Obama constantly touts his judgement as one of the prime qualities that he would bring to the office of President. But on the most important issue of the time, at the time that it was most important to make a good judgement, he made a terribly, terribly bad judgement:
“To reach such a solution, we must communicate clearly and effectively to the factions in Iraq that the days of asking, urging, and waiting for them to take control of their own country are coming to an end.” This is the most absurd point of all. The Iraqis didn’t have enough trained and seasoned security forces to bring stability. Retreat would not have forced them to work together — it would have forced the factions to arm themselves and go to war to protect themselves. The central government needed more time to develop the means to “take control of their own country”, and in 2008 we have seen the results.
McCain and Bush made the right call in supporting the Surge. The irony of the situation now is that the gains that we have made through the Surge have made Obama's withdrawal plans feasible, instead of crazy - as they were when he started advocating them - in other words, the rightness of McCain and Bush ultimately allow Obama to seem more reasonable, and thus, electable. That's a shame.
"Irrational" is how 36th District Court Judge Ronald Giles described Kilpatrick's assault on a deputy who was trying Thursday afternoon to serve court papers on a friend of the mayor. Good for Giles to finally take real charge of the mayor's criminal case Friday, after weeks of swaying in the hot air from Kilpatrick's defense team. The judge set a thug-like cash bond for the mayor, subjected him to random drug tests, and generally dressed Kilpatrick down for incredibly bad behavior. In short, he treated the mayor like the criminal defendant he is. About time.
Maybe now Kilpatrick's $700-an-hour lawyers will get serious with Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy about some kind of plea to end this nightmare, which has yet to reach even the preliminary hearing stage. Trial? Likely into next year. Cost? Millions of Wayne County tax dollars that could be put to so much better use.
With a cloud hanging over the City Council because of its own scandal on a sludge contract, there's a big ball sitting in Gov. Jennifer Granholm's court, too. The council asked her to use her constitutional power to boot the mayor; Granholm, ever judicious, has set up a legal procedure for decision-making. It is at least on a faster pace than the mayor's criminal case, but nothing official can really begin to happen until after Labor Day, and this, again, is going to take time and money from a state that has so many other major needs for its resources.
Even as Granholm's quasi-judicial cogs are turning, she ought to be privately leaning on the mayor to do everybody, including himself, a favor and quit. Whatever she may think of the legal grounds for removing him, Granholm can't be happy about the mayor's public conduct, the paralysis he has inflicted on Detroit and the damage he is doing to Michigan's image. Next time he calls to ask for a meeting on Cobo Hall, she just has to say: "Mr. Mayor, what's the point? I've been asked to sit in judgment of you. We have nothing else to discuss unless it's how you can spare us both a lot of grief."
And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.
He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the
Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.
And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.
From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.
And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.
And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.
We should be grateful that Chuck Schumer has at least grasped the interrelation of supply and demand. Now we just need explain to him the notion of fungibility, that a barrel of American oil is precisely the equivalent of Saudi oil as far as supply goes, and we'll be in like Flynn.
BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: "They said we couldn't leave when violence was up, they say we can't leave when violence is down." Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might "refine" his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.
Jonah Goldberg has actually been to ANWR's coastal plain, where oil drilling would be taking place right now if people weren't so, well, stupid:
ANWR is roughly the size of South Carolina, and it is spectacular. However, the area where, according to Department of Interior estimates, some 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil reside is much smaller and not necessarily as awe-inspiring. It would amount to the size of Dulles airport.
Question for McCain: Has South Carolina been ruined because it has an airport?
The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt renders a valuable service by wading through last week’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report which ostensibly flogs the “Bush Lied” theme, but in fact reports that Pres. Bush’s statements on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, chemical weapons, biological weapons, production capability and mobile laboratories, weapons of mass destruction overall, ballistic missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda were all substantiated by the available intelligence...
Forget the facts. Any political or military gains in Iraq, according to Obama, are only “tactical.”
Obama does not even go to Iraq for two years (he went once for two days in 2006), nor does he receive individual briefings from General Petraeus. He has already determined that whatever the success of the U.S. and Iraqi forces in Sadr City and Basra, whatever the performance of the Iraqi army, and whatever the level of violence, we have already been defeated and must leave immediately.
In rejecting John McCain’s invitation for a joint visit to Iraq, Obama’s spokesman declared that “we don’t need any more ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge.” No word on why the passage of key political benchmarks doesn’t qualify as “political progress.” In short, facts don’t matter.
The WaPo calls this a tragic and catastrophic failure of intelligence by the CIA. It should also say forthrightly that this entire line is a tragic and catastrophic failure of intelligence by the Democratic Party, who have had no coherent terrorism policy since 9/11 except to parrot MoveOn.org's stupidest sloganeering.
My colleagues on The Times’s editorial page called the [farm] bill “disgraceful.” My former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page ripped it as a “scam.” Yet such is the logic of collective action; the bill is certain to become law. It passed with 81 votes in the Senate and 318 in the House — enough to override President Bush’s coming veto. Nearly everyone in Congress got something.
The question amid this supposed change election is: Who is going to end this sort of thing?
Barack Obama talks about taking on the special interests. This farm bill would have been a perfect opportunity to do so. But Obama supported the bill, just as he supported the 2005 energy bill that was a Christmas tree for the oil and gas industries.
Obama’s vote may help him win Iowa, but it will lead to higher global food prices and more hunger in Africa. Moreover, it raises questions about how exactly he expects to bring about the change that he promises.
If elected, Obama’s main opposition will not come from Republicans. It will come from Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. Already, the Democratic machine is reborn. Lobbyists are now giving 60 percent of their dollars to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The pharmaceutical industry, the defense industry and the financial sector all give more money to Democrats than Republicans. If Obama is actually going to bring about change, he’s going to have to ruffle these sorts of alliances. If he can’t do it in an easy case like the farm bill, will he ever?
Al Qaeda in Iraq is pretty close to dead, according to al Qaeda in Iraq. Hence, it's the perfect time to elect the guy who wants to pull out of Iraq and reinvigorate al Qaeda in Iraq! Because if we don't have a war to protest, the lefties will all have to get rid of those cool "endlessthis war" bumper stickers.
What we have is jihadists virtually conceding defeat, while the leading Democratic candidate for president essentially campaigns on a way to turn that defeat into a victory by removing the obstacles to jihadi success.
To which I say, keep your chin up, al Qaeda in Iraq! After all, O! is promising hopeyness and changitude! — though for a while there, he had me convinced he was directing that message at the US electorate.
Instead, turns out he’s just pitching it toward our adversaries and the uninformed here at home — and of course, to those who feel that shows of US military strength are just part and parcel of an unsavory US international hegemony, one that needs to be thwarted so that we’ll learn our lesson about crass interventionalism (defined as interventionalism in our own national interests, rather than the kind that smacks of showy altruism); stick to ourselves, culturally speaking; and concentrate on important things, like how best to have the government regulate our thermostats, our medical care, our eating habits, etc., as well as how best to “put every American to work” in the service of the State — a small offering, if you will, to the Secular Godhead and His cult of personality.
Can someone explain why it is, exactly, that Barack Obama is not a laughingstock?
A very good question indeed, in response to Obama's ridiculous assertions about Iran not being a threat to the US (although it should be noted that the very next day Obama was claiming that the threat from Iran is "grave").
What with all the "hope" and "change" being bandied about at those massive campaign rallies, I doubt that there's time to consider that perhaps Iran isn't the rational actor on the world stage that the Soviet Union was, and that perhaps negotiation and deterrence and all that nice stuff might not work as well on a truly nutty theocrat like Mahmud Ahmadinejad. And there's certainly no time in between all of the bashing of Bush the Warmongering Cowboy to note that over the last five years or so, Iran has been engaging in a diplomacy fest with Europe (of the type that Obama and his Democrat cohorts are all atwitter about) that has accomplished precisely nothing, being used instead by the Iranian regime as a diversion to buy time and advance their nuclear ambitions.
And this guy is very likely to be our next president. God help us.
I've been waiting patiently for Matthew Yglesias to explain the sudden end to Obama's "Accidental Foreign Policy," which met its demise over the weekend with a report in the New York Times that the candidate does not now, nor has he ever, supported direct and immediate talks with the leader of Iran. This happened just as Yglesias published a piece in the Atlantic celebrating Obama's bold and unwavering support for direct and immediate talks with the leader of Iran.
