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)
Warner positions Virginia in spotlight - DENVER Seizing his moment in the national spotlight, former Virginia governor and current Senate candidate Mark Warner on Tuesday night framed the fall election as a "race for the future" that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats must win with new ideas and pragmatic politics. (READ MORE)
Hoyer hedges on McCain as 'bad president' - DENVER House Democratic Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Tuesday that Republican John McCain wouldn't necessarily be a bad president, but his problem is he has embraced President Bush's policies. (READ MORE)
Hijackers of Darfur plane surrender - TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) – Two hijackers who commandeered a jetliner from Sudan's Darfur region and diverted it to a remote desert airstrip in southern Libya surrendered Wednesday after a 22-hour standoff, an airline official said. (READ MORE)
Nearly 600 detained in immigration raid - LAUREL, Miss. (AP) The largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history has caused panic among Hispanic families in this small southern Mississippi town, where federal agents rounded up nearly 600 plant workers suspected of being in the country illegally. (READ MORE)
Flights delayed by FAA glitch - Airports across the country experienced major delays Tuesday after a Federal Aviation Administration facility in Georgia that processes flight plans for the Eastern U.S. developed communications problems due to software issues, the FAA said. (READ MORE)
Russia dismembers Georgia - UNITED NATIONS Russia on Tuesday recognized the "independence" of two breakaway Georgian regions, responding to what Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin called "a completely new reality" and expanding de facto Russian territorial control for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. (READ MORE)
Shi'ite resistance to Sunnis threatens progress of surge - The Iraqi government is resisting U.S. efforts to incorporate former Sunni insurgents into Iraqi security forces, threatening a strategy that helped make the surge a success thus far and could allow U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities next year. (READ MORE)
Power-Sector Emissions Of China To Top U.S. - The carbon emissions of China's electric power sector will jump by about a third this year and surpass the total emissions of the U.S. electric power industry for the first time, according to a report by the Center for Global Development - a Washington-based think tank. (READ MORE)
U.N. Finds Airstrike Killed 90 Afghans - ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 26 -- United Nations officials in Afghanistan said Tuesday that there was "convincing evidence" at least 90 civilians -- two-thirds of them children -- were killed in a U.S.-led airstrike last week that caused the Afghan government to call for a review of U.S. and NATO... (READ MORE)
N. Korea, Angry Over Terror List, Threatens to Rebuild Nuclear Program - TOKYO, Aug. 26 -- Angry that the United States has not removed it from a list of states that sponsor terrorism, North Korea said Tuesday that it has stopped disabling its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and will consider rebuilding it. (READ MORE)
Pakistani Push in Tribal Areas Triggers a Flood of Refugees - NOWSHERA, Pakistan -- Lal Bahadur walked down from the mountains about two weeks ago. With his back to Afghanistan and his wife and five children alongside, he descended steep inclines through the northern edge of Pakistan's tribal areas as artillery fire boomed around them. It was nearly a full day before the family found a place to rest. By the time they reached the district of Nawagai, the price of a ride to safety in the nearby city of Peshawar had already increased 10-fold. (READ MORE)
U.N. Farce - IT HAS BEEN ALMOST a year since the world was stirred by thousands of Burmese monks and ordinary people taking to the streets to demand freedom -- and being bloodily crushed by one of the world's cruelest regimes. Governments everywhere proclaimed that such violence and repression could not stand, and they insisted that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon do something. (READ MORE)
Russia Says 2 Regions in Georgia Are Independent - MOSCOW, Aug. 26 -- Russia recognized the independence of two breakaway provinces of Georgia over the strong objections of the United States and much of Europe on Tuesday, escalating tensions in the region as Russian troops dug in on Georgian soil and U.S. warships prepared to deliver humanitarian aid to an occupied port city. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
CJ: Exclusive: Obama VP's New World Order Aspirations - Everyone (except Hillary Clinton's supporters) seems to be pleased with the choice of Senator Joseph Biden as Senator Barack Obama's choice of VP. There's a lot of attention on Biden's negative comments about Obama and positive comments towards McCain, but that's really semantics. The real issue that everyone should be focusing on isn't even in the press yet. And I doubt they'll even investigate or publicize this if they knew anyway. Prepare for something you'll only find on ASP. Joe Biden has claimed multiple times Saddam "illegally used American aid to buy arms", "slaughter[ed]…his own Kurdish citizens", and used American intelligence to aid in his invasion into Kuwait. That's not even the most damning of Biden's own claims. He boldly proclaimed, "Saddam provided safe haven for the world's most infamous terrorists." WHAT!?!?! I thought this war was NOTHING about terrorism! But, that's not all. (READ MORE)
Kathleen Parker: Pope Pelosi At the Gate - WASHINGTON -- When Democrats decided they wouldn't let the GOP be "God's Only Party," they weren't kidding. Thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, none other than St. Augustine has been summoned to Denver. He was resurrected as Pelosi was trying to respond to the question that refuses to die: When does human life begin? This time, it was Tom Brokaw asking on Sunday's "Meet the Press." Citing Barack Obama's recent pass on a similar question -- "At what point does a baby get human rights?" -- Brokaw asked Pelosi what she would say to Obama were he to ask her advice. Pelosi didn't finesse her answer, as Obama did when he said the question was above his pay grade, but she may wish she had. (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: What I Saw At the Discombobulation - DENVER -- Never was so much hype created by so few to simulate the appearance of so many. The hard-core left vowed to turn out 50,000 protesters for the Democratic National Convention this week. They pledged to "Re-create '68" and cause the kind of tear-gas-infused revolutionary havoc that marked the DNC in Chicago four decades ago. Police prepared for the worst riots. Media from around the world anticipated the best pictures. But when rhetorical push came to real-life shove, the nostalgic, Marx-adoring organizers of Re-create '68 seem to have mustered no more than, oh, 68 bodies. Their presence here is dwarfed by the massive show of police, press and camera-toting looky-loos. You can't take a picture without someone else taking pictures of everyone else taking pictures of not much else getting in your frame. (READ MORE)
Michelle Bernard: The Shattered Glass Ceiling: Women Voters after Hillary Clinton’s Run - The Democratic National Convention is upon us, and much of the press commentary revolves around “her.” Hillary Clinton, that is, and whether she and her supporters will unite behind Barack Obama. Both campaigns are now developing strategies to attract the votes of women. The best way to do this is not to play gender politics, but to craft sensible solutions to the problems that affect women, men, families, and children. The Democratic race was unusually hard-fought, and the antagonism of women of a certain era to Senator Obama remains strong. Disgruntled Clinton supporters have created a “Just Say No Deal” coalition including 250 internet groups to oppose his nomination. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 21 percent of Democrats plan to vote for Senator McCain. That is likely to change by November 4th, but even a small number of Democratic defectors could cost Senator Obama victory in a tight race. (READ MORE)
Walter E. Williams: Is College Worth It? - As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Over-rated Product: Higher Education (www.martynemko.com/articles/americas-most-overrated-product-higher-education_id1539)." The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 76 out of 100 students who graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class do not graduate from college, even if they spend eight and a half years in college. That's even with colleges having dumbed down classes to accommodate such students. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million students who took the ACT college entrance examinations in 2007 were prepared to do college-level study in math, English and science. (READ MORE)
Jonah Goldberg: Obama Flubs the 'Presidential' Test - Vice president. Who among us can contain their excitement? Not me. I can't wait to hear more from the man for whom brevity is a Rubicon he will not cross. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you something about Joe Biden, as Joe Biden himself might say: Joe is the guy who will tell the hard truths, say the unsaid things - literally, not just figuratively - to ensure that he has gone the extra oratory mile in service to this great cause, America, for which he will give not merely his last breaths but an unknowable number of breaths in service of the country he loves, never once tiring or being distracted by the grammatical ballast of the period, the wedge issue of the paragraph break or the thud of his audiences' heads soporifically smacking the tables in front of them. No, never let it be said that Joe won't say what needs to be said, not only when it needs to be said but the other times as well, again and again and, ladies and gentlemen, again. (READ MORE)
Mona Charen: This Historic Candidacy - I so wish I could support Barack Obama. It would be great -- truly magnificent -- to elect a black president of the United States. Watching the convention coverage on Monday night, I was moved by my friend Juan Williams' almost tearful reaction to Michelle Obama's address. He shook his head in amazement that an African-American woman was in the position she was. And it moved me to see how moved he was. I wish I could send Michelle Obama -- so attractive, so poised, so stylish -- a cyber hug. I'd wager that millions of other Americans, like me, would love to see someone like her as First Lady. Or at least I would love to support the person Michelle Obama has conjured for us this week -- successful working-class girl who worked hard, upheld traditional values, and was rewarded by a great nation. But in her case, as in Barack Obama's case, there is just too much artifice and not enough reality here. (READ MORE)
Ben Shapiro: Barack Obama's Big Mistake: Successfully Distributing His Message - Campaigns usually collapse because of gaffes -- off-the-cuff actions that accidentally reveal the true nature of candidates. And the Barack Obama campaign has had more than its share of revealing gaffes: Obama's statement that rural voters turn to God, guns and racism because they have no jobs; his explanation that proper tire gauge use would fix high gas prices; his self-aggrandizing exhortation that he has "become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions"; his associations with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko; the list goes on and on. But gaffes are not the real reason for the stagnation of the Obama campaign. That stagnation is due to one factor: successful distribution of the Obama message. (READ MORE)
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: Magic Words: "I Love This Country" - 'I love this country": Those are the magic words that Michelle Obama said at the Democratic National Convention last night. They're the words we've wanted to hear from her ever since we saw her say that she was proud of her country "for the first time in my adult life" now that her husband was winning primaries en route to the White House. Did she buy into the American dream? Was she part of our national aspiration - or part of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's twisted view of us? Those were the questions we wanted answered. Last night, she answered - loud and clear. We've watched the scripted familial intimacies Hillary Clinton always shares from the podium and wondered if they had been focus grouped. We've watched Theresa Heinz Kerry's vaulting ambition at the 2004 Democratic convention and wondered if she was really human. (READ MORE)
John McCaslin: It's Unity, Stupid - Democrats are boasting about the pair of "prominent Republicans" addressing this week's Democratic National Convention, including former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach Monday night and Jim Whitaker, mayor of Fairbanks, Alaska, on Tuesday night. Both politicians earlier endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president because of his desire to unify the country. Wouldn't you know, Democrats are now finding it difficult to unify their own party. MINY OR MOE? On Nov. 4, voters will choose "the lesser of two evils" to become president of the United States. "This is a battle to become the lesser of two evils, rather than the best of the bunch," says Washington political pollster Frank Luntz, who in a memo obtained by Inside the Beltway on Monday writes that so-called floating, or undecided voters, "have huge hang-ups with both candidates," albeit for different reasons. (READ MORE)
Smooth Stone: Slouching towards Armageddon - BabbaZee, at her excellent blog The Outraged Spleen of Zion, has written a masterful post about Condoleeza Rice’s insistence that Jerusalem be divided between Israeli Jews, its rightful owners, and Israel’s enemies, the undeserving and historically and internationally inappropriate Palestinian Arabs of Arabia. BabbaZee begins her post with Dore Gold’s discussion of his book, The Fight For Jerusalem, where Dore Gold talks about the Muslim Arab’s denial of the existence of the Temple of the Jews, a denial which started with Arafat but did not die with him, viewable here: BabbaZee then reminds us of her post from June 2008 where she writes about how Mahmoud Abbas, the current leader of the Palestinian Arab thieves, who is also the engineer behind the heinous murders of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1973 in this post Abbas: Temple Mount “100% Islamic”. (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Shameful honor or honorable shame? - John Kerry’s “finest moment”, according to Bill Ayers, was the day he threw his medals away. Should we listen to him? Is it possible to even discuss the video without somehow being accused of bigotry? Some have implied that society’s “finest moment” should be the ability to throw the information about what is implied about Ayers, as exemplified by the anecdote he himself tells, away. Yet Ayers himself doesn’t cast aside the information, but shouts it from the housetops as in the recent interview. How does one listen, yet not listen to Bill Ayers? The implied answer is to wear a filter where the Ayers story about Kerry becomes a noble anecdote - a kind of modern Horatius Not At the Bridge story. The AP writes that “Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 ‘Swift Boat’ campaign.” (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: Obama's Unquenchable Love Of The Grandiose - Let's see; the McCain campaign is successfully cutting you to pieces with ads portraying you as an inexperienced, yet arrogant novice who's more of a rock star than a politician. So, what do you do? If you're Barack Obama, you have Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen open for you, have a Hollywood actress sing the national anthem, and then...I think I will just let the rest of the story speak for itself: “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple. The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.” (READ MORE)
Kings of War: ‘Why can’t the Americans stop this?’ - So what does success and ultimate victory mean in Afghanistan, for the Taliban and for us? I’m always amazed by the spirit of international forces fighting in Afghanistan with few resources in wildly unfavourable circumstances. Equally, I would echo the views of the Faceless Bureaucrat below, that some recent statements by ISAF commanders suggest a disturbing partial (or mis ) understanding of the conflict. Consider this: “The road from Kabul to Kandahar is even more treacherous, according to other drivers. ‘If the Afghan Army isn’t there, a fly cannot pass,’ said Bashir, a lorry owner, pointing to the scorched shells of three vehicles he retrieved from a Taleban raid on the Kandahar road last week. Of 60 lorries, 13 were destroyed, he said. ‘Why can’t the Americans stop this?’” (READ MORE)
Matt Sanchez: Canada’s Guantanamo problem - In Afghanistan, on July 27, 2002, U.S. medic Sgt. 1st Class Christopher J. Speer of Alberquerque, N.M., attached to the 3rd Platoon of Bravo Company, 505th Infantry Regiment was killed by a Toronto born Canadian citizen. Today, Omar Khardr sits at the American naval base of Guantanamo awaitng trial. Internationally Guantanomo invigorates America haters to protest with clenched fists and shake their collective heads in self-righteousness. Unfortunately, the press has done a horrible job of explaining the Guantanamo detention center and the reason why is probably because too many journalists were busy shaking their heads and clenching their fists. Guantanamo is the place no one wants to claim despite the niffty service it provides. A randy group of suspects, most of whom caught on the battlefield, have been held at “Gitmo”, a sliver of freedom on the prison island of Cuba. (READ MORE)
Phyllis Chesler: Michelle and Joe Looked Grim as Hillary Endorsed Obama in a Masterfully Minimal Way - As Hillary addressed the DNC, the unforgiving cameras kept panning back to Michelle Obama who was sitting with Joe Biden. Neither Michelle nor Joe managed to crack more than one smile apiece-well, perhaps two, even as Hillary insisted, over and over again, that the Democratic Party must unite behind Obama-not because he is an astounding leader, or The One, but simply because he is the Democratic candidate. During every ovation, both the future First Lady and his Vice-Presidential choice remained grim-lipped, expressionless, sometimes even angry-faced. (Joe Biden was caught on camera warmly embracing former President Jimmy Carter. So much for "change.") In a sense, just as Hillary stood by her man Bill, she is also, just as strategically, standing by her man Obama. But not exactly. (READ MORE)
This Ain't Hell: Back to the IVAW Theater - The street theater that got Adam Kokesh in trouble last summer in DC has been brought to Denver. Pretending they’re on a patrol, IVAW members start face-planting random spectators as if they were suspects in terrorist attacks; “Suddenly one of the soldiers announced that they were looking for a suspect wearing an orange bandana, who they suspected of planting roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs). At that the GIs began forcing nearby pedestrians face-first up against a wall and yelling at them to ‘shut the fuck up.’ One man was pinned to the ground in what looked like a stress position. The police officers, from Denver and surrounding towns, did nothing. They had been informed days before, one officer told me, that the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) were coming to town and preparing to engage in nonviolent street theater on Tuesday and Wednesday. The scared pedestrians pinned to the wall and the sidewalk, I learned, were volunteers. This was all just acting.” (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: Durban II: Heading right down the same anti-Semitic path - UN Watch has another report on the upcoming UN anti-Israel and Democracy Conference The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. It seems that not only is Durban II going after Israel, but it’s really going to try to codify anti-Islamic blasphemy. UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer, a modern-day Don Quixote who bangs his head against the windmill called United Nations, spoke against the declaration. “The declaration makes only one reference to a country situation, ‘reiterat[ing] its concern about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupations.’ Neuer asked, ‘Why is a non-African situation mentioned in a declaration about Africa, one that references neither Sudan’s racist killings, nor any other country in Africa?’” (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: The Illness That Dare Not Speak Its Name - A terrible affliction is sweeping the nation today. A condition that is so shameful, that almost no one can bring themselves to even say it aloud. But here at Wizbang, we are sturdy souls, we are hardy and hearty, and we will do that which others fear to do: we shall speak (well, type) the name of this dread disease: Sudden Jihadi Syndrome. This is that terrible illness that strikes completely at random, when perfectly normal, peace-loving, tolerant Muslims and drives them into committing horrific feats of terror. One such sufferer is 25=year-old Mohammed Taheri-Azar, who was living out a calm, routine, uneventful life when he was suddenly afflicted with SJS and drove his SUV into a pedestrian area at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, hoping to kill as many infidels as he could before he himself was, in turn, struck down by police. (READ MORE)
Lorie Byrd: The Non-Obama Convention - If you missed Hillary's speech tonight, let me summarize it for you: Obama is the Democrat nominee so I will support him, since he is the Democrat and I am a Democrat. She also talked about her campaign and how her candidacy inspired women and little girls. She looked great and her video was great. She just didn't make the case for Obama. She didn't talk about how he is qualified to lead. She said his name plenty of times, but she really didn't talk about him. Tomorrow night Bill Clinton will speak. We all know what he will talk about, because it is all he ever talks about, and it ain't Obama. The other speaker tomorrow night will be Joe Biden. Biden is known for his love of the sound of his own voice so I expect he will be talking more about himself than Obama. (READ MORE)
Warner Todd Huston: Despite Soft Polls in US, Bloomberg News Tells us Germans ‘Overwhelmingly Favor Obama’ - On August 25 Patrick Donahue of Bloomberg breathlessly informed us that a recent poll showed that Germans love Barack Obama. In a week where Obama’s soft polling numbers with Americans who will do the actual voting, you’d be excused if you wondered who cared, but apparently Bloomberg thinks this Obama puffing “news” is worth reporting. It’s more reason to be suspicious that the Old Media is in the tank for Barack Obama, in any case. This particular Bloomberg story has little substance and is centered on a population that cannot even vote for Obama in the first place. Interestingly, however, this story makes no effort to contrast high polling numbers in Germany with the much softer support Obama finds in the U.S.A. At least such a comparison might have served a more newsworthy purpose. (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: HALFWAY HOME AND DEMS STILL CAN’T FIND UNITY - Allow me to take off my partisan hat for a moment and try to give a coldly analytical view of the Democratic convention at the halfway point. It seems to me that the major themes of the convention have largely been subsumed by the Clinton drama and that the more the Obama camp tries to assuage the hurt feelings of the PUMA’s, the Hillraisers, and the bitter end Hillaryites, the more they become resistant to the call for unity. Frankly, I don’t know what else the Obama people could be doing to rectify this situation. They have bent over backwards to accommodate the wishes of Hillary’s campaign and, by extension, her supporters. And all that they seem to be getting for their trouble are leaks about how “arrogant” they are and how they have been disrespectful to Hillary and her supporters. What this has done is elevate the level of tension in the hall so that rather than coming off excited and confident, the Democrats seem hesitant and worried. (READ MORE)
Dan Riehl: Obama Caught In Perfect Storm Of Events - A series of events are coming together to create, perhaps not a perfect storm, but certainly in-climate weather for Barack Obama given that he hoped to capture lightening in a bottle with a rhetorical whirlwind Thursday night at Invesco Stadium. The first wave was Hillary Clinton, who endorsed an agenda last night in Denver which included at least slight personal praise for John McCain, yet yielded no such thing for Barack Obama. The second big wave to crash into him is coming tomorrow with Hillary's, even if sometimes inappropriately engorged, lessor half. Then after two nights of Clinton convention domination, Obama will still not have Thursday evening entirely to himself. While the speech will certainly dominate political coverage it isn't really news. And as we saw with Obama's Veep circus, the media will be forced to speculate, spy and continuously ask who is John McCain going to be rolling out as Veep come Friday afternoon. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Video: Behind the scenes at Invesco and the “regal” stage - Earlier, I wrote about Barack Obama and the Temple of The One, but the picture we had didn’t give quite the same perspective as this taken by “See Swann”. The intrepid correspondent’s narrative gets a little tiresome, but his access to the field at Invesco/Mile High Stadium gives the best possible look at the staging for Obama’s acceptance speech on Thursday night: Greek or Roman architecture? Based on my limited recollection, the Romans used similar construction but copied it from the Greeks. Perhaps architects can answer that question, but what hasn’t been answered is why Obama decided to go with this theme rather than use a more traditional, American theme for his staging. Should a man who is trying to push back against being defined as an elitist opt to speak from an ersatz Greek temple? What screams elitist more than a Mount Olympus reference? (READ MORE)
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