Roger Simon has some opinions about Senator Obama:
The Illinois Senator has proven himself to be a disingenuous creep, the kind of man who publicly bashes NAFTA and then has his minions go whisper to the Canadians he was just kidding. How he will perform in office is anybody’s guess, most likely including his own. But the mainstream media continues to cover for him on a daily basis and not ask questions. Talk about creeps…
I support drilling off shore, which by the way is fifty miles off, out of view, with much more environmentally safe systems. Those “wild polluters” the Norwegians have done it quite successfully for awhile, as have the French building nuclear power plants. We have to get into these things. Would we do so in an Obama administration? Maybe. Just as he’d probably stay in Iraq. Obama is two-faced enough to do the opposite of what he is proposing during the election. He reminds me of Nixon — only not as smart.
No understatement there. Question: the Washington Post ran a piece back in February about the “top Obama flip-flops” (and the list has grown quite a bit since then) — what is the probability of seeing an update to that piece appear in the Post before November?
About Rathergate (a subject we know way too much about — really), Tom Wolfe said this in indictment of the practices of Dan Rather and his associates in CBS news:
“Idiots. They should have looked at the piece of paper. Obviously not written by a typewriter.“
That statement applies to this obvious forgery as well. Doesn’t anyone remember what things that were typed in 1961 actually looked like? HT: Ace
Edward Luttwak in the NYT raises an interesting issue about Senator Obama, which, by and large, the media have chosen to ignore or deny. We note that this is not the only story in the NYT to address the question of Senator Obama and his family’s religious background:
it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage. Senator Obama is half African by birth and Africans can understandably identify with him. In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith. As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.
Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him. His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).
With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obama’s case.) It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iran’s Parliament and in two Malaysian states)…
another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing. At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House.
This matter would appear to be non-trivial. We have witnessed great intensity of feeling as to what constitutes justice in the situations of other apostates, and the situation of the President would appear to be a special and highly visible case. Criminalizing apostasy ought itself to be a crime, but that, unfortunately, lies far in the future.
Lawyer and Powerline member Scott Johnson makes Minnesota Representative and former teacher Mindy Greiling look like a nitwit in her effort to get Star Tribune metro columnist Katherine Kersten fired. It’s a very enjoyable read, and ultimately it’s about a very serious matter.
Senator Clinton won a pretty impressive 9.2% victory in Pennsylvania after being outspent 2:1 in that contest. She has now won the primary voting in the largest states and the battleground states that Democrats need in the fall to take the presidency, with the exception of Senator Obama’s home state. She would be well on her way to the nomination if the Democrats had a winner-take-all primary system that not only tracks the GOP system, but is the same set of rules that applies in the general election. You would think that the New York Times would be particularly pleased at this stage with the endorsement that it made of Senator Clinton just three months ago:
The early primaries produced two powerful main contenders: Hillary Clinton, the brilliant if at times harsh-sounding senator from New York; and Barack Obama, the incandescent if still undefined senator from Illinois…As Democrats look ahead to the primaries in the biggest states on Feb. 5, The Times’s editorial board strongly recommends that they select Hillary Clinton as their nominee for the 2008 presidential election…
When we endorsed Mrs. Clinton in 2006, we were certain she would continue to be a great senator, but since her higher ambitions were evident, we wondered if she could present herself as a leader to the nation. Her ideas, her comeback in New Hampshire and strong showing in Nevada, her new openness to explaining herself and not just her programs, and her abiding, powerful intellect show she is fully capable of doing just that. She is the best choice for the Democratic Party as it tries to regain the White House.
But the New York Times was not at all pleased with Senator Clinton’s 9% victory margin in Pennsylvania, going so far as to label it “inconclusive” and calling for the Democrat convention superdelegates to end the race, presumably by announcing for Senator Obama now. Here’s the NYT’s new editorial, barely 90 days later than the one above:
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned…
It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign.
The Times has a point of course. Senator Clinton’s lines of attack against the campaign of Senator Obama legitimize those same attacks by the GOP in the general election. No doubt the Times and its media bretheren had been looking forward to using the epithets of political correctness against those who dared raise the “trival” issues that caused such a stir in the recent debate, or pressed the candidate when he waffled on important matters. The longer that Senator Clinton stays in the race, the the more legitimate those attacks become, the more legitimate the media’s tough questions, or so the logic goes. No wonder the Times is upset.
(Final point: the Times has perhaps another reason to be upset. The 190,000 vote margin of victory for Clinton is smaller than the 230,000 Republicans and others who are said to have changed their registration to Democrat in Pennsylvania in 2008 to vote in the primary. Could it be that Senator Clinton’s margin of victory is partially attributable to an orchestrated campaign in the conservative New Media that the Times does not care to acknowledge?)
These days it seems that everyone is wearing a wire to political fundraisers. Barack Obama got stung last week through a recording of some of his remarks at a San Francisco event. This week it’s Senator Clinton’s turn. The Huffington Post has a clandestine recording. The WaPo provides some background. Here are Senator Clinton’s thoughts, as recorded by some unknown party:
“We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.”
Hugh Hewitt thinks that Senator Clinton’s “admission that the activists of the Democrats are far to the left of American political opinion” is highly significant. We’ll see about that. One aspect of this story that does appear to have significant implications for the future is that clandestine recording or transmitting via cellphone of off-the-record meetings seems to be becoming widespread. Perhaps future fundraisers will have to be held in the Cone of Silence.
There’s no doubt the cat is cool. It’s easy to imagine the wild reception many parts of the world would give a President Obama as he loped down the stairs of Air Force One in his aviator glasses, the chic and chiseled Michelle on his arm. The imagery of the 2008 race is all about cool and hot.
It’s all part of that “re-branding of America” thing that Barbara Ehrenreich said was coming. Wouldn’t it be cool if America was, like, a fashion magazine or America’s Next Top Model or whatever? Then, like, all the problems would go away, because there’d be like change and everything.
Question: how cool is too cool? If the Senator flips his opponent the bird, is that the coolest presidential gesture yet — or is it something else entirely?
I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.
The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers. Yes, young Iraqi boys know about “GoArmy.com.”…our soldiers under the Petraeus strategy got off their big bases and out of their tanks and deeper into the neighborhoods, American values began to win the war.
Iraqis came to respect American soldiers as warriors who would protect them from terror gangs. But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic, school or a neighborhood. They learned that the American soldier is not only the most dangerous enemy in the world, but one of the best friends a neighborhood can have.
“My dear, brave American soldier, you noble individual who traversed land and sea in order to write the story of Iraqi freedom for the first time in its modern history - you believed, in accordance with logic, self-evident truths, and rational thought, that a people who had been subjected to repression, starvation, and killing would dance for joy, and would thank Allah who sent you to them as a liberating angel…they would strew flowers and break out in songs of joy that would smash the chains of slavery, ignominy, and humiliation.
“Not even a writer of surrealistic or the absurd would have imagined that the Iraqi people would revolt against their liberator and would rush ardently back to a new bondage of a different kind - that of the religious cleric, the tribal sheikh, and the gang leader. It was unthinkable that the people would go against logic, rational thought, and self-evident truths, in a mad rush towards the abyss and total ruin. My beloved, brave American soldier, we apologize to you…
Barack Obama filled out a questionnaire on his views in 1996. His campaign denied that the views expressed were his, but it turns out that Obama was interviewed on the questionnaire, and amended it the next day, in his own handwriting. The two versions of the questionnaire, “provided to Politico with assistance from political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign”, seem to add up to something less than honesty on the part of the Senator:
Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he’s projected during his presidential campaign. The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.
Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire. They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize(d) his position.”
But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago non-profit group that issued it. And it found that Obama - the day after sitting for the interview - filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes adding to one answer…
Both versions of the 1996 questionnaires provide answers his presidential campaign disavows to questions about whether Obama supports capital punishment and state legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.” He responded simply “No” and “Yes,” respectively, to those questions on both questionnaires. But a fact sheet provided by his campaign flatly denies Obama ever held those views…
One of the interesting elements of this story is that the questionnaire was initially reported back in December 2007, but had no impact. Now perhaps, after the Wright affair and the simple passage of time, it might. We’ll see what’s next in the “scandalous information” promised to us last November by “political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign.”
Tom Bethell has an insightful piece in the American Spectator that raises some important points about a debate that, if it is framed honestly, dares not speak its name in the elite media. Excerpt:
Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s remarks about America were the worst things said about my adopted country since I came here from England in 1962. Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X are not in the same league as this champion of race hatred from Chicago. Imagine if Senator John McCain had for years been a member of a church where a white pastor said that blacks should go back to Africa where they came from. And McCain were to respond: Well, I disagree with his remarks and I reject what he said but I won’t disassociate myself from him, because he has been so important to my life. McCain would be out of the race in the blink of an eye. Yet Obama has not felt the need to distance himself from Pastor Wright.
The New York Times has praised Obama’s speech as a “profile in courage.” That is baloney — reflecting the gross double standard that has prevailed for decades on the subject of race. The underlying problem is that the liberals who still control so much of the debate quietly agree with much of what Wright said….I just read a mealy-mouthed article by the Washington Post’s Dan Balz (”Will the Answer Outlive the Questions?“). He quoted three “Democratic analysts” who point out that Wright’s comments could hurt Obama in November. What was significant was that not one of these analysts went on the record. This shows that we do indeed need a debate about race. The real problem is that it’s the liberals who don’t want to debate it, probably because they know they would lose.
Prediction: This Obama episode will once more show how the new technology is transforming political debate. Balz conveyed in his piece that the Washington Post will be good soldiers and won’t do anything more than absolutely necessary to upset the race industry, of which the Post is a part. But how could the web and the blogs and e-mail be controlled? That’s what bothered Dan Balz. “The danger,” he wrote, as though he were already on the Obama team, “is that what might last are the images of his Chicago pastor — edited and reedited into television ads, YouTube videos and an endless stream of e-mails delivered quietly into the computers of millions of Americans.”
Bethell says: “The underlying problem is that the liberals who still control so much of the debate quietly agree with much of what Wright said”. That may be true, but we think the problem may be even worse than that.
We think that, when confronted by an issue like the Wright comments, many in the elite halls of the MSM experience a combination of fear and condescension that they do not even appreciate consciously. Instead, this toxic brew falsely presents itself to them as a feeling of sensitivity to someone’s plight. It masks itself as something nice, but it is not. In fact, it is itself a kind of nasty bias. Of course this is a feeling that it would be very hard for such a reporter or editor to acknowledge and confront directly. The same sentiment was evident in the self-censorship of the elite media in the cartoon controversy three years ago. The media sometimes note in passing the strange or scary or aberrant behavior by members of certain groups, like the Cartoon Riots, or the Wright statements, but, depending upon the group, they’d just as soon leave the matter alone as quickly as possible.
In an example used by Bethell, Nick Kristof wrote in a recent piece “it has been shocking to hear Mr. Wright suggest that the AIDS virus was released as a deliberate government plot to kill black people. That may be an absurd view in white circles, but a 1990 survey found that 30 percent of African-Americans believed this was at least plausible.” Kristof then went on to catalogue other items where blacks and whites thought differently, in the same kind of “on the one hand, on the other hand” way. (In some ways that is also what Senator Obama did in his speech the other day.) Regarding Kristof’s two-handed approach, isn’t the media’s problem this: if 30% of people believe something nutty, shouldn’t we start the discussion by calling that belief nutty, and take things from there?
Until the elite media are willing to see clearly and condemn nutty or destructive behavior or beliefs of groups that elicit the MSM’s inappropriate emotional reaction, an open debate cannot take place — at least any debate hosted by the elite media. Some sort of debate will continue to take place of course; it will just for the most part not include those parts of the media establishment. It is of note that in two recent examples of such debates — the Dubai ports deal and the immigration reform fiasco — the elite media’s view was 180 degrees out of phase with the vast majority of Americans. It is our guess that the matter of Reverend Wright is similar in some ways to these two other examples. Time will tell if that is the case.
We didn’t know the name of the current generation of young people being targeted in Senator Obama’s campaign when we mentioned the Pepsi Generation the other day. Apparently this new group is the Millennial Generation. Ron Dzwonkowski in the Detroit Free Press:
This Democratic dilemma came up this week in a conversation with two old-line party members who have written a new book on young voters. “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics.” The book is all about the political potential of the so-called Millennial Generation, born from 1983-2003, and at 80 million strong, the largest generation in American history. It also is the most diverse and most technologically savvy and has been forecast to be America’s next great generation, reshaping the nation to the same extent that the “GI Generation” did after World War II.
With its defining moment so far the 9/11 attacks, the Millennial Generation is concerned about security and is in constant communication via cell phones and the Internet. Thanks in part to Title IX and growing up with TV shows that melted down stereotypes, the generation has little sense of traditional roles for men and women, doesn’t make much of racial or ethnic differences, and relies for advice largely on friends and peers. Millennials prefer “win-win” solutions to outright victories for one side, which means they have little use for politics as practiced in this country for the past 20 years or so.
Although, at 46, not part of the generation, Obama obviously is in tune with it. His campaign is the first to tap nationally into the online “social networking” that is an essential part of life for just about every Millennial.
“They don’t see a black candidate; they see hope,” said Morley Winograd, the former Michigan Democratic chairman and adviser to Vice President Al Gore who wrote the book with Michael Hais, a researcher and analyst who worked on campaigns for Michigan U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and former governor James Blanchard. “They are not out to resist government authority, but for them that authority has not worked very well,” Hais said of the coming generation of voters, who have only known presidents named Clinton or Bush. “They want to make it work better and don’t see the current leadership doing that.” For them, Obama means change.
Reread that last paragraph a few times. It is a little disturbing that a chunk of the younger generation is so fatuous. Do these youngsters think that the world has just been waiting for them to arrive? Maybe so. This may be the first, or at least one of the first, presidential campaigns whose marketing strategy often looks like it is selling the hottest fad to unsuspecting teeny-boppers. Maybe we were more right than we knew when we speculated that the iPod ruined America.
In responding to the first question in last night’s debate, Senator Clinton said this (see video), a reference to a funny SNL skit that showed the MSM fawning over Senator Obama, as her campaign recently complained about:
And if anybody saw ‘Saturday Night Live,’ you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.
That line wasn’t a hit, far from it. But the most interesting aspect may be that it appears currently impossible to view that SNL spoof debate video on YouTube, even though a much longer (and strange) political video from the same program (albeit apparently in altered form) still makes the rounds.
We saw a report that 78% of Daily Show clips were removed from YouTube for copyright reasons, the same explanation that is given for the removal of the debate skit, but there would appear to be an argument for legitimate fair use posting of the entire Clinton / Obama clip, since it has been so widely discussed in the media and political circles. (We did find a brief, but only partially representative snippet still available, but maybe that will disappear as well.)
Given the new and critical importance of the internet in electoral discourse, (which we discussed several years ago here and here) companies such as YouTube would appear to have an obligation to err on the side of making political content available, rather than censoring it, particularly when discussion of that content has clearly entered the public domain.
In the course of giving John McCain advice on how to run in the general election, Michael Medved delivers what looks an awful lot like a post mortem on the campaign of Senator Clinton — even though Ohio and Texas are still two weeks away.
Clinton made a decision to avoid an ideological battle with her rival and decided to frame the race as a choice between “experience” and “charisma,” between “work” and “words.” In other words she decided to fight Obama on personality, rather than the issues, and in terms of a compelling, appealing personality, Obama obviously wins.
Clinton could have won an issues election – mobilizing the broad middle of the Democratic Party and leaving Obama to run to her left. She could have criticized him for preaching surrender on the war, for minimizing the reality of the terrorist threat, for calling unequivocally for big government and higher taxes, for rejecting the free trade heritage of Clintonism. Instead, she insisted that she and her opponent hardly differed on the issues, and it was only a question of who is better “prepared to take over as commander-in-chief from day one.”
By emphasizing my “thirty-five years of work fighting for change” Hillary not only made herself sound older, but high-lighted the meaningless, trivial nature of the change she sought and, allegedly, achieved: most Democrats don’t like the results of the last thirty-five years of government policy.
Anyone who believes that the nomination struggle was actually centered on substantive issues should try to answer two fundamental questions: who’s more liberal, Hillary or Obama? And who’s more moderate, Hillary or Obama? It’s telling that in the Democratic Party both liberals and moderates seem to be breaking for Obama. In the absence of any clear distinction on policy prescriptions, they all feel free to vote for him as an expression of the fact that they just like the guy, or as an indication that they long (like nearly all Americans) to reject our terrible history of racism, or as a reflection about incurable unease about the alternative…
Senator Obama doesn’t much have to change his tune as he appears to transition from primary campaigning to the general election. Though now he is increasingly referring to John McCain by name in his speeches, his denunciation of the “politics of yesterday” would seem to be applicable to either opponent.
When did you begin to think that Obama might be unstoppable? Was it when your grown feminist daughter started weeping inconsolably over his defeat in New Hampshire? Or was it when he triumphed in Virginia, a state still littered with Confederate monuments and memorabilia? For me, it was on Tuesday night when two Republican Virginians in a row called C-SPAN radio to report that they’d just voted for Ron Paul, but, in the general election, would vote for… Obama…
Thanks to Iraq and water-boarding, Abu Ghraib and the “rendering” of terror suspects, we’ve achieved the moral status of a pariah nation. The seas are rising. The dollar is sinking. A growing proportion of Americans have no access to health care; an estimated 18,000 die every year for lack of health insurance. Now, as the economy staggers into recession, the financial analysts are wondering only whether the rest of the world is sufficiently “de-coupled” from the US economy to survive our demise…
Obama is different, really different, and that in itself represents “change.” A Kenyan-Kansan with roots in Indonesia and multiracial Hawaii, he seems to be the perfect answer to the bumper sticker that says, “I love you America, but isn’t it time to start seeing other people?” As conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has written, Obama’s election could mean the re-branding of America. An anti-war black president with an Arab-sounding name: See, we’re not so bad after all, world!
Once upon a time there was a serious country called the United States of America. It often had serious men, from all over the political spectrum, as leaders and as citizens. That was before “the re-branding of America,” however. Heaven help us all.
Camille Paglia assesses the election in this particularly crazy political year and delivers a negative endorsement for John McCain. It makes us like McCain all the more (full disclosure: we’re part of the “grumpy old men” demographic):
John McCain’s courage under torture during the Vietnam War deserves everyone’s gratitude and respect. But as a national candidate, the stumpy, uptight McCain is a lemon. Oy, that weaselly voice and those dated locutions and stilted intonations. Who needs a weird old coot with a short fuse in the White House?
Paglia asks: “Who needs a weird old coot with a short fuse in the White House?” That characterization might be something of a stretch, but even if it’s not, we’re satisfied with the candidate, given his current and oft-stated views. We have to admit that, as a member of the belligerent old coot cohort, we’re at the center of the market where McCain is most attractive, but so be it.
Unless the uproar by some prominent conservative media figures is some sort of attempt at a clever strategy, it seems like a bit of an affectation to us at this point. It has begun to strike us as very odd that some who ardently supported President Bush on most matters are vehemently anti-McCain, when, for better or worse, the two haven’t been really all that different on many policies — except that McCain’s recent pronouncements have been to the right of Bush.
John Hinderaker quotes Senator Clinton on ABC and extends the analogy to Social Security. The idea is that, just as a young person would have to be crazy to voluntarily enter the social security system today, because the numbers show that it all costs, no benefits to him, precisely the same sort of economics can be extrapolated in so-called universal health care:
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans…when pressed on ABC’s “This Week,” she said: “I think there are a number of mechanisms” that are possible, including “going after people’s wages, automatic enrollment.” Clinton said such measures would apply only to workers who can afford health coverage but refuse to buy it…
There is an analogy between the compulsory aspects of the candidates’ health care proposals and Social Security. A young man or woman would be crazy to participate in the Social Security system if he or she had any choice. If anyone saved 12.4% of his earnings over a lifetime, he would not only have far more money in retirement than Social Security can provide, it would, equally important, be his money, to invest and dispose of as he sees fit. But the government needs young people’s money to support their grandparents’ retirements, so Social Security is forced upon them.
Given the internet and the nature of modern information flow, there is less excuse than ever in the world for the Law of Unintended Consequences, particularly when the negative results are first order consequences of the initial act. But perhaps such is the nature of human folly and hope that there will be a willing suspension of disbelief in any scheme that appears to promise something for (almost) nothing in the short term.
Senator Obama discussed the Clinton campaign on ABC:
I find the manner in which they’ve been running their campaign sort of depressing, lately. It was interesting in the debate, Sen. Clinton saying “don’t feed the American people false hopes.” Get a reality check, you know? I mean, you can picture JFK saying, “we can’t go to the moon, it’s a false hope.” Let’s get a reality check. It’s not, sort of, I think, what our tradition has been.
2008. The New New Frontier. From the signs we’ve seen in the media to date, we can expect a lot more of this, particularly in a post-Hillary environment, in the unlikely event that should happen. Speaking of a hypothetical post-Hillary environment in the minds of the media, Roger Simon at the Politico adds this about two rallies he attended:
Obama said things like: “We are one nation; we are one people; and our time for change has come.” Clinton said things like: “I founded in the Senate the Bipartisan Manufacturing Caucus.”
TIME chimes in on New Hampshire in this negative post (other reviews were far more upbeat):
If the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s 100 Club dinner is any bell weather – Barack Obama will handily win here. When Obama, the dinner’s last speaker, took the stage the crowd surged forward chanting “O-bam-a” and “Fired Up, Ready to Go!” So many people pressed toward the stage that an announcer asked people to “please take their seats for safety concerns.”
By comparison Hillary was twice booed. The first time was when she said she has always and will continue to work for “change for you. The audience, particularly from Obama supporters (they were waving Obama signs) let out a noise that sounded like a thousand people collectively groaning. The second time came a few minutes later when Clinton said: “The there are two big questions for voters in New Hampshire. One is: who will be ready to lead from day one? The second,”
and here Clinton was forced to pause as boos from the crowd mixed with cheers from her own supporters. “Is who can we nominate who will go the distance against the Republicans?”
Not just past slights. Apparently the media are putting, if we read this correctly, anti-Hillary “bullets” into people’s brains — or something like that. Frankly, President Clinton’s statement seemed a little incoherent.
The greatest media scandals of this decade have been Rathergate and the smearing of the Swift Boat Veterans. In each case mainstream media organizations failed to accept responsibility for false reporting. History will prove unkind to the media companies and their leaders who failed in the most basic duties of their charter.
Bruce Kesler, who knows more about the SwiftBoatVets than anyone else in the blogosphere, has pointed us to To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler, which outlines the basis for the media’s disgrace. John O’Neill wrote the foreword.
John Kerry’s sad life of tall tales should have unravelled after he was caught spending Christmas in Cambodia, but of course that did not happen, since the media took his side against the SwiftBoatVets. No doubt coming generations will write a more correct and definitive history. We’re looking forward to reading this first draft of that history.
Senator Joe Lieberman speaks about the Democratic Party and the Kyl-Lieberman amendment in a NY Sun story. It is hard to recall that he was the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in 2000:
Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.
Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America’s moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there…
several left-wing blogs seized upon the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, offering wild conspiracy theories about how it could be used to authorize the use of military force against Iran. These were absurd arguments. The text of our amendment contained nothing — nothing — that could be construed as a green light for an attack on Iran. To claim that it did was an act of delusion or deception. On the contrary, by calling for tougher sanctions on Iran, the intention of our amendment was to offer an alternative to war.
Nonetheless, the conspiracy theories started to spread. Although the Senate passed our amendment, 76-22, several Democrats, including some of the Democratic presidential candidates, soon began attacking it — and Senator Clinton, who voted for the amendment. In fact, some of the very same Democrats who had cosponsored the legislation in the spring, urging the designation of the IRGC, began denouncing our amendment for doing the exact same thing.
The problem with the Kyl-Lieberman amendment of course had little to do with its substance, and a lot to do with politics. I asked some of my Senate colleagues who voted against our amendment: “Do you believe the evidence the military has given us about the IRGC sponsoring these attacks on our troops?” Yes, they invariably said. “Don’t you support tougher economic sanctions against Iran?” I asked. Again, yes — no question. So what’s the problem, I asked. “It’s simple,” they said. “We don’t trust Bush. He’ll use this resolution as an excuse for war against Iran.”…
there is something profoundly wrong — something that should trouble all of us — when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops. There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base — even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.
In the NY Sun story, a Lieberman critic said: “There is a large grain of truth that Lieberman is very much overstating….He is absolutely right that so far we have not heard in the presidential primaries, candidates speaking to the Democratic tradition of expanding democracy around the world and using force to advance American values, and that is in large part because of the sense that America is in a dire situation in Iraq. I think we will see the Democratic nominee return to these kinds of values.” We shall see.
In the old days, the job of stock analyst was only one step up on the ladder of excitement from that of actuary. Dreary conference calls with CFO’s, boring lunches down at the NYSSA. Times have changed. We had never heard of stock analysts getting death threats, and certainly not threats that were splashed across the front pages. Now we have. Times of London:
Meredith Whitney, the analyst who prompted a $369 billion (£177 billion) plunge in the value of US shares on Thursday by issuing a negative note on Citigroup, hit out at Wall Street’s culture of intimidation yesterday after receiving several death threats from investors in the bank.
Ms Whitney, a CIBC analyst who is married to the former World Wrestling Entertainment champion Death Mask, prompted a near 7 per cent drop in Citigroup’s shares on Thursday, after suggesting that the bank needed to raise more than $30 billion to restore its capital cushion.
She also downgraded her recommendation on Citigroup’s shares to “market underperform” in the note that set off America’s biggest stock market decline since August.
Ms Whitney, Forbes’s second-highest ranked stock picker for 2007, told The Times: “People are scared to be negative, especially when a company has such a wide holding. Clients are not pleased with my call and I have had several death threats…
We are sure it is completely by chance that the analyst getting death threats is married to WWE wrestler Death Mask. Any resemblance to a production by Vince McMahon is purely coincidental.
There are allegations that the Chinese government has hijacked the major US search engines and redirected their Chinese search traffic to Baidu. AFP:
US Internet search engines in China were being hijacked and directed to Chinese-owned Baidu, analysts said Wednesday, speculating that this may be retaliation for the White House award to exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama. Analysts at Search Engine Roundtable, a website focusing on Internet search, said Chinese users trying to search on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft websites were being directed to the Chinese search engine.
“It seems like China is fed up with the US, so as a way to fight back, they redirected virtually all search traffic from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to Baidu, the Chinese based search engine,” the analysts wrote.
The authors said it was not clear exactly how or why the searches were being redirected, but China is known for tightly controlling the Internet and using a variety of filters to screen out search results for issues relating to dissidents or the Tibetan spiritual leader. On Wednesday, US President George W. Bush called for an end to “religious repression” in China as he defiantly became the first US leader to appear in public with the Dalai Lama.
As has been noted, Baidu, a Chinese company, is listed on NASDAQ. Search engines get much of their revenue from their traffic, because internet advertising revenues are related to page views, click-throughs, or other such metrics. Question: if China has been redirecting traffic from these other US public companies to the US public company Baidu for the economic benefit to China or otherwise, is it guilty of stock manipulation? Should the SEC be investigating China?
The New York Times coverage of the unraveling of Haditha is reminiscent of its coverage of Mike Nifong and Duke. It’s such a pity when the facts — prejudged so wrongly and so far in advance by the MSM — do not fit the progressive action line. Here are some excerpts from the Times’ obituary for the lost My Lai of Iraq, in which it is called an “unusual departure” for the prosecution to comment that it ill serves society to go to trial with a case it can’t prove:
Last year, when accounts of the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha by a group of marines came to light, it seemed that the Iraq war had produced its defining atrocity, just as the conflict in Vietnam had spawned the My Lai massacre a generation ago.
But on Thursday, a senior military investigator recommended dropping murder charges against the ranking enlisted marine accused in the 2005 killings, just as he had done earlier in the cases of two other marines charged in the case. The recommendation may well have ended prosecutors’ chances of winning any murder convictions in the killings of the apparently unarmed men, women and children….
“When you have an investigating officer like Ware, who says ‘don’t go there if you can’t prove,’” your case, Mr. Solis said, “we’re left with what appear to be very reduced charges.” He added: “He’s aggressive, and he seems to make his judgments without regard for anything but the law. He must know that people — civilians, primarily — are going to howl about this, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern.”…
“It does surprise me to see that the killing of seven women and children by grenades and rifles, for the purposes of clearing structures, is being treated the way this investigating officer has treated it,” said Eugene R. Fidell, an expert in military law in Washington.
In an unusual departure from the analysis of the facts in Lance Corporal Sharratt’s case, Colonel Ware warned that putting marines on trial for murder without having the evidence to prove it could “erode public support of the Marine Corps and mission in Iraq.”
“Unusual departure”? It seems rather the opposite to us — that the logical conclusion from any discussion of the facts and evidence in the case is the statement of Colonel Ware that it ill serves society for a prosecutor to proceed to trial with a case he can’t prove. Or are we missing something? In any event, a little unbiased journalism might be a welcome “unusual departure” in the disgraceful coverage of Haditha. The pieces at Gateway Pundit and Powerline provide more examples of bias and unprofessional behavior.
George Will describes the increased volatility of the left and the right and the apparent empowerment of third party movements by the multiplicity of media (and the BCRS, which Will does not cite):
the responses of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in the Sept. 26 debate, to this question: “Will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term, more than five years from now, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq?” Their dusty answers were clear enough: No and no. Because those responses were more or less sensible, they infuriated the party’s incandescent antiwar activists. Those activists thought that in the 2006 elections they had won for their party the power to end the war, but they have had to settle for increasing the minimum wage.
Surely it is not fanciful to imagine that in the fevered recesses of these activists’ minds there are thoughts of running, or at least threatening to run, an independent antiwar candidate in the general election. Most political professionals discount this possibility, saying that restive Democrats learned their lesson in 2000, when Ralph Nader’s 97,488 votes in Florida cost Al Gore the presidency. But another lesson of that episode is that a small number of intensely disaffected “progressives” can have momentous consequences. Hence they might have considerable leverage by threatening an insurgency.
Speaking of insurgencies, last week there were menacing rumblings from social conservatives about running an independent antiabortion candidate if Rudy Giuliani is the Republican nominee. Perhaps if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, social conservatives will be terrified back into the fold, their fury assuaged by Giuliani’s repeated genuflections in the form of promises regarding what such conservatives care most about — judicial nominations.
But do not underestimate the temptation, to which the intense cohorts on Democratic left and Republican right are susceptible, to kick over their party’s furniture for the fun of it. The pleasures of moral purity are available to those who fancy themselves a small-church militant in an unconverted world. The multiplication of political media has infused politics with an extraordinary volatility. For example, in 2006, when Rep. Mark Foley, the Florida Republican, was incinerated in the House page scandal, his national name recognition went from essentially zero to the high 80s in six days.
Will quotes Adam Smith on causation: “It is not the multitude of ale-houses…that occasions a general disposition to drunkenness among the common people; but that disposition, arising from other causes, necessarily gives employment to a multitude of ale-houses.”
However, while it is true that the fiery sentiments of some on the Left and Right arise before any third party movements, McCain-Feingold and the New Media have lowered the barriers to entry and created favorable conditions for schismatics: (a) low cost, instant, professional looking messages; (b) the appearance that smallish groups have critical mass because it’s so easy to generate a crowd in cyberspace; and (c) ample funding for the fringes; among other elements. We shall see if any serious insurgencies arise over the course of the next 13 months.
Joe Conason of the NY Observer states one point of view on the oddest political controversy in the media this year. Mr. Conason’s frame of reference seems to have relatively little in common with our own, which, in this instance, more resembles that of Jack Kelly. Here is an excerpt from Conason’s piece:
Only in a media environment where conservatives have long felt exempt from scrutiny would Limbaugh still feel free to mock the military service of those who disagree with him. He is, after all, a certified chicken-hawk who cheered on the Vietnam War as it ground up tens of thousands of young Americans, but saw no reason why he should serve. His local draft board in a Missouri county, where his family enjoyed political influence, granted him a 1-Y deferment after he dropped out of college and forfeited his student deferment. Explaining how he escaped the draft, he has cited both a “bad knee” and a cyst on his backside that supposedly rendered him medically unfit.
Despite that undistinguished record, however, he has never hesitated to denigrate the service of Sen. John Kerry, former Sen. Tom Daschle and other Democrats who volunteered to wear the nation’s uniform. He spent hours repeating the “Swift boat” lies when Kerry ran for president in 2004. And now he insinuates that the troops and vets who question this war are “phony soldiers.”
What really worries Limbaugh and his right-wing comrades is that more and more of those who bravely serve America abroad, from foot soldiers to flag officers, have begun to voice their anger at the reckless policies that have cost them so dearly. Leaders of VoteVets, a group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans organized in support of smarter security policy, have angrily challenged Limbaugh to repeat his slur to their faces — something he is most unlikely to do.
Thanks to all the veterans with the courage to speak out — no matter what their opinion — it is no longer so easy for the Limbaugh crowd to claim the military and the flag as their exclusive property. That illegitimate seizure of everyone’s patriotic heritage is coming to an ignominious end.
Of course some in the military oppose the war, and certainly many object to the way it has been fought. Yet we are still talking about a US fighting force that, when polled three years ago, supported Bush over Kerry by a 69% to 24% margin. The idea of the rising tide of an anti-war all-volunteer military — “more and more of those who bravely serve America abroad, from foot soldiers to flag officers, have begun to voice their anger” — seems a bit far fetched, and the overheated prose of Mr. Conason suggests a wish rather than an observation.
Things have gotten a bit strange in the war against conservative talk radio:
Senator Harkin: I’ll just close, Mr. President, by noting that in August, seven soldiers published an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing the current strategy in Iraq. Tragically, two of those soldiers were subsequently killed in action, making the ultimate sacrifice for their country. I can only assume by Mr. Limbaugh’s definition that they too were “phony soldiers.” Now what’s most despicable is that Mr. Limbaugh says these provocative things to make more money. So he castigates our soldiers, this makes more news, more people tune in, he makes more money. Well, I don’t know. Maybe he was just high on his drugs again…
Senator Reid: Here is what we wrote: “Dear Mr. Mays.” Here’s the letter, Mr. President. “At the time we signed this letter, 3,801 hundred American soldiers had been killed in Iraq. Another 27,936 have been wounded. One hundred and sixty others awoke this morning on foreign sand far from home to face the danger and uncertainty of another day at war. Although Americans of goodwill debate the merits of this war, we can all agree that those who serve with such great courage deserve our deepest respect and gratitude….That’s why Rush Limbaugh’s recent characterization of troops who oppose the war as “phony soldiers” is an outrage. Our troops are fighting and dying to bring to others the freedoms that many take for granted. It is unconscionable that Mr. Limbaugh would criticize them for exercising the fundamental American right to free speech. We call on you to publicly repudiate these comments that call into question their service and sacrifice and ask Mr. Limbaugh to apologize for his comments.
We understand that some have called this rather implausible attack on the pro-military conservative talk show host battlefield preparation for the political media war of 2008, but to us, it just looks foolish. Furthermore, the bit from Harkin is downright bizarre, given his history.
Sidney Blumenthal says that one of the most viewed posts in the life of the blogosphere was the result of a grand conspiracy, instantaneously executed:
Within minutes of the conclusion of the broadcast, conservative bloggers launched a counterattack. The chief of these critics was a Republican Party activist in Georgia. Almost certainly, these bloggers, who had been part of meetings or conference calls organized by Karl Rove’s political operation, coordinated their actions with Rove’s office.
Over the past months, there has been a ratcheting up of rhetoric and preparations for a war against Iran. Now there are military men going on the record about war planning for Iran, a new development, with several possible motives. UK Times:
Project Checkmate, a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War’s air campaign, was quietly reestablished at the Pentagon in June. It reports directly to General Michael Moseley, the US Air Force chief, and consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defence and cyberspace experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Detailed contingency planning for a possible attack on Iran has been carried out for more than two years by Centcom (US central command), according to defence sources. Checkmate’s job is to add a dash of brilliance to Air Force thinking by countering the military’s tendency to “fight the last war” and by providing innovative strategies for warfighting and assessing future needs for air, space and cyberwarfare. It is led by Brigadier-General Lawrence “Stutz” Stutzriem, who is considered one of the brightest air force generals. He is assisted by Dr Lani Kass, a former Israeli military officer and expert on cyberwarfare…
Checkmate was formed in the 1970s to counter Soviet threats but fell into disuse in the 1980s. It was revived under Colonel John Warden…Checkmate’s role is to develop the necessary expertise so that “if somebody says Iran, it says: ‘here is what you need to think about’. Here are the objectives, here are the risks, here is what it will cost, here are the numbers of planes we will lose, here is how the war is going to end and here is what the peace will look like”.
Warden added: “The Centcoms of this world are executional – they don’t have the staff, the expertise or the responsibility to do the thinking that is needed before a country makes the decision to go to war. War planning is not just about bombs, airplanes and sailing boats.”
So war planning against Iran would appear to be more real than ever, with military officials going on the record about it. In addition, the advertising of Checkmate would appear to be intended to make the point that a campaign against Iran would be better planned than the Iraq War. Such a preemptive US domestic propaganda campaign also suggests that the administration is very serious about an Iran war.
the official address to the 9/11 commemoration ceremony by Deval Patrick, who is apparently the governor of Massachusetts: 9/11, said Gov. Patrick, “was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States.” “Mean and nasty”? He sounds like an oversensitive waiter complaining that John Kerry’s sent back the aubergine coulis again. But evidently that’s what passes for tough talk in Massachusetts these days…
If you’ll forgive such judgmental categorizations, this isn’t about “them,” it’s about “us.” The long-term survival of any society depends on what proportion of its citizens thinks as Gov. Patrick does. Islamism is an opportunist enemy but you can’t blame them for seeing the opportunity: In that sense, they understand us far more clearly than Gov. Patrick understands them…
Why do radical imams seek to convert young Canadian, British and even American men and women in their late teens and twenties? Because they understand that when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of Deval Patrick-style cultural relativism – nothing is any better or any worse than anything else; if people are “mean and nasty” to us, it’s only because we didn’t sing enough Barney the Dinosaur songs at them – in such a world a certain percentage of its youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something fierce and primal and implacable.
Tra, la la. What a rabble rouser. We have much better things to do today, teach children conflict resolution, play non-winner games, try out the new ab buster, and of course watch OJ and more OJ.
James Lewis looks at Europe and sees a self-inflicted mess. His analysis is interesting in that it identifies coldly calculated domestic political gain, at the expense of losing the country, as the culprit:
London had its Underground bombing a couple of years ago. Madrid had its train bombings, which drove Spain out of the anti-terror coalition. France has had two years of seasonal riots on the outskirts of Paris, and Germany just arrested bomb-plotters trying to create “another 9/11″ at Frankfurt Airport or the Ramstein US air base. The Netherlands had its public murder of Theo Van Gogh, as well as unpublicized violence, and Denmark had its cartoon riots. Levels of rape by immigrants who view women as cattle are up all over Europe, as well as honor killings, genital mutilation, chain immigration and a rising atmosphere of fear and intimidation. If you don’t think people are scared in Europe, you aren’t paying attention…
The governing elites don’t care. After all, the multi-culti crowd who run the place created the problem of uncontrollable immigration in the first place, because immigrants vote Left, just like illegal immigrants in the United States, who are also considered automatic Democrats. So the calculation is that the Left can endanger its native voter base, and still make up for the loss by importing and buying Muslim votes. So far, that calculation has worked very nicely for the political class, so that major cities like Amsterdam, Paris and London are rapidly trending Muslim in polulation. Socialist Britain hasn’t even managed to get rid of terror-preaching Imams who are not legal British citizens. The rule of Shari’a comes next if you just wait long enough.
Roger Simon wrote a paragraph the other day whose concepts were beyond the ken of all but a handful of Americans six long years ago:
anyone who says the three religions are the same when Judaism and Christianity have gone through numerous reformations and Islam has not is simply delusional or lying or a combination of the two. For that reason, fundamentalists are a minority in Judaism and Christianity, while everybody is in one sense a fundamentalist in Islam. The Koran is the verbatim word of God, therefore immutable. The Bible is only a report of the word of God. Out of this, we still have Islamic people beheading people, trying to blow up civilians in subways, destroying Buddhist monuments, institutionally oppressing women and all the rest in 2007, not 1007. Are the perpetrators the exceptions? Sure to some degree (though not in the oppression of women). And there are certainly more of these violent types by far, exponentially far, than there are in any other religion. Do we see the Islamic world rising up in opposition to their behavior? Not at all.
The ability to write that paragraph is precisely how the world has changed since 9-11, whether Christiane Amanpour and CNN choose to acknowledge it or not.
We had never encountered the term poetry slam until today. This was a pretty good way to make its acquaintance. Perhaps the revolution will be televised after all. HT:LGF
There appear to be a number of signs that this year’s annual warning from Adam Gadahn might possibly have a bit of substance behind it. For example, the New York City police department went into high gear yesterday after Debka reported a dirty bomb threat against NYC, LA, and Miami; now police activities are being “scaled back.” The editor of Debka made the salient point to Ynet that the NYC police were not acting on Debka’s report alone:
Be it true or false, imaginary or realistic, DEBKAfile’s Giora Shamis can rest easy on Saturday, after having spun New York police into a frenzy following a Debka report that al-Qaeda might be plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the city…”The New York Police didn’t have to take my information seriously,” he said. “They had other information, additional to ours.”…”We never know if the threat is real or not, but if you follow these publications for years, you can get a feel for whether the threat is serious or not. This time this threat seemed -– due to the intensiveness of the exchange of messages — to be more serious than others.”
Interestingly, Bill Roggio reports that al Qaeda and Taliban training camps — the kind the US destroyed in the aftermath of 9/11 — have been emptying out:
The Fourth Rail interviewed a senior US military intelligence official and a US military officer, both of whom are familiar with the situation in the Northwest Frontier Province and wish to remain anonymous. The sources confirmed Mr. Shahzad’s information concerning the al Qaeda and Taliban camps in North Waziristan and the Taliban’s reorganization is accurate. Both sources are particularly concerned about the implications of the emptying of the camps…Mr. Shahzad reported there were 29 al Qaeda and Taliban camps in North and South Waziristan, and all but one “have been dismantled, apart from one run by hardline Islamist Mullah Abdul Khaliq.”…
The al Qaeda and Taliban personnel abandoned the 28 camps after “the US had presented Islamabad with a dossier detailing the location of the bases as advance information on likely US targets,” Mr. Shahzad reported….”This is one of the reasons that we are worried about a major CONUS [Continental United States] attack,” the senior military intelligence source told The Fourth Rail, noting the recent influx of news of terror cells attempting to penetrate the US. “If they evacuated their bases, they almost certainly did so out of fear of more than just the Pakistani army.”
Meanwhile, DHS reports increased penetration attempts from both Canada and Mexico, via ABC:
“Tunnels under U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico serve primarily as conduits for transporting illicit drugs into the United States. In addition, reliable reporting indicates that some tunnels also are used for alien smuggling, including special interest aliens.”…In its own report, “Special Assessment: Underground Tunnels: A Border Security Threat,” DHS noted that 65 tunnels have been discovered since 1990 — all but one originating in Mexico — and the pace of tunneling or the discovery of tunneling appears to be accelerating…
Canadian officials meanwhile have issued a warning that “several…counterfeit visas…have been intercepted at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.”…”The counterfeits were detected in the possession of nationals of Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan, and most recently, nationals of India. The counterfeits, purportedly issued in Kiev and Chandigarh, bear serial numbers starting with ‘A043283.’”
Finally, some odd things have been happening in Washington as well. The Republican administration is suddenly making noises about taking border enforcement seriously, and the Democratic Congress went along with warrantless domestic surveillance with relatively few complaints. Happenstance, coincidence, or other? (And, by the way, should we start thinking about August 22 again, as Bernard Lewis suggested last year?)
Observations by Michael Yon, who has spent 18 months embedded with troops in Iraq:
almost none of those who have cast themselves as truth-tellers have the requisite credibility for the job. The one man who does was told he had only until September to evaluate progress. I’m not suggesting that I make a worthy substitute for the commanding general, David Petraeus, on this or any subject, but since December of 2004, I have spent roughly a 1½ years on the battlefields of Iraq.
I’ve traveled alongside American Army and Marines and British forces, from Basra to Mosul and just about anywhere of note in between. When it comes to Iraq, being there matters because of the massive disconnect between what most Americans think they know about Iraq, and what is actually going on there…
