Republican presidential candidate John McCain had his own German experience Thursday—at a restaurant in Ohio. He asserted that he was happy to devote his time this week to touring the nation's heartland. "I'd love to give a speech in Germany. But I'd much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for president," McCain told reporters...
[there, equal time. proof the old media isn't biased]
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Friday, July 25, 2008
McCain visits German restaurant in Ohio
Gergen: Obama erred in airing Maliki talks
WASHINGTON - Political pundit David Gergen said U.S. Sen. Barack Obama should have kept the contents of his discussions with Iraq's prime minister confidential. Gergen told CNN it was a mistake for Obama to release a statement detailing "exactly" what Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told him. "We have a long tradition in this country that we only have one president at a time...
[evidently that's 'change'd]
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Newsweek CW: Surge Worked, Helps... Obama?
From the July 24 "Conventional Wisdom" on Newsweek.com:
[up arrow] Obama: It worked--but, ironically, benefiting Obama more than McCain.
Is that why the latest tracking poll by Rasmussen shows Obama with a small single-digit lead?
[sometimes the spin is insultingly overt]
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“If there is one element of moral and political certainty that cements the liberal consensus more than any other, it is the complacent view that while Iraq is ‘a war of choice,’ it is really and only Afghanistan that is a war of necessity. The ritualistic solidity of this view is impressive.
It survives all arguments and all evidence.”
It survives all arguments and all evidence.”
Christopher Hitchens, 'On Wars of Choice'
.
The Soldier Voting Scandal
Analysis by the federal Election Assistance Commission, rejecting inflated Defense Department voting claims, estimated overseas and absentee military voting for the 2006 midterm elections at a disgracefully low 5.5 percent. The quality of voting statistics is so poor that there is no way to tell how many of the slightly over 330,000 votes actually were sent in by the absentee military voters and their dependents and how many by civilian Americans living abroad -- 6 million all total.
Nobody who has studied the question objectively sees any improvement since 2006, and that is a scandal. Retired U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Charles Henry wrote in the July issue of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings: "While virtually everyone involved ... seems to agree that military people deserve at least equal opportunity when it comes to having their votes counted, indications are that in November 2008, many thousands of service members who try to vote will do so in vain."
Rep. Roy Blunt, the House Republican whip, on July 8 introduced a resolution demanding that the Defense Department better enable U.S. military personnel overseas to vote in the November elections. That act was followed by silence. Democrats normally leap on an opportunity to find fault with the Bush Pentagon.
But not a single Democrat joined Blunt as a co-sponsor, and an all-Republican proposal cannot pass in the Democratic-controlled House...
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Poll: Obama "Not Likely" to Be Effective Commander-in-Chief
[HT:SE]
On the night of January 20, 2009, a new commander-in-chief will leave the inaugural podium, parade, and festivities for the Oval Office. A national security staff ready with the latest “threat briefing” will join him there.
On his desk, they will place a thick binder of reports, each focusing on real or emerging threats to our national security...
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Dots...
Iran missile launch renews urgency
WASHINGTON -- The head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency says Iran's recent missile launch proves the value of deploying a missile defense system. Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said Tuesday that Iran's launch of several different missiles, including one with more than 1,200 miles of target range, is an example of the importance of the missile defense system deployed in Eastern Europe and in the United States, the Missile Defense Agency reported.
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Iran ends cooperation with IAEA probe
Vienna, Austria - Iran on Thursday signaled it would no longer cooperate with International Atomic Energy Agency experts investigating for signs of nuclear weapons programs, confirming that the probe - launched a year ago with great expectations - was at a dead end.
[experts in the field have been saying to watch for this for years - it's a prerequisite for completing Iran's ambitions - they're likely nearing their goals]
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The Sharia debate: we can't all be equal under different laws
Sneakily, Britain's first Muslim Minister, Shahid Malik, has ducked the critics that he will enrage in an interview to be broadcast on Channel 4's Dispatches programme on Monday.
Knowing that the phrase he uses to describe the situation of British Muslims - “the Jews of Europe” - will make the headlines, he has put it in the mouths of others. “If you ask Muslims today what do they feel like,” he says, “they feel like the Jews of Europe.” He does not say if he thinks that they are right.
I'll respond in the Malik method. If you asked most non-Muslims what they feel about the suggestion, they would say that it was disgraceful, outrageous and insulting... [snip]
Allowing British Muslims recourse to Islamic law would be a charter for male dominance and peer-group bullying...
[another problem caused by judges rather than handled by them]
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Mosques increasingly not welcome
Europeans are increasingly lashing out at the construction of mosques in their cities as terrorism fears and continued immigration feed anti-Muslim sentiment across the continent. The latest dispute is in Switzerland, which is planning a nationwide referendum to ban minarets on mosques. (Snip) Some analysts call the mosque conflicts the manifestation of a growing fear that Muslims aren't assimilating, don't accept Western values and pose a threat to security.
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Talk of wind power is just that: talk
IN his commercials, T. Boone Pickens seems minted in Hollywood. He is the grizzled oilman who sagely tells the public that we can't drill our way out of this problem. But here is what he told Newsweek about wind power: "There are no turbines on my ranch, because I think they are ugly."
Add Pickens to that list of hypocrites - notably Walter Cronkite and the Kennedy family (Robert Kennedy Jr. is a major global warming alarmist) - who tell us we need alternative energy while opposing the installation of wind turbines near them.
If the world were in serious trouble, Pickens, Cronkite and the Kennedys would put windmills in their back yards. But they know it is all snake oil, and they peddle it while luxuriating in their air-conditioned second and third homes along the beach. The only wind power they want is for their sailboats...
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They've got that global warming thing down cold
Yeah, that global warming is pretty bad. You know, Al Gore says -- oops, never mind. Turns out Penn's not reading from the infamous Time cover story of 2006 on global warming, the one headlined BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED. No, this Time is from 1974, and the headline is, ANOTHER ICE AGE? And all those violent paroxysms of nature are the pernicious work of global cooling
I sometimes find myself longing for the good old days of the Ice Age scare, because at least back then, dissent was possible. These days, deviating from the orthodoxy on global warming is almost enough to get you thrown in jail. One of Gore's former science advisors said that oil company executives who argue against him ``should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.''
Consider it a certainty that the Climate Police will lock up Penn & Teller after Thursday's show. Not only does it feature interviews with some scientists who aren't totally sold on the idea that the Earth is toast, it whispers an even more inconvenient truth:
A lot of the scariest global-warming tales are told by people who stand to make a buck if they can scare you enough...
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Thursday, July 24, 2008
WaPo: Did Obama Really Find Support For Iraq Withdrawal Plan?
THE INITIAL MEDIA coverage of Barack Obama's visit to Iraq suggested that the Democratic candidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces on a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama's own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq's principal political leaders actually support his strategy.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of the dramatic turnaround in U.S. fortunes, "does not want a timetable," Mr. Obama reported in a news conference yesterday. He explained that "there are deep concerns about . . . a timetable that doesn't take into account what [American commanders] anticipate might be some sort of change in conditions."
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made headlines by saying he would support a withdrawal of American forces by 2010. But an Iraqi government statement made clear that his timetable, already extending seven months past Obama's, would also be conditioned on the readiness of Iraqi forces, the same linkage that Gen. Petraeus seeks.
Other Iraqi leaders were more directly critical. As Mr. Obama acknowledged, Sunni leaders in Anbar province told him that American troops are essential to maintaining the peace among Iraq's rival sects and said they were worried about a rapid drawdown.
Yet Obama insists that Afghanistan is "the central front". But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves.
If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.
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American Heroism Goes Unreported in Iraq
[HT:MG]
American heroism has been ignored and overlooked by networks at home and overseas for the duration of the Iraq war, while insurgents and terrorists have used willing media outlets to score public relations wins... [snip]
“You can’t name one hero from this war but there’s got to be a thousand or more. Did anyone know who was in charge of the American soldiers in Iraq until [Gen. David] Petraeus took over?"... "But we all knew who al Zaraqawi was,”A collection of graphs and charts made available through the public affairs office of the Multi-National Corps in Iraq indicates that the media has pulled back on its coverage, now that U.S. casualty figures have declined and Al Qaeda is in retreat. (See related story)
“The reality is they [the insurgents] could never stage a massive attack against any of our bases, even the smaller ones, but anytime there was more than one rocket launched, you would read about how Baghdad is under attack, and I would just have to say to myself, ‘What are they talking about?’”
“We are bound as a country and as a military to the stubborn thing called truth and accuracy, and because we are bound to these very stubborn things called truth and accuracy, we are not as agile as somebody who is not bound by truth and accuracy,”
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Not in My Backyard, Say an Increasing Number of Germans
The planned construction of over 180 mosques in Germany is mobilizing right-wing xenophobes but also an increasing number of leftist critics. They fear the Muslim places of worship will facilitate the establishment of a completely parallel society...
[no bias in this lead in {hey, it's der Spiegel}]
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Council refuses to back charity event for wounded British soldiers - in case it offends ethnic minorities
A council refused to back a military charity event for fear of offending minority groups. Richard Chamberlain had applied for a £500 grant to help him raise cash for Help for Heroes, which cares for wounded soldiers. But Portsmouth City Council turned down the 57-year-old, saying in a letter: 'The event could cause offence to ethnic minority groups living in the community who may also have experience of injury/violence due to the war.'
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Iran vows no concessions in nuclear dispute
Tehran, Iran - Iran will not ''retreat one iota'' over its disputed nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday. (Snip) ''The Iranian nation has chosen its path,'' Ahmadinejad said.
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