Dark Star

American Thinker as uncovered some of the surrounding circumstances regarding Scott McClellen's book What Happened.

This is short article that tells you most everything you need to know, and supports my observations in an earlier post, found here.
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This book is essential to understanding the events after 9/11 through the first two years of the Iraq War. Ever wonder why we didn't take out Sadr when we had the chance in Fallujah? Friedman answers this, and host of other questions we all had at one time or another. An engrossing read. It sucks you in and doesn't let go. The war, the politics, and the behind-the-scenes decision making.

You can read the author's bio here.
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I have added a new list to the righthand frames on this page where I will put book titles with links to Amazon. As I add a books to the list I'll post a note about why I recommend it.

First on the list is Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. For those of you not familiar with Thomas Sowell by name, he is a Senior Fellow at the conservative think tank The Hoover Institution. He was a student and remains a disciple of the late great economist, Milton Friedman. Sowell, along with William F. Buckely, Jr., is the conservative movement's most intellectually powerful presence of the past 20 years. Since Buckley's passing, Sowell is our greatest living philosopher.

He is an economist, but it would be a mistake to think his insight s useful only for the economy. Far from it. However, if you want to know about the economy, this is the place to start.

Economic, for most of us, remains a mystery. Even though we feel the pinch, or the benefits of Washington's economic policies, few of us understand why what happens, happens. Even grasping the most elementary of ideas in economics can leave one feeling dry as a bone, and sleepy as a bloodhound on the porch.

Basic Economics is your ticket to understanding economics. Period. Sowell's knack for making complex ideas seem as easy to grasp as the story in a Dick and Jane book.

If you were ever intimidated by economics, but wished you knew how it all works, look no further. If you are an intereste observer of politics, you need to understand economics.

This will be the best money you've spent on a book in years.

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I think it was in the National Review where I recently read someone explaining the difference between being a good steward of the Earth, as the Bible commands, and Earth-worship. Earth-worship can be seen in the leftist environmentalist movement. It's either Earth worship, or, as Charles Krauthammer explains (amplifying comments made by Czech Republic president Vaclav Claus) in his latest column.

The Environmentalists are simply Socialists with a new sales pitch. I think there's merit to the argument.
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Been very busy today, but I wanted to put two cents in on this Scott McClellen book.

First, who of us wasn't relieved when they finally replaced him with Tony Snow? He was a mediocre Press Secretary (that's being generous), and he was the PS at a time when the White House needed a slugger.

So when they finally replaced him with Snow, there was a sense of relief on the Republican side. But apparently McClellen was bitter at being asked to resign.

The passages of the book I've heard are just repetitions of what the Liberals have been saying since 2002.

But, as Charles Krauthammer pointed out last night on Special Report with Brit Hume, since he never publicly nor privately confided to anyone at anytime this is how he actually felt, and that he continued, and presumably would have continued had he not been replaced with Snow, to feed the media and the American public what he felt - apparently quite strongly, was "propaganda," for his paycheck, then what kind of person are we talking about here?

Where was the internal protest. Where was the resignation in the middle of the fight?

Looks to me like after a less than stellar career at his post, he decided to cash in. And he knew what would sell books. And by turning his back, so throughly on the Bush Administration, he opens himself to more opportunities for consulting on the news talk shows around Washington and New York where he will now be welcomes with open arms by the likes of Cris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Matt Lauer, etc.
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Since the release and reviews of the movie Recount and the coming November elections are bound to bring the crap to the forefront again, here's some intellectual ammo for you on the Bush-Gore Florida election.

In 2001, a bunch of News organizations got together and hired the NORC to examine and produce a definitive history of the votes in Florida. From the NORC's website:

A group of the nation's largest news organizations has retained the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to conduct an in-depth inventory of uncounted ballots from the presidential race in Florida.

The group, which includes The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Tribune Publishing, CNN, Associated Press, the St. Petersburg Times and the Palm Beach Post, plans to produce a database that will describe in detail the 180,000 Florida ballots that didn't register a vote on machine counts – including both undervotes (no vote for president recorded) and overvotes (two or more votes for president). (Tribune, based in Chicago, owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, among others; Washington Post Co. owns the Post and Newsweek; The New York Times owns the Boston Globe, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and the Lakeland Ledger, among others.)

NORC, a nonprofit survey research firm affiliated with the University of Chicago will view the ballots and abstract information about the marks, or lack of marks, on each. NORC will not attempt to assess whether any particular ballot contains a "vote" but simply describe the marks.

The results of the study were reported at the following:

The Washington Post
The New York Times
CNN
PBS

Basically, Bush would have won even with the recounts which the U.S. Supreme court stopped - twice, had been counted. The only way Gore won in any scenario is if "overvotes," were counted, which they never requested, because it wouldn't have been allowed, because it's impossible to tell voter intent if they voted for two presidential candidates on the same ballot.

So remember, Gore never led Bush, not in the first count, the automatic machine recount, not in the hand recounts, not even if all recounts the Democrats were requesting had been done, completed, turned sideways. It would have never happened for Gore.
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Tom Friedman has a fantasy about a mythical presidential candidate, who would regulate gas prices with a price floor:

This candidate would note that $4-a-gallon gasoline is really starting to impact driving behavior and buying behavior in way that $3-a-gallon gas did not. The first time we got such a strong price signal, after the 1973 oil shock, we responded as a country by demanding and producing more fuel-efficient cars. But as soon as oil prices started falling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we let Detroit get us readdicted to gas guzzlers, and the price steadily crept back up to where it is today.

We must not make that mistake again. Therefore, what our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Philip Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.

To ease the burden on the less well-off, “anyone earning under $80,000 a year would be compensated with a reduction in the payroll taxes,” said Verleger. Or, he suggested, the government could use the gasoline tax to buy back gas guzzlers from the public and “crush them.”

But the message going forward to every car buyer and carmaker would be this: The price of gasoline is never going back down. Therefore, if you buy a big gas guzzler today, you are locking yourself into perpetually high gasoline bills. You are buying a pig that will eat you out of house and home. At the same time, if you, a manufacturer, continue building fleets of nonhybrid gas guzzlers, you are condemning yourself, your employees and shareholders to oblivion.

What a cruel thing for a candidate to say? I disagree. Every decade we look back and say: “If only we had done the right thing then, we would be in a different position today.”

But no politician dared to do so. When gasoline was $2 a gallon, the government never would have imposed a $2 tax. Now that it is $4 a gallon, the government should at least keep it there, since it is really having the right effect.

Yes, that evil free-market is to blame.

Price ceilings and price floors don't work. They never have. They make a screwed up situation even more screwed up. Price Floors always - ALWAYS - lead to surpluses. Price Ceilings to shortages.

First of all let's take a look at what Mr. Friedman is really wanting here. He is wanting to keep prices artificially high. Not just gas prices either. That's just where the action is. When gas prices go up, everything goes up. You not only pay more to drive to the store, you pay more when you get there, because whoever brought it to the store drove to get there, too. That's a simple illustration, but transportation is the backbone of the economy and transportation takes oil.

So Mr. Friedman would have it that ALL of our prices for everything stay artificially high, even if oil prices tumble to $50/barrel. So we would all be paying the same we're paying right now, from now until new technology arrived to supplant oil. His reasoning? Because the higher prices seem to be having the desired effect of curbing consumption. (And, therefore, he says, reducing our dependence on foreign oil).

Well, hang on now, if it's that simple, why didn't we do that a long time ago? Because we had responsible people take over the White House after Jimmy Carter is the correct answer.

So what happens when our price floor prevents the market from reflecting $50/barrel oil? Surplus. And if Americans won't buy it (at the artificially high price), then guess where it goes? The answer is not here. So while emerging economies like India and China (the causes for higher demand at present) can buy more gas for their vehicles on the cheap, Americans pay through the nose. And if Americans pay through the nose for gas, as we've noted, they pay through the nose for everything else. Imagine Communist China paying real prices for gas, which are lower than America's artificial prices. Think about it.

So what happens to China and India's imports to the U.S.? They increase. Why because they can make and transport things cheaper than we can. So what happens to our manufacturing jobs then?

So what makes me so sure oil prices will come down naturally anyway? Because they are being kept high right now, due to futures investors buying oil futures to protect themselves against a weakened U.S. dollar. And the U.S. dollar will not stay weak. It will rebound, causing more investments in the dollar, oil futures hedging will fall, and so will oil prices.

Have you been hearing all these advertisements for investing in Gold? It's based on the same principle. The dollar is currency. Gold is money. There's a difference. That's why you don't hear a bunch of advertisements that want you to invest in oil. Oil doesn't have to advertise.

Oil is more "money," than money.
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From The Weekly Standard Blog:

We all expected it, and most of us still do, but it's odd that it has failed to materialize. Obama has slipped in the new poll from Newsweek and now runs even with McCain at 46-46. More interesting is his decline in both Gallup tracking polls. Those polls don't reflect the brouhaha over Clinton's RFK gaffe, so maybe he gets his bounce back this week in the race for the nomination, but it is hard to explain how Clinton has bounced back from a deficit of 16 points less than ten days ago. Also, Clinton still holds a significant lead over McCain, and she has consistently held that lead since the beginning of the month. In the Obama-McCain match up, McCain has jumped ahead by two points in what looks to be a far less stable race. But if there's one thing we know for certain, Democrats aren't going to be swayed by electability arguments. Or are they?

Check out the graph.

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From the Weekly Standard Blog:

Obama talks about a possible meeting with Raul Castro:

HOLLIS: If I can ask one more question. Sort of a follow-up to comments you made yesterday. Will you meet one-on-one with Raul Castro and other leaders of the Cuban government?

OBAMA: Not immediately. But what I've said is that if we start low-level talks, and at the diplomatic levels, to explore areas of potential mutual interest, then that's something we should continue. Our primary interest is making sure the people of Cuba are free. Freedom of religion, of press, travel, and to organize politically, and that would be the agenda. We would press them. If there appeared to be progress in the area of liberalization--as I've said repeatedly, I would be willing, if it is going to move the progress, to move forward, with any leader that is willing to consider these issues.

So is a willingness to "consider these issues," i.e. freedom of religion, of press, travel, and to organize politically, now considered "preparation" for a meeting with the leader of Cuba? Because those sound like preconditions.

This is not a complicated issue. Will Obama meet with A'jad, Castro, Kim Jong-Il, and Bashar Assad without preconditions? And if so, what on earth does he mean by "preparations." If preparations involve these leaders surrendering on every major issue of contention, how is Obama's position any different that President Bush's?

At the end of the day, I think it's mostly that Obama doesn't have any idea what he's talking about from day to day, interview to interview.

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“This is in our religion and nobody can force us to do anything against our religion,” he said. “If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that.”

(Hat tip: LGF)
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The Open Left wonders why there are so few stories concerning Iraq over the Memorial Day weekend.

Take a moment, today, while you're grilling up those ribs or thighs, to consider some other charred body parts - the arms, legs, and other limbs our soldiers have left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our troops have come home maimed, or in a flag-wrapped box, so that we could go on grillin,' chillin', and fillin' our tanks and tummies with cheap fuel and food.

Good luck with that; according to a report in today's New York Times, most Americans are too busy struggling to feed their families, fuel their cars, and cling to the roof over their heads to spend much time thinking about the sacrifices our soldiers are making on our behalf.

Apparently, we'd rather tune out the war, and our news media is happy to oblige, as David Carr reports:

"...coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September."

Carr asked Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, how the media could largely ignore a war that has cost us thousands of lives and over $1 trillion. Keller e-mailed back:

There is a cold and sad calculation that readers/viewers aren't that interested in the war, whether because they are preoccupied with paying $4 for a gallon of gas and avoiding foreclosure, or because they have Iraq fatigue.

This is largely a bunch of crap. The problem is that most of the news coming out of Iraq is encouraging and the media doesn't see fit to report it.

Ralph Peters explains.
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This is fun:

This is an article I could have written a long time ago. I refrained in order to wait until the anti-US fifth column overplays their hand, which has happened. Applying true Sun-Tzu tactics, their exhausted state is the perfect time for a counterattack.

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I wonder when the MSM will give Obama a Pop Quiz, like the ones they are fond of giving Conservatives.

LGF wonders, too:

On Friday Barack Obama spelled out his Latin America policy (it’s just like his Middle East policy—talk to everybody), and inadvertently supplied another example of his stunning ignorance of history and naive foreign policy ideas. The speech is transcribed at the official Obama campaign web site: Renewing U.S. Leadership in the Americas.

Since the Bush Administration launched a misguided war in Iraq, its policy in the Americas has been negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples’ lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region.

No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum.

This is pathetic. Hugo Chavez came to power during the Clinton Administration, and was first elected President of Venezuela in 1998, two years before the Bush Administration took office.

UPDATE at 5/25/08 9:15:04 am:

This is far from the first time Barack Obama has been wrong about a simple historical fact.

I’d like to hear him answer some simple questions about world history, to see exactly how much he really does know. No blow-dried media talking head will ever do this, of course, but I suspect people would be in for a real shock if they knew the depths of his historical ignorance.

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An excellent summary post from the guys at Power Line:

On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, "and it hasn't made us safer." It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us.

Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made us safer since 2001. Over the course of the Bush administration, successful attacks on the United States and its interests overseas have dwindled to virtually nothing.

Some perspective here is required. While most Americans may not have been paying attention, a considerable number of terrorist attacks on America and American interests abroad were launched from the 1980s forward, too many of which were successful. What follows is a partial history:

1988
February: Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Higgens, Chief of the U.N. Truce Force, was kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah.

December: Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York was blown up over Scotland, killing 270 people, including 35 from Syracuse University and a number of American military personnel.

1991
November: American University in Beirut bombed.

1993
January: A Pakistani terrorist opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two agents and wounding three.

February: World Trade Center bombed, killing six and injuring more than 1,000.

1995
January: Operation Bojinka, Osama bin Laden's plan to blow up 12 airliners over the Pacific Ocean, discovered.

November: Five Americans killed in attack on a U.S. Army office in Saudi Arabia.

1996
June: Truck bomb at Khobar Towers kills 19 American servicemen and injures 240.

June: Terrorist opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one.

1997
February: Palestinian opens fire at top of Empire State Building, killing one and wounding more than a dozen.

November: Terrorists murder four American oil company employees in Pakistan.

1998
January: U.S. Embassy in Peru bombed.

August: Simultaneous bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people and injured over 5,000.

1999
October: Egypt Air flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing 100 Americans among the more than 200 on board; the pilot yelled "Allahu Akbar!" as he steered the airplane into the ocean.

2000
October: A suicide boat exploded next to the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 American sailors and injuring 39.

2001
September: Terrorists with four hijacked airplanes kill around 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

December: Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," tries to blow up a transatlantic flight, but is stopped by passengers.

The September 11 attack was a propaganda triumph for al Qaeda, celebrated by a dismaying number of Muslims around the world. Everyone expected that it would draw more Muslims to bin Laden's cause and that more such attacks would follow. In fact, though, what happened was quite different: the pace of successful jihadist attacks against the United States slowed, decelerated further after the onset of the Iraq war, and has now dwindled to essentially zero. Here is the record:

2002
October: Diplomat Laurence Foley murdered in Jordan, in an operation planned, directed and financed by Zarqawi in Iraq, perhaps with the complicity of Saddam's government.

2003
May: Suicide bombers killed 10 Americans, and killed and wounded many others, at housing compounds for westerners in Saudi Arabia.

October: More bombings of United States housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killed 26 and injured 160.

2004
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2005
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2006
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2007
There were no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

2008
So far, there have been no successful attacks inside the United States or against American interests abroad.

I have omitted from the above accounting a few "lone wolf" Islamic terrorist incidents, like the Washington, D.C. snipers, the Egyptian who attacked the El Al counter in Los Angeles, and an incident or two when a Muslim driver steered his vehicle into a crowd. These are, in a sense, exceptions that prove the rule, since the "lone wolves" were not, as far as we know, in contact with international Islamic terrorist groups and therefore could not have been detected by surveillance of terrorist conversations or interrogations of al Qaeda leaders.

It should also be noted that the decline in attacks on the U.S. was not the result of jihadists abandoning the field. Our government stopped a number of incipient attacks and broke up several terrorist cells, while Islamic terrorists continued to carry out successful attacks around the world, in England, Spain, Russia, Pakistan, Israel, Indonesia and elsewhere.

There are a number of possible reasons why our government's actions after September 11 may have made us safer. Overthrowing the Taliban and depriving al Qaeda of its training grounds in Afghanistan certainly impaired the effectiveness of that organization. Waterboarding three top al Qaeda leaders for a minute or so apiece may have given us the vital information we needed to head off plots in progress and to kill or apprehend three-quarters of al Qaeda's leadership. The National Security Agency's eavesdropping on international terrorist communications may have allowed us to identify and penetrate cells here in the U.S., as well as to identify and kill terrorists overseas. We may have penetrated al Qaeda's communications network, perhaps through the mysterious Naeem Noor Khan, whose laptop may have been the 21st century equivalent of the Enigma machine. Al Qaeda's announcement that Iraq is the central front in its war against the West, and its call for jihadis to find their way to Iraq to fight American troops, may have distracted the terrorists from attacks on the United States. The fact that al Qaeda loyalists gathered in Iraq, where they have been decimated by American and Iraqi troops, may have crippled their ability to launch attacks elsewhere. The conduct of al Qaeda in Iraq, which revealed that it is an organization of sociopaths, not freedom fighters, may have destroyed its credibility in the Islamic world. The Bush administration's skillful diplomacy may have convinced other nations to take stronger actions against their own domestic terrorists. (This certainly happened in Saudi Arabia, for whatever reason.) Our intelligence agencies may have gotten their act together after decades of failure. The Department of Homeland Security, despite its moments of obvious lameness, may not be as useless as many of us had thought.

No doubt there are officials inside the Bush administration who could better allocate credit among these, and probably other, explanations of our success in preventing terrorist attacks. But based on the clear historical record, it is obvious that the Bush administration has done something since 2001 that has dramatically improved our security against such attacks. To fail to recognize this, and to rail against the Bush administration's security policies as failures or worse, is to sow the seeds of greatly increased susceptibility to terrorist attack in the next administration.

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Maxine Waters ignores basic economic principles and threatens to "socialize," oil companies.

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The Weekly Standard Blog has issued a Halo Alert on the cover of Newsweek.

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I watched the HBO movie Recount over the holiday weekend, and was impressed overall. There are several fantastic performances, one of which is not Laura Dern.

Kathrine Harris is vilified and made out to be a delusional idiot. While her resemblance to Harris is striking, her performance is a superficial caricature. It's my sense that everyone on the production was standing off -camera encouraging Dern with winks and snickers, but by the time her funnies reach the viewer at home, they are thin and flat as a sheet of paper.

Other than that, however, the film is excellent. For those of us who followed the news minute to minute during that time, seeing a representation of what happened behind the scenes was extremely interesting.

Other than the Kathrine Harris thing, I found the film fair to both sides. Tom Wilkinson's performance as James Baker was brilliant. And his speech to the team a the end of the film was pitch perfect as he tells them what every critic will say of the election results, how those results were found, and what he response should be.

That the recount happened at all (beyond the automatic machine recount triggered by the result margin) is a disgrace. The shameless scraping for votes from any where and in any way, shows the greed for the power the Gore side felt. That's not to say that greed didn't exist on the Bush side, it may very well have, but the fact that Bush won the election served to put them on defense rather than offense, leaving the lust for power, and to what extent it existed, unexposed.

For the Gore folks, it's laid out for all to see. And it's kind of ugly. Kevin Spacey in the lead role as a Gore manager, says in one scene, 'You know what I really want to know? Who won this election - Who won the f****ing thing!?"

At this point in the film, we, the viewers are supposed to feel his frustration. Liberals, no doubt would feel his frustration. Phrased as it is, though, we are meant to believe that those on the Gore team simply wanted to have every vote count. But the actions of these same characters in this very film belie that as their primary motive. What the Spacey character really wants, is to see that Gore had really won the election, and is shown in a later scene, sarcastically thanking Joe Lieberman for saying on TV that the military absentee ballots should count.

I was amused, though, when one Gore staffer come rushing in and announces that people had been turned away at the polls for having names similar to that of convicted felons. The movie puts the number at 20,000 (non-felons). Then says most of them were African American. And this is bad because African Americans vote Democrat over 80%.

But here's the thing: Felons, by and large, are liars. So why would they use their real name when going to the polls when they know their right to vote has been revoked? And aliases are usually something similar to the person's real name because they are easier for the felon to remember.

No, I'm not amused that innocent people and good citizens, even Liberal Democrats, were turned away at the polls who shouldn't have been. But for me, this is a great example of Liberal policies coming back to bite them, because here is yet another fantastic reason for voters to show photo I.D. when they show up to vote. That would take care of the problem.

Good, but not great, movie overall. I'd give it three out of five stars.

Pajamas Media covers it here.

The Corner covers it here.

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The Open Left blog has a post about McCain and his "Jesus Complex". There is a lot of ridiculous psycho-babble (liberals just love to garnish their arguments with pseudo-academic extrapolations - makes'em look smart) but at the end of the day, the argument is basically this:

Senator McCain's motto seems to be: Judge me not by what I say or do or who I climb into bed with, rather judge me by the fact that I served my country. This is what might be called the, I'm Jesus Christ argument. Having suffered, been imprisoned and then raised again on behalf of America, who are ordinary mortals such as Senator Obama, to question McCain's judgments?

I think this is hilarious. Apparently, Libs think this argument is just fine when it serves their purposes. We saw the very same argument used to their benefit in the following cases:

The Jersey Girls (9/11 widows critical of the Bush Administration); from Michelle Malkin:

You’ve read the story of the day, all day, on Drudge: Ann Coulter is antagonizing the Left with her comments about the liberal 9/11 widows known as “The Jersey Girls.” Hillary Clinton is going ape. TV producers of all partisan stripes are ecstatic. So are Ann’s publicists and publisher.

Unfortunately, lost in all the hype and hyperbole on both sides is the central point about the absolute moral authority the MSM confers on victims they agree with–while victims whose politics they do not share can’t get the time of day. Ann told Sean Hannity today she hopes her comments will demolish the “liberal infallibility” the MSM confers on its faves. (Video here.) Ironically, IMO, the facade has already eroded considerably–thanks to new media, talk radio, Fox News, etc. Case in point here.

"Phony Soldier" Jesse MacBeth; from Rush Limbaugh's transcript:

Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse MacBeth. Now, he was a "corporal." I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse MacBeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn't his Purple Heart; it wasn't his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse MacBeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse MacBeth describes the horrors this way: "We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque."

Now, recently, Jesse MacBeth, poster boy for the anti-war left, had his day in court. And you know what? He was sentenced to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and his Army discharge record. He was in the Army. Jesse MacBeth was in the Army, folks, briefly. Forty-four days before he washed out of boot camp. Jesse MacBeth isn't an Army Ranger, never was. He isn't a corporal, never was. He never won the Purple Heart, and he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. You probably haven't even heard about this. And, if you have, you haven't heard much about it. This doesn't fit the narrative and the template in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party as to who is a genuine war hero. Don't look for any retractions, by the way. Not from the anti-war left, the anti-military Drive-By Media, or the Arabic websites that spread Jesse MacBeth's lies about our troops, because the truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose. They have to lie about such atrocities because they can't find any that fit the template of the way they see the US military. In other words, for the American anti-war left, the greatest inconvenience they face is the truth.

And who could forget Liberal Anti-Bush cause celeb Valerie Plame; from Andrew McCarthy:

My colleague Cliff May has already demonstrated the bankruptcy of the narrative the media relentlessly spouts for Bush-bashing public consumption: to wit, that Valerie Wilson, nee Plame, was identified as a covert CIA agent by the columnist Robert Novak, to whom she was compromised by an administration official. In fact, it appears Plame was first outed to the general public as a result of a consciously loaded and slyly hypothetical piece by the journalist David Corn. Corn's source appears to have been none other than Plame's own husband, former ambassador and current Democratic-party operative Joseph Wilson — that same pillar of national security rectitude whose notion of discretion, upon being dispatched by the CIA for a sensitive mission to Niger, was to write a highly public op-ed about his trip in the New York Times. This isn't news to the media; they have simply chosen not to report it.

The hypocrisy, though, only starts there. It turns out that the media believe Plame was outed long before either Novak or Corn took pen to paper. And not by an ambiguous confirmation from Rove or a nod-and-a-wink from Ambassador Hubby. No, the media think Plame was previously compromised by a disclosure from the intelligence community itself — although it may be questionable whether there was anything of her covert status left to salvage at that point, for reasons that will become clear momentarily.

And, of course, Cindy Sheehan, victim of smears by the right; from Salon.com:

She's been profiled in dozens of papers and hailed in a New York Times editorial. Consequently, she's also been smeared by the right. Pundits have pointed out Sheehan's apparent inconsistencies -- in the past, she said that she believed Bush cares about the troops who've died, and she spoke warmly of a brief visit with the president after Casey's death that she now recalls as insincere and impersonal. All this week Matt Drudge has hammered on Sheehan, publicizing criticism by some of her family members, who say they support Bush and the war. On the Tuesday edition of his show, Fox host Bill O'Reilly said Sheehan's behavior "borders on treasonous."

This is what they call "Swift-Boating" on the Left. A pejorative term for any criticism of whomever the Left considers a hero - usually protesters or "whistle-blowers" that stoke the fires of Liberal pet beliefs (i.e. Bush lied, etc.). It does, as this term's origin shows, extend to those who are SOLIDLY in the political fray and have been for years.

So I would urge the Left to cool it with all the psycho-babble they think explains this type of mind-set in John McCain.
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Power Line posts John McCain's statement about Obama with comments.

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Power Line has a few words for the latest Hollywood Limousine Liberal attempt in romanticizing the psychopath Che Guevara:

I'd rather have my fingernails pulled out than watch a four and a half hour tribute to Che, but, as if that isn't bad enough, the director and star say that you really need to see it more than once:

While it may be hard to persuade audiences to see it a first time, the story requires repeated viewings to really appreciate it, said Del Toro, also a producer on the project.

... "I really think that eventually, those people, when they see the movie for the third time, they'll start seeing things, they'll start seeing dimensions and angles, maybe a look or a smile or the use of this or a character here and there.

The only way that's going to happen is if they kidnap people. The way Guevara used to do.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I really have a serious problem with crtiquing a film before I see it. But the very idea of the film in this case bothers me.

It even bothers The New York Times:

His brutal role in turning a revolutionary movement into a dictatorship goes virtually unmentioned.

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One of my favorite writer/directors (David Mamet, pictured here with wife, actress Rebecca Pidgeon) recently published a piece in the Village Voice titled: "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'."

It's a great example of a liberal suddenly realizing that America is a great place to live, and then being honest about it.

While Mamet's Play and Screenwriting, I believe, are second to none, (credits include: Spartan, The Spanish Prisoner, Wag the Dog, Glengarry Glenn Ross, etc.) his op-ed writing leaves something to be desired. There are, however, some truly brilliant moments in this 5 page article.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bulls__t and go straight to firearms.

He goes on:

I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

If you have time, read the whole thing.

Looks like China has worked it's deal out with Cuba to drill off our coast. China can, and as this story reports "plans to," slant drill and get into the oil close to Florida and in the Gulf.

And we all know China is just as clean and safe as American drilling companies, right?
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Arrogance can get you into a lot of trouble. And Barak Obama is certainly arrogant. Charles Krauthammer's new column explains how Obama finds himself in this situation, and highlights the stupidity of it all. It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.

Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."

After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.

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The first of many attempts of the MSM to patch up Obama's Jeremiah Wright problem. Does McCain have a preacher-problem of his own?

From ABCNews:

"Islam is an anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world,"

Sounds about right to me.

But I don't think this will damage McCain. The stark difference between this an Jeremiah Wright is McCain wasn't sitting in this guy's pew for 20 years, wasn't married by him, and didn't have his kids baptized by him. Only to throw him overboard when it was politically expedient.

Having said that, I don't know how this idiot came up with this:

"America was founded with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed," Parsley says, "and I believe Sept. 11, 2001 was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore."

I'm sure we'll find out about a bunch of other nutty stuff he said. But if they think this will make Jeremiah Wright go away over the summer, they're wrong.

(Hat tip: LGF)
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Simon Fraser (Vancouver, Canada) University's Human Security Report Project has released their latest brief.

Challenging the expert consensus that the threat of global terrorism is increasing, the Human Security Brief 2007 reveals a sharp net decline in the incidence of terrorist violence around the world.

Fatalities from terrorism have declined by some 40 percent, while the loose-knit terror network associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda has suffered a dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim world.

Fatalities cut by 40% and al-Qaeda is suffering a "dramatic collapse in poplar support"?

That sounds like we're winning. Simon Fraser's in trouble now.


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American Thinker has a piece about Democrat Energy Policy rubbish along the lines of my post from last night.

Presently, over eighty-five per cent of our energy comes from "fossil fuels." We use more than twenty million barrels of oil every day in this country. For the economy to expand and give us time to create alternative forms of energy we will need more, not less, moderately priced fossil fuels in the intervening years. Nowhere in the Democrat plan is there a strategy to provide this energy.

Read the whole thing. It's concise and to the point.
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Found here.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a three-part series focusing on misstatements, prevarications and falsehoods proclaimed by the three major presidential candidates.

I'll post the other two as they come in.
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The New York Times reports that McCain has meetings set up with three potential running mates this weekend.

Here they are...

Governor Charles Joseph 'Charlie' Crist Jr. (FL)

Willard Mitt Romney

Governor Bobby Jindal (LA)

But that's not an exclusive list at this point.

In addition to Mr. Crist, Mr. Jindal and Mr. Romney, the McCain guest list includes some of his top political counselors, among them Charlie Black, a senior strategist, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, his frequent traveling companion and probably his closest colleague in the Senate. Also on hand will be at least one senior business executive prominent in Mr. McCain’s circle, Frederick W. Smith, the chairman of FedEx.

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I've had the pleasure to attend a lecture and Q&A with New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman. It was just after 9/11. He spoke about Middle Eastern affairs, terrorism, and his experiences engaging everyman Muslims all over the Middle East.

I found him intelligent, engaging, respectful, and very personable.

Having said that, I'm getting very tired of his doom-and-gloom. In almost every column it's all about how dumb President Bush is, how badly he has handled - quite literally - everything since the decision to invade Iraq.

In this column, Friedman is confused about something:

It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles an hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from what he called our “addiction to oil.”

The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world — the U.S. economy — to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states — from Russia to Venezuela to Iran — that are reshaping global politics in their own image.

It's not the president's - nor the government's - job to produce a scalable alternative to oil. It's the market's. And with oil at $130 a barrel, the president doesn't have to ask anybody to do anything. Fewer people can afford to drive an SUV, so they won't. Fewer people can afford to spend gas the way they normally would, so they will change their behavior.

As I've said before, what the government can do, and what the President has tried to do, is to remove government regulations and restrictions on domestic drilling to reduce our dependence on the "petro-authoritarian states". We have oil, but the Liberals won't let us go get it.

Rush Limbaugh made the point today that whenever domestic drilling is brought up, naysayers always point out that even if we started drilling today it would take ten years for that to have any affect on the market. His response: So what? We have to start somewhere. And if we had started ten years ago, we wouldn't be in this situation now.

But I would like to amplify this point. It might take ten years for new domestic drilling to have an affect on the market. (I'm not convinced that's true. If as we're told, much of this run-up in oil prices is due to oil market speculators, then the news that American has tapped its own well will surely give the speculators something to think about. But, for the sake of this argument, I'll cede the point). If it takes ten years for domestic oil drilling to have an affect on the market, how long would it take for a new scalable oil alternative to really take hold on the U.S. economy and free us from the grasp of the petro-authoritarians?

Currently, everybody's car runs on gas. Even the Prius. Let's say that over the next five years we come up with that oil alternative. And it works well enough to replace gasoline. How long will it take to replace even one quarter of he vehicles in the U.S. that run on gas with ones that run on the new fuel?

Let's even assume that the new vehicles are affordable, say, the price of a new Honda Civic (which is highly unlikely, by the way, considering it would be new technology and expensive for manufacturers to produce due to lack of industrial infrastructure). Let's also say that everybody who can afford one, buys one, and uses it.

What does Friedman think is a good estimate for all that? Ten years? If so, he's deluded. My best case estimate is thirty years for that kind of seismic shift in technology. And to get the entire country switched over? At least twice that long.

So does Mr. Friedman think that these crises that he's so concerned and baffled about will just wait on us? Not likely. So what are we supposed to do in the meantime? The answer, of course, is drill and refine. President Bush knows this and has been raising the alarm for at least six years.

And it's not like the market hasn't already started to work on the issue. Most car companies already offer a hybrid. The Prius has been a popular choice for a lot of people. Is the hybrid the final solution? No, but, it's the market moving in the right direction, and most importantly, moving in the right direction in the right way. Making something that people want, can afford, and will use. The government solution, ethanol, is a bad pipe-dream which will never work and wreak more havoc (on the economy and the environment) than it's worth. The only reason it's still even being considered is because of the massive government subsidies being flushed, like so much undigested corn, right down the drain. We're already seeing signs of the economic effects.

Now, if I understand him correctly, Tom Friedman is no fan of the ethanol mandate, but, Tom, ethanol is beside the point. It's the government's subsidies. It's an example of what the government's limitations are. And investment in new innovation is way, way out of the government's scope and function. Investing or encouraging (in the form of subsidies) market tested and proven technologies, may be a necessary function, and that's a reasonable point for discussion.

People not only don't like paying high gas prices - they can't after a certain point. That's what prices are for, to regulate supply and demand. Price goes up, less people can afford the scarce resource. Hence, less people get the scarce resource, hence, less is used.

People sell their SUVs. And if they can't afford a Prius, they can at least buy a used Civic. And they will if they get tired of eating Beenie Weenies and their cable gets turned off.

The market needs time to work, Tom. We should let it. And, pardon him, but President Bush takes his economic cues from another Mr. Friedman.
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I think so... and in the House, too.

On the Senate, Dick Morris puts it this way:

Overall, that’s a likely Democratic pickup of five seats, with an eight-seat gain possible, and, in a partisan wipeout, a 12-seat shift.

Ouch.

Prepare yourselves for a bad year.

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In her familiar scorching style, Ann Coulter lays the blade to the Liberals crying foul over the President's speech in Israel.

Liberals think all real tyrants ended with Hitler and act as if they would have known all along not to appease him. Next time is always different for people who refuse to learn from history. As Air America's Mark Green said: "Look, Hitler was Hitler." (Which, I admit, threw me for a loop: I thought Air America's position is that Bush is Hitler.)

She goes on:

What [Chris] Matthews and the [New York] Times are saying is this: We can have a Munich, but we promise to be tougher than Chamberlain was. Therein lies the flaw in their logic. Yes, in the abstract, it is technically possible to "talk" without giving up Czechoslovakia (or in today's case, Iraq or Israel).

But in reality, when talking to a lunatic without having first bombed him into submission, the only possible result is appeasement. Any talk with Hitler, or a McHitler like Ahmadinejad, that does not include handing over Czechoslovakia or Israel, like a game show parting gift, is going to be a relatively brief chat.

Churchill knew that before Chamberlain went to Munich. But a lot of Britons then, like a lot of Americans today, refused to see that blindingly obvious point.

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Thomas Sowell reminds us:

Even if you think our presidential choices this election year are between disgust and disaster, anyone who has ever been through a real disaster can tell you that this difference is not small. It is big enough to go vote on Election Day.

So bear that in mind.
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About that war-funding bill...

This is why Republicans are losing. Their base doesn't believe a word they say anymore.

Democrats have sought to pack $11 billion worth of new unemployment benefits into the war bill, along with extra Medicaid spending. Republicans have joined in, seeking money for NASA, bridges, health-care research, competitiveness research, the Mississippi coastline, drug-trafficking enforcement, and foreign aid. One addendum would have Congress give Louisiana $3.1 billion to help the state “match” previous federal contributions.

What has any of that to do with American military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq? Nothing.

Read the whole thing at NRO.

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It won't save the Republicans this time around. But it sure wouldn't hurt. Their platform current platform, "I'm not George W. Bush," isn't working. And no wonder... as much as has been made out of the President's low approval ratings, the Dems never beat him. And his approval rating has remained well above Congress's the whole time.

Suggestions from NRO here.

Suggestions from Sean Hannity here.

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Think of the money we'd save on movers.

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Climbing: A Cakewalk for Some Primates


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Senator Lieberman has an op-ed in today's WSJ concerning Barak Obama, the left-wing of the Democratic party, and bemoans the loss of the traditional Democrat party identity.

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More like he piggy-backed the free concert there that day.

Not much about this in the reports in the MSM, though they did make a big deal about the size of the crowd. Maybe it just slipped their minds.
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Iraqi Army takes over Sadr City.

Power Line comments with a link to the New York Times report.

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Few have seen the actual ad that Everybody is so twisted up about. Here it is. I think you'll find the reactions to this ad way out of proportion with the message.



In fairness, Michelle Obama clarified her remarks:



But, I'm struck by her attributing the opportunities that her working-class parents provided her in her going to Harvard and Princeton was "up to luck, or based on race, or gender, or based on political affiliation..."

Her "City-Worker" father would be surprised to hear, I'm sure, that his contributions to her education and raising were based on luck, race, and gender.

We should all be surprised that the wife of the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States thinks political affiliation has ANYTHING to do with whether or not you can go to a good college. Did she misspeak, or is she really that deluded?

Red State Update chimes in.

The last line is worth clicking the vid.


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In Barak Obama: Gaffe Machine Michelle Malkin lists gaffes - any one of which would have killed a Republican campaign - of the presumed Democratic nominee:

* Last May, he claimed that Kansas tornadoes killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.

*Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”

*Last week, in front of a roaring Sioux Falls, South Dakota audience, Obama exulted: “Thank you Sioux City…I said it wrong. I’ve been in Iowa for too long. I’m sorry.”

*Explaining last week why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky, Obama again botched basic geography: “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.” On what map is Arkansas closer to Kentucky than Illinois?

*Obama has as much trouble with numbers as he has with maps. Last March, on the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama, he claimed his parents united as a direct result of the civil rights movement:

“There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born.”

Obama was born in 1961. The Selma march took place in 1965. His spokesman, Bill Burton, later explained that Obama was “speaking metaphorically about the civil rights movement as a whole.”

*Earlier this month in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by honing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages.

*Over the weekend in Oregon, Obama pleaded ignorance of the decades-old, multi-billion-dollar massive Hanford nuclear waste clean-up:

“Here’s something that you will rarely hear from a politician, and that is that I’m not familiar with the Hanford, uuuuhh, site, so I don’t know exactly what’s going on there. (Applause.) Now, having said that, I promise you I’ll learn about it by the time I leave here on the ride back to the airport.”

I assume on that ride, a staffer reminded him that he’s voted on at least one defense authorization bill that addressed the “costs, schedules, and technical issues” dealing with the nation’s most contaminated nuclear waste site.

*Last March, the Chicago Tribune reported this little-noticed nugget about a fake autobiographical detail in Obama’s “Dreams from My Father:”

“Then, there’s the copy of Life magazine that Obama presents as his racial awakening at age 9. In it, he wrote, was an article and two accompanying photographs of an African-American man physically and mentally scarred by his efforts to lighten his skin. In fact, the Life article and the photographs don’t exist, say the magazine’s own historians.”

* And in perhaps the most seriously troubling set of gaffes of them all, Obama told a Portland crowd over the weekend that Iran doesn’t “pose a serious threat to us”–cluelessly arguing that “tiny countries” with small defense budgets can’t do us harm– and then promptly flip-flopped the next day, claiming, “I’ve made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.”

Keep'em coming.
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Dean Barnett from The Weekly Standard reports some of the confounding Democratic attempts to attack McCain.

The star of this show is Democratic congressional candidate Bill Gillespie:

"Admirals' sons," Gillespie said, unopposed for the Democratic nomination in the 1st Congressional District held by Republican Rep. Jack Kingston, "were treated like royalty. They were privileged people. They were given a silver spoon. Their careers were prepared for them."

Gillespie, a former Army officer who served in Iraq, said McCain was the kind of admiral's son who became a "maverick."

McCain, Gillespie added, was "somebody who needed to stand out, someone that needed to draw attention to themselves and ... was usually out for themselves."

Well, I'll give McCain this, going to POW camp and refusing to be released early is sure one way to stand out.

I've got issues with McCain, but his military record isn't one of them. Far from it. How many times have you heard McCain talk about his service? Very few.

Contrast that with John Kerry, who stopped short only of claiming that Martin Sheen's Willard in Apocalypse Now was actually based on his experiences in Vietnam. I guess he learned from Al Gore's mistake with the Love Story flap.

But keep on attacking McCain on his service and captivity Dems. It'll work for you, we promise.

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Well said, Mr. Hanson.

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From an interview on Political Punch:

TAPPER: In recent days, it has seemed that some of your staffers and supporters have walked back from your statement that you would be willing to meet with the leaders of rogue nations, countries hostile to the U.S., without preconditions. Your foreign policy adviser Susan Rice said you wouldn't necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad, Sen. Daschle said of course there would be conditions -- (Obama interrupts)

OBAMA: You know, Jake, I have to say I completely disagree that people have been walking back from anything. They may be correcting the characterizations or distortions of John McCain or others of what I said. What I said was I would meet with our adversaries including Iran, including Venezula, including Cuba, including North Korea, without preconditions but that does not mean without preparation.

TAPPER: Well, what's the difference?

OBAMA: There's a huge difference. When you talk about Iran, for example, the Bush administration's position has been we won't have talks with Iran until they agree to everything we want to them to agree to. That's not diplomacy. That's asking them to do what they say and then acknowledge we are willing to meet with them. That's not how diplomacy works. That's not how Ronald Reagan operated with Gorbachev or Kennedy with Khruschev or Nixon with Mao.

There are a whole series of steps that need to be taken before you have a presidential meeting but that doesn't mean you expect the other side to agree to every item on your list. That has been the attitude of the Bush administration and that will change when I'm President of the United States. What we are doing now hasn't worked. Iran is stronger now than when George Bush took office. The Cuban people are no more free than when George Bush took office. The one area we saw progress, North Korea, and that is in direct proportion to the Bush administration's reversing itself and participating in the six-party talks when early on they refused and (North Korea) developed nuclear weapons they didn't have when George Bush took office. We will return to common sense, bipartisan approach to diplomacy that existed before George Bush. In fact, his father practiced the same diplomacy I'm talking about.

(Hat tip: TWS)

That clear it up for everybody?

One would think that if the difference between preconditions and preparations were so "huge," then this bright, talented, articulate, US Senator could make what the hell he's talking about perfectly clear. But somehow he leaves us more confused.

One thing does seem to spring into focus, however, Obama doesn't grasp that the US cannot accept Iran with nukes. And that's our precondition: Halt your nuclear program while we talk and we can talk. Iran says no. What's there to talk to them about?

Obama says this us demanding everything we want before we'll talk to them. No, sir. We're not asking them to install a democratic government, give their citizens a free press, ensure freedom of religion, endorse women's rights, and give us cheap oil. Our precondition is they at least halt their nuke program while we talk. As, you know, a sign of good faith.

And this crap about North Korea and the nukes they didn't have before George Bush took office... does he actually remember those responsible for the conditions which enabled North Korea to develop their nukes?
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Thomas Friedman argues that their are two recessions. The American economy (he is completely wrong here) and a recession of democracy (correct).

First of all, Friedman doesn't argue for point one, he simply states it as fact. The issue here is that "economic recession," has an agreed upon definition which is "Two consecutive quarters of negative growth." That means any number preceded by a minus sign. The fact that we haven't had even one quarter of negative growth, doesn't stop this otherwise intelligent human being from repeating a liberal line of complete crap.

He does, however, actually argue the second point. And does a good job of it.

I agree with the idea that as the price of oil goes up, the trend of democracy around the world goes down and vice versa. I don't agree, however, with the idea that finding alternatives to oil energy is the end all and be all. We should pursue alternatives - even aggressively - but we should also find and use the oil we already own in the meantime to cut our dependence.

But the environmentalists know better, of course. Biofuels are better for the environment than drilling for, and using oil. It's obvious, right?

Jonah Goldberg notes "Environmentalism’s most renewable resources are fear, guilt, and moral bullying."

Well, part of the problem of being a conservative is bearing the burden of thinking things through. It makes one wildly unpopular.
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Ladies and Gentlemen, Dr. Thomas Sowell.
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The reviews are in. Ebert loved it. Rotten Tomatoes rates it a 78%.

I haven't seen it yet. I've been catching my daughter up on the previous films before we go see it.

It's getting hard to wait.

As a kid I learned a big lesson from the Indiana Jones movies that has always stuck with me. That things don't always go smooth for a hero (and we're all the star of our own movie, right?). In 90% of the action sequences in these films, Indy is at his most vulnerable. His fights are ungainly, he gets his but kicked more than anything. And just when he gives us that little cock-sure smile of his, things go from bad to worse. But he always hangs in there, takes his lumps and perseveres. And he's a part-time teacher.

Now that's an action hero.

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Dick Morris has some advice for McCain. Run to the center. No big stretch there.

Morris, the lovable little weasel, is exactly right, I think. The problem is we shouldn't be in this position in the first place.

If you read his column, Morris cites several specific things McCain should campaign on. Some of them make you want to roll your eyes on. He also says McCain should distance himself from Bush ("the least popular president of modern times").

When reading Morris it's important to remember, he is not in the business of policy morals. He is in the business of winning. And he's good at it.


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I make no secret of my admiration for Mark Steyn. He is a towering intellect with a great sense of humor. If you read one of his columns, you'll keep going back.

One of Steyn's pet topics is European demographics vis-a-vis Islamic immigration. He's Canadian-born and British-raised according to Wikipedia. Even so, he has his finger on the pulse of American politics and foreign policy.

I've heard him guest host for Rush Limbaugh once. And only once. Rush may have listened and rightly concluded that he had a natural rival. He was excellent and hilarious.

Read this.

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... That Man-Made Global Warming is happening.

(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

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My former Mayor Bob Corker weighs in.

If the US Senate starts condemning political ads, then all the GOP ads will be condemned as out-of-line.

And Corker would do better to concentrate on "reducing federal spending, etc." rather than putting out press releases condemning his own party's ads in an election year.

(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

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I don't think it's, as Obama says, a distortion. Mrs. Obama, hasn't been proud of her country until it nominated her husband for president.

Having said that, maybe the guys at Power Line have a point.
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One thing conservatives are bad about...

They get caught up in the debate and don't realize when the Liberals start leaving off the whole argument. It's happening right now with the Obama/Iran thing. The issue isn't whether Obama would meet with Iran and whether or not that's bad or good. As Obama likes to point out, Reagan met with Gorbachev, etc. But conservatives fail to notice, and if they don't fail to notice, they fail to reiterate, the point is that Obama said he would meet with our enemies "without preconditions". Never something Reagan did. Never something Kennedy did.

But look at this, they're trying to prop up a straw man so they can knock it down. How does it matter whether it is Ahmadinejad or another Iranian Presdient - or even the mullahs.

BLITZER: Let’s be precise because when they criticize Barack Obama, not only John McCain but others, for suggesting that he would meet without preconditions with Ahmadinejad, who only last week on Israel's 60th anniversary called Israel a "stinking corpse." The question that they ask is what is Barack Obama going to talk with him about?

RICE: Well, first of all as I said, it would be the appropriate Iranian leadership at the appropriate time – not necessarily Ahmadinejad.

Check out the Power Line post.

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To some Democrats, Obama and Clinton together would the be the dream ticket.

Not going to happen. Dick Morris tells us why.

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How far will they go to try to get a shot off at the president? This far:

What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable. He wanted the German-speaking areas of Europe under German authority. He had just annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech Republic.

This was the response of President Bush's criticism of "appeasers". The Editor-in-question has revised, thought not refuted, his statement.

It is interesting though... if this guy is going to make the case that Hitler was reasonable, would he have to say, by extension, that President Bush is reasonable too?

(Hat tip: LGF)

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Coming to the rescue of Barack Obama—the United Nations “Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,” to expose the bigotry and racism of the United States...

The UN should stick to something they know, like, protecting dictators and passing resolutions against Israel.

(Hat tip: LGF)

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