers bail them out. It's as if Andy Fastow insisted that Enron shareholders pay his fines after his fraud cost them their life savings. (READ MORE)
Their Fair Share - Washington is teeing up "the rich" for a big tax hike next year, as a way to make them "pay their fair share." Well, the latest IRS data have arrived on who paid what share of income taxes in 2006, and it's going to be hard for the rich to pay any more than they already do. The data show that the 2003 Bush tax cuts caused what may be the biggest increase in tax payments by the rich in American history. (READ MORE)
For 'Surge' Troops, Pride Mingles With Doubt - BAGHDAD -- This time last year, Capt. Wes Wilhite's men were getting ready to move into an abandoned house in western Baghdad wedged between cells of Sunni insurgents to the south and strongholds of Shiite militias to the north. (READ MORE)
In Immigration Cases, Employers Feel the Pressure - A three-year-old enforcement campaign against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants is increasingly resulting in arrests and criminal convictions, using evidence gathered by phone taps, undercover agents and prisoners who agree to serve as government witnesses. (READ MORE)
Detainee's Trial in Military System Begins Today - GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Nearly seven years after President Bush declared an "extraordinary emergency" that empowered him to bring terrorists before military judges, Osama bin Laden's former driver is scheduled to go on trial Monday in the first test of whether that system can dispense fair and impartial justice. (READ MORE)
Obama, Karzai Share a 'Working Lunch' - KABUL, July 20 -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met here Sunday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and later reiterated his call for additional U.S. forces to deal with conditions in Afghanistan that he described as "precarious and urgent," capping a two-day tour as casualties continued to mount from violence in the war-torn country. (READ MORE)
Obama begins firsthand look at Baghdad - BAGHDAD (AP) – Barack Obama began Monday his first on-the-ground inspection of Iraq since launching his bid for the White House, with U.S. commanders ready to brief him on progress in a war he has long opposed and Iraqi leaders wanting more details of his proposals for troop withdrawals. (READ MORE)
Fees, fewer flights ground business travel - Business travelers are beginning to reminisce about the days when red-eye flights and early-morning meetings were their primary sources of distress. In recent months, they have been overwhelmed by a cascade of increased costs, canceled flights and fees tacked on by airlines that are struggling to offset soaring fuel costs. (READ MORE)
Grassley won't be GOP delegate - Evangelical Christians in Iowa, dominant in the state's Republican Party, have denied Sen. Charles E. Grassley his request for a place on the state's delegation to this summer's Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. (READ MORE)
Rice limits embassies' aid for candidates - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has instructed U.S. overseas missions to provide only minimal support to foreign visits by the two main presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, forbidding diplomats to hold events or arrange meetings for them. (READ MORE)
Newspaper editors hopeful amid woes - The news about newspapers is alarming but not hopeless - and there are actually a few good tidings, according to a report released Monday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The key to the newspaper's ultimate survival is "a good business model and strong journalism," the report says. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Mary Anastasia O'Grady: Argentine Democrats Strike Back - Argentine democrats chalked up a big win last week when the Senate in Buenos Aires voted down a tax bill sent to it by President Cristina Kirchner. The significance of the defeat for Mrs. Kirchner goes well beyond her fiscal agenda to the heart of the rule of law in one of the most important countries in Latin America. To wit, for the first time in seven years, the office of the Argentine president has been forced to accept limits to its power. This is great news for a nation that seemed, until last week, to have lost all institutional checks and balances. If some of those institutions are reasserting their power to keep the executive in line, it means that the Argentine democracy still has a pulse. It is also good for the neighborhood, where young democracies are still being tested. (READ MORE)
L. Gordon Crovitz: Good Scholarship Is Worth Honoring - The University of Chicago recently announced it will create a new institute to add to its outsized reputation in economics, business and law. This became controversial because of the name: the Milton Friedman Institute. Some 100 members of the faculty last month wrote the university president to object that this would imply that the Chicago faculty "lacks intellectual and ideological diversity." Any implication that Chicago is staffed mostly by conservatives and libertarians is amusing -- after all, one Barack Obama taught law there until he became otherwise engaged. But the larger point is that what Friedman stood for, more than any particular idea, was the importance of doing the hard work of research. This sounds like a useful thing for academia in a world with hard policy problems to address, especially in this information-focused era when we expect right answers and wrong answers and to know which is which, preferably ahead of time. (READ MORE)
William Tucker: Let's Have Some Love for Nuclear Power - All over the world, nuclear power is making a comeback. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has just commissioned eight new reactors, and says there's "no upper limit" to the number Britain will build in the future. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has challenged her country's program to phase out 17 nuclear reactors by 2020, saying it will be impossible to deal with climate change without them. China and India are building nuclear power plants; France and Russia, both of whom have embraced the technology, are fiercely competing to sell them the hardware. And just last month John McCain called for the construction of 45 new reactors by 2030. Barack Obama is less enthusiastic about nuclear energy, but he seems to be moving toward tacit approval. In the U.S. at present, 104 nuclear plants generate about 21% of our electric power. (READ MORE)
R. Glenn Hubbard: We're Asking Too Much of the Fed - The combination of eye-popping headline inflation of 5% year over year and dramatic expansions of the Federal Reserve's lending activities to limit the credit crunch raise a key question: Are we asking too much of monetary policy? The simple answer is yes. The expansion of the Fed's lending has been extraordinary in scale and scope. But it is not the best response to the present credit crunch, and may bring unwelcome side effects. To assess the Fed's role as firefighter in the current financial turmoil, it is useful to start with the roots of the problem. Shocks to financial institutions' net worth affected the supply of credit from those institutions. Such credit restrictions reduced consumption and investment -- otherwise known as a "credit crunch." The Fed's interventions have, of course, aimed at liquidity -- the ability to fund increases in assets and meet obligations as they become due. (READ MORE)
Bronwen Maddox: Europe Gets Real About America - Berlin was always going to be the best backdrop for Barack Obama's big European speech this week. London offered only the besieged Gordon Brown, who is determined, aides have let it be known, to have a technocratic conversation with the Democratic candidate, hammering away at food and fuel prices. Paris's own pomp and architecture upstage most leaders. So does Carla Sarkozy. And although U.S.-French relations are unfreezing, defense and trade are still tough issues. But Berlin, oversupplied with resonant monuments to a once-divided continent, is the perfect stage for any politician who wants to strike the big themes of democracy, freedom and unity in the face of common threats. There was an endearing comedy in the efforts of the Obama team to find exactly the right location once Chancellor Angela Merkel vetoed the Brandenburg Gate. (READ MORE)
Micahel Rubin: Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran - On May 31, 2006, Condoleezza Rice drew a red line in front of Tehran's nuclear enrichment program. "The Iranian government's choices are clear," she said. "The negative choice is for the regime to maintain its current course. . . . If the regime does so, it will incur only great costs." She also offered an olive branch: "As soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the United States will come to the table with our EU-3 colleagues and meet with Iran's representatives." Two years later, Iranian officials have installed more than 3,000 centrifuges in a facility designed to hold 50,000. On July 9, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tested missiles which could reach Israel; the same day, Iranian Web sites carried President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's pledge to launch a satellite, an event that would demonstrate a mastery of intercontinental ballistic missile technology. (READ MORE)
Robert D. Novak: Obama's Iraq Spotlight - WASHINGTON, D.C. -- I asked one of the Republican Party's smartest, most candid heavy hitters this week whether John McCain really has a chance to defeat Barack Obama in this season of Republican discontent. "No, if the campaign is about McCain," he replied. "Yes, if it's about Obama." That underlines the importance of Obama's visit to Iraq, beginning weeks of scrutiny for the Democratic presidential candidate under a GOP spotlight. Four years ago nearly to the day, I asked the same question to the same Republican leader about George W. Bush and John Kerry, and he gave the same answer. He proved prophetic because Bush's campaign made Kerry the issue, and the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate flunked the test. Obama is a far more interesting personality and an incomparably more appealing candidate than Kerry. But why then, in a year where the nation clearly has rejected the GOP as a party, does McCain have a real chance to be elected? (READ MORE)
Paul Greenberg: Good News is No News - Have you been keeping up with the good news out of Mosul, al-Qaida's last urban stronghold in Iraq? The good news is that it's not an al-Qaida stronghold any more. Thanks to the latest American and Iraqi offensive. But you might not have heard about that welcome development. American victories don't get all that much play in this country - a pattern that dates back at least to David Halberstam's heyday as a New York Times war correspondent and behind-the-scenes player in Vietnam. For news of victory, Americans may have to look to the foreign press. For example, The Times of London, which carried a piece by Marie Colvin the other day. She reported that "American and Iraqi forces are driving al-Qaida in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror." Who knew? I must have overlooked the story in the New York Times. Nor did I see it on the AP wire. (READ MORE)
Star Parker: Gays in the military: What would George Washington think? - For the first time since the "don't ask, don't tell" law was enacted in 1993 by President Clinton, the House Armed Services Committee has scheduled hearings to review it. The law disqualifies gays from serving in the military. Individuals are deemed gay, according to this ruling, if they publicly state so. However, the military is prohibited from asking. Thus, "don't ask, don't tell." Activists are now pushing for change to allow gays to serve openly. We can anticipate a technical discussion. Does the presence of openly gay soldiers undermine cohesiveness of units, morale, and discipline? How would retention rates of troops or enlistments be affected? We can be sure, though, that a discussion about the general moral implications of such a policy will not take place. (READ MORE)
Dinesh D'Souza: An Absentee God? - In my debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens in New York last October he raised a point that I did not know how to answer. So I employed an old debating strategy: I ignored it and answered other issues. But Hitchens' argument bothered me. Here's what Hitchens said. Homo sapiens has been on the planet for a long time, let's say 100,000 years. Apparently for 95,000 years God sat idly by, watching and perhaps enjoying man's horrible condition. After all, cave-man's plight was a miserable one: infant mortality, brutal massacres, horrible toothaches, and an early death. Evidently God didn't really care. Then, a few thousand years ago, God said, "It's time to get involved." Even so God did not intervene in one of the civilized parts of the world. He didn't bother with China or Egypt or India. Rather, he decided to get his message to a group of nomadic people in the middle of nowhere. It took another thousand years or more for this message to get to places like India and China. (READ MORE)
Bill O'Reilly: Disrespecting Tony - The recent death of Tony Snow brought sadness to millions of Americans who admired the man's public service and optimism about his country. But not everybody felt the need to honor him. Just hours after he died from cancer, the Associated Press released an obituary that has shocked some people and badly damaged the AP's image, at least in the conservative community. AP reporter Douglass Daniel began the article by listing some of Tony's accomplishments, but then suddenly veered into ideological territory, writing: "With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster's good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook -- if not always a command of the facts -- he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses... "Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation." (READ MORE)
Peter J. Wirs: Is Obama’s Secret Fall Strategy to Wage a Polarizing Smear Campaign? - The allegations of Obama planting the false Maureen Down column to immunize himself from legitimate criticism didn’t simply fall out the sky. Astute political observers could easily detect David Axelrod’s fingerprints all over the illicit campaign tactic. It worked before, so why not now? The senior partner of AKP Message & Media, David Axelrod is a leading political consultant based in Chicago, Illinois. While he is best known as a top adviser to Barack Obama, first in Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Illinois and currently as strategist for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, he has been the power behind the throne in multiple campaigns, including Dennis Archer in Detroit, Michael R. White in Cleveland, Anthony A. Williams in Washington, D.C., Lee P. Brown in Houston, and John F. Street in Philadelphia. (READ MORE)
Salena Zito: The Hatfield 'n' McCoy vote - “The Appalachian voting bloc will be critical in the … 2008 presidential election,” former Democratic National Committee executive director Mark Siegel says. Yet his broad statement comes with its own geopolitical caveat: location. “It all depends on what part of Appalachia you are talking about,” says Siegel. “If they live in Pennsylvania and Ohio, then, yes, without a doubt they are the key voters. If they live in West Virginia, then no, because for the Democrats that is not a state that is in play.” Appalachia is not a single state but a region that has its own unique frame (or perhaps frames) of mind that extend well past the borders of West Virginia and Kentucky, the states most often associated with the term. As a geographical entity, Appalachia cuts a diagonal path from western New York to Alabama and Mississippi. (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: Gore Compares Offshore Drilling to Iraq Invasion - Thank goodness Al Gore never won the Presidency, because his asinine statements keep showing just how completely divorced from reality he is. He is so convinced in the existence of man made global warming that he makes preposterous analogies to support his baseless and destructive policy suggestions. As Ben Smith at Politico reports: “‘If you look at the seriousness of the climate crisis, you see how it ties to the economic crisis and the national security threat that we face,’ he said. ‘200 billion dollars are being sent overseas just from oil.’ ‘The idea that we can drill our way out of this is just so absurd,’ he said, comparing the push for offshore oil drilling — which has gained popularity and put environmentalists on the defense — to dealing with a hangover by having another drink.” (READ MORE)
A Newt One: Obama: The Subtleties of A Dictatorial Tyrant - He sure looks pretty, doesn't he? All dressed up and well groomed and all. Pearly whites all aglow pounding out verbiage not of his own, spouting of things he knows nothing of. Teleprompters not withstanding, isn't he all dashing, smiling and a champion of all of the oppressed? WOW! He doesn't fool me for a nano-second. What a fraud this Obama is. There is a must read over at Roger Guy's Radar Site blog entitled, The Fouse Report: 20 Jul 08 with a sub-title of, The New Nazis. It describes, in part, via a brief summary of known historical facts the rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany and the more than "coincidental" commonalities of Nazism and Islamofascism. Those of us that have studied Islam at length see the parallels of both. Barack Obama has said more than once that we have to talk to those that have sworn to destroy us. (READ MORE)
DrewM @ Ace of Spades: "Give me a second. I gotta go kill these guys first." - Last Sunday word came in about a large scale attack on a small and remote US base in Afghanistan. 9 soldiers were killed in that battle. In the few cases like this where the enemy decides to fight toe to toe the news seems to follow a familiar pattern...initial reports of US casualties, then a few days later news of how badly out numbered our troops were but still held off the larger force. Today the next phase gets underway... tales of heroism of American soldiers. Stars and Stripes has details on last week's fight in Afghanistan’s Kunar province. “Immediately, a grenade exploded by Stafford, blowing him down to a lower terrace at the observation post and knocking his helmet off. Stafford put his helmet back on and noticed how badly he was bleeding. Cpl. Matthew Phillips was close by, so Stafford called to him for help. Phillips was preparing to throw a grenade and shot a look at Stafford that said, ‘Give me a second. I gotta go kill these guys first.’” (READ MORE)
Dafydd: Will Elite Media Ask Obama Whether Their Coverage of Him is Fair? - Well, we're not quite back yet; but we're out of the back country and rarin' to jump back into the political fray. So cowboy up and read on! The elite media love to gaze upon Barack H. Obama... but if there is anything they love more, it's gazing upon their own navels. Thus, we're not at all surprised to note that the big story of the day is -- "What should the big story of the day be?" Or in this case, who should it be... and should it be Barack H. Obama all day, every day? “Television news' royalty will fly in to meet Barack Obama during this week's overseas trip: CBS chief anchor Katie Couric in Jordan on Tuesday, ABC's Charles Gibson in Israel on Wednesday and NBC's Brian Williams in Germany on Thursday. The anchor blessing defines the trip as a Major Event and -- much like a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit in February that depicted a press corps fawning over Obama -- raises anew the issue of fairness in campaign coverage.” (READ MORE)
Big Dog: McCain Shatters Obama’s Secrecy - The Obama camp is upset with John McCain because he disclosed that the young Senator was on his way to the Middle East. The camp is upset because they have closely guarded the information regarding his departure even though the major networks have mobilized to follow him around like Bill Clinton following the scent of an intern. “For weeks now, Barack Obama has closely guarded the details of his planned fact-finding trips to Afghanistan and Iraq, citing security concerns. But Friday, the Democratic presidential hopeful’s Republican rival, John McCain, may have let the secret out of the bag - infuriating some Obama supporters and putting Camp McCain on the defensive.” I understand the need for a certain amount of secrecy in order to ensure safety but the news has been abuzz about the anointed one and his trek across the world. The supposed “fact finding mission” is really a campaign ploy which explains why Obama has an army of advisers to keep him from making a mistake that might cost him votes. (READ MORE)
Blonde Sagacity: Muslims Offended...Again - During a conference call with reporters (arranged by Florida's Republican Comittee --NOT John McCain), one of McCain's fellow former POW's said this: “‘The Muslims have said either we kneel or they're going to kill us. I don't intend to kneel and I don't advocate to anybody that we kneel, and John doesn't advocate to anybody that we kneel.’ ~Col. Bud Day” "Muslim leaders and Arab-American groups quickly denounced the ''bigoted'' comments by Day, a Pensacola resident, Medal of Honor recipient and member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack machine from 2004. This is as close to racist as it gets. These are cheap street tactics,'' said Khaled Saffuri, who helped organize Arab outreach for President Bush's 2000 campaign but is now a Libertarian. ``Even if this is called a mistake or a slip of the tongue, it shows a bigger problem with racism. McCain and the Republican party should denounce this. (READ MORE)
The Captain's Journal: The Example of Musa Qala - We have previously covered the secret negotiations between MI6 agents and mid-level Taliban commanders, the result of which was the agreement between British forces and one Mullah Abdul Salaam who had promised military help when British and U.S. forces retook Musa Qala late in 2007. The military assistance never materialized, and instead of engaging in the battle, Salaam and his “fighters” stayed in his compound in Shakahraz, ten miles east, with a small cortège of fighters, where he made increasingly desperate pleas for help. “He said that he would bring all the tribes with him but they never materialised,” recalled one British officer at the forefront of the operation. “Instead, all that happened was a series of increasingly fraught and frantic calls from him for help to Karzai.” For this he was rewarded with rule of Musa Qala. But not more than half a year later relations between Salaam and the British have badly degraded. (READ MORE)
Evan Kohlmann: Is Iraq the “Central Front” in the War On Terror? - When the Bush administration made the fateful decision in 2003 to open an active military frontline in Iraq, for many Al-Qaida supporters, the experience was not unlike witnessing the fulfillment of divine prophecy. Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke would later write in his memoirs, “It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting ‘invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq.’” Given the opportunity to confront an aggressive American invasion of the Islamic world, Bin Laden would “become a hero in the minds of people,” explained noted Saudi jihadi ideologue Dr. Saad al-Faqih to me over cups of sweet black tea shared at his suburban London flat. “It is a golden opportunity for them, for the American, for the infidel—the invading infidel—to be in his [military] uniform in a Muslim country, in an Arabic country even.” (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee: Still No Good Explanation for Obama's Plan For A State Security Apparatus - Our good friends on the far left have plenty of snark to drop in this post, suddenly finding an aversion to Third Reich analogies after seven years of BushHilter and comparisons of the RNC to Nazis. What they have not done, nor even seriously attempted, was to explain the comments the media so carefully edited-out of a speech that Obama recently gave, where he advocated a "civilian national security force" that is "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the nation's military. As I noted in my last comment to that post, "national" means United States, or domestic in nature, not a international force. Security means "police." Unless Obama was uttering "just words," he was advocating domestic state security. (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico: Liberal Definition of "Tax Relief" - If you have an understanding of economics, and government, and need a laugh, read this editorial from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called "Yes, it is property tax relief ". In it, the editorial board of the newpaper explains that a 0.5% sales tax enacted 17 years ago was in fact, property tax relief. By their logic, since the money raised was spent, and didn't come from property taxes, it was "property tax relief". The flip side of the argument; if they hadn't collected the money, it wouldn't have been spent; isn't raised. The editorial board at that paper has issues with the idea of not taking and spending money. The source of the argument is an advisory referendum slated for November to ask the voters to raise the sales tax again, so that property taxes won't have to go up to fund transportation and parks. (READ MORE)
Discerning Texan: Manchurian Candidate? Is the Obama Birth Certificate (released via the Daily Kos) a forgery? - For several months now, many Republicans have been questioning why Barack Obama has not released his birth certificate. Well, this week the Daily Kos finally did release a jpg of a purported "Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth" (basically a certification that the Original is legit) that it claims was provided by the Obama campaign. Jim Geraghty at NRO was among those calling attention to this back in June, as FullosseousFlap pointed out : “Was Barack Obama born in Hawaii or somewhere else, or did he just change a name? Jim Geraghty looks at rumors running around about Obama’s supposed secrecy on his birth, and runs down three scenarios of what the campaign may want to hide. Their refusal to produce a birth certificate has stoked some of the speculation:” Was all this much ado about nothing? Well, maybe... but you really do wonder why Obama "refused" initially to provide a birth certificate in the first place. Seems like it ought to be a mere formality, right? (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Schooled - Nouri al-Maliki plays both ends against the middle. And a year ago they said Iraq’s prime minister was weak. Robert Reid of the Associated Press figured it out. And in retrospect, it is obvious: “Confusion over Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s seeming endorsement of Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal plan is part of Iraq’s strategy to play U.S. politics for the best deal possible over America’s military mission. The goal isn’t necessarily to push out the Americans quickly, but instead to give Iraqis a major voice in how long U.S. troops stay and what they will do while there. It also is designed to refurbish the credentials of al-Maliki, who owes his political survival to the support of President George W. Bush. Now, an increasingly confident Iraqi government seems to be undermining long-standing White House policies on Iraq.” Of course, that also plays well to the Iraqi populace who like France after World War II is pretty tired of us. (READ MORE)
FREEDOM EDEN: Revolutionary Michelle Obama - Barack Obama has said it repeatedly. His wife Michelle is off limits. Do not criticize her. Everyone is on notice. Leave Michelle alone. Obama's orders are meant to give Michelle a pass, but she has another shield to prevent challenges from opponents. She has something else to protect her -- the color of her skin. From Sophia A. Nelson, in the Washington Post: “There she is -- no, not Miss America, but the Angela-Davis-Afro-wearing, machine-gun-toting, angry, unpatriotic Michelle Obama, greeting her husband with a fist bump instead of a kiss on the cheek. It was supposed to be satire, but the caricature of Barack Obama and his wife that appeared on the cover of the New Yorker last week rightly caused a major flap. And among black professional women like me and many of my sisters in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, who happened to be gathered last week in Washington for our 100th anniversary celebration, the mischaracterization of Michelle hit the rawest of nerves.” (READ MORE)
Allahpundit: Lieberman: Obama couldn’t go to Iraq today if we’d followed his plan - From Fox News Sunday by way of Team McCain, a succinct reply to Obama triumphalists. His point at the end about Afghanistan is also well taken, although Hitchens’s formulation from last week is more elegant: “If it is true, as yesterday’s three-decker front-page headline in the New York Times had it, that ‘U.S. Considering Stepping Up Pace of Iraq Pullout/ Fall in Violence Cited/ More Troops Could Be Freed for Operations in Afghanistan,’ then this can only be because al-Qaida in Iraq has been subjected to a battlefield defeat at our hands—a military defeat accompanied by a political humiliation in which its fanatics have been angrily repudiated by the very people they falsely claimed to be fighting for. If we had left Iraq according to the timetable of the anti-war movement, the situation would be the precise reverse:” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Obama flunks history, again - After receiving a hailstorm of criticism for considering Brandenburg Gate for a public speech, as well as official German dissuasion, Barack Obama moved the venue to the Siegessäule monument. Obama will speak about “historic” US-German relations, but once again, Obama’s own grasp of history has been proven deficient. Not only does the site contain a monument to Prussian victories over other American allies in Europe, its placement was decided by Adolf Hitler — in order to impress crowds in his idealized version of Berlin called Germania: “Still, even as the issue of his speech’s location has now been settled, a number of politicians in Berlin are still dissatisfied with the site. The Siegessäule — or Victory Column — was erected in memory of Prussia’s victories over Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870/71). The column originally stood in front of the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building, but was moved by Adolf Hitler to its current location in 1939 to make way for his planned transformation of Berlin into the Nazi capital ‘Germania.’” (READ MORE)
Michael J. Totten: The Bin Ladens of the Balkans, Part I - Around a thousand mujahideen, veteran Arabic fighters from the anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan, showed up in Bosnia in the mid-1990s to fight a jihad against Serbian Orthodox Christians. They thought they would be welcomed, and they were right. The European community imposed an arms embargo on all of Yugoslavia during the Bosnian civil war which preserved the imbalance of power and arms in favor of Slobodan Milosevic and his nationalist Bosnian Serb comrades in arms. The Bosnian army was multi-ethnic and multi-confessional – it included Serb and Croat Christians as well as Bosniak Muslims – but its leaders chose to accept help from the so-called “Afghan Arabs” because they were desperate. The radical Arab mujahideen matured slightly between the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and they probed the anti-Milosevic guerilla movement known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to see if they could lend a hand there, as well. (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: Shifting fires - The sources of Islamic resentment against the West are complex and multi-faceted. Our lofty ideals about democracy were always viewed with suspicion when our actions in the region were to make common cause with oppressive kings and tyrants. The issue of Palestinian statehood and the perceived injustices of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank smolder in hearts throughout the umma, but there is little hope for real compromise when too many Palestinians cherish the dream of destroying their Israeli “peace partners” in detail rather than coming to any form of accomodation with their existence. Even if some way were found to bridge that gap, the al Qaeda jihadis that dream of re-establishing the caliphate seek also to undo the Spanish reconquista along the way - a goal that is probably not worth serious consideration in Spain. So where are we now? Tactically. In Iraq we have taken a battle that al Qaeda called a “must-win” and made them lose. (READ MORE)
McQ: Or is it 1980? - Except in this case the "Ronald Reagan" of the election would be Barack Obama. Wandering around the net and reading various articles, I stumbled across Clive Crook’s examination of exactly the phenomenon Michael Baron addresses in the post below. Crook, however, has a completely different analysis based on the work of Emory University professor Alan Abramowitz and his electoral barometer. The point to be made about the good professor’s electoral barometer is it that has a good track record, much better than the polls. And, as Crook succinctly sums up Abramowitz’s findings about this election, "McCain is toast". Essentially the message Crook and Abramowitz give is that the polls that show the candidates in a very tight race don’t really matter because they’re polling the wrong things. (READ MORE)
This Ain't Hell: NY Times red pencil’s McCain’s opinion - I read it first at Little Green Footballs and then clicked over to Drudge to read the whole thing, and it’s pretty startling. It seems that the New York Times is now rejecting people’s opinions based on style issues. Obama’s opinion piece a few weeks ago in the Times is apparently the style guide. ‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’ Let me ask this question of the NYT’s editors…how do you think you can get away with presenting one politician’s opinion and then dictating to another what his rebuttal will be? NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’ (READ MORE)
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