Dark Star

From Boston Dynamics.
__

If anybody was left wondering why exactly would al-Maliki endorse a timetable (which in effect, endorsed Obama), like I was, Charles Krauthammer spells it out:

So Maliki is looking ahead, beyond the withdrawal of major U.S. combat forces, and toward the next stage: the long-term relationship between America and Iraq.

With whom does he prefer to negotiate the status-of-forces agreement that will not be concluded during the Bush administration? Obama or McCain?

Obama, reflecting the mainstream Democratic view, simply wants to get out of Iraq as soon as possible. Two years ago, it was because the war was lost. Now, we are told, it is to save Afghanistan. The reasons change, but the conclusion is always the same. Out of Iraq. Banish the very memory. Leave as small and insignificant a residual force as possible. And no long-term bases.

McCain, like George Bush, envisions the United States seizing the fruits of victory from a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

For example, we might want to retain an air base to deter Iran, protect regional allies and relieve our naval forces, which today carry much of the burden of protecting the Persian Gulf region, thus allowing redeployment elsewhere.

Any Iraqi leader would prefer a more pliant American negotiator because all countries -- we've seen this in Germany, Japan and South Korea -- want to maximize their own sovereign freedom of action while still retaining American protection.

It is no mystery who would be the more pliant U.S. negotiator. The Democrats have long been protesting the Bush administration's hard bargaining for strategic assets in postwar Iraq. Maliki knows the Democrats are so sick of this war, so politically and psychologically committed to its liquidation, so intent on doing nothing to vindicate "Bush's war," that they simply want out with the least continued American involvement.

Which is why Maliki gave Obama that royal reception, complete with the embrace of his heretofore problematic withdrawal timetable.

Obama was likely to be president anyway. He is likelier now still. Moreover, he not only agrees with Maliki on minimizing the U.S. role in postwar Iraq. He now owes him. That's why Maliki voted for Obama, casting the earliest and most ostentatious absentee ballot of this presidential election.

That makes sense, I guess. We've dealt with French ingratitude for decades. I guess I was just hoping for something a little better from Iraq. How naieve.

Krauthammer, like Dick Morris, considers this to be an effective argument ender for McCain against Obama. I'm still unconvinced. I think Americans are more likely to take the word of an American General over an Iraqi politician. But both Krathammer and Morris are a little smarter than I am when it comes to this stuff, so we'll see.
__

Power Line has posted McCain's new ad, and posted some (not-so) shocking stats on journalist contributions to political parties.

Here's the vid, but do go to Power line to read the short post.



__

The assumption among most observers seems to be that Barack Obama will get a bounce in the polls from his trip to Afghanistan and Iraq, the Middle East, and western Europe. But it's not apparent in the polls that have come in to date. Gallup tracking shows him with a 46 percent-to-42 percent lead, about what he's had since clinching the Democratic nomination June 3. Rasmussen tracking shows him ahead by just 47 percent to 45 percent and the day before had the race at a 46 percent-to-46 percent tie. The Detroit News poll shows Obama leading in Michigan by only 43 percent to 41 percent, and there is some good news for John McCain in the recent Rasmussen poll in Ohio showing McCain ahead 46 percent to 40 percent. This last is a contrast with another poll in Ohio, showing Obama ahead 48 percent to 40 percent, conducted by the North Carolina Democratic firm PPP, whose record this cycle seems to me to have been erratic.

I will be pleasantly surprised if this is the way it goes. Obama has acted with sheer arrogance on this trip. It's so bad that even the Washington Post has been critical. And there have been a couple of instances of somebody having to remind Obama's staff that he is not the President of the United States - yet.

Barone goes on to say there could be trouble for Obama overall on the anti-war tack he's sticking to:

Another interesting result from Rasmussen. He now shows that voters believe the United States is winning rather than losing the war on terrorism by a 51 percent-to-16 percent margin. A year ago, in July 2007, the numbers were 36 percent to 36 percent. That's a big change. It could mean that voters will want to continue something like the current approach, which would be good news for McCain. Or it could mean that voters will decide that we don't need to worry about terrorism much anymore, which would be good news for Obama. Stay tuned. I don't think the voters' decision-making process is complete yet.

__

In his latest post, Dick Morris says that the statement by al-Maliki which lines up with Obama's timetable for troop pullout knocks the legs out from under McCain.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has cut the legs out from under John McCain by basically endorsing Sen. Barack Obama’s troop-withdrawal plan.

Just when McCain had Obama on the defensive over the Democrat’s plan to surrender after we’ve won in Iraq, Maliki has made McCain look the naïf for opposing a timetable for withdrawal.

Unless McCain changes his approach, he’s lost the use of this issue. He can’t come out for staying in Iraq longer than the government we support wants.

The Republican needs to shift the debate to Iraq’s future. Neither Obama’s belaboring of his previous opposition to the war nor McCain’s attacking the Democrat’s opposition to the surge is relevant - both lines are history lessons best left in the classroom. What voters want to know is: What now?

McCain needs to hammer at one basic theme: that Obama’s pullout plan will lead to a third Iraq war. The Democrat wants to keep substantial numbers of troops next door, to go back into Iraq if necessary. McCain should stress that a premature withdrawal will lead to a collapse - losing the hard-won stability in Iraq, opening the door to an Iranian takeover and al Qaeda revival, and potentially forcing a new US invasion.

Obama isn’t a peace candidate, McCain can say - just an advocate of a deferred war. Just as the first President George Bush left the ingredients in place for a second war when he failed to depose Saddam Hussein in 1991, so Obama will fail to finish the job and invite yet another war if he abandons Iraq before our gains have been consolidated.

I'm not sure this is all true. First of all, there have been polls to support the notion that Iraqis don't want American troops in country for quite sometime. Al-Maliki is a politician, just like Obama and McCain and says things publicly that he feels he must.

The man we must listen to is General Petraus. I think the general's comments that we do not need or want a timetable cancel out those of al-Maliki. Or at least cancel them out enough that McCain still has an issue here.

But Morris is 100% right when he says most American's want to know "What now?" more than anything else.
__

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.

Full article.
__

Michael Barone has some great words for one of favorite people in media.

Tony will be sorely missed.
__

Dick Morris says there's a great opportunity for McCain developing... if he'll only seize it.

The campaign of 2008 started on July 1 when Obama launched his first national advertising buy of the season. How McCain responds and whether or not he does, will have a big impact in determining whether Obama can solidify or expand his current lead in the polls. As always, the media fails to cover the significant events of the campaign — but this is one of the most critical.

The Obama ad, which introduces him as someone who worked his way through college, fights for American jobs, and battles for health care also seeks to move him to the center by taking credit for welfare reform in Illinois which, the ad proclaims, reduced the rolls by 80%.

But there’s one problem - Obama opposed the 1996 welfare reform act at the time. The Illinois law for which he takes credit, was merely the local implementing law the state was required to pass, and it did, almost unanimously. Obama’s implication — that he backed “moving people from welfare to work” — is just not true.

With Obama running the ad in all the swing states (Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia), this gross usurpation of credit affords the McCain campaign an incredible opportunity for rebuttal.

Read the other half.
__

This type of thing is what's at stake if we lose the war against Muslim extremism. I know this point has been made before, but it bears repeating the wonder of why the liberals and feminists aren't 100% behind the war. Oh, I forgot, they aren't Christians.

A Clayton County man faces murder charges in the strangulation death of his 25-year-old daughter early Sunday over what police said was her desire to end an arranged marriage.

Chaudhry Rashad, 54, apparently became angry during an argument in which the victim, Sandela Kanwal, told him she wanted out of the marriage, Clayton police spokesman Timothy Owens said.

Full article.

(Hat tip: LGF)
__

Power Line points to this mostly fair and ultimately fascinating profile of El Rushbo.

I enjoyed the whole thing, but, like Power Line, I think the writer is mistaken in his Hannity questions.

But here's the part about us, the listeners:

Limbaugh's audience is often underestimated by critics who don't listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as "liberal," according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of "news knowledge questions," Limbaugh's "Dittoheads" — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners.

That's probably because NPR listeners get a carefully selected queue of news stories designed to promote a liberal world view under the guise of objective reporting. While Rush listeners on the other hand are given not only the story, but the real meaning behind the story, the reason it's being reported by the drive-by media that way it is, what will probably happen in the next few days as a result of the story, and how the media will report that - and why - as well.

And he's right 99.98 percent of the time.

Funniest to me in this profile was this quote from Al Sharpton:

"I despise his ideology," Sharpton told me, "but Rush is a lot smarter and craftier than Don Imus. Limbaugh puts things in a way that he can't be blamed for easy bigotry. Some of the songs he does about me just make me laugh. But he's the most dangerous guy we have to deal with on the right, including O'Reilly and Imus. They come at you with an ax. He uses a razor."

... which remind me of the the oft-misquoted lyric in "The Big Payback," where James Brown says he don't know karate but he knows ka-razor. (Most people think he's saying "crazy,"). What I don't like about that quote is that Sharpton seems to leave it to us to figure out that Rush is a bigot, he's just not an easy bigot.

Anyway, good profile for anybody wanting to know a little more about the man behind the golden microphone.
__

O rly?

When one people is oppressed, all of us are oppressed. What you do to any one of these you do to me, Jesus said. So we are all Palestinians.

Check out the post at LGF.
__

Obama's campaign has made much of valuing "judgment," over "experience,". And with good reason. He doesn't have much experience at all. And what he does have, (party line liberal votes in his short time in the senate), doesn't bode well for him. The rest of his experience as a "community organizer," is starting come under closer scrutiny. Check this out from the Boston Globe:

The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.

But it's not safe to live here.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

Some of the residents of Grove Parc say they are angry that Obama did not notice their plight.

Full article.

(Hat tip: LGF)
__